Saying yes to one thing leaves less time for something else. So how do you decide what deserves your attention?

In the first Listener Questions episode of Season 5, Cathal Quinlan and Annette Sloan revisit Caroline Webb’s interview and the ideas in her book Leadership Intelligence.

Annette shares three tools she wants to use: Yes-Grow-No for deciding what to take on, hand over or decline; ACORN for working through important decisions; and the bridge model for feedback and difficult stakeholder relationships. Cathal adds his own picks from the book.

We also open up the season to you. From giving feedback to rebuilding after redundancy, tell us which workplace topics you want us to explore.

Send us a question, a career dilemma or an idea for a future Listener Questions episode.

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Season 5 starts with the guest who started it all. Caroline Webb is back, tackling a question every overloaded leader needs to answer: what should you stop doing yourself?

Caroline joined Better at Work for our very first episode in 2022. Now she returns with Leadership Intelligence and a practical conversation about the shift from doing great work yourself to helping other people do theirs.

She and Cathal Quinlan explore what deserves a deliberate yes, what someone else could learn to do, and how to say no when something else matters more.

In this episode:

• Make time for the leadership work only you can do.

• Use Yes/Grow/No to decide what to keep, delegate and decline.

• Work through ACORN: Aim, Criteria, Options, Rating and Next steps.

• Give specific feedback without jumping to conclusions.

• Use Brag and Borrow to share progress and ask for help.

• Work through difficult stakeholder relationships and reset under pressure.

Caroline is a leadership coach, economist and author of How to Have a Good Day and Leadership Intelligence.

Find Caroline: https://carolinewebb.co/

Leadership Intelligence: https://carolinewebb.co/books/leadership-intelligence/

Welcome back to Better at Work. Follow the show in your podcast app and join us for Season 5.

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Toughing it out is not resilience. Chronic pressure without recovery drains people, and the ones praised for coping are often closest to the edge.

In this Better Moment, organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich takes apart the bounce-back myth: why "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is backwards, why resilience behaves like a budget rather than a personality trait, and why almost none of us can see the cost coming. Her research on self-awareness says 95 percent of us believe we can. Roughly 10 to 15 percent actually can.

Her advice to leaders is structural, not motivational. Fix the load, not the person. Remove chronic stressors at source, design recovery in, and check on the people who look fine.

Listen to the full conversation: https://youtu.be/MJ_rqzhEmts?si=CcQVF5_wyZYtgVxd

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Conflict at work is not simply a choice between charging in and avoiding it.

In this four-and-a-half-minute Better Moment, *Smart Conflict* authors Alice Driscoll and Louise van Haarst focus on two useful forces: conflict confidence, and the desire to get it right or be right.

They explain why enforced harmony can crowd out healthy disagreement, and how to move from relational conflict, me against you, into task conflict, both of us against the problem.

Their practical phrase works at either end of the scale: get curious, not furious.

Listen to the full conversation: https://shows.acast.com/betteratworkpodcast/episodes/69d60cb9ef4d724206d29c01

Follow Better at Work so season five lands in your feed when we return on 15 September.

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Hope at work is not optimism. It is a goal worth reaching, more than one credible route forward and enough agency to move.

In this seven-minute Better Moment, burnout researcher and workplace culture strategist Jennifer Moss draws on Charles Snyder's hope theory to explain why hope is a practical leadership strategy.

Jennifer looks at the growing hope gap among younger workers, why small completed goals build momentum and what micromanagement takes away: accomplishment, autonomy and intrinsic motivation.

Her warning is blunt. Leaders cannot ask people to invest in the future while telling them they may not have a place in it.

Listen to the full conversation: https://shows.acast.com/betteratworkpodcast/episodes/we-cant-yoga-our-way-out-of-bad-culture-the-newest-burnout-r

Jennifer Moss is the author of *Why Are We Here? Creating a Work Culture Everybody Wants*.

Follow Better at Work so season five lands in your feed when we return in September.

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A good job is not the same for everyone.

Laura Gassner Otting gives us four dials for working out whether a role actually fits: calling, connection, contribution and control.

Calling is the force that pulls you forward. Connection is whether your work matters. Contribution is what the work gives your life. Control is the agency you have over your time, decisions and environment.

The practical question is not whether all four are high. It is whether the mix matches what matters to you now.

Laura is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, researcher and former executive recruiter. She is the author of *Limitless* and *Wonderhell*.

Watch the full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Z0nuapNLI

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The loudest predictions about AI count the jobs it might destroy. Russell Beck says that is the wrong unit of analysis.

Technology is very good at removing the scarce skill inside a job. Russell's example is a naval shipyard worker wearing an exoskeleton. The job remains. The work becomes safer. The employer gains a wider talent pool. Physical strength stops being the thing that makes one person uniquely qualified.

In this eight-minute Better Moment, Russell explains where the advantage moves next: creativity, self-efficacy and leadership.

Russell Beck is the author of *The World of Work to 2030*. He has worked in 25 countries and was European Head of Talent at Yahoo.

Follow Better at Work so season five lands in your feed when we return in September.

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Most companies can show you a plan. Far fewer can explain the choices underneath it.

In this Better Moment, Roger Martin strips strategy back to what it actually is: what you do, not what you say. He explains why a list of initiatives is not a strategy, how the question “What would have to be true?” can get a divided room moving, and why AI is much better at finding the average answer than a distinctive one.

Thirteen minutes on the choices that make a strategy real.

Listen to Roger’s full Better at Work conversations:

Part 1: https://shows.acast.com/betteratworkpodcast/episodes/the-worlds-1-strategy-thinker-on-why-planning-isnt-strategy

Part 2: https://shows.acast.com/betteratworkpodcast/episodes/part-2-the-worlds-1-strategy-thinker-on-why-planning-isnt-st

Book: Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley.

Follow Better at Work so season five lands in your feed when we return in September.

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Cathal and Annette close out season four together in London, in person for once. The four ideas from 30+ episodes that actually changed how they work: Laura Gassner Otting's four Cs of a fulfilling career, Zach Mercurio on the mattering deficit, Colin Fisher (The Collective Edge) on teams and clarity, and the Smart Conflict five Rs from Louise van Haast and Alice Driscoll.

Plus the first listener question they've ever half disagreed on, the corporate jargon they'd ban, Annette's rabbit story, and a look ahead to season five.

We're taking a short summer break, with best-of episodes in the feed while we're away. Season five lands in September.

Got a question or topic for season five? Send it here: https://betteratwork.net/

Follow the show so season five lands in your feed the moment we're back.

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The final listener questions episode of Better at Work, Season 4.

This week is Cathal and Annette closing out the season's questions before next week's wrap, with the stories that stuck with them and a look ahead to Season 5.

Annette shares the story of Pauline Wald, a banking executive who walked 2,000 kilometres across France and Spain to find what her successful life had been missing.

Cathal gets honest about a habit a lot of us share, starting the day with the easy task instead of the hard one, and the idea from this season that made him rethink it.

We also revisit the biggest ideas from our recent conversation with Roger Martin, ranked the number 1 management thinker in the world, and the questions you have already sent us for next season.

What we cover:

• The banker who walked 2,000km to find what success had left out

• Why successful people do the hardest task first

• What you want us to cover in Season 5

• The Roger Martin strategy ideas that stuck, including: what would have to be true?

• How a former Sephora CEO scaled with the same framework

Got a career dilemma for Season 5? Send it to us at betteratwork.net.

Next week: our Season 4 wrap, recorded in person in London.

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