Laura Claire Aiken

Why do we resist change, even when it’s good for us?

This is the first question I had for Fenella Hemus NLP & Hypnotherapy, Master NLP trainer and coach – and my trainer in NLP and Hypnosis training last year.

Most of us know what we’d like to change, but we struggle to shift patterns that feel familiar, automatic, or safe – even if we know they’re causing us harm.

Where do you notice that tension most in your own life or work?

We’ve talked a lot about what’s not working.

But the more interesting question is: what actually needs to change?

Our take: create the conditions for people to work at their best.

…simple, right?

Julie Clow - Organisational psychologist, facilitator, advisor and author working with CEOs and leadership teams to diagnose challenges and co-create solutions, while building team capability. PhD in behavioural psychology; author of The Work Revolution.

Danielle Santori - Senior Consultant at Kintla with 20 years’ experience in leadership coaching and organisational development, helping leaders and complex teams build alignment, resilience and organisational effectiveness.

We talk a lot about burnout, but we don’t talk enough about what happens next.

Because more often than not, people come back to the same conditions that caused the problem in the first place.

According to one study by KU Leuven and wellbeing organisation IDEWE, around 28% of employees relapse within a year of returning to work after burnout. Other research suggests that 41% of people experience burnout again even after taking time off.

We know (from HSE Management Standards and CIPD guidance) what drives workplace stress and how to support return to work, but most organisations still try to solve it at the individual level.

And – how you bring one person back to work quietly teaches your entire team what happens when they struggle.

So the real question is:

When someone comes back… what’s actually changed?

Resources:

IDEWE & KU Leuven (2021) Study on burnout relapse rates among employees returning to work, reported in: The Brussels Times (2021) Nearly 30% of people with burnout relapse within a year of returning to work.

Robinson, B. (2024) 41% Of Americans Experiencing Burnout After Taking Time Off, National Study Shows. Forbes

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) (n.d.) Management Standards for Work-Related Stress

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) (2023) Managing and supporting employee mental health at work

It started by moving desks, and ended in a completely different way of working.

One where communication, ideas and inspiration flowed more freely.

This is the power of “micro-cultures”, and often it doesn’t need much to get them going.

A bit more flexibility, a bit more trust, and space for teams to optimise how they work best.

And business get to reap the benefits – in productivity, retention and wellbeing.

Where have you seen small changes make a big difference in how a team works?

Julie Clow - Organisational psychologist, facilitator, advisor and author working with CEOs and leadership teams to diagnose challenges and co-create solutions, while building team capability. PhD in behavioural psychology; author of The Work Revolution.

Danielle Santori - Senior Consultant at Kintla with 20 years’ experience in leadership coaching and organisational development, helping leaders and complex teams build alignment, resilience and organisational effectiveness.

Self-regulation is a super power, but it’s not something we can just ‘do’.

We need to build self-awareness so we can recognise how we show up and what it is that regulates us.

Which takes time.

And then comes the hard part – choosing to regulate when we need it, and more importantly, building regulation into your daily patterns.

I love Danielle’s take on being an active participant in her stress, her regulation, and her future.

Julie Clow - Organisational psychologist, facilitator, advisor and author working with CEOs and leadership teams to diagnose challenges and co-create solutions, while building team capability. PhD in behavioural psychology; author of The Work Revolution.

Danielle Santori - Senior Consultant at Kintla with 20 years’ experience in leadership coaching and organisational development, helping leaders and complex teams build alignment, resilience and organisational effectiveness.

What makes a great team?

The surprising (for some) answer is… women.

We discuss a study on Group IQ that examines the fundamentals of performance in groups across three independent studies.

Women are often left “holding the bag” of unpaid emotional labour at work – but when it’s this fundamental to team performance, why is it so over-burdened and under rewarded?

Who is holding that load in your team right now?

Read the study:

Bates, T.C. & Gupta, S. (2017). Smart groups of smart people: Evidence for IQ as the origin of collective intelligence in the performance of human groups. Intelligence. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616303282

Julie Clow - Organisational psychologist, facilitator, advisor and author working with CEOs and leadership teams to diagnose challenges and co-create solutions, while building team capability. PhD in behavioural psychology; author of The Work Revolution.

Danielle Santori - Senior Consultant at Kintla with 20 years’ experience in leadership coaching and organisational development, helping leaders and complex teams build alignment, resilience and organisational effectiveness

One of the best stress management strategies I see is a healthy detachment from work.

But it’s really tough to achieve – especially when work never feels “finished”.

Your brain doesn’t handle open loops well. Psychology research shows that when something feels unresolved, the mind keeps it active in the background.

One simple place to start is giving your day a clear end.

(And I love a simple practice, with disproportionately powerful results).

It doesn’t fixes everything, but it does give your brain permission to let go – which can give you the mental space to reclaim more of yourself outside of work.

How do you manage tasks left over at the end of the day?

References:

Masicampo, E.J. & Baumeister, R.F. (2011) Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683.

Conversations about women in business shouldn’t just be happening on International Women’s Day.

I sat down to talk with two incredible women - and my colleagues at Kintla - about their experience in the workplace.

To start the conversation, we each shared a moment in our careers when we realised that the workplace was failing us as women.

I’d be really interested to hear: when was the moment you realised something at work wasn’t designed for you?

Julie Clow - Organisational psychologist, facilitator, advisor and author working with CEOs and leadership teams to diagnose challenges and co-create solutions, while building team capability. PhD in behavioural psychology; author of The Work Revolution.

Danielle Santori - Senior Consultant at Kintla with 20 years’ experience in leadership coaching and organisational development, helping leaders and complex teams build alignment, resilience and organisational effectiveness.

You’d think that in order to get the best out of people, we’d design work in a way that helps them perform well.

But right now, many workplaces are doing the opposite.

1 in 5 UK workers needed time off for burnout last year. And increasingly this is about how work is designed.

Workload. Constant change. Low clarity. No recovery.

We know from stress research that sustained, high-intensity demand without recovery wears down how we think, decide, and relate to others.

So why are we still asking individuals to cope with the impossible… instead of changing the system?

References:

Mental Health UK (2026) Burnout Report 2026: High stress pushing workers into sick leave as just one in four feel mental health is genuinely prioritised and supported in the workplace.

McEwen, B.S. (2006) Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators: Central role of the brain. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 8(4), 367–381.