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The Superpower Economy

Posted on by Margie Sheedy

Haydn Thomas’ recent workshop on the Superpower Economy gave attendees some unique insights:

  • Communication is consistently the #1 skill employers cite. This covers written, verbal, digital, and cross-cultural communication. The strengths needed: Active listening, emotional intelligence, clarity of thought, adaptability of tone, and confidence.
  • What’s interesting is that over 25 years, technical skills have come and gone (specific software, platforms, methodologies), but the human skills — communication, EQ, critical thinking, adaptability — have only grown in value. This is partly because technology has automated the routine and left the relational and the complex to people.
  • Every wave of technological and economic disruption has raised the bar on what it means to be distinctly human at work.
  • In a sense, the most durable professional skill is the ability to keep developing skills — which is really just curiosity and resilience working together.

Want to know more about leveraging your strengths and setting you and your teams up for success in an AI age? Contact us today: [email protected]

How to Get that Promotion

Posted on by Margie Sheedy

Ever been passed over for a promotion? Even when you’re the best person for the job? The solution to improving your career trajectory could be the exact opposite of what you’ve been doing, as Haydn Thomas notes in his recent Mindavation Insight on YouTube.

The conventional wisdom is that we need to make ourselves indispensable at work. Guard your expertise carefully, be the only person who knows how the legacy system works, become so critical that the company simply can’t function without you.

Sounds like job security? It’s actually a career trap because, put simply, you can’t move up if they can’t let you go.

When you’re the only person who can handle your current responsibilities, you’ve essentially locked yourself into your own role. Your manager might absolutely recognise that you’re ready for bigger things – they might even want to promote you – but their hands are tied. Who’s going to do your job if you move on?

First Step: Share What you Know

We advise our coaching clients to flip the script. When you start actively teaching your team everything you know, something quite remarkable happens:

  • Your colleagues gradually become capable of handling responsibilities that once only you could manage
  • Projects keep moving forward smoothly when you’re out of the office
  • The team starts functioning independently, making sound decisions without needing to check in with you constantly.

When your boss observes this transformation, they’re seeing someone who can develop talent, delegate effectively, and build sustainable systems. They’re seeing a leader, not just a high performer.

Making yourself replaceable is actually one of the strongest signals you can send that you’re ready for the next level. It demonstrates:

  • Genuine leadership ability: You’re not just good at your job – you’re invested in making others good at theirs.
  • Strategic thinking: You understand that sustainable success isn’t about being a bottleneck; it’s about building capable teams.
  • Authentic confidence: You’re not threatened by others’ growth and success. In fact, you’re actively championing it.
  • True readiness: You’ve already created the space for your next move by ensuring your current role won’t collapse without you.

Mapping your Next Move

Ambition without self-awareness is just wishful thinking. So if you want to progress professionally, the most valuable thing you can do is conduct an honest personal audit at where you genuinely stand right now.

What are you actually good at? Not what your job description says, but what others seek you out for. What comes easily to you that challenges your peers? What do you get energised by, not just competent at? These are your real strengths? Where are the gaps?
Every level of seniority comes with a new set of demands. The skills that got you to where you are today almost certainly won’t be the ones that take you to the next stage. What do your stakeholders find frustrating? Where do you fall short when the pressure is on? Naming these clearly is not a weakness but the prerequisite for addressing them.

It will also give you insights into the areas you could explore. Career progression isn’t just about the next rung on the ladder; it’s about making sure you’re climbing the right ladder.

Turn Insight Into Action

Insight without action is just expensive self-reflection. Every strength, weakness and opportunity you identify needs to be translated into a specific commitment: something concrete you will do, by a specific date, that moves you closer to where you want to be.

Want to be seen as a strategic thinker rather than a technical executor? Name the behaviours that would demonstrate that. Then set about building them into how you operate in the next 90 days. Want to expand your influence beyond your team? Map the relationships you need to build and schedule the first three conversations this month.

Your Next Steps

Start the process of replacing yourself today with some simple actions:

  • Document your processes
  • Share your insights in team meetings
  • Mentor someone at work
  • Create resources that help others succeed.

Every time you transfer knowledge, you’re not diminishing your value – you’re multiplying it. Remember, the path to promotion is about being generous with what you know, empowering others to shine, and proving that you’re ready to tackle bigger challenges.

