Are Irish workers discontented?

Do you have a bad relationship with your boss? If so, you’re not alone. 3 in every 4 workers have or would consider leaving a job due to a difficult relationship with a boss. More than 9 in 10 say workplace relationships and conditions have an impact on how they view their job, and at least 1 in 10 workers do not feel valued by their employer.

The Great Resignation: 3/4 of Workers Would Consider Leaving Jobs

The Great Resignation is in full swing worldwide, with millions quitting their positions. Many workers are getting fed up with their jobs, and a difficult relationship with upper management is a major factor in this.

Almost 6 in 10 people (59%) say that the relationship they have with their boss has a major impact on their how they feel about their job, so much so that 75% say they either have left or would consider leaving, if that working relationship became too difficult.

65% say the relationship they have with their team has a big influence on their work-life experience and their attitude towards their job.

Do you feel you are valued by your employer?

These were the responses.

Yes very – 35%

Somewhat – 50%

No, not at all – 15%

These are among the findings of Taxback.com’s All-Ireland Employee Survey, which surveyed the attitudes of 1,200 employees in SMEs throughout the country.

The survey also found that workplace relations are likely to have a greater impact on female employees, with more women than men respondents saying that the relationship they have with their boss and their team affects the attitude they have towards their job “a lot”.

Key findings from the Taxback.com All-Ireland Employee Survey include:

10% more women than men say their relationship with their manager affects them ‘a lot’

Marginally more women (37%) than men (34%) have actually left their job because of a difficult relationship with their boss

More men (9%) than women (5%) said they would not consider leaving because of a difficult relationship with a boss

85% of workers feel valued by their employer to varying degrees – 35% say they feel “very” valued; 50% say they feel “somewhat” valued

12% of men say they don’t feel valued at all – but this rises to 16% of women

Just over 1 in 10 workers do not feel valued by their employer

To what extent does the quality of the support you receive from your manager affect your attitude towards your job?

Overall Male Female A lot 59% 54% 63% A little 33% 38% 30% Not at all 8% 8% 7%

To what extent does your relationship with your team affect your attitude towards your job?

Overall Male Female A lot 65% 63% 67% A little 26% 28% 24% Not at all 9% 9% 9%

Have you ever left a job, or would you ever consider leaving, if you had a difficult relationship with your boss?

Overall Male Female Yes, I have left a job due to difficult work relations with a boss 36% 34% 37% Yes, I would consider leaving for this reason 39% 39% 40% No, I haven’t left a job due to difficult work relations with a boss 18% 18% 18% No, I would not consider leaving for this reason 7% 9% 5%

Speaking of some of the findings on employee attitudes towards management, Barry Cahill, Director of the Employee Wellbeing Service at Taxback.com, said: “People spend a huge chunk of their lives working and for many, what goes on in work can often impact their emotions, and feelings outside of work”.

He continued: “So, it wasn’t altogether too surprising to learn that 39% would consider leaving a job due to a difficult relationship with a boss. What was concerning however was that a further 36% have actually left a job in the past for this reason”.

Do workers feel valued?

Feeling valued in your job can have a major effect on your motivation to continue working there. Many employees draw from those in more senior positions for motivation and direction, and if that relationship is poor, it can make people feel undervalued.

It is recommended that employers nurture a working environment that makes every employee feel valued, rew...

A step forward in eBike technology.

Swytch Technology have announced that they are about to launch a world-first, pocket-sized eBike battery that can turn any bike into an electric bike.

The new Swytch eBike conversion kit, launching in August 2022, features a pocket-sized battery called the “Power Pack” which is similar in size to a large smart-phone. The battery provides 250W of power and enough range for your daily commute, whilst weighing only 700g (1.5lb) and can be recharged in around 1 hour.

Pocket-Sized Battery Can Turn Any Regular Bike into eBike

Swytch believes that eBikes should be lightweight, affordable and work like a regular bike whilst having electric functionality. The new Swytch Kit is the result of world-class engineering and design to create a truly revolutionary product that brings affordable cutting-edge technology to the eBike market.

