Better At Work with Cathal Quinlan

Saying yes to one thing leaves less time for something else. So how do you decide what deserves your attention?In the first Listener Questions episode of Season 5, Cathal Quinlan and Annette Sloan revisit Caroline Webb’s interview and the ideas in her book Leadership Intelligence.Annette shares three tools she wants to use: Yes-Grow-No for deciding what to take on, hand over or decline; ACORN for working through important decisions; and the bridge model for feedback and difficult stakeholder relationships. Cathal adds his own picks from the book.We also open up the season to you. From giving feedback to rebuilding after redundancy, tell us which workplace topics you want us to explore. Send us a question, a career dilemma or an idea for a future Listener Questions episode.Betteratwork.netFollow Better at Work in your podcast app for more from Season 5. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 5 starts with the guest who started it all. Caroline Webb is back, tackling a question every overloaded leader needs to answer: what should you stop doing yourself?Caroline joined Better at Work for our very first episode in 2022. Now she returns with Leadership Intelligence and a practical conversation about the shift from doing great work yourself to helping other people do theirs.She and Cathal Quinlan explore what deserves a deliberate yes, what someone else could learn to do, and how to say no when something else matters more.In this episode:• Make time for the leadership work only you can do.• Use Yes/Grow/No to decide what to keep, delegate and decline.• Work through ACORN: Aim, Criteria, Options, Rating and Next steps.• Give specific feedback without jumping to conclusions.• Use Brag and Borrow to share progress and ask for help.• Work through difficult stakeholder relationships and reset under pressure.Caroline is a leadership coach, economist and author of How to Have a Good Day and Leadership Intelligence.Find Caroline: https://carolinewebb.co/Leadership Intelligence: https://carolinewebb.co/books/leadership-intelligence/Welcome back to Better at Work. Follow the show in your podcast app and join us for Season 5. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cathal and Annette close out season four together in London, in person for once. The four ideas from 30+ episodes that actually changed how they work: Laura Gassner Otting's four Cs of a fulfilling career, Zach Mercurio on the mattering deficit, Colin Fisher (The Collective Edge) on teams and clarity, and the Smart Conflict five Rs from Louise van Haast and Alice Driscoll.Plus the first listener question they've ever half disagreed on, the corporate jargon they'd ban, Annette's rabbit story, and a look ahead to season five.We're taking a short summer break, with best-of episodes in the feed while we're away. Season five lands in September.Got a question or topic for season five? Send it here: https://betteratwork.net/Follow the show so season five lands in your feed the moment we're back. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The final listener questions episode of Better at Work, Season 4.This week is Cathal and Annette closing out the season's questions before next week's wrap, with the stories that stuck with them and a look ahead to Season 5.Annette shares the story of Pauline Wald, a banking executive who walked 2,000 kilometres across France and Spain to find what her successful life had been missing. Cathal gets honest about a habit a lot of us share, starting the day with the easy task instead of the hard one, and the idea from this season that made him rethink it.We also revisit the biggest ideas from our recent conversation with Roger Martin, ranked the number 1 management thinker in the world, and the questions you have already sent us for next season.What we cover: • The banker who walked 2,000km to find what success had left out• Why successful people do the hardest task first• What you want us to cover in Season 5 • The Roger Martin strategy ideas that stuck, including: what would have to be true?• How a former Sephora CEO scaled with the same frameworkGot a career dilemma for Season 5? Send it to us at betteratwork.net.Next week: our Season 4 wrap, recorded in person in London.Follow Better at Work so you never miss an episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roger Martin is the world's number one management thinker, former dean of the Rotman School of Management, and strategy advisor to the CEOs of P&G, Lego, Ford and American Express. He is our final guest of the year, and we have split the conversation in two.In part one, Roger takes apart what most people get wrong about strategy. We begin at his father's kitchen table, where an animal feed company and one unbreakable rule taught him more about business than Harvard did. From there he lays out the idea at the heart of his book Playing to Win: strategy is not a long planning document, it is a set of interrelated choices that compels a customer to act.He explains why only 10 to 15% of big companies actually have a strategy, why the rest end up with a laundry list of initiatives, and how the strongest leaders set a clear outcome and then trust their people to find the way there. Along the way: the Strategy Choice Cascade, why strategy has to be made at every level of an organisation, and the difference between micromanaging and what the military calls commander's intent.Book: Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley.New episodes every Thursday at 7am. More at betteratwork.net. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.