Mindavation partners with professionals and organisations to accelerate meaningful career growth. Contact us at [email protected] to find out more.

Work Challenges You Can Conquer

Posted on by Margie Sheedy

People come into our coaching sessions thinking they need help with time management or difficult conversations. We thoughts we’d give you some of the professional challenges we come across most frequently and give you quick insights on how to conquer them.

Insight 1 – “I’ve Been Solving the Wrong Problem”

A general manager came to coaching frustrated that her team wasn’t stepping up. Three sessions in, she had a realisation: “I’m not giving them room to step up. I solve problems before they even know there’s an issue.”

She’d been so focused on being responsive and capable that she’d accidentally created a team that waited for her to have all the answers. The problem wasn’t their capability—it was her leadership pattern.

Key takeaway: Sometimes this just requires a focus flip: try addressing the cause, not the symptom of an issue.

Insight 2 – “My Strength Has Become My Limitation”

This is where the very thing that got you to your current position is now holding you back.

  • The detail-oriented leader who rose through the ranks by never missing anything now realises they’re micromanaging and losing strategic perspective.
  • The decisive executive who built their reputation on quick action discovers they’re moving too fast and leaving people behind.
  • The relationship-focused leader who everyone loves working with realises they’re avoiding necessary difficult conversations.

Key takeaway: Your superpower doesn’t stop being valuable—but at a certain level, if you can’t dial it back or balance it with something else, it becomes a constraint.

Insight 3 – “I’m Leading From Fear More Than I Imagined”

This one’s uncomfortable but incredibly common. In the confidential space of coaching, executives start noticing how much of their decision-making is driven by avoiding negative outcomes rather than pursuing possibilities.

“I’m not challenging that strategy because I don’t want to seem difficult.”
“I’m holding onto this underperformer because I’m worried about team morale.”
“I’m not speaking up in the executive meeting because I’m concerned about how it’ll land.”

Key takeaway: The insight isn’t that fear is bad—it’s recognising when it’s quietly running the show and making your decisions smaller than they need to be.

Insight 4 – “I’ve Been Waiting for Permission”

Perhaps the most powerful discovery is this: many capable leaders are waiting for someone to tell them they’re ready, it’s okay, they’re allowed.

Ready to have the difficult conversation. Ready to challenge the status quo. Ready to put forward the big idea. Ready to step into more senior leadership.

The coaching insight? No one’s going to give you that permission.

Key takeaway: You already have the capability—you’re just not using it.

Why These Insights Matter

These discoveries don’t happen because coaching provides magical wisdom. They happen because coaching creates the conditions for people to think more deeply than they normally give themselves time for —without judgment, with better questions, and with someone holding up a mirror.

The power isn’t in the insight alone. It’s in what becomes possible once you see clearly.

When you realise you’ve been solving the wrong problem, you can redirect your energy to what actually matters. When you understand your blind spots, you can lead more intentionally. When you’re honest about what you really want, you can make aligned choices.

It’s this kind of clarity that changes everything.

Stop Guessing, Start Asking: Our Great Questions Library Drives Clarity

Posted on by Margie Sheedy

How do you navigate ambiguity, get your point across in a way that brings others into the conversation or correct simple misunderstandings at work?

It’s all in the intentional habit of asking great questions.

The right question at the right time changes everything. It builds trust, gets people thinking differently and increases your influence.

Mindavation’s Great Questions Library helps you unlock success in some critical business areas. Go on, give them a try!

Elevate Your Vision and Strategy

Defining where you are going is the first step toward effective business execution. The following questions help you cut through the noise and define your shared “North Star.”

  • What does success look like? This grounds aspirational goals in specific, shared outcomes so everyone knows the score.
  • What is the area that, if we made an improvement, would give us the greatest return on time, energy, and dollars invested? This question helps prioritise efforts for maximum leverage and demonstrates your ability to lean into strategic discussions.
  • What if there were no limits? Prompting colleagues to dream big temporarily can reveal genuinely innovative possibilities and challenge old constraints.
  • If we had a magic wand, what would we really be asking for? This cuts through politeness and practicality to uncover the true desire or need beneath surface-level requests.
  • What other options do we rule out? Understanding trade-offs makes decision-making transparent and ensures you’re choosing the best path, not just the first one.

