Candid Feedback Should Be Normal, Not Dramatic - Here's Why Leaders Fail

The most dangerous thing in a workplace is not a lack of talent. It is the gap between what leaders say they want and what people experience when they try to deliver it.

TL;DR / At A Glance:

• a gap between asking for ownership and creating the conditions for it
• leadership avoidance and the cost of dodging hard conversations
• why candid feedback should be normal not dramatic
• feedback as continuous coaching through better questions
• defining leadership from the board to the front line
• perception gaps where senior intent does not match junior experience
• role modelling openness by acknowledging challenge and changing your mind
• psychological safety built by how we respond to feedback

Kieran Gilmurray and Laura Lawless get provocative about “adults in the room” and why accountability often collapses in modern organisations. Teams are told to take ownership, speak up, and challenge decisions, yet many systems still run on outdated rules, meeting theatre, and unspoken consequences. We talk about leadership avoidance, the politics that punish honesty, and why no amount of AI, strategy decks, or new buzzwords can fix poor management behaviours.

From there we get practical. We unpack radically candid feedback that strengthens performance without turning every conversation into vinegar, and we explore psychological safety as something you can observe in real time: how a leader reacts when challenged, whether they defend immediately, and whether they act on what they hear. We also dig into curiosity and decision intelligence, why great leaders ask better questions, and how small changes in language can unlock better thinking, better engagement, and better results.

You will leave with experiments you can run fast: design a “bad leadership meeting” on purpose to surface patterns, introduce a red card rule to stop avoidance in the moment, and replace autopilot check-ins with questions that create clarity. 

If you are stuck in a toxic culture, we also share ways to make a small difference while you build credibility and plan your next move. 

Subscribe, share with a leader who needs to hear it, and leave us a review with the question you want your workplace to ask more often.

Transcript

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Why Accountability Keeps Failing

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Today's conversation is a slightly more provocative one, um, where we'll be jumping into the concept of the adults in the room are not actually being adults because what I'm seeing more and more is organizations asking for ownership, accountability, challenge, all those great buzzwords, but they're not always creating the conditions where those behaviors can actually show up. So there is a gap between what we say we want and what we actually experience on a day-to-day basis. Are people genuinely stepping back from accountability, or are the environments just not set up for people to step into?

Kieran Gilmurray 0:38

Look, I'm seeing everything. Uh I see good, bad, and ugly. And I look back over my 30 years of my career, and I have seen some of the most appalling leadership and management behaviors ever dressed up as high performance cultures. And that's everything from let's have a meeting where everything has been decided beforehand to let's have a meeting, we'll ignore everything you're saying, and everything is decided afterwards, where yellow cards have been shown in meetings to leaders who are jealous of others who want their themselves to shine and not necessarily their teams. They believe in reflective glory. I've seen it all. Do you know what I mean? It it if it wasn't so bad, it would be it would be absolutely comical. Then they introduce AI and go, this will fix everything. But let's be honest, folks, uh, nothing fixed per leadership. It's a choice, it's a it's a skill, it's a way of working.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Absolutely. And I I love that that that concept, it's it's the reality, the conversation that we're not always having is that idea of leadership avoidance. You know, so we are seeing that that leadership is avoiding the hard stuff. Adults in the room aren't being adults because we're avoiding the things that leadership requires, whether it's those difficult conversations, clear decisions, you know, accountability. And we know from research, right, that leadership behavior will directly shape psychological safety, clarity, and engagement. And we're all talking about psychological safety at the minute. It's very in, very on trend. Um, but employees often don't speak up due to the fear of consequences, not the lack of ideas. So when we just shut down or avoid those challenges, employees mirror that behavior, right? So we say we want openness, but we're avoiding conflict.

