Enter: self-awareness.

It’s not just a buzzword. It’s the key to staying motivated, making better decisions, and actually enjoying the work you're doing. And the best part? You don’t need hours of journaling or a personal development retreat to get started.

Here are 7 small ways to build self-awareness — and why it matters more than you think:

1. Ask Yourself: “What’s Driving Me Today?”

Before you dive into your to-do list, pause and check in:

• Are you working from excitement?

• Or are you just trying to prove something, avoid something, or tick a box?

When we know why we’re doing something, it’s way easier to stay focused and feel fulfilled — not just busy.

Quick stat: People with high self-awareness are 32% more effective at achieving their goals. (Harvard Business Review)

2. Know Your Values — and Stick to Them

If you don’t know what your personal values are, your goals might feel a bit…meh.
Take 10 minutes to jot down your top 3–5 values (e.g. creativity, family, freedom, growth, humour). Ask yourself:

• Do my current goals reflect these?

• Or am I chasing someone else’s version of success?

When your actions match your values, that’s where real motivation kicks in.

3. Track Energy, Not Just Hours

Forget just watching the clock — start paying attention to how you feel during different tasks.

• What energises you?

• What drains you?

• When are you in the zone?

Your body and mood give you clues. If team meetings exhaust you but creative work lights you up, use that knowledge to shape your week more intentionally.

4. Get (Gentle) Feedback from Someone You Trust

Self-awareness isn’t only about what you notice — it’s also about how others experience you.

Try asking someone you trust:

• What’s something I do well that I might not notice?

• How do I come across when I’m under pressure?

You might be surprised — in a good way! And it’s a great way to spot blind spots before they become roadblocks.

5. Revisit the “Why” Behind Your Goals

Before going all-in on a new project or idea, ask:

• Why do I want this?

• Would I still want it if no one knew about it?

Sometimes we chase things that look great on paper but feel a little empty inside. This question brings you back to what really matters.

"Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion." — Simon Sinek

6. Notice When You’re Out of Alignment

Here are some signs your inner self might be screaming for a bit more attention:

• You’re doing all the “right” things but still feel flat

• You keep saying yes when you really want to say no

• You feel busy, but not productive

• You’re resenting your work (or the people around you )

If you feel these, don’t panic. It just means it’s time to pause and realign — not start over.

7. Make Space for Micro Moments of Reflection

You don’t need to meditate for an hour a day. Even a 60-second pause in the car, during your morning coffee, or before bed can make a difference.

Try asking:

• What felt good today?

• What didn’t?

• What do I need more of tomorrow?

Small reflections, big shifts.

The Bottom Line?

Self-awareness isn’t some luxury you “get to later.” It’s one of the best tools you’ve got for staying motivated, connected, and clear. When you understand yourself better, you make better decisions — and life just feels a little lighter.

So next time you’re chasing a big goal, don’t forget to check in with yourself too.

Because outer success feels so much better when it actually aligns with what’s happening inside.

1. Micromanagement of online workers

Some leaders delegate…and unfortunately some leaders make the mistake of micromanaging. Micromanaging essentially boils down to the leaders having a lack of trust for their employees to satisfactorily get the job done. They also love being the sole-decision maker, even to the detriment of their team and themselves.

Since the micromanager boss can no longer look over the shoulders of their employees when they are working from home, some have gone to extreme lengths trying to micromanage their team online. While they may feel more comfortable having regained some level of control, the micromanager is doing more harm than good. People (in general) hate being micromanaged, hate having meeting after meeting, and hate when they work hard at something, only for their boss to go in and change it all. Negative experiences like this at work can have a lot of reverberations not only at the workplace, but also in your life.

 2. Leaders assuming your team members are available to work 24/7 since they’re just at home

During the pandemic, there have been countless stories of employers increasing work hours from 9-5 to 24/7  because their employees were now working from home. I had a friend that was working so much during the pandemic that her work started paying for everyone to order ubereats every night because the company didn’t want them to stop working for long enough to cook dinner. They would also assign her work to do a after 5pm to have ready for their 8am meeting. Her hours were insane and she got burnt out and rightfully quit.

This is just one example, but the trend is certainly there. Approximately 45% of us are working more than they were before the pandemic started. More alarmingly, 75% said they were now also working on weekends. So why is this happening? Basically, it’s that workplaces are not understanding or respecting boundaries, now there isn’t a physically work boundary at play. To many managers, they don’t want to see their productivity numbers go down, even though realistically they should given all the disruption.

3. Lack of feedback and L&D opportunities from Leaders

When the pandemic, the whole system had to shift so that employees could now work from home…but some things may have been forgotten in the transition. Now that employees can no longer just come up to you when they’re working from home, they are receiving less feedback on their work (good and bad). Not only this, but many companies have limited the amount of L&D they’re doing since things are still not back to normal. This can make it harder for employees who are looking to progress upwards in their career during this time.

Luckily due to the pandemic, things like online learning, as well as better online collaboration tools, have come into play. The mistake is not to use them while you have access to them.

Is the 4 day work week going to be the new norm for workplaces? For decades, the 5 day work week has been the go-to. Despite all the changes that have occurred within the workplace over the last 50 years, this weekly structure has persisted. Most recent information shows that we may have to change it up.

Did you know?

Technological advancements have made humans more productive than ever and businesses want to see those numbers continue to rise. As a result, employee burnout is increasing.

A recent study showing 52% of workers having felt burned out in 2020/2021, up 7% from pre-covid. With many people being made to work from home, 65% in a study reported that their business hours increased.

Employers were expecting employees to be available outside of their regular work hours due to being confined to their home. But the statistics get worse: 34% of people struggle to fall asleep due to work related stress; 50%+ are skipping their lunch break due to workload; 66% of workers do not strongly agree that they have good work-life balance; 27% of workers report feeling depressed because of their work. The list of statistics goes on. These numbers are only rising and are clearly unsustainable for a growing workforce.

The 4 day Work Week

Many employers worry that the 4 day workweek will lower productivity and be bad for business. Studies have proven otherwise. Overworked employees are statistically less productive than employees who work an average work week. Many of the most productive countries (such as Norway, Germany, Denmark and Netherlands) on average only work 27 hours a week. On the other hand, Japan, a country notoriously known for overworking employees, ranks 20th out of 35 countries for productivity.

Perpetual Guardian, a large New Zealand business, trialled a 4 day work week and the results were interesting. Not only did productivity increase by 20%, but also employees reported a 24% increase in work-life balance scores. More time off boost feelings of happiness and fulfilment in their own lives. This means more time to spend with loved one, more time for hobbies and even just catching up on life. Happier the employees, the more focused and stress-free they’ll be, which will result in higher productivity.

In conclusion…

Some industries may have a harder time than others adapting to this new 4 day work week structure, but it’s at least something to consider. The workplace is changing, something that was apparent when we all suddenly started working from home due to the pandemic. Businesses need to be open to change and questioning ingrained structures that exist within the workplace. Only adaptable businesses that are willing to look out for their employees with thrive in a time of rapid and constant change. Businesses will need to be flexible in order to be competitive as employers. In the end it comes down to this: happier workers do better work. It’s not about hours, it’s not about KPIs. It’s about caring.

Have a magical week!

For many people, working from home has provided a way to better understand their own personal working preferences. Many employers are still being persistent in their traditional workday and workweek structure. Though those ahead of the curve have taken this opportunity to refine the traditional process to better serve their employees.  

