The Whole Equation

What We Want

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 18:14:25 GMT

When expectations don’t quite meet

You want what’s in my head

I want to be better led

You want me to do it your way

I want to be able to have a say

You want me to be in the meeting

I want us to get beyond repeating

You want me to rise to the challenge

I want to have some balance

You want me to play my part

I want to tell you what’s on my heart

You want me to respect and trust you

I want you to do that too

You want me to not take the credit

I want to tell the story and not edit

You want me to silence my voice

I want to at least have a choice

Books, Books, Books

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 09:43:20 GMT

Books, books, books.

Where would we be without books? I know that my life is so much richer because of them. And I am deeply grateful to the people who bravely put their pen to paper and let us into their world.

In honour of World Book Day 2023, and inspired by a newsletter from the lovely Antonia Taylor this morning, here are three recommendations of books I’ve recently read. They are practical books covering three topics close to my heart: numbers, writing and people.

Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chip Heath and Karla Starr is a great guide to presenting numerical information in a user-friendly way. Numbers have a story to tell and the secret seems to lie in not using any numbers to tell the story! And if you must use some numbers this book does a great job at demonstrating ways to make them relatable. And one of m y favourite lines “Our brains were designed to juggle 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. After that, it’s just “lots.”

Exploratory Writing: Everyday Magic for Life and Work by Alison Jones is an indispensable guide to exploring our own thoughts and thinking - a way to write for ourselves so we can figure out what it is we want to say. And the secret to this is 3Ps: paper, pen(cil) and prompt. And a line I revisit in this book “…when your thoughts are going round in pointless circles, you can hijack your own brain simply by writing a good question as the prompt for an exploratory writing session.”

The Jerk’s Guide To Happiness: Practical Ways to Change While Still Being You by Alyn Mitlyng. This is not, as Alyn puts it, to ‘help you to cure the jerks in your life’ but if you have jerk-like tendencies this might help you overcome them. “But what if people don’t know they are a jerk?“ - Alyn says this is the question she was asked most and is sure you know if you are. She bravely shares her own transformation. I found it an inspiring insight into taking responsibility for your own behaviour. So, even if you have no jerk-like tendencies this book will add value to your interactions with others.

I'm Ready to Speak

susan@beyond-thenumbers.com (Susan Ni Chriodain) — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 15:44:08 GMT

What does your inner voice say?

Earlier this year as I was out for a walk and these words began to come to mind in a way that felt like poetry. So, when I got home I started to write. The words seemed to come through me. And in no time at all, I had written a poem; my first poem.

I've made a couple of minor changes to this poem, but this is pretty much what I wrote when I came back from my walk that day. It was inspired by a conversation with Kerry who told me to start close in . St art Close In is the name of a poem by David Whyte . I listened to him recite this in the days leading up to this walk.

I'm Ready to Speak
Nobody cares what you think,

whispers a voice deep within.

So deep I needed help from my ancestors to hear it.

Yet it has roamed freely,

questioning my motives,

erecting walls,

silencing my heart,

stopping me in my tracks.

It is only trying to protect me.

But it wasn't the voice that was buried.

It was my dreams and desires.

Play it safe.

Stay quiet.

Keep your opinion to yourself.

No one cares.

But I care.

I care deeply.

And the times I really cared,

I dared.

I said what I felt needed to be said,

when it mattered

and often in the service of others.

To protect others from a similar fate

or a fate they didn't deserve.

To right a wrong.

To challenge an injustice.

To play fair.

And then I'd retreat.

Now I choose to use my voice on demand.

Not only when it is urgent.

But still in the service of others.

And if no one cares,

well, that's fine too.

I'll survive.

I'll even thrive.

But maybe, just maybe, hearing what I think will help others uncover what they think

and help them find their voice.

And in the meantime

I'll meet my voice deep inside with compassion

and let it know it's okay to rest,

to rest knowing that its job here is done.

And I'll thank that voice for keeping me safe.

And assure it I'm ready to face the anguish.

I love you. I needed you. And if you love me, you'll set me free.

I'm ready to speak.

Susan Ní Chríodáin, April 17th 2022

Know Your Strengths

susan@beyond-thenumbers.com (Susan Ni Chriodain) — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 11:53:24 GMT

How often do you reflect on your strengths?

Do you know what you are really good at?
Do you know what yo ur strengths are?

There is a difference between activities that you are good at and activities that play to your strengths.

Performance is what you are good at or not good at. You can be good at something and hate doing it!

We might not always judge our performance accurately but we know where our strengths lie.

Strengths strengthen us. We can over use them so we need to be mindful of that.

