Most people are not at their best under pressure. Put a group of highly pressured people together, and unhealthy workplace behaviour can quickly become the norm.

In this episode of Wired to Work, Jess Chapman is joined by leadership coach Kate Franklin to explore why workplace relationships become so difficult—and why a challenging boss is not necessarily a bad person.

They discuss how stress changes the way we communicate, why relational skills matter just as much as technical expertise, and how leaders can create the conditions for trust, honesty and high performance.

In this conversation:

• Why poor workplace behaviour has become normalized
• How pressure affects leaders and their teams
• Why relationships are a critical part of performance
• How to give honest feedback to your boss
• The difference between intention and impact
• Why complaints are more useful when turned into requests
• How leaders can discover the impact they are having
• Why caring about people and expecting strong results are not opposites
• How much agency we really have to improve difficult workplace relationships

Most difficult workplace relationships are not beyond repair. But improving them requires courage, curiosity and a willingness to remember that the person across from you is human too.

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LinkedIn: @Kate Franklin
Instagram: @coachkatefranklin

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#Leadership #WorkplaceRelationships #WorkplaceCulture #ManagingUp #LeadershipDevelopment #EmployeeEngagement #WiredToWork

Your brain is changing all the time, whether you realize it or not.

In this episode of Wired to Work, Jess Chapman breaks down one of the most important concepts in neuroscience: neuroplasticity. From habits and learning to performance and leadership, understanding how your brain forms and strengthens neural pathways can completely change the way you think about personal growth.

You’ll learn:

• Why “use it or lose it” is literally true for your brain
• How habits are created through repetition
• Why multitasking hurts learning
• The surprising role emotion plays in memory and behaviour
• Why practice—not just knowledge—is the key to lasting change

Whether you’re trying to build better habits, learn new skills, or help your team perform at their best, this episode explains the science in a way that’s practical and easy to apply.

Subscribe for more conversations about neuroscience, leadership, workplace psychology, and making work work better.

#Neuroplasticity #Habits #Neuroscience #Leadership #PersonalDevelopment #BrainScience #WiredToWork

In this special season finale, Jess Chapman looks back at the five conversations that challenged her thinking the most - and the ideas that every leader, HR professional, and workplace designer should be paying attention to.

From the hidden burnout crisis facing HR professionals to what healthcare can teach us about designing better systems, this episode explores the themes that kept resurfacing all season: cognitive load, psychological safety, technology, boundaries, climate anxiety, menopause, and why the future of work has to be designed around humans, not just processes.

Jess revisits powerful conversations with:
• Dr. Jo Burrell on the growing burnout crisis in HR
• Dr. Paul Zak on measuring whether people are actually thriving at work
• Ange Crockwell on why boundaries are an act of leadership—not selfishness
• Dr. Ashlee Cunsolo on climate grief and its impact on today’s workforce
• Tina Pomroy on reframing menopause as an evolution rather than a decline

If there’s one thread running through every conversation this season, it’s this:

Work isn’t broken because people aren’t trying hard enough. It’s broken because we’ve spent too long designing systems without fully considering the humans inside them.

Whether you’ve listened to every episode or you’re just discovering Wired to Work, this is the perfect place to catch up on the biggest ideas from the season, and to start thinking differently about what work could become.

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