Blog
When it comes to Leadership and people thriving at work, there is a lot we are passionate about. Check out our blog each month for the latest ponderings, insights and ideas from Karen Gately.
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From leadership and company culture to self-improvement and current affairs, our blog offers practical tips and advice to help you learn and grow.
Discover how to become a more effective leader, build a thriving team, and achieve your ambitions. Among other things our blogs can help you to:
- Discover how to build trust, create a healthy workplace culture, and keep your employees engaged.
- Develop a positive mindset, cultivate resilience, build confidence, and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Karen writes about things that inspire her in a hope they will inspire you too. Ultimately she’s strive to help you to become a more effective leader, a successful individual, and a well-rounded citizen of the world.
Navigating the Intersection of Policy and Compassion
In a recent episode of our podcast, Work Savvy, I shared in our WTF at Work segment the story of a Queensland bus driver who found himself at the harsh intersection of company policy and moral duty. After intervening to defend a young passenger from an assault, the driver was terminated from his position for allegedly breaching the company’s policies.
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Challenges and Rewards of Being an Entrepreneur
This podcast episode features Karen Gately interviewing Natasha Coughlan, a multiple award-winning entrepreneur, coach, and speaker. The focus of the conversation is on the challenges and rewards of being an entrepreneur.
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Performance versus Well-being Myth
On this podcast Karen Gately talks with Graham Winter about the performance versus well-being myth.
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Taming the Black Dog: Overcoming Depression
Adam shares his story of overcoming depression and suicidal ideation. He talks about the various challenges he faced throughout his life, including bullying, ADHD, and learning disabilities.
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Fostering Innovation and Well-being: Psychological Safety at Work
Karen Gately and guest Brett Pomroy from ‘Salt Legal’ discuss the crucial concept of psychological safety in the workplace. They explore the idea of an environment where employees feel empowered to take risks, voice their ideas, and ask questions without the fear of repercussions.
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Broken Leadership and How to Address it
This episode with Karen Gately, the founder of Corporate Dojo, and Dr. Paige Williams, an organizational psychologist and an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne, is about broken leadership and how to fix it. Together they explore Paige Williams' latest book, ‘The Leaders Ecosystem: A Guide to Leading Exceptionally’ including how it came to be and why it is important for today’s leaders.
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Soft Skills Are the New Hard Skills for Leaders
This episode, Karen Gately talks with communication expert Leah Metha. Leah is a specialist in communication and human skills, a seasoned speaker, trainer, facilitator and published author.
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Trauma and its Influence on how People Show Up at Work
In this "Work Savvy" podcast, host Karen Gately is joined by Bonnie Souter, founder of “Bombora Learning”. The conversation focuses on the profound impact of trauma on individuals in the workplace. They delve into understanding the nature of trauma and how leaders can approach it with empathy and effectiveness.
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Why 'Plain Speak' Matters
Most of us are taught to be polite, and that’s a good thing. Some of us are also taught that a sophisticated vocabulary, or ‘big words’ help us to appear intelligent and educated. The problem is when we hold back from speaking the full extent of the truth, or use language that is difficult to understand, barriers to success are created.
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Fostering Collaboration in the Workplace
Karen and Adam discuss the centrality of trust in establishing a collaborative environment. Leaders who demonstrate trust in their team members create a foundation for opencommunication and mutual respect. This, in turn, fosters a sense of psychological safety, whereteam members feel comfortable expressing ideas, concerns, and potential solutions without fearof judgment or reprimand.
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Strong Relationships Are at The Heart of Your Team’s Ability to Thrive
How well do the members of your team get along? Are your people able to effectively collaborate to achieve the best possible outcomes for your business? Strong relationships built on a foundation of trust and respect are essential to any team’s ability to realise their potential.
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Building Confidence: Tips to Elevate Your Self-Esteem
I’m often saddened by how many of my clients lack confidence and even low self regard. All too often I am able to see their strengths and potential, when they don’t. Even when I encourage them to recognise their own gifts and value to their employer, they resist.
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The Power of Autonomy
Working with a client recently to redesign their Performance and Development Plans, I was reminded of the incredible insights on human motivation offered by Dan Pink in his groundbreaking book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About WhatMotivates Us.
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Staying Focused in a Busy Job with Loads of Competing Priorities
In today's fast-paced work environment, it's not uncommon for people to find themselves submerged in a sea of tasks, with each wave threatening to pull our focus away from essential priorities. The constant influx of emails, unexpected meetings, and looming deadlines can make it challenging to stay on track. It’s a challenge most of the leaders we work with face.
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Cultivating Patience: Steps to Being a Calmer You
Let’s face it people and life can be frustrating at times. Patience hasn’t always been my strength so I can empathise with the many leaders I work with who struggle to be patient when faced with the challenges inherent in influencing the performance of teams, progress of priorities and achievement of results.
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Why Visualization Is a Powerful Tool for Building Confidence and Enabling Success
As a Martial Artist one of tools we used to build confidence and courage, as well as ready ourselves for competing was visualization. Putting it simply, visualization works because of its ability to tap into our brain's intricate networks, priming it for success and influencing our emotions, decisions, and actions.
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Being Assertive
Assertiveness is often misinterpreted as aggression or arrogance. In reality, it's a balanced, respectful way of expressing your views or standing up for your rights. While aggression may violate others' boundaries, assertiveness respects both your own rights and those of others. It's a middle ground between passivity and aggression.
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Making Remote Working Work
Remote work has now found its firm footing in the business world. As a manager, optimizing the productivity, communication, and well-being of remote teams can feel like a big challenge. However, with the right strategies in place, it's possible to create a thriving remote work environment. Here are ten steps you can take to make remote working work well for your team.
