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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.

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Building Confidence: Tips to Elevate Your Self-Esteem

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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Cultivating Patience: Steps to being a Calmer You

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

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

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

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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Enabling Beliefs

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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Knowing when to surrender

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

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

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

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

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

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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Why it’s OK to talk about not being OK

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

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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Giving yourself the best chance of success each day

Giving yourself the best chance of success each day

Success doesn’t come easily.  No matter 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

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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NEW PODCAST ALERT!

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. 
 

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Sick of the 'Sickie'?

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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New podcast

New podcast

Want to learn about culture and corporate governance?

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Value adding performance management

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 getting the best from each person on their team.

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Bad Blood

Bad Blood

Among my favourite pastimes is reading books about business leaders and organisations. I’m especially intrigued by stories of corporate corruption and how seriously dodgy leaders manage to get away with the things that they do, for as long as they do.

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Shifting Culture Webinar

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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Diagnosing performance issues

Diagnosing performance issues

Register now for our fourth webinar. Come and join us! Wednesday 24th of November, at 12pm AEST. 

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Lessons learned from Viktor Frankl's 'Man's Search for Meaning'

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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Webinar 2 - Executing a strategy through your people

Webinar 2 - Executing a strategy through your people

Register now for our second webinar. Come and join us! Wednesday 29th of September, at 11:30am AEST. 

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Just deal with it already!

Just deal with it already!

Contemplate for a moment on how often you avoid dealing with the problems you need to.  Now ask yourself how well that typically turns out - for you, your team or even your business. In my experience avoidance simply prolongs agony and often makes things worse.  All too often the people I work with hesitate to address issues and ultimately pay a price.  Energy, time, money and momentum are all lost when roadblocks to success are tolerated, ignored or simply put in the ‘too hard to deal with right now’ basket.

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Dealing with reality

Dealing with reality

If nothing else what the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed is a need for many of us to learn to deal with reality in ways that are good for our health . While it’s understandable that a lot of people have felt fearful, disappointed or frustrated, the simple truth is there is very little we can do to change the circumstances we all find ourselves in.

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