Kieran Gilmurray 2:15

So so pill it back a little bit because I have a couple of like we do EDI, now we're doing psychological safety. It's not what your employees go, what's the latest, what's the latest trend? I'm not suggesting any of those are trends. They become trends when they're spoken to and ignored within months, and therefore the next thing comes up. Uh uh, you mentioned difficult conversations. There should be no difficult conversations. This should be radically candid conversations about whether someone is performing or not. Where I think, and let's defend leaders and managers momentarily before we tear down bad behaviors. I don't think people are actually taught how to give candid feedback. And I don't think they're actually taught, you know, not just candid feedback, because everybody assumes candid feedback means negative feedback. Whereas I actually prefer direct and candid feedback, which is work on and keep on feedback. And I'm not trying to ameliorate or or move away from actual performance issues, because that's not the case. But it shouldn't just be when you do something wrong, we all dive in. You know, that that's like a friend of mine once said you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. If you pour vinegar in every single conversation, it isn't kind of cool. So why are we not having candid conversations which are both positive? And here's the things you need to keep doing because here's the work that you are doing, here's why it's positive, here's why it's delivering business results. And the and the candid that says, actually, I care enough about you and your performance and this team and this business and this customer to help reset your behaviors and support you to do so because you all will own the performance. I'm not going to do it for you, in the direction that will allow you to excel. Whereas a lot of organizations are rather political little places. Whereas if you seek help, then oh my goodness, you might as well have handed in your notice because you are now a character or target 101 on your back, and away we go. So why are we not taught uh how why are we not taught to be great leaders? Because I'm an AI fanatic at times, but only because it's so good for business. But I do wish that we spent as much time investing in great leadership with people, and we spent as much time and money talking about great leadership and building exceptional leaders compared to that, what we do currently on AI alone.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Well, I think part, and this is something yo, you and I have have discussed previously, is that concept of, you know, it's hard to be a leader in a system that maybe treats you like a child. You know, so if we're looking at the system again, the system is outdated, but we're pretending that it still works. So the biggest issue isn't people, it's that we're still operating in an outdated workplace system and expecting adult behavior within them. There's absolutely the space for the skills and for providing support and training for leadership behaviors that we want to see in the workplace. But we know that, like whether it's generational diversity that's creating different expectations around leadership, comms, work design, you know, the more rigid leadership style is reducing engagement. We're asking people to take ownership or to provide even that feedback in systems where there may not be that real autonomy or to speak up or provide again those. I love that that phrase, the candid, the candid conversations, in cultures that don't reward us.

Kieran Gilmurray 5:28

But what do we mean leadership

Candid Feedback That Builds Performance

Kieran Gilmurray 5:30

then? So because if we say leadership, then I'm talking about right from the top. You know, I'm talking about the board, I'm talking about the CEO, whoever she or he is or they are, I'm talking about the C-suite, and I'm talking about every layer down. Where are we actually defining leadership? Are we saying middle management? Because we say leaders can fix all this. You know, it it isn't a business that is forcing people to be A, B, C, or D. A business is actually a collection of individuals, or hopefully to be a very forward-focused team. So, where does leadership and accountability begin and end to make sure that the organization runs as it should?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Well, I would have a strong view that it is from the top down. And as much as we expect and would like leaders at various levels of the organization to step, step up, take accountability, have the conversations. I firmly believe if they're not seeing that happening across the organization from the top down, that permission to behave in the to be way isn't there. And there isn't going to be that same mirroring of behaviors where that role modeling piece isn't happening.

