Function: C-suite

How to be at your best

Does the very thought of working on your performance mindset leave you with a knot in your stomach? Perhaps it conjures up images of learning survival techniques on an outward-bound expedition or an even earlier alarm in the morning to make time for a fitness regime.

While these endeavours have merit, in the everyday environment it’s not about climbing Mount Everest (although kudos if that’s something you’ve achieved!). It’s about being in good enough shape to navigate the specific challenges your work and life present.

“Mindset” is defined as the attitudes that determine how you interpret and respond to situations. Getting the right mindset to achieve your goals is the first step in identifying what is required to achieve peak performance in your chosen field.

This is when the highly trained experts at Goldcrest Partners can help. We take a holistic approach to the pillars of performance – cognitive, physical, emotional, physiological – and focus on what is important for you to perform better more of the time. It’s a complex, inter-related dynamic, but get it right and all the elements will slot smoothly into place – leaving you better placed to perform (and enjoy) life at work and at home.

Don’t follow the herd

Whether you’re a fund manager or a firefighter, in essence, performance coaching asks, “How do you do what you do better?”

To achieve this there’s been a tendency for ‘business’ to over-borrow techniques from the worlds of elite sport and the military. This choice is natural as they are environments where performance psychology has been an implicit and explicit part of training for decades and is a highly developed area of competence.

The reality though is that the financial workplace is a different environment with a different timeframe and different operating rhythm. Some qualities like discipline and teamwork tend to crossover well but as the performance criteria and the persistency demanded are different, so is the emphasis of the performance coaching.

At Goldcrest Partners our observation is that financial services over-index on cognitive performance, physical conditioning is the go-to stress management activity, and the emotional and physiological dimensions are most often overlooked. This makes sense because from an autonomic nervous system perspective, high achievers in financial services tend to be sympathetic dominant with a bias to action over rest.

This approach can work but it is akin to driving through a muddy field in a 2-wheel drive. The car can be as high-performance as you like but until its power is distributed evenly, it just spins away and potentially burns out before reaching its destination.

This behavioural tendency can also play out in the way finance professionals demonstrate an over development of technical and tactical skills with more emphasis needed on interpersonal and strategic aspects that are crucial to successful performance of the most senior roles.

Role specific

An accurate diagnosis of the key actions required to execute a role is essential.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Different roles in the finance industry are unique and evolve over time, so the performance criteria are different to begin with and then change.

For example, successful investment decision-making takes cognitive clarity and emotional intelligence, so a focus on those elements may be the primary areas of focus to elevate performance. Effective leaders of organisations benefit from having a clear purpose, being physiologically well-regulated and forming strong relational bonds, so that could be the emphasis for boosting performance in those roles.

What is consistent is the accurate identification of the capabilities needed to perform a role well and focus on these. Other elements that may be the most important in other elite performance environments could just be hygiene factors or not relevant to high performance in the financial services industry.

Individualised and effective

The assessment of the needs of the role is complemented by an internal appraisal of the individual. How you are doing, both personally and professionally.

This ‘diagnostic’ process can include many different inputs and tends to massively raise self-awareness which informs where to build up and balance out our capability to perform the task at hand.

We then work with you to design an easy and enjoyable framework that takes into account your professional and personal values and goals.

But a bit like business strategy, the success rate for a process such as this is low. Plans are often misguided, don’t get started and if they do, they seldom stick and that’s where the value of performance mindset coaching comes into its own.

Support, challenge – and have some fun

It takes practise and time to change habits. A combination of support and challenge in the right balance is a winning formula.

Receiving permission to rest and guidance on how to develop parasympathetic renewal techniques is important support for those who tend to be ‘always on the go’.

Shifting mindset that the process doesn’t need to be a painful 180° switch in lifestyle is invaluable. Often the smallest changes can have the biggest impact. Consider the 1 in 60 rule in which pilots learn that flying just 1 degree off course means after 60 miles they’ll miss their target by an entire mile. Now flip that on its head and apply it to the trajectory of your career, a small change to your direction of travel today can make a big difference to your destination in a few years.

