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42% of Employee Turnover Is Preventable – Coaching is the answer!

According to Gallup’s latest research, here’s what’s actually driving employees out the door — and why many leaders still don’t see it...

1. People Don’t Feel Cared About as Humans This is the biggest one — and the most ignored.  When employees feel invisible, undervalued, or treated like interchangeable parts, disengagement is inevitable. Feeling genuinely cared about by a manager isn’t “soft leadership" - it's effective leadership. John Maxwell framed this as "be devoted to your people, but expect excellence".
2. Weak Management is Eroding Commitment  Many managers were promoted because they were great individual contributors — not because they know how to lead people. The result? • Poor communication • Little to no coaching • Recognition that’s either rare or nonexistent
3. People are Guessing What Matters Confusion kills motivation. When people don’t understand what’s expected of them — or how their work connects to something bigger — they stop caring. Purpose doesn’t come from mission statements. It comes from clarity. When you don't have clarity your workload becomes overwhelming leading to stress.
4. Personal Growth Has Flatlined People aren’t just quitting jobs. They’re quitting stagnation. When learning stops, engagement fades. Employees want to grow skills, expand responsibility, and see a future.
5. Burnout Is Being Treated Like a Badge of Honor Overwork, constant urgency, unrealistic workloads, and zero flexibility are pushing even high performers to rethink everything. Burnout isn’t a resilience problem. It’s a systems problem. When stress becomes normal our personal productivity and our leadership effectiveness are significantly reduced. If you are working 70+ hours per week, you have probably achieved about as much as if you had worked 55 hours.

The Art of Giving and Receiving Advice

  One of my favourite pieces of research is the finding that people giving advice are more likely to change their behaviour than those receiving it. This is because the person giving advice is actually thinking about it and processing the information at a deeper level. The person receiving the advice is just hearing it. And as well know, most of what we hear we forget. Harvard Business Review nails it: Great advice isn’t a monologue — it’s a brainstorm.You don’t need to be a guru. You need to be a collaborator. Start Doing This:

• Ask questions before you offer solutions.
• Share your experience with humility and empathy.
• Help the person tailor your advice to their own messy, real-life situation.

• Launch into advice without listening first.
• Assume your advice is a perfect fit.

Do you need wellbeing or willpower to achieve your goals?

  This is a fascinating study tracking people's will power and wellbeing over time. Increases in well being preceded increases in will power rather than vice versa! A summary of the article can be found here. Often when I am asked to coach someone it is because they can't see their way out of their current situation - and that's leading them to be stressed. After we establish where they want to get to we then look at where they are currently - this often includes poor wellbeing. I start them off on a few basic things to improve their self care. When we catch up the next time they have had some wins on the self care front and are feeling better about their problem as well. I always thought that the process of them getting some small wins created a positive impact that started to help them see they can control more than they realised (getting them into the influence part of the circle of influence). Based on this research, perhaps their self control/will power also improves with increases in wellbeing? So how do we make some changes to improve our wellbeing without having willpower! The answer is start with something so small that your brain can't talk you out of it. Here's a short video on forming habits - the domino's analogy is a great way of thinking about achieving big goals by starting really small! We also need to have something to remind us to do it. The Power of habit cue, routine and reward is a great way of kick starting a new habit and having the tools to make changes.

Want to improve employee wellbeing? Try listening to them!

A recent communication blog from the Glasers, they reminded us of the power of listening to improve employee well being. Rosalind Chow in Inc pointed out that only 20% of employees typically participate in wellbeing programmes. Rosalind suggested making listening a habit through:

• Making time for real conversations. Block space for check-ins that aren’t rushed or transactional. An Executive I coached recently was saying he was always late for meetings because he took the time to talk to his people. His PA was always chasing him and trying to get him to the next meeting on time. Rather than not stop and chat we talked about having 45 minute meetings that gave him time to have the checkins and still be on time.
• Practice active listening. Ask follow-ups, reflect what you heard, and show you understood.
• Follow through. If someone shares a concern, act — or explain why you can’t. This is a key part of the trust equation!
• Lead by example. Your behaviour sets the tone for the entire team.

How Psychology Can Improve Leadership

We recently had the pleasure of hosting a number of our amazing clients at our very first Strategic People Group breakfast event. As Organisational Psychologists, this topic is one we hold particularly close to our hearts: How Psychology Can Improve Leadership.

We’re proud to share that SPG has recently passed a significant milestone — working with over 1,600 leaders across 34 organisations. It has been a privilege to play a part in developing leaders at all levels, and our breakfast session captured some of the insights we believe matter most for the future of leadership.

We explored why strengths matter now more than ever in a world that continues to grow in complexity and volatility. As Gilbert Enoka so perfectly puts it:

“Leadership… it’s not about you, but it’s all about you.”

In dynamic contexts, leaders are required to be both humble and open, while simultaneously providing the confidence, stability and direction their people need to navigate uncertainty. That's a tough psychologically! Strengths and purpose act as anchors — enabling leaders to show just enough vulnerability to bring warmth to relationships, while still demonstrating credibility. Together, warmth and credibility account for 80% of the judgments people make about us, and may well be at the heart of what we think of as “charisma”.

Our guests left with some reflective homework, and we hope they’re already completed that!

As we look back on the year that’s been, we want to again thank our wonderful clients — many of whom have become friends — for your ongoing support and partnership. We genuinely love working alongside you to make things better: for you as leaders, for your teams, and for your organisations.

Wishing you all a safe and restful Christmas and New Year break

Nga mihi,

Andrea, John and Tara