This episode comes from Nicola Richardson, who founded The People Mentor to help small employers, managers and leaders handle difficult conversations, strengthen accountability, and lead with calm, practical confidence.
In this episode I’m joined by Nina Ketel, a confidence and rebuilding coach based in Buxton who spent more than 13 years leading teams in local authority before moving into coaching, speaking and writing. Nina knows both sides of managing people. She has sat in the manager’s chair, and she now spends her days helping people with rebuilding confidence at work after redundancy, divorce, illness, or a long break to raise a family. We talk about why listening beats talking, what a good manager does when someone has lost their confidence, and the most common mistake managers make in a difficult conversation.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify below.
Key takeaways from The People Mentor
- Rebuilding confidence at work usually starts with the person, not the performance. “How are you, really?” opens more doors than going straight to targets.
- People rarely lose their ability. They lose their confidence. Focus on someone’s strengths and it comes back.
- Listening is often more powerful than talking. Walk the floor, say good morning, and you’ll read a team’s mood before anyone says a word.
- Plan a difficult conversation, but don’t script it. Note the facts and a few questions, then listen and let the rest follow.
- Give conversations room. Don’t rush a sensitive chat between two meetings, or hold it where the whole office can hear.
- Confidence can always be rebuilt. Often people just need someone to believe in them before they believe in themselves.
In This Episode, Nina and I Talk About
- Why people never leave their lives at the door, and what that means for how you lead them
- How to read body language and notice when someone’s mood has shifted before they say a word
- Why lost confidence is not lost ability, and how a good manager helps rebuild it
- The most common mistake managers make in a difficult conversation
- How to begin with the person, not the performance, when someone’s work starts to slip
- Why the environment matters, and when to take a conversation off the work premises
- The untapped talent in neurodivergent team members, and why so much of it goes unnoticed
A Useful Reframe
When someone’s performance dips, most managers reach straight for the targets. Start with the person, and the targets usually take care of themselves.
Episode Transcript
Nicola: Welcome to The People Mentor. Today my guest is Nina Ketel, a confidence and rebuilding coach based in Buxton, Derbyshire, who spent over 13 years leading teams in local authority before moving into coaching, speaking and writing. Nina now works with people who are rebuilding after some of life’s harder chapters: redundancy, divorce, illness, or returning to work after raising a family. She delivers one-to-one coaching, workshops and community programmes, and she’s recently written a memoir, The £30,000 Lesson: What I Wish I Knew Before My Divorce. What I love about having Nina on the show is that she brings both sides of the management experience. She’s sat in the manager’s chair and dealt with the real, messy, human side of leading people, and she now spends her days helping people find their confidence and their footing again. Nina, welcome.
Nina: Hello, Nicola. Lovely to meet you, and thank you for the warm welcome.
Nicola: I hope you find a publisher soon, because it’s a story well worth sharing.
Nina: Thank you. It didn’t start off as a memoir. As we’ve talked about before, my divorce ended up costing me around £34,000. A week before I was due to exchange and move into my dream home, the mud-slinging was still going on, and I thought I had to reply to every single email because I believed it would all go before the judge. That’s not true at all. So I’ve written the book to help other people, because my story isn’t unique to me and it won’t be unique to anyone else. If I can save somebody else £30,000, I will. A wonderful editor, Liz Boardman, proofread it and gave me some constructive criticism: she wanted real-life evidence and examples of why each thing cost what it did. So I’ve gone back and added them, and along the way I’ve relived a lot of it. I’ve had so many people, men and women, message me privately to say how much it’s helped them. That’s why I’d love a traditional publisher and agent first, rather than self-publishing.
Nicola: It does make sense. But if you can’t get one, don’t let that stop you. Self-publish if you have to, because you can still get the publicity. Sometimes we fix on one particular way of doing something, and when we can’t get to it we almost give up. The answer is usually to approach it from a different angle.
Nina: That’s exactly how I’ve looked at it. I’ve said to all those so-called agents, if I don’t find one, I’ll go to Amazon and self-publish.
Nicola: And you could go to local bookshops, local newspapers, tell them your story. That’s how it spreads. I can already picture you on Instagram holding your book up. It’s going to happen.
Nina: It will. And I’ll send you a signed copy.
Nicola: Thank you. So, you spent over 13 years leading teams in local authority before moving into coaching. What’s the one thing you wish someone had told you about managing people right at the start?
Nina: People don’t leave their lives at the door when they come into work in the morning. Everybody is carrying something we know nothing about. So what I learnt is that listening is often more powerful than talking. I learnt to read people. If someone walked in and their shoulders had dropped, or they weren’t joining in, I’d gradually get into conversation with them, and if needed, have a quiet chat in a private office. When you go into management you’re often not given the support you should be. People assume, right, you’re a manager, you know what you’re doing. You’re not handed a rule book. It’s get on with it. I really think we need more books like yours, about how to have those difficult conversations.
Nicola: I totally agree. You’ve picked up on something important there about empathy and reading body language, and being part of the team. I used to go in and say good morning, and they’d all say it back, a bit like school. I could gauge the mood by the way they answered. And I’d walk the floor several times a week, ideally every day. You pick up so much by body language. We lose a trick if we don’t. If we’re too engrossed in ourselves, that’s when we miss it.