Challenge lives in the coaching relationship and in the things you commit to do. It can take the form of acknowledging fixed mindsets that don’t serve you or your goals anymore. Holding you accountable to your plans and actions. These might be as simple as getting up an hour earlier to incorporate some exercise into your routine – or hitting the snooze button to get an hour’s extra sleep because you don’t really need to be in the gym six days a week. It could be a challenge to develop new interpersonal skills and upgrade your communication to transform the way you engage with your teams, peers and leaders.

The most effective approach to support and challenge is carefully calibrated and, most importantly, fun. Not only can it be enjoyable, but we also believe it has to be, otherwise it is just another chore on an already never ending to-do-list.

Perhaps this is the biggest mindset shift of all. It is easy to sustainably elevate your performance and enhance your long-term wellbeing while having fun!

How to talk about mental health at work

After what we’ve all been and continue to go through, it’s perhaps no surprise that mental health issues have increased dramatically in recent years.

The fact that mental health is more of a high-profile talking point now than ever before is a good thing. It is helping us shed the stigma around the topic and brings it into focus as a challenge we should engage with proactively.

Like the old BT advert said, “It’s good to talk.”

But like all pieces of advice, on closer reflection, the wise answer most often seems to be, “It depends.”

Talking about mental health challenges in a trusted and confidential relationship can be a huge part of getting the support needed to manage and hopefully overcome any issues.

However it is important to understand our personal limits when discussing others’ mental health with them.

This may come across as counter intuitive, so allow me to explain.

Know thyself

Personally, I sometimes feel at a disadvantage when discussing mental health issues. I can sympathise but not empathise, because I am lucky enough to have never really experienced anything I would describe as a mental health challenge.

Despite my career in the military, I have never experienced PTSD. I don’t often feel stressed. I have never battled with depression or anxiety. I don’t often let obstacles get me down. When I do feel stressed, I am able to put things in perspective and bounce back reasonably quickly.

However, by recognising this about myself it helps me understand how I can and cannot help others. I can still be a great resource and support to those who are struggling but am better off leaving the more nuanced conversations to the experts.

Stiff upper lip

The reason I welcome the increased profile of mental health issues is that in Britain our social conventions have not always invited the necessary conversations around the topic.

Put it down to the traditional ‘stiff upper lip’ mentality, perhaps. But, whatever the cultural factors, it seems to me there are a couple of practical reasons why we shy away from these conversations:

• We might not be familiar with expressing and handling emotions out in the open which can impact our confidence to do so.

• We don’t know where the conversation will lead or what to do about it.

Often this type of uncertainty and discomfort can motivate us to withdraw just at the moment we could be helpfully proactive.

3 Skills to boost your confidence around mental health

Step 1: Listen

Learn how to be a good listener.

This won’t be the first time you’ve heard this advice and that is because listening is possibly the most important skill we are not taught at school. Plenty of public speaking but not so much public listening.

I find this really difficult because I am an extrovert and I tend to fill empty space with noise. I have to work hard to get comfortable with the gaps and the pauses.

In that sense, I have to work hard to genuinely listen to others. I have to consciously and actively listen and avoid the temptation to jump in.

Often, when a conversation goes silent, I become uneasy. Yet I am sure that the person I’m talking to actually values the fact that I’m giving them space to think and feel through what they want to say.

I believe that when a colleague or employee finds the courage to raise a mental health issue with us the very least we can do is give them our full attention.

If I can do it, you can.

Step 2: Know what to do when you don’t know what to do

This is true of any problem to some extent, but never more so than in the case of mental health.

When someone comes to you to talk to you about the stress they’re under – or that they’re depressed – what we must be really careful to avoid is trying to fix them.. We could end up doing more harm than good. Pointing them towards the appropriate resource within your organisation is often the best thing to do.