The key advantages noted about the new conversion kit are the small and sleek size of the pocket-sized eBike battery, the battery being flight-safe, meaning it can be taken in carry-on luggage, and the low price point, which is around 4 times lower than that of an eBike with equivalent specifications.

It is also good for the environment, as customers will be able to continue using their existing bike, meaning that it will reduce waste.

What is Swytch?

Swytch is already a leader in the eBike market through the success of their existing version of the Swytch Kit (launched in 2019) which contains a “palm-sized” battery weighing 2kg (4.4lb). The Swytch Kit is already one of the best-selling eBike products in the UK, having sold over 9,000 units in 2020, making it responsible for over 5% of the entire eBike market by volume.

To date, Swytch has sold almost 40,000 units of the original Swytch Kit to customers all over the world, with over 50% of sales being to international customers, primarily in the EU and USA. Now, with the introduction of their new kit, featuring a pocket sized battery, Swytch anticipates that global sales volumes will grow to over 50,000 units annually by 2023.

Swytch has recently raised £3.8M of equity investment, primarily from climate tech and sustainability focused investors.

Swytch’s largest investors are Green Angel Syndicate and Calyx Venture Fund with the remainder of their funding coming from One Planet Capital, Startup Funding Club, members of the Angels Den, Wealth Club, and Southern Angel Investors Club (SAIC), plus a number of other private investors.

Swytch’s latest round of funding will be used primarily to invest in people and grow Swytch’s team, as well as to scale up their manufacturing and supply chain to increase production capacity in order to keep pace with their rapid growth in demand.

An eBike for the future?

Swytch’s CTO and Co-Founder, Dmitro Khroma comments, “our new improved Swytch Kit is a game-changer. It is going to totally disrupt the eBike industry because it is so much lighter, smaller and more affordable than anything else out there”. Whilst Swytch’s CEO and Co-Founder, Oliver Montague, comments, “our job as innovators is to make environmentally-friendly technology that people want to use because it is cool! That way, a global change to a more sustainable way of life will happen naturally”.

The new Swytch Kit will be available to pre-order following the official public launch next month (May 2022). To learn more and watch Swytch’s pre-launch video visit www.swytchbike.com/comingsoon/

OFGEM has granted MaresConnect an Interconnector Licence between Wales and Ireland. Ofgem’s licence grants MaresConnect the right to own and operate an electricity interconnector project in the UK and provides certain associated powers as a statutory undertaker.

750MW MaresConnect links UK and Irish Power Grids

MaresConnect is a proposed 750MW, subsea and underground cable interconnector, with associated converter stations, between the existing electricity grids in Ireland and Great Britain. This would be operated respectively by EirGrid in Ireland and National Grid Electricity Transmission in the UK.

The project will link Dublin, Ireland and Bodelwyddan transmission substation in Denbighshire, Wales. Further details can be found at the project’s website: www.maresconnect.ie

MaresConnect secured a 750MW grid connection at National Grid’s Bodelwyddan substation in 2018 and procurement for the major onshore survey contracts is currently under way. Following the current development, the project is expected to have a three-year construction programme leading to operations in 2027.

MaresConnect is being developed by Foresight Group’s energy transition fund, the international Foresight Energy Infrastructure Partners, and Etchea Energy, a London and Dublin-based energy project development firm.

What will this mean for Irish and British consumers?

MaresConnect is a proposed 750MW electricity interconnector linking the power markets of Ireland and Great Britain. The cable route is approximately 245km underground and under the sea between its Irish and Welsh stations.

As part of Europe’s 2022 Ten Year Network Development Plan (“TYNDP”), MaresConnect is considered one of Europe’s most important energy infrastructure projects that will form part of a system that is secure, sustainable and affordable, and that integrates Ireland’s abundant renewable energy resources, thereby offering an essential contribution to the European Green Deal.

With the UK’s current energy crisis, this could be a major step in the right direction.

As part of the UK government’s energy policy to secure 18GW of electricity interconnector capacity by 2030, Ofgem will invite new interconnector projects to apply for Cap & Floor regulation in a third window over the summer. Earlier this month Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications launched a consultation on Ireland’s electricity interconnector policy to address Ireland’s increased climate and energy ambitions.

