Modern Business Magazine January 2016 | Page 17

GETTING TO KNOW YOU was important, I realised we need to start paying attention to our brain health from our earliest years. Staying in general practice, much as I loved it, was preventing me from getting the message of brain health out to a wider audience. So I took the somewhat scary decision to start a new career promoting brain health and better thinking skills. What types of customers do you help? What experience do you have helping small business customers? My customers include the general public who are hungry to find out more about how their brain works, educators who want assistance for themselves and their students to enhance learning, resiliency skills and stress management and SME’s and corporates who have come to realise that a happy healthy workforce is good for higher productivity, performance and profit. One of the biggest challenges facing many of my clients in small business is managing organisational change. Providing insight into why some resist change, why it can be tricky to achieve the desired change and how to nudge people towards acceptance can alleviate a lot of the fear and anxiety felt on all sides. Other times my work has been around managing energy levels at work and how to switch off. Over busy, over stretched brains that get stressed find it hard to slow down, so sometimes I provide tools and strategies for slower thinking to enhances clarity and focus and reduce stress. People skills, effective communication, developing a work culture where people want to come to work and do their job well, is January 2016 ModernBusiness 17