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Published by Cathal Quinlan
The Better At Work podcast is your new best friend at work. It’s packed with honest, practical advice and science-backed techniques from a diverse range of guests to help you achieve betterness in your work, and life. Better At Work is for everyone striving to be better and feel better. Whether you’re ready to take your career to new heights, or battling with the daily grind, your host Cathal Quinlan is here to help. By drawing on insights from leading psychologists, neuroscientists and performance experts, and Cathal sharing his own successes and mistakes as a leader, the podcast delivers proven strategies, tools and science-backed techniques to help you achieve betterness in your working life, one day at a time, because when work is better, life is better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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.
Toughing it out is not resilience. Chronic pressure without recovery drains people, and the ones praised for coping are often closest to the edge. In this Better Moment, organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich takes apart the bounce-back myth: why "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is backwards, why resilience behaves like a budget rather than a personality trait, and why almost none of us can see the cost coming. Her research on self-awareness says 95 percent of us believe we can. Roughly 10 to 15 percent actually can. Her advice to leaders is structural, not motivational. Fix the load, not the person. Remove chronic stressors at source, design recovery in, and check on the people who look fine. Listen to the full conversation: https://youtu.be/MJ_rqzhEmts?si=CcQVF5_wyZYtgVxd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Conflict at work is not simply a choice between charging in and avoiding it. In this four-and-a-half-minute Better Moment, *Smart Conflict* authors Alice Driscoll and Louise van Haarst focus on two useful forces: conflict confidence, and the desire to get it right or be right. They explain why enforced harmony can crowd out healthy disagreement, and how to move from relational conflict, me against you, into task conflict, both of us against the problem. Their practical phrase works at either end of the scale: get curious, not furious. Listen to the full conversation: https://shows.acast.com/betteratworkpodcast/episodes/69d60cb9ef4d724206d29c01 Follow Better at Work so season five lands in your feed when we return on 15 September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hope at work is not optimism. It is a goal worth reaching, more than one credible route forward and enough agency to move. In this seven-minute Better Moment, burnout researcher and workplace culture strategist Jennifer Moss draws on Charles Snyder's hope theory to explain why hope is a practical leadership strategy. Jennifer looks at the growing hope gap among younger workers, why small completed goals build momentum and what micromanagement takes away: accomplishment, autonomy and intrinsic motivation. Her warning is blunt. Leaders cannot ask people to invest in the future while telling them they may not have a place in it. Listen to the full conversation: https://shows.acast.com/betteratworkpodcast/episodes/we-cant-yoga-our-way-out-of-bad-culture-the-newest-burnout-r Jennifer Moss is the author of *Why Are We Here? Creating a Work Culture Everybody Wants*. Follow Better at Work so season five lands in your feed when we return in September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A good job is not the same for everyone. Laura Gassner Otting gives us four dials for working out whether a role actually fits: calling, connection, contribution and control. Calling is the force that pulls you forward. Connection is whether your work matters. Contribution is what the work gives your life. Control is the agency you have over your time, decisions and environment. The practical question is not whether all four are high. It is whether the mix matches what matters to you now. Laura is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, researcher and former executive recruiter. She is the author of * Limitless * and * Wonderhell *. Watch the full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Z0nuapNLI Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The loudest predictions about AI count the jobs it might destroy. Russell Beck says that is the wrong unit of analysis. Technology is very good at removing the scarce skill inside a job. Russell's example is a naval shipyard worker wearing an exoskeleton. The job remains. The work becomes safer. The employer gains a wider talent pool. Physical strength stops being the thing that makes one person uniquely qualified. In this eight-minute Better Moment, Russell explains where the advantage moves next: creativity, self-efficacy and leadership. Russell Beck is the author of *The World of Work to 2030*. He has worked in 25 countries and was European Head of Talent at Yahoo. Follow Better at Work so season five lands in your feed when we return in September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Most companies can show you a plan. Far fewer can explain the choices underneath it. In this Better Moment, Roger Martin strips strategy back to what it actually is: what you do, not what you say. He explains why a list of initiatives is not a strategy, how the question “What would have to be true?” can get a divided room moving, and why AI is much better at finding the average answer than a distinctive one. Thirteen minutes on the choices that make a strategy real. Listen to Roger’s full Better at Work conversations: Part 1: https://shows.acast.com/betteratworkpodcast/episodes/the-worlds-1-strategy-thinker-on-why-planning-isnt-strategy Part 2: https://shows.acast.com/betteratworkpodcast/episodes/part-2-the-worlds-1-strategy-thinker-on-why-planning-isnt-st Book: Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works , by Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley. Follow Better at Work so season five lands in your feed when we return in September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome to Better Moments! Small but mighty snippets from our best episodes. 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 framework Got 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.
