We talk a lot about burnout in the social sector, and rightly so, it’s a real thing. Encouragingly, I’m hearing more leaders embrace the idea of “white space” – intentionally blocking out diary time for reflection, blue sky thinking, planning and self care. This isn’t a luxury it’s a necessity.

Recently, I heard from an NFP CEO, ten years into their tenure, who was encouraged by their Board to take a full three-month sabbatical, with no calls, no emails, and no contact. Yikes!

For both the CEO and the Board, this wasn’t just a good idea, it was a leap of faith. Would the organisation cope? Would the wheels fall off? Would the CEO even come back?

And for the CEO, how do you suddenly sit still after a decade of constant, passion driven activity?

Fast forward three months. The CEO has returned clearer, calmer, and more intentional. With the benefit of distance, they’ve reflected deeply on their leadership style, shifting from reactive and frenetic to focused and considered. They also recognised just how close they were to burnout, and are now setting (and role modelling) healthier boundaries.

The ripple effects have been just as powerful:
• The Deputy stepped up, building capability and confidence
• The executive team stretched into new leadership territory
• The Board gained fresh perspective, identifying both gaps and opportunities.

This wasn’t just time away. It was development, succession planning, cultural reset, all in one bold move, which took courage, wisdom and trust.

But it does make you wonder if we’re unintentionally rewarding leaders for running themselves into the ground, rather than designing roles that are truly sustainable?

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

As we (rightly) strengthen regulatory and governance frameworks to ensure safety and quality of care, we also need leaders who are agile, adaptable, forward-thinking and deeply committed to helping people not just stay safe, but truly thrive.

In my work with leaders I can see that that’s a big ask.

The tension between compliance and innovation, risk management and human-centred care, short-term pressures and long-term reform is becoming increasingly difficult for one CEO, Executive or Board Chair to hold alone.

Perhaps this speaks to the growing importance of diversity in leadership teams. Not just diversity of background, but diversity of thinking, experience and perspective. And equally, the importance of creating leadership cultures with enough trust and psychological safety for those perspectives to genuinely be heard.

I’ve spent much of my career in and around disability services organisations, and I’m now heavily immersed in the aged care sector – both professionally as a coach, and personally through the people I love.

I want the leaders of these organisations to keep me and my loved ones safe and well. But I also want them to keep learning, adapting and improving so service recipients experience dignity, choice and genuinely high-quality outcomes.

Understanding the tension is an important first step in managing it.
And perhaps one of the greatest risks for the sector right now is expecting leaders to carry that complexity without enough support themselves.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

On this particular day, I was struck by the clear and pristine beauty of Middleton Beach, while just across the peninsula, much of our South Australian coast is struggling under a toxic algal bloom.
It got me thinking about the different workplace cultures I encounter through my coaching work. Some are clear, positive, and energising, with a healthy, forward rhythm like the Middleton’s waves. Others feel murky, stagnant, and even unsafe, much like parts of our Gulf at the moment.

So, what can you do if you’re a leader trying to make a positive impact within a toxic workplace?

1. Reset expectations around behaviour and accountability:
   Be clear about what good looks like. Involve your people in defining the standards and hold everyone, including leaders, accountable.
2. Model the behaviours you want to see:
   Demonstrate respect, openness, and integrity. Have the courage to call out toxic behaviours, even when they appear in your peers or those above you.
3. Ramp up your self-care:
   Toxic environments can take a toll. Prioritise exercise, rest, and positive social connections outside of work. Without strong self-care, it’s easy to become part of the problem.
4. Focus on what you can influence:
   Change what you can, accept what you can’t, and stay clear about the difference. Influence grows from clarity, not frustration.
5. Know when to move on:
   If the culture has reached a point of no return, look outward. Find your own “patch of coast” – the environment that allows you to thrive and lead in alignment with your values. Sometimes, it’s just across the peninsula.

