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Blocked Drains and Breakthroughs

My weekly lives have started again over on LinkedIn and Youtube on Tuesday afternoon's at 4pm UK time. I'll be sharing with you the videos from the lives for you to watch at your leisure.
 
This week's LinkedIn Live is about Blocked Drains and Breakthroughs, enjoy!
 
Kelly
 
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Your Seat At The Table

leadership Jan 28, 2022
Today I want to talk about getting your seat at the table. I was working with a client the middle of last week and then I got asked a question on Friday along the same theme topic, both were about the seat at the table.
 
Both women have a lot of responsibility in their roles and they both manage large teams. They've both got big budget responsibility. They seem to be very well respected by colleagues and peers. They both do a good job (I’d say they both do a brilliant job). And they both help people from outside of their organisations with other things. They both act as a mentor for women in similar roles in different organisations helping them to grow and develop. And they've both been recognised for all of this.
 
Both of them however feel that they are underpaid and undervalued. Some of the people that they're both helping in other organisations have bigger roles than them and bigger job titles than them and much bigger salaries than them and they both...
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Goals for Core-Led Women

leadership Jan 14, 2022
This week I’m talking about goals. It’s the time of year isn't it where many of you may have intentions you may have resolutions you might be thinking about goals if you are in a leadership position or in an organisation where your financial year is finishing in April, you might be really looking at your goals for this quarter. You might be looking at goals for the year as a whole calendar year, financial year, whatever it is that you're looking at.
 
Years ago, I was surprised when I attended a leadership conference for women and we were introduced to the notion of goals and sadly, how very few of us as women set concrete goals. I've always got goals I'm always achieving goals but this research kept coming up. It came up with some work that I was doing. And I think a lot of the time when I speak to clients about goals and even sometimes when I'm still setting goals I can still be a little bit woolly with some.
 
Sometimes the goals are vague, like I...
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Women In Business After Burnout

I’ve made no secret of the fact that after my Burnout I continued in my corporate career and that’s where I thought I’d stay, until, three months after my two operations in 48 hours, I heard myself say for the very first time that I wanted to start my own company.

Never had I ever imagined that this was a path I would take.  Firstly, I had no real idea what I would do, secondly I knew nothing about starting a business, and thirdly, my dreams of the super large global role that I would be able to take on once my sons were finished school was the thing that had kept me in my role.

The drive though of starting my own consultancy became overwhelming, and within three months, I’d left my six-figure salary, created a business that was aligned to my values and started to really focus on the change that needed to be made in the world of work.  And seven and a half years later, I’m still here and growing from strength to strength.

Recent...

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10 Ways In Which Working Environments Are Causing Burnout

burnout leadership Sep 28, 2021
10 Ways In Which Working Environments Are Causing Burnout
 
More and more workplaces are offering a week off to prevent Burnout and many individuals assume that one week off will fix how they are feeling.
 
If it truly is Burnout that is being experienced, a week off will not solve this.
 
In 2019 when the World Health Organisation defined Burnout as an occupational phenomenon and it stated that:
“Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:
  • feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
  • increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and
  • reduced professional efficacy.
Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”
 
If you Google Burnout in the workplace...
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10 Ways to Move from Burnout To Balance

Until my burnout in 2013, if you had asked me about the important things in life, what I valued and what I prioritised, it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to put myself on that list. I had a long list of what I wanted to achieve, the goals, the promotions, the lifestyle, the income, the house, the type of mum and wife I wanted to be – for my sons and husband, not for me, and I was set on achieving it all.
 
I exercised a lot because it was a stress release and another thing to tick off the list, but I was never really present, just focusing on how much more I could do in the time and how much further I could go. Everything in my life was about doing, being and having better.
 
I’d been told that I couldn’t grow and develop my career whilst being a mum to twin sons, I was told I’d need more time to reach the top, I was told that my timelines and aspirations were unrealistic. I was told I should lower my expectations.
 
And...
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Alignment

burnout coaching leadership Sep 01, 2021

I speak and write a lot about leading from your core, and alignment plays a big part in this.

When I hit Burnout in 2013, I was not aligned with my values. I'd been working in a toxic environment that was causing me to be much less of the real me, and it was shaping me into something and someone that I didn't recognise. Determined to fix the issues in the workplace and to do what I knew I was capable of doing, I kept on pushing, kept on trying to fit, and I kept on fighting.

I had seven months going in and out of hospital, working from my hospital bed, refusing to be defeated, refusing to give in and refusing to rest. I had work to do and change to create and I was damn well going to make it work.

Fast forward to today, and I'm aligned to my core, to my values, and to my work in ways I would only have been able to imagine back in 2013. And yet it hasn't been easy to get here.

Burnout caused me to question everything. Who I was, what I wanted, what I was good at, where I was heading....

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Reignited - How Do We Smash The Ceiling If We Can't Get Off The Floor

coaching leadership Jun 22, 2021

 The latest Deloitte Global report “Women @ Work: A global outlook” that represents 5000 women across 10 countries reveals a stark reality for women in the workplace. The report finds that these increased responsibilities are having devastating effects on working women as 51% of those surveyed are less optimistic about their career prospects today.

Additionally, women surveyed reported a 35-point drop in mental health and a 29-point drop in motivation at work compared to before the pandemic.

The report states that equality has regressed during the pandemic, stifling years of slow, but steady progress. Increased responsibilities at work and at home during the pandemic, coupled with non-inclusive workplace cultures, are resulting in diminishing job satisfaction and employer loyalty for women.

Since the pandemic began, 77% of women surveyed say that their workloads have increased – the most frequently-cited change in their lives brought on by the pandemic. Women...

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Animal Instincts and Primitive Brains

hr leadership Jun 04, 2021
A change is announced at work: a merger, an acquisition, or employee cuts for efficiencies or cost-saving. At first, although shocked (maybe), you deal with it and feel OK. Then the jungle drums start thudding and you notice panic setting in. Behaviours change, gossip starts and you too start to change the way you feel about the change and about your ability.
 
Ordinarily, you know you are good at your job and you hope you will be OK. You’ll wait and see what happens and if you do have to leave, you can do so with some money in your pocket and find a new job, start your own business or take the opportunity to learn some new skills and start a new career path. You are still feeling quite calm.
 
And then it starts.
 
People around you are starting to belittle each other, ‘I’m better than you'. In meetings or during work people are stamping all over each other, shouting loudly, ‘pick me, pick me; you need me, you know you do’. You...
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The Glass Ceiling

leadership May 20, 2021
ollowing my LinkedIn Live on Tuesday where I talked about knowing your worth and the differences between men and women when it comes to salary negotiations and setting prices in business, I've received some heartfelt, sad, and difficult messages from women talking about experiences in their current workplaces that are impacting their confidence levels and their ability to stay in the role.
 
We must do better!
 
Glass Ceiling: – noun: an unacknowledged barrier to advancement in a profession, especially affecting women and members of minorities.
 
The first time I was asked to deliver an address at a women’s network, it was on the topic of Glass Ceilings and the issues I had faced throughout my career in competing with men. I explained that I had never encountered this issue (that changed years later) but I could give my opinion on the differences between men and women when seeking a new role or a promotion from an HR perspective.
 
Typically,...
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