Here is a list for people who feel trapped by the traditional structures of the workday or workweek to try out:

1. Have weekly workloads, not a strict 9-5.

Not everyone works best on a schedule that completely aligns with the traditional workweek structure. To change that you can suggest that it could be efficient for everyone to have a number of tasks that need to be completed by the end of the week. This will give employees a better idea of what you are actually achieving during the day.

You can eliminate the time you spend procrastinating or filling time with tasks you don’t want to do. As a result you may not have to be physically present and you could be doing something you want to do at work. This will also leave you more time for yourself while still completing your workload. All without having to be in the office for 40 hours a week. This in turn will make you a better worker, a more enjoyable teammate, and you will have a better quality of life.

2. Track more than the hours.

Many workplaces want to make sure that they measure hours worked and KPIs. Are these the only two things that matter? Well, those things only matter for factory robots. People working in jobs have many more skills and needs. Tracking employee happiness will help you with a host of things including efficiency and job retention. Making this a priority in the workday and work week should be encouraged.

3. Utilise your employees hidden talents.

Many people are realising that their job isn’t their whole life. For most people, a job is a means to an end. That end may be a hobby, a better lifestyle, or training to be something else. This doesn’t have to be so binary. For instance; If you are a manager and an employee is a Star Wars fan, you could let them have a budget to decorate the office for May the 4th. It may seem completely unrelated to your accounting firm, but not only will it improve workplace culture, but it may also be something that you could share online. People want to use their hobbies and talents as much as possible, as an employer it your job to best know how to utilise it.

This was just a taste of what can be done to get the most out of your employees. If you want to learn more about how you can get the best out of them, listen to our podcast on “Changing the Workday/Workweek structure” here

It takes just 1/10th off a second for us to judge someone and form a first impression. We end up making assumptions about that person based on one or more characteristics they possess. This is an unconscious bias.

Unconscious bias happens on a subconscious level. The brain receives new stimuli (such as meeting someone for the first time) and quickly attempts to categorise it. It is the same part of the brain (the amygdala) that also controls our fight or flight response. Adults make about 35000 remotely conscious decisions a day. That leads to our brain making quick generalised judgements on an unconscious level.

Some of the most common unconscious bias examples include as gender bias, affinity bias, and ageism. Let’s dive a little deeper into each of these biases.

Gender Bias

Gender bias is when you tend to prefer one gender over another because of preconceived assumptions about that gender. In the workplace, this results in preferential treatment of men over women and other genders. The most prevalent gender stereotype in Western culture is that women are more emotional than men. Women and gender diverse people tend to lose out on positions of power and influence because of this. One study found that women and men prefer male job candidates. A man is 1.5x more likely to be hired than a woman. A great example of gender bias is a quote from disgraced former President Richard Nixon:

“I don’t think a woman should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don’t. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic. And emotional. Men are erratic and emotional, too, but the point is a woman is more likely to be”

You can see from this quote that he doesn’t really know why he believes women shouldn’t be in government. He even states that both men and women are emotional and erratic. This was his unconscious bias. It made him believe that a woman is still more likely to be these things than a man.

Affinity Bias

Affinity bias is the tendency for people to connect with others who share similar interests, experiences, and backgrounds.

This unconscious bias manifests in the workplace as people only hiring and promoting people who share the same race, gender, age, culture, or educational background. This is usually justified as a ‘culture fit’ hire. This can result in a company forming a monoculture. Monocultures lack diversity of people and ideas – which can stagnate or ruin a company.

Affinity bias hits hardest in the pre-interview stage when CVs and resumes are read. For example, someone from an “undesirable” part of town, who didn’t go to a fancy college may not get the job. This also disproportionally affects people with non-anglo sounding names and those from marginalised communities. All these people are likely to miss out due to affinity bias. Companies with an above-average diversity produced a greater proportion of revenue from innovation (45% of total) than companies with below average diversity (26%). This proved that diverse companies have a better financial performance.

Ageism

Ageism is the tendency to have negative feelings toward someone based on their age. This unconscious bias tends to work against mature and young people. 56% of people over 50 said they had experienced some level of ageism in the workplace. 52% of people aged 18-34 have also experienced ageism at work as well.

This ageism in the workplace can manifest in different ways.

Ageism Towards Older people

Older people report feeling patronised because of their age. Assumptions about them include not know how to use technology and remarks about their age. There is also lack of learning opportunities offered. People make age based disparaging comments and many feel disadvantaged in the hiring process.

Ageism Towards Younger People

Younger people report feeling ageism in the workplace in the following ways:

• Their feedback is overlooked by senior colleagues.

• They are not trusted with important tasks.

• Young people are stereotypically referred to as ‘entitled’, ‘soft’, ‘lazy’ or ‘radical’.

• Young people miss out on entry level jobs due to lack of work-experience. Often more senior staff are resistant to younger workers because they have different expectations on work-life balance.

“People judge others by their own standard. So, that senior person may have succeeded through the traditional measures of success: long hours, missing family events, constantly being in the workplace. When they see behaviours that aren’t similar – leaving work to go work out or for family dinner, taking health and wellness measures – the result can be a stereotype of, ‘Well, that person isn’t acting like I did’.” – Rikleen

When these pre-conceived notions of young people combine with traditional workplace values and seniority structures, the result can be a workplace that holds back young people, negatively impacting career trajectory, and opportunities for mentorship and promotion.

“If people on senior levels are writing them off because of assumptions, the younger people won’t get the opportunities they need to succeed,” says Rikleen. “And that becomes a self-perpetuating cycle because they look around and think, ‘Nobody’s taking an interest in my career, I’m going to look elsewhere’. Then the senior person is like, ‘See? I knew it.’”

source: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210730-the-acute-ageism-problem-hurting-young-workers

What can you do about unconscious bias in your workplace?

There are many measures you can take to reduce unconscious bias in the hiring and promoting process.

1. Accept that you and everyone around you holds unconscious biases.

2. Take a test on your own unconscious biases and follow that up with training

3. Redact information about name, age, gender, and education in the pre-interview process to ensure candidates are compared in a less bias setting

4. Include more women and people of colour in important decision-making processes

5. Have a diverse board that does not have a majority of cisgendered and heterosexual white males.

6. Hire more people that have different backgrounds, educations and skills, because this leads to better innovation within your company

You see, when we as people are comfortable, secure and safe, we feel curious. This may be a young child asking their parent 100 questions about whatever they are looking at, a student doing extra research to get to the bottom of a problem, or someone at your work discovering a better way of doing things. In contrast, someone who is anxious or unsafe may feel that all they need is familiarity, and so looking into ‘why something is the way it is’ simply isn’t appealing or significant. If this second part feels like you, and maybe you aren’t sure why you should even want to be curious, then here is a quick look at the benefits of curiosity.

Benefits of curiosity

At a fundamental level, curiosity makes us:

• Better at Problem Solving

• Smarter

• Self-aware

• Empathetic

All human discoveries and inventions are the result of curiosity. There are also many benefits of curiosity in the workplace.

So, how do I be more curious?

Make a list

Write down a list of things that you want to know, and look into them. It can be as stupid or as intellectual as you like, just as long as you walk away with new knowledge. I recently looked into why so many movies are super hero movies now. Very interesting.

Watch a documentary

It can be about your favourite band, movie, or even science that you like. It can be about anything you’re interested in. You always find something new!