Even in toxic waters, renewal is possible. But it starts with courageous leadership and a clear commitment to creating safer, healthier currents.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

An effective leader

• Understands the capacity and potential of their reports, and supports them to challenge themselves to grow and learn without feeling like they’ve been thrown in the deep end without a life jacket.
• Understands and promotes the value of a strong feedback culture, providing clear, kind and actionable feedback without shaming, blaming or humiliating people for mistakes
• Is clear about expectations, and holds people to account for agreed deliverables and behaviours, whilst providing the required coaching and support to enable people to meet those agreements.
• Can express feelings and emotions to aid understanding and trust in a style, tone and setting that is not intimidating or provocative
• Seeks support from their Manager, People and Culture team or external coach to navigate what can be very nuanced and sensitive scenarios.

What other examples can you think of? I’d love to hear about your experiences?

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

Change projects are essentially about people. A successful change depends on getting people on board. But this takes us into the murky area of psychosocial risk. Should we stop initiating change because of the risk? Absolutely not. Whether you’re a leader or a senior technical expert, a core part of your role is to find new ways to create value for your organisation. If you stagnate, you don’t survive.
To keep people psychologically safe during change, I believe we need to support them in two distinct domains which I’ve named Change Agility and Change Stability.

1. Change Agility
This involves building the capacity to adapt and engage. It includes three key activities:
a) Context – Help people understand why the change is needed, framed within the organisation’s strategy.
b) Conversations – Create opportunities for one-on-one or small-group discussions. People don’t resist change because they’re change-resistant—they resist when they can’t make sense of the change within their personal frame of reference. Encourage questions and dialogue to help people align their mindset with the proposed change.
c) Contribution – Give people the opportunity to contribute. They might help design solutions to the challenge driving the change or shape how the change strategy is implemented. Involvement builds ownership.

2. Change Stability
This focuses on giving people psychological anchors during change. It includes three key activities:
d) Familiarity – Highlight what’s staying the same: familiar processes, systems, people, or routines. These act as a tether in unfamiliar waters.
e) Alignment – Reinforce how the change supports the organisation’s purpose, and how each person’s work continues to contribute to that purpose.
f) Grounding – Anchor the change in the organisation’s values. Not only should the outcome of the change align with the values—but the process of change should also consistently reflect them.

Managing change safely means recognising and addressing psychosocial risk. By supporting both agility and stability, I believe we can create the conditions for people to not just survive change, but engage, adapt, and thrive.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

While managing these risks is a shared responsibility, managers and leaders are uniquely positioned to create meaningful change. With the right support they can become powerful agents for psychosocial safety.

Why Psychosocial Risk Matters

Unlike physical hazards, psychosocial risks are often hidden within culture, systems, or leadership behaviours, making them harder to detect until harm occurs. Yet their impacts are real: mental health conditions now account for 9% of serious workplace injury claims in Australia (WorkSafe, 2024), and burnout is rising across industries.

Common psychosocial hazards include:

• High emotional demands or workload
• Low job control or unclear roles
• Bullying, harassment, or unresolved conflict
• Lack of recognition or leadership support
• Poor organisational change practices.

Left unaddressed, these issues lead to low productivity, absenteeism, high turnover, and long-term mental health impacts—posing legal, ethical, and business risks in addition to the obvious personal costs to an injured worker.

Managers: A Frontline Defence

Managers play a critical role in shaping safe, supportive team environments. They’re responsible for setting expectations, structuring roles, resolving conflict, and ensuring people are treated fairly. But many managers, particularly if new to people leadership or in an already emotionally demanding role,  feel under-equipped to identify and manage psychological risks—especially when they’re dealing with emotionally complex situations.

Rather than seeing unwell staff as “problems,” managers can learn to recognise them, just like the canary in the coal mine, as important signals – early warnings of deeper systemic issues. When someone shows signs of distress, it’s a cue to ask: Is the workload too high? Are expectations unclear? Is the team culture healthy?

How Coaching Can Support Managers?

