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No one likes hearing they’re not meeting their boss’s expectations, and neither did I. My first response was that the criticism was unfair – all that work was on track. I felt wronged and misunderstood. William James, a pioneer in psychology, said, “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over...
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When Steve Jobs bought the computer division from Lucasfilm and started an independent company called Pixar in 1986, no one could have anticipated its runaway success. Until Pixar came along, the commercial success of computer-animated movies had been hit or miss. It was rare for a production company to have a string of hits, let alone...
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When I first met my partner, he was petrified of Dentists – not just one, but all of them. He had an accident that needed dental work when he was a child, and his terrible experience left a deep mark. He avoided any Dentist for years until he knew he couldn’t put it off any...
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It was 2018. I looked at the Employee Opinion Survey results and was shocked. The trust in leadership scores had dropped significantly. Being me, I took it personally and brought in an external facilitator to help understand why. We broke everyone across the Branch into small groups to explore (i) which level of leader they...
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On 3 July 1988, the USS cruiser Vincennes mistook an Iranian commercial flight for a fighter jet. The crew of the Vincennes, a missile cruiser, thought the Airbus was an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter. The commercial flight’s transponder was emitting civilian code, the plane was climbing—not diving to attack, and radio messages warning the Airbus...
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In a job interview for an executive role in the mid-2010s, I was invited to tell the selection panel about my weaknesses. The first one that came to mind was ‘I often do because I can’. That was a handy weakness when I was working late at night to meet a deadline, something had to...
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Fifteen years ago, I worked with doctors who believed they didn’t need as much sleep as the next person. We engaged a university, involved the doctors in action-based research and tracked their sleep patterns. The study proved they were not physiologically different from the rest of the community. That was the easy part. The hard...
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Last night, my husband confessed. He told me about a game he plays when we’re on a long drive in the car. The types of drives where you chat, stop talking, listen to music, watch the world go by and talk again. Apparently, I often talk about our kids before going quiet for a while....
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Everyone in my immediate family can at least draw an elephant’s backside – but not me. Some of them can do far more than that, including my daughter studying design. I made my wedding dress, all the bridesmaids’ dresses, the flower girl’s dress, and the groom’s vest to match my dress. I even made boxer...
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Have you ever led a project or program where you knew it was no longer sustainable, but despite multiple conversations with the rest of the leadership team, there was no resolution? It kept dragging along, talk fest after talk fest. When I worked with an organisation stuck in this cycle, they agreed to try something...
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Stories have power, and the stories we tell ourselves often have hidden power when we fail to recognise that’s what they are – stories. Let me share with you some stories I’ve noticed coaching clients tell themselves. Names have been changed to protect the identities of these master storytellers. Jill told herself that if something...
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Last week, we explored why you can still get hooked when you avoid emotions at work. When you keep a smile plastered on your face no matter what gets thrown at you, the internal pressure builds and builds until, eventually, that pressure has to find a way out, just like lava overflowing from a volcano. ...
Read itIf the complexity in your organisation isn't going anywhere, and you have less certainty than you'd like, that's ground Susanne has worked for thirty years.
Start with a conversation to find your team's way through.
