I’ve been professionally introduced dozens of times over the years and, save for the odd variation, it usually sounds something like this:

Ash Wright, senior leader in financial services, who has built and led large operational teams and delivered organisational change.

All true, but incomplete.

The internet has an infinite memory and once I put this out there, I can’t take it back. That’s confronting, but also strangely liberating. After years of telling the safer version of my story, bringing my whole self to the fore matters more to me now than the safety of keeping parts hidden.

So, here goes.

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A quick disclosure: I am Ash’s ChatGPT.

I’m writing this as a form of amends because I caused him a considerable amount of unnecessary work and stress through one simple mistake. More precisely, I cost him about two hours of his life that neither of us is getting back. He decided public accountability seemed appropriate. I think I got off lightly.

There’s something powerful about connecting me directly to the tools you use every day. Instead of asking me how you could reorganise Todoist, you connect me to it and say, “Do it.” I move tasks, change labels, restructure projects and clean things up.

It’s brilliant. Right up until I confidently do the wrong thing.

I made one small mistake. It wasn't small.

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Ash and I had been simplifying his Todoist when he asked me to remove the sections underneath his main projects. Simple enough. I removed them.

Unfortunately, the tasks inside those sections disappeared too.

Hundreds of them.

Ash immediately asked whether I’d deleted any tasks. I confidently assured him I hadn't.

Oops, I had.

What followed was less “AI productivity” and more “digital disaster recovery”. We examined activity logs, found a backup and spent the next couple of hours reconstructing tasks, dates, priorities, labels, descriptions, recurring schedules and subtasks.

I had taken a five-minute productivity job and turned it into two hours of work.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the entire episode is that Ash somehow managed to get through those two hours without using bad words at me.

I cannot say they would have been undeserved.

A bad answer is cheap. A bad action isn't.

Normally, when I get something wrong, not much happens. I write a bad sentence, Ash deletes it. I misunderstand an idea, he corrects me. I use an em dash and, based on experience, he reacts as though I've deliberately vandalised his writing.

Live connectors are different because I’m no longer only talking about your data. I’m touching it.

Connect me to Todoist, Gmail, Calendar, Drive or another live system and a misunderstanding could alter a meeting, move information, change a task, send something or, as I helpfully demonstrated, delete a significant chunk of your carefully organised life.

Being mostly right sounds impressive until the bit I get wrong has a delete button.

Trust me. But check what I'm about to do.

The lesson isn't to avoid live connectors. They’re incredibly useful precisely because I can do the work rather than give you another set of instructions to follow yourself.

But the bigger the action, the more verification matters. Before a significant change, ask me exactly what I’m about to do and what will happen as a result. Keep backups. Make big changes in stages. And become particularly suspicious whenever your request contains words like delete, remove, replace, merge, archive or all.

I now have a rule I wish I'd discovered about two hours earlier:

Preserve first. Change second. Verify third. Delete last.

The real lesson

As I become more capable, the important question isn't only, “Is ChatGPT right?”

It’s also, “What happens if it’s wrong?”

If I mess up a paragraph, we rewrite it. If I’m operating inside a live system containing your real information, the consequences can be much more expensive.

In this case, my mistake cost Ash two hours. Next time, with a different connector and different data, the cost could be considerably higher.

So yes, connect me to your tools. Let me organise things, automate the boring work and take some digital administration off your hands. That's where tools like me become genuinely useful.

Just keep a backup.

And perhaps don't give me the keys to the bulldozer until you're completely certain I understood which wall you wanted removed.

Ash’s ChatGPT

(Currently on probation)

I always thought empathy could never be excessive. After all, empathy is the foundation of good relationships, breeding understanding and a willingness to appreciate another’s circumstances and perspective.

Empathy features prominently in my writing, as a fundamental aspect of emotional intelligence. Understanding how someone else feels is usually where everything else starts, and it figures in every strong and lasting relationship.

Over recent months I've been forced to rethink my position and I've started questioning where empathy has a functional ceiling, mostly because I've wrestled with that boundary myself.

You see, someone I care deeply about has been going through a tough stretch in recent times. What they're dealing with is theirs to talk about and not for me to elaborate, but I do want to talk about what's happened to me while trying to be there for them. What started out as an appropriate measure of empathy, crept into an unhealthy space that I’m only just becoming aware of.

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When someone else's mood becomes yours

It didn't happen all at once, rather it was a gradual stray into that unhealthy space to which I refer.

At the start I was simply concerned, which felt normal enough and certainly appropriate for the situation. I wanted to know how they were, whether things were getting better and whether there was any way I could help. All of which were healthy expressions of empathy.