Simon Ludlam, CEO of MaresConnect, said: “Securing an interconnector licence is an important step for us to position the project for its application for Ofgem’s third Cap & Floor window and to advance our route planning strategy and engagement with community stakeholders. MaresConnect will increase interconnector capacity between Ireland and GB by 50% and make a material contribution to Ireland achieving its 2030 environmental targets as well as providing a cost-efficient export route for Ireland’s growing offshore wind sector.”

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An interesting look at animals and their interior world and the types of consciousness they may have. The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness by David M Peña-Guzmán. Published by Princeton University Press 2nd August 2022 | Hardback | £20.00. See more about the book here.

When Animals Dream by David M. Peña-Guzmán, reviewed

This book tackles an interesting concept, which, in one way you might argue we can never really know about. The author takes a while to make the case for why animals do dream, slightly longer than perhaps needed. Surely anyone who has owned a pet can tell you that animals dream, when your dog is both clearly fast asleep and yet, whining, barking, wincing, in their sleep, they are clearly replaying, reliving or simply dreaming about things they have encountered in their waking world.

The author then does cite the example of octopi, who, while asleep, were observed to go through the sequence of colours and motions that they would have done while waking to stalk, attack and then eat prey. There have been plenty of studies to show that octopi are intelligent, so the fact that they dream too seems highly plausible. The question that the book then struggles to grapple with, is, where do we go with this knowledge? As we still struggle to know what they are exactly dream about, and what this says about their wider intelligence.

The author does use the concept of dreaming as one way to validate and enhance the concept of the importance of respecting and not mistreating animals. When one ape recounts the horrific experience of having their mother killed by hunters and then being passed into slavery, it of course validates that animals have a consciousness and an innate right to be respected for their own existence and it would of course be a lot better if humans didn’t torture, kill and eat them. You could say that research like this nudges us further along the path towards veganism, but this is not necessarily a series of dots being joined up in this book.

This is an interesting book, but it is perhaps the book before the book that crosses over and becomes a massive popular science hit. Naturally if it helps increase awareness about why we should treat animals fairly and kindly then it has had some impact, but it perhaps leaving you with as many, although different, questions as when you started the book.

More about the book

Are humans the only dreamers on Earth? What goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? When Animals Dream brings together behavioural and neuroscientific research on animal sleep with philosophical theories of dreaming. It shows that dreams provide an invaluable window into the cognitive and emotional lives of nonhuman animals, giving us access to a seemingly inaccessible realm of animal experience.

David Peña-Guzmán uncovers evidence of animal dreaming throughout the scientific literature, suggesting that many animals run “reality simulations” while asleep, with a dream-ego moving through a dynamic and coherent dreamscape. He builds a convincing case for animals as conscious beings and examines the thorny scientific, philosophical, and ethical questions it raises. Once we accept that animals dream, we incur a host of moral obligations and have no choice but to rethink our views about who animals are and the interior lives they lead.

A mesmerizing journey into the otherworldly domain of nonhuman consciousness, When Animals Dream carries profound implications for contemporary debates about animal cognition, animal ethics, and animal rights, challenging us to regard animals as beings who matter, and for whom things matter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David M. Peña-Guzmán is associate professor of humanities and liberal studies at San Francisco State University. He specializes in critical animal studies, the history and philosophy of science, and contemporary European philosophy. He is a co-author of Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief and co-host of the popular Overthink podcast.

See more bo...

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar officially opened Future Mobility Campus Ireland (FMCI) in Shannon, County Clare, on Friday, 15th July, 2022. The FCMI is Ireland’s first full-scale development centre and test-bed for mobility technologies. Based in Shannon, the facility focuses on technology research and development spanning ground and air uses.

An investment of around €5.5m has been made in the state-of-the-art commercial campus which is stimulating international investment and job creation, as well as consolidating Ireland’s reputation for leadership in connected, automated, electrified and shared mobility solutions.

Future Mobility : What is the FCMI?

