In late August 2021 Mark Aspden, CEO of Sport Hawkes Bay, a Regional Sports Trust in the North Island of Aotearoa NZ posted on LinkedIn. copy of an email he had recently sent to his staff.

It was prompted by the tragic death of Olivia Podmore a well-known New Zealand high-performance cyclist and the impact her death had on many working in the sporting community.

In it he noted the following:

‘what I do know is while our work in the community is important and makes a real difference, there is nothing we do that is so critical that any one of us should be sacrificing our mental health for it. NOTHING’. 

This is a conversation about the link between workloads and wellbeing from a leadership perspective –the role of boards, management teams and funders – in walking the wellbeing talk. 

A conversation with Jeana Abbott about how individuals and organisations can prepare for new ways of working and why transitions are an important part to understand and leverage. 

Jeana holds a master’s in psychology and has spent a career in human resource, workforce planning, recruitment and people and culture roles, in Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas. She has the INSEAD Executive Certificate in Global Management and is a Cartier Women’s Initiative Coach. 

Today I talk with Kim Coates a New Zealand industrial organisational (I-O) psychologist. Kim has over 20 years experience designing and delivering tailored development initiatives that help organisations understand how their people tick in order to bring out the best of them.

During our conversation, we explore why as human’s we’re prone to relentlessly driving ourselves to do so much it becomes detrimental to our health, wellbeing and peace of mind and identify one question that in and of itself explains everything.