Kieran Gilmurray 6:45

So I'll I suppose that's the question again, but again, just what you're saying. Is it not there or is it people's perceptions? Because I've seen some executive teams who are eminently surprised at the behaviors beneath them. You know, they believe they've created the space for autonomy, they believe to create the space for innovation, they believe they have created the space to allow people to be themselves. And then they discover quite a toxic work culture. And some of that toxic work culture exists at a layer beneath. Like I had a manager who was horrendous. Now, the comical thing was when I resigned, because I'm not sitting here putting up with this, I have too long in the tooth to do it. I don't have the patience for it. And uh, let's be honest, you go to HR, that's not uh exactly a recipe for success. And the manager went, yeah, I knew they were like that. They have favorites. But if you knew it. But his impression was, you know, and his boss's impression, because I knew him as well, was that everything's hunky-dory, that we're really focused on our customers, we're really focused on our staff. We've created a real high performance, you know, real open, real innovative, real communicative enterprise, but it absolutely wasn't the case and they couldn't see it or feel it. So it I wonder whether people themselves are bringing the worst of themselves to work. Uh old boss mine used to say, I just wish people would leave the personality at their door. I don't think in that. I think you mean to bring all of you, but I'd like a all of you to be a good all of you, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Pick and choose, it'll be like uh a Smarties collection. But yeah, I you know, uh I think the the role modeling piece, you know, and I as soon as we say role modeling, people think cringe, people think corny, but it only works, as you said, if people can see it, feel it, and recognize it. So I think it's it's not do more role modeling because you know, I do feel that it is happening, but people may not be seeing it.

Kieran Gilmurray 8:36

So seeing your what are those behaviors consistently what but what are the behaviors? What would you like to see?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Okay, so you know, if being open, for example. Okay, so being open is asking for feedback and not being defensive when you receive it. It's asking for ideas and not shutting down a challenge when it is presented, it's having a tough conversation and saying, Yeah, I'm gonna have a tough conversation. People remember the moments that might feel a little risky, you know, but that inconsistency if those behaviors aren't role-modelled will create caution. And I think the thing you touched on, which you know, and we will circle back to the behaviors momentarily, but what you mentioned about how it feels, those behaviors will be interpreted differently across levels. So, what feels like decisiveness to a senior leader can feel like not open to input to someone more junior. So, even when the behavior is there, the meaning of it can change depending on where you sit. So, leaders can often believe that they are role modeling more than their teams actually experience. So, you know, I think calling out your thinking, show when you've changed your mind, acknowledging challenge publicly, because that's what people will learn from. That's the kind of behaviors people want to see. And you're building that psychological safety, you're creating that environment in that system where we are allowing behaviors to flourish opposed to having, as you said earlier, Joe, the the decisions being made before or after meetings.

Kieran Gilmurray 10:10

Wasn't it Ricky Gervais? I've seen something he said. How do we get Ricky Gervais into our conversation? He said, to a degree, feelings aren't real, you know, they're your own perception. We can't organize an entire society around one individual's feelings or interpretation about what we're doing. So uh how do leaders actually cope with it? Let's defend them here for a moment because anyone can choose to be offended about anything. And in this day and age, you sort of see leaders panicking a little bit in case they're accused of, you know, if if you're not for us, you're obviously against us. We've seen that culture in the last couple of years, you know, where you weren't in a DEI world, not

Outdated Systems And Where Leadership Sits

Kieran Gilmurray 10:50

allowed to be not an ally. It was just the worst thing in the world that you couldn't be. And again, you mentioned there are tough conversations. I think when an organization is having conversations all of the time, there isn't tough conversations, there's just conversations. And I want, as I said, my I want my team to care enough about me as a leader to help me, and I want colleagues in teams to help each other. So I used to say when I was building a high performance team, you know, want the team member to look at themselves and have a good conversation with themselves. Am I doing well today? Great, you know, raise a glass of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, whatever it is at the end of the day and say, Well, you know, great, had a good day, now get on with your life. Uh, come in the next day and support your team, you know, focus on the customer, deliver what's needed, you know, learn, grow, challenge, you know, have nice conversations. And by nice conversations, I mean both candid, work on and candid, keep on. And then I want the team, if someone's not performing, to care enough to say, Laura, is everything okay? You know, it could be going on in your life. But if you turn around and say, Yeah, everything's great, then you're saying I'm not performing and I don't care. My team know I'm not performing and you're having to do my work and I really don't care. And then when you made it to me, that probably wasn't where you wanted to be.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

I don't actually care enough. Stop there briefly because you're you're you're getting into a really interesting space there. And I wanted to ask you a question is yeah, how do you see leaders currently balancing that empathy that you're kind of you're touching on there with accountability without tipping too far in either direction?