Increasingly organisations have nominated ‘mental health first aiders’ who have some relevant training and are able to offer short term help while connecting the colleague with HR and more sustainable external professional support.

Step 3: It’s an ongoing process

Mental health problems do not go away overnight and need to be managed in the broader work context. Awareness and sensitivity are key to enable recovery and support ongoing wellbeing.

It is also important to manage our own resources and be careful not to take on too much of the emotional burden of colleagues. If we do that’s not good for anyone.

Take the opportunity to develop your listening skills, your emotional intelligence, and your resilience to be more capable and confident about mental health.

Click here to find out more about Mental Health Awareness Week.

Personal sustainability & renewal

That can be to our detriment particularly if it causes stress and burn-out.

Pressure can lead to stress which is accompanied by a strong biochemical reaction that can activate our fight / flight survival responses. When stress is chronic, the sympathetic nervous system is triggered too much and too often – leading to an ‘always on’ setting or ‘spike and crash’ pattern that can impact performance and wellbeing. As a consequence, working sustainably under pressure, requires behaviours that support recovery and, more interestingly, renewal.

As Richard Boyatzis wrote in “Thrive and survive: Assessing personal sustainability”:

“Cumulative stress contributes to a loss of engagement and cognitive functioning, and it reduces learning from coaching, training, or education.”

To prevent this happening, Boyatzis maintained that “the only antidote is renewal in terms of the arousal of the parasympathetic nervous system.” That’s because our parasympathetic nervous system calms us down after a period of sympathetic activation. These two branches of the autonomic nervous system work in tandem, an accelerator and a brake if you will, revving us up and slowing us down. When they are in harmony all is well, however if there is dysregulation then problems follow.

Given its importance, it is strange that we are not more explicitly aware of the value of renewal activities on the parasympathetic nervous system. Happily, we do know this implicitly and often naturally self-orientate towards them. Helpfully, they are also integrated with many social conventions, earning them a place in our rituals, hobbies and traditions.

Types of renewal activities

Considering what there is to gain from renewal activities, what exactly are they?

Broadly speaking, they can be categorized into four themes – all of which can stimulate that all-important parasympathetic nervous system. When choosing, the key is to find something you enjoy, so it doesn’t feel like a chore. If it’s fun for you, you’ll do it regularly. And, when it becomes a habit and part of your regular routine, you’ll start to reap the rewards from your consistent practice.

1.    Social renewal activities

Going out for a meal with friends or family is so much more than having a catch-up. When you’re laughing with loved ones, you’ll start to relax, alleviating tension in your body and brain and re-regulating your nervous system. Other social renewal activities to recharge your batteries are playing fun games with others, sharing in collective experiences like listening to music or singing or spending quality time with a much-loved pet.

2.    Manual renewal activities

If you like to do things with your hands, trying out some craft hobbies can be a fantastic way to take your mind off work and relieve any pressure. For good reason, mindful colouring has seen a surge in popularity in recent years. Or many people, who became keen gardeners during the pandemic, still enjoy their green-fingered hobby’s mental and physical benefits. You could also try your hand at painting, pottery, knitting, woodwork, flower arranging and, believe it or not, with the right mindset, even household tasks like washing up or folding washing can serve this purpose.

3.    Slow movement renewal activities

The advantages of high intensity exercise are well reported, but these are more of a sympathetic activity. For renewal activities, movement should take a slower pace. Walking is the prime example and one that can be done anywhere, with anyone. Yoga is another great renewal exercise, as are slower-paced martial arts like tai chi or qigong. Dancing is another great example of a renewal activity as could be light physical work of a practical nature around the house or through volunteering.

4.    Reflection renewal activities

Finally, finding time to reflect can be a highly effective renewal activity. If you have faith, this could include prayer and meditation, but if not, a secular mindfulness practice can serve a similar purpose. Walking is, again, another wonderful activity that’s great for reflection – especially when in nature. But really anything that you do that allows your mind to slip into neutral, wander and return, has great value.

