Gayle Smerdon

I'm dangerously close to saying the word November. Frankly, I feel this should require some kind of official permission. It's been a year of interesting conversations, questionable workplace practices, some very good ideas and an alarming number of ducks. I've spent much of 2026 writing, speakin

Leaders and employees are constantly told to get comfortable with uncertainty. Sit with ambiguity. Resist jumping to conclusions. Don't rush to judgement. Excellent advice. But what exactly are we supposed to do while we're sitting there? Because from the outside, thoughtful uncertainty and dither

Every so often I wonder whether we are approaching Peak Crazy at Work . Not because work has suddenly become ridiculous. Work has always had its peculiarities. Humans have been finding unnecessarily complicated ways to organise other humans for quite some time. But there does seem to be a lot of

Have you ever found yourself in the particular kind of workplace hell where you are required to enthusiastically support something you think is shit? It seemed like a good idea, but goodness… the execution got away, then got committee-ed and turned into pulp. Sure, we need a strategy, maybe the o

There are two kinds of bamboo. Clumping bamboo stays politely where you put it. Running bamboo thinks, Lovely garden you’ve got here. I’ll take all of it. I think office jokes work the same way. Some are clumping jokes . Someone says something funny in a meeting. Everyone laughs. Perhaps someone

Humour is the best medicine. Excellent news because, frankly, these days I am self-medicating very heavily. Sitcoms, memes, stupid videos, stand-up and people falling over things they absolutely should have seen. Mainline that sucker straight into my bloodstream - stat. And there’s good reason fo

We talk a lot about people feeling useful at work. Sometimes we focus on people feeling valued at work. But I wonder if we should aim for treasured . It sounds like a small change of words. Maybe even a slightly sentimental one. But the more I play with it, the more I think there’s something i

The Australian worker has changed, but I’m not sure our idea of the ideal worker has. I was listening to George Megalogenis on the radio discussing his new book, Three Shocks , and one of the shifts he describes has stuck with me. It’s a significant change in who sits at the centre of the Australi

We have spent years worrying about whether people are productive enough, when we should be worrying about whether we actually let employees do the work enough. Because in any modern workplace, we have developed an impressive arsenal of weapons of mass distraction . Not all of them are that new, bu

The leadership behaviours that create the conditions for resilience, adaptability and high performance. Imagine two teams. Same workload. Same deadlines. Same organisation. One team finishes exhausted. They drag themselves back the next day. Small things get under their skin. They get more reacti

Your brain is a bit like a river. Most of the time, random things just float past. 🎵 The chorus of an ABBA song. 🐈 Have I fed the cat? 🧦 I really need new socks. 🍝 What am I having for dinner? Then, without warning... "Everyone at work thinks you're incompetent." Hang on. Thr

Most of us know what bedside manner means. A technically brilliant doctor can still leave a patient feeling frightened, dismissed or unheard if they lack warmth, empathy or curiosity. Their expertise matters. But so does the way they deliver it. Leadership is no different. Perhaps it's time we s

One of the hardest things about work isn't coming up with ideas. It's sharing them. Every now and then, you have an idea that feels different. It's still tiny, barely formed, but you can already see where it could go. You can imagine the conversations it might change, the problems it might solve, t

Some days at work don’t feel like work. They feel like four different TV genres fighting over the same calendar invite. You arrive with a coffee, a bag, a vague sense of purpose and the fragile hope that the day might be reasonably straightforward. Maybe today will be a gentle workplace documentar

We often judge workplace behaviour as if it were deliberate and calculated. Someone snaps in a meeting. Goes quiet when they would normally contribute. Sends the blunt email. Takes something personally. Makes a poor decision from the red zone. And sometimes, yes, behaviour needs to be called out.

A bad meeting can turn a manageable day into a Bad Day faster than almost anything else at work. That’s why we spend so much time trying to fix them. We have all made many attempts over the years. Better agendas. Better facilitation. More participation. Clearer actions. Less PowerPoint. Shorter. S

I have a proposal. If you're awake at 3 AM, you should have to do community service. Nothing major. Just a few hours helping solve society's problems before breakfast. Think about it. At any given moment, there are thousands of people awake across your city. Shift workers. New parents. Students. In

One of the strangest things about leadership is that the more senior you become, the more people assume you have the answers. The job starts to come with an invisible expectation that you should be certain, confident and composed at all times. But some of the most important moments in leadership ha