The School of Life Australia

Emotional skills are crucial to unlocking our full potential, and because we bring our full psychology to work, this is a thorny challenge. The School of Life at Work applies its deep and broad experience of individual and group psychology to the workplace, where we support individuals, teams and businesses to perform better, to be more successful and ultimately, more fulfilled. We run transformational workshops, talks and group or individual coaching for Australian based organisations. Our rich and interactive toolkit consisting of podcasts, games, books, microsessions, diagnostics and much more, draws on examples from art and psychotherapy, philosophy and literature.

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Our Learning Philosophy image

Our Learning Philosophy

We believe that learning is not just a process of acquiring information but a deeply personal journey of self-discovery and emotional growth. Over the past 10 years we have worked with organisations in Australia across all sectors and have created learning experiences for +27,000 people.
An Introduction to The School of Life at Work

Our Full Emotional Skills Curriculum

Our expert-led, live, learning experiences can be run in-person or virtually, and are designed to inspire fresh thinking and real change. Workshops (2 hrs, up to 30 people) create intimate, interactive spaces for dialogue, reflection and practical learning. Talks (1 hr, for larger groups) introduce emotional insights that spark team-wide conversations.

Adaptability

Today, businesses – and their people – have to learn continually, responding to change and innovation by staying
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Adaptive Communication

One of the biggest causes of disharmony in life is when communication goes wrong. Feeling misunderstood – or
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Anxiety

Feeling anxious is entirely normal, unpleasant and detrimental to wellbeing. Our imaginations permanently remind us of everything that
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Assertiveness

One of the reasons why our lives are harder than they might be is that most of us
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Becoming Boss

Contrary to popular belief, none of us are actually ‘born leaders’. Instead, the entry into a management role
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Being Well

According to a recent study, 67% of professionals are experiencing moderate to high levels of stress at work,
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Calm

No one is calm all the time. Nor should we be; a touch of fear and adrenaline can
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Charm

In order for even the best ideas to have the greatest impact they need to be communicated with
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Coaching

‘Leadership is not about you, it’s about them’, according to Jack Welch and in our modern working work
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Collaboration

Although collaboration – the extraordinary business of having to work with other people – is one of the
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Communication

The stronger a team’s communication skills are, the better the outcome: research by MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory found
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Confidence

The greatest projects and schemes die for no grander reasons than that we don’t dare. Indeed, research shows
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Crafting Careers

One of the most extraordinary and yet quietly routine assumptions of our professional lives is that we should
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Creativity

Einstein said that we’re all born geniuses – which suggests that a lot of education strips us of
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Curiosity

While we may imagine that curiosity is reserved for arts, culture, or our childhood, it is increasingly sought
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Decisiveness

Making good decisions is a fundamental aspect of being a trusted co-worker or an excellent leader. Yet, too
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Delegation

‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’ We’ve all heard this phrase at some point, whether
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Difficult Conversations

Throughout our life and work we will inevitably be faced with having many challenging conversations. Rather than viewing
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Diplomacy

A workshop which offers techniques for handling sensitive discussions and tough negotiations. Diplomacy is the art of navigating
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Effectiveness

The end result of an absence of efficiency isn’t just inefficiency, it’s regret. In order to work through
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Eloquence

Although many of us fear it more than death, knowing how to speak to others in front of
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Empathy

Feeling and demonstrating empathy is tied to better performance at work, and especially to better leadership. Empathy is
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Emotional Intelligence

Most businesses run into problems not because of a lack of technical know-how, but because of how we
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Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a major fascination of our times. We often think of entrepreneurs as bold risk-takers with completely
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Feedback

Feedback may be a gift, but it’s still one that many of us don’t care to give or
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Goals

In our modern world, goal setting is everywhere: we set goals for our careers, our health, our finances
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Grit

Grit can be defined as ‘the passion and perseverance for long-term goals’. Demonstrating grit at work means to
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Growth Mindset

Beliefs drive our behaviour, perhaps few more than our mindset about our own abilities. Carol Dweck’s work on
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Impostor Syndrome

Around 70% of us will at some point in our lives experience an emotional state best characterised as
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Influence

Forensic science pioneer Edmond Locard formulated a theory which became the basis for forensic science as we know
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Initiative

While motivation might drive us, initiative is the ability and willingness to take action, and begin something independently
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Innovation

Innovation is the ability to create changes, offshoots and iterations that add value and solve problems. This requires
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Inspire

One of the most impactful things we can do as human beings at work is to inspire others.
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Kindness

