The most difficult aspect of work has nothing to do with profitability or deadlines or competition. It has to do with the immense and beautiful challenges opened up by the fact that we must deal, on an ongoing basis, with that often amazing but always complicated entity known as the colleague.

Our colleagues can be the sources of our greatest joys and triumphs: they compensate for our weaknesses, enlarge our strengths and aggregate our energies. However, working successfully around others is neither intuitive nor simple: it requires us to communicate effectively, to understand our own minds and blind spots, to master our emotions and to see the world through others’ perspectives.

The School of Life has been working with organisations since its foundation, releasing the latent talents of employees and equipping them with the emotional intelligence required to succeed. This book compresses our learning into a series of lessons on workplace psychology. The result is nothing less than an essential guide to more profitable and harmonious.