Sharpen Your Problem-Solving Skills

When faced with a challenge, powerful problem-solving skills rely on simplifying complex concepts. The following questions will help you identify a problem’s root causes and the most direct path forward.

  • What did we assume? Identifying hidden assumptions is the fastest way to expose blind spots that may be holding up your progress.
  • What’s the first step to move us forward? This breaks down overwhelming projects into manageable actions, overcoming inertia immediately.
  • What is the simplest solution here? Complexity is often the enemy of speed; this question champions quick, efficient action.

Foster Effective Communication and Support

Strong teams are built on transparency and mutual support. These queries foster effective communication by addressing unspoken needs and necessary conversations.

  • What conversations are we avoiding right now? Or, what is it that you’re trying not to tell me? Acknowledging difficult topics builds trust and removes silent barriers to alignment.
  • What do you most need right now? This simple, empathetic question ensures you offer the specific, timely support required for success.
  • What kind of support would be helpful? It moves beyond vague requests toward specific, actionable assistance.

Actionable Tips for Daily Clarity

  1. Why not try starting your next team check-in with one question selected from the list?
  2. Challenge your inner narrative by asking “What are we not saying?” during internal reviews.
  3. Use these questions as a friendly blueprint when developing next steps for a work initiative.
  4. Practice true listening after you ask a question. The insights generated are where the real value lies.
  5. Review your progress by asking, “What have we learned?”

The path to clear results and empowered teams starts not with having all the answers, but with asking the right questions.

Contact us today at [email protected] to learn how Mindavation can help your team achieve improved clarity and truly be effective at work.

How to Improve your Ability to Influence Outcomes

Posted on by Margie Sheedy

You don’t need a title to make a difference. Some of the most powerful people in any room aren’t the ones running the meeting — they’re the ones asking the right questions.
But here’s where most people go wrong: when they want to steer an outcome, they push. They advocate. They present their case. And sometimes that works. More often, it puts people on the defensive and shuts the conversation down before it even starts.

There’s a better way.

Let the Horse Find the Water
Think about it like this: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. The real skill? Making the horse think it found the stream itself.
When people arrive at a conclusion on their own, they own it. They champion it. Your job as an influencer isn’t to hand them the answer — it’s to ask the questions that get them there.

The Questions That Change Everything
Two of our favourites:
“What other options did we rule out?” This one is deceptively simple. It gently opens the door to possibilities that may have been dismissed too early, without making anyone feel like their thinking was wrong. It’s curious, not confrontational.
“If we had a magic wand, what would we really be asking for?” This question is magic in itself. It strips away constraints and gets to the heart of what people actually want — not just what they think is possible. Once you understand the real need, you can help shape a path toward it.

Why This Works
Asking smart questions does two things at once: it builds trust and it shifts thinking. When you ask instead of tell, you signal that you’re genuinely interested in the best outcome, not just your outcome. That changes the dynamic entirely. People feel heard. And more often than not, they land somewhere better than where they started.

Influence isn’t about being the loudest voice in the room. It’s about being the most curious one.

Ready to Go Deeper?
The right question at the right time can change everything — in a meeting, a project, a conversation. We’ve built a whole library of powerful questions designed to help you lead, align, and influence more effectively.
👉 Explore our question library on the Mindavation website and start influencing outcomes today.

The Professional Strengths you Need Now

Posted on by Margie Sheedy

Technical skills come and go, but the human skills — communication, EQ, critical thinking, adaptability — have only grown in value. As AI accelerates, the relational and the complex is going to be left to people.

The strengths that seem to underpin almost everything are:
• Self-awareness — knowing how you think, feel, and come across to others
• Curiosity — the engine behind learning new skills in the first place
• Empathy — the foundation of collaboration, leadership, and communication
• Discipline — the ability to follow through when motivation fades
• Resilience — the capacity to recover and keep growing

In a sense, the most durable professional skill is the ability to keep developing skills — which is really just curiosity and resilience working together.