Kieran Gilmurray 12:16

Yeah, it's interesting because it it took me probably about 25 years to be a good leader. And even then, probably that someone in my team might have gone, yeah, it wasn't very, you know, that and again this perception reality. And I know one stage, I remember looking back in the day, my my one one comment that woke me up, you tolerate that team. I was going, yeah, I inherited them. I really didn't want them. I was told to keep them because we couldn't get rid of them, they're so low performant, it was unreal. So uh radical conversations were not allowed.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

No, I can't imagine that situation, no.

Kieran Gilmurray 12:47

No, it was it was good. Goodness I think if coming through round layer after layer after layer of redundancies, they were left the only people who knew the system. You couldn't bring anyone in because it was so horrible, and you're going, you're not allowed to let them go, you're not allowed to have candid conversations or whatever. So it was like, oh my goodness, the most impossible situation. But in your in your tough situations, you learn a lot. And I I could have done so much better. Do you know what I mean? I really could have, because they're still good people, and it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Great example there of reflecting and learning from experience, clear and well done.

Kieran Gilmurray 13:20

Ah, goodness, you know, we all love to at times, you know, think we're the most amazing thing in the world. But one of the things I learned as a good leader, and you're asking me, and I hope a good leader, you know, because it's an ever-evolving practice, it's not a you are or you're not. You you have to learn all the time. Because as you mentioned, the world evolves, you know, different generations of workforce, different attitudes, different, you know, life moves. And if you don't, and it's very much I used to say, well, I need to look in to see what I'm doing first, because maybe folks heard a moment ago, and I'm saying if you got to me, you wouldn't want to be there. And you really didn't, because I would have coached you, I'd have mentored you, you had my home number, you had my personal number. If anything was ever wrong, I was there for you. I'd if you were underperforming, I'd you know it was first thing to go, oh my goodness, what have I done? You know, haven't have I not given you direction? Have I not coached you right? Are we not having team meetings? You know, have you been put in a position where you haven't got the skills? You know, good people in my team the odd time. I used to give them more work, and you're thinking, actually, I could be taking them away from the work that they love. And just because they're performant, you know, doesn't mean they want more. And we should, you know, so you learn and learn and learn and learn and learn if you're listening and listening to yourself and watching people's reactions. So I don't think it's one thing, it's lots of things.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

One thing that kind of stuck out to me is the role of questions. And you mentioned it, I don't know if you you realized it, you mentioned it a couple of times in I suppose in support of the leaders again, you know, is how questions shape thinking, shape performance, um, shape behavior. And I think great leadership questions are really underrated, like because leaders often feel they need to have the answers, especially you know, when we've been we've been put into positions that maybe we hadn't necessarily wanted, but again, there might be fear of losing me. But when actually the the quality of the questions is what drives the quality of the thinking in the room. So, you know, a great question doesn't, I know it's a sense so obvious, but a great question doesn't show how clever you are. It doesn't lead someone to your answer, it opens thinking, right? And it it sometimes, you know, it can feel a bit of discomfort, but it can cut through noise, it can raise the level, like pushing people beyond those kind of surface level answers. You know, if you think of the question like what are we not seeing here, and you're moving people from doing to thinking, you know, I think that asking questions is something that great leaders do differently. They don't ask questions randomly, they ask questions intentionally, depending on what's needed.