Adding renewal activities to your list of things to do

When it comes to renewal activities, there is no better time to start than now.

However, by definition, people who need them most don’t seem to have time. Finding space in your day can be challenging but is essential to being able to sustain your performance and wellbeing for anything but the short term.

It might seem that taking time out is a diversion that stops you from working through your to-do list. However, prioritising a renewal activity will ultimately make everything on that list easier to complete. Your mind will be clearer, your mood better and you’ll be more efficient.

Renewal activities also inoculate us to the effects of pressure. They build our tolerance to stress and paradoxically enable us to accomplish more, whether that be in a the financial services or otherwise.

Harnessing the power of a team

With that in mind, think about your team.

  • Do you actively invest in it and how its members work together?
  • Would your team more easily achieve business outcomes through better communication?
  • If so, what could you do to facilitate those changes?

One method to harness your team’s true potential is to run an offsite. We look at why they’re so effective here, but also how you can plan one which unlocks the full power of your team.

The benefit of an offsite

The key advantage to offsites is that they offer the chance to focus with no distractions. It sounds obvious, but taking the time to concentrate solely on your team is so easily overlooked, even though the results can be hugely worthwhile.

That’s because taking time out means you can zone in exactly on what your team needs to improve – making them more productive. Those improvements will generally fall into four areas:

1)   The introduction of high-performing characteristics

An offsite is the ideal place to lay foundations for the following 7 characteristics seen in the best, high-performing teams:

With all these characteristics, teams are able to combine individual brilliance into collective power. Introducing them effectively is hard to do in your office’s own four walls and without a concerted effort from a leader.

2)   Working on weaknesses

Even the best teams aren’t perfect. For instance, it could be that communication has become an issue. Or, your team may currently lack targeted aims. At an offsite, you can address those issues constructively.

Plus, what’s useful about the out of office set up is that any tricky team dynamics can be anticipated in advance. ‘Healthy conflict’ is then possible – leading to practical approaches for addressing problems in the future.

3)   Strengthening strengths

What’s also great about offsites is that they’re a fantastic way to reinforce strong points. They’re not just for reinventing the wheel. For instance, if your team already has good working relationships, you can use an offsite to accentuate that further.

4)   Time to make a team, a team

Finally, getting everyone present in one room can be hard to achieve spontaneously, especially if you have team members dotted around the country or globe. An offsite is dedicated time, all together. So, they are great for working on that social glue that leads to cohesion – thanks to providing space outside of the office, in an environment that’s safe. 

Planning an offsite

Given what there is to gain from an offsite, how do you plan a profitable day?

Keep it simple

Identify specific outcomes you want to achieve. They don’t have to be overly complicated. They can simply be to create a closer-knit team. From there, you can then develop a well-structured agenda that zones in on those outcomes only.

Remember to take it offsite

Technically speaking, an offsite doesn’t actually have to be offsite. It can be tempting to save money by using one of your company’s meeting rooms. However, leaving the office can be advantageous because any outside noise will be immediately minimised – if not eradicated completely.

Make it fun

Finally, offsites should be enjoyable. They’re not just a day that has to be spent in a room coming up with strategy ideas for the short, mid and long term. But that doesn’t automatically mean you must take your team paintballing or other painfully enforced “fun” activities. Something where people relax is key.

It doesn’t even have to be a whole day out of the office. It can simply be going out to dinner, wine tasting, or just a drink after work. Anywhere your team spends time with one another in a relaxed environment is beneficial. Any get together outside a formal meeting can have huge power if done well.

How Goldcrest Partners can help

It’s always surprising to us that, despite the powerful tool an offsite is, they’re so often anticipated with dread by attendees. That’s a massive shame as offsites then essentially become an expensive waste of time.