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Navigating Difficult Conversations: Addressing a Team Member's Poor Attitude
Having a conversation about a team member's poor attitude can be one of the more challenging aspects of people leadership. It’s common for the leaders I work with to avoid or put off conversations about attitudes that are undermining team morale, productivity or performance.
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2 Things That Make the Biggest Difference When It Comes to Building a Cohesive Team
Great teams are always cohesive and united in their pursuit of common goals. The strength and extent of interpersonal connection existing among the members of a group is the biggest indicator of whether a group is likely to succeed together.
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Be and Work for a Family-Friendly Leader
Maintaining a balance between the demands of your job and those of your family life comes down to the decisions you make. Your ability to maintain balance is ultimately a reflection of what you choose to prioritise, who you choose to work for and what you choose to accept.
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Enabling Beliefs
Reflect for a moment on the ways in which the beliefs you hold influence the choices you make in life, including at work. Do the things you believe about your capabilities inspire you to step forward and take on new challenges, or do they hold you back? How often do you allow limiting beliefs to cause you to hesitate to give things a go or speak up with confidence?
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What To Do About Unreliable People
Are you frustrated by the impacts unreliable employees have on the spirit and performance of your team? If so, you’re far from alone. Many of the leaders we work with complain of the need to manage people who drop the ball just when they are needed most. Tardiness, absenteeism, missed deadlines and inconsistent standards of work quality are common concerns.
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Knowing When to Surrender
Reflect on how many fights you are actively engaged in right now. With yourself, family members or colleagues. To be clear, by fight, I mean being in a state of struggle in which we are resisting or working to overcome, eliminate or prevent our circumstances.
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Strong Foundations
It’s quite extraordinary how one 'aha' moment can have a massive impact on our thinking, emotions and actions. The most recent example for me happened during a three-day immersive development retreat.
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Motivation Myth
While having lunch with my son recently he proclaimed, “Mum, I think motivation is a myth”. He went on to explain that he doesn’t believe motivation is what enables us to get started, but rather a feeling that builds when we achieve forward momentum or a sense of progress.
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What to Do When You Get the Hiring Decision Wrong
Let’s face it. When we get hiring decisions wrong the consequences can be painful. Lost time, money and productivity together with low morale and damaged relationships are among the most common impacts I see.
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No Regrets: Living Life Like There Are Few Tomorrows
Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, looking after patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded her patient’s dying epiphanies in her blog, which thanks to the attention it received led to the release of her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing.
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6 Steps to Harnessing Discretionary Effort
So many of the leaders I work with are frustrated by failed attempts to lift the energy and contribution of their team. People plodding along doing no more than they absolutely must is all too familiar and a common challenge across the diverse range of industries we work with.
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Combating Unconscious Bias
Searching for information about the impacts of unconscious biases on people at work, I came across an article titled ‘Physical Attractiveness Bias in Employee Termination’ by Melissa Commisso and Lisa Finkelstein from the Department of Psychology at Northern Illinois University.
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Why Thank You Matters More Than Money
How do you feel when someone says thank you? Whether it be for our efforts, or achievements, most people appreciate being told they are appreciated. Assuming sincerity in its delivery, a simple ‘thank you’ can go a long way to making people feel valued and respected.
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Why It’s OK to Talk About Not Being OK
The first time I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety the strongest emotion I felt was embarrassment. When my husband shared ‘the news’ with another family member I was devastated, convinced what would follow was unwanted pity and ultimately loss of respect from people I care about.
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Avoiding Burnout When You're Connected 24/7
When was the last time you spent a day completely disconnected from technology? How often do you check emails outside of work hours? Is your attention constantly grabbed by apps that notify you of everything going on in your world, as it happens?
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New Podcast Episode!
There is a brand new Work Savvy episode ready for your ear holes!
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Giving Yourself the Best Chance of Success Each Day
Success doesn’t come easily. No matter how much it might seem like some people have it lucky and seem to achieve everything they want to, the simple reality is everyone needs to do the work needed to land in the places that they want to.
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Take the Pain Early
Have you ever avoided change because it feels too hard to go through the pain inherent in making it happen?
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Choosing Our Attitude
Travelling home from Sydney recently I was reminded of how much power we have to choose the version of reality we experience.
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NEW PODCAST ALERT!
Work Savvy is back this week for episode 21 with Ros from Neural Networks to discuss the link between EQ and team culture.
Sick of the 'Sickie'?
The issue of the ‘sickie’ was raised by a client recently who has been struggling to get people to consistently turn up for work at a time when roles have been especially hard for them to fill. Staff shortages are putting enormous pressure on the team and the last thing they need is people dishonestly using their personal leave.
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Value Adding Performance Management
It doesn’t matter how well-designed a performance management system is, unless it is effectively applied it will add little to no value. What matters most is the approach people leaders take every day to get the best from each person on their team.
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Growing Emotional Intelligence
How emotionally intelligent are you? This is a particularly difficult question for most of us to answer.
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Shifting Culture Webinar
Register now for our last free webinar for 2021. Come and join us! TOMORROW - Wednesday 15th of December, at 12pm AEDT.
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CEO Fires 900 Staff on a Zoom Call...
In case you’ve missed it in the news, the latest staggeringly poor example of business leadership is brought to us courtesy of Better.com CEO Vishal Garg.
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Assessing Character Through the Hiring Process
Getting hiring decisions wrong is an undeniably costly exercise. The drain on time, energy, morale and drag on progress can be immense.
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Diagnosing Performance Issues
Register now for our fourth webinar. Come and join us! Wednesday 24th of November, at 12 pm AEST.
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Lessons Learned from Viktor Frankl's 'Man's Search for Meaning
Recently I finished reading Viktor Frankl’s famous book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ and was reminded of just how much power we each have to choose how we perceive and experience reality.
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