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B.U.I.L.D.®: Upskill – Strengthen the Mindset Muscles That Drive Sustainable Success

In our last article, Baseline, we explored how to uncover the invisible barriers that hold individuals and teams back, from self-sabotage and outdated beliefs to systemic blockers that quietly drain performance and wellbeing.

Once you know what is getting in the way, the next step is clear: build the capacity to move beyond it. This is where Upskill comes in.

Why Upskill Matters

In today’s complex working environment, where AI disruption, hybrid teams, a challenging business environment and tougher expectations combine, it is not just technical skills that determine success.

What matters just as much is the ability to stay clear-headed, confident, and creative in high-pressure moments. But without the mental muscles to adapt, collaborate and lead through uncertainty, change doesn’t stick.

You cannot delegate self-awareness. You can’t innovate or easily be creative if your saboteurs restrict you from taking positive steps. And you certainly cannot collaborate effectively if your team is stuck in defence mode, afraid to fail, quick to blame, slow to trust and unable to work through these fears and pressures to find positive solutions.

That is why we focus on teaching these skills as part of the Upskill stage in our B.U.I.L.D.® framework.

How we help you and your teams to Upskill

In this stage of B.U.I.L.D.® we use the Positive Intelligence (PQ) approach. This is a science-backed method that helps individuals and teams shift from reactivity and self-sabotage to greater clarity, resilience, and creativity.

Individual participants build the mental muscles to:

  • Interrupt unhelpful habits such as perfectionism, overworking, or people-pleasing
  • Respond to challenges with empathy, curiosity, and confidence
  • Show up consistently with more calm, clarity and courage

Teams learn to

  • Collaborate more effectively and creatively
  • Hold one another accountable for standards / actions
  • Work together under a unifying team purpose and vision
  • Engage in healthy conflict resulting in win-win resolutions

What Does Upskilling Look Like in Practice?

There are a number of ways we can support you or your team in the Upskill stage

The full PQ training programme
Runs over six weeks via a simple app, with short daily practices, weekly reflection, and coaching support. Taking just 15 minutes of activity per day and supported by weekly 1:1 or group sessions with Lara, a certified PQ Coach

Leadership Coaching and Development
 Personalised coaching to build self-awareness, shift mindset, and strengthen leadership impact – either 1:1 or for Teams

Mindset Talks and Workshops
 For larger teams we can offer interactive talks and workshops to generate fresh thinking, motivate teams, and create lasting mindset shifts

For Individuals: Building Confidence and Self-Mastery

“Before this, I thought I had to be in control all the time. But I realised that urgency and control were my saboteurs—and they were exhausting me and my team.”

This senior leader learned to recognise these patterns, pause, and respond differently. The result was stronger team relationships, more balanced decision-making, and increased energy for strategic priorities.

For Teams: Breaking Through Cultural Stagnation

An insights agency team was experiencing poor collaboration following years of structural change. Saboteurs were fuelling negative behaviours – one team member was micromanaging everything as a result of their ‘Controller’ saboteur – which activated another team members ‘Pleaser’ saboteur that said “yes” to every little change or request posed. Neither was happy and in fact they often were both dismayed by the others requests and way of working – it was having a detrimental impact on the rest of the team….

Through the introduction of shared language and PQ mindset tools, the team began to rebuild psychological safety and creative flow. Conversations became more open, feedback more honest, and ideas more frequent and braver. The result was not only improved client delivery, but greater engagement and cohesion.

What Comes Next?

Once individuals and teams strengthen their mindset muscles, we move to Implement—the next stage of the B.U.I.L.D.® framework. This is where learning becomes embedded in daily routines, and insights translate into sustainable action.

Would you like to explore how Upskill could support your team, function or career?

Download our B.U.I.L.D. ® info pack or book a call here

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Problem Definition: never more important to get it right

A leap of faith or a planned jump?

Introduction
Is the man in this opening image going to land safely? Did he prepare properly and make an informed decision to jump in this failing light after checking the hazard out fully, or did he just go ahead in a rush at that time, as it seemed the only choice?
Like the man in the opening image is about to, corporate initiatives can fall short without proper preparation and information; and as a result, incur cost and time to rectify. Which could have been better spent on meeting/realising objectives. One wonders how the man in this image felt when the better option of a nearby footbridge was visible in the morning light.

The last 2-3 years have already seen customer behaviour becoming more fragmented and Covid-19 has added another layer of complexity into business decisions. Whether you are working client or agency-side, commercial success ultimately requires everyone to find mutual ground and to make the best decisions possible. But how can you achieve this?

This short post shares our observations and experiences over the last 2 decades about successful problem-definition and how insight engineers can help you to harmonise your commercial objectives to achieve in-market success.
There is a link to download a full PDF of this paper below.

  1. Why Do Problems Need Definition?

Before starting to work immediately on the apparent solution, most successful organisations have learnt to stand back first and invest time and effort to improve their understanding of their problem and associated objectives. As Einstein once said, “A well-defined problem is 90% solved”. But, do you sometimes find you are on a completely different wavelength to the other people you work with? Agreeing on a clear problem definition with colleagues can be extremely challenging – different people, in different disciplines and positions of responsibility, with different motivations and pain-points, will often focus their thinking on disparate solutions.

Research evidence helps everyone get on the same wavelength, neutrally. Carefully curated insights can create a strong narrative on the feelings and inclinations of your target market in management level discussions, bringing stakeholders together within a common language. And especially when this information & insights are part of a structured problem definition process. This framework helps clients to avoid relying on the past, gut feel & intuition or the strongest opinion, and helps plot the best course of action, especially in times of business pressures.

When the world has just fundamentally changed, it is logical that a fresh attitude and new input is needed to make decisions for solutions in the post Covid-19 situation. The importance of harmonising your objectives and defining your problem with the right questions has never been more important to get right.

  1. What Questions Should You Be Asking on the Client-Side?

A good client-side project manager will constantly look to improve their understanding of a problem and more importantly which decisions need to be made and what information is needed to assist in these decisions. The inputs that start this necessary comprehension stage relate to the familiar 5Ws – Who, What, Where, When and Why. Here are the initial 10 questions, logically ordered, that our clients start asking of themselves: –

You can download these 10 questions and the rest of the full article <here>

Wrap up
Whether you are client-side or working at another agency, the value of a systematic approach to defining your problem and the routes ahead, will help you make the best customer-centric decisions in alignment with the end objectives. Ultimately, success then requires the right core team working towards the shared vision and the identified success factors to drive sales. And to revisit the 5Ws as you progress; changing your plans if conditions change.

insight engineers are used to being part of such initiatives for future pipeline and sales. We work regularly, internationally, on understanding customer behaviour and response to concepts, ideas and propositions. Your tricky B2B and B2C questions are our calls to action. Beyond quality, speed and value, our role is to be a strong partner in the team, helping you to deliver on your objectives. We find a problem definition process, such as the one in this paper, always enhances the chances of success. Working well together, a project team will normally ask the right questions and turn resulting information into profitable wisdom. Wouldn’t it be great to be in such a team in the future saying “Without us, X would not have existed”?

To people who have not worked with us before, let’s talk. Nobody loses from opening a dialogue.

Jeff Deighton
(e) jeff.deighton@insight-engineers.com
(ddi) +44 1753 916 908

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The Power of Networking on Performance Development

Spiral Dynamics

The power of networking on Performance Development – June 2018

Imagine the difference a best practice team of independent performance management experts could make to your business growth and customer experience journey by instilling performance-oriented thinking.
How do you find collaborative thinkers and experts in the 4 critical elements for sustained business success – Finance, Customer, Organisation, People? Read more

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