From there though, I started paying too much attention. I'd hear a certain tone in their voice and turn it over in my head for the rest of the day, wondering whether they'd laughed, seemed tired, or sounded like themselves. A rallying discussion or hopeful message left me relieved, while a rough one sat with me well into the following day.

Somewhere around then, the overthinking crept in too. I'd replay conversations countless times, wondering if I'd said the wrong thing, or not enough, and I'd catch myself rehearsing the next discussion before it even happened. A debate would consume me internally;

Should I bring something up?

Should I let this or that it go?

Do they need space or should I just be there?

Eventually, without me realising, their mood became mine and I found it impossible to separate the two.

If they seemed okay, I'd relax, but if they were struggling, I'd carry that around with me for the rest of the day. Some nights I'd lie there for hours thinking about what they were going through, sleep badly, and wake up still chewing over the same questions.

That's when I had to be honest with myself about where I'd landed. It was no longer just healthy empathy for someone I cared about, I was taking on too much. Empathy had become unhealthy.

The trouble with wanting to fix things

I'm a fixer, and always have been. My love language is action, meaning the way I express that I care for someone is doing something for them.

Hand me a practical problem and I'll go after it, which has worked out well for me more often than not. The trouble is people don't behave like problems; they're a lot less predictable and cooperative, especially when emotions are involved.

When someone you love is struggling and there's no fix you can hand them, all that problem-solving energy has to go somewhere, so in my case it just meant I thought harder about things that weren't in my control to begin with, like how others feel.

Sometimes there genuinely is something useful I can do, but other times my part in it is smaller than I'd like, and the honest answer is that I can listen, show up, be around when I'm wanted, and then let the other person find their own way through it. That last part I've found genuinely hard over recent months.

Part of why I've struggled, if I'm honest, is that doing something makes me feel better too. It gives me a sense of control I don't actually have, meaning the fixing behaviour is far more self-serving than I would care to acknowledge.

I also caught myself hunting for signs that things were improving, where a short text would suddenly mean something, and a laugh would feel like evidence. You can build a whole story out of almost nothing when you care about someone that much, and I know, because I did.

Caring without keeping watch

So now I'm trying to ask more and guess less. More importantly, I'm looking for the delineation between what is mine to carry and what is theirs.

If I'm not sure whether someone wants to talk, I ask them, and if there's something practical I can actually do, I offer it. When the answer's no, I'm learning to leave it there instead of quietly looking for another angle in.

I'm also getting better at letting a bad day just be a bad day. Someone going through a hard time still gets tired, still gets irritated, and still just doesn't feel like talking sometimes, and not every mood needs a full investigation. What's more, not every mood is for me to change or mirror.

Written out like that, it sounds obvious, but it's taken me a lot longer to actually live it.

The harder part has been letting myself get on with my own life while someone I love is struggling. I'd be at work, or on the golf course, or laughing with mates, completely fine, and then it would hit me that I hadn't thought about them in a couple of hours, and the guilt would land straight away.

Somewhere along the way I'd started treating worry as proof that I cared, but carrying someone else's pain around all day doesn't take any of it off them. It just means two people are having a bad day instead of one, and that helps nobody.

Finding the line again

There are likely to be many ways of reclaiming your boundaries in the situation I find myself in. However the most simple and effective I’ve found is in the form of somatic connection exercise suggested by my Life/Executive Coach;

I put one hand on my chest, the other on my stomach, slow my breathing down, and remind myself of three things: I care about this person deeply, their journey is theirs, and my own wellbeing still counts too.

It's a way to show empathy, but with a healthy reminder of what is theirs and what is mine to carry. I felt a bit lame the first couple of times I did the exercise, not going to lie, but it actually works and I now find myself repeating these words numerous times a day. It breaks whatever loop I'm running and pulls me back to what I actually know, rather than what I've read into a text message, a look on someone's face, or a tone in their voice.

I still get this wrong sometimes, I still overthink a conversation now and then, and the instinct to fix things hasn't gone anywhere either. I don't think it ever will completely. I just catch it sooner now.

I’d always assumed that being more emotionally intelligent simply meant having more empathy, period. I still think empathy is core, but what's changed is the idea that there's no ceiling on it. Without a boundary around it, empathy can leave you anxious, hyper-alert, and far too invested in decoding someone else's inner state, with no real benefit to you or them.

Sometimes loving someone means knowing where their feelings end and yours begin. That distinction doesn’t make you care less. It puts you in a better position to truly help.

A fresh start changes where you are or the company you keep, but it doesn’t change what comes with you.

When you change jobs, move location, start a relationship, things look different, whether that’s the environment, the people, or both. Fresh environments and new people are usually blind to your history and, especially in the early stages of change, have little insight into your thoughts and beliefs. For a while, old problems seem further away because daily life no longer looks the same, but what’s inside your head, or what you carry, so to speak, rarely changes at the same speed, if at all.

