FYI: Emotional intelligence is not arse licking…

So, anyone who’s spent any time working for a large organisation will have come across the “latest management fad” – the supposed panacea that will make everything better. From Myers-Briggs* to Hartman’s Colour Codes^ management fads run the full gamut of pseudoscientific nonsense, wasting time Read More …

The Prisoner’s Dilemma and Compassion…

Imagine the following scenario: two prisoners are held in solitary confinement and have no way of communicating with one another. Each is told, individually, that there are three options: (1) if you betray the other prisoner, you will go free and he will be imprisoned Read More …

An alternate take on Mindfulness…

I’ve written a lot about mindfulness, and up until now, it’s pretty much all been about mindfulness as a way of either feeling or functioning better – sort of a ‘mindfulness for a better you’ stance. This is also the direction taken in a lot of Read More …

What the hell is wrong with us?

Welcome to humanity: a species of short-sighted, venal, self-absorbed, stupid, profligate feeders. And that’s the good stuff. This is what evolution primed us for – based on a tiny population, nasty predators, and a cruel environment we evolved to put ourselves and the survival of Read More …

How to fail (as an employer, organisation, government, leader, Prime Minister, etc.)…

A few years ago I wrote a book called ‘Managing People in Organisations’ (Amazon link here) – I like to think that it’s pretty good and, my own trumpet blowing aside, it represents a thorough review of the best practices in keeping people engaged at Read More …

Making teams work: Increasing cooperation and productivity by removing primate politics…

Any of you who’ve spent time working in a large organisation will be familiar with the seeming need for (what feels like) endless meetings. In fact, working with and in groups is an inescapable fact of pretty much all organised work. Occasionally, this experience can Read More …

Being professional: Ethics and practice…

We all remember the Suarez biting incident a few weeks back. Given my background in sport psychology, I found it particularly interesting and even thought about writing a blog about it. At the same time, I had several requests (from the media) to speculate on Read More …

Performing under pressure: What you need to know…

Some of you probably know that I’m trained as a sport psychologist, and spent four years running a Masters’ degree in Sport and Performance Psychology in London. During that time, I designed what I believed to be a cutting-edge course, had it ratified and accredited Read More …

Wellbeing at work (Part 3): Helping your employer be less of an arsehole…

OK, looks like life has conspired to answer my own question – a blog every two weeks seems to be doable, so from now on (unless I get extra excited), expect fortnightly entries. Today, I want to finish the trilogy of wellbeing at work articles. Read More …

Wellbeing at work (Part 2): Taking control…

I’m still not quite decided whether I’ll continue this blog on a weekly or a fortnightly basis – recently I’ve come up with quite a few new ideas, so we’ll see how things go. You can help though! Let me know whether you’d really like Read More …

Wellbeing at work: Cutting through the bullshit…

Apologies for the break last week – turns out that coming up with a new topic every week is actually pretty hard – and there have now been over 65 blogs (stretching over a 14 months). Hits are steadily increasing too – the site just Read More …

The biggest tragedy of our times (and why it really matters)…

Apologies for the lack of blog last week – it was my birthday and I decided to take the day off… This week, I want to write about something that’s quite dear to me, but that’s a little off topic from my usual theme. And, Read More …

Good and bad instinct: Learning to tell the difference between expertise and evolution

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the illusory self, and encouraged a healthy scepticism regarding the things you feel are ‘right’. I claimed that, often, the things that we feel are the right thing to do are very much the wrong thing, themselves the product of Read More …

Is elite athlete “arrogance” a performance hack? Part 3 (When hubris becomes sociopathy)

This week I’m going to continue the articles on athletic arrogance as a performance hack. Initially, this line of thinking came from my speculations about how we hack our neurological limitations, using behavioural ‘software patches’, to increase our ability to perform. In this case, I Read More …

Is elite athlete “arrogance” a performance hack? Part 2 (When arrogance becomes hubris)

Last week I wrote about elite athlete “arrogance” with the suggestion that it’s actually a learned performance hack to help athletes trust “expert systems” under pressure. The more I thought about this though, the more I realised that it’s not just used by athletes, and that Read More …

Consumerism, entitlement and the loss of personal and national identity – Part 2

In my last post I talked about some of the reasons why gadgets are so appealing from a neurological perspective. I also suggested that modern living (and the gadgets) are, in part, responsible for a lack of connectedness with the people around us. Interestingly, a part of Read More …