We don't all think the same way, so why do we assume that there is one way we should all plan?

A differnt planning approach for business owners and leaders who think differently

Have you ever found yourself staring at your computer screen at 9 pm, wondering where the day went?

You've been busy. Constantly moving, checking things off lists, answering emails. Yet you can't shake the feeling that you're not actually getting anywhere meaningful.

That's one of the things I hear almost every day from business owners I work with is: "I just don't have time to even think." It's a strange kind of exhaustion, working harder than ever and somehow standing still.

I know it well, I've felt it myself, more than once, in the eighteen-plus years I have been running my own business.

The Magical To-Do List

I’m a big fan of to-do lists, I think they are magical!  But they contain good magic and a more imp-like, mischievous magic too.  The good magic means they help me stay on track and remember what I need to get done.  The mischievous magic adds things to my list quicker than I can check them off, so somehow I never get caught up and often feel further behind than ever.

And here is the rub, being busy isn't the same as making progress. And without a clear plan that actually fits how you work, you'll keep running on that exhausting wheel, watching opportunities pass by while you stay stuck in survival mode.

We know that the most successful business owners aren't necessarily the ones working the longest hours. They're the ones working on the right things at the right time.

So what does that actually mean in practice, and how do you get there when you're already stretched thin?

When you fall out of love with what you have built

There's something else that happens quietly, underneath all that busyness, that doesn't get talked about enough.

Somewhere between the long days and the endless admin, it's easy to stop enjoying the thing you set out to build. There's no single bad day you can point to, no big announcement, just a feeling that creeps slowly in until one day you notice you're going through the motions of a business you used to love.

I've been there. Running your own business means constantly juggling everything at once, and the guilt of not thinking strategically enough can sit alongside the day-to-day grind for years without you ever addressing it. 

It took me a long time to understand that this wasn't a sign I was doing something wrong. It was a sign I'd never built in the time to think.

Pretending everything is fine when you've quietly lost your spark helps nobody, least of all you.

Every planner, every system but still there is something missing

Like a lot of business owners, I went looking for the answer in other people's systems; after all, it seemed to work for them, and they seemed successful, so why reinvent the wheel?.

I tried the planners, the apps, I read all the books, picked up frameworks that promised to finally get me organised, and gave each one a proper go.  Elements of nearly all of them worked at least for a while. A way of structuring things, some useful questions or frameworks or an interesting concept.

But nothing worked completely. I'd get partway through a system before it started to feel like I was bending myself to fit the tool, rather than the other way round. The shelf of half-used planners filled up. So did the quiet sense that maybe I was the problem, that everyone else could just pick a system and stick to it, and I couldn't.

I don't think that any more. And I don't think you should either, if this sounds familiar.

Planning for the way your brain actually works

The shift came for me when I stopped asking which system I should use, and started asking what actually worked for how my brain works.

I am a Dyslexic Thinker. That shapes how I process information, how I hold ideas, and importantly, what keeps me engaged. A rigid, linear system that assumes everyone plans the same way was always going to fight against that, however good it looked on the surface.

What I needed was room for a bit of fun and novelty even, in something as seemingly dry as planning. The flexibility to add novelty, colour, movement, the chance to think in pictures as well as words, permission to circle back rather than march through steps in order. Once I let go of trying to force myself into someone else's straight line, planning stopped being a chore I avoided and started being something I actually wanted to do.

This is, I think, one of the most underrated parts of good planning. It isn't just about the content of your plan, a lot of the value in planning comes from getting to the plan. So to unlock that value and create a plan that you actually work to, the process you use needs to work with your brain or against it. Get that wrong, and even the best plans and frameworks in the world will end up in stuffed in a drawer and ignored.

A different way of working:  The Applied Curiosity Model

The Applied Curiosity Model I developed, which sits at the heart of all the work I do with Leaders and Business Owners, can also be applied to this challenge.The Applied Curiosity Model is a three-stage cycle: Research, Reflect and React.

Research is where you gather what you actually need to know. That might mean listening properly to what's really going on in your business, asking better questions of yourself and others, or looking honestly at what's working and what isn't. Most of us skip this stage entirely and jump straight to action, which is exactly how you end up busy without being productive.

Reflect is the stage almost everyone struggles to make time for. This is where you take what you've found and actually sit and think about what it is telling you.  What does it mean? How does it connect to what you already know? What matters most here? Reflection needs space, and it needs to happen in a way that suits you, whether that's a proper conversation, a walk, or a notebook covered in diagrams rather than neat lists.

React is where you take what you've learned and decide what you are actually going to do about it. It is not about doing everything that you could possibly do, but based on your Research and Reflections, picking the best actions to take to move you forward.

The power of this model isn't that it's complicated. It's that it's a cycle, built to flex around you rather than the other way round. Each time you go round it, you learn something that feeds into the next round.

Why a reset beats a small tweak when it comes to finding a way of planning that works the way your brain does

You can absolutely start applying Research, Reflect, React on your own, in small ways, starting today. Notice where you're reacting instead of researching. Carve out small chunks of time to actually Research and Reflect on Decisions instead of jumping straight to action. Small shifts like these do add up.

But if you recognise yourself in everything above, the shelf of abandoned planners, the busyness that never quite turns into progress, the pile of plans that you made and never took action on, the sense that you need a system built around you rather than despite you, small tweaks alone won't get you there that fast.  What you may need is a proper reset.

That's what the Steps to Success Workshop is. Not another planner to add to the pile, but a half-day built entirely around applying this process to your business, in a way that fits how you think, with space for the novelty and flexibility that actually keeps you engaged. You leave with your quarterly quest, the one focus that will genuinely move the needle, and a personal roadmap built for you rather than adapted from someone else's template.

The questions I would like to leave you with

The question I'd like to leave you with is this:

What would change if your plan finally worked with the way you think, instead of against it?

If you've spent years trying to force yourself into someone else's system, that reset might be exactly what you need.  

Research published by the Lilac Centre shows some of the systemic challenges faced by Neurodivergent Leaders.  Discover how Applied Curiosity can help.

Have you ever felt like the systems around you were designed for someone else entirely?

Like the way information gets shared, the forms you have to fill in, the way meetings are run, the way you are supposed to ask for funding or find a mentor or just figure out what your next step is, all of it feels like it was built with a very specific kind of brain in mind. And that brain is not yours.  You feel these things should be way easier than you actually find them, and other people don’t seem to have the same challenges with them as you do.  These are some of the common experiences for a Neurodivergent Leader.

If you have ever felt that way, I want you to know something important. You were not imagining it, and you are not alone.

I had a corporate career I genuinely loved, the work was interesting, the people were fantastic, and I got to work on some real challenges and make a marked difference.  But the internal systems? Not so much, they nearly broke me. Something as logically straightforward as an expense claim would fill me with a dread I could not entirely explain. I knew it was simple, most people found it easy, but not me.

When I set up my own business, one promise I made to myself was to design my systems around the way my brain actually works. I’m a dyslexic thinker, and that means my brain works differently.  The things I find genuinely difficult, like accounts, I outsource without apology. The things that are all but impossible for me, like proofreading, I get help with. I stopped trying to do things the way everyone else seemed to manage and started building a working life that fit.

It's not something I have really talked about all that much, but business feels so much easier now I am not expending so much energy trying to follow other people's processes and work within systems that just don't work for me.

And now, there is a major report which confirms our experiences and suggests ways forward.

You can download a copy of the full report or listen to the audio version here.

A Report That Shifts the Conversation

In June 2026, Small Business Britain published the LILAC Centre Report, Neurodivergent Entrepreneurship in the UK: Building a Better System for Founders, Businesses and the Economy. It is based on a national survey of more than 600 neurodivergent founders, alongside focus groups and lived-experience interviews. It is one of the most detailed pieces of research into neurodivergent entrepreneurship ever produced in the UK.

As a Dyslexic Thinker and the proud owner of a neurodivergent brain, how we make the world of work more accessible for everyone is something I am passionate about.  I was fortunate enough to be at the launch and have since devoured the report and its findings.

