Category: Leadership & Management Foundations
The ideas every manager keeps bumping into: what leadership and management actually are, the models worth knowing, and the evidence behind them. The place to start if you are new to the job or never had the training.
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Information Doesn’t Change Behaviour. Here’s What Does.
Training usually fails not because it was delivered badly, but because information on its own does not change behaviour. Knowing is not half the battle. Behaviour and belief change is hard, and seldom happens without discomfort and moments of realisation. Introduction Here is a pattern you will recognise. Your team spends a […]
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Evidence Based Management: Making Better Decisions at Work
Evidence based management means making important decisions using the best available evidence from four sources: your own professional expertise, organisational data, the scientific literature, and the concerns of the people affected. Introduction Most management decisions are made with evidence of some kind. Someone has a view, someone else has a dashboard, and […]
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A Leader’s Role in Improving Psychological Safety: Building Trust, Openness, and Growth
Leaders have a disproportionate impact on psychological safety. How they listen, respond, and behave shapes whether people feel safe to speak up. Leadership behaviours like admitting fallibility, inviting input, and responding with curiosity are powerful tools for building safety. Introduction Psychological safety is not something you can install like software. It’s grown, […]
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Me, Us, and It: A Whole-System Lens for Leadership and Collaboration
“Me, Us, and It” is a simple model to help us think about what’s important for leaders (and others) to focus on in the workplace. It says that to be successful, we need to appropriately spread our attention across three domains: Ourselves as an individual (Me), Our teams and group dynamics (Us), […]
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Self-Determination Theory: Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness at Work
Self-Determination Theory (SDT), developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, is one of the most comprehensive and empirically supported frameworks in motivational psychology. It proposes that human beings have three basic psychological needs, autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and that the satisfaction or frustration of these needs profoundly shapes the quality of motivation, […]
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Proactivity at Work: Beyond Just Taking Initiative
Proactivity at work is a well-researched behavioural construct that involves anticipating future problems, actively shaping one’s environment, and persisting through setbacks without being told to do so. Many organisations claim to value proactive employees, but fail to create the pre-requisites that actually foster proactivity, such as psychological safety, genuine autonomy, and tolerant […]
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Leadership vs Management: What’s the Difference and Why It Matters
Leadership and management are distinct but complementary functions in organisations. Leadership is about direction, vision, and inspiration; management is about coordination, execution, and control. Organisations need both strong leadership and effective management to thrive. Understanding the Distinction The difference between leadership and management is one of the most debated, misunderstood, and yet […]
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Google’s Project Aristotle and Psychological Safety
Project Aristotle was Google’s multi-year research initiative to discover what makes teams effective. They found that how a team worked together mattered far more than who was on it, and they identified psychological safety as the most important factor for high-performing teams. The Answer is Kind of Simple Around 2012, Google decided […]
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Psychological Capital: The HERO Within
Psychological Capital (PsyCap) is a higher-order positive psychological resource comprising Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism (HERO). It is linked with improved performance, wellbeing, engagement, and reduced cynicism, making it one of the more robust and practically useful constructs in organisational psychology. Psychological Capital Psychological Capital, or PsyCap, is a concept developed primarily […]
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Action Centred Leadership: A Practical and Enduring Leadership Framework
John Adair’s Action Centred Leadership model emphasises the need to balance three interdependent leadership domains: task, team, and individual. Effective leaders flex their focus across these areas based on context, maturity, and organisational priorities. Introduction Leadership often feels complex, fast-moving, and paradoxical. Yet some frameworks endure because they capture essential truths with […]