When Nikki Hill and I spoke recently on Life Beyond the Numbers Podcast (episode 53) she mentioned that generally throughout her career she noticed how we seem to reserve the strengths questions for interviews and she thinks it should be something that we ask ourselves more regularly.

This inspired me to pull together an infographic which was further inspired by Marcus Buckingham and his StandOut Strengths work.

How often do you reflect on your strenghts?

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 11:23:59 GMT

How to cultivate moments of laughter

Above is a coffee I'm not likely to forget. I drink coffee a couple of times a day. I like to take put the milk into the bottom of my mug before pouring the coffee. But when I was distracted making coffee one day, I put the coffee at the bottom of the cafetière, added the milk and poured in the water. And as I poured the water, I realised my error. There are a few ways I could have reacted.

I could have gotten annoyed with myself, or
I could have thrown it in and started all over again, or
And this is what I did, I laughed and moved on. I didn't need to waste time getting annoyed, and I didn't need to waste anything by throwing it out.

Laughter truly is the best medicine. We are all born with the ability to laugh. It is one of our body's natural ways of releasing tension. It can change how we react and reframe our responses, when appropriate of course. Laughter is innate – we are born with the ability to laugh.

The world we live in is serious – as we grow into adulthood, we often lose our sense of fun and playfulness. Life is serious, of course, but it doesn't always have to be taken so seriously. And it's not to undermine it or make light of it. No, it's to see if we can have a more light-hearted approach and benefit from some of the many benefits to laughter, like:

Building resilience.
Boosting our immune system
Massaging our internal organs and invigorating our insides
Giving your belly muscles a work-out.

Humour is one of my top three values and I love to laugh. Humour is a positive emotion and its outward expression, laughter, is a universal currency. In all seriousness if I don’t have some fun, humour and laughter in my day …. the cracks begin to show! Luckily, we can proactively cultivate moments of laughter in our lives.

Below are three ways to infuse the benefits of laughter, as a medicine, into your life.

The first one we have already touched on – laughing at yourself. It isn’t always easy

I may have a head start here because I grew up in a house where daily, Garfield told us we must learn to laugh at ourselves. Garfield may have instilled that sense of humour and fun in me.

I wonder if he was even the inspiration for me pursuing a career in ....

......Accountancy?!

Laughing at yourself is not always easy, it is often easier to get a bit annoyed, and it takes practice. You have to catch yourself in that moment you added the milk too soon, remember there is no point in getting angry, or crying over spilled milk, laugh it off and get on with your day. Eventually it becomes a habit and you do it automatically and bounce back quicker from minor setbacks.

A second way is to keep a list of funny moments, things that made you laugh. And when you bring them to mind, you’ll be right back in that moment. I keep a list and I can instantly bring stories to mind that shift my mood and my thinking. As that's another benefit of laughter – it can spark creativity, put you in a more problem-solving frame of mind and leave you feeling open-minded.

One story I use is:

Several years ago when I was in Niger with work, I went to a house party with my friend Catherine. An American woman with the Peace Corp came over and introduced herself. “Hi, I'm Jane”, she said. “Hi, I'm Susan”, I replied. And as Catherine was about to her to introduce herself, she wiped her hands because she had been eating and as she did so she muttered under her breath “I've got greasy hands” and Jane immediately replies “Greasy Hands - that's an unusual name.” In that moment Catherine and I looked at one another stunned and silenced – before we regained composure Jane had wandered off. She probably thought we were strange, but we laughed about it, and for years after that, Catherine was in my phone contacts as Greasy Hands.

If you don’t have a bunch of laughter moments, you can force some laughter

Turn that frown upside down and force a smile and once smiling maybe you can laugh. Force the laughter. The amazing thing about smiling and laughter is that it can be infectious (not like covid but in a healthy way!) You will thank yourself. Your body will. And others might too!
Failing that try a super quick exercise: Take a pen and put it between your teeth. Then pick something up and read it. You just start to laugh because your brain thinks you want to laugh and it joins in!
If neither of these two did the trick go on YouTube and search for goats on trampolines.

So, learn to laugh at yourself, keep a list of moments that have made you laugh and consult with them when you need a laugh or develop some tricks to fool your brain into laughter.

I hope I've convinced you that laughter really is the best medicine. Do you feel the benefit?

Reference : Laughology: Improve Your Life With The Science Of Laughter , Stephanie Davies

Workplace Psychological Safety

susan@beyond-thenumbers.com (Susan Ni Chriodain) — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 10:04:42 GMT

Innovation Needs Psychological Safety

To be able to bring your whole self to work and feel safe is something I believe we should all be able to do. Look for it, find it, create it, force it if you can!