I wanted to share my thoughts and observations to further that cause and highlight how the areas discussed in the report intersect with how I have worked with leaders and founders in the past and how they will continue to do so.

Want to know what stood out to me?  Time to get curious and find out!

For Neurodivergent Leaders, Confidence is Not the Problem, but the System Is.

The research found that 65% of neurodivergent entrepreneurs cited confidence or self-belief as a challenge when starting their business.

I found this statistic very interesting for two reasons.  Firstly, that despite this lack of confidence, these founders have done it anyway, and I love that they have.  Secondly, it would be easy to misunderstand the root cause of that lack of confidence.  Part of a lot of founders' entrepreneurial journey is to experience a lack of confidence from time to time.  But the report is explicit. For the neurodiverse entrepreneur, these challenges are not about intelligence or talent. They reflect systems that erode confidence through repeated friction, inaccessible processes and lack of validation.

Let me say that again, confidence is being eroded by the system. 

As a dyslexic thinker and someone who has spent years learning to understand my own neurodivergent brain, I know this feeling intimately. You apply your considerable intelligence and creativity to navigating a world that keeps asking you to do things the hard way. And after enough of that, you start to wonder if the problem is you.

It is not you.

But here is what I have learned, both from my own experience and from working with leaders over many years. Knowing the system is the problem does not automatically give you back your confidence. You need something practical. You need a process that you can apply to each situation.

That is exactly what using the Applied Curiosity Model does.

The model works as a continuous cycle of three phases: Research, Reflect, React. Each revolution of the cycle builds on the last. You gather information. You make sense of it. You act on it. And then you start again, each time with more knowledge, more insight, and more evidence of your own competence.

Confidence is built in the React phase. Every time you form a hypothesis, test it, and see what happens, you collect evidence that you can do this. Over time, you become more aware of your unique strengths and the impact that you have when you apply them, and that becomes the foundation of genuine, lasting self-belief. 

The Invisible Barrier Neurodivergent Leaders Face

The report identifies a common thread running through every part of its research. Michelle Ovens CBE, Founder and CEO of Small Business Britain, puts it this way in the foreword: the central challenge is "accessing, understanding and communicating information."

Does that resonate? I suspect it does.

Think about the last time you tried to navigate a grant application, or understand the criteria for a funding scheme, or find the right kind of support for where your business is right now. The information exists. It feels like it is everywhere, often in several places. In language that seems designed to confuse rather than clarify.  Finding information is often not a problem, interpreting and understanding its relevance often is, especially for the kinds of brains that make a lot of connections and naturally look for patterns and overlaps.

For neurodivergent founders and leaders, this is not just frustrating. It is exhausting. It consumes cognitive energy that you could be using to do the actual work you are brilliant at.

The Applied Curiosity Model treats information processing as a skill. Not something you either have or do not have, but something you can develop and apply deliberately.

The Research phase is not just about Googling things. It is about knowing how you gather information best, what questions to ask, whose perspective you need, and how to listen in a way that actually gets you what you need. 

The Reflect phase is where you take everything you have gathered and make it yours by adding context and making it make sense. You connect it to everything else you know in a controlled way, and you decide what it means for you and your specific situation.  This building of structured thinking time before taking action is a step many neurodivergent leaders skip, and one which is often the difference between burnout and sustainability

The React Phase is where you turn what you have learned into a hypothesis, which you then test.  When we think of our actions  in terms of experiments, the impact of getting results we did not expect is softened and feels less like a failure, so we need less time to pick ourselves up and try the next experiment.  

For neurodivergent leaders, having a structured way to do this is not a luxury. It is a survival strategy

Burnout Is Not a Personal Failure for Neurodivergent Leaders, But It Needs Addressing.

Here is a finding that I think every neurodivergent founder needs to read and then read again.

79% of neurodivergent founders face workload management or burnout challenges as they grow.

That is nearly four out of five. And the report is clear: burnout is not the result of individual weakness. It is the result of systems that place excessive demands on founders without adequate support.

So what do we do with that?

Because here is the thing. Understanding that burnout is structural does not make the burnout go away. You still need to find a way to manage your energy, pace your work, and build a sustainable rhythm.

This is where I see one of the most important contributions of the Applied Curiosity Model. The Reflect phase is, at its heart, a built-in pause. It is the part of the cycle that says: before you act, think. Before you react, understand.

Most neurodivergent leaders I work with are brilliant at the React phase. Ideas, action, movement. That is often where the energy and the passion live. What gets missed is the Reflect phase. And when it gets missed, decisions become reactive, energy gets depleted, and burnout follows.

Learning to value and protect your Reflect time is one of the most powerful things you can do for your long-term sustainability as a leader and founder. And yes, working with a coach or mentor can support this reflection, and it is something we can work on directly together.  But it is also something I encourage clients to do between sessions, so it becomes a skill they start applying automatically.

Wanting Support From Someone Who Truly Gets It.

This one is personal, I've experienced what it is like to get 'advice' from someone who claims to understand but doesn't really get the full impact of what is happening for me.

So the report finding that 79% of neurodivergent founders said it was important that support comes from someone with lived experience of neurodivergence was no surprise for me.

I am a dyslexic thinker. I am neurodivergent. That is not a footnote to my work, it is central to how I understand leadership, how I developed the Applied Curiosity Model, and how I show up in every coaching and mentoring conversation.

I know what it is like to have a brain that processes information differently. I know what it feels like to be in a room where the way things are done does not suit how you think. I know the particular exhaustion of masking, and the particular relief of being somewhere you do not have to.  I, too, feel that weight of responsibility for having to educate people on what this experience is like.

When I work with neurodivergent leaders, I am not applying a framework designed for someone else and adapting it as we go. I am working from a genuine understanding. That changes the nature of the conversation. You do not need to explain or justify your experience to me. We can start from where you actually are.

The Systematic and Admin Barriers Are Real And Are Stopping Neurodivergent Leaders

The report found that 61% of neurodivergent founders had avoided starting or scaling a business because of systemic or personal barriers related to being neurodivergent. A further 46% struggled with legal or administrative processes when starting out.

The report draws on research in cognitive load theory to make a point that will feel very familiar if you are neurodivergent. Unnecessary complexity reduces performance, increases error rates, and heightens stress for everyone. For neurodivergent founders, complex systems do not just slow things down. They can stop things altogether.

One founder quoted in the report put it simply: "Just the basics of running a business are overwhelming... It can feel like a swamp trying to swallow you."

If you have ever felt that way, I want you to know that it is a rational response to an irrational amount of complexity. And part of what good coaching and mentoring does is help you build the systems, structures, and strategies to navigate that complexity in a way that works for your brain.

The Applied Curiosity Model helps here too, because the Research phase includes learning how to find and filter information, and the React phase includes the planning and process skills that make implementation manageable. You are not just learning concepts. You are building practical tools.

Neurodivergent Leaders Need Support That Is Flexible, Ongoing, and Actually Useful

The report describes what good support looks like for neurodivergent founders. It should be flexible and modular. It should come from someone with lived experience. It should focus on confidence as well as skills. And it should be ongoing, not a one-off event.

I designed the Applied Curiosity Model as a continuous cycle for exactly this reason. There is no endpoint where you have finished being curious. Every revolution of the Research, Reflect, React cycle builds on the previous one. Your capacity grows. Your confidence grows. Your ability to apply curiosity to the challenges in front of you grows. 

My coaching and mentoring is structured around this model. We work in whatever format suits you best. We work at a pace that is sustainable for you, not a pace set by a programme that was designed for someone else.  Underlying this is an aim to make you and your business as self-sufficient as possible, only pulling in support when you need it.

So What Does This All Mean for You?

Let me get curious with you for a moment.

If you are a neurodivergent leader or founder, and you recognise yourself in any of what I have shared today, I want to ask you a question.

What would it be worth to have a structured, evidence-based process for building your confidence, processing information in a way that works for your brain, managing your energy sustainably, and making decisions that you can actually follow through on?

What would change in your business or your leadership if you had that?