Spend time Alone in Nature

Spend time alone in a garden or park. Dirt is an ecosystem as rich as the ocean, and it’s just under our feet. Spend 10 minutes looking at one patch and notice all the workings of the bugs that live there. For an added benefit, our CEO Grahame recommends doing it with your shoes off, to really get back in tune with nature.

Have some ‘me’ time

Schedule time for yourself. It can be hard when you are working from home to work out when to schedule time for yourself, especially if scheduling isn’t your strong suit (it’s definitely not mine). However, giving yourself permission to have time each day to really do something that only you want to do is really powerful long-term in reconnecting with yourself, feeling less anxious, and becoming curious not only about life in general, but about yourself.

So hopefully you are feeling inspired to help do your own curious activity and learn a bit about the world. If you want to learn about the Power of Curiosity, then check out this podcast with Danette and Grahame.

Have a Magical day!

Jacinda Ardern

Jacinda Ardern, now serving her second terms as the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Ardern has pushed conventions and proven herself countless times as a great leader of the country. She was the world’s youngest elected state leader in 2017. In 2018, Ardern became the second state leader to give birth while in office. This was a first in New Zealand history. Three months later, Ardern attended a UN General Assembly with her child in hand. This once again challenged the boundaries of women in politics. Since then, Ardern has achieve a great deal in spite of crisis:

• She was the first NZ PM to march in the LGBTQIA+ Pride parade in 2018

• She tightened NZ gun laws within a month of the terrorist mosque shootings in 2019

• Since the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, Ardern was quick to implement policies to reduce community transmission. She managed to keep numbers low at a total of only 2398 cases and 26 deaths since the pandemic began

• Later this year, Ardern is implementing a policy that will help reduce ‘period poverty’ in NZ by providing free sanitary products to children in school.

These are just a few of her (and her party’s) achievements from the last few years. She is a politician for the people. Ardern has taken many measures to leave the country in a better position than when she started in office. Truly inspirational!

Serena Williams

Serena Williams is undoubtedly one of the best and most famous tennis stars of all time. She is strong, motivated, powerful, and unapologetic. She constantly fights sexism and racism in her sport. Williams has won over 39 grand slam titles (for singles, doubles and mixed) and holds the highest grand slam titles out of any active player. She also has won 4 gold medals at 3 different Olympics. In 2016 and 2017, she was the highest paid female athlete of all time in any sport. In 2017, Williams won the Australian Open whilst pregnant. The list of her achievements goes on.

Williams has truly pushed the boundaries for women in sport, particularly for women and people of colour. She is truly an inspiring leader that is changing the game!

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah is best known for being the host of The Oprah Winfrey Show for 25 consecutive years. That is not her only talent though. She is also a hugely successful actor, producer, author and philanthropist. Winfrey grew up poor and was sexually abused as a young girl and had a child as a result of this in her early teen years. She worked in some media jobs before starting her own production company and show in 1986. Oprah’s show focused on mindfulness, literature, self-improvement and spirituality in a welcoming and intimate nature that connected with her audience. Oprah interviews people in a unique ‘rapport talk’ style and receives massive praise for this. Dubbed as the “Queen of All Media”, she became the richest African American of the 20th century.

Oprah’s opinion is valued by her fan base, and her personal endorsements of products such as books, beef and the US election have had very positive, measurable results. Recently, Oprah did an interview with Megan Markle and Prince Harry about leaving the royal family. She was able to uncover some shocking and emotional truths about their experience. Her talent is undeniable, as is her influence – and she is truly changing the game for women everywhere.

So, how did they do it? Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can best utilise your time in front of people to increase you ability to public speak and make great changes, no matter what your scale is. Now most people say “start with a joke” or “imagine the audience in their underwear” when preparing for public speaking.

Here are some more powerful tools to help you get your message across.

1. Start with Why?

More important that the text and nuances of your speech should be the “why”. A concept made famous by Simon Sinek great speeches and actions are more readily available to your listeners. Whether they agree or disagree with your statement, if they can understand why you are saying the things you are saying, and that you really believe it, they will trust you more. Often times, when someone is bad at public speaking, or we don’t fully connect with what they are saying, them not believing what they are talking about is usually at the core.

2. Don’t put undue pressure on yourself.

Many people get nervous before public speaking. “What if I mess up?” “What if I forget what I’m talking about?” “What if I embarrass myself?” What is a really important thing to keep in mind is that public speaking is one of the great fears all people share, and subsequently, it is one of the things we all struggle with. I mean all of us. Most speeches we hear, especially from non-professional speakers, are about a 3/10 – 4/10… aka forgettable. So, if you aren’t a professional public speaker, your job is simply to hit a 3/10, and you have met your mark. Messing up is part of it; just put yourself within reasonable confines for success. “If I can get to all my points, I’ve succeeded” “If I can get them to understand this one metaphor, I’ve succeeded.” “If I can get one person to ask a question at the end, I’ve done my job.”

3. Don’t be afraid to have fun

Public speaking is often dry because people are afraid to have fun. If you watch any great speech, you can see the speaker fully committed to the product, and often times, will be able to throw to a joke, and it make the speech soar. A simple pun, rhyme of punchline can often serve to break up a complex idea, which will allow your audience to relax, give them a chance to breathe, and then you can come back in. Breaking up speeches in this way gives your audience an opportunity to utilise more parts of their brain, so they can take things in in a more involved way. Jokes also demonstrate confidence, which allows your audience to feel confident in what you are saying, and relax themselves.

So don’t be afraid of public speaking, if you utilise all of these skills, you will be giving inspiring speeches in no time.

On deciding what to read… 

Let’s start with when you first go to a bookstore. Danette says it’s important to look at all the sections of the shop. Read the reviews of the book you select. Read the back, the front, all the easily accessible information so you’re making an informed decision on what you choose to read. Does it pertain to an area in which you’d like to grow? Is it a new fascinating subject?  

All of these are great ways to decide what to read!  

While you read… 

When you do start to read, it’s important to stop and question yourself. For example, how does this relate to what I already know? How does this change what I already know? Who can I share this book with? How can this book help others?  

It’s also important to be mindful while reading. Using sticky notes for concepts that are new to you, or journaling so you can think of ways in which to apply your learnings is another way to get the most out of your book.  

New learnings mean you have to update your own knowledge!   

Reading before bed is also a good way to subconsciously absorb ideas and have your brain work with them while you’re asleep and you can approach it with fresh eyes in the morning. 

The brain science is clear that passive learning (where you just sit and listen to someone talk) is less effective than active learning.  The idea is that the more multi-sensory learning experiences are, the more this deeply embeds in terms of neural connections.

Here are a couple of ideas to make your learning more active, even if it is online:

• Spend a couple of minutes prior to a course thinking about what you would like to get out of it

• What questions do you have?

• How can you involve the different senses in your learning?

• Take notes

• Use case studies and scenarios

• Use videos and music

• Discuss what you are learning with someone else

• Use breakout rooms so people can have talk to one another about what they are learning

• Develop an action plan at the end of the course

• Take small steps to embed the learning after the course

• Reflect on what you have learned and how you can apply it

• Incorporate what you have learned with your personal experiences and knowledge

• Can you involve movement in the learnings?

• Make it fun and relevant.

I remember reading about an organisation that was teaching electrical circuits to students and the trainer cleared the room and created different parts of a circuit using cardboard and the group had to set the pieces up on the floor in the classroom to create a working circuit.  What a great way to use active learning.