In 2021 Aoife O'Brien invited me onto her Happier at Work Podcast to talk about workplace psychological safety.

Psychological Safety in the workplace is not being afraid to say what is on your mind and when you speak up or out that you do so without fear of ridicule, rebuke or retribution.

The key points covered in this episode include:

An insight into my career background and how to see beyond the numbers and put people first.
How toxicity and negativity can spread throughout a workplace.
How Innovation needs a psychologically safe environment.
How to identify & deal with being in a psychologically unsafe environment.
The benefits of communicating effectively on a human level.
Building courage to deal with difficult ( for you ) conversations.
Finding calm with inner turmoil and being comfortable with silence.
How we can learn and progress by allowing vulnerability & being open to feedback.
Establishing boundaries and making them visible & tangible
Actions that leaders can take to implement a psychologically safe workspace.

You can listen to the full episode on Apple , Spotify and Happier at Work

Resources Mentioned:

Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World

by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall.

7 Questions to help you find out if your team feels psychologically safe – Dr Amy Edmondson

Is there an Imposter Living in Your Head?

susan@beyond-thenumbers.com (Susan Ni Chriodain) — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 11:25:31 GMT

How do you respond?

I met with someone recently who told me they had an imposter living in their head.

Ring any bells?

It did for me.

I don’t remember now when I first heard the term ‘imposter syndrome’ but I recognised it immediately. I used to think it was just me who felt that way.

As a first time Finance Director, I often worried that I would get ‘found out’…. that any minute now my boss, or fellow Directors, would realise that a mistake had been made when I was hired. I often thought that it was just pure luck that I was in that role. I can vividly remember times when I was at my desk waiting for them to call me into a meeting to tell me that the game was up. It was irrational; in my head; but that didn’t make it any less real.

One occasion really stands out:

Our bank offered to help review how we were managing our foreign exchange. I was confident that we were managing it optimally. However, I felt anxious about having this put under a microscope. I was open to recommendations that would help us improve – that wasn’t the issue. But, I was worried that maybe I had made some shameful error that would be uncovered. I put together an overview of what we were doing and as I handed over the files to our relationship manager, I said something along the lines of ‘you’ll probably think I am crap at my job when your team reviews this’. The relationship manager contacted me a few weeks later to tell me that the Bank’s Foreign Exchange team were unable to come up with any recommendations for improvement.

I’ve been in plenty of situations where I didn’t know what to do and I asked people for help or said, “I don’t know”. On the whole, my self-belief is stronger than my self-doubt. However, that does not mean that I don’t ever experience feelings of doubt or that I don’t belong or that I am just not good enough.

When my ‘imposter’ starts questioning my capabilities, my competence, my worth or my direction I stop. I think about the next smallest step(s) that I can take to help me achieve what I am trying to do. I take a small step, then maybe another and another until my imposter vanishes. Sometimes it can be immediate and sometimes it takes a while.

Maybe you’ve felt never felt like a fraud. Maybe you have once. Maybe you feel that way often. If you have ever felt like this rest assured you are not alone.

Help is at hand

There are loads of resources available that provide tips and techniques to address this phenomenon. Some of my favourites include:

· Amy Cuddy

· This TEDx talk https://youtu.be/zNBmHXS3A6I

· HBR articles. These are two of my favourites:

· https://hbr.org/2016/07/everyone-suffers-from-imposter-syndrome-heres-how-to-handle-it

· https://hbr.org/2008/04/embrace-your-inner-imposter

When your imposter speaks to you - you can:

Stop. Listen. Listen to understand or learn but not to obey. Then set out some small steps that you can take. Start taking those steps and you might be surprised at how quickly it disappears. It is your imposter; your voice. You can stand up to it and conquer it.

Standing on my own two feet!

susan@beyond-thenumbers.com (Susan Ni Chriodain) — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 16:31:01 GMT

A journey of discovery

“Sisters are doing it for themselves, standing on their own two feet…” so sang Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox. I’m from a generation that was almost indoctrinated to do it for ourselves, to be self-sufficient, to make our own way in the world. But for a couple of years, I struggled to work out what I wanted really wanted to do. I read books, explored options, learnt new skills and I was determined to figure out what I was passionate about. And I believed I could do that on my “own two feet”.

The key to a successful coaching relationship is rapport between the coach and client. Therefore, it almost goes without saying that clients will work best with a coach they feel they “click” with – someone they can identify with – someone who “gets” them. This is how I felt when I first met my coach. I listened to him speak, tell his story and heard him when he said how difficult it can be for people to ask for help. I felt compelled to speak with him. I did.