When we are little, one of the first lessons we ever receive is in the importance of being
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Leadership

Throughout the ages, much has been written about the traits of great leaders. It’s easy to feel intimidated.
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Managing Change

Today, widespread and frequent change often feels inescapable – particularly in business. And yet in reality our ability
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Managing Up

The Harvard Business Review defines managing up as ‘being the most effective employee you can be, creating value
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Motivation

It’s not hard to make the link between motivation and a more productive workplace. Motivation inspires energy, commitment,
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Negotiation

A single question can evoke a multitude of different responses depending on who is answering. Agreeing on which
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Networking

Networking has a unique ability to light a fire in the belly of some – and turn the
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Objectivity

Emotions can sometimes blur our vision. To make good decisions and work well with others, we need to
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Peak Performance

Peak performance is defined as an individual performing at optimal levels physically, mentally, or both. Employees who thrive
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Personal Brand

Everyone has a reputation; a personal brand is our visible and distinctive commitment to the value we bring
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Playfulness

Too often we think of play as something reserved for children, or worse, for the lazy, idle, and
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Presenting

Presenting is a skill laden with more barriers and judgments than most. We are much more likely to
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Problem-Solving

When a problem arises, our first instinct is often to rush head-first into fixing it. As humans, we
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Productivity

One of the most powerful skills we can develop to enhance our performance and wellbeing is improved self-management
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Psychological Safety

To get the best out of our people we not only have to equip them with the knowledge
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Purpose

Day-to-day work can all too easily make us feel bored or burnt-out. For many of us, this is
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Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence, yet studies show that while most of us think we understand
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Self-Management

One of the most powerful skills we can develop to enhance our performance and wellbeing is improved self-management.
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Storytelling

Life is built upon an intertwining collection of different stories. In fact, each of us house our very
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Strategic Thinking

There is a fundamental distinction to be made between two kinds of thinking: figuring out what we would
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Supportiveness

Supporting others and listening carefully (but not uncritically) to their signs of distress allows us to give them
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Trust

Trust is a basic human need and one that’s essential to our early development: in its essence, trust
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Unconscious Bias

All of us navigate our professional and personal lives with an Emotional Inheritance. That is, a way of
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Vulnerability

It’s no surprise that each of us wish to appear professional and competent in our working lives. In
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Becoming a Leader

As with management, leadership is something that often ‘happens’ to us without a great deal of fanfare or
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Leadership Style

Deep down, we often believe that being a leader should mean becoming someone else. Yet the key to
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Leading Purposefully

Leaders need to inspire their teams. To do so, they must be clear on their own purpose, and
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Innovation Mindset

Objectively, every leader understands the importance of innovation. Yet a range of emotional and functional barriers exist which
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Leading Change

Humans are hardwired to seek certainty. As leaders, we bear a unique responsibility to not only paint a
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Leading Inclusively

Leaders must set the tone they wish their teams and organisations to follow. Understanding the behaviours and signals
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Leadership Prioritisation

Effective decision making and strategic prioritisation are the cornerstones of successful leadership. Inability to distinguish the imperative from
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Leadership Wellbeing

Leaders face some of the toughest challenges when it comes to promoting and maintaining their own wellbeing; they
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Leadership Coaching

In these one-hour one-to-one coaching sessions, leaders will:   Reflect on their relationship to the specific emotional skill,
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Delighting Participants, Inspiring Action image

Delighting Participants, Inspiring Action

We’re proud to say that learning interventions designed by The School of Life are not your average corporate training. From developing new and aspiring managers and leaders to providing an emotional boost to team and away days, we take ideas from a broad range of sources, and use them to delight participants, encourage new ways of thinking, and ultimately inspire action.
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Workshop Participant

“
The group work was really valuable and also gives me lots of points to follow up with my team to support their journey forward.

Clarins Group

Workshop Participant

“
The most valuable part of this for me was to step back from thinking about the ‘what of work’, and start think about the ‘how and why’.

National Disability Insurance Agency

Confidence
Confidence is a skill, not a gift from the gods. It is a skill founded on a set of ideas about the world and our natural place within it. These ideas can be systematically studied and gradually learnt, so that the roots of excessive hesitancy and compliance can be overcome.
Confidence

The EQ Office
Offices exist to help people collaborate. But lots goes wrong in the attempt. Some of the hurdles are procedural: meetings go on too long or everyone talks at the same time. But many more of the problems are psychological in nature.
The EQ Office