Coaching can help equip managers with the awareness, tools, and confidence to effectively prevent, identify and reduce psychosocial risk. Here are four possible areas you might relate to:

1. Raising Awareness
   Coaches help managers step back and identify hidden risks in their team dynamics—such as unresolved tension or unclear responsibilities—before they escalate.
2. Building Skills
   Many managers avoid emotional or interpersonal issues due to discomfort. Coaching develops their confidence and communication skills to address concerns early and effectively. One leader, for example, learned through coaching to confront a long-standing team conflict that had been eroding trust and morale.
3. Encouraging Strategic Thinking
   Rather than reacting to issues as they arise, coaching supports long-term planning. For example, during organisational change, a leader was coached to build better consultation and feedback processes that reduced stress and confusion.
4. Shaping Culture
   Coaching helps managers create psychological safety and model healthy behaviours—setting boundaries, encouraging breaks, and resisting an “always-on” culture. These visible actions show teams that wellbeing is not just encouraged but expected.

From Individual Fixes to Organisational Responsibility

Often, organisations place the burden of managing stress on individual workers—offering resilience training, fruit bowls or wellbeing apps. While helpful, these don’t address the root causes of harm.

At an organisational level, People and Culture teams can help identify where risks exist across teams, job clusters or geographical locations. This data enables smarter strategic decisions like redesigning roles, skill development for leaders, or improving support systems.

But it’s my belief that true change starts with leadership. Coaching empowers managers to take responsibility for the things they can influence—team dynamics, role clarity, communication, and culture, thereby embedding psychosocial safety from the ground up.

If we want to reduce psychological harm at work, we need to support the people who shape workplace culture every day—our leaders and managers.

If you’re a manager, ask yourself:

• Do I know what psychosocial risks exist in my team?
• Can I influence the conditions causing them?
• Do I have the skills to intervene early?
• Am I creating a culture that supports wellbeing?

If any of these give you pause to reflect, coaching might be the next step.

Coaching provides a confidential, practical space for leaders to develop the awareness, skills, and strategies needed to create psychologically safe environments, supporting them to shift from reactive problem solving to leading proactively with intention.

If you’d like to explore how coaching could support you or your team, please get in touch to arrange a complimentary virtual coffee – I’d love to connect.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

Expertunity is an evidence-based framework which addresses this gap by identifying the unique competencies that enable specialists to thrive and to add maximum value to their company regardless of their technical domain. The framework incorporates a unique Expertship competency model and a range of developmental programs and strategies targeted specifically at Subject Matter Experts as distinct from people leaders.

Mastering Expertship programs have been run successfully over a number of years in Australia, New Zealand and globally, with program evaluation results showing both participant and organisational benefits including

• Technical experts adding far more value to their organisation
• Retention of top technical talent
• Avoidance of single-point-of failure expertise gaps
• Re-energising long-term technical employees
• Re-engagement of demotivated or cynical technical experts.

In March this year my colleagues and I delivered the first 5 day Mastering Expertship program for technical experts here in Adelaide. The program was extremely successful, receiving a net promotor score (NPS) of 78. Participants included scientists, HR experts, IT specialists, engineers and planners. Feedback from both participants and line managers of the experts has been so positive we have planned a second Mastering Expertship program to be run face to face in Adelaide in October.

The program will be facilitated by two experienced local facilitators, myself Jo Saies and Wendy Taylor.  We would be looking at a program of 12-16 participants with a minimum of 2 per agency, and wanting to confirm participant names by early August.

Attached is a brief overview of the Mastering Expertship program and a guide to selecting participants.

Would you be interested in finding out more?

If this is something worth exploring further as a development option for your subject matter experts please book a 30 minute call to provide some more context and answer and questions.

Thanks for your interest in Expertship

Jo

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

My first response is usually  ‘Guess what, you’re not alone!’ Unless you’re a narcissist, no-one feels they’re good at selling themselves, and guaranteed, the last person who got offered a job following the interview went in with some feelings of anxiety and self-doubt. Unfortunately these beliefs are often a classic example of self-fulfilling prophecy – believing you’re terrible at job interviews can become consuming and distract you from doing the preparation you need or get in the way of you performing well at the time it counts.