The LILAC Centre Report confirms something I have believed for a long time. Neurodivergent leaders and founders are not held back by a lack of ability or ambition. They are held back by systems that were not built for them, systems that do not recognise their amazing strengths and abilities, and by the absence of support that genuinely understands how they work.

The Applied Curiosity Model was built for how you work. And I built it as someone whose brain works the same way.

So Lets Find Out If We Are A Good Fit

I offer a free consultation call for neurodivergent leaders and founders who want to explore whether working together would make a difference for them.

It is a genuine conversation. We will talk about where you are, what is getting in the way, and whether the Applied Curiosity Model and my coaching and mentoring approach feels like the right fit for you.

If it is, brilliant. We will talk about what working together looks like.

If it is not, I will do my best to point you in the direction of something that is going to work for you.

So, are you ready to get curious?

The questions I would like to leave you with

The question I would like to leave you with is this:

If the system were not the barrier, and you had the right support around you, what would you build?

Why Working Harder Is Not the Answer

And What to Do Instead

Have you ever had the feeling that no matter how much effort you put in, nothing actually moves?

You are showing up. You are caring deeply. You are putting in the hours. And yet the same obstacles keep reappearing, the same frustrations keep surfacing, and the dial just does not seem to shift.

Sometimes it is dramatic, a persistent sense of pushing against something immovable. Other times, it’s quieter than that. A low-level hum of effort without traction. Of genuinely caring about things you have no real power to change.

When everything around us feels heavy and uncertain, as it does right now, even the low-level hum becomes louder, and the sense of helplessness we feel grows and can feel like it is crushing the life out of us.  

That is one of the things I hear almost every day from the leaders I work with. And if any of that resonates, you are in very good company. And more importantly, there is a reason for it, and you can do something about it

The Moment Everything Shifted for One Leader

Let me share a story.  I recently worked with a leader who, by any external measure, was doing everything right. Experienced, running a well-regarded business, genuinely invested in her team. And completely exhausted.

When I asked her what was taking up most of her mental energy, she barely paused. Interest rates. Falling consumer confidence. What a competitor was doing. Rising costs. Clients not responding to proposals. Tax changes. The rise of AI.

All of it was real. All of it mattered. And none of it was within her control.

What she had not yet seen, and what became the real turning point in our work together, was that the very act of focusing on those things was making her less effective, not more. Her energy was going to the territory where she had no power, which meant it was being taken away from the territory where she had a great deal.

When we mapped her three circles, something shifted. Not because anything external changed. But because she could finally see clearly where her energy was going -- and make a deliberate choice about what to do with it.

So What Are the Three Circles?

The Three Circles Model was introduced by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey, S.R., 1989, Simon and Schuster). It has become one of the most widely recognised frameworks in leadership development, and, in my experience, one of the most underused.

Many leaders have encountered it. Far fewer have ever actually applied it to their own working world in any structured way. So let's get curious about what the three circles actually are.

The Circle of Concern is the outermost circle. Everything you care about lives here -- the economy, organisational politics, how other people behave, decisions made above you, and what is happening in your industry. It is a large circle. And for many leaders, it is where most of their mental energy goes.

The Circle of Influence sits inside that. These are the things you cannot control directly, but where your actions, relationships, communication, and choices genuinely make a difference. Your team's culture, the way you give feedback, the trust you build with stakeholders, and how you show up when things are hard.

The Circle of Control is at the centre. And it is usually much smaller than people expect. This is the territory of your own thoughts, attitude, behaviour, words, and decisions. Nobody can take this from you. But when we are under pressure, it can be surprisingly easy to forget it exists at all.

The Insight That Makes This Model So Powerful

Here is where it gets really interesting.

When you focus the majority of your energy on your Circle of Concern, your Circle of Influence does not stay the same size. It shrinks. The very act of fixating on things you cannot change causes the space where you could make a difference to contract. It creates an inward pressure that heightens the feeling of helplessness, denting your confidence and, in turn, your well-being.

The reverse, though, is equally true. The more you direct your energy towards your Circle of Control, the bigger your Circle of Influence grows. You build relationships, develop skills, and increase your credibility. What once felt beyond your reach begins to move within it.

So what does this mean for you? It means the most powerful thing you can do right now may not be to work harder on the things that concern you. It might be to get much clearer about which things you can actually control and influence -- and put your energy there instead.

And here is something worth reflecting on. It takes the same amount of energy to focus on what you can control as it does to focus on what you cannot. You get to choose how you use it.

Why the Model So Often Stays as a Good Idea

You might be wondering why, if the model is this powerful, it so often stays at the level of a useful concept rather than a genuine shift in how leaders operate.

In my experience, there are two reasons.

The first is that people rarely actually map their circles. They nod along to the concept, feel the truth of it, and then forget about it on the commute home. It stays theoretical.

The second is that even when the mapping does happen, there is often no clear mechanism for turning that insight into action. You can see clearly that most of your energy is going to the outer circle. You feel the pull back towards what you can control. And then you go back to your desk, and the same patterns quietly reassert themselves.

This is where the Applied Curiosity Model comes in.

Have You Ever Wondered Why Understanding Something Like The 3 Circles Model Rarely Changes Anything?

We know we should focus on what we can control. We know that pouring energy into the Circle of Concern is counterproductive. And yet, we keep doing it.

Knowledge, on its own, is rarely enough. And I think it is important to name that because so many leaders assume that if they just understood something better, they would behave differently. But this is not a willpower problem or a motivation problem. It is a process problem.

What we need is a clear mechanism for taking the insight and translating it into consistent, deliberate action.

That is exactly what the Applied Curiosity Model provides.

Applied Curiosity: The How Behind the What

Applied Curiosity is the practice of treating curiosity not as a personality trait, but as a set of skills you can deliberately develop and apply. It works as a repeating cycle with three stages, and each revolution of the cycle deepens awareness and sharpens the choices available to you.

Research is the starting point. This is where you gather data and build your understanding -- not evaluating or judging, but genuinely trying to see clearly. Listening to understand. Asking honest questions without editing the answers before they arrive. In the context of the circles, this is where you find out what is actually taking up your mental and emotional energy. Not the tidy, leadership-appropriate version. The real one.

Reflect is where you turn that raw data into understanding. It is where you add context, pattern recognition, and honest meaning to what you have gathered. Where you ask not just "what is here?" but "why, and what does that tell me?"

Now while reflecting and ruminating can look similar from the outside, they are very different in practice. Reflection is motivated by genuine curiosity. It moves towards understanding and then towards choice. It naturally focuses on the Circle of Control. Rumination, on the other hand, is motivated by anxiety. It revisits the same ground repeatedly without moving towards resolution -- and it lives firmly in the Circle of Concern.

React is where insight becomes action. This is the "so what" stage. The point where you take one specific, deliberate, testable choice about what you will do differently. Without React, the first two stages remain genuinely interesting -- but ultimately inert. The benefit comes when we act.

The cycle then repeats. Whatever your React commitment produces becomes the starting point for the next Research stage. If the experiment worked, that is data. If it did not go as planned, that is also data. Either way, you begin the next cycle with more to work with than the last.

So What Happens When You Bring the Two Together?

The Three Circles Model shows you the territory. Applied Curiosity gives you the means to navigate it.

Without a practice like Applied Curiosity, the circles remain a concept you understand but do not use. With it, you have a repeating process for seeing clearly where your energy is going, making sense of what you find, and taking deliberate, grounded action in response.

That is what makes the difference between a model you nod at and a model that actually changes how you lead.

Ready to Map Your Own Circles?

If this has sparked something for you, maybe a flicker of recognition, a quiet question about where your own energy is going, then I would love to invite you to take the next step.

I have created a workbook that walks you through the process of mapping your Three Circles and applying the Applied Curiosity cycle to what you find. It is practical, reflective, and designed to move you from insight to action.

Download the FREE workbook here, Map your Circles and start working smarter not harder!

The questions I would like to leave you with

The question I would like to leave you with is this:

If you were to map your circles honestly today, not the polished version, but the real one, where do you think most of your energy is actually going?

What are the leadership and people management implications of the Employment Rights Act?