We all need to take charge of our own learning and development because as Alvin Toffler shared many years ago, ‘The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.’

So if this sounds like you, here is a quick list of 4 ways to relax and unwind.

1. Go out in nature

It is something we preach here at Magical Learning, but connecting with nature has proven results regarding helping people to feel less stressed. You can do a nature walk, which we highly encourage here, which involves going for a walk in nature without any technology, and really letting your brain unwind*. If this isn’t possible for you, walking in a park, or if that isn’t possible, even looking at images of nature has shown to have some benefits.

2.   Breathing

Yes, as you are reading this, you are breathing, but if you aren’t doing it the right way, you may be making yourself more anxious. Taking long deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, can be a quick way to tricking your brain into thinking it is nice and calm, and as a result, you’ll become more calm. Slow breathing has benefits beyond just relaxation, and we highly recommend the book Breath by James Nestor if you really want to deep dive on the science behind it.

3. Meditate

Yes, many people have given meditating a try and found it is not for them. Or so they think. Meditation comes in many forms with many outcomes, but at its simplest, it is simply concentrating on your breathing. Perhaps you gave the wrong course a go, or perhaps you found that you were thinking about other things and couldn’t concentrate. Remember, no one is good at meditating when they start out, so even staying with it for 10 seconds is a great first achievement.

4. Learn a new skill

If you are finding that all you can think about is work or other things that may stress you out, breaking the cycle of that thought pattern is important. One way to do that is to do something new. While we do recommend things that don’t necessarily involve technology, like learning an instrument, an art or a craft (woodworking is a personal favourite of mine), anything new that has peaked your interest in the past may be the cure for your looping thought patterns. Don’t set high expectations for yourself, you are only a beginner, and anything you make is better than nothing. Plus, you never know when you may be able to use the skill in the future.

We hope these things help you relax over the holiday season, as it has been a long and strange year. And remember, be nice to yourself, and recharge for a good year next year.

1. Have a cuddle with your pet/partner/children/friend/family

Hugging is known to have significant calming effects on the body! During a hug your body releases oxytocin, a hormone that reduces anxiety and makes you feel calmer. According to science, the sweet spot for duration of a hug is 20 seconds (this might be longer than you’re used to but we definitely recommend it). If you go around hugging the people you care about, they will get the same positive benefits as you do.

2. Journal about your day

We’ve mentioned on numerous occasions the benefits of journalling for both your personal and professional life. Journalling can help you gather your thoughts, emotions and actions of the day together in one spot. This is a great way to get insights about what you might be overlooking in your life. 3 great journalling questions we recommend are:

• What should I stop doing?

• What should I keep doing?

• What should I start doing?

3. Have yourself a little dance party

If you’ve had a particularly stressful day, one of the best ways to unwind might be hosting a private dance party for yourself. Close yourself in a room, blast some banging tunes and dance your heart out! Dance is not only a form of exercise, but is also great for improving your posture, mood, flexibility and ease anxiety.

4. Do a nightly stretch routine

If you can feel how tense your body is, a great way to unwind is to introduce a short stretch to your nighttime routine. Stretching is good for easing anxiety, muscle discomfort and will give you a better night’s sleep. If you’re not sure which stretches to do, both Nike and Adidas have totally free apps that have many different short stretch routines for inspiration.

5. Lie in the sun

When was the last time you lay down in the sun and just relaxed with no distractions for 10 minutes? It’s probably been a while, hey? Sunlight exposure can boost your mood, give you better sleep, helps Vitamin D production and can reduce the risk of some illnesses. Obviously if you’re sun-baking in Australia, keep your time in direct sun limited or make sure you’re wearing SPF 30+ sunscreen (ideally both). But a nice 10 minute session in the sun’s rays will give you the benefits you’re looking for.

6. Connect with your breath

This technique is part of many different meditation and mindfulness routines. Your breath is actually a really important determining factor of how you feel, and many people don’t realise they’re breathing ‘wrong’. The benefits of slow, focused breathing includes lowered stress levels, blood pressure and heart rate. The best way to do this is find a comfortable seated or lying position away from external distractions and focus on different aspects of your breathing. There are many free guided breathing exercises available online, just find one that works for you.

7. Spend time in solitude

This covers most of the activities in the list, but time away from others is super important to unwinding and de-stressing. Time to yourself can help increase creativity, productivity, empathy, and our patience for others. If you have the opportunity to, you should go for a walk outside and focus on what you see around you (this is a mindfulness technique). This will help you get some sunlight and gives you time to literally stop and smell the flowers.

8. Massage your hands

Sounds a little weird if you haven’t done it before, but the humble hand massage is a nice quick fix for unwinding after a tough day. Grab some hand cream and focus on your joints, your palm area and the ‘webbed’ area between your fingers. This will make your hands feel better if they’re sore from overuse, and will also help improve your mood, your sleep and the cream will make your hands softer! This is better done by someone else, however also easy enough to do to yourself.

9. Watch the sunrise/sunset

Spending time out of your day to witness the sunrise or sunset is a great way to take a moment to unwind. If you’re an early riser, you can even take your coffee/tea outside and watch it before heading off for the day. If you’re not a morning person, take 10 minutes out of your day to admire the sunset. This is a great way to slow down and reconnect with the beauty and grandeur of nature.

10. Spend time with a hobby you haven’t touched in a while

If it’s been a while since you picked up your lockdown hobbies, maybe it’s time to rummage them up again. Spending time drawing, colouring, cooking, baking, reading, gardening, whatever. Just spend some time doing something you find fun just for the sake of having fun. Especially with the holidays around the corner, a bit of crafting can get you feeling festive and can be a great way to entertain the kids too.

If you, or anyone you know needs help at the moment, please do not hesitate to reach out to us! If you would like to speak to one of our team, email us at learn@magicallearning.com or call us on (+61) 2 6944 8200.

Continue to Offer Your Employees a WFH Option

This year, many people have experienced what it’s like to WFH for the first time. Employees were made to completely restructure their whole routines, remove the work-life separation and in many cases, just get on with it. Many businesses only survived because of the willingness of employees to adapt to their new working conditions. To reward their effort and adaptability, leaders should continue to offer employees the option of WFH going forward. This pandemic has proven that an employees physical presence in an office is not as necessary as many previously thought. With video conference calls, online file sharing and team management systems, a worker can do a lot from the comfort of their own home. There are also many added benefits of WFH: not having to get dressed up, no commute to the office, ability to cook lunch at home, more time with loved ones, fewer distractions from colleagues, and more. Being flexible about where your employees work could really have a significant positive impact on your employee’e engagement and your organisational culture. Many people looking for jobs will now favour positions that offer flexible working options, especially while COVID is still around.

Offer Flexible Working Hours Where You Can

Especially if you do have people Working From Home, a great way to engage with the individual worker is to offer them flexible working hours. This means if they are not needed between 9am-5pm, let them choose when they do their work. Some people work best in the early morning, others late in the evening. Allowing employees autonomy over when they complete their hours throughout the week can be daunting for many leaders, especially those with micromanaging tendencies. It can be scary to let go of our engrained 9-5 mindset, but many people will actually be more productive, more efficient and be happier if they can choose when they’re doing the work. This also allows for flexibility with other commitments the person may have, such as caring for children or social engagements. This gives your employees the ability to choose how to integrate work into their life as opposed to trying to squeeze in their life around work. 

