Mental Toughness Programme


"Utterly superb!"

Kym Kapadia, Chief Commercial Officer, Aprirose Real Estate investment




Improve Mental Toughness  >  Transform performance of individuals and organisations

Are your employees on go slow due to being defocussed and mentally over challenged?
How many are turning up but RIP; retired in post?
How many duvet days and sickness absence days are being taken through stress and ill health?
Are you losing key critical employees due to lack of employee emotional engagement?
Do you know if your employees are turning up, but are too sick to work?
How many instances are there of poor decision making,  non-compliance, and are you experiencing higher accident rates?
Do you know who is at risk of developing a mental illness or stress disorders?

Your employees are in the building but are underperforming, or worse still not performing or engaged at all.

This is a critical wellbeing issue and costs businesses £20 billion annually in sickness absence and staff turnover.

The bigger cost though is what you don’t see; the lack of sales, the poor customer service, the phone not ringing or being answered correctly, orders going out wrong, slow production, poor planning, less profit, less on your bottom line. These all lead to an increase in hidden costs to every business.

Teaching your leaders about wellbeing and mental toughness and resilience will increase your productivity by up to 25% . Good culture comes from the top down, just this one fact should make you look at wellbeing in your company.

A disengaged employee will bring your teams morale down, will be disruptive and cause friction, the team can’t be cohesive, happy and on target, they won’t be innovative and engaged all because of one person, maybe a group of people and this can so easily be remedied.

So if you are looking at burnout, stress, low morale, depression, childcare or elderly care issues, disengagement, regular illness, bullying or harassment, frequent illness or known job hunting all these are signs of presenteeism and absenteeism two of the biggest killers of productivity in the workplace.






A recent and comprehensive study (GOV.UK) suggests improvement in wellbeing will result in improved workplace performance; in profitability (financial performance), labour productivity and the quality of outputs or services. Job satisfaction, including satisfaction with training, skills development opportunities, how much autonomy employees have in their role, and how much scope they have to use their own initiative and influence decisions, show a strong and positive link with workplace performance.

What is wellbeing?

The term ‘wellbeing’ covers many aspects of the way people feel about their lives, including their jobs and their relationships with the people around them. Of course, a person’s wellbeing is to do with their own character and home or social life along with the workplace, but research shows that employers can have an influence on an individual’s sense of wellbeing in the way they run a workplace.

How can individual wellbeing at work be improved?

Employers have the potential to influence the wellbeing of their staff. There is no ‘one size fits all’ but where employers are able to raise wellbeing in their workforce, they see improvements in the performance of the workplace. When the demands of a job are particularly high this can reduce wellbeing. Job demands result not only from the amount of work a member of staff undertakes, but also from the level of compatibility with pressures outside of work. Ensuring good, open communication with employees, strong leadership and line management have a significant impact on a persons performance.


Mental Toughness is a personality trait, which means that it sits in every one of us, and every time we do something our personality determines how we respond to the situation we find ourselves in. It’s about how well we cope with, and manage the stress, pressure and challenges we face.

Mental toughness is the key to performance, well being and positive behaviour. The importance of optimism, confidence, resilience, character, grit and attitude have never been more relevant in today’s workplace. Developing your mental toughness is vital to your survival in a challenging, stressful and pressurised world.

There are 4 key areas that determine your Mental Toughness:

How do you feel you are able to CONTROL your life and your emotions? If you have a high level of life control you are likely to have a ‘can do’ attitude, whereas a low control level will display a ‘can’t do’ attitude.

How much ‘stickability’ do you have – your COMMITMENT to things you do in your life? A mindset that instinctively says ‘I will do whatever it takes’ (rather than visualises failure and problems) shows a high level of Mental Toughness. Goals targets and measures are appealing to people that are mentally tough.

How do you respond to CHALLENGE? Resilience is an aspect that shows your ability to deal with an adverse situation, or a challenge. How do you view a challenge and respond to it?

To what extent do you believe you have the ability to deal with whatever you face? How do you consider your level of CONFIDENCE (or self belief) in your abilities and your interpersonal confidence? The Mentally Tough prosper, and the good news is you can develop the areas that will make you mentally tougher.



Have you ever wondered what makes someone a good athlete? Or a good leader? Or a good parent? Why do some people accomplish their goals while others fail? What makes the difference?

Usually we answer these questions by talking about the talent of top performers. He must be the smartest scientist in the lab. She’s faster than everyone else on the team. He is a brilliant business strategist.

But I think we all know there is more to the story than that. In fact, when you start looking into it, your talent and your intelligence don’t play nearly as big of a role as you might think. Intelligence only accounts for 30% of your achievement, and that’s at the extreme upper end.

What makes a bigger impact than talent or intelligence? Mental toughness.

Research shows that your mental toughness (grit, perseverance, passion) plays a more important role than anything else for achieving your goals in health, business, and life.


Why is mental toughness so important? And how can you develop more of it?


The good news is that Mental Toughness can be improved through assessment, diagnosis, training and coaching.

With understanding, interventions and evaluation our development programmes can be tailored to every organisation and individual. 

Mental Toughness programmes are invaluable for:

Leadership & Management Development

Staff Development

New Recruit Development

Organisational Development

Assessment, Training & Coaching may include these areas:


Anxiety control

Attentional control

Positive thinking

Goal setting


The test itself – feedback and coaching


Penny Mallory and her team deliver personal and organisational neuro transformation to assess, develop and sustain resilient performance and wellbeing through applied neuroscience based diagnostic tools, neuro coaching and development interventions.