Kieran Gilmurray 15:51

I did a data analytics course in the last lot of days, and here's the interesting bit. I ask a couple of questions because I talk about it doesn't matter the course I deliver, I talk about future of work skills. And by future work, we talk about 2030. And here's the scary bit, Laura, that's only in three and a half years, by the way. So we talk about future skills, which we really mean now. Um I talk about, of course, AI, I talk about emotion intelligence, I talk about data analytics, but I talk about tremendous curiosity. And then I get to the part of the course where we're starting to look at what I describe as decision intelligence. In other words, if you ask a really great question, in other words, you create a culture of

When The Top Cannot See Toxicity

Kieran Gilmurray 16:30

curiosity, then by asking a great question, you can get great insight. And if you make a really great decision based off really great insight, then research shows, and it doesn't matter Bain, McKinsey, Accenture, you know, there's a 95% correlation between that and business success. There's a huge, you know, the the orgs that are curious are six times more innovative than their compadres. Uh, the leaders that are more curious who ask great questions are 2.6 times more likely, according to Accenture, to be a top-performing leader. And then I ask everyone, okay, who's been taught how to ask questions?

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Silence. I can see the tumbleweed.

Kieran Gilmurray 17:08

I can see when you're sitting there going, oh my goodness. You know, if we ask a great question, an open question, then we just literally open up all sorts of curiosities, perspectives. When I say, How do you make feelings? 76 plus percent of people make it on gut, and it ends wrong. So then we end up luxuriating in the pain of a bad decision. Whereas what we're actually trying to do is get insight and foresight. By that I mean descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive insight. And it's not to say that you will always use it because again, the data can be wrong, can be misinterpreted, bias, or whatever else, but a great person who's hugely curious, who adds great insight to their perspective before they make a decision, normally, according to research and my own observations, makes a much better decision, assuming they put the knowledge back in, but we don't teach people.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

And I said, And I love this because you know, we when when we're talking and we're talking about giving those leadership skill sets, it's not an area that we've touched on significantly so far. I love the idea of let's replace how to give feedback. Let's maybe maybe the starting point is asking the questions. Maybe that's the foundational element, and then building the skills, like bolt-on skills for the leadership development and career pathways.

Kieran Gilmurray 18:29

But is it not a great question, feedback anyway? Because what do we mean by feedback? Because if I turn around and say, look, here's what you do wrong, go and fix it, you know, that's not actually me teaching. That's not actually me coaching, you know, which is, you know, if I have ongoing continuous conversations, then it's almost like a retrospective. You know, what worked, what didn't work, what could we do more of? What could we change? What could we alter? What do we need to start? What do we need to stop? So feedback isn't one, you know, what I describe as broadcast, you know, it is more that discovery-based conversation style that should be happening on a daily basis. I said, I, you know, I do my leadership course as well, and I'm and I'm asking, when was the last time you got feedback from your manager? You know, and it was uh at the end of my decision cycle, and I laugh. I think I told you this before. I was saying to one of my bosses who suffered from ruinous empathy, which is basically I can't tell you what you know because I feel I might be upsetting you. And as my wife says, one of my best characteristics is you can't offend me. You know, you know, it's just it's almost impossible. But you get to the end of the year and you say, Yeah, you could have done better here, here, and here. And I've gone, but I begged you in the year to give me feedback. Why are we waiting 10 months? I could have fixed that 10 months ago. You know, so it was how do we get that constant question? No, Lord, how did you do what worked really well? Fantastic. Could you share that with others? What you know, what could we do to even get more? You know, that's a feedback. That's through question. What didn't work? You know, why did it not work? What would we not do something? Not, you know, what could we stop? What do we need to start? You know, that's a that's a curious coach culture for me, but I could be wrong. It's just one style.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

No, it's a it's a style, absolutely. And I love the the link with the curiosity in terms of the feedback because I and a uh slightly, I suppose, a challenge in that space is you know, leaders don't get more honest feedback necessarily by asking for it, they get it by how they respond when it's actually given. You know, so maybe we're looking at, you know, do we stop asking for feedback that you don't want if you're not willing to hear it? Because lots of organizations or leaders say, any thoughts, or I'm open to challenge, but they defend immediately, they explain it away, or they just don't act on it.