Offer Your Employees Training

This year has been difficult in some way for everyone, and some people may be feeling alienated from others, distant from their old life and anxious about the future. Now that we have entered COVID-Normal, it is so important to offer your employees any extra help they may need in ‘getting back to normal’ if you have not already been doing so. Training in areas such as resilience, mental health, team communication, adaptability, and emotional intelligence will give your employees the tools to build up these areas in their personal and professional lives. Many training providers (including us) now offer online training as well as face-to-face options so no matter where your team is, they can receive the training they need. 

Offer Your Employees Coaching

In a similar fashion to training, coaching could be beneficial for either yourself or your team. Coaching offers a more personalised option for those who could use more specific guidance, especially for those who have gone through or are thinking about undergoing major life change. Executive coaching can focus on developing an individual’s: 

• leadership skills

• emotional intelligence

• resilience and stress management

• business strategies and innovative thinking

• teamwork skills

• “true purpose”

• program and project management skills.

This will again increase employee engagement by making the employee feel valued by the company enough to be individually developed and up-skilled. The benefits for your company will be dedicated employees with a better mindset and skillset.

Organise Some Fun Team-Building Activities

It’s been a stressful year, and everyone could afford to blow off a bit of steam. It’s important to show your employees that you appreciate the hard work they have been putting in. Especially if your team has been working remotely this year, you might want to organise something fun for all of them to do together that will make the team feel stronger and more connected. COVID-Normal obviously has restrictions around how many people can gather in groups and what kind of activities they can do. For larger teams, you’ll likely have to do something socially distanced outdoors or online, but that doesn’t mean the experience has to be sub-par. Especially as Australia enters the summer months, having a socially distanced team trivia in the park could be one option, or even a water fight. You could also start a remote group fitness challenge to raise money for a cause each group cares deeply about. You can even do online murder mystery parties these days. Whatever you choose doesn’t matter much, but make sure its fun and will bring your team closer together. If you could use a few more suggestions, we recommend these articles: 45 Outdoor Team Building Activity Ideas for Work Groups by Outback Team Building 10 COVID-Friendly Engaging Games for Team Building by Engage for Success If you or any of your employees need help at the moment, please do no hesitate to reach out to us! If you would like to speak to one of our team, email us at learn@magicallearning.com or call us on (+61) 2 6944 8200. Have a magical day!

As change happens more rapidly in this world, we all need to make sure that we encourage innovation in ourselves and others.  Yet often we do the opposite.

What Stops People Innovating

Many people fear failure and that may hold them back from wanting to innovate.  After all it is very rare that innovation will happen on the first attempt.  There will be numerous ‘failures’ before innovation occurs.  For some people this fear of failure will stop them from innovating.

Another barrier to innovation is having a closed mindset.  If we don’t believe that everyone can innovate then we will be closed to people suggesting new ideas and ways of doing things.  One of the fastest ways to stop people suggesting new ideas is to utter the words, ‘No, but…’ in meetings where people are putting up new ideas.  It doesn’t take long for everyone to get the message that new ideas are not welcome here.

Making it hard to collaborate is another barrier.  For some teams this can be made worse as not everyone is co-located due to the current disruption.  Employees working from home may feel left out of collaborative efforts. 

Another reason can be that we think we don’t have enough: time, resources and/or money.  I love the story of Kyle MacDonald who traded a red paperclip for a house. Kyle’s book, One Red Paperclip and TED Talk – What if you could trade a paperclip for a house? are worth reading and watching to see how an assumption about needing money to achieve things isn’t necessarily true. Just because we don’t think we have enough, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a way to be more innovative.

Another barrier is focusing primarily on the short-term.  A lot of organisations reward this type of focus through bonuses and promotions.  If an organisation is to thrive and be sustainable in the longer-term then it needs to be innovating regularly to stay ahead of the pack.

Being risk averse can be another reason used to explain why we don’t innovate. 

If you look at the above list, none of these are insurmountable.  In fact, if these are barriers in your organisation then we would suggest that it is worth examining them to see if they are actually true or simply an excuse which will help maintain the status quo.

What You Can Do to Encourage Innovation

As leaders, we should be encouraging innovation and supporting it throughout our organisation.  Everyone has the ability to be innovative if we encourage them.  Make sure that the leadership team doesn’t have ideas about who can come up with innovation and who can’t.

Having diverse teams and a diverse organisation can also help to encourage innovation.  With diversity we get different ways of looking at things, different perspectives and different problem-solving approaches. 

Using the phrase, ‘Yes, and…’ to encourage people to build on one another’s ideas can also help teams to collaborate and innovate together.  Encouraging praise and recognition as part of this process to encourage people to continue to innovate is also helpful.

Look at your environment.  Is it one that encourages innovation?  Are there spaces, including online spaces, for people to connect and collaborate?  Innovation should be fun, after all we are experimenting with new ideas.  Think about how you can encourage a more innovative working environment.  If you are not sure, try Googling, ‘Innovative working environments’ and reading about what some workplaces are doing.

We love the concept of 20% time that Google made famous when it gave its employees the opportunity to spend 20% of their time working on projects that they thought would most benefit Google.  This not only inspires innovation in the employees but also increases the likelihood of the organisation benefitting as well.

If you want to generate more innovation in your organisations, study great innovators.  For example, Steve Jobs was great at generating many innovative products. He was someone who aggressively sought out, attacked and overthrew conventional ideas (paraphrased from The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo). Who should your organisation study and using Steve Jobs approach ‘Are there conventional ideas in your organisation that should be overthrown?’

Another approach to help with this is to try new experiences and seek to make new connections to old concepts.  One of the exercises we use in our Creative Thinking at Work workshop is to see how many uses you can come up with for a paperclip.  It is amazing what people come up with if there are no rules and judgement to hold them back.

By encouraging everyone to be an innovator within your organisation you are opening your organisation up to new ideas that otherwise would probably not have seen the light of day.

But how do games actually help you be more creative? Most board games encourage some form of communication between players by providing external stimulus that they must respond to. These often involve strategy, collaboration, problem solving and individual creativity in order to achieve the best outcome and win. Science shows our brains are at our most creative when we are having fun. When we are calm, the blood-flow to our brains goes to the pre-frontal cortex which facilitates good critical thinking and creativity. However, when we are stressed the blood-flow to our brain moves to the hypothalamus or ‘reptilian brain’ which sends adrenaline around your body, inducing the fight/flight/freeze response. You’ll engage with the creative part of your brain making it stronger and more adaptive to new stimulus, as long as you don’t get too stressed about losing!

Below are our recommendations!

Zombicide

Zombicide involves a lot of strategic thinking and teamwork in order to beat the game. All players work as one team to move the figurines around the board, collect objectives and escape before everyone is eaten by zombies. This game is great because you can adjust the difficulty by making the board bigger/smaller and adding in more/less zombie spawn points. This game also available in different maps and time periods! We recommend this game for 2+ people, ages 14+!

Cranium

Cranium is basically a mishmash of a few games, including Pictionary, trivia, Name That Tune, word games and more. Players work in teams against each other, and must work their way around the board in order to win. This game is great because it involves a lot of verbal and non-verbal communication between team members. It is also good for people with different strengths, whether that is facts, word play, acting, singing or drawing. Great to play with the family or with friends. We recommend this game for 4+ people, ages 16+. Cranium also sells a different version called Cranium Junior for ages 7+.