FMCI is the first complete development centre and full-scale test bed in Ireland, based in the Shannon Freezone and operating across Europe. The facility focuses on comprehensive mobility technologies that span both ground (autonomous driving, micro-mobility, smart cities, V2X communications) and air (unmanned drones, eVTOL, AAM, UTM) uses.

The commercially-viable facility is supporting a range of parties, from individual researchers to multi-national corporations, to start-ups and Government entities, to conceive, develop, trial, and deploy societally-transformative transport solutions in Shannon and across Ireland.

Cutting-edge solutions, straight out of Shannon

Projects involving unmanned drones, electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL), Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), autonomous driving, micro-mobility, smart cities, and V2X vehicle communication systems are accommodated.

Congratulating all those involved in the establishment of FMCI, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said:“We want Ireland to be at the cutting-edge of new technologies, and that means we must continually invest in research, testing new ideas, seeing what works and how it can be improved”.

Future mobility is a particularly important and interesting area, given our need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, while at the same time making our cities more liveable. This is a particular challenge given our population is rising.The very best of luck to the Future Mobility Campus Ireland team and their partners; I look forward to seeing what’s in store”, Varadkar concluded.

Enterprise in tech

Funded by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment through Enterprise Ireland, and financial contributions from the local authorities of Clare County Council, Limerick City and County Council, the Western Development Commission and industry partners, the unique FMCI campus at Shannon has state-of-the-art facilities for aerospace and automotive research and development, including a recently opened Advanced Air Mobility Hub.

The facility supports a range of parties including large and small-scale enterprise, from individual researchers to multi-national corporations, start-ups and Government entities.

Partners consist of companies such as Jaguar Land Rover, Shannon Group, Cisco, Valeo, Seagate, Red Hat, Taoglas, Mergon, Exida, Analog Devices, General Motors, Pipiper, Collins Aerospace and Avtrain.

Societally transformative transport solutions can be conceived, developed, trialled and deployed in Shannon for applications across Ireland, Europe and the wider world, according to Russell Vickers, CEO of Future Mobility Campus Ireland.

“Our unique facility in Shannon is facilitating safe, cost-effective and sustainable transport of freight and people now and into the future. What we and our clients do here contributes to socio-economic development and technological advancement that has extensive business, public service and societal applications”, said Mr Vickers.

EU and Irish collaboration

In June, a European consortium coordinated by FMCI was approved and funded by the EU to develop a ‘Digital Sky Demonstrator’ for aerial Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) systems. The ground-breaking new research was a major vote of confidence in Ireland’s resourcing of advanced air mobility development, and in the industry operators and exper...

Ukrainian-founded Preply reached a record-breaking milestone in the company’s funding history today, raising $50 million USD in its series C, amassing more than USD $100 million in investments since inception.

Despite the war in Ukraine, founders Kirill Bigai, Dmytro Voloshyn and Serge Lukyanov have succeeded in building a truly global business, expanding the team to over 400 employees of 58 different nationalities across 30 countries worldwide. From an education startup, Preply has become a global e-learning powerhouse that connects the world’s largest live language learning community.

Ukrainian Business Preply Builds Online Learning Marketplace

The Series C round was led by Silicon Valley based Owl Ventures, the largest Education Technology investor in the world. Previous investors Diligent Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Educapital, Evli Growth Partners, Przemyslaw Gacek, co-founder of Grupa Pracuj also participated, as well as new investors such as Swisscom Ventures, and Orbit Capital.

What is Preply?

Preply is a massive online language learning marketplace connecting over 32,000 tutors teaching 50 languages to hundreds of thousands of learners in 180 countries worldwide. With student-tutor matches being suggested through a machine-learning algorithm, recommended tutors create customized lesson plans to suit the learner’s budget, schedule, and current knowledge.

Preply was founded in 2012 by the Ukrainian team of Kirill Bigai, Serge Lukyanov, and Dmytro Voloshyn. Today, the company has over 400 employees of 58 different nationalities. Preply is a US company with employees based in 30 countries across Europe, USA, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Preply’s Growth and the Market Trajectory

The Preply marketplace pairs hundreds of thousands of learners with more than 32,000 tutors teaching over 50 languages. Over the past year, Preply has tripled the size of its B2B language learning business which now counts Bytedance (Tiktok), Mercedes and McKinsey amongst its customers.