I hadn't planned on writing about the Employment Rights Act, but I was asked one of those questions that just noodles round in your brain until you have answered it! 

For many leaders and people managers, employment law has always felt like something that happens around them — handled by HR, escalated when things go wrong, and largely invisible when things are going right.  Maybe that is how it has been for you - but that changes now.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 doesn't just alter what employers must do. It fundamentally reshapes what it means to manage people well and challenges us all to think about a number of things.

Now that there are some much firmer rules about how people are managed, things that we may have considered guardrails are now legal obligations.

I should warn you that you may leave this article with more questions than answers, but those questions will help you shape your future leadership and provide great points for reflection, so I make no apology for them!

So what are the key shifts you need to know and think about?

1. Performance management is now both a leadership responsibility and a legal necessity. The qualifying period for unfair dismissal has reduced from two years to six months, which means decisions about a new employee's suitability need to be made and evidenced far earlier than before. And the obligation does not stop there; there need to be regular check-ins, clear documentation, and addressing underperformance early rather than hoping things improve. 
2. The days of handling difficult decisions informally are over. Weak processes will be exposed, and reliance on individual judgment, without documentation or consistency, will no longer be sufficient
3. Hiring decisions carry greater weight. Senior appointments in particular require much more careful thought, given the removal of the compensation cap and the shorter qualifying period.
4. Workforce planning is becoming strategic rather than administrative.
5. Harassment prevention is now firmly a management responsibility requiring proactive leadership, not just a reactive response when something goes wrong.

This change is also going to increase the need for training for those managing people, from earlier in their career than is typical in many organisations.

So what was the question that got me thinking about all this?

Will the Employment Rights Act 2025 Act like a mirror or lever for Company Culture?

What a great question, and one that I think every manager would benefit from spending time considering.

My answer? Both. But not in equal measure.

The intent behind the Act is genuinely good. How people are treated, how concerns are raised and managed, and equity in the workplace have become matters of law, not just aspirations. In that sense, the Act holds a mirror up to every organisation and asks: are you actually living your values, or just displaying them on a wall?

But here's the conundrum it surfaces. The Act is process-driven by design. And processes treat people the same, which isn't the same as treating people equally. We all have subtly different needs and preferences. Legislation can't hold that nuance. So whilst the framework is there to protect people, there's a real tension between putting the person first and putting the process designed to support the person first.

And that tension has consequences.

Less flexibility and less agility. For larger organisations, that's uncomfortable. For smaller businesses, whose greatest strength is their ability to adapt quickly and personally, it's a more significant shift. The impact will be felt more acutely where agility has always been the competitive edge.  

There's also nowhere to hide. Weak processes will be exposed. If your documentation is patchy, your consistency non-existent, or your managers winging difficult conversations, the Act will surface these issues, and they become organisational risks with legal consequences.

For those smaller organisations, they are also likely to have the biggest lift to get their processes and practices to a point of compliance, and they may well need to do so without the help of the support functions that larger organisations have, putting further burden on the leadership team or the business owner

Depending on your start point, that could feel like a threat. Or, and this is the reframe I'd invite you to consider, it could be an opportunity.

The Impact on Leaders and People Managers

It is on people managers and leaders where the day-to-day impact of the tension between strict adherence to policy and unlocking the individual strengths of team members is going to be most sharply felt. 

Great leaders and people managers understand the need to adapt and adjust their approach with each team member to keep them motivated and to get the best work from them. The key here is going to be to have flexibility within processes to do this.

Another interesting area for both policy makers and individual leaders to consider is going to be the intersection of the Employment Rights Act and the 2010 Equality Act, which gives employees the right to request reasonable adjustments to their work

Early warning signs that the Act is exposing cultural or management problems?

The early warning signs may be subtle, but when considering how well your implementation of the new Act is going, here are some things you are going to want to consider

Watch what managers stop doing.

Recruitment shyness is one of the first indicators worth paying attention to. If managers are quietly hesitant to bring new people in, ask why. It may reflect anxiety or a lack of understanding about reduced flexibility or the earlier unfair dismissal threshold, but it may also signal something deeper: a lack of confidence in their own ability to manage performance fairly and consistently.

Watch what starts to increase.

A rise in grievances. More requests for support in managing people. These aren't inherently bad signs. In fact, people asking for help is a healthy response. But the question to hold alongside it is: why now, and what does that tell us about what was missing before? Manager training is suddenly becoming a priority — particularly for first-time managers. 

Compliance costs are another signal — and here's the one that often gets overlooked. If you're not seeing an increase, at least in the short term, it's worth asking whether you're actually doing the work required by the Act.

Statutory Sick Pay from day one will naturally bring some increase in cost. That's expected. But frequent, short-term absences, a pattern that SSP data will now make harder to ignore, can be one of the clearest indicators of a culture that isn't working. People don't repeatedly take a day here and a day there because they're unwell. Often, they do it because they're not okay.

Watch what your documentation is actually telling you.

Is the increase in documented decisions reflecting better management practice — or just more paperwork? There's an important difference. Documentation that captures decisions and then does nothing with them isn't governance. It's performance. The real question isn't whether things are being written down. It's what is being done about what's being uncovered.

The Signs are an invitation to get Curious

None of these signals alone is a reason to panic. Every single one of them is an invitation — to get curious, to look honestly at where you are, and to ask what kind of workplace you're actually building.  The organisations that will navigate this period best won't be the ones with the tidiest handbooks. They'll be the ones willing to look in the mirror and take action on what they see.

The questions I would like to leave you with

The question I would like to leave you with is this:

How are you going to respond to the leadership conundrums that the Employment Rights Act has thrown up? 

What changes do you need to make now?

What do you need to keep an eye on?  

What are the implications for me as a manager of people, and for my organisation?

If all this feels too much, reach out, book a call and let’s get this handled for you and your organisation.

Is your leadership a hidden project killer?

Have you ever looked up from your desk and realised that another month – or even another year – has passed, and that goal you really cared about is still sitting there on your list, untouched?

You are absolutely not alone.

As business owners, we are no strangers to big plans and bold ambitions. We care deeply about doing good work. And yet, there is often a frustrating gap between what we intend to do and what we actually get done.

We are busy. Genuinely, relentlessly busy. When the urgent keeps trumping the important, it can feel as though the things that matter most will never quite get the attention they deserve.

And that does not feel good.

But what if those important things could get the focus and attention they need? What might become possible for you and your business then?

For most of my career, I have been providing Accountability Partnering in one form or another — as a line manager, a project leader, a coach, a mentor, and more recently through specific Accountability Partnering Programmes that bring all of that experience together.

Time and again, I have seen that having the right person in your corner genuinely changes things.

So, let’s get curious about what an Accountability Partner could do for you. Here are ten reasons why it might be one of the most important investments you make in yourself and your business.

1. It Dramatically Increases your Success Rate

What if I were to tell you that simply sharing your goals with someone and checking in regularly could increase your likelihood of achieving them by over 70%?

That is exactly what Dr Gail Matthews at Dominican University of California found in her research with over 200 participants. People who wrote down their goals, shared them with a friend, and sent regular progress updates were significantly more likely to achieve them than those who kept their goals to themselves (Matthews, G. (2015). Goals Research Summary. Dominican University of California).

Other research supports this too — publicly committing to a goal with someone gives you at least a 65% chance of completion, compared with significantly lower rates when you go it alone.

In practice, I have seen this play out in some remarkable ways. One client hit their annual bookings goal in just four months — and went on to triple it by the end of the year. For others, it has meant finally getting the website finished, or creating enough breathing room to take a proper holiday.

What difference would actually achieving one of your goals make to you right now?

2. Enhanced Motivation and Less Procrastination

You know that feeling when you have arranged to meet someone at the gym? Suddenly, even the most comfortable sofa in the world loses some of its appeal.

There is real science behind that.

A study published in Management Science found that people who attended the gym with a friend were significantly more consistent than those who went alone — demonstrating the power of social commitment in sustaining motivation over time (Milkman, K.L., Minson, J.A., & Volpp, K.G.M. (2014). Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym: An Evaluation of Temptation Bundling. Management Science, 60(2), 283–299).

