Helping Organisations Thrive with Julian Roberts

Welcome to this solo series called BOOST, the purpose is to give you little BOOST to your day, to further provide ways to create a thriving organisation.   Michael Phelps famously credits visualisation to his success in the 200m butterfly at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He won gold and set a world record despite not being able to see for the last 75m while water filled up his leaky goggles. You may...

*** Trigger warning - mentions of suicide ***   The analogies between endurance racing and mental health have often been cited. In this fascinating podcast Sally Orange draws comparisons between her extreme physical adventures and her challenges with severe depression, suicidal tendencies and crippling anxiety.    Sally has completed over 8 Ironman triathlons, 71 marathons, along with events such...

How to empower and equip your team to manage their own stress.  As a GP of 20 years, Rebecca saw a multitude of variations of the harm caused by stress, with most people coming to her at crisis point, when it was hard to disentangle what might be causing the physical and mental health symptoms she was presented with. This led Rebecca to start her own business, Williams Stress Management. She now h...

How to support wellness when your organisation works remotely? The opportunities and challenges facing managers who want to provide holistic support for employees' well-being are discussed in this fascinating podcast with Tarin Calmeyer. Tarin describes wellness as a way of looking at your whole life - financial, social, physical, spiritual etc, and describes wellness as an optimal state of thrivi...

How to turn your team into an ideas factory, giving you a modern engine of innovation to drive ROI.  CEO and Co-founder of Leg Up Tom Finn talks about how to achieve the balance between kindness and accountability within servant leadership, and explores reasons behind the turnover tsunami of the current Great Resignation. The importance of having a growth mindset is nothing new, but Tom explains h...

In this podcast Corina discusses how to identify and then support emerging and front line leaders. She prioritises "coach-ability" as the number one trait to look for when identify future leaders; and advises organisations to consider having two different leadership tracks - one for business/technical leadership, and one for people leadership.  Corina advises companies to give any employee the cha...

Seeing sales in a new light: Ex global business director Gillian Selby talks about the impact of taking a collaborative approach to sales, and elevating your business as one unit, rather than seeing sales as a stand alone entity. She explores the value of having a service mindset approach, as opposed to a company seeing themselves as the experts and expecting clients to come to them. She explains...

CEO and Principal of East Sussex College Group, Rebecca Conroy talks about maintaining value driven leadership through difficult financial seasons.    Rebecca explains how she makes tough decisions relating to significant funding cuts, and how she leads her team in prioritising listening, then talking to people. She takes time to understand how decisions like potential redundancies would impact th...

Intent on changing the way people interact, author Patrick Aylward is having a global impact with his ideas on collaboration. He shares how collaboration leads to opportunities and innovation; whereas mediation, debate and conflict resolution close down this potential to innovate and grow. Where conflict resolution is inherently reactive, collaboration is proactive.    Patrick is a former litigati...

Eco-adventurer, Geoscientist and expedition leader Isaac Kenyon talks about the mental toughness needed to row for 3 days and 10 hrs on an indoor rowing machine with no sleep (gaining a world record); and the success of using meta-cognition for this event.   Growing up, Isaac was not always safe outside or in school, and therefore spent a lot of time indoors as a teenager. Camping and fishing trip...

Is there a correlation between employee happiness and customer happiness? Can emotions be translated into data to show the relationship between engagement in the workplace and the top 4 happiness drivers?   The Happiness Index co-founder Matt Phelan discusses how to analyse data on employee happiness, engagement and productivity from a neuroscience perspective, coaching his clients to use data to...

Today I am interviewing Louise Larkum who is the Founder and Director at Mindcare Training.   Deloitte's undertook an official independent review and found that for every £1 they had spent on mental health and well-being in the workplace, they received a £5 return. Join Louise Larkum as she discusses how to create a top down culture of mental well-being in your workplace.   Louise explains how, as...

Today I am interviewing adventurer Jasmine Harrison.   At 21 years old Jasmine Harrison is the youngest female to row solo across any ocean. Jasmine recently spent 70 days rowing alone across the Atlantic, enduring capsizing, hallucinations, sleep deprivation, an inability to eat (which she was not expecting!).  Jasmine explores the importance of knowing your "why"; and how keep on overcoming chal...