On the consumer side, the number of people using the Preply app has grown 4x over the last two years and in many geographies overall users have almost doubled year on year.

The number of students being taught on the platform now exceeds the number of students taught in Ivy League universities as the platform plans to conquer the growing online language learning market, set to reach $47 billion by 2025.

Kirill Bigai, Co-founder and CEO of Preply, said, “I am indescribably proud of what the Preply team has achieved. We have become the world’s leading brand in live language classes and the platform of choice for so many tutors who have decided to teach online”.

He added: “With the additional funding, we plan to continue growing our footprint in the US and Europe by doubling down on AI-based matching and delivering on our promise to connect the largest live language learning community in the world.”

Ross Darwin, Principal at Owl Ventures said: “We’re thrilled to partner with Preply on their next phase of growth. We’re particularly excited by the continued momentum of the consumer business as well as its new language learning offering for companies, increasingly reliant on international workforces.”

Preply in Ireland

Around 230 Preply tutors were born in Ireland. However, the majority of Irish tutors are members of Ireland’s large diaspora, with 59% of them teaching from another country, such as Spain, the UK, Thailand, Italy, France, or Vietnam.

Their students come from a variety of places, from Italy to Brazil, Russia to Spain, and Poland to France. Over 100 nationalities are currently being taught by Irish tutors. One Irish tutor even had 137 students on Preply in 2021 alone.

Supporting Ukraine through business

Though Preply’s main offices are in the U.S. & Europe, the founders hail from Kyiv. Over the last few months, the company’s global workforce have launched a number of meaningful initiatives to support Ukraine.

This includes a ‘Messages to Ukraine’ campaign,...

Guest Article by Phil Teare, founder of PureVolt.

2022 sees the long-awaited rollout of feed-in tariffs in Ireland. At long last, homes with solar panels will get paid for the excess electricity they send back to the grid. This seismic change in the solar panel industry has been touted as a game changer. We have been looking into the numbers to see if the claims stack up.

What Feed-In Tariffs Mean for Solar in Ireland

Most people with solar panels on their homes will produce more electricity than they can use during the summer months. Before 2022, this excess electricity was just given back to the grid for free. In the days of continually rising energy prices, this need to give it away for free has not been popular.

The government introduced legislation to force all utility companies to start paying homeowners for the electricity they give to the grid. Officially, this is called the Clean Export Guarantee (CEG) tariff.

This extra enticement for more people to get solar is all part of the government’s push to get more clean electricity onto the grid as part of Ireland’s net-zero commitments.

How much difference do feed-in tariffs make?

In short, a lot – 21% better payback is a typical figure from our calculations.

Let’s take a 3-bed house in Ireland with 4.1 kWh of solar panels. The payback period – the time it takes the solar panels to ultimately pay for themselves – is 6 years 10 months, which is about typical. The feed-in tariff reduces this payback period by 14 months, to just 5 years 8 months. And over the 25-year lifespan of the solar panels, that same homeowner will end up with over €6000 more in their back pocket.

Getting the payback period to within the five-year ballpark has been considered a holy grail of solar, suddenly opening up solar panels as a choice for more and more homeowners.

The utility company question

Each utility company has been given the power to set its own rates, as long as those rates pass the “at the market rate” test.

SSE Airtricity are offering 14 cent/unit, and Pinergy 13.5 cents/unit. None of the other major utility companies have announced their rates as yet (July 2022).

Many utility companies have been dragging their heels on the topic, whilst some have reportedly been engaging with the CRU (Commission for Regulation of Utilities) to see just how low they are allowed to set the rates to still pass the “at the market rate” test their offerings have to meet.

It looks like most companies will be coming in at between 25% and 50% of the price at which you buy electricity. We are hearing some companies considering rates around 8 cents kWh, and some have even been looking at paying nothing at all.

Only time will tell if homes with solar panels start voting with their feet and changing suppliers to chase the best feed-in tariffs. It will be interesting to see where the dust settles, whilst some companies will be paying almost double the rate of others.

The end of solar storage batteries?