So how do we manage these ingrained thought patterns so we can perform at our best and maximise our chances of success? This often forms a really key part of a coaching program, when a client is looking for support to advance their career, take a sideways move into a new role, or where they have found themselves involuntarily in the position of having to apply for new roles.  I try to frame my job interview coaching around six Ps, spending more time on those Ps most significant for that client.

Performance is the fifth of the six Ps, and is often the most challenging for clients. Performance is the term I use in recognition of the fact that a job interview has many of the elements of other performance tasks such as a musical recital or sporting performance, that require not only aptitude, but management of one’s emotional, physiological and mental processes in order to do well.

The feelings, thoughts and sensations that come up for people in the context of job interviews, including anxiety, self-doubt, unworthiness, and comparison to others, can be at best highly intrusive and at worst overwhelming and completely debilitating for the interviewee. The key is identifying how and when these sensations show up and learning techniques to minimise their negative impact on your performance. Here’s some suggestions:

• Accept that most people feel nervous, you’re no different to other candidates in that respect (in fact, you might even have a competitive advantage since you’ve learnt some techniques for managing nerves!)
• A degree of nervous energy is productive – it stimulates your system into a state of arousal which can keep you sharp and focused
• Practice a relaxation technique in the lead up to, and just prior to the interview, for example a deep breathing exercise, a progressive muscle relaxation, mediation or visualisation
• Notice and challenge your negative self talk – if you find your inner critic constantly reminding you you’re hopeless at interviews, what could challenge that belief? For example, you might say to yourself I used to be bad at interviews but the last few I’ve done I’ve felt better and better about how I did
• And a corollary to this one – it could be helpful to remind yourself that just because you didn’t get the last job it doesn’t mean you did badly at interview – you may have done well but missed out to an applicant with more skills; now might be a good time to check in with your own or the panel’s perspective on what went well in your last interview
• You don’t have to sell yourself – you need to be able to clearly and accurately describe the best evidence you have of your knowledge, experience, skills and attributes, and how these will add value to the potential employer
• Run your own race – you’ve done the preparation and you have the ability to do the job, your focus now has to be on yourself, and conveying evidence of your suitability to the panel – mentally comparing yourself to other applicants (either actual or perceived) is not helpful once you get to interview, as it can exacerbate feelings of self- doubt
• If you do nothing else, before stepping in to the interview strike your best power pose (preferably somewhere private!) then take 10 slow deep breaths to calm the nervous system and ground yourself in the present
• Don’t forget to reflect after the interview on what went well – wait a couple of days and take some time to notice what you were happy with, what you improved on, and what you want to keep doing at your next interview.

Remember, not too many people wake up in the morning relishing the idea of a job interview. But you don’t actually have to love them to do well and be successful in getting the job of your dreams. Apart from working on your Performance, there’s five other P’s that will also make a difference:

• Panel perspective – put yourself in their shoes
• Preparation – learn as much as you can about the company and the role
• Product – that’s you! What features and benefits can you offer?
• Presentation – what impression do you want to create and leave?
• Persistence – how do you sustain your resilience to keep putting yourself out there?

Please get in touch if you’d like to know more about managing nerves and negative self-talk, or how the other five Ps can enhance your interview performance.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

I start with the lowlights – the things that didn’t go to plan, that challenged me, that created pain or hardship, and I acknowledge that these are inevitable components of what it means to be human.

I follow-up with my highlights – surprises, unexpected good outcomes, achievements I’ve worked hard towards, people that have given me strength and support, and all the ways in which I’ve lived my passion and purpose. I make sure that for every lowlight, I come up with three highlights, to create a sense of positivity and help counteract any negative emotions arising from the lowlights.

