Negotiation Skills: natural or learnt?
Negotiating is an essential life skill that we are not always explicitly taught. What are the key secrets of good negotiators? Averil Leimon, Leadership Psychologist and Director of White Water Group, discussed it all with Stephen Jardine on BBC Radio Scotland –...
Straight Talking can be for Good News too
Being a straight talker doesn’t mean that you have to be critical or offensive. We avoid not only confrontation but the good stuff too, suspicious of positive comments as just being a softener before the negative! If you take the opportunity to praise others in a...
Political correctness v. unconscious bias
In the increasingly fractious debate of what constitutes acceptable public speech, organisation err towards bland caution, for fear of unleashing a twitter storm damageable to their reputation. Yet the same organisations routinely reinforce the use of expressions that...
Halloween Special… What is it about scary women?
A while ago I was asked to speak on Business Breakfast about a report that stated that women were more stressed when working for a female boss than a male boss. When I arrived, I wondered why pictures of wasps were projected on the studio walls. The interviewer’s...
Gender Equality: Why corporate initiatives fail (and what to do about it)
As part of our White Water Insights research series, we are introducing a new white paper: Despite the apparent best efforts of many companies, the talent pipeline keeps leaking. In this research, we draw on our 15+ years of experience coaching senior women and...
Taking your career up a notch
Women enter the workforce with a high confidence level after graduating University in their early twenties. They are usually in their first job because they are the best: they have the highest academic grades and have passed various interview processes with flying...
Women’s Leadership: The Full Life by Averil Leimon
Having a work-life balance can be extremely challenging. Instead, Averil Leimon emphasises the importance of having a full life. This video provides you with the tips you need in order to have a happier and more balanced life.
Fight club for Women?
I have been banging on about women for a long time. . . .a very long time. Amazing what turns up if you Google yourself. That press cutting came from 1983 and was my public speaking debut. I remember it well, even that I was wearing a fabulous cream trouser suit with...
Dancing in the moment
Rush, rush, rush. . .I often have real concern in organisations when I see people lurch from one frenetic activity to the next, taking little opportunity to sit back and reflect on what and how they are doing. It often makes for bad business due to tunnel vision....
Titania – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Have we not all wanted to ‘do a Blackadder’ and deliver Shakespeare a smart bop on the noggin when, for the hundredth time, we were made to read A Midsummer Night’s Dream in school? One of the more endlessly regurgitated of his plays, ‘the dream’ might have very...