Having a Business Accountability Partner works in much the same way. Because you have committed to doing a specific thing by a specific time — and told someone about it — you are intrinsically more motivated to follow through.

Less procrastination planning. Fewer “I’ll just quickly do…” distractions. Far fewer urgent fridge‑cleaning emergencies.

Does any of that sound familiar?

3. Improved Confidence Through Healthy Business Habits

Something quietly powerful happens each time you keep a commitment you have made to yourself. You start to build evidence — real, personal evidence — that you can get things done. And that builds confidence.

Layer on the habits that naturally develop through working with an Accountability Partner — taking time to reflect, to review, to decide what truly matters — and those practices start to become second nature. You begin spotting opportunities and challenges sooner. You respond before they spiral, rather than firefighting after the event.

Over time, that becomes a genuinely virtuous circle.

4. Objective Feedback

We may not always love it, but we all benefit from feedback — when it is objective, well-timed, and offered with good intent.

Because an Accountability Partner is not caught up in the day-to-day of your business, they can offer you a perspective you simply cannot give yourself. I have worked with clients to identify potential problems before they arose, to think through alternative approaches, and — perhaps most importantly — to recognise and celebrate successes that they might otherwise have brushed aside.

When did you last pause to genuinely acknowledge how far you have come?

5. Structured Progress Tracking

Knowing you are going to report back on your progress does something interesting — it encourages you to track it properly in the first place.

Working with an Accountability Partner naturally leads you to break your goals into clear, actionable steps with real timescales attached. You keep better records. You start to see what is working and what is not.

And that clarity makes it much easier to adapt and respond as things evolve.

I have seen client after client benefit from developing flexible and relevant structures that support them.

6. Learning and Professional Development

One of the things I find most rewarding about Accountability Partnering is how much learning quietly accumulates over time.

The reflection that is built into the process surfaces opportunities for development you might not have noticed otherwise. The conversations create space to learn from someone else's experience and perspective. And all of it happens while you are maintaining a clear focus on where you want to go.

It is development that does not feel like another thing on your to-do list — because it is woven into the work itself.

7. Connection and Support

In an increasingly automated, online world, genuinely human-to-human connection is becoming rarer. And yet we know — even the most introverted amongst us — that we are wired to seek it.

Having an Accountability Partner provides a particular kind of supportive relationship. One that can reduce feelings of isolation, offer real encouragement during difficult periods, and create a genuine sense of being understood and valued. Research consistently shows that social support acts as a meaningful buffer against stress and burnout (Cohen, S., & Wills, T.A. (1985). Stress, Social Support, and the Buffering Hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 98(2), 310–357).

Our friends and family are wonderful, and their support is well-intentioned. But they may not fully understand your business world — and you may not want to burden them with it. An Accountability Partner steps into that space, and over time, the relationship you build also strengthens your capacity to build other trusting, productive relationships. Which, in today's business landscape, matters more than ever.

8. Help Spotting Unhelpful Patterns

An experienced Accountability Partner can act a bit like an early warning system.

They notice when things are starting to drift. They spot when the same excuse keeps appearing. And — with care and curiosity rather than judgement — they gently name it. Those reality checks can help you manage your own expectations, maintain healthy boundaries, and stay out of the kind of busywork and overwhelm that keeps you spinning without moving forward.

Have you ever found yourself doing the same thing repeatedly and wondering why the result is not changing?

9. A  More Holistic Approach to Your Life and Your Business

Your business does not exist in isolation from the rest of your life. It can feel all-consuming at times — and yes, it matters enormously. But it is rarely the only thing that deserves your attention.

Working with an Accountability Partner creates space to factor in the whole picture when you are setting your goals and intentions. Sometimes the most important action is in your business. Sometimes it is not. Having someone who can support you in working out where your energy is most needed — and holding that space with you — is genuinely valuable.

10. Cutting Through the Overwhelm and Chaos

Last and by no means least, one of the biggest benefits of having an Accountability Partner is how they help you cut through the noise, the overwhelm, and the chaos of the world.

Being a business owner is, at times, inherently chaotic. Add in rapidly changing markets, shifting economic conditions, and the relentless pace of everything, and it can feel overwhelming — not just occasionally, but a lot of the time.

When business is going well, we are too busy delivering to work on the important things that will keep it healthy long-term. When it is not going well, our natural tendency is to just add more — one more thing, one more idea — until we can no longer see the wood for the trees.

An Accountability Partner helps you focus. They help you see what the most important next step actually is. And sometimes, that clarity is the most valuable thing of all.

So are you ready?

Accountability Partnering works. It draws on the science of social support and commitment, and it works by providing real-world structure, cutting through the noise, and giving you a thoughtful, challenging presence in your corner.

Imagine starting each week knowing you are working on the things that genuinely matter — and that you have someone who is both cheering you on and willing to ask the questions you might not be asking yourself.

The questions I would like to leave you with

The question I would like to leave you with is this:

What is the one goal that has been sitting on your list for too long — and what might become possible if you actually had the support to achieve it?

Is your leadership a hidden project killer?

Have you ever delivered what you believed was a clear direction to your project team, only to discover weeks later that they understood something entirely different? Or perhaps you've championed open communication, yet feedback reveals your team sees you as unapproachable?

This gap between your intent as a leader and how your team perceives that intent isn't just an uncomfortable reality; it's one of the most significant yet overlooked threats to project success.

As organisations invest heavily in sophisticated project management tools, methodologies, and AI-driven analytics, we're becoming increasingly adept at managing the technical aspects of project delivery. Yet projects continue to fail, and often the root cause isn't found in the Gantt chart or the risk register. It’s a human problem most often found in the space between what leaders think they're communicating and what their teams actually understand.

More elaborate planning frameworks and governance processes won’t solve this problem, but cultivating our emotional intelligence, and specifically one key skill, Applied Curiosity, will.

The Real Cost of Misalignment

When your team's perception of your leadership doesn't align with your intentions, the consequences cascade through every aspect of project delivery. Team members start to second-guess decisions, stakeholders disengage, and the psychological safety required for problem-solving and innovation evaporates. Trust is dented, and everything slows down.

Empowerment can be perceived as disinterest. Autonomy might feel like abandonment. Some of the most capable executives I've worked with have been genuinely shocked to discover this perception gap

The perception gap isn't about their competence; it is about awareness.

The harsh truth is that our intentions as leaders don’t matter as much as how we're perceived.

Applied Curiosity: A Framework for Closing the Gap

Applied Curiosity offers project leaders a systematic approach to identifying and addressing perception gaps before they derail delivery. Unlike passive curiosity, simply wondering about things, Applied Curiosity is a deliberate process that transforms how we gather information, make sense of it, and take action.

The Applied Curiosity Model consists of three interconnected phases: Research, Reflect, and React. This creates a virtuous cycle where each revolution builds on the previous one, continuously refining our understanding and improving our leadership effectiveness.

When we apply this framework to guide our actions and address a challenge such as the perception gap, we move from unconscious misalignment to conscious, informed leadership that drives project success.

Phase 1 - Research: Discovering How You're Really Perceived

The research phase is where we actively gather data about how our leadership is being experienced. 

We can start by having conversations with the project teams at all levels. Sounds simple, and on the surface it is.  However, we need to be self-aware when we do so and recognise that we will apply our own distortions and perceptions to the conversations.  

Naturally, we will seek out information that confirms our views, so we need to be able to put our confirmation bias to one side and to ask great and balanced questions that explore all the options.  We need to listen to what we hear with the intent of understanding what we are being told, rather than answering or correcting the speaker.  And that can be hard when we are used to setting direction.

Doing this will deepen your relationships and generate feedback you can take action on, so it is a great start; however, it will be coloured by the very perceptions you are trying to understand.  

To get an accurate picture, we are going to need to lean into the wisdom of the crowd as the more people we ask, the closer we will get to the truth.  But let’s be real, you don’t have time to talk to everyone, so a well-constructed survey-based approach that looks into the factors that perceptions impact, like how trusted you are, your ability to influence and how you apply your leadership, can provide the human-centric data needed to get a more complete and actionable picture.  Combining this with a neutral third party asking the questions and the technology available to us now, this can be done in but real time.