Yet, the benefits of an offsite are so compelling. And it’s something that we can help with at Goldcrest Partners. All you need to do is give us a clear idea of where your team is now and where you want it to be afterwards. From there, we can tailor an offsite to be a constructive use of everyone’s time.

We do that through:

Collaboration

When planning a team’s offsite, we work closely with leaders in a highly collaborative way. In doing so, we design your day in tandem with you – rather than for you.

Direction

We act as a much-needed sounding board in the run-up to the day. Together with you, we compile your aims and objectives. Our input helps you stay focussed on creating an agenda and an environment to achieve your aims. Importantly, while that means we may give pointers and direction, you’re still definitely the leader. We believe that is critical to the day’s success.

Support

With us there throughout your offsite, you can focus on being part of any discussions. You never need to worry about running your timetable to the clock or who the next speaker will be. Our support enables you and your team to gain as much from the day as possible.

Independence

Crucially, we remain objective and independent. Having us as a third party gives everyone the space to relax and enjoy themselves that bit more. Our help encourages a team to have productive discussions that enhance relationships.   

Contact us today

We’re experienced in creating the best environment resulting in the best outcomes. With our expertise, you can develop a high-performing team that not only reaches its targets and goals, but beats them time and time again too. Call or enquire with Goldcrest Partners today so we can start planning an offsite with you.

Bringing together the 7 conditions of a high-performing team

Creating a high performing team is essential not only for the team’s own success but for the overall success of its entire organisation. As we will explore, the following 7 essential conditions must be met to ensure optimal team performance: trust, vision & alignment, autonomy & empowerment, social glue, healthy conflict, connectivity, and continual learning.

Vitally, they must all be present for a team to be truly high performing.

No single condition must be left out. Each one is interconnected and interdependent on all others. None will ever thrive in isolation. For instance, consider healthy conflict. Having a constructive debate would be difficult without trust or social glue. These conditions complement and strengthen each other so they can be leveraged far more powerfully.

Ensuring all these conditions are present within a team is not an easy task. Nor is it a quick one. There are several challenges that a team leader or manager could meet along the way while trying to nurture and cultivate such an environment. For example, employees may be resistant to taking more responsibility for their work, or some may struggle to maintain their efforts towards continual learning.

But the rewards that all these 7 conditions cultivate cannot be underestimated, which is a hugely motivating factor for leaders. There are many practical steps and strategies that leaders can use to foster trust, promote healthy conflict and instil all other conditions mentioned in this series of insights.

If you’re a leader, Goldcrest Partners can help you identify and implement those steps so that you can build and sustain a high performing team that is incredibly successful. While many of our tips and ideas are part of an ongoing process, the long term benefits such as increased competitiveness, improved employee retention and better success at meeting targets make the effort worthwhile.

Interested? Contact us so we can start setting up your 7 point high performing team model framework to ensure your team’s success.

Understanding the value of followership

The business world is obsessed with leadership. Google “leadership” and you’ll get many thousands of results. But what about those who are being led? What about the followers? Knowing how to follow is equally important but if you search for “followership” online there is much less to find.

No one goes to Harvard to learn how to follow, yet it is the other side of the leadership coin. If we apply this notion to business, while leadership may be the behaviour in focus it is followership that dominates most of our working lives and is the crucial secret skill of success.

Understanding the skills needed to follow well are important in their own right and also make us better leaders. Knowledge of effective followership enables leaders to fulfil their responsibilities effectively, demonstrating empathy, knowing what motivates others and communicating well.

What is followership and why is it important?

It’s useful to define what we mean by followership. In brief, it is the ability to take direction well, to align behind a programme or project, to be part of a team and to deliver on what is expected of you.

It is not just about behaviour but also mindset. It also enables followers to hold their leaders to account.

Characteristics of effective followership

Despite followership not receiving the same attention as leadership, the difference between effective and ineffective followership behaviours was codified as far back as 1988, in a seminal article in the Harvard Business Review by Robert Kelley.

