Communication
Trust is biased, and your team is proving it
Trust breakdowns rarely start with incompetence. Maryam Rezaei argues they begin with bias, familiarity and the meanings we attach to tone, silence and directness. She explores psychological safety, real listening and what repairs trust: new experiences, not explanations. For L&D and leaders, trust is a skill to practise every day. Do you trust your teammates? If you do, why do you trust them? Are you careful, distant, or unsure with other people, even before anything has clearly gone wrong? These…
Decision armour is the new normal: Supporting clear thinking across a changed workforce
Design work that protects thinking under pressure, and decision quality follows. In this article, Amy Brann and Dr Jessie Gulsin share neuroscience-backed ways for L&D to reduce cognitive load, reframe resilience for shifting values, and strengthen connection in hybrid teams. Practical tips help people perform without burnout day after day. By now, most L&D professionals will recognise two parallel challenges shaping today’s workplace. First, decision-making feels harder: cognitive load is high, attention is fragmented, and errors creep in under pressure.…
Five ways to boost confidence and reduce stress at work
Confidence and stress are not separate tracks at work. This article shows how situational awareness turns confidence into visible behaviours that lower pressure. Five practical moves clarify expectations, ask better questions, build feedback loops, set boundaries and use body language. Anne Maartje Oud links personal habits with culture for performance. “Boost your confidence” and “reduce stress” sound great, but they are often treated as separate goals. That is where the interpretation becomes misleading. Confidence that helps prevent stress is not…
TJ podcast: The rise of the supermanager: Why AI transformation still needs human leadership – episode 330
Julia Bersin joins Jo Cook to explore the rise of the supermanager and why AI transformation still depends on human leadership. As organisations rethink management layers, managers remain critical to trust, experimentation and adoption, helping teams turn AI investment into meaningful change rather than another tool-led initiative with limited impact. Key takeaways: Created by ChatpGPT Podcast summary: Created by ChatpGPT Jo Cook speaks with Julia Bersin, Director of Research at The Josh Bersin Company, about the changing role of managers…
The global team trap: 5 mistakes leaders keep making
Leading teams across time zones means more than adding Zoom calls. Mykhailo Voitovych explains five common mistakes that derail multicultural, distributed work, from fuzzy definitions of “done” to undocumented decisions and clumsy feedback. He shares practical fixes: structured handoffs, decision logs, and flexible communication norms that keep progress steady globally. In the era the World Economic Forum labels as one of “geoeconomic fragmentation and geopolitical tensions”, businesses seek flexibility. For leadership and talent development, it means multicultural teams are popular…
The leadership blind spot: Managers who stop listening when it gets awkward
Difficult workplace conversations are now routine, but many managers lose confidence when emotions rise and listening matters most. Joseph Conway explores why employees feel dismissed, what the psychological safety data reveals, and how L&D can build people’s skills for listening under pressure, with practical strategies that strengthen trust and wellbeing. Difficult conversations in the workplace are no longer few and far between. For line managers, they’ve become a routine part of leadership, whether it’s navigating performance concerns, responding to interpersonal…
From breakdown to backbone: Helping people thrive under selfish leaders
Selfish leaders can drain confidence, distort reality and trigger burnout, but support can be a turning point. Drawing on a case study, this article shares coaching tools to build awareness, protect boundaries and respond strategically. Josefine Campbell shows how clients can restore resilience, reclaim agency and even thrive at work. Selfish leaders prioritise their personal gain over the well-being of their teams and can create a toxic ripple effect in the workplace. Whether as a professional coach, an empathetic colleague,…
Smarter skills for a messy world: Why middle managers are the real organisational stabilisers
Middle managers hold organisations together by translating strategy into everyday decisions, absorbing emotional tension and making meaning when work is messy. These capabilities are too often mislabelled as “soft skills”, leading to underinvestment and burnout. Gary Cookson argues that they are smarter skills and they drive performance, trust and coherence. Emotional intelligence, sense-making and the human work that keeps organisations moving. We need to stop calling them “soft skills.” That’s a misleading label. If emotional intelligence, judgement, communication and adaptability…
Culture reset case study: From attrition to high performance
Growth can create internal “static”, especially in people-first industries where belonging is the product. By building psychological safety, practising radical candour, and shifting to human-centric leadership, teams move from transactional communication to collective responsibility. Fiona Wright outlines how this approach reduced attrition, improved collaboration, and strengthened customer experiences at Haulfryn. In the hospitality and residential park industry, a brand is only as strong as the people who represent it. For Haulfryn, a family-owned business with a- 90-year history of excellence,…
Why early involvement is only part of the story
Getting L&D involved early matters, but this discussion shows that access alone is not the full answer. Kim Ellis, Cathy Hoy, Donald H Taylor and Laura Overton reflect on stakeholder relationships, strategic credibility and why influence grows when L&D understands the business well enough to help shape what happens next. Summary A recurring theme in the TJ L&D Influence Report is that good intentions and strong evidence are rarely enough on their own. What often makes the difference is whether…
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