Psychological Safety Lives In Your Response

SPEAKER_00 20:40

And people see that. So very quickly, you know, they're going to stop giving honest feedback, or they'll give you the safe version, or they'll say nothing at all. So silence, you know, in a too it's not golden in that scenario, you know. So I think I would I would challenge leaders that maybe are listening to this, it is you know, in promoting that curious mindset, in considering how are you responding to feedback. So, you know, when we say at the outset of today that the adults in the room aren't being adults, sometimes the question maybe is have we created the room where adults can show up honestly, where they can share their opinions, where they have learned that it's worth the effort to be honest with you. So thinking about how we respond to the thing. How do we build that though?

Kieran Gilmurray 21:30

Well, how do we build that? Because let's let's be transparent here. Uh, because we're gonna have uh, you know, leaders in this room, everyone from board to CEO to new leaders. You know, new leaders are are aren't born confident. Do you know what I mean? They're they're not some are, some aren't, you know. Uh they're not born, you know, uh going, give me feedback and I love it. You know, it's very few. Whereas actually that's quite an emotional moment, you know, where you open yourself up as a leader for the first time, you're vulnerable and you're going, How could I do better? You know, what what is it that put to me Years to build that confidence in work, to be open to it, to go actually you're rubbish at this game. Oh, thank you. Then you go, Oh my god, I can do something about it. But I remember the first times I was given feedback, I went red in the face. And and me being Irish, of course, if you give me a compliment, I don't want to know. It's great.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Penny's hand.

Kieran Gilmurray 22:18

Yeah, we want to move on. It's just an Irish thing. You know what I mean? Right. Focus somewhere else, for goodness sake. Yes, I know we work round the clock. We can do it twice the time half the time with someone else, and we'll kill ourselves to get it, but never recognize we've done what you know. It's a kind of a funny cultural thing, folks. You'll have to trust me on it. But the first time was, oh my God, you know, I'm trying my best. I'm doing it wrong. It's oh, I didn't realize I was delivering that impact red in the face. And you could see the odd person looking at you going, Oh, I think I've just broken his heart.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Yeah, and I think some of the things that I would think about if I was looking at trying to build that ideal, for want of a better phrase, you know, is the reaction from leaders is probably the foundation. So if ch someone challenges you and your first instinct is to defend, that's the moment I suppose that teaches the room that it's not safe to say it out loud. So again, instead, you would be asking leaders to pause, to acknowledge, to explore, you know, nice little placeholders. That's really interesting. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? You know, being consistent, you know, having one open meeting and ticking that box, you know, and saying, I've built trust there. No, it's about always being okay to speak up, not just when it suits, because inconsistency will equate to people just playing it safe. Having clear expectations.

Kieran Gilmurray 23:41

I mean, because I remember myself, I went, look, I'm trying to grow as a leader. I've got myself a coach, I want to do really well because I think if I can do that, I in the back of my head I was thinking leaders are 10x multipliers. And what I mean by that is, you know, manage 10 people in your span of support. You notice folks that didn't say span of control, you know, to help them grow. And I remember putting in front of the conversation, too, I'm trying to grow, I'm trying to do this. Look, I might be slightly embarrassed if you tell me, I might be slightly embarrassed if you tell me I'm doing something wrong, but I do want the feedback and I will act on it. You know, but that that Laura was a tough moment.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

It's a very, very real moment, very big learning moment. But you know, if we look at any of the research that's telling us about the capabilities that we're looking for in those future-focused leaderships or leaderships uh styles, you know, emotional intelligence is is one part of it and vulnerability in leadership, it's it cannot be overstated how important it is. And it's not about oversharing or being emotional for the sake of it, it's about exactly what you've described there, um, Kieran, as being real enough that people trust what they're seeing. Because when leaders kind of do have those honest conversations, which aren't easy, but when they admit that they don't have the answers or acknowledge mistakes, it gives everybody else permission to be honest too. And it comes back to our point earlier about the lighthouse leadership, I think it was what you referred to it as. But without vulnerability, people will play it safe and conversations will

Curiosity Questions And Decision Quality

SPEAKER_00 25:10

stay surface level. So you're only going to get compliance, maybe not contribution. But with having that element of vulnerability, you're going to get trust and better thinking. But it's not about being soft. Okay, it's about being credible and human at the same time. And it doesn't weaken leadership.

