Mental Health at Work Isn’t Just About You. It’s About Your Culture.
We talk a lot about mental health in the workplace. And while these conversations are important, they often focus on the individual: how someone could build their resilience, manage their stress, or ask for accommodation. The problem with this approach is that it implies the problem is you. What people report experiencing at work — […]
Why Wellbeing at Work Is an Organizational Problem — Not an Individual One
In most workplaces “wellbeing” means something like: the individual employee is coping adequately with the conditions of their work. Wellbeing at work isn’t just a nice-to-have or a soft priority. Canadian organizations are facing a growing crisis of disconnection which affects the bottom line. The Scale of the Problem: Burnout and Disconnection in Canadian Workplaces […]
Why do Collaborations Fail?
Collaboration in the workplace is not only necessary, it is paramount. Especially as we are collectively finding our way back to hybrid or in-office working in new ways. That said, many folks find collaborating pretty darn frustrating, and frankly, it’s not uncommon for these processes to go sour. I’ve been privy to quite a few […]
Want Better Collaboration? Start With Workplace Culture
Want to improve collaboration on your team? Or collaboration between teams? Before diving into those team building exercises, or buying everyone donuts (and I do love a good donut…), you might want to take a step back and think about workplace culture. Why Workplace Culture is the Foundation of Collaboration The where and how things happen at work can cultivate […]
How do I make creativity my job? (And Should I?)
Quite a few people have shared with me that they long for creativity to be their central, sustaining effort. My sense is that folks are feeling transactional and burned out in their current employment. Much of traditional work, and employer-employee relationships more generally, aren’t working for them. They’re looking for something more balanced, respectful, human-centred, […]
Finding the right writing tone
Finding the right tone for your writing can sometimes feel tricky, especially in professional contexts, and especially if you regularly switch your writing for different audiences or forms. Often advice about tone is focused on the intent of your writing, or your audience’s needs, or even the expectations around the writing genre or form. And […]
Thought Leadership for Researchers: How to Share Your Work and Build Trust
We are inundated with misinformation and disinformation, and this is why human-written, research-based thought leadership is crucial. Thought leadership from trusted experts helps us all make sense of how research can be beneficial. Data don’t speak for themselves. We need help understanding, interpreting, and figuring out what to do with it. Thought leadership is about […]
Lift Up, Don’t Water Down
How to make complex ideas accessible without losing their depth Nobody likes watery soup. Or coffee. Or hot chocolate. And it’s probably safe to say that nobody likes a watery learning opportunity. Or art. Or writing. But is it possible to make your teaching, art, writing, or communication accessible and clear to people without watering […]
How and where to start writing
A client once shared with me that when she thinks about writing something new she feels dread. (yes, DREAD!) As a seasoned professional, internationally renowned with decades of experience under her belt, she uses writing as a regular part of her work – grant writing, project proposals, website copy, among so many other things. And […]
Should you think about your reader in your writing process?
What’s the best way to think about your reader when you’re in the middle of your writing process? Should you think about your reader? And if you should, how might you go about doing that? My short answer is: it depends. It depends a lot on the type of writing you are doing. To […]
Sometimes ‘less is more’ when designing a good presentation
I was chatting with a former student recently about giving a guest lecture. As a new grad student, he was in the throes of preparing to give his first and was asking for advice (so exciting!). My big overarching message to him: Less is more. For reals. I see a whole lotta “more is more” […]
Some Thoughts on Leaving Academia
Possibilities on The Other Side I get a lot of questions from folks considering leaving academia about what work will be like on The Other Side. The crux of what they seem to be asking is: “Will I continue to be independent? Will I have agency?” When I was contemplating leaving, these were some of […]