In this piece, Kelley set out the difference between effective and ineffective followership behaviours in the following way:

• Ineffective followership behaviours

This often takes the form of team members sitting around waiting to be told what to do and being reluctant to take the initiative.

Going a step further, it could manifest as what Kelley calls “survivor” behaviour, which is when you’re perfectly capable and have a good brain but have chosen to switch yourself off to just get through the day and do the bare minimum.

Perhaps the worst of the ineffective behaviours is when you are angry and complaining vocally, not caring who knows how you feel. This behaviour can become subversive and start to sow dissent.


Effective behaviours, by contrast, include:

  • The ability to think for themselves
  • Take initiative within mutually understood boundaries without the need to be constantly seeking permission
  • Willingness to take a degree of risk
  • Ability to use their own judgement
  • Being comfortable putting their hand up and saying when they don’t know something
  • Being capable to operate independently
  • Hunger to expand their level of competence

That last point is important, because effective followers often strive to increase their competence – to stretch themselves, learn more and develop by asking for more challenging tasks, or for mentorship.

Indeed, it is the ability to switch roles, to change priorities, to offer support, that could be said to define effective followership. This is what people in high performing teams do – they’re typically able to switch between roles very easily.

How do we create a culture where effective followership behaviour thrives in a hybrid working world?

Leadership plays a key role in nurturing effective followership. If you create the conditions for effective followership to thrive, through your leadership, then it will thrive. If you create the conditions for survivorship, then those behaviours will thrive. It’s up to you what you create.

With the rise of new ways of working – hybrid working in particular – your leadership plays a more important role than ever. People have a choice about how hard they work. They have a choice about what they spend time on and what they prioritise.

Discretionary effort is ultimately what it’s all about. Your effective followers are really comfortable providing you discretionary effort. They’re also really comfortable turning around and telling you when they’re maxed out or in danger of burnout. You can trust them in this context, because they’ve got a good track record of being honest, trustworthy, reliable individuals who tell you the truth. If they say they’re maxed out, then the chances are, they’re maxed out.

Of course, if you care about your team member, you will be receptive to the signs of overwork and potential burnout. If you notice that they are working through weekends or sending emails at 5.30am and at 9.30pm, it’s time to talk to them about creating a better work-life balance. It’s time to see how you can support them.

In short, you need to care about your people. To support them. To listen to them. To respond when they come to you with challenges. Do this, and you will foster a relationship based on trust. They will repay in kind with increased productivity and discretionary effort.

Here we’ve gone full circle back to the importance of good leadership. You get the followership that your leadership style deserves: it doesn’t just happen. Remember the earlier point about the military: that good leaders serve their followers. As a leader, you are there to provide your people with everything they need to do the job for you, from equipment and tools to motivation and purpose: a reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

If you give all your people all the things they need to be brilliant, then you’ll get effective followership. Without this, no leader can succeed. With it, no leader can fail. 

How to balance confidence and humility

Confidence is a great strength in a leader when used appropriately. But we often celebrate its upsides while turning a blind eye to its drawbacks.

An appropriately confident leader is a great asset to their organisation and the people they lead. They tend to be open, assertive, reliable and honest.

However, we are all familiar with the notion that we can have too much of a good thing and most of us will have worked for someone who was all too sure of their ability.

Over-confident leaders often focus on their personal goals and achievements at the expense of their team or the wider organisation and blame others when something goes wrong.

Such leaders can also be closed off and hard to reach. After all, why be open to feedback when you already know everything there is to know?

This armoured and potentially arrogant way of being is a significant obstacle to good engagement and long-term success.

The strengths of the humble leader

By contrast, let’s consider the strengths of a humble leader, which include:

  • Listening
  • Teamwork
  • Soliciting feedback

Humble leaders encourage others to speak up and give their opinions, regardless of their position in the company. As Steve Jobs once said:

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

Such leaders are also commonly associated with positive traits such as sincerity, modesty, truthfulness, fairness and authenticity.