What the Lists Get Wrong
Most “top skills” lists conflate several different things:
Skills (learnable capabilities, e.g. data analysis, public speaking) vs. Competencies (skills applied in context, e.g. presenting data persuasively to a sceptical board) vs. Strengths (natural tendencies that, when developed, produce excellence, e.g. a person who naturally synthesises complex information) vs. Character (who you are under pressure, e.g. do you tell hard truths? Do you protect people or yourself when it costs something?)

Most professional development focuses on skills and competencies. Research increasingly suggests that character and strengths are the actual differentiators at work. You can teach someone PowerPoint. You cannot easily teach Courage. Or Intellectual Honesty. Or Tolerance. Or Relational Intelligence.

But one superpower underlies all others. Adaptability: the ability to continuously discover, combine and evolve your strengths.

If you want to learn more, contact us today!

The Book that Shaped How We Help People Perform Better

Posted on by Margie Sheedy

At Mindavation, one of the most significant shifts in how we coach people and teams to perform better came from a single book: Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations. It didn’t just influence our thinking. It shaped a core part of our practise.

Scott’s central insight cuts through the noise: the conversation is the relationship. Not the memo. Not the cascade. Not the FAQ document on the intranet nobody reads. The real, human, sometimes uncomfortable exchange between two people.

That’s where trust is built or broken and where change actually takes hold.

We now use this thinking as a catalyst to help people have better conversations.

What we do differently
We now coach managers not just on what to communicate during change, but on how to show up in a conversation — present, honest, and willing to hear what’s really going on for their people.

Using the principles from Fierce Conversations, we help leaders and teams to:

  • Interrogate reality together rather than presenting a polished version of it and hoping people buy in
  • Come out from behind the role having genuine exchanges instead of performing a leadership script
  • Name the thing in the room because the issue that isn’t being spoken about is usually the one driving all the resistance
  • Make every conversation count whether it’s a one-on-one check-in or a high-stakes alignment session with the executive team

    • Where this shows up
    In practice, this looks like coaching a manager to sit with a team member’s real concerns rather than deflecting to process. It looks like facilitating a leadership team to have the alignment conversation they’ve been avoiding for six months. It looks like helping a change champion find the words for a truth their sponsor needs to hear.

    Scott asks a question we return to constantly in our coaching work: “What is the most important conversation you’ve been avoiding?”

    Teams fail because people stop, or never start, having the conversations that matter.

    At Mindavation, we believe that the human conversation at the heart of change is not a soft skill. It’s the whole game.

    If your managers are struggling to bring their teams through change, the question worth asking isn’t “what should we be communicating?”

    It’s “what conversation needs to happen — and why hasn’t it yet?”

    We can help you have Hard Conversations. Reach out to find out how.

    #ChangeManagement #Coaching #Leadership #Mindavation #FierceConversatins #ProfessionalDevelopment

    Mindavation partners with SDI® to Improve your Work Relationships

    Posted on by Margie Sheedy

    Have you ever wondered why two people with the best intentions can still frustrate each other at work?

    Do you sometimes struggle to understand what really drives your colleagues—or why they approach the same problem so differently?

    Workplace relationships are crucial to people’s wellbeing and performance at work.

    Mindavation can now help you find the answers.

    We are partnering with Crucial Learning to deliver Strength Deployment Inventory® (SDI®) assessments for individuals and teams.

    Uncover insights of human motives and strengths at one of our Strength Deployment Inventory® (SDI®) workshops and develop greater relationship intelligence at work. In this engaging session, you’ll complete the SDI assessment and explore your motives, strengths, and conflict patterns.

    You’ll gain powerful insights into how you and your colleagues approach work and relationships. With this understanding, you’ll learn practical ways to communicate more effectively, reduce friction, and build stronger working relationships.

    How is SDI® different?

    SDI® is different from other personality assessments because it is an engaging way to measure your motives, how you experience conflict, your strengths, and how your strengths can limit effectiveness when overdone. With these four views, it delivers personalised insights to help you and your teams build trust and form productive relationships.

    SDI® is trusted by some of the world’s leading brands, including Facebook, Toyota, Adobe, Boeing and Johnson & Johnson, to improve relationships in their organisations.

    If you want to find a clearer way to understand what drives people’s behaviour, especially under stress, and improve your relationships — and results, contact Mindavation today to learn more.