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...
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...
Averil Leimon talks about motivation
Listen to Averil on BBC Radio 4 ‘Women’s Hour’ talking about motivation with the two Olympic Champions Tessa Sanderson CBE and Dame Kelly Holmes. Click here to listen to the full podcast. Would you like to learn more about motivation and how to feel...
Mind the Gap: Why is a job worth less when a woman is doing it? Supporting Equal Pay Day 2016
Today, 10th November, is the day women stop getting paid. For the rest of the year – 51 days – women effectively work for free, all because of a gender pay gap which has lingered on long after the Equal Pay Act was introduced in the UK in 1970. The average...
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....