You can be capable, loyal, and dependable – and still go nowhere. The barrier is rarely visible. It is rarely deliberate. It is built from expectation, and it dissolves only when the signal changes.

Praise and criticism are not opposites. They are the same mechanism operating in different directions. The moment one carries weight, so does the other.

‘I didn’t want anything back, but a thank you would have been nice.’ The disappointment is the evidence. The expectation was there long before the help was offered.

Influence rarely announces itself as influence. It presents instead as choice. In the 1970s, psychologist Ellen Langer demonstrated that people are more responsive and compliant when they believe they are exercising control. Even the appearance…

Invisibility in organisations is rarely inflicted. It is drifted into – and no one inside the system is coming to correct it.

The people closest to you do more than provide companionship. They quietly shape the environment in which your thinking develops – and that environment operates largely below the level of conscious attention.