Phase 2 - Reflect: Making Sense of What You've Discovered

Gathering data is valuable, but without reflection, it's merely noise. The reflect phase is where we assimilate what we've learned, add context, and determine its relevance.

In the fast-paced, busy world we inhabit, especially around projects, making time for this phase is often rushed or skipped altogether.  Yet it is where we turn the data we have collected into actionable insights and build a genuine understanding that enables better leadership choices.

It’s time to examine patterns in the feedback you're receiving.  What themes are there? What might people be missing?  What assumptions have you made that need to be challenged?

Reflection also allows you to explore how new insights link to everything else you know about effective project delivery. For example, how does this perception gap relate to recent project delays, to stakeholder concerns? 

Reflection does not have to be a solo activity; consider discussing your findings with a trusted colleague, coach, or mentor who can help you see blind spots and find the connections.

Phase 3 - React: Taking Action That Drives Project Success

Understanding the perception gap is valuable, but without action, it's merely an interesting academic exercise. The react phase is where we form hypotheses about what might work and experiment to see what happens—creating new information that starts the Applied Curiosity cycle again.

What the best actions are will, of course, depend on the insights you gain in the reflection phase.  Do you need to provide extra information or clarifications, extra guidelines, or do you need to take some away?  Do you need to change your behaviours?

I encourage you to experiment with different approaches and observe the results. How does team behaviour shift when you explicitly address the perception gap? These experiments provide new data that feeds back into the research phase of the next cycle of Applied Curiosity, creating continuous improvement in your leadership effectiveness.

The Strategic Imperative

For C-suite executives and decision-makers, addressing the perception gap through Applied Curiosity isn't just about being a better leader—though it certainly achieves that. It's about removing a critical barrier to project success and organisational performance.

When your team's perception aligns with your intent, trust grows, decisions flow more smoothly, escalations happen at the right time, innovation flourishes, and projects deliver not just on technical metrics but on the human outcomes that drive true organisational value.

Applied Curiosity transforms this from a one-time exercise into embedding a critical leadership capability. The research-reflect-react cycle becomes part of how you lead projects, creating continuous feedback loops that prevent small misalignments from becoming project-derailing crises.

In an era where we're investing millions in project management technology and methodology, perhaps our greatest return on investment comes from investing time in understanding how we're actually experienced by the people we lead.

The questions I would like to leave you with

The question I would like to leave you with is this: What would you discover if you got genuinely curious about the gap between your leadership intentions and how your team experiences them?

This article was published in Enterprise Vision Magazine's Project Management Edition.

Is being technically brilliant enough to be successful as a PMO Professional?

Being able to lead a PMO that adds value to the organisation you support and that is a true strategic partner needs you to be more than just a technically brilliant PMO professional.  Yes, you need to understand and be great at using your PMO skills, but that alone will not get you the career you are looking for.You need to be great at the people things too - and that is where your emotional intelligence comes in.

That’s why some PMO people seem to navigate complexity and stakeholder challenges with ease, whilst others, despite similar technical expertise, struggle to gain traction. You may have heard of these people-based skills referred to as soft skills - that’s not a name that has ever resonated for me - they are at least as difficult and complex as technical skills, and without them, your technical skills will only get you so far.  I prefer the term power skills as they power up your career.  Their complexity, however, does not mean that you have to spend a fortune developing them.  There are lots of things you can do alongside your day-to-day role to build them - you can read more about them here.

These skills are also widely misunderstood, often being wrapped into leadership or people skills and the development of those.  So, let’s break it down a bit and from a PMO perspective, let’s start by understanding what Emotional Intelligence actually is.

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence, which is measured as your EQ, is the ability to recognise, understand, and manage both your own emotions and those of the people around you. It's about being aware of how emotions influence behaviour and decisions, and how it impacts those around you.  It is then about using that awareness to build stronger relationships, make better choices, and create more effective outcomes.

Let's get curious about what makes up emotional intelligence and why it matters so much to you as a PMO leader.

The Five Elements of Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman, the psychologist who popularised the concept of emotional intelligence, identified five key components that work together to create EQ.  Once we understand those, we can start to look at how we best develop our overall EQ.

Let's explore each one.

1. Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is your ability to recognise and understand your own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, values, and motivations. It's about knowing what triggers you, understanding how your mood affects your decisions, and being honest with yourself about your capabilities and limitations.

As a PMO leader, self-awareness allows you to understand how you are impacting your working world and for example, to understand when your frustration with a project delay is clouding your judgment, or when your enthusiasm for a particular approach might be preventing you from hearing valid concerns from your team.

2. Self-Regulation

Self-regulation is the capacity to control or redirect disruptive emotions and impulses. It's about thinking before acting, maintaining your composure under pressure, and adapting your response to suit the situation rather than simply reacting to it. It is about recognising and using the power of the pause!

That's one of the things I hear almost every day from PMO leaders: the challenge of staying calm when plans change, deadlines shift, or stakeholders make unreasonable demands. Self-regulation is what enables you to respond thoughtfully rather than reactively, maintaining your credibility and effectiveness even in difficult moments.

3. Motivation

In the context of EQ, motivation refers to your internal drive to achieve goals for reasons beyond external rewards like money or status. It's about having a passion for the work itself, persistence in the face of setbacks, and optimism about what can be achieved.

Leaders with high intrinsic motivation inspire their teams through their commitment and resilience. They're the ones who remain focused on the bigger picture when projects face obstacles, and who help others see challenges as opportunities for learning rather than just problems to endure.  

Developing this ability to help our teams and the projects we support stay motivated, avoid burnout out and focus on what we are really trying to achieve will position us to lead a PMO that becomes a key enabler in our organisations.

4. Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It's about recognising emotional cues, considering different perspectives, and genuinely appreciating how situations affect the people around you.

Yet, we know that empathy in a PMO context isn't about being soft or avoiding difficult conversations. It's about understanding what motivates your project managers, what concerns your stakeholders have, and what pressures your delivery teams are facing. It allows us to have those challenging conversations in a constructive way and to dissolve conflicts around our programmes.  This understanding allows you to communicate more effectively, resolve conflicts more easily, and build the trust that's essential for successful delivery.

5. Social Skills

Social skills encompass your ability to manage relationships, build networks, find common ground, and influence others. This includes communication, conflict management, collaboration, and the capacity to inspire and develop people.

Your social skills enable you to negotiate with stakeholders, facilitate difficult conversations, build cross-functional relationships, and create an environment where your team can do their best work. These are the practical applications of all the other EQ elements working together.

As you can see, there is some overlap between the five elements, but they provide a useful framework for us to use when considering what elements of our Emotional Intelligence we are going to develop.

Why Should Having a High EQ Matter to You as a PMO Leader?

Now, whilst technical skills and process knowledge are essential in PMO leadership, they only tell part of the story. Your working world is filled with competing priorities, resistant stakeholders, and teams under pressure. In these situations, it's your EQ that determines whether you can create the trust and collaboration needed to deliver results.

Building Trust and Credibility

Trust isn’t just a feel-good factor—it’s a strategic advantage. Research shows that high-trust teams outperform low-trust ones in virtually every key metric, from productivity to innovation, in every environment and not just projects.  When trust is present, employees feel empowered, accountable, and motivated, all of which contribute to smoother project execution and ultimately better business outcomes.  We are operating in a time where trust is a scarce and fragile resource, so building and protecting it matters more than ever.

The top 8 benefits of developing a high trust environment around projects that I regularly see are, as they say in all the best awards ceremonies, in no particular order, the benefits are:

1. Faster Decision-Making and Problem-Solving

2. Enhanced Collaboration and Communication

3. Increased Accountability and Ownership

4. Higher Engagement and Productivity 

5. More Innovation and Creativity 

6. Stronger Conflict Resolution 

7. Greater Resilience Under Pressure

8. Improved Stakeholder and Client Relationships

Navigating Resistance and Change

The resistance we face to our initiatives, our processes, or our governance requirements is real and something we face daily.  In my experience, that resistance is rarely about the logic of your approach – it's almost always emotional.

