Psychology@Work

So what is the greatest leadership risk of all? It’s not the stuff that leaders do badly or don’t do at all, despite what you might think. It’s not having a lack of  skills  in certain areas, although of course that can be a problem all of its own. No, the greatest leadership risk of them all is the dreaded  strength in overdrive . Today I want to talk about this leadership risk in more detail – h...

Energise your employee experience Employers are starting to wake up to the fact that it’s  them  who need to start flexing to the needs and expectations of their employees rather than the other way around.  And in my view, these changes are accelerating, won’t be reversed and any employer that doesn’t shift its thinking will fail to attract and keep good people, ultimately leading to untimely deat...

How to change the habits of a lifetime Changing habits comes up a lot on people’s to do lists – when we want to keep our NY resolutions, lose weight, get fit, stop smoking, eat healthily and so on and so on. With the stuff I talk about on these podcasts, it’s usually the case that we’re wanting to change habituated behaviour by adopting new thinking or new behavioural patterns and using our brain’...

Today's podcast is about how adding strengths together can actually lead to a multiplication of strengths (I know right, mad maths), which can make those strengths either super-strong, or which may lead to them getting totally out of control. How to create super-strengths and not strength monsters

My podcasts focus on the intersect between life and work and strengths and Oh My Actual God (other deities are available), today’s podcast really does cover all three. Like literally, in the form of a diagram - Ikigai. Live Longer With Ikigai

Today’s podcast is all about the intersection between work and strengths and how to do this best, particularly when it comes to leadership development. Make your leadership 360 degree feedback program work

Employee engagement is a workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of wellbeing. Engaging employees is seen as a bit of a ‘holy grail’ when it comes to managing people and looking after their well-being. So how exactly do peo...

So as we head in to the new year, there’s a good chance that you’ll be thinking about your goals for the year ahead. So the question I’m posing this week, and giving you some tips for, is how best to structure your goal-setting for the start of the year (or quite frankly for any time) to give you the best possible chance of success. And, as usual, my tips are backed by science.

This week I am delighted to be joined for a podversation by Louise Blanchett, a wonderful lady with approximately 200% more energy than me. I know right? And Louise is going to tell her story of strengths through her career so far – how she’s used the approach in her corporate career, for her own personal development and outside of work too.

Being present at Chrismas I know you know that Christmas can be stressful. Forget that, Christmas is stressful. In fact, hold on, has someone actually designed-in stress to Christmas as a way of making more money from us? Or is that a conspiracy theory too far? Ok, so assuming no one's actually deliberately manipulating our stress levels against our will at Christmas, we’re probably more in contro...

There’s a lot of contrary advice out there on whether we’re better at making decisions with our ‘hearts’ (keying into our intuition, values and feelings) or with our ‘heads’ (referencing logic, facts and evidence), so I wanted to spend today’s podcast considering how you can get the best from both worlds, rather than ignoring, suppressing or overplaying one or the other. How to make decisions

It is my complete and utter delight to be joined by a truly warm and wonderful human being, a living legend, a future visionary, thought leader and key influencer of today – yes, I welcome Dr Naeema Pasha, Director of Henley Careers at Henley Business School to the mic. In this podversation, we talk about Generation Z – who are they, what they want with us, from us, and for us and the world, and h...

In today’s podcast, I want to talk about a popular topic – how to own your own development, in a work context. In some organisations, there will be a formal process for putting together your personal development plan. In others, there will be less of a formal process and more of an informal ‘development by request’ process, where you’ll need to put together your reasoning behind requesting a parti...

When you watch people who lead and manage others well – people that you come into contact with at work, or that you hear about from others, they’ll all be very different people – different values, stories, experiences, attitudes – everyone’s unique, right? But in terms of some of the behaviours of the very best leaders and managers – there is some commonality. And one of the things that the best l...

What is strengths-based coaching and how does it differ from more traditional approaches? In today’s podcast, I’m going to give you some tips and some killer questions that will help you supercharge any coaching-type conversation that you may have – whether it’s with a colleague, a direct report or an actual coachee.

I’m excited today to be bringing you a podversation which follows my podcast on how to improve employee engagement. I thought it might be helpful to share our experience of employee engagement at Strengthscope…good, bad and indifferent. We want to share what we do at different stages of the employee experience – what’s worked and what’s work in progress (although it’s all work in progress really,...

Today’s podcast has a clear work focus and is how to set expectations . Well I say it’s a clear work focus…actually, who’s to say that following some of these approaches wouldn’t be helpful outside of work too. But mainly I’m going to be talking about work as the focus. Transcript: How to set expectations at work

To be successful with any task or activity, you need to be engaged with it, particularly at work. Increasing employee engagement at work has been shown to directly relate to organisational success – profitability, productivity, customer loyalty and reduced levels of absenteeism and turnover. In today’s podcast, I am going to talk about what are some of the proven benefits of increased employee eng...

This week I talk about the challenges, both physically and mentally, that the change of the season brings. Listen in to hear my tips on setting yourself up for a great winter and beat those winter blues.

What are management and leadership strengths and how can you get them? One of the questions I am often asked in my work with leaders is ‘do I have the right strengths to be a leader?’. In this podcast I talk about how it matters far less which strengths you have, but what matters more is how you use them. Listen in to hear my tips on getting know your strengths and using them effectively in any ro...

In this podversation, I am joined by Jane Grant – UK Head of Learning and Development at WSP. We’re going to be talking about WSP’s practical application of the strengths approach (and our strengths assessment tool Strengthscope) in different parts of the WSP business. WSP is a Canadian business providing management and consultancy services to the built and natural environment with over 50,000 sta...

Performance management processes – you know, what many people still call appraisals – are having a bit of facelift, an overhaul, a loving boot in many organisations that we’re working with at Strengthscope. Why? Because traditional appraisals don’t work so well, or even at all, with today’s employees. In this podcast, I want to talk about how the performance management process is getting an upgrad...

In our work around strengths – helping people to find, share and develop their strengths – we’re often asked the question…do strengths change over time? On this podcast, I want to describe a couple of occasions where strengths do shift over time, both to become more prominent, or to play a lesser role.

One of the most frequently mentioned challenges I hear from people wanting to improve their work performance, or developing their strengths is making behaviour changes stick. It’s tricky. Behaviour change hurts, needs discipline, and there are no short cuts. However, there are cute ways that you can use what’s already in your brain to help changes stick. One idea that seems to be getting a bit of...

Have you come across the term ‘ strength in overdrive ’? Well it’s a phrase that we use a lot at Strengthscope® - what it means is when you’re using something that is usually a positive quality for you, one that gives you energy and that you are good at using or at least have that potential. But in certain circumstances, that strength can go just that little bit too far, so it tips into ‘overdrive...