One interesting consequence is for solar storage batteries. Once a popular add-on to solar panel installations, their return on investment has been declining over recent years.

2020 saw the removal of the grant payment toward solar storage batteries. The grants are now all towards solar panels only.

Still, batteries had a good economic argument when you were giving away electricity for free, just to buy back the power later that same day at the full rate. But now you get paid for electricity, the financial argument for batteries is diminished.

A solar storage battery add-on, that might have had a payback in 6 to 7 years beforehand, now might take 12 to 14 years to pay for itself. And considering an average battery has a lifespan of 10 to 12 years, the economics are suddenly stacked against battery storage systems.

Batteries also add a lot to the upfront costs for the homeowner too. You not only need to buy the battery itself, but you need a more expensive inverter (the device that connects your panels and battery...

A VR Experience

The Goethe-Institut Irland has announced that it will host a travelling virtual reality (VR) exhibition at its premises on Merrion Square, Dublin, which invites visitors to reimagine the future of libraries as interactive spaces that offer multisensory forms of storytelling.

Entitled ‘The Infinite Library’, the multimedia installation offers visitors an immersive experience, using VR, holograms, 3D-printed objects, a QR code game and audio-visual works. The installation’s central piece is a vast VR library, set in a cave, in which visitors can explore a series of smaller sub-libraries, dedicated to topics as diverse as Polynesian navigation, South-Indian puppetry and European alchemy.

Goethe-Institute Future of Libraries VR Exhibition

Director of the Goethe-Institut Irland, Franziska Höfler, added: “As a cultural institute with a busy library, we are excited to reimagine what a library visit in the future might entail. Experience and knowledge were recorded and exchanged long before the advent of books and other media, and it is inspiring to explore how, through the use modern technology, libraries around the world might evolve in the years to come.”

What is the Goethe-Institut Irland?

The Goethe-Institut is Germany’s cultural institute, which is active in 98 countries worldwide. It opened its doors in Ireland 61 years ago, in 1961, and is based at 37 Merrion Square in Dublin.

It operates from a European perspective and works independently, without political ties. Its objectives are to promote the knowledge of the German language, foster cultural collaboration and exchange, and convey a contemporary image of Germany.

It does this through maintaining and building relationships with partners from the cultural and educational sectors in Ireland.

The institute runs an extensive cultural and events programme, offers language courses and qualifications, and an on-site and online library, which combined holds more than 30,000 titles. These can be accessed by anyone, free of charge, once registered.

Reimagining the Library

The Infinite Library was created and produced by the Goethe-Institut and Max Mueller Bhavan in New Delhi alongside the Prague-based production company, Daisy with Rider, and the Berlin-based studio for documentary VR, AR, and interactive content, High Road Stories. This was in conjunction with internationally renowned multimedia artist and creative director of the exhibition, Mika Johnson.

Commenting ahead of the exhibition opening at the Goethe-Institut in Dublin, Mr Johnson said: “The Infinite Library seeks to embed human stories within a much grander narrative, one which includes the birth of our planet and the evolution of all life forms.

“It reimagines what we generally understand a library to be and offers a glimpse of what a library might look like in the future. The virtual library space at the heart of the installation is conceived as a living organism, a kind of embodiment of knowledge that introduces itself to visitors personally before inviting them to explore its house”, he added.

The Infinite Library will open at the Goethe-Institut Ireland on Saturday the 23rd July and run for one week, until Friday, 29th July, excluding Sunday, 24th July, when the exhibition will be closed. The exhibition is free to visit and all are welcome.

Leadership

Trust is a choice.

I was once convinced that others to a large extent defined my capacity to trust. However, when my leadership matured, I learned that I choose trust just as I may choose safe leadership. It is a matter of personal decision-making.

We may be inclined to think of trust as something we primarily place in others but in fact, there are two other places in which we choose to put and nurture our trust: in ourselves, in others and finally in whatever we know is bigger than us, regardless of how much it is beyond our rational understanding.

Your leadership effectiveness and ability to be a bold leader are heavily affected by each of these three layers of trust: integrity, intimacy and allowing.

