Expertise
Seven areas of expertise
Behaviour change, safety, coaching, emotion regulation, change management, leadership and communication each require their own knowledge. These pages explore practical questions, examples and ways to understand them.
Illustration · seven areas, one question
Where the areas overlap
Three layers
Areas of expertise, approach and research
Each area is described separately. In practice, they often overlap, and what is useful depends on the question.
1 · Expertise
The seven areas below. Each page starts from a real dilemma, sets out the mechanisms that could explain it, names the evidence that separates them and says what we would do.
2 · Focused ways to work
Three routes: a Decision Review when one decision is the crux, a behaviour and change intervention, or leadership and human-dynamics work. See Services.
3 · Evidence and ethics
Why we trust a claim or not: the research programme, the approach and the ethical review that applies to every route.
The seven areas
Start with the question you are actually asking
Why people do not do what they have agreed to do, and what to alter first.
“The policy is accepted and the work looks the same.”Open the page 02 · SafetyThree moments, three kinds of leadershipParticipation before, a clear instruction during, learning after.
“Do I negotiate, instruct or investigate?”Open the page 03 · Coaching & mentoringHelp without taking the problem overWhen to ask, when to tell, and how to know the support worked.
“She asks me for answers. Should I give them?”Open the page 04 · Emotion regulationEmotion is information, not interferenceWhat anger, fear and sadness at work are telling you, and where the limits lie.
“What is this outburst actually about?”Open the page 05 · Change managementResistance is a diagnosis not yet madeDefending a direction is one job; organising the implementation is another.
“Is this resistance, or is it information?”Open the page 06 · LeadershipWhere judgement becomes behaviourDirection and care, power and fairness, and the leader’s own pattern.
“Capable people, a sound plan, nobody follows.”Open the page 07 · CommunicationClear is not the same as understoodListening, questions, interpersonal patterns, and the leader as mediator or judge.
“We agreed on it. We agreed on different things.”Open the pageHow the seven connect
One event, six perspectives
A fictional maintenance team skips a lock-out step before opening a line. Which page you need depends on the question you ask.
- Safety: was the instruction clear, and is this a standard nobody may negotiate?
- Behaviour change: what makes skipping the easy path, and what makes the correct step harder?
- Communication: do the technician and the planner mean the same thing by “isolated”?
- Emotion regulation: how did the supervisor’s reaction to the last near miss shape whether the next one is reported?
- Leadership: what does the shift leader ask first when a line stops?
- Change management: which part of the new permit process was designed without the people who must use it?
Usually two or three of these are true at once. The work is to find out which ones carry the weight, before anyone is asked to change. When the real uncertainty is one specific decision, for instance whether to redesign the permit process at all, the right door is a Decision Review.
Choosing a starting point
If you are asking this, start here
| The question | Start with | A typical first piece of work |
|---|---|---|
| We agreed on a new way of working and nothing has changed. | Behaviour change | Define the behaviour in observable terms and watch it in its setting for a short round. |
| People ignore a rule, or nobody tells us about near misses. | Safety | Classify the decision by urgency and reversibility; walk the work as it is actually done. |
| A new leader, or a capable person who has stalled. | Coaching & mentoring | A contract with a goal, a time window and a stopping rule; observable behaviour as baseline. |
| Meetings or a team keep erupting, or going silent. | Emotion regulation | Map what each outburst follows and what is at stake for the person, then test one change in the situation. |
| A reorganisation or new system is stuck. | Change management | Separate objections that are right from objections that are about loss, then pilot one reversible step. |
| Capable people will not follow a sound plan. | Leadership | Ask each person individually what would make them use it next week, and sort the answers. |
| Two parties each think the other is not listening. | Communication | Check what each side believes was agreed; decide whether the leader should mediate or decide. |
| One consequential decision, and views are divided. | Decision Review | Intake, evidence challenge, a written Decision Brief with the threshold for reversing. |
How certain are we?
The labels you will meet on every expertise page
- EstablishedFindings that have been replicated and reviewed in the research literature.
We cite the field, not ourselves. Even then, effects found in one setting do not carry over automatically to yours.
- Plausible applicationA well-supported mechanism applied to a setting where it is not specifically tested.
Reasonable, and worth a small test. We say what the test is.
- Our hypothesisOur own working idea, stated so that it can be shown wrong.
Each hypothesis comes with the observation that would count against it.
This is behaviour work, and behaviour work is a form of influence. Every route is subject to the ethical review: who gains, who pays, who was asked, and who could say no. We do not offer diagnostic scores, personality typing or clinical advice, and we do not promise outcomes.
Describe the situation
A paragraph is enough: what is happening, who is affected, and what you have already tried. Leave out names and sensitive details. We can discuss which area is relevant and whether I can help.