For me the beauty of coaching is that the coach helps you to find answers within yourself. A coach doesn’t tell you what you should do or show you what you could do. A coach supports you to find your own answers, to solve your problems, to unlock your own insights, to see your own potential, or unleash it. A coach also supports you to build and strengthen your sense of self-belief. Decision-making is key to building and reinforcing our self-belief. Making our own decisions allows us to feel responsible for ourselves, for our destiny, for our successes and failures.

Coaching is, in essence, a conversation. The coach need not be an expert in your field – they are coaching you and not the subject or content. The conversation typically involves open-ended questions and while answering you receive the undivided attention of your coach – this feels like a luxury and something we rarely experience. Our words often define how we feel about something. Attentive listening is a key trait of a coach. A coach needs to listen, truly listen, to their client.

Open-ended questions are a powerful way to drill down and explore what your answers actually mean. They can be thought-provoking and challenging but you are in a safe and supportive space. The conversation will go at your own pace and follow your train of thought. The style of questioning is non-judgemental, objective, empathetic, compassionate and open. There is an acceptance of your answers. You trust your coach.

Of course, you cannot escape dealing with feelings. Feelings and emotions. I had a habit of expressing my feelings as a thought – “I think that I feel x”. But, with a gently persuasive approach my coach got me to drop “think” and focus on “feel”. His questions helped me to challenge long-held assumptions and beliefs and see them from a different perspective. Changing the perspective of how you view a situation can help you unblock a fear that is limiting progress towards fulfilling your potential. Creating awareness of the fear allows you to break free of these limitations.

I was able to open up about expectations and fears, what ifs and maybes and any nagging uncertainties I had. Sometimes, as you say something aloud, it is as if you admit it to yourself and then you realise that it is something you created for yourself and that doesn’t make it true. So, you can let it go, recognise it doesn’t serve you, you don’t need it, it isn’t who you are and doesn’t define you. Working with a coach helped me to focus on my future, the future I want for myself. I uncovered my passion and my purpose. I worked towards concrete goals.

And, importantly for me, I still felt like I was standing on my “own two feet”.

How is your technique?

susan@beyond-thenumbers.com (Susan Ni Chriodain) — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 16:24:53 GMT

Sink or swim?

Sink or swim

I’m a water baby. I grew up by the sea and spent summers in the water! When I was 7 or 8, I was taken to swimming classes at a pool. At the beginning of the first lesson the instructor told us to ‘jump in’. I did. I couldn’t swim. And, I was out of my depth. I had to be pulled out and I have a vague memory of coughing and spluttering as I recovered. I didn’t continue with those lessons. Amazingly I didn't develop a fear of water. It certainly didn’t deter me from going into the sea, or a pool. I can remember doing water safety classes in the sea and I continued to ‘swim’, albeit without any technique. However, I was always afraid of being in out of my depth.

Dive in

Fast forward to the year 2000. I backpacked through Thailand and Malaysia on my way to Australia. I didn’t dare try diving. Snorkelling, once I got into the water, was manageable. So, when I started living in Sydney, I decided it was time to get swimming lessons. I needed a swim coach to help me improve.

A-ha moment

I can still vividly recall the first time the coach showed me how to breathe while doing the front crawl. I put my head in the water and I was able to breathe out. It was one of the biggest light-bulb moments of my life. I was so blown away that it was that easy. Why didn’t I know this already? I had been doing the front crawl for years with my head above water – never really getting anywhere but enjoying it all the same.

From strength to strength

As I became a more competent swimmer, I gained confidence. In 2012 I joined Dublin Swimming Club and took part in the summer sea-swimming season. There were about 60 women competing and in the first race I was one of the last to finish. In the next race the water was so cold and there were jellyfish everywhere. I think that those conditions provided an extra incentive to swim even faster and I finished somewhere in the middle.

What a feeling

In 2013 I went on a Swim-trek holiday took part in a 5km swim one morning. What a feeling! Swimming forces you to be present. You need to be fully alert. Especially sea swimming. You need to be mindful of the potential dangers lurking everywhere - waves, currents, jellyfish, boats and other swimmers.

Out of my depth

I’ve had my fair share of swimming in the deep-end at work. I swam. I swam well. I swam against the tide. I treaded water. I was in over my head. I began to recognise when my ‘technique’ was off and found people to help me to breathe properly again. I also became someone that others came to when their ‘technique’ felt off and I helped them recover and swim confidently in the deep-end.