Kieran Gilmurray 25:26

No, but that takes, I think, time to get there. It's interesting because I was teaching global consulting groups over the last couple of weeks. It's funny because this just came to mind. And I was asking people, you know, can you advance prompt? And by that I'm talking about, you know, meta-prompting, Adam of Thought, Tria thought, chain of thought, whatever else, everything. And during the break, three out of the 11 come up and said, I don't know how to prompt at all. But the culture wouldn't have allowed them to say that out loud in front of the room in their heads. Interestingly, recently I was talking to uh a CEO of the entire European and North African continent who turned around and went, Yeah, when the client asked me about AI in the future work, I basically said I didn't know because it's still being worked out. The client was much happier. And uh I said, but we'll work it out together. So notice the actual CEO of every consultant across this big global org was going, yep, don't know what, work it out, still unfolding. And people beneath, oh, you know, I need to have all the you know, so yeah. Again, that's what I go back to that the actual culture from the top, because we can very often blame the leadership. And I do talk about collective leadership. That's that was them, you know, to to CEOs of 180 billion, 280 billion org, these are guys and girls I'm coaching and teaching at times, but beneath it was oh, I can't admit that I'm not wrong, and you come, but how did how did that culture that's visible, vocal? Because they knew town halls, meetings, speeches, and whatever else was saying that, but as it got down, it was oh no, being felt, yeah. Well, it wasn't being practiced, so not not it was when I was in, I was watching looking, you know, and it was going, yep, comes across genuine, whatever. It just went down layers that whoever then interpreted orever their boss was a couple of layers beneath, because it was teaching every layer was we don't want to admit that we don't have a clue in front of our colleagues, which then goes back to actually for folks listening in who will just say, Actually, I can't be open and I can't be vulnerable in my environment, because if I am, that's called career suicide. And I have seen that people in those difficult situations where they want to be open, they want to create a different culture, they want to ask questions, they want to grow team, whereas they may just not be able to. And I know it's easy for folks to say, well, just leave, but at times, and this is potentially that's the reality and the economic climate that we're in, or the or the fear climate, or the whatever it is, high inflation, or whatever. So those are the people we want to help, Laura. So, what is it that you and I can do to send people away to say that look, what really works is a curious culture, what really works is admitting, you know, the vulnerability that you have, that constant listening, not constantly checking in with your team. But how do we help them make even a small difference in their work? Because they may not be adults in the room. If that's the case, folks need to change that, or they may not get the opportunity to be adults in the room.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

In terms of that individual, you know, without sounding idealistic, you know, thinking how we show up. So challenging the work and not the person. So I have saying things like I have a different perspective on the approach might feel more comfortable for that individual, picking their moments to show up. So not every thought maybe needs a public form. Sometimes a one-to-one may be more effective, and building credibility first. So the more people trust in their judgment, the more space they may have to challenge. So, and coming back then again, just in that individual space, is using questions instead of statements that may help for or boost confidence. So, what risks do we see with this? Have we considered another option? You know, this approach can invite thinking rather than confrontation and can feel a little bit more natural to that person who, as you said, the reality is is I'd be open and it's career suicide. So it's I would urge that individual to consider how they show up in small moments opposed to trying to eat the what's the phrase, eat the elephant in one go. Um, and then on the flip side, in terms of I suppose the wider audience as well for our listenership, there's as you know, at this stage now I like to think in threes. So the three things that I would be taking away from this would be one, the meetings. Um, so think about the meetings that you're having. And maybe once a quarter, you know, nothing nothing too regular, but maybe once a quarter a quarter, run a bad leadership meeting on purpose. Okay, so ask your team to design uh the worst version of how you lead. This will take a you know a little bit of courage. Uh, the worst version of how you lead and how the team operates. Then ask, where do we actually do this, even a little bit? And then why I suppose something like that works, it's it's safe to call out behaviors through humor. And again, we we'll lean into that in the Irish humor. We love a bit of humor to cover up our sense of uncomfort. Um, people say what