When you have high EQ, you can get curious about what's really driving that resistance. Is it fear of additional workload? Concern about losing autonomy? Uncertainty about capability? By recognising and addressing the emotional dimension, you can navigate resistance far more effectively than by simply presenting more rational arguments or asserting your authority.

Making Better Decisions Under Pressure

PMO leadership involves constant decision-making, often with incomplete information and competing demands. Your emotions inevitably influence these decisions, whether you're aware of it or not.

Leaders with high self-awareness recognise when stress, frustration, or overconfidence might be affecting their judgement. They can pause, regulate their response, and make more considered choices.

Developing High-Performing Project and PMO Teams

Your project managers and PMO team members need more than clear processes and good templates. They need leaders who understand their individual motivations, recognise when they're struggling, provide support that's tailored to their needs, and create an environment where they can develop and grow.

While the technical mentoring you can provide is valuable, it's your emotional intelligence that enables you to truly develop people. Empathy helps you understand what each person needs. Social skills allow you to give feedback effectively. Self-regulation models the composure and professionalism you want to see in your team.

Creating Strategic Influence

Let's take a moment to think about your influence as a PMO leader. You need to influence without authority, gain buy-in from senior stakeholders, and shape organisational approaches to delivery and change.

Yet, we know that influence isn't achieved through logic alone. It requires understanding your audience's concerns, timing your messages appropriately, building relationships over time, and adapting your communication style to different people. These are all functions of emotional intelligence, particularly empathy and social skills.

You can read more about engaging Stakeholders here.

Conclusions

As I have been writing this post I have had an earworm (a song that I just can't get out of my head.  At risk of highlighting my age, and passing on that earworm,  as the Bananarama and Fun Boy Three song goes, 'it ain't what you do but the way that you do it that gets results'.  This is so true of our work in PMO, and developing our EQ is all about the way we do the things that we do.

And our EQ, just like our technical skills, is something we can develop.  

You can read more about developing your EQ in a budget friendly way here.

The questions I would like to leave you with

There is always room to develop our EQ and the question I would like to leave you with is

If you were to develop your EQ, which of the Benefits of having a High EQ would make the biggest difference to you?

You know you need to develop your emotional intelligence but you don't have a budget for that.

Over the years, I have noticed how much easier it is to get budget to spend on the tools of our trade and other tangible things than it is to get authorisation to spend on things like your development, let alone soft skills development.  And I understand that,  it is much harder to quantify what will be different as a result, and given the current economic climate and uncertainties, the need to be prudent is magnified.

And that leaves us with a quandary: we need to develop our EQ to be as impactful as our organisation needs us to be, and if we are being brutally honest, to protect our careers, but we have little or no budget to develop the very skills we need to do that.

Why you need to develop your EQ

Whatever leadership or project role you are in, your emotional intelligence matters just as much, if not more than, your technical skills.  This is especially true in roles like the PMO, where you are bridging the gap between strategy and the teams charged with executing that strategy.  The constant project pressures, stakeholder demands and the sheer number of projects in our programmes and portfolios serve to emphasise this key differentiator between an adequate PMO person and a PMO Professional who makes an impact and adds valueWhen we have a higher EQ (the measure of our Emotional Intelligence) you can expect to experience many benefits which fall into these categories.

1. Building deeper levels of Trust and Credibility

2. Navigating Resistance and Change with more ease

3. Making better decisions under pressure

4. Developing high-performance project and PMO teams

5. Becoming strategically influential

So how can you develop your EQ in a budget friendly way?

So I am going to share two things that can help!

1. How to use Applied Curiosity to develop your EQ
2. A free download with over 40 budget friendly and free tools and techniques you can use to develop your EQ

The Applied Curiosity Model is a power tool that can be used in a number of ways to develop your Emotional Intelligence.  You can use it to structure your development, to develop each of the elements of Emotional Intelligence and within each development activity.

2. Reflect: Creating Meaning from Multiple Perspectives

This is the powerful pause between something happening and how we react.  It is about creating the time to think, to challenge ourselves and our assumptions, to consider the context we are working in.  We need to synthesise all the different inputs, all the research and think about how everything links together.  It is our chance to consider the trade-offs that there will be from various courses of action.

As we create our plan to develop our EQ the reflection stage would include considering which tactics we are going to use to develop the particular skill, how we might evaluate our progress and the potential impact of each. At this stage, we are generating options rather than committing ourselves to a specific set of actions.

3. React: From Insight to Value-Adding Action

The React Phase of the Applied Curiosity Model is where we truly unlock the power of our Curiosity.  Without this phase, our curiosity remains an interesting but academic exercise.

Download the free Ebook

I have collated over 40 tools and techniques that you can use yourself and with the people you work with to develop your Emotional Intelligence.  All the tools and techniques are either free or very low cost, and you can start using them right away.

You can download your copy here.  

You will be asked to create a free account so you can download the ebook and I  promise you will not be bombarded with multiple or regular emails when you do!

Conclusions

Developing your Emotional Intelligence will allow you to leverage your technical skills and support you in many other areas of your life, both in work and outside work.  It is something that we can all always work on, but it does not have to cost us a fortune to do it.  Yes, Coaching and Mentoring are the best ways to develop your EQ, but we don't always have the budget for them.  Using the Applied Curiosity Model is a great place to start, and the 40 tools and techniques in the free ebook will support both you and your team in developing your EQ and your effectiveness.

The questions I would like to leave you with

What is the biggest difference you think developing your EQ would make to you and how are you going to start?

The Power of Dyslexic Thinking

How It Shaped My Career

Dyslexia isn’t just about struggling with reading and writing—it’s a fundamentally different way of thinking.

And that difference? It can give you a real advantage.

Earlier this year, I was invited to give a talk about my experience of Dyslexia, and this article is a summary of that talk.  You can watch and listen to the presentation here, and I have put a transcript here.

One in Ten:  You Know More Dyslexics Than You Think 

Dyslexia affects around 10% of the population, yet many people don’t realise they know someone who has it. Why? Because we look just like everyone else. But our brains work differently, and that difference comes with both challenges and advantages.

I’m a dyslexic thinker, and I want to share how this has impacted my life, my career, and my clients. I’m also going to share some simple things that you can do to make the world easier for the dyslexics around you, whether they’ve told you about their diagnosis or not.If you read the full transcript, you will find more stories that illustrate the points I make in this summary.  You can find the full transcript here.

The School Struggles And The Lessons They Taught Me

School was rough. Imagine being nine years old and being told you’re a failure. To be fair, you knew you were failing long before that, with everything suggesting you were not as good as your classmates. Either way, it is something that stays with you.  Teachers meant well, but the education system just wasn’t built for how my brain processes information. Reading out loud? Nightmare. Spelling? A creative exercise in frustration. Tests and Exams? Designed to highlight my weaknesses rather than my strengths.

It wasn’t all bad, though. I learned early on that success is different for everyone.  It comes from finding your own way to thrive.  I learned to find my own way of doing things, I learned resilience, and I learned how to try different approaches until something worked.  I have probably used these lessons way more than what I learned about the kings and queens of England.

What Can You Do?

Whether you’re a manager, a colleague or a friend, you can help dyslexics thrive by:

• Focusing on strengths, not deficits – Instead of forcing someone into a system that wasn’t designed for them, figure out how they work best.
• Embracing different ways of thinking – If someone struggles with reading, it doesn’t mean they don’t understand. Look for alternative ways to assess skills.
• Providing the right tools – Tech like Grammarly and mind-mapping software can be game-changers.  
• Document Presentation - Consider how you present documents and emails.  Bullet points and white space really help, as does colour coding and using simple sans-serif fonts (ones without fancy swirls!).  Try and avoid writing in al capitals too, the overall shape of a word can be a big part of how we read and that shape disappears when words are written in all capital letters.
• Ask - be comfortable asking people what would help them. Not all dyslexias are the same and the person is best placed to tell you what works for them

My Takeaway? Dyslexic Thinking is a strength

It took me years to own my dyslexia. For decades, I didn’t tell anyone. Now, I proudly share my story because I know that the way I think brings value to the world.

