Communication
Pause. Breathe. Reassess.
Occasionally, we just need to pause. When we find ourselves with a churning or anxious mind, we need to pause. When we feel overwhelmed or unsure, we need to pause. When our nervous systems are caught in a state of fight or flight, constantly waiting for the next fire that needs extinguishing, we just need to…
Read MoreHow Responsible Is TOO Responsible?
Responsibility is a spectrum – meaning there’s a line ranging from completely irresponsible all the way to destructive over-responsibility… and all of us are on it somewhere. We all know that personal responsibility is something we start to learn early in life – brush your teeth, make your bed, represent yourself well, be nice to…
Read MoreDeveloping Safe Space for Difficult Conversations
Developing a safe space for difficult conversations is hard. It doesn’t matter what the conversation is about, who’s involved, or whether you’re trying to have it at home, at work, or with a friend – we have an innate fear of being a part of difficult conversations because they are threatening, feel unsafe, and often…
Read MoreWhat Makes You Valuable?
What is it that makes you valuable as a human being? What is it that makes you valuable as a teammate? I use the word teammate in the broadest sense, applying it to work and home, to sports and friendships, to community and country. What is it that makes you valuable as an individual –…
Read MoreThe Strength In Our Differences
It’s part of our survival instinct as human beings to look for threats and defend ourselves against them. Once upon a time, the part of our brain responsible for reacting to threats would have been on the alert for a sabre-toothed tiger. Today, the same part of our brain responsible for our survival instincts still…
Read MoreHow Stress Makes Us Stupid
Over the past few years, I’ve become more and more of an advocate for decent strategic planning in the lead up to the December break and the flip over of the calendar to the next year. Strategic planning that allows us to consider, download and offload the year we’ve had – processing the lessons, assessing…
Read MoreMaintaining Control of November
We are mid-November, caught between finishing what we need to accomplish and account for this year, and preparing for the new year coming. As time available seems to shorten, and calendars fill up with impossible amounts of residual tasks, our heads can start to feel full and pressurised. Board meetings, end of term and end of…
Read MoreAssuaging the Global Pandemic of Self-Doubt
Many of us are experiencing for the first time in our lifetimes the effects of prolonged uncertainty, change, and “operating conditions” that are continuously out of our control and difficult, if not impossible to plan for. Whilst this global pandemic started as one of physical health, it has become one that has tested our mental…
Read MoreThe Case For Honesty
All of us are constantly trying to balance our needs. When we are out of balance, our behaviours, responses, and decisions are all governed by trying to get back into some sense of balance. With any luck, we find and choose healthy ways to rebalance ourselves; but balance we must, even if we have to…
Read MoreCreating Cohesion Out Of Chaos
When I first started translating the Crew Resource Management skills that flight crews use into other business teams, I thought I was sharing strictly communication skills. I very quickly realised that you can’t address human communication without coming smack bang up against culture, and that together, communication and culture are the grease that allow the…
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