With so many positive associations with humility, why are so many business leaders so reticent about being humble?

Perhaps it’s because we’re bombarded with stories of strong, charismatic leaders in the business press. Or we’re influenced by images of strong leadership in the media. Or we just don’t want to risk appearing to not know the answer, doubt ourselves or be vulnerable. Reframing what it means to be a leader is a helpful starting point in shifting this mindset.

All coins have two sides

But what are the drawbacks of excessive humility? If there is a shadow to confidence, what is the shadow of humility?

For ourselves, if our doubts inflate, we can undermine our confidence and feel like an imposter who doesn’t know enough to deserve the role. A common fear around this is the sense that we got where we are by luck and will get found out someday. This emotional state can lead to rumination and dwelling on mistakes and feedback in a self-critical way that undermines learning and risk appetite.

For the people we lead, we might not be there for them when they need us.In conclusion, as with most leadership traits, there is a balance to be struck between confidence and humility. Too much of a good thing doesn’t seem to work and the best leaders have learned how to avoid the shadows and demonstrate both confidence and humility positively and, paradoxically, often at the same time.

As author Jim Collins wrote in his book Good to Great, those chief executives who most often helped to transition their companies to outperform their competition exhibited two key traits:

  • Humility
  • A will to advance the cause of the whole organisation

The empirical evidence is that both humility and confidence are critical to success.

Challenge and support in the workplace

Did you ever have a teacher at school who influenced you? Maybe even changed your life?

When I reflect on conversations with the people I have trained, coached or just met along the way in my time as a leadership developer, I notice how often an inspirational teacher from school is fondly remembered.

In any performance environment, knowing when and how to challenge or support people is a vital leadership skill and I can think of few professions which know more about how to do this well than teaching.

For some of us it is natural to want to stay in our comfort zones. As we mature and grow, we learn how to be more comfortable with pushing ourselves. Being stretched and challenged is uncomfortable for all of us initially, a bit like yoga or weight training, but with practice we get better and it becomes a habit.

I spoke recently with Louise North, Principal of Framlingham College, for her perspective and she described that when she started her job, she noticed the school was doing an amazing job at supporting and nurturing pupils – but that there was room to challenge them more.

“The school had a reputation for kindness and niceness, but we weren’t actually challenging the children to reach their full potential,” Louise said. “Kindness is not the same as accepting mediocrity – it’s just the opposite.”

Louise encouraged the teaching body to challenge the students more, giving them the confidence to do so with her support. She also encouraged the staff to be honest with parents about their children’s performance and to work together to motivate pupils more. It all served the goal of enabling children to reach their full potential within a supportive environment.

So, if this is the task at hand, how can we do it well?


Challenge and support

How can we define what it means to be challenged or supported at work? How, as leaders, can we try to achieve that same level of balance as the inspirational teachers of our childhoods?

A leader can challenge by questioning the status quo, looking for continuous improvement and keeping things moving. A leader can also support by checking in often with their team, encouraging everyone to participate and offering coaching where needed.

These are behaviours where we may have a natural preference to do one or the other and it takes self-awareness, emotional intelligence and developed skill to read the situation and respond accordingly.

The best leaders are able to both support and challenge, in the right way at the right time for the best results.

The value of big picture thinking

Getting lost in the detail is a risk for many business leaders. It can often impede performance, and remains a familiar and easy mistake.

Leaders tend to be promoted into a senior role after showing themselves to be brilliant at the details of their previous role. Former sales leaders become MDs who still love sales and selling. CFOs get promoted to CEO but may not stop thinking in the language of numbers.

This is like a violinist being promoted to conductor and focusing on the string section instead of the whole orchestra. The problem with this is obvious. Rather than getting mired in the detail, the new role demands that the leader broadens their view across the bigger picture and allows their team to work out the steps required to make that big picture goal a reality.

What is a big picture and why is it important?

A big picture is a compelling vision for the whole team. It might be a bold statement, a vision, a feeling or a dream of where an organisation wishes to be in the future.