Charades

Most people have probably heard of charades before. The aim of the game is to perform clues non-verbally and have your teammates guess what you’re performing correctly. This game is great for creativity because you have to communicate in a way divergent from normal. This forces your brain to get creative with getting your message across, especially when you draw a card with only hard options. Our Melbourne team has been challenging themselves by only doing the ‘Famous People’ category as this is the category that often requires the most creative responses. We recommend this game for 2+ people, ages 8+.

Or why not invent your own!

This is a really great and fun way to get creative, and you can just use the things you’ve got around the house. Even try collaborating with the people you live with to invent a new house game!

Being stuck in lockdown, our team developed a few games of their own! The game pictured is very creatively referred to as ‘The Drawing Game”. In this game, players take turns coming up with a character from memory, then everyone has 1 minute to draw that character to the best of their ability. Players then compare their drawings with each other, and finally compare them to what the character actually looks like. The most accurate drawing wins that round.

This game tests your memory recall and your drawing ability, but under some intense time pressure. Most of the time, you end up with funny drawings that may/may not resemble your character of choice. Our team has bought whiteboards and markers to help save on paper, but really all you need to play with game is some pens, paper, and a phone/computer (for timer and image search). We recommend playing with 3+ people, ages 8+.

Here is some of the quality you can expect:

Our team came up with another game using the same materials as The Drawing Game, inspired by extensive viewing of Ink Master. In this game, each player says 1 word (at least 2 nouns and no more than 1 adjective – e.g. a bird, The Queen and angry) and players have 3 minutes to draw an image that involves all of the words. So for example with the words above, you could draw The Queen as a bird and make her angry, or The Queen riding a grumpy bird, or a bird and The Queen having a fight, etc. It’s up to you! The endless image combinations certainly results in some very creative designs. The player with with best image wins the round. We recommend playing with 3+ people, ages 15+.

Comment below you game recommendations!

It is important to remember that mental health is a spectrum and can vary from good to poor.  A person’s mental health may fluctuate and vary depending on a person’s circumstances and their life.  It is common for people to experience patches of sub-optimal mental health. 

The Research

Research has shown that resilience can help protect you from various mental health conditions.  If you have an existing mental health condition, being resilient can improve your ability to cope.

It takes time and practice to build resilience and so remember if you are not feeling good, please reach out and seek help.

One of the ways that you can grow your mental health is to understand your brain and how it functions a bit better. 

Did you know that, even if you are a naturally positive person, our brain focuses approximately 64% of its time on negative rather than positive information?  Dr. Daniel Amen, a clinical neuroscientist, calls them ANTs – Automatic Negative Thoughts.  These negative thoughts can tend to trigger the threat response in our body and brain and they impact on our ability to problem-solve and make good decisions.

How to catch yourself when you’re feeling down

Part of being mentally well is to catch your brain when it is focusing on the negative and then learn to refocus it elsewhere.

Some ways you can do that include:

• Become aware of your regular ANTs

• Ask yourself if what your brain is telling you is true

• Tell your brain that you have got this

• Replace those ANTs with more positive thoughts

• Seek out others who have different perspectives

• Relax and remember that this too will pass

• Practice the 5:5:5 – ask yourself, will this matter in 5 days, 5 weeks or 5 months.  If the answer is ‘No’ then let it go

• Smile – this helps by releasing the feel-good chemicals in our brain and helps open up more of the thinking part of our brain

• Regular self-care.

Speaking of regular self-care, it is one of the things that can really help boost a person’s resilience.  One of the ways we know our client’s resilience is dropping is when they start a coaching session with the following (apologies, this is a swearing alert).  When we ask how they are doing they usually reply, ‘Everybody is pissing me off.  I want to through my phone away and my computer.  I want to find a deserted island or cave and not see anyone for a couple of weeks.’

Please know that this is not a sign of weakness.  Rather it is a sign of being too generous to others and not generous enough with yourself.

How to maintain your mental wellness

Some other things that you can do to support and maintain your mental wellness, include:

• Getting a good night’s sleep (7-9 hours of good quality sleep every night) – this is the foundational element that helps all other efforts – watch Matt Walker’s TED Talk, Sleep is your superpower

• An hour before bed write all your worries in your worry journal and then finish it with three things you are grateful for.  This is a great way to get the worries out of your head and help you sleep more soundly

• Taking regular breaks throughout the day

• Taking regular holidays (even staycations)

• Eating good quality food with no or low sugar

• Staying hydrated by drinking lots of water

• Daily exercise – movement makes us feel better and helps our brain to continue to grow

• Deep breathing

• Meditation – it could be as simple as getting on YouTube and selecting a nature meditation and watching that for a couple of minutes

• Journalling – rate your day out of 10 and ask yourself what you should ‘keep doing, stop doing and start doing?’

• Connecting socially – whether online or in-person such as a picnic at the local park

• Positive thinking and positive language

• Practicing mindfulness

• Laughing

• Having fun

• Showing compassion

• Practicing daily gratitude – this has fabulous physical and mental health benefits including increased happiness and sleeping better

• Practicing random acts of kindness

• Regularly getting out in nature

• Reframing – instead of saying ‘I have to…’ change it to ‘I choose to…’ or ‘I get to…’

• Using essential oils to uplift you – my favourites for this are citrus based oils

• Creating some upbeat music playlists.

Extra resources

Mental Health Australia also has over 8 pages of helpful resources to share to support mental health.

Remember, YOU matter.  If at any time, you or someone you care for, needs help please reach out to any of the 24/7 National Crisis Counselling Services.

We would also love for you to share things you do to support your mental health. You never know who this might help.

Being able to think outside the box is a process. Even if you are late to the game of wanting to come up with unusual ways to solve problems, you can still do so. Creative thinking is something that you have to slowly work towards. It’s about breaking traditional ways of thinking and monotonous patterns. Here are a few simple ways to spark ways of creative thinking in your life.

1. Read

Reading is vital to growth and creativity. It is also important to read things that are outside of your comfort zone of reading. Pick up a fantasy novel, a murder mystery, or anything that seems like it would challenge you and make you learn something new. Reading is a good alternative to travel, especially in these unprecedented times, not knowing when our real-life adventures can resume.

Reading challenges you to look at the world from different perspectives. An interesting exercise could be to pick a continent and read literature that comes from the different countries in that continent. It’s a great way to learn about different cultures as well, and you can do this from the comfort of your home. I’ll leave you on these words by Ben Okri, “We read the world poorly, because we read poorly.” Now could be the time to buy some new books and spark some creativity!

2. Ask questions

Asking questions is an important element of learning. If you don’t understand something, there’s no shame asking about it. It’s better to ask and learn than to nurture your ego by pretending you know. If something intrigues you, ask questions about it! Inculcating curiosity in yourself is a great way to expand your mind. Asking questions helps you learn about people and their experiences, and you won’t always be able to live them yourself or find them in any kind of literature. Often problems that you are faced with will involve people, and the more people you listen to, the more creatively you will be able to tackle these issues. A bonus is that it makes you a better listener and more approachable!

3. Break rules and take risks

Often, in the process of thinking creatively, you need to break the rules and take some risks about how things should be done. You need to question the average standards, practices and norms in the way things work and see how you can improve it. However, before you try and improve on what already exists, it’s best if you know the norms and practices like the back of your hand. Deliberate why these norms exist, question them, and then set out to challenge it. This is the part that involves actively thinking outside the box, and this is where having gained new perspectives and experiences plays a part in thinking creatively. It is also important to remember that things won’t always work out on the first go, but challenging yourself is the only way to open doors that lead to new possibilities.