Today I am interviewing Van Carlson who is the CEO at SRA 831(b) Admin.   "We don't have enough risk takers", according to Van Carlson, founder and CEO of Strategic Risk Alternatives. Van explores all things risk-related, and explains how to mitigate risks without taking away the reward. He talks about the importance of being willing to take risks, but also of the need to have a short term memory!...

Today I am interviewing British adventurer Chris Howard.   "Our mantra went out the window when we left port, and it became very scary, but we used that fear." Extreme endurance adventurer and father of three, Chris Howard chats about some of his most recent adventures, including rowing the Atlantic and walking the coast of Great Britain (a marathon a day for 450 consecutive days). He talks about...

Today I am interviewing Siôn Stansfield who is a Co-Founder at POINT3 Wellbeing.   Do you think of high performance when you think of well-being? In this interview we explored performance and well-being in the workplace, balancing goal achievement and well-being with my guest Sion Stansfield. Sion discusses how to develop a sustainable approach to high performance, balancing staff well-being with...

Today I am interviewing Isobel Cripps who is a personal development and wellbeing coach.   We explored the importance of well-being in the workplace, Isobel explains why this can't be neatly packaged, and advises how to approach well-being as bespoke, rather than corporate. This approach will benefit individual employees as well as your business as a whole, reaping financial benefits through incre...

Today I am interviewing Michelle Smith who is the Founder and Managing Director of Empower Workplace solutions.   Michelle has an empathetic leadership approach to all the services she offers, today we focused on how to equip your leaders to have those conversations around supporting your teams in loss or grief, this could be loss of a loved one, loss of a marriage or even financial loss. Michelle...

Today I am interviewing George Minakakis who is the Founder and CEO of Inception Retail Group Inc.   We discussed authentic leadership in the context of the organisation and how leading in this will have the greatest impact on your business. George shared his Reliability Quotient which is defined as 1. Authenticity - believable leadership, 2. Integrity - incorruptible leadership, 3. Credibility -...

Today I am interviewing Victoria Thomson who is the Owner of Ambridge HR. Today's episode is part of the series on "HR challenges faced by SME's", where I will be interviewing HR experts on key topics to help SME organisations.   Today we explored menopause in the workplace, policy and how to implement day to day, what does it mean and why. Here is the context for our discussion. According to Prof...

Today I am interviewing Emily Woodason, by day a Landscape Architect, however she has just completed the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. A 3,000 mile rowing race across the Atlantic. This is a story of resilience, teamwork and leadership that we can translate into our organisations. Her team One Ocean Crew crossed the #TWAC2021 finish line on 21st January 2022 at 13:13 local time. Jen Cullom,...

Today I am interviewing Linda Taylor who is the Managing Director of The Employees Relations Consultancy. Today's episode is part of the series on "HR challenges faced by SME's", where I will be interviewing HR experts on key topics to help SME organisations.   We discussed discrimination in the workplace, and we focused on the behaviour of banter and telling inappropriate jokes, and how do you de...

Today I am interviewing Matt Atkinson who is the Managing Director of Utelize.   Matt shared his experiences of how he has started multiple businesses and grown them, recognising that each stage of growth requires different skills of people, along with ensuring you are empowering and motivating your teams onto the next stage. Matt shared 2 key ways to drive his business forward, one was ensure you...

Today I am interviewing Emily Perry who is the Founder of The People Consultancy. Today's episode is part of the series on "HR challenges faced by SME's", where I will be interviewing HR experts on key topics to help SME organisations.   Emily started the conversation by saying before you even think about your people in your business, is to get clear what your business goals are, who you are as a...

Today I am interviewing Lucy Fitzgerald who is the CEO & Founder of Fitzgerald HR. Today's episode starts the a series on "HR challenges faced by SME's", where I will be interviewing HR experts on key topics to help SME organisations.   According to Breathe (HR software platform), 68% of business owners have said that they have seen an increase in the mental health, anxiety and depression in their...