Blog

July 2, 2020
in Corporate Wellness, Emotional Wellness, Empowerment, Leadership, Resilience, Stress

Your meeting did not go to plan. Everyone and everything annoyed you. But did the meeting lead to your bad mood or your mood lead to a bad meeting? You were tired and irritable long before you stepped into the room. You were outside your 'window of tolerance.' Coined by Dr Dan Siegel, your 'window of tolerance' refers to the zone of arousal of your optimal state - the zone in which you're best able to function. To receive and process information, and self-regulate to the demands of everyday life with minimal difficulty....

June 25, 2020
in Corporate Wellness, Emotional Wellness, Empowerment, Leadership, Resilience, Stress

Tired of watching your team yawn their way through a workshop and dump their never-to-be-seen-again materials in a drawer? There’s a reason why training programs and workshops fail. Your employees need to know why they're upskilling or developing and the benefits to them. The Conscious Competence Learning Model by Martin M Broadwell shows the 4 stages we go through when learning a new skill or behaviour.   Unconscious Incompetence – you don’t know that you don’t know (your blind spot) Conscious Incompetence  – you're aware of your gap because of feedback Conscious Competence...

June 18, 2020
in Corporate Wellness, Emotional Wellness, Empowerment, Leadership, Resilience, Stress

And there you were thinking your manager was onside when you vented about your annoying team members and their behaviour! Instead, she thought you were a chronic complainer. Why? Perhaps you're in the Blind Spot. According to the Johari Window - a powerful model identified by late psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham - we have 4 possible perception experiences in a group context.   The Open Self – what you and others are aware of The Blind Self (blind spot) – what others are aware of, but you aren't Hidden self – what you're...

June 11, 2020
in Corporate Wellness, Emotional Wellness, Empowerment, Leadership, Resilience, Stress

You have two candidates for the job: A and B. You choose A – the one you believe to be the most qualified. What if the names & genders on their resumes were removed? Unconscious bias is real. In fact, 98% of your brain activity is COMPLETELY unconscious. In Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality, the unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts and memories that influences judgments, feelings or behaviours. We access these resources naturally and spontaneously to make decisions. Sometimes, this works out well for us. Other times, it significantly impacts our behaviour and...

June 4, 2020
in Corporate Wellness, Emotional Wellness, Empowerment, Leadership, Resilience, Stress

You’ve enthusiastically shared an idea to boost your company’s bottom line. “Good!” your boss says. Sounds positive, right? So, why do you feel deflated? In his renowned book ‘Silent Messages’, Professor Albert Mehrabian shares that our tone, facial expressions, posture and gestures can easily contradict our verbal messages. You have the ability to hear the silence. To comprehend what isn’t been spoken. To recognise When “Good,” actually means “What on earth?!” How can you tell when ‘yes’ means ‘no’ and vice versa? Mehrabian shares the following equation: 7% VERBAL LIKING + 38% VOCAL LIKING + 55%...

May 28, 2020
in Corporate Wellness, Emotional Wellness, Empowerment, Leadership, Resilience, Stress

Every day, at work and at home, we take in multiple world and life experiences. Some are great and rewarding and some are not-so-nice (to put it mildly). Why are some experiences not-so-nice? We all have our own filter, agenda or emotional hot spot (the things that emotionally trigger us). How do they serve us? They add colours, flavours and labels to our experiences. Here’s something to think about: in your daily interactions, which filter, agenda or emotional hot spots do you have in place? Are these filters clouding your relationships and your...

May 21, 2020
in Corporate Wellness, Emotional Wellness, Empowerment, Leadership, Resilience, Stress

When you’re emotionally fired-up, it becomes difficult to help yourself and others too. Your brain’s emotional centre (limbic centre) is activated, which means you’re at greater risk of saying or doing things you’ll later regret. How can you zoom out and regain perspective? Ask questions! David Rock, author of Quiet Leadership, notes this simple strategy can take you off the Drama rung and on to the Planning and Vision rungs on the ladder to success. Visioning questions give logical food to the brain, thus triggering the ‘business centre’ (Pre-frontal Cortex) and settling the...

May 14, 2020
in Corporate Wellness, Emotional Wellness, Empowerment, Leadership, Resilience, Stress

We all get emotionally charged at work and in life from time to time. Projects, tasks, relationships and office politics are bound to create frictions and frustration. It’s human and expected. But, if we stay in a place of Drama, our ‘emotional centre’ (Limbic Brain) gets activated and overrides our ‘business centre’ (Pre-Frontal Cortex). Our ability to zoom out, have clarity and regain our Vision is compromised. If we get locked in that state, we further trigger our Amygdala and activate our flight, flight or freeze responses. In those states we certainly...