So, there you have it, here are some steps to help spark creativity in how you think. It’s important to know that this isn’t a quick fix process. It is going to require deliberation, patience, and time. And these are not the only ways to enhance or develop creativity. Remember to keep your eyes and mind open and seize new opportunities when they come to you. I’ll leave you on this; “The important thing for you is to be alert, to question, to find out, so that your own initiative may be awakened.” ­– Bruce Lee

1. You’re caught up on the small stuff

One of the challenges that many leaders, especially new leaders, face is moving from small picture thinking to big picture thinking. Being scrupulous about the small details may be your forte, however now that you are leading a team of people, that is exactly what you should be focusing on. Delegating work ultimately means that some of the project will be out of your hands and you are relying on the work of others, something that can be a scary thought for most. If this is something that triggers you personally, consider why you don’t trust your team to do the work and how that can be rectified.

A good way to ensure that all parties are happy is to communicate your expectations clearly with the person performing the task, and provide them with timely and regular feedback on their work. By communicating effectively with your staff, you reduce the risk of them veering off course with their duty, especially if they are new to the role. On the other hand, don’t delegate out a task and then spend the whole time micromanaging it to death – this is also not helpful and will likely cause tensions within your team.

2. You could do it better

While this MAY be true, this is one of the most common reasons leaders don’t delegate out tasks. Many perfectionists or detail-oriented leaders think that it’s easier for them to do the task because they believe they will do it the best, something that is referred to as self-enhancement bias. While you may think this is the most efficient way to go about it, it shows that you have a lack of confidence in your team’s capabilities to complete tasks and they almost certainly know it.

One of the best ways to not only get the most out of your staff members, but to keep them engaged in their job is to follow the SCARF model (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness). Take some time to understand the strengths, weaknesses and goals of your team members and start delegating tasks to them based on this. By passing on more of the responsibility to your team, you are increasing their:

• feeling of autonomy

• sense of status

• relatedness to you and the company

• and the overall fairness when they receive recognition for their work,

all while clearing things from your ‘To Do’ list!

3. There’s not enough time to mentor

According to Carol Walker, “Most people will tell you they are too busy to delegate – that it’s more efficient for them to just do it themselves.” This is also one of the biggest factors as to why people don’t delegate, and it’s because they consider it to be wasted time explaining everything to someone, when in that moment it would be quicker if they just did it themselves.

The irony is, the very thing you don’t have time to do now is what will eventually give you more free time in the future. It’s essentially an investment in your time, and while the yield is initially small, the more time and effort you put into developing your staff, the greater their output in the long run. So while staff development may not be something that you consider to be urgent (especially during busier times), it is important for your team and your company.

4. You don’t know how

A 2007 study determined that almost half of the companies surveyed were concerned about their employees’ delegation skills, however only 28% of them offered training on the subject. If your company doesn’t offer training, you may be at a loss on how to proceed. We recommend sitting down with each of your staff members and figure out each individual’s career goals and create a staff development plan. That way when new things come up, you can delegate those tasks according to who it’s most complementary with, and those staff members understand what is expected of them and how the task fits in with their development plan.

After you have delegated the task, your job is to then stand back, check in and support them if they ask for it, but don’t hover and micromanage. In order for employees to grow, they need to be able to make mistakes and learn how to fix them without you telling them exactly what to do. On the other hand, you don’t want to pass all responsibility over to them and then walk away – stay involved and let them lead. The more you delegate over time, the less you will have to monitor your team as they become more competent and comfortable in their role.

Psychological safety comprises two key components and empowers team members to try new things (that may fail) without fear of ridicule or rejection.

The first component is ‘social sensitivity’ – taking time to connect with others on a personal level.  For example, before starting a meeting, you check-in with team members to see how their week has been.  Social sensitivity can also involve being fully ‘present’ when listening to others and displaying an open body posture. 

The second component is that every team member gets (approximately) equal air time.  This provides the opportunity for all voices to be heard and is part of feeling included.

From what we know about brain science, this makes sense. Matthew D. Lieberman, author of Social, has done some great research about the human need for connection.  When we feel connected and safe, we are far more likely to perform better.

Here are some questions to help you determine what work might need to be done, to help build more psychological safety in your organisation.

How do leaders handle pressure?

One positive aspect of disruption, particularly if you are a leader who wants to continue to develop and grow, is that it highlights areas you need to work on.  Under pressure, unless you have done the work, you will tend to revert to type. Organisations must look to how their leaders handle pressures, like disruption, particularly when they are stressed.

For example, if your leaders are calm under pressure, they influence others to also be calm under pressure.  This sets your organisation up well during disruption, as your teams can think clearly, collaborate, adapt and innovate.

The opposite is also true.  If your leaders are reactive under stress, then that will impact across your organisation, resulting in more people being stressed, which triggers poorer problem-solving, decision-making and collaboration.

Is it safe to suggest new ideas or try new approaches?

Organisations and leaders that value employee psychological safety will be rewarded with employees proposing new ideas and trying new ways of doing things. 

Reviewing how new ideas and approaches are supported (or not) is important.  It is also worth reviewing how long it takes ideas to be approved.  Are you losing your innovative people because they are tired of slow or no progress? 

For example, imagine working in an organisation where you come up with an idea that will help your organisation perform better.  You take it to your boss, who needs to put their stamp on it, who sends it to their boss who also needs to put their stamp on it, who sends it to their boss who needs to put their stamp on it, and at some stage the idea comes back to you with lots of changes that effectively keep things as they are.  You get the idea.  Some organisational cultures are just too slow and risk averse, so things end up staying pretty much as they are.  So their innovative employees tend to leave, frustrated at the lack of progress.

Others actively encourage innovation, adaption and flexibility.  The organisational structure might be flatter and leaner, or the organisation’s hierarchy is bypassed when new ideas are considered.

What happens when a new idea is suggested?  Is there a quick ‘No, but’, or is a safe space created to encourage that idea to be explored?  Even starting to catch the ‘No, buts’ and replace them with ‘Yes, and’ can help encourage people to contribute new ideas and ways of doing things.

If you want your organisation to be adaptable and innovative, then it needs to create a space where it is safe to suggest new idea and to try new approaches.  This also means examining how your organisation treats ‘failure’.

How does your organisation deal with failure?

Failure is part of the innovation process. Examining how your organisation deals with failure is important.

Have you ever experienced a boss who was way more interested in showing the organisation how great they were, while making sure everyone knows that any  failures or problems in their work area were created by someone else?  We inherently distrust this type of boss because we know they don’t have our back.

This type of boss makes it less safe to try new things.

How does your organisation handle failure?  Is it accepted as part of the culture and used to learn lessons to improve as the organisation moves forward?  Or is failure viewed as a CLM (career limiting move) that effectively ends peoples’ careers in the organisation?

Are people more curious or judgemental?

Teams that value psychological safety tend to be curious.  They know they don’t know everything and need to stay open to new ideas and possibilities.  Curiosity is encouraged.

Compare this with organisations that are less curious, more judgemental.

Do you like to be judged?  It is very rare that someone says they like being judged.  It tends to trigger a threat response in our brain. This means people are not going to perform at their best.

If we want to create a great culture then curiosity needs to be the norm.  Even using the ‘Yes, and’ approach when listening to people’s suggestions, instead of the ‘No, but’ can help.  Encouraging people to collect and use great questions can help encourage curiosity.

