It’s a cracker!

Apparently, Christmas cracker manufacturer Swantex is revamping its seasonal jokes because some of them might be offensive to Essex girls and mothers-in-law.

I thought perhaps we could contribute some career related lightbulb jokes. Hopefully, these will only cause offence to those with absolutely no sense of humour.

Are we sure these lightbulbs need changing?

The complexity of self-esteem

How'm I looking? Lookin' good!

Self-esteem can play an important part in career success. This has been on my mind quite a bit in recent weeks. I have been doing a lot of work with people involved in organisational restructuring. Even when they are not facing redundancy, they are often having to deal with the prospect of applying for roles within a new structure or working under radically different conditions. When someone decides that all or part of what you have spent the last few years working at is not worth doing, it can severely dent your feelings of validity.

I have also been teaching on an introductory management course, where the issue of self-esteem came up in relation to staff motivation and performance management.

It is traditional to focus on the dangers of low self-esteem, which is usually linked to under-performance, lack of initiative, social withdrawal, fear of change, even depression and self-harm. Consequently, much of the advice around is about how to raise your self-esteem.

But there are dangers in too much self-esteem.