the Captain’s Blog
Build your skills in this leadership blog with regular insights from Ollie Phillips and the Optimist Performance team. Learn about Ollie’s dual passions of rugby and adventuring, and how they relate to a corporate director role with PwC, coaching and motivational speaking to teams. Plus you will find loads of useful growth tips, success stories, podcast links, videos and more to help you build your own leadership and teamwork skills.
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The power of shared experiences – By Optimist Performance
“I wanted to become a doctor because I wanted to serve others…I’ve shared the lives of patients and staff members of the hospital, I've laughed with them, I’ve cried with them, this is what I want to do with my life.” - Patch Adams Movie When we look back on our...
Poor managers are bad for your health – By Ollie Phillips
"Poor managers are bad for your health". This was just one of the findings from CIPD’s 2022 Health and wellbeing at work survey, which identified issues such as including heavy workloads and ‘management style’ as major causes of stress in the workplace. The CIPD’s...
What does Pilates have to do with performance? – By Anaya Grover (Founder of Men Do Pilates)
Your productivity and performance are inextricably linked to how stressed you are. Working in a high-pressure environment is extremely stressful and can create an acute stress response in our nervous system called flight or fight mode. For our ancient ancestors, the...
Disconnecting while on holiday – The ultimate guide – By Optimist Performance
Once again, it's that time of year when everyone scrolls through images of sunny beaches and longs to be there. However, genuinely disconnecting is not as easy as we may think. Most of us continue to respond to emails, check in on our teams, and obsess over current...
How to use time management skills to prepare for your holiday – By Optimist Performance
Time management is always important, but when holiday leave is fast approaching and our mountain of work doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller, managing our time becomes even more critical. According to a recent study, 82% of respondents said they work while on...
Are you allowing productivity within your team? – By Optimist Performance
Productivity becomes increasingly vital in a fast-paced workplace where we seem to be getting busier by the day. Just do a quick search on the internet and you’ll find about a thousand different tips on how to increase it. However, productivity is a highly personal...
Building a cohesive team can reduce loneliness – By Ollie Phillips
Most people have probably felt lonely during the past few years of lockdowns and restrictions on our social interactions. Across the country and across all age groups we are now just beginning to experience some other nasty side effects of the Covid pandemic. Our...
Who cares if leaders feel lonely? – by Optimist Performance
We talk a lot about how leaders need to make sure everyone in their team is happy and comfortable. We appreciate how important it is to create a culture that promotes well-being and performance, but while leaders take care of the people they lead, who is taking care...
What I have learned about stress & mental health since quitting rugby – By Ollie Phillips
As Stress Awareness Month comes to an end, it leads me to reflect on stress and the journey I have been on throughout my career. The topic of mental health and stress should not be taboo. We should feel empowered to be open when it comes to verbalising issues...
How can leaders help with work-related stress? – By Optimist Performance
Work-related stress affects a quarter of the population in the UK, making our jobs, along with health and money, one of the most stressful factors in our lives. There's also a link between the number of people who say they're stressed and the number of people who quit...
Why you shouldn’t completely avoid stress? – By Optimist Performance
We’ve all been bombarded with the dangerous effects of stress. But many don’t realise that stress can actually enable and encourage the best performance. Could we be less worried about stress if we believe it could help us achieve our goals, be more compassionate,...
Is your mindset stopping your growth? – By Optimist Performance
How many times have you thought or said things like "I'm too old to learn this," "I'll never be good enough," "I don't really need to know," "I'm not good at this type of thing," or "learning will take too long, and I don't have the time right now"? Learning something...