Better At Work with Cathal Quinlan

Hosted by Cathal Quinlan

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Oct 2026

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About the show

The Better At Work podcast is your new best friend at work. It’s packed with honest, practical advice and science-backed techniques from a diverse range of guests to help you achieve betterness in your work, and life. Better At Work is for everyone striving to be better and feel better. Whether you’re ready to take your career to new heights, or battling with the daily grind, your host Cathal Quinlan is here to help. By drawing on insights from leading psychologists, neuroscientists and performance experts, and Cathal sharing his own successes and mistakes as a leader, the podcast delivers proven strategies, tools and science-backed techniques to help you achieve betterness in your working life, one day at a time, because when work is better, life is better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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October 20, 202626 min

A change in career, offices that inspire work, and more guest takeaways | Listener Questions

How do you get into product management in a bank? Cathal Quinlan and Annette Sloan answer Jake's question about finding a way into the role. Annette explains what product managers actually do, then shares three practical places to start: shadow someone doing the job, explore relevant study, or learn the business through a customer-facing or operations role. They also revisit Cathal's conversation with workplace designer Dan Moscrop: why friendship at work matters, how to design around the people using a space, and what makes an office worth the commute. Have a career question for Cathal and Annette? Visit https://betteratwork.net and send them a note. Follow Better at Work for more conversations and practical ideas for your working life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

October 13, 20261 hr 9 min

Why Employees Don’t Want to Come Back to the Office | Dan Moscrop | Season 5

What makes an office worth coming back to? As businesses push for a return to the office, the bigger question is what people are coming back to. Somewhere that helps them work better, or somewhere to sit on video calls? Cathal Quinlan is joined by Dan Moscrop, founder of workplace experience studio THEM , to explore how office design shapes company culture, communicates a business’s story and gives people a reason to make the commute. They discuss why putting a logo on the wall isn’t enough, what other companies’ impressive offices can’t tell you about your own, and where to start when a full redesign isn’t on the cards. In this episode: What makes a workplace worth the journey. How to bring your company’s story into its physical space. Why staff, visitors and new starters need different things from an office. How everyday frustrations reveal what needs fixing. Small changes you can make without a full office refit. If you lead a team, shape company culture or make decisions about the workplace, this conversation will get you looking at your office differently. Follow Better at Work with Cathal Quinlan for more conversations about making work better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

October 6, 202633 min

What to Do When a Team Member Keeps Letting You Down | Listener Questions

A team member keeps missing commitments. There is always a reason, the rest of the team is frustrated, and their manager is running out of patience. What should happen next? Cathal Quinlan and Annette Sloan work through Katie's question in this Listener Questions episode. They explore what might be getting in the way, from a change in someone's circumstances to workload, skills and unclear priorities, and how to agree what happens next. They also revisit Neil Mullarkey's conversation about listening and improv, including appreciative inquiry and making meetings more useful. More from Better at Work: https://betteratwork.net Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

September 29, 20261 hr 15 min

Are You Listening, or Just Waiting to Speak? | Neil Mullarkey

A good conversation changes what you say next. Neil Mullarkey joins Cathal Quinlan to explore what improvisation can teach us about listening, leadership and working together. Neil is a comedian, communication trainer and author of In the Moment. From his early comedy partnership with Mike Myers to his work with teams, Neil shares practical ways to respond to the person in front of you, make room for ideas and use humour at work. Cathal and Neil discuss: - Listening when you're tempted to rehearse your next point. - Finding useful information in an objection. - Preparing for a meeting while staying open to what happens. - Knowing when to explore ideas and when to make a decision. - Sharing a laugh without making someone the target. - A small change to try on your next working day. Along the way, there are stories about meetings, shopping lists and the everyday moments that help people connect. Neil's book: In the Moment: Build Your Confidence, Communication and Creativity at Work. Follow Better at Work for more conversations for the work ahead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

September 22, 202633 min

How to Say No at Work (With Respect) | Listener Questions | Season 5

Saying yes to one thing leaves less time for something else. So how do you decide what deserves your attention? In the first Listener Questions episode of Season 5, Cathal Quinlan and Annette Sloan revisit Caroline Webb’s interview and the ideas in her book Leadership Intelligence . Annette shares three tools she wants to use: Yes-Grow-No for deciding what to take on, hand over or decline; ACORN for working through important decisions; and the bridge model for feedback and difficult stakeholder relationships. Cathal adds his own picks from the book. We also open up the season to you. From giving feedback to rebuilding after redundancy, tell us which workplace topics you want us to explore. Send us a question, a career dilemma or an idea for a future Listener Questions episode. Betteratwork.net Follow Better at Work in your podcast app for more from Season 5. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

