Join us for a captivating dive into "The Great EI Debate" and its ongoing relevance to leadership. We explore the controversy surrounding Emotional Intelligence (EI), touching upon its construct validity, measurement, and predictive power for workplace outcomes.

Proponents argue that the field has matured, citing meta-analyses showing EI's predictive strength for employee performance, organisational citizenship behaviour, and leader effectiveness, even after accounting for cognitive ability and personality. However, critics contend that EI measures are often flawed, meta-analyses can be problematic, and true incremental validity remains unproven. We discuss calls for improved research methodology and a shift towards understanding EI as distinct emotional abilities.

Ever wondered why our default is always to add, rarely to subtract? This episode unpacks compelling research demonstrating that people systematically overlook subtractive changes, consistently defaulting to additive transformations. We explore why this cognitive bias exists, leading us to accept adequate solutions while missing potentially superior alternatives. Discover the conditions that make us more likely to identify advantageous subtractive changes, including the presence of subtraction cues, multiple opportunities to recognise additive shortcomings, and operating under a lower cognitive load. Understand how this tendency impacts everything from overburdened schedules to institutional red tape and environmental challenges.

Tune into our latest episode as we dig into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), arguably the world's most popular psychology idea. Despite its immense popularity, used by millions globally, we uncover the significant theoretical flaws that exist beneath its surface. The MBTI, based on Carl Jung's theory, lacks agreement with known facts and data, suffers from internal contradictions, and lacks testability when evaluated against rigorous scientific criteria. We explore how its underlying assumptions, like the existence of "true types" and the nature of its dichotomies, are not empirically supported. Discover why, despite these criticisms, the MBTI continues to shape public perceptions of psychology.

Organisations are investing billions into leadership development, yet traditional "one size fits all" programmes often fall short. Today's leaders must master a wider array of skills, challenge outdated paradigms, and effectively manage polarities and paradoxes. The focus is shifting from "managing human capital" to "potentialising people", demanding personalised learning and building leadership capacities. We explore the Pro•Leader Intervention Program, a groundbreaking, individualised approach. It's based on leadership cycles, styles, and antecedent factors, integrating life skills training for real-world application. Discover why transforming leadership development is crucial for success.

Ready to stop guessing about emotional intelligence? This episode cuts through the hype to reveal its undeniable power in the workplace. We uncover the real reasons why mastering your emotional landscape, and understanding others', isn't just a 'nice-to-have'—it's a game-changer for individual performance, team cohesion, and tackling stress head-on. For coaches, leaders, and organisational psychologists, we'll clarify the critical difference between true emotional ability and broader social attributes, equipping you with sharper insights for more impactful interventions. Get ready for actionable strategies that will help you develop talent, forge powerhouse teams, and design systems that truly unlock emotional intelligence for tangible results in any real-world setting.

On this episode, we challenge conventional wisdom about leadership feedback. We uncover how your 'blind spots' – those aspects of your leadership others see but you don't – can actually positively correlate with leader effectiveness, a surprising finding that redefines how we view self-awareness. Prepare for another twist: for highly observable leadership behaviours, it's often the unique perspectives from specific rater groups like peers, board members, or direct reports that hold the most predictive power, rather than just the shared consensus. We'll also delve into why low-performing individuals are often profoundly unaware of their shortcomings, while top performers tend to underestimate their own abilities, offering crucial context for interpreting all feedback. This isn't just theory; it fundamentally shifts how organisations should approach leadership coaching and the design of effective feedback systems, urging us to leverage these nuanced insights for real-world impact.

In this episode, we dive into how our core values, passions, and personality quirks team up to fuel what drives us—from Schwartz’s universal values circle shaping our life compass and moral judgments (Schwartz, 1992) to the power of trait-like interests that reliably predict career success and satisfaction (Rounds & Su, 2014). You’ll also learn why distinguishing learned values (“ought” ideals) from innate traits can transform goal-setting strategies and why those stable, contextual interests often outpace personality in forecasting long-term performance. For coaches and curious minds alike, mastering these psychological building blocks isn’t just academic—it’s the secret sauce for crafting meaningful growth journeys in an ever-changing world.

This episode explores the deep connection between personality and leadership, using the Five-Factor Model as a key framework. It highlights the significant overlap among many leadership measures, suggesting this commonality largely reflects the positive emotional quality of the leader-follower relationship. The discussion also covers how personality assessment is used in executive coaching to boost self-awareness and encourage behavioural change through a collaborative approach. Furthermore, it examines how cultural contexts, like collectivism, can influence the predictive power of certain personality traits for leader effectiveness, and introduces Honesty-Humility as an important trait for predicting leadership beyond the Five-Factor Model. Ultimately, the podcast advocates for a simpler, behaviour-focused approach to understanding leadership, moving away from redundant leadership styles.

This episode explores a meta-analysis of 44 studies involving over 120,000 participants and how major life events are associated with personality change. It reveals reliable and specific, yet relatively small, effects on Big Five traits, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Changes were larger and more consistent in the work domain (e.g., graduation, first job) than in the love domain (e.g., new relationship, marriage). Self-esteem and life satisfaction showed more consistent changes than Big Five traits. While gain-based events had more frequent effects in work, love-related gain events showed larger short-term impacts, and loss-based events had larger long-term consequences. The study highlights the nuanced and specific ways life transitions shape individuals.

We're unpacking a vital new study from the Journal of Applied Psychology on 360-degree feedback: "Does What Others Can(not) See Really Matter?" We delve into the Leadership Arena–Reputation–Identity (LARI) model, which precisely captures shared and unique perspectives in multisource ratings, akin to the Johari window. This research, involving 491 senior executives, explores how different viewpoints (Arena, Reputation, Identity) predict leader effectiveness. Discover key insights for coaches, including how to interpret "blind spots" (Reputation) and the distinct value of various rater groups like Direct Reports and Board Members, helping you move beyond simple averages in debriefing feedback.