High Performance Groundwork Podcast

The Mayo Clinic, one of the top hospitals in the US, recommends assertiveness to reduce stress, anger, and improve coping skills.

Assertiveness is one of those skills that nobody teaches, everyone misunderstands, and that can solve many problems.

Ivna Curi is the CEO and founder of assertiveway.com, which helps people in organisations (with a big focus on women), to speak up effectively with assertive communication eg: disagreeing, getting ideas across, asking for what they need to be successful, handling conflict, giving effective feedback etc, without coming across as aggressive or difficult.

She has a background in electrical engineering, specifically analytics, as well as international business, and management consulting.

She is a Forbes contributor and holds a Masters in Business Administration from INSEAD (a leading MBA program outside of the U.S). She has also lived and worked around the world in 4 continents for Fortune 500 companies.

In this episode Ivna explains that one of the big misconceptions we have about assertiveness is that we think it’s about being aggressive, when in reality, it’s very different. This misunderstanding can cause problems. She shares what assertiveness actually is, some key mindsets to cultivate it, how to start being more assertive, and what to do if you make a mistake as you’re learning to be more assertive.

Find out more about Ivna Curry and her work:

Adelaide Goodeve is an elite performance coach working with the worlds best companies, leaders, teams and athletes to achieve elite performance. In the last three years she's focused on helping athletes re-wire their brain to master their mental game for unstoppable performance.

Adelaide had sever chronic fatigue syndrome which caused her to be almost bedridden. After years of countless trials with little success, she was able to transform her life with just three days of brain training, and is now an endurance athlete. She shares how we can use the same principles to improve our performance. The language we use when talking to ourselves is at the core of this. She explains how to handle some common problems many of us face when trying to utilise language to our advantage, and how to make the process more potent.

Find out more about Adelaide Goodeve below:

Daniel Murray helps frustrated leaders unlock the true performance of their people by developing curious and empathic skills to harness the 'tough skills' of leadership. His degree in mathematics and background in corporate strategy provides Daniel with a unique perspective blending strategic thinking with empathy and emotional intelligence in practical and pragmatic ways.

What Chris Redmile shares in this episode is the reason I started doing this podcast.

Chris Redmile is a behavioural change management consultant for a Big4 consultancy in the UK. He focuses on culture in the workplace, organisational transformation and stakeholder management. He is an NLP master practitioner, professionally trained coach, parent, and military veteran. He also runs a performance and productivity coaching practice, mentoring people around the world. Ultimately, he helps people to overcome their limitations, solve problems and realise what they are actually capable of, be that through corporate consulting, coaching or parenting.

We talk about changing workplace culture by starting with the end in mind, and not trying to make every workplace like Google. He shares how frontline workers often have many solutions, but are often never asked (listen to find out why), and how this dynamic leads to loss of money, poor culture, and the miss-perception of there being fat, greedy, uncaring people at the top of organisations. He also shares productivity tools and the ADKAR methodology for creating change in organisations.

You can find out more about Chris Redmile with the links below:

Dr Debra Dupree is the founder and CEO of relationships at work, where she offers dispute resolution services. She has nearly 30 years of experience in dispute resolution and working with people in conflict. She works with leaders on how to leverage the mindset to work with people from different walks of life.

Find out more about Debra here:

Wayne Mullins is the founder and CEO of Ugly Mug Marketing. We talk about leading from the heart and how our businesses are very often a reflection of ourselves. He shares how the Pygmalion effect occurs in the workplace and what leaders can do with this to enhance the workplace. We dive into workplace culture, how it relates to high performance, the importance of being intentional and Wayne's own journey in transforming the culture at Ugly Mug Marketing into one that is high performing and self accountable.

Find out more about Wayne Mullins here:

Ashlee Livingstone is the founder of Our Forté where her and her team help create thriving, sustainable cultures to help everyone succeed. They help strengthen relationships with teams, clients and donors.

In this episode we discuss overwhelm in the workplace. Ashlee shares both the environmental factors that have contributed to the current state of overwhelm as well as personal things we can each do to help with this challenge. Relationships are what underpins much of Ashlee's work, and we explore fundamental, doable actions to cultivate and strengthen relationships.

