How knowing your values and being interested in the values of others helps you lead better and enjoy sustainable career success.
Values frequently come into the work we do with leaders who are having a challenging time at work or in combining work and home. We do a lot of work with professional women with children who place importance on achieving at work and value being present and emotionally available for their children which can sometimes […]
Promoted into a new peer group? 5 actions to settle quickly
Promoted into a new peer group? 5 actions to settle quickly This article was written for our subscribers. Subscribe to Pivotal quickly and for free. Article in a nutshell: Coaching speeds up newly promoted leaders finding their place and their voice in their new peer group by working through ‘how will I be perceived?’ worries. One of […]
Intensely disliking a colleague – avoid, have coaching or mediation?
I’ve never much liked having BBC Radio 4’s Nick Robinson in my kitchen first thing in the morning. He’s the smug, sneery-toned Today programme journalist who may well be as disliked by his co-presenter Emma Barnett as me. The Times – of which I am a subscriber – reported a few weeks ago that Emma […]
Success + positive impact: how comeback coaching supports returning remployees
How comeback coaching supports returning employees Success and positive impact: how comeback coaching supports returning employees was originally written for and published on HR Spotlight, February 2025. Picture yourself 30 minutes late for supper at a friend’s apartment. You’re one of nine guests and although you’re familiar with a few of them, the majority are […]
Reflections on Group Coaching Training
Jessica Chivers | December 2024. This ‘reflective essay’ was written at the end of a three month Professional Group Coaching programme with coaching psychologist Ana Paula Nacif. I share as a window on Group Coaching training and to inspire and encourage other executive coaches and coaching psychologists to keep developing their practice and their self-understanding. […]
How to make 1:1s less ‘meh’
This article first appeared in Talent Keeping 16/10/24, a fortnightly psychology-based newsletter for workplace performance, relationships and wellbeing. Subscribe here. How to make 1:1s less meh in a nutshell 1:1s have an almost magical ability to elevate a direct report’s mood, performance and wanting to stay part of your team, yet they’re often a dismal […]
Why strengths coaching when employees return to work from maternity, sick leave and other breaks?
Whilst I was peeling carrots last Sunday my daughter reflected on how happy she is that she’s been allowed to drop GCSE Spanish. She’d fallen behind in Y9 after three months medical leave and I mused that it was a shame because she’d always seemed to enjoy it. “No,” came the reply. “I was good […]
Boreout
What happens when we’re chronically bored at work? There was so much I wanted to pick up on at the end of my conversation with fire fighter Emma Young (COMEBACK COACH episode 86) about her experience of being taken off frontline duties when she was pregnant and returning to the fire service after maternity leave. […]
Managing rumination + keeping healthy habits when you’re consumed with problems at work
This is the transcript of episode 83 of COMEBACK COACH, the podcast for people returning to work after a break. Hello Bright Minds, I’m Jessica Chivers a coaching psychologist, the author of “Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work” and founder of The Talent Keeper Specialists. […]
Psychology of, and coaching through, redundancy
Psychology of, and coaching through, redundancy Redundancy and how our sense of psychological safety is affected be being ‘at risk’ of redundancy is top of mind this week. The Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023 comes into effect on Friday 6th April. My thanks to for the following people for their contributions in this piece: […]