Leaders who are calm, present and ask: ‘Tell me more.…’ also encourage curiosity.

What does your culture reward?

It is important to look at what your organisation’s culture rewards.  With disruption, you need cultures that foster teamwork and collaboration.  It is rare that one great idea is transformed into an innovation by just one person.

This is also why diversity and inclusion are key parts of a great culture.  When we have diversity of thought and perspectives, we see things that a homogenous team can’t.  When people feel included, they are more likely to bring ideas and perspectives that would have never seen the light of day in a less inclusive environment.  This helps us to ‘think outside the box’ as an organisation.

I love Margaret Heffernan’s TED talk, Forget the Pecking Order at Work, which demonstrates why collaboration is generally a much better trait for an organisation than competition.  When we reward people for competition, it generally becomes ‘each person for themselves’.  If you think about a lot of rewards systems in organisations, they really just encourage people to think about themselves (at least from a financial rewards perspective).

Many organisations have realised that collaboration is critical if they want to navigate this period of disruption well.  They look at structures, financial rewards, etc. and set them up to reward collaboration instead of competition.

Psychological safety is essential if you want a culture that will be able to adapt and thrive during this disruption.  Taking the time to look at different ways to improve psychologically safety in your organisation is really important.

We hope you have enjoyed this blog. We’d love to hear about other tactics you’ve used to help create psychological safety in your workplace. Please feel free to share with us at community@magicallearning.com.

I preferred English to Maths at school, so when I started doing accounting at university I really struggled.  In fact, can I let you in on a little secret?  I failed Accounting 1 at uni.  Now I teach accounting (among other things) to accountants and non-accountants!  If you are like me and prefer language to numbers,  you may find reading your financial reports hard at present. Fortunately, there is a way to understand the ‘story’ those reports tell you. 

We tend to avoid what we don’t understand.  We may even come up with a good story to support our actions.  Mine was: ‘I suck at maths.  I am no good with numbers.’  What’s your story? 

There are many reasons why you may find reading financial reports challenging.  But like any skill, if you stick with it you can become more confident at reading financial reports and using them to make good decisions.  

So why do many people find accounting and numbers so hard?  Here are some of the reasons why you may not have yet mastered these reports. 

Lost in Translation 

Twenty years ago, my husband and I travelled to France.  At one place we were staying, as I opened the door to Reception I noticed a sign on the door: ‘Attention à la marche.’  Suddenly I was falling forward – but caught myself before I fell flat on my face.  The sign meant ‘Watch your step’….  It would have helped if I’d understood the language. 

Have you ever travelled to a country where you didn’t speak the language you had no way to access a translator app? It’s scary and confusing to begin with. 

Like all professions, accounting has its own language and it isn’t necessarily intuitive.  Until you can translate that language into something you understand, you will probably feel like I did when I was learning accounting (or falling through the doorway).  I thought I was stupid and no good at numbers, when really what I needed was someone to translate ‘accounting speak’ into plain English.  If you are in a role that requires you to read financial reports to make decisions, then investing the time to learn the language will help make you more well-rounded in terms of your skills – and it will definitely help you feel more confident in your decision-making around numbers.   

Extra Brain Effort 

When you’re learning a new language, such as when someone starts talking to you about accruals, budgets and variances, you may find your eyes starting to glaze over and your mind wanders.   

Our brain is an energy hungry beast.  It is 2% of our body’s mass, yet uses 20% of our energy (measured through blood flow), so it looks to conserve energy where possible. 

When our brain encounters a concept or idea it perceives as ‘boring’ or ‘too hard’, it is less inclined to want to understand that concept because it will drain more energy.  

Unless we have a really good reason to concentrate on that concept, our brain will look for something more interesting or new to focus on. 

If you want to get promoted or change organisations, learning to read your numbers will decrease the likelihood of you making poor decisions, especially around resources including $. 

We have a saying in our company: ‘Change = Uncomfortable = Growth.’  It is important to remember than any new skill is uncomfortable until we practice it enough that it becomes part of our new normal. 

We Use More Than One Word to Mean the Same Thing 

When I was learning Accounting at university, there were times when I finally felt like I understood a concept, only to have the lecturer change words on me.  Eventually I found out that accountants often use more than one word to mean the same thing. 

For example, the concept of ‘debtors’ which is a list of all the people we have sold goods or services to on credit (instead of them paying upfront for the goods or services), can also be known as ‘receivables’ or ‘accounts receivable’.   

So perhaps you started to feel OK about the numbers and then someone changed the words….  no wonder you are confused. 

Not All Accounting Reports are the Same 

Have you ever read a financial report that includes ‘minus’ signs or brackets?  Then you move to another organisation and their reports look different or they use different symbols to the last organisation? 

Unfortunately, not all accounting systems are configured the same way.  This means that a report from one system may look different to the same report from a different system.  This is especially so in terms of using symbols such as ‘-‘ or ‘(  )’.  Minus signs or brackets can reflect good or bad results.   

Once you learn to understand how financial reports are organised, you will find it easier to look at differently-configured reports and understand what they are telling you. 

Some People Like to Complicate Things 

Some professionals mistakenly believe that using complicated terms is more likely to impress their clients. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this approach, you may also have walked away more confused. 

Unfortunately, this approach generally triggers the same response we spoke about in the ‘Extra Brain Effort’ section above.   

Communication Skills 

How many great communicators do you know?   

One of the secrets of being a great communicator is the ability to make complex ideas appear simple.  Like any profession, not all accountants are great communicators.  

This means you may ask for a concept to be explained and the words that are used in the explanation are just more ‘accounting speak.’   It’s important to learn to translate accounting speak yourself, so that you don’t need to rely on someone else explaining the concepts to you. 

Avoiding Embarrassment 

Hands up if you have ever been too embarrassed to admit you didn’t understand something? 

We have all done this.   

I regularly have senior people, including board members, sheepishly admit that they don’t understood terms in their financial reports.   

Once we’ve have held a position for a while, it is embarrassing to admit we don’t understand the financial reports we’ve been receiving regularly.  We often pretend to understand in the hope that eventually we will ‘get’ the numbers. 

The only real way to overcome this is to learn those financial skills. 

Simple Ways to Grow Your Financial Skills 

There are some simple ways to boost your knowledge of financial reports.   

Start by deciding which of the above points resonate most for you. This will give you some idea on which area/s you need to work on. 

One of the things I have noticed when teaching finance to non-finance people, is that once they understand that there are only two formulas they need to understand to ‘get’ the financial reports, their brains become less resistant to learning.  Even when the words change, once they have mastered the formulas, it all becomes much easier.  

When I finally understood accounting, a friend pointed out to me that I now had mastered a technical skill.  I was already good at the ‘soft’ skills.  She pointed out that many accountants didn’t value those ‘soft’ skills at the time (this was many years ago and not necessarily true today).  This made me more well-rounded than the accountants who merely focused on their technical skills – and this can be the same for you.  

One thing I really enjoy when teaching finance to non-finance people is that, if they preferred English to Maths at school, they love the realisation that there is a ‘story’ to be read in financials.  Once you master the two formulas, it also makes it easier to spend time reading that story, because it’s there to us to help us make better decisions.   

While change is uncomfortable, it does represent our growth.  If you are looking to build your finance skills and make better decisions, investing your time and energy in learning the stories the numbers tell will be time and energy well invested.