Dyslexia isn’t a disadvantage—it’s a different way of processing information that can lead to breakthroughs, innovations, and unexpected success.

So, the next time you meet someone who thinks differently, don’t try to fit them into the mould. Instead, ask: What if their way is better?

Some Useful Resources

Succeed with Dyslexia - Home of the Go Red for Dyslexia Campaign and again a great place for resources.

Quoted References:

Covey, Stephen.  The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Deloitte. Stakeholder Capitalism Study. Deloitte Insights.

McKinsey & Company. CEO Excellence Research. McKinsey Global Institute.

Have You Ever Had a Brilliant Idea That Never Saw the Light of Day?

You know that feeling, don't you? You've had what feels like a game-changing idea for your organisation. Something that could genuinely make a difference. But then reality hits - how on earth do you get senior stakeholders on board?

Let's get curious about why so many brilliant ideas remain just that, at best, becoming ideas gathering digital dust deep in someone's folders,  rather than transformative initiatives that drive real change.  

As well as being wasteful, it is frustrating on a personal level, especially when you see less powerful or impactful ideas being championed.

Why Stakeholder Engagement Matters More Than Your Brilliant Idea

The harsh reality is that the quality of your idea matters far less than your ability to engage the people who can make it happen.

Research by Deloitte shows that companies actively managing and engaging stakeholders are up to 36% more likely to see positive project outcomes. 

Yet how many of us actually invest the time upfront to understand what really matters to the decision-makers in our organisations?  Unless we really understand what matters to them, how can we know if they will even entertain our idea?

In my experience, most of us rush the initial stages of stakeholder engagement and that not only means that great ideas fall by the wayside, but for those ideas that are taken up, there are consequences right through the project lifecycle and beyond:

• Projects are more likely to fail or be cancelled outright
• Cost overruns become inevitable
• Timelines slip
• Resources get misallocated across the organisation
• Internal credibility takes a significant hit
• Future innovation capacity diminishes as people become reluctant to support new initiatives

Understanding What Senior Stakeholders Actually Care About

So, we know we need to understand our senior stakeholders, but how do we do that.  It’s time to get curious about what's really driving them.

McKinsey research consistently identifies several themes that occupy C-suite attention: strategic alignment, financial performance, risk management, stakeholder value, digital transformation, sustainability commitments, and talent management. These are the publicly stated priorities, and our experience tells us two things: firstly, that we need to get really specific about these publicly stated aims and secondly, that their personal motivations and agendas are just as important.

Typically, these hidden motivations will be around three broad areas.

1. Career protection and advancement.  They may be focused on the legacy they want to build and the reputation they want to create and maintain, they may be thinking about avoiding career-damaging failures or the view of their peers and their industry standing may be driving them.  They may also be thinking about their next career move and positioning themselves for that.

2. Control and Influence.  Your Stakeholders may be driven by maintaining or extending their control and influence, looking to build their own fiefdom. They may be concerned with maintaining their decision-making authority or span of control, or possibly maintaining their organisational power structure.

3. Signs of Personal Success.  Top of their hidden agenda could be things like performance against their individual targets, the bonus or compensation implications of what you are asking them to consider or the Board or Investors' perceptions of them as an individual.

Knowing which of these board factors are at play for your stakeholders is not, however, enough if you are looking to really understand them, build a trust-led relationship with them and engage them in the ideas you are proposing.

Firstly, the Applied Curiosity Model can provide you with a plan for your approach.  The three phases of engaging your senior stakeholders in your idea mimicking the three stages of the Applied Curiosity Cycle.As we look to answer the three central questions, we are going to need to start with a Research Phase. 

• Who the key stakeholders are likely to be
• What their public and private agendas are
• What concerns the stakeholders have

The research is likely to be mostly be conversations with the stakeholders themselves, but can also be based on what you already know and the ideas and suggestions of others.

Next will be a Reflect phase, where you pull together everything you have learned from the conversations you have held and your observations with what you already knew.  In this phase, you will be reflecting not only on the best positioning for your idea, but also any refinements you need to make to the idea based on the new information you have gathered.  

As well as making it easier to talk about our idea in a way that is meaningful and appealing to the stakeholders we are looking to engage in our idea, integrating this new information almost always results in an even more powerful solution.

But planning is not the only time that using the Applied Curiosity Model will help us engage Stakeholders in the idea we want to propose.

Using the Applied Curiosity Model during your Stakeholder Conversations

The Applied Curiosity Model can also be a great way to structure your conversations with your Stakeholders.

We know we are going into these conversations with some things we are looking to find out, but going in with a curious mind doesn’t necessarily help you know how to manage the conversation and get the outcomes that you want.  

Done right, these conversations are a great opportunity to build your relationship with the stakeholder, build trust and demonstrate your value, not through talking about it but by showing the stakeholder your value in action.

I suggest positioning the meeting along the lines of ‘I have had an idea, and before I work on it any further, I want to understand if it is actually going to be of value to use. I appreciate your perspective and would like to ask you some questions.’

Having positioned the meeting, you are going to start with the Research Phase, leading with some great questions that explore the stakeholders' public and private agendas.  Great questions are ones where the person being asked is able to answer them in a number of ways, where the answer is not obvious from the question and where the person answering has to think a little.  In this case, we will be asking about what matters to them at work at the moment and how that aligns with the corporate agenda and other projects and programmes that are being worked on at the moment.

As you go through the meeting, you will be reflecting to summarise what you have heard and check that your understanding is correct.  You will also be discussing with the stakeholder how the various ideas interact and either align or don’t align.Iterating between research and reflection will allow you to dig deeper into your Stakeholders motivations and develop a greater understanding of them as you also build your relationship.

Using the Applied Curiosity Model after your Stakeholder Conversations

After we have completed our conversations with our stakeholder(s), we need to make sure we are leveraging them.  The Research phase of the Applied Curiosity Cycle, after our conversations, focuses on collating everything that we have learned from the conversations and any other sources, such as published strategies and agendas.

The Reflection phase is where the magic happens.  This is where we move from data gathering to genuine understanding.

One of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which is often forgotten, but is just as true today as when he wrote it in 1989, is  "Seek to understand before being understood." People want to know that you genuinely want to hear their perspective first.

During reflection, consider:

• How does your idea align with both the stated organisational priorities AND the personal motivations you've uncovered?
• Does what the stakeholder says match with what you see them doing?
• What language resonates with each stakeholder group?
• Where might competing agendas create challenges?
• What evidence do you have that this idea will deliver measurable outcomes?

Once you have reflected, you will be in a position to form a working hypothesis about how to engage your stakeholders.  It is then time to React and plan your next steps

• How will you feedback to the stakeholders?
• How are you going to position your ideas?
• What do you need to do next?
• Who else do you need to talk to?

Conclusions

Using an Applied Curioisty based approach allows us to truly understand our stakeholders’ perspectives and agendas.  It also allows us to verify our brilliant idea and make sure it is the right idea for the organisation at the right time.

This approach allows us to refine the ideas so that when we position them to the stakeholders to find our champion and build our stakeholder coalition.  Additionally, as we have been doing this, we will have built trust with those stakeholders, which should smooth the path not only of this idea as it becomes a project but also all our other projects, programmes and the entire portfolio.

The questions I would like to leave you with

Now, one of the things I often hear is: "I just don't have time to do all this upfront work."

But two questions I would like to leave you with are:

1. Do you believe your idea is brilliant enough to be worth investing a little of your time in?

2. If it is, do you have time not to do the upfront workt?

The time you invest in stakeholder engagement before your idea becomes an active project will save weeks or months of frustration later. 

So my final challenge to you is, what if it's actually the difference between your brilliant idea succeeding or joining the graveyard of good intentions?

Quoted References:

Covey, Stephen.  The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Deloitte. Stakeholder Capitalism Study. Deloitte Insights.

McKinsey & Company. CEO Excellence Research. McKinsey Global Institute.