


Bringing in the bacon and bringing up baby
I answered the home phone and was asked if the caller could speak to the main breadwinner. I expressed some irritation and declined the conversation. Partly I wasn’t entirely sure who was and I certainly wasn’t content to hand over to my husband, if I worked it out to...
(De)-focused leadership?
In the moments before I took the call asking me to speak on BBC Radio about Focus, I had been: commenting on a family WhatsApp conversation, checking my phone messages, updating Facebook, reading e-mails, catching up on LinkedIn; and feeling guilty about not tweeting...
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...
Selfies: love ‘em or hate ‘em?
We take 100m of them every day. Why? Self-expression can explain part of the trend, but is there something more complex at play? Dig deeper by listening to Averil Leimon’s insights.
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...
Leadership and Resilience: Sometimes we just need the proof
There are many ways to convince somebody that changing a behaviour might be a good idea. In most cases the simple rational argument is not enough; nor are appeals to emotions or shock tactics. Usually a combination of several factors lines up and we move from...
Influence can change the world: the role of social psychology in coaching
Last week I had the good fortune to meet a postgraduate class studying organisational and social psychology at the LSE to discuss the practical applications of various strands of psychology in coaching. This blog is the first in a series building on this conversation....
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...
An inconvenient truth
This week being Passover, I revisited a post from a couple of years ago, The Rabbi’s leadership wisdom. In it, I debated the relationship between ‘telling it like it is’ and unintended consequences: in corporate life, like in real life, the messenger bears in part the...