Nina: Absolutely. And at the end of the day I always said goodbye and thanked everyone for their hard work. It worked.
Nicola: So now you work a lot with people who’ve lost their confidence, through redundancy, illness or major life change. What does it actually look like when someone walks back into a workplace, and what does a good manager do differently in that moment?
Nina: What I’ve noticed is that people haven’t lost their ability. They’ve lost their confidence. A good example is my own. I had seven years away from the workplace raising my family. I had all the same skills when I went back, but the world had moved on, emails, the internet, and I felt like a fish out of water. Because I understood how that felt, by the time I became a team leader I knew what the ladies coming back would be feeling. One lady had been out of work for eight years. In her interview she was shaking, she was so nervous. She’d lost her confidence, but she had incredible skills. In our one-to-ones I never made it a tick-box exercise. We worked on her strengths. She was brilliant at Excel, so we made her the go-to person for it. She’d never lost that ability. We built her confidence, and within about ten months she’d moved up two grades, and later into the training department, and the last I heard she’d become a senior manager, higher than I ever was.
Nicola: Excellent. That reminds me of something I said this week to a CEO dealing with some difficult behaviours. It’s like children when they’re naughty. If you only concentrate on the naughtiness, they do more of it, because they’re still getting attention. It’s no different at work. We need to look at people’s strengths and skills, and have the conversations around those. It’s fascinating how people bloom when you do. You can see the confidence come to the fore because they feel recognised for their talents.
Nina: Exactly. Confidence breeds confidence. Yes, we can give constructive criticism, but don’t go in all guns blazing and have a go at someone. You, or someone, hired that person to work with you. Don’t destroy them.
Nicola: And I’d say 99% of people don’t do anything deliberately wrong. Usually something happens. I remember county court work where one small thing went wrong and it carried through the rest of the case, often something nobody had even spotted at the time. We jump to blame and judgment when we should be curious and ask questions.
Nina: Absolutely.
Nicola: So, difficult conversations are one of the hardest parts of managing people. What’s the single most common mistake you see managers make when they’re trying to have one?
Nina: I’ll put my hand up here, because I’ve done it too. The biggest mistake is preparing what you’re going to say instead of what you’re going to ask. Lead with curiosity before assumptions.
Nicola: That’s a really important point. You can plan a conversation, but you don’t script it. That’s the difference. Write down the facts you want to get across and the impact it’s having, and jot down a few questions in case you get stuck. But if you’re really listening, the questions flow naturally. If we care about our people, we want to know them better, support them, help them. I always wanted my team to fly past me, to go higher than me. That’s what nurturing is.
Nina: It’s the same with your children. You bring them up to reach for the stars. It’s the same as a team leader.
Nicola: Exactly. You shared a story with me about a team member whose performance had dropped, and you started by asking how they were, rather than going straight to targets. That takes confidence. How do you help managers get comfortable with that kind of conversation?
Nina: Go back to basics. Be polite, be kind. Begin with the person, not the performance. Just ask, how are you, how are you really? Any problems at home? It’s amazing how people open up. Use your intuition. You can often tell from the atmosphere if something’s wrong. And don’t blurt it out in an open-plan office where everyone can hear. Go to a private office, or a coffee shop. There are enough of them now.
Nicola: I totally agree. And managers often don’t leave enough time for these conversations. They’ll book meetings either side and end up rushing. If it’s an important conversation, schedule time either side so the person gets what they need.
Nina: Absolutely. It reminds me of a manager I had. We’d have one-to-ones, she never wrote anything down, and every time it was, right, I’ve got to go, I’ve got a meeting. I realise now she was in the wrong job and couldn’t handle it.
Nicola: I worked with a client who had a manager like that. His issue was that he didn’t understand one of his team. She’d lived in the UK for over 20 years but still had her accent, and instead of just asking her to repeat herself, he’d cut the conversation dead and say he had another meeting. That helps no one, and it stops you getting to know your team.
Nina: It got my back up, well and truly, and it went pear-shaped quickly.
Nicola: Exactly. So make the time, listen, and don’t hide behind another meeting. You said the best teachers ask questions before giving answers. What does that look like for someone who’s used to being the person with all the solutions?
Nina: Back to basics again. Ask, what do you think would help going forward? What options have you already considered, and what can we consider together? Say it’s a sickness-return meeting. I had a very scripted manager once who had everything written down, right, what can I do to make things better? But you couldn’t actually discuss anything with her. The real reason I was off was stress. The office I’d been moved to was overcrowded, 75 people using it with only 35 desks. I should have felt able to say, take me out of that office. It’s fine to ask what would help, but you have to listen to the answer and read the body language. If someone says, oh, nothing, gently say, really? Leave it a week and come back to it. Meet in the kitchen or the coffee room. Change the environment. Don’t make it so formal.
Nicola: Absolutely. That’s reminded me of the conversations I’d take to a coffee shop, because I wanted the person to feel relaxed and off the work premises. There’s nothing wrong with that if it helps them open up.