Reflecting on my highlights puts me in a creative, positive and open state, which is great for generating new awareness, thinking and perspectives. How am I seeing things differently now compared to a year ago? What lessons have the lowlights taught me? What new strengths have emerged in me that helped create my highlights? What do I know about myself that I hadn’t been aware of before? What has changed in how I see myself, how I respond to others, or how I see the world around me? Is there one big truth that I will now try to live by?

Sometimes I’ll take myself down to the beach, to a nice park or to my favourite coffee shop to reflect. Some years I just sit outside in the sun with a bit of music in the background. Sometimes I like to be in a busy place full of life and atmosphere, other times I’d rather be somewhere peaceful on my own. And there are years where I write all my thoughts in a journal, and others where I just sit and purposefully ponder. Experiment and choose the style and setting that works best for you. And if so inclined, for an extra boost of positivity and connection, share your key lowlights, highlights and insights with someone important to you.

A lowlight for me in 2020 was being mistreated by an employer I had given my heart and soul to. Highlights included a weekend diving with the giant cuttlefish, joining a ukulele band, and completing my Advanced Coaching Training. And my key insights? I’ve shared some of them throughout the year – act on what’s most important, be kind and stay connected. I think my one big truth for the year is that we are less in control that we think – goals and plans are important but we need to keep a light grip on our attachment to them, as we just don’t know what’s around the next corner.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

Emotional intelligence is not about stifling or hiding emotions, always being positive, or needing to be more emotional.  It’s about using emotion productively –  recognising, understanding and working with emotions in ourselves and others, so we can

• Interact more effectively
• deal with disagreement constructively
• pro-actively handle stress and change
• read and navigate the dynamics of an organisational or team culture
• manage through complexity and make difficult decisions
• show up authentically
• build and maintain trust.

All of these behaviours help us to increase our performance and achieve more positive results. There is indeed strong evidence that high levels of emotional intelligence in the workplace can lead to:

• Better physical and mental health
• Improved workplace relationships
• Coping better with high demands and stress
• Increased levels of engagement and discretionary effort
• Reductions in employee turnover and absenteeism
• Prevention of psychological injury
• Increased creativity and innovation
• More effective leadership.

So how do we build emotional intelligence? A good place to start is working on our self-awareness to get better at recognising emotion, in the moment,  in ourselves and others. To build self-awareness, practice paying attention to these four things:

1. Emotion is a biological reaction, and is first triggered in the body, so we can start to notice emotion by being aware of physiological changes or body sensations – are we holding our breath, where do we feel tightness, how intense is that tightness, how far does it extend, how long does it last?
2. Next tune in to our self-talk – what are we thinking, what words and phrases are we saying to ourselves that give us a clue as to how we’re feeling?
3. Notice what we’re saying – listen to our language, the labels we are assigning, and to the tone and volume of our voice
4. Pay attention to our behaviour – both what we’re doing, and what we feel like doing.

When identifying emotions in others we don’t have the benefit of knowing directly about their body sensations or their self-talk (although we could ask them). But in addition to what they’re saying and doing, we also have the benefit of observing facial expression and body language to help us recognise and label an emotional experience. A shift in the person’s energy can also be a clue that they have experienced an emotional reaction.

Awareness in the moment alerts us to the presence of an emotion in ourselves and others. Having a comprehensive mental dictionary of emotions gives us the capacity to label that experience. We can then use that information to make a choice about how to respond more productively.

For example, when we recognise emotion in ourselves we’re able to regulate the way we express that emotion, shift our emotional state to one that is more productive and incorporate information from our feelings, together with facts and other information, into decisions.  When we recognise emotion in others, we can acknowledge the emotion with empathy, assist them where necessary to regulate how they are expressing the emotion, and use a broader range of  information to help us respond appropriately.

Emotional Intelligence skills can be learnt, by focusing on key behaviours you want to change and practising new responses over time. Like any behaviour change, it can be hard going to get started, but begin by recognising the value to you and the people around you in terms of improved performance and relationships. Then through self-awareness, feedback from others and observation of impact you will start to embed emotional intelligence for a thriving future.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au