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. Part two is coming soon. 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.
Annette is in London! She and Cathal are finally in the same studio for this listener questions episode. First up, Annette's three takeaways from Cathal's conversation with behavioural scientist Leidy Klotz, author of In a Good Place. The headline: every workspace has to meet three psychological needs. Agency, growth and connection. They get into why hot-desking quietly erodes all three, the simplest confidence trick going (visit the room before a high-stakes meeting), and how to improve a workspace when no renovation budget is coming. Then a question from listener Helen, whose husband is working around the clock. She can feel them losing connection, and he keeps telling her the same thing: you don't understand, I don't have a choice. Cathal and Annette have both been close to this one, and they share practical ways to help without trying to fix. Plus: Annette's Camino de Santiago walk, two black toes and all. Next week: Roger Martin, author of Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works. Got a work dilemma for a future episode? Get in touch at betteratwork.net Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Most workplaces obsess over paint colours, open-plan vs closed offices, and how many days people should be back at their desks. They skip the only question that actually matters. This week Cathal sits down with Leidy Klotz, engineering professor and behavioural scientist at the University of Virginia. Leidy is the author of SUBTRACT (translated into eight languages) and his new book IN A GOOD PLACE breaks down the three psychological needs your physical surroundings either feed or starve: agency, growth, and connection. They cover: - The nursing home study where control over your space changed survival rates - Why refugees in "half-finished houses" recover faster than those given fully built homes - The boss who accidentally locked his team out of the only good conference room - What the negotiation research says about arriving 20 minutes early - The single most damaging mistake organisations make when designing workplaces - Why space is one of the only things in your life you can actually change Leidy Klotz, PhD is a behavioural scientist and engineering professor at the University of Virginia. His research has been published in Nature and Science. Before academia he played professional soccer and designed schools in New Jersey. His new book IN A GOOD PLACE: How the Spaces Where We Live, Work, and Play Can Help Us Thrive is out now. Find Leidy: leidyklotz.com New episodes of Better at Work every Thursday, 7am GMT. Real talk on work, careers, and how to make work actually better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Q&A episode: Annette synthesises Wendy Smith's both/and thinking, Cathal reflects on Bob Geldof's recent speech on empathy in leadership, and we answer Lou's question on preparing for her first competency-based interview. Following last week's conversation with Wendy Smith (Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems), Annette walks through the takeaways that stuck with her. The Fab Four: assumptions, boundaries, comfort, dynamics. The two metaphors at the heart of Wendy's framework: the tightrope walker who splits attention and chops between competing priorities, and the mule, the integrated both/and solution that's stronger than a horse and smarter than a donkey. Cathal and Annette get into why so many of us end up tightrope walking at work without meaning to. The "stop starting, start finishing" trap. The way leaders accumulate priorities until everything is urgent and nothing is finished. And why complexity, the thing most of us instinctively dread, can actually be a source of energy if you have the right framework to meet it with. Then a swerve into Bob Geldof's recent awards speech on empathy and what's gone missing in global leadership. Cathal pulls the thread: the both/and case for caring about people and running a business well. They're not in tension. The listener question this week comes from Lou, who's preparing for her first ever competency-based interview and has no idea where to start. Annette lays out the framework: → Prepare 5 examples from your career, things you're genuinely proud of → Cover real range: a difficult stakeholder, a deadline crunch, an unsolvable problem → Structure each one with situation, action, outcome → Connect each example back to your core skills and values → Practise out loud, to camera or to a mirror, so the interview isn't the first time you've heard these words in your own voice Plus a look at what's coming next week: Leidy Klotz, author of Subtract, on his new book In a Good Place: How the Spaces Where We Live, Work, and Play Can Help Us Thrive. Got a career dilemma you'd like us to tackle in a future Q&A? Head to betteratwork.net. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wendy Smith is a management professor at the University of Delaware and the co-author of Both/And Thinking, a book translating 25 years of research into practical tools leaders can apply immediately. In this conversation: - Why workplace tensions are a feature, not a bug - What most business schools are getting wrong about leadership - The difference between a dilemma (where you choose) and a paradox (where you don't) - Four types of paradox every leader faces: learning, performing, organising, belonging - The three traps of either/or thinking: rabbit holes, wrecking balls, trench warfare - Why King Charles got both sides of the US Congress on their feet - The X-on-the-hand habit that made Wendy a better listener (and a better leader) - A preview of her next book on anxiety and finding comfort in the discomfort Wendy's biggest invitation: notice how often the tensions in your life present themselves as either/or. Then ask one question. What if it's both? Featuring callbacks to previous Better at Work guests Jennifer Moss and Amy Gallo. Recorded with Wendy in Philadelphia. Got a career dilemma? Send it in at betteratwork.com NEXT WEEK: Q&A with Annette on this episode and listener questions. Making your work life better, one conversation at a time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Annette's back with three takeaways from last week's Jennifer Moss episode that genuinely changed how we think about hope at work. Plus a listener question from Paul, an Australian who's been working in Dublin for 7-8 years and is now moving the family home to Melbourne while weighing a career change. In this Q&A: - The Admiral McRaven "make your bed" reminder - FOBO (fear of becoming obsolete) and the five-step Gallup framework for compassionate leadership in the AI era - Why scheduling time for learning is the part most leaders skip - "Hope is not a method" vs. "hope IS a strategy": Annette's full reframe - The four-part hope framework: goals, pathways, personal agency, agency for others - Paul's question: how do you survive an international move AND a career pivot at the same time? - The both/and move that changes the maths on midlife career transitions Annette tells the story of the Post-it she kept on her monitor at one of the toughest jobs of her career: "Hope is not a method." Years later, Jennifer Moss reframed it for her. Hope is a strategy when you build goals, pathways, and agency underneath it. Without those, it's just wishful thinking with better PR. For Paul, and anyone considering a big move plus a big career shift at the same time, the advice is the both/and: contract while you network, build foundations while you research, and don't try to do all the big rocks at once. Got a career dilemma? Send it in at betteratwork.com NEXT WEEK: Wendy Smith on Both/And Thinking. You're going to love it. Making your work life better, one conversation at a time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Three years ago, Jennifer Moss came on Better at Work and gave us a line that stuck: we can't yoga our way out of a bad boss. She's back. New book. Sharper take. Jennifer is a burnout researcher and workplace culture strategist whose new book Why Are We Here? Creating a Work Culture Everybody Wants is her third on this space and one of the most useful Cathal has read this year. In this conversation: → Why hope is collapsing at work, especially for under-25s (the World Happiness Report numbers are bleak) → Charles Snyder's hope theory and why agency is the piece most leaders miss → Why a compliant team isn't a loyal team, it's a team where hope is dying → The real cost of layoffs to the people who stay → Phobos and the 1 in 2 stat on AI anxiety from Microsoft's Work Trend Index → Why most micromanagers are frightened, not malicious → The 5-step compassionate leadership framework for AI transitions → Why "I'm an ally" framing has made diversity work fragile, and the reframe that fixes it → Optimal distinctiveness: fitting in and standing out at the same time → Three things leaders can do this week Jennifer references Adam Grant, Lindsay McIntyre (formerly of Microsoft), Amy Gallo, Claudia Goldin, Robin Dunbar, and case studies from companies including Patagonia and Bright Horizons. Find Jennifer at jennifer-moss.com and on LinkedIn. Better at Work is hosted by Cathal Quinlan. New episodes every Thursday 7am. If this one