The end game is the same: it is a shared hope for everyone to work towards. Everything a team does is in the context of and with reference to the big picture, moving the organisation forwards.

As an example, think of John F Kennedy’s speech to the US Congress in May 1961, when he said:

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

While the gendered language has not aged well, the point here is that he didn’t focus on the details, but the vision of the future. JFK invited others to join him in making something seemingly impossible come true and his ambition was so compelling that it continued to inspire action even though he was not alive to see it happen.

The benefits of a compelling big picture

This ability to inspire is one of the chief virtues of a strong big picture. Teams thrive on clarity and focus, on working towards interesting and measurable goals, and on having clear timelines for achieving them.

Once you have a Big-Picture goal, you and your team can get into the detail and plan what needs to be done, and the various steps that must be taken on a day-to-day basis to achieve it.

Managing mental health in the workplace

As mental health is a fundamental component of how people think, feel, relate and perform at work, it’s vital to have a company culture that is healthy and supportive.   

Mental health is no longer a peripheral workplace issue. The vast majority of a workforce will have been touched or affected by mental health challenges at some point in their career, whether it has been overcoming difficulties personally or supporting someone who has.

Recent years, particularly during and following the pandemic, brought mental health into sharper focus. While the virus itself was not a cause of mental health conditions, the global response, including prolonged uncertainty, isolation and changes to working patterns, created an environment in which anxiety, stress and low mood were more likely to emerge. In many cases, these challenges were dormant or manageable beforehand, but were intensified or newly triggered by the circumstances people found themselves in.  

For some, this period was especially difficult, particularly those with existing vulnerabilities or limited support networks. For others, it became an unexpected catalyst for adaptation, prompting reassessment of priorities, stronger boundaries and healthier work-life balance. What became increasingly clear was that mental health exists on a spectrum, fluctuating over time and shaped by both personal resilience and organisational context. 

Awareness in the workplace

A healthy workplace culture acknowledges mental health risks without defining people by them. While it is vital to recognise stressors and challenges early, it is equally important not to assume fragility or inevitability.   

Mindsets, therefore, matter. A tendency to catastrophise or to frame experiences in extremes can inadvertently undermine wellbeing. While the placebo effect is well known (where positive beliefs improve outcomes) the “nocebo” effect can do the opposite, reinforcing difficulty and diminishing confidence.   

And therein lies the rub. How do we adequately acknowledge very real personal stressors and mental health risks while, at the same time, keeping ourselves from making them a self-fulfilling prophesy?   

The key is to be aware of both the potential mental health issues that may arise and our ability to overcome them. 

Tips for leaders

1. Everybody’s different

How the working world has changed since the pandemic has shown that trusting people to manage themselves is not just possible but highly effective for the business and something that individuals prize. If you can maintain trust and flexibility, employees will continue to find their way to optimise their approach. It might look different for everyone but that is likely a good thing.  

2.  Wellbeing and performance

Prioritising performance over well-being in anything but the short term is a false dichotomy. They are two sides of the same coin. If we allow our people to attend to their well-being, then they perform for the long term. Performance without well-being is unsustainable, particularly in an ‘infinite game’ like financial services. At Goldcrest Partners, we believe an emphasis on both well-being and performance will yield superior long-term outcomes for organisations and individuals.  

3.  Slow and steady wins the race

Change often fails because it is ‘too much, too soon, too fast’ for the individual or organisation to tolerate. If we let people travel at their own pace and provide appropriate boundaries and encouragement, then it will certainly pay dividends.

In summary, at Goldcrest Partners, we believe it is important to be both vigilant and confident in the ability to mitigate mental health risks and support individuals if needed. Furthermore, allowing individuals the flexibility to optimise their working habits and trusting them to do the right thing may prove to be a key factor in not just mental health but also attracting and retaining the best talent.   

The upside here is a competitive advantage in your people.