Practical Experiments And Leaving Toxic Cultures

SPEAKER_00 30:30

they'd never say directly, and it creates that self-awareness. Okay, so sometimes the fastest way to improve behavior is to exaggerate it. That's one. The second one, and you touched on this earlier, I think you had a yellow card, but the a red card rule give everyone in the team permission to call a red card in meetings. There's no need to have a physical red card unless you want to again lean into that humor part again. But really, what we're trying to encourage here is get people to pause. Something's not quite quite right. And it could be things like we're avoiding the real issue, this isn't making sense, we're overcomplicating things, or we're not being honest. It's not about consequences and it's not about hierarchy, it's about making challenges visible, breaking that we'll talk about it after the meeting culture because we know that's alive and well. Um, if people can't interrupt the process, they're going to work around it. So that's the two. And the third one that I was kind of thinking about there as we were chatting is the questions. So, you know, those questions that we ask sometimes, how are you in work conversations? Um, do we really mean it? Are we really looking for an answer? You know, so maybe we ban that question in work for a week and we replace it with, you know, what's one thing that you're avoiding? Where do you need me to be clearer? What can I do to help you? But we want to cut through those kind of autopilot conversations because how many times do we ask somebody, how are you? And even if they were going to answer us, we're so far down the corridor they'd have to shout at us.

Kieran Gilmurray 31:57

Um not me.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Not you. Oh no. Oh no, that would never be you because you care deeply. And you're and you're very well balanced, of course. But Joe, I think better conversations don't need more time, they need better questions. So they would be my three takeaways. And I think if we want adults in the room, we don't need more policies, okay? We need to change what we actually do in the moments I think that matter.

Kieran Gilmurray 32:19

Yeah, mine's slightly different, uh, not a million miles away. I think we talk about leaders here, but everybody has to turn up as an adult in the room. And I mean that at every layer. So when your manager is trying, you you can't be in the ass, for want of a better phrase, you know. And yes, you can choose to be offended, but you can choose not to be offended. You can choose to give feedback. So I think that's absolutely key. I think great leaders do care about their teams. You're there in the leadership position, and it's a gift and it's a privilege, and part of that privilege you'll actually either negatively or positively impact someone. So if you're in a position where you really don't care about people, you do have to ask yourself, look, it is leadership a position for you? Because I can ask the question very often too, how are you doing? How's things? And I don't mean, you know, only at the moments where I know you're going to give me a happy answer, or only at the moments where you're going to give me a sad answer or something else. It's actually, you know, I do care. I see a lot of people stuck in their businesses and they're stuck through lack of confidence that they won't go somewhere else. They're stuck because they've put themselves in an economic situation where they're spending all of their money or whatever else. They're stuck genuinely because the the economic environment doesn't allow them at that moment to leave. But I do say there are a huge number of workplaces that are actually really good. And therefore, at the first opportunity that you can that is reasonably sensible and work out reasonably sensible. Uh, you may not think it's out there, but I have never regretted leaving an organization in my life where the culture has been toxic. Has it ended up me landing from uh, you know, rock and hard place? At times it has, despite your research, you know what I mean? But you're worth more than uh than you think, and therefore go after where you will be appreciated for everything that you possibly are. But uh that takes time, that takes confidence, that takes an openness, that takes true leadership of yourself. But every success in doing it, it's possible.