She also shares why you should intentionally waste the first 10-15 minutes of every meeting, the freedom of ditching that to-do list, and the timely benefits of having beer tasting events over zoom.

You can find out more about Ashlee Livingstone here:

Dr Troy is an award-winning culture strategist, speaker, bestselling author, and global talent retention expert with more than 40 years of practical leadership experience and a Ph.D. in Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship. He helps transform organisations through talent retention and helps leaders and companies thrive. We discuss what cohesion culture is, how it benefits organisations and individuals, and the different principles that underlie Dr Troy's work. He explains that cohesion is causal, in that when it is present, you get performance and engagement. But cohesion is not about trying to make every workplace the same.

One organisation implemented the principles he discusses over a 9 month period. They were then recognised by a global company as "best new culture"

Dr Troy also shares insights to better help understand issues of complexity and confidentiality that upper management deal with, that can easily be miss-understood by staff, as well as what staff can do when cohesion is not present in the workplace.

Find out more about Dr Troy Hall here:

Gayle Smerdon helps focus and re-energise workplaces by doing what matters. As a passionate and experienced Learning & Organisational Development professional, she knows that given the right environment and support, people have immense capability waiting to be revealed. She helps government and not-for-profit organisations be their best by bringing out the best in their people, their leaders and their teams. Her qualification include a PhD in the Social Sciences, a Grad. Dip. in Psychology as well as certifications in several psychometric and personality inventories.

We talk about doing one thing and doing it deep, rather than getting overwhelmed by too many projects or not being able to finish anything. She talks about making one small incremental change that takes a long time, and doing that in many different ways. She shares why it's important to understand the different thinking preferences that people have, the power of coaching and asking questions, and how to create an environment where giving and receiving feedback works better.

Gayle also covers the benefits of doing small experiments when making a change and getting everyone involved in a way that is fun, as well as looking at the environmental changes that support wellness rather than try to get someone to be healthy in a stressful environment.

You can find out more about Gayle Smerdon here:

Tom Sarsons experienced workplace abuse while simultaneously going through conflicts in his personal relationship. This lead him to experiencing PTSD, depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. In this discussion he shares his experience of the abuse and his healing journey. He touches on what could have been different, how true healing is about discovering that you are not your thoughts or emotions but rather that you are the observer, the importance of brave choices, self awareness, having the skills to speak your truth, to speak honestly and openly, to set boundaries and  have your needs met.

For those in similar situations he says: you are not broken and you are not alone.

Find out more about Tom:

I talk with the author of “the altruistic capitalist” Lynn Yap. She shares stories of how business can be used as a force for good, with examples like the sneaker with the lowest carbon emissions, to empowering elderly folks with electronics. In the research she conducted for her book, she pulled out three key mindsets of the altruistic capitalist. Here she tells us what they are and shows different ways they can show up at work (some of these things can be implemented almost immediately). She talks about why the dog-eat-dog mindset no longer works and the shift which is now coming through where care for employees, distributors, customers etc is becoming more and more important (rather than only pleasing shareholders). And if all this change seems too big, she talks about why we shouldn’t be afraid in the face of its magnitude.

I talk with executive and career coach Terry McDougall on the challenges high achievers face when it comes to their wellbeing at work, the importance of boundaries and how to set them in a humane and kind way, showing up differently and checking your assumptions. She shares stories on being curious in real life situations, and handling challenging circumstances. Terry also covers ways of handling all the work we need to get done by using things like the Eisenhower box, task batching, delegation, looking at the big picture, and creating safety and trust as a leader.

We talk about Noah Healy's work in using game theory to change finance. We discuss Conway's law, systems, their many affects, and how this applies both to software and humans in the workforce, and how the technical and social aspects of work mirror one another. We touch on google guy's in the Whitehouse, why meaning is not just important for humans but also computers, creating physical feedback mechanisms to quickly see when problems occur, the importance of conversations to create change and some reasons on why these conversations often don't work.

If you would like to find out more about Noah Healy or his work, here are some links:

A discussion with Trish Bishop on why leadership is key to wellbeing in the workplace, high performance teams: the elements that make them up plus the importance and benefits of safety and care in teams. We also talk about intuition and practical methods for applying it to the workplace.

Links: