Support – Advice & Insights

How Optical Professionals Can Deal With Difficult People at Work

The 6 Cs of Employee Engagement in Optical Practices

Owning Your Mistakes Without Losing Yourself in the Process

Here is a hard truth about working in optics. You will get things wrong.

Does your manager bring out the best in you

It’s an easy question to ask and a harder one to answer honestly. It isn’t really about whether someone is pleasant, organised, or technically competent. And it’s not about whether the practice hits its numbers or the rota is fair most weeks. The question sits somewhere quieter than that, in the space between how you show up at work and how much of yourself you feel able to bring with you when the doors open and the clinic starts to fill.

Mastering Behavioural Interviews in Optical Careers

A practical guide to helping optical professionals confidently demonstrate their real-world skills during interviews.

How to Say No at Work (Without Burning Bridges)

Most of us have been there-you’re swamped with deadlines, someone drops another task on your desk, and you feel that familiar panic: how do I say no without looking unhelpful?

There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a practice at the end of a long clinic.

The last patient has left. The test room light is off. Someone is wiping down the frame boards. A dispensing optician is double checking a complex varifocal order. An optical assistant is balancing the till while chatting softly about their weekend. Nothing dramatic is happening, yet everything important is.

Stress at Work: Eight Practical Ways to Stay in Control

Work has always involved pressure. Deadlines, responsibilities, expectations from colleagues or managers, and the simple desire to perform well can all create moments of stress during the working day. In moderation, that pressure can be healthy. It can push us to focus, to prepare properly, and to deliver our best work. But when stress begins to accumulate without being managed, it can start to affect performance, decision-making and overall wellbeing.

The Empty Boat and Your Career: Why Perspective Changes Everything

Most people believe anger comes from what happens to them. In reality, it usually comes from how they interpret what happens.

How to Talk About Your Strengths and Weaknesses in an Optical Job Interview

A Practical Guide for Optical Professionals Who Want to Stand Out

INSPIRED INTERVIEW PREP CALL FOR PRACTICE MANAGER ROLES

How to Answer the “Greatest Weakness” Question in an Optical Interview

Turning a Difficult Interview Moment into a Professional Advantage

The Questions That Can Change a Career

Most people think career growth comes from having the right answers. In my experience, it often starts with asking better questions. I have seen this many times in recruitment. The people who make the strongest progress are not always the most technically gifted or the most confident in the room. Very often, they are the ones who have learned how to use conversations wisely. They understand that time with an experienced leader is not just a chance to impress. It is a chance to learn how good judgement is formed.

Practice Manager Interview Edge Guide - How to Stand Out in an Optical Practice Interview

If you have been invited to interview for a Practice Manager role, you have already done something right. The practice believes you could be a good fit.

The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork

INSPIRED RECRUITMENT TRAINING - The 5-Minute Interview Prep Call

How Great Optical Practice Managers Handle Stress Five simple techniques when the day starts going wrong

How to Master Job Interview Questions in Optical Practice

A Practical Guide for Optical Professionals Who Want to Stand Out and Secure Their Next Opportunity

The Quiet Career Risk of Self-Abandonment

Over the years, working in recruitment and speaking with thousands of professionals about their careers, I have noticed something that rarely appears on a CV but shows up everywhere once you start paying attention. It is not a lack of skill, experience, or ambition. In fact, it often affects some of the most capable people in the workplace. The issue is something quieter and far less visible: people slowly abandoning their own needs, values, and direction in order to keep everyone else satisfied.

Confidence is not something you are handed when you qualify. It is something you build, quietly, in the spaces where no one is clapping.

In optics, we talk a great deal about competence. Clinical accuracy. Communication skills. Commercial awareness. Hitting targets. Managing diaries. Reducing remakes. But behind all of that sits something far less visible and far more powerful. Self-trust.

“Self-abandonment.”

The psychological pattern where a person slowly disconnects from their own needs, feelings, and identity in order to please others, avoid conflict, or gain approval. Over time, people start prioritizing everyone else while neglecting themselves.

The Subtle Behaviours That Quietly Lead to Promotion

One of the most common questions people ask me in recruitment is surprisingly simple: What actually gets someone promoted? Not what appears on a performance review form, not what sits in a job description, but what genuinely influences the decision when a manager chooses who moves up. After many years of working with both employers and candidates, I have learned that promotions rarely come from doing your job well alone. Competence is expected. Promotion tends to follow something slightly different: the ability to make yourself useful at a higher level before anyone officially asks you to.

Straight-Talking Advice: 9 Thinking Patterns That Will Wreck Your Career (and How to Fix Them)

Recruitment’s a mental game. Your mindset drives performance, relationships, and results. These nine thinking traps quietly kill confidence and clarity - whether you’re a consultant, candidate, or client. Let’s call them out and fix them - Mark Goode style.