resonated, share it with someone on your team who needs it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What if the colleague who drives you up the wall is the one your organisation can't afford to lose? Cathal and Annette are back for a listener-questions special, picking up where last week's conversation with David [surname TBC], former Head of Design at Tesla, left off. The idea that stuck: every team has Mad Hatters and White Rabbits. The Mad Hatters bring the wild, disruptive, sometimes maddening ideas. The White Rabbits keep things running on time. Most organisations over-index on one and quietly punish the other, which is exactly how you lose the creative edge that made you competitive in the first place. Cathal shares why the framework hit home, why psychological safety matters more than surface-level politeness, and why "I don't agree with you" should be a welcome sentence in any good team. He also references his recent LinkedIn post on the thing nobody tells you when you become a manager for the first time: there's no handbook. You're going to get it wrong sometimes. That's fine, as long as you keep showing up and keep supporting the ideas. Then the listener question. Michelle wrote in from retail. She's covering two to three people's roles on her normal shifts and being called in on her days off. She's drained. She can't say no. She's breaking. Annette and Cathal unpack it honestly and the reframe is the gold: the days-off problem isn't the real problem. The root cause is the workload. And there's a way to raise it with her manager that doesn't torch the relationship, with a Plan B ready if it doesn't land. Expect the glass-of-water stress analogy, a useful reframe on supporting failure at work, and a reminder that the people who held the retail and service economy together through Covid deserve better than being treated as infinitely elastic. In this episode: Why Mad Hatters and White Rabbits need each other The LinkedIn post Cathal wrote about becoming a manager Why feeling threatened by a different viewpoint is a trap The glass of water and what stress does when you hold it too long How Michelle can raise the workload conversation, with a Plan B ready Chapters: 00:00 Welcome back 01:35 Recap: David on curiosity at Tesla 05:38 The Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit 11:06 Why entrepreneurial thinkers need air cover 12:15 No handbook for being a manager 14:05 Why supporting failure is a leadership skill 15:03 Listener question: Michelle is running on empty 19:08 The glass of water test 20:14 How to reframe the conversation upwards 25:20 Respect for frontline workers 26:15 Next week: Jennifer Moss returns Mentioned in this episode: Last week's interview with David Imai, former Head of Design at Tesla (Apple, Spotify, YouTube) Cathal's recent LinkedIn post on becoming a manager Next week: Jennifer Moss, author of Why Are We Here? Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants Got a career dilemma of your own? Send it in. We'll take it on anonymously, just like Michelle's. Details at betteratwork.net Subscribe to The Better Bits newsletter for the best insights from every episode, delivered straight to your inbox. New episodes every Thursday on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. Hit follow so you don't miss Jennifer Moss. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For 14 years, David Imai was a Design Director at Tesla, helping shape every car the company put on the road. Before that, GM and Opel. Today he advises the startups building the future of transport and robotics, and he's obsessed with one question: why do the best ideas keep dying inside big organisations? His answer will surprise you. Every team has two types of people. The Mad Hatter, who throws out wild, half-formed, maybe-genius ideas. And the White Rabbit, who gets things done on time. Most workplaces only protect one of them, and it's almost always the wrong one. That's why your best thinking never makes it out of the meeting room. In this episode, David sits down with Cathal (his old London housemate, small world) to unpack the three things every curious culture needs. Why psychological safety isn't optional. Why Tesla sends its robotics engineers to Disney Imagineering. And the one habit that separates teams that innovate from teams that talk about innovating. If you've ever walked out of work wondering why nobody listens to your best ideas, press play. This is the episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Observed September 20, 2026. Cached outside the daily freshness window; the positions keep the date they were taken on.
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