Integrity

It is my firm belief that if such a complex matter as leadership ever needs to be reduced to one thing only, that would be our ability to act with integrity.

Integrity starts with trusting ourselves first. It is our trust in ourselves, which will inspire others to trust in us, and true trust is only truly given to us by others when we genuinely trust in ourselves.

This is how our self-trust paves the way for our trustworthiness.

Trusting ourselves allows other people to trust in us too, and bringing authenticity and values to our work is contagious. Because it matters to you it will matter to the other people around you. If we give ourselves permission to bring our entire self, unapologetically, and take responsibility for our impact and our values, we will be more able to stand up for what we believe in and look ourselves in the mirror.

Intimacy

Intimacy is about showing yourself truthfully and being trusted for it. It is also linked with our capacity to fully trust the other.

In order to build trust in ourselves, we also need to build trust in others and gain their trust in return. Building a culture of Bold Leadership depends heavily on flexing our trust muscles and empowering others to be their best, reflective, learning selves as well, and opening a conversation is a crucial aspect of that intimacy.

If we surround ourselves with trusted people who can call each other forth to our individual and collective brilliance, we can all grow through our relationships, and success becomes absolutely tied to other people, our interactions and collaborations.

If we operate from a space of trust and belief in others we can build a safety net for all, allowing for mistakes and growing together, with an open framework for reflection, awareness and critical dialogue.

Without intimacy, leadership and our relationships become transactional rather than relational; all head and no heart, and are unlikely to yield the strongest results.

Allowing

We can’t know everything, be everywhere or do everything on our own.

Bold leadership means trusting that other people’s greatness is part of the equation and having the ability to let go of some of the control in order to work together. This means essentially working from a place of trust, as opposed to fear.

When you are actively aware of the trust in yourself and the others, you become more aware of a bigger picture, of what is happening out there.

We are all agents in a wider context. How are we a part of the world around us?

What is our contribution? How are we shaping culture?

Part of the fabric of trust-building is having faith in the wider unknown and those things that are outside of our control.

Building on trust in all its forms and acknowledging that we co-create the world means being actively part of a whole, which allows for accountability to the entire organisation, more empowerment and more shared purpose for our communities.

If we make the active choice to trust we can become better and bolder leaders for the future.

Zana Goic Petricevic is an internationally certified leadership coach and consultant. She is the founder of Bold Leadership Culture, and the author of Bold Reinvented: Next level leading with Courage, Consciousness and Conviction.

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Providing technical and technological support to a vast range of customers is no easy job. It is even harder and stressing for the CTO of a fairly new company to get it all together, manage their team and solve the issues of the clients. This is exactly what Nick Drouet has been doing.

Nick is a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and a Distinguished Engineer for Kyndryl United Kingdom and Ireland. In today’s podcast, he talks to Tanjima Elham Khandaker about his work and experience and why more people should build their career in the field of technology. Nick also shares his thoughts and steps he has taken for the LGBTQ+ as a member and advocate of the community.

LGBTQ+ issues and diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, Nick Drouet

About Nick:

Nick Drouet is a CTO for Kyndryl United Kingdom and Ireland, a role in which he serves as the glue which binds the company’s technical groups together. Drouet was selected to be part of the inaugural class of Kyndryl Distinguished Engineers, leading innovators who are shaping the future of Kyndryl and driving change in the industry.

About Tanjima:

Tanjima Elham Khandaker is an MA student of Journalism, studying at the University of Roehampton, and an intern at the Irish Tech News. She is from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Back in her country, Tanjima worked for six and a half years as a journalist, sub-editor and senior sub-editor with a TV channel, an online news portal and a daily newspaper. She plans on becoming a better-skilled newsperson by pursuing further studies in the UK. Tanjima is a tech-enthusiast and dreams of walking on the moon one day.

See more podcasts here.

More about Irish Tech News

Irish Tech News are Ireland’s No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland’s No.1 Tech Podcast too.

You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here:

If you’d like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at [email protected] now to discuss.

Irish Tech News have a range of services available to help promote your business. Why not drop us a line at [email protected] now to find out more about how we can help you reach our audience.

You can also find and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.