With the increased acceptance of remote and hybrid working, there’s a risk that the boundaries between work time and personal time will continue to blur.

This post provides some simple tips to help create and maintain your personal boundaries.

How we set boundaries in our professional and personal lives has a big impact on our energy and our ability to do our best work.

There’s a real danger in setting the bar too low and it’s important to be mindful of when others might try to do this to you.

In our own careers and in our roles as leaders, we need to be alert to the soft bigotry of low expectations. Let’s not limit someone’s options or possibilities because we make a false assumption about their abilities or ambitions.

As leaders, it's essential not only that we are mindful of our own resilience, what bolsters it and what drains it, but also that we nurture the resilience of our teams. What actions can we take, what support can we provide and what behaviours can we model to grow, rather than to erode, the resilience of the people we lead?

Productivity is important as a measure of performance - for machines and production plants. However, it’s flawed, if not a bit lazy, to apply the same measure to people.

It’s ten years since I was at Harvard Business School for one of their Executive Education Programs. Here’s what I learned.

A common catch-cry of many organisations, and their leaders, is that ‘people are our greatest assets’. However, as leaders in asset management it’s not acceptable to treat our people like machines, or as mere economic artefacts.

There's a myth about the hero scientist - Newton being struck by an apple, Archimedes leaping from the bath exclaiming Eureka! While there may be grains of truth in these stories, great achievements are rarely made by individuals acting alone. In reality it takes a team and active collaboration to make significant breakthroughs.

Jacaranda blossoms are very delicate and as they fall from the tree, they create a soft, rich carpet. The arrival of the jacarandas excites me now, but it wasn’t always the case. As an undergraduate at the University of Queensland, the sight of those first blooms was always a cause for great fear and dread. It heralded the imminent arrival of exams and a very stressful time of year. It was said that if you hadn’t started studying before you saw your first jacaranda flower—it was too late!

So often, complexity is worn as a badge of honour, but the greater the complexity, the smaller the audience. Complex, technical language is OK when you're talking with other specialists in your own field, because you're all native speakers. If you want to get your message to a wider audience, you need to speak their language.

I was recently interviewed for Femeconomy and this article originally appeared on their blog. I talk about why I wrote my latest book Leadership Assets and what advice I would give to other leaders.

What does it mean to practise humility?

This question was the basis of our conversation at my regular Cambium Circle lunch last week.

It was a rich discussion where we explored what humilty meant to each of us and why it was important to our roles as leaders.

What does it mean to practise humility?

This question was the basis of our conversation at my regular Cambium Circle lunch last week.

It was a rich discussion where we explored what humilty meant to each of us and why it was important to our roles as leaders.

Taking time out for rest and reflection is valuable to our mind and body and can help us to become more focused on the work ahead.

People define success through their own perspectives, but their view of success shouldn't define yours.

What's important to you?

How are you prioritising these things in your own definition of success?

I'm often asked what advice I would give to someone starting out in their career, or commencing a new stage of their career journey.

While there's much advice I might give, here are two key things that I think are important.

What advice would you give?

The convenience of modern technology has many benefits, but one of the recognised downsides is the 'always on' phenomenon. While this has perhaps been exacerbated by the rise of 'working from home' during the pandemic, it's not a new issue.