September 15, 202652 min

How to Lead Without Doing It All Yourself with Caroline Webb | Season 5

Season 5 starts with the guest who started it all. Caroline Webb is back, tackling a question every overloaded leader needs to answer: what should you stop doing yourself? Caroline joined Better at Work for our very first episode in 2022. Now she returns with Leadership Intelligence and a practical conversation about the shift from doing great work yourself to helping other people do theirs. She and Cathal Quinlan explore what deserves a deliberate yes, what someone else could learn to do, and how to say no when something else matters more. In this episode: • Make time for the leadership work only you can do. • Use Yes/Grow/No to decide what to keep, delegate and decline. • Work through ACORN: Aim, Criteria, Options, Rating and Next steps. • Give specific feedback without jumping to conclusions. • Use Brag and Borrow to share progress and ask for help. • Work through difficult stakeholder relationships and reset under pressure. Caroline is a leadership coach, economist and author of How to Have a Good Day and Leadership Intelligence. Find Caroline: https://carolinewebb.co/ Leadership Intelligence: https://carolinewebb.co/books/leadership-intelligence/ Welcome back to Better at Work. Follow the show in your podcast app and join us for Season 5. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 27, 20266 min

Resilience Has a Ceiling | Better Moments #7 | Tasha Eurich

Toughing it out is not resilience. Chronic pressure without recovery drains people, and the ones praised for coping are often closest to the edge. In this Better Moment, organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich takes apart the bounce-back myth: why "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is backwards, why resilience behaves like a budget rather than a personality trait, and why almost none of us can see the cost coming. Her research on self-awareness says 95 percent of us believe we can. Roughly 10 to 15 percent actually can. Her advice to leaders is structural, not motivational. Fix the load, not the person. Remove chronic stressors at source, design recovery in, and check on the people who look fine. Listen to the full conversation: https://youtu.be/MJ_rqzhEmts?si=CcQVF5_wyZYtgVxd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 20, 20264 min

How to Get Curious, Not Furious | Better Moments #6 | Smart Conflict

Conflict at work is not simply a choice between charging in and avoiding it. In this four-and-a-half-minute Better Moment, *Smart Conflict* authors Alice Driscoll and Louise van Haarst focus on two useful forces: conflict confidence, and the desire to get it right or be right. They explain why enforced harmony can crowd out healthy disagreement, and how to move from relational conflict, me against you, into task conflict, both of us against the problem. Their practical phrase works at either end of the scale: get curious, not furious. Listen to the full conversation: https://shows.acast.com/betteratworkpodcast/episodes/69d60cb9ef4d724206d29c01 Follow Better at Work so season five lands in your feed when we return on 15 September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 13, 20266 min

Hope Is a Strategy? | Better Moments #5 | Jennifer Moss

Hope at work is not optimism. It is a goal worth reaching, more than one credible route forward and enough agency to move. In this seven-minute Better Moment, burnout researcher and workplace culture strategist Jennifer Moss draws on Charles Snyder's hope theory to explain why hope is a practical leadership strategy. Jennifer looks at the growing hope gap among younger workers, why small completed goals build momentum and what micromanagement takes away: accomplishment, autonomy and intrinsic motivation. Her warning is blunt. Leaders cannot ask people to invest in the future while telling them they may not have a place in it. Listen to the full conversation: https://shows.acast.com/betteratworkpodcast/episodes/we-cant-yoga-our-way-out-of-bad-culture-the-newest-burnout-r Jennifer Moss is the author of *Why Are We Here? Creating a Work Culture Everybody Wants*. Follow Better at Work so season five lands in your feed when we return in September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 6, 20265 min

The Four Things That Make Work Worth Doing | Better Moments #4 | Laura Gassner Otting

A good job is not the same for everyone. Laura Gassner Otting gives us four dials for working out whether a role actually fits: calling, connection, contribution and control. Calling is the force that pulls you forward. Connection is whether your work matters. Contribution is what the work gives your life. Control is the agency you have over your time, decisions and environment. The practical question is not whether all four are high. It is whether the mix matches what matters to you now. Laura is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, researcher and former executive recruiter. She is the author of * Limitless * and * Wonderhell *. Watch the full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Z0nuapNLI Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.