Nina: I always took being a team leader as a privilege. I wasn’t there to rule with an iron rod. I was there to support, encourage and bring people on.
Nicola: And so many managers get that wrong. The power goes to their head.
Nina: There’s a certain type who do that, and they’re hard to deal with because it’s all about them. They’re not self-aware.
Nicola: In those cases there’s often very little you can do. The people you can work with are the ones who want to improve, who reflect, who are self-aware. So, you’ve written a memoir and you deliver community programmes alongside your coaching. What has working with people going through real-life challenges taught you about what people actually need from the person who manages them?
Nina: I’ve created a programme called What’s Next. It’s still a pilot, run from the Women’s Centre in Stockport, which supports women who’ve been through domestic abuse and coercive control. I went through the centre’s programmes myself in 2023 and turned my life around, and last year they asked me to design something. A lot of the women had finished the other programmes and kept asking, what can we do now? So I called it What’s Next. I use coaching tools at the start, then adapt it to each woman’s goals, whether that’s going back to work, promotion, health or simply feeling better about themselves. Everyone’s unique. One of the ladies has ADHD and can’t concentrate on worksheets, she prefers to chat, so I’m bringing in Play-Doh for her to fiddle with, an idea I got from you a couple of years ago. What’s Next has taught me that confidence can be rebuilt, and that people flourish when someone believes in them before they believe in themselves.
Nicola: Absolutely. Everyone has something to give, strengths we need to tap into. I’ve been running neurodiversity workshops for some companies recently, and they’ve gone down really well. It starts with understanding what neurodiversity is, the language you use, and then some very simple actions, most of which cost nothing. We’re missing talent in the workplace because we’re not tapping into neurodivergent people. Only around one in five autistic people are in work. That’s four out of five who aren’t, which is really sad, because they often have great strengths, like being analytical and spotting patterns. We need those people.
Nina: Exactly. The five women I’ve got are all so different and so strong. They tell me I bring a lot of energy and inspire them with my own story. One of them loves animals, so I’ve been researching behind the scenes, looking at what it costs to have a zookeeper experience at Chester Zoo and whether there are concessions for women who’ve been through domestic abuse. I’ve started emailing women’s charities to see if they can help. If she got that experience it would be life-changing, for all the right reasons. It would give her some belief that people care, that we’re not just ticking a box.
Nicola: That makes total sense. The fact that you can adapt the programme and use your initiative means it’ll be an outstanding programme by the time you finish. Well done.
Nina: Thank you. I actually feel it could roll out across the country. It’s been so well received. There’s more to come, but it’s very exciting.
Nicola: I can’t wait to see what happens. So, finally, if someone listening today could take just one thing and use it with their team this week, what would you want it to be?
Nina: Great managers lead the person first, the job second. Confidence can always be rebuilt. And people remember how you made them feel. I’m being greedy and giving you all three.
Nicola: Of course you can have all three. You’ve shared some crackers today, Nina. We look forward to watching you go from strength to strength with the programme and the memoir. Keep us posted, and we’ll have you back to see what happens.
Nina: Thank you so much, Nicola. I enjoyed it.
Nicola: This is The People Mentor, signing off for today. Thank you for listening.
Resources Mentioned
- The £30,000 Lesson: What I Wish I Knew Before My Divorce – Nina’s memoir, currently seeking an agent and traditional publisher.
- What’s Next – Nina’s confidence-rebuilding programme, piloted at the Women’s Centre in Stockport.
- Liz Boardman – editor and proofreader, Knutsford.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you start rebuilding confidence at work in someone who’s just come back from a long break? Begin with their strengths, not their gaps. Find the thing they’re genuinely good at, make them the go-to person for it, and let small wins do the work. Confidence at work is rebuilt through being trusted with something real, not through reassurance alone.
What’s the most common mistake managers make in a difficult conversation? Preparing what to say instead of what to ask. Lead with curiosity. Plan the facts and a few questions, then listen properly, and the conversation usually finds its own way.
Where should a sensitive conversation actually happen? Not in an open-plan office where everyone can hear, and not squeezed between two other meetings. A private room, or even a coffee shop off the premises, helps people relax and open up.
Can focusing on someone’s strengths really change their performance? Yes. Confidence breeds confidence. When you recognise what someone is good at and build on it, they bloom. Concentrate only on what’s going wrong and, much like a child who’s always told off, they tend to do more of it.
A Final Thought
Great managers lead the person first and the job second. Nina left us with three lines worth keeping on a sticky note: confidence can always be rebuilt, people flourish when someone believes in them before they believe in themselves, and people remember how you made them feel.
And if you’re a manager who wants this kind of practical support every month, that’s exactly what The Manager’s Academy is for. It’s where I help managers lead the person first, handle the tricky conversations with less dread, and build the confidence to do it well, all for less than the cost of a coffee a week. Come and take a look at The Manager’s Academy and see if it’s the steadying hand you’ve been after.
If difficult conversations are the part of managing you quietly dread, that’s exactly what I help with. Making Difficult Conversations Easier gives you a calm, practical way to make honest conversations feel easier on purpose, rather than hoping they go well.