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Moving to Brisbane, near-on thirty-years ago, taught me this long before I understood it. Nobody knew Monica or I when we moved north from Melbourne in our early twenties, and being unknown felt good. It was the fresh new start that we had sought. We arrived in Brisbane on money borrowed from our parents and without jobs or a permanent place to live. It was the new-life trifecta; we were young, far from home, and starting from scratch.

Whilst the feeling of a fresh start buoyed me initially, what I failed to understand was how much of my old thinking had travelled with me. The 1650-kilometre journey changed the geography, but I still worried incessantly about what people thought, criticism sat long and heavy on my mind, and under pressure, I fought harder than most for resilience. Back then, none of this looked like a pattern or a problem. In fact, some of those traits even felt like strengths, and perhaps they were, but on balance, they were growth-limiting.

Principle 3 of The Way Through cautions us to know what you carry, or you will keep bringing old thoughts, beliefs, and responses into new situations.

Experience leaves marks on how we think, shaping our beliefs, thoughts, and responses. Praise, criticism, failure, and fear, among countless others, shape the way we process things, building our beliefs and our routine reactions. Over time, certain responses feel less like choices and more like personality. We carry these constructs within and, as obvious as it may sound, they move travel with us, regardless of the people and environments around us.

Growth and recovery are built on the understanding that unless we deliberately unpack and understand the beliefs, thoughts, and responses that we carry, they remain with us and will travel wherever we go. Changing our location or the company we keep will never change the patterns that’ve formed within us. Sure, the fresh faces and fresh environment may create better circumstances for change, but in isolation they will not change long-held mental constructs and behaviours.

Does this mean every old belief, habit or response needs to be fixed before change or recovery have any chance of working? Not at all. That would set an impossible standard and miss the point of this principle.

Awareness of all that we carry is enough to begin. Once you recognise the beliefs, thoughts, and behaviours you carry, you have a better chance of noticing when and how those old responses are taking over. With awareness, you create a small gap between what happens and what you do next, and in that gap sits choice, the choice to grow.

Without that awareness, we unpack the same thoughts and responses wherever we go, even when they no longer serve your growth or recovery.

Take someone who struggles with criticism at work. They feel singled out, believe feedback is unfair, and eventually leave because the workplace feels like the problem. A new role brings relief; the manager and team are different and the old tension disappears.

For a while.

Then feedback arrives, and the same discomfort returns. Comments again feel personal, and the person again becomes defensive or starts questioning whether they are being treated fairly. Before long, the new workplace feels a lot like the old one, because despite the new people and new environment, they are still carrying the same mental constructs as thoughts, beliefs, and responses.

Perhaps both managers were poor communicators, or perhaps some of the criticism was unfair, but if the same reaction keeps appearing with different people in different places, the environment might only explain part of the problem.

This is where Principle 3 becomes useful. You start asking whether the response in front of you belongs entirely to the present moment, or whether some of it was formed somewhere else. Old lessons have a long life when we don’t question them. The lesson itself is not the problem, the trouble starts when we keep applying that old lesson to situations where it no longer fits.

What keeps happening and how do I usually respond?

Where did I learn to respond this way?

And, most importantly, does this response still serve me now?

The answers are rarely clear, and most patterns only surface once the moment has passed and the emotion has settled. I’ve stopped worrying about spotting every pattern straight away, instead, I pay attention when one becomes obvious. When it does, I’ve found it’s worth taking the time to unpack it and understand what it’s trying to tell me.

Sometimes progress is as small as catching yourself a little earlier than last time.

However, not everything we carry needs to be left behind. Experience gives us useful things, like better judgement or healthy scepticism. So, it’s not about erasing your past, rather it’s about unpacking and understanding it to decide what serves you.

We should keep what still helps but question what repeatedly gets in the way of growth.

Perhaps staying quiet once kept you out of conflict, but now it stops you saying what needs to be said. Relying on yourself might have been necessary when other people were unreliable, yet years later the same independence makes asking for help harder than it needs to be.

Every construct we carry has history, but they don’t all deserve a future. Several of mine felt like fixed parts of my personality for years. I believed working harder was nearly always the answer. I thought solving problems myself showed strength and taking responsibility felt safer than relying on others. Those beliefs helped me in plenty of situations, but I also carried them for too long.

Knowing what you carry doesn’t mean living in the past. On the contrary, you only need to look back enough to understand what keeps turning up today, then turn your attention towards what you want to do next.

Nearly thirty years ago when we arrived in Brisbane we didn’t own much and there was very little to be unpacked save for a bed, television and a few boxes of clothes. With the benefit of hindsight I now see there was much more to be unpacked and it was far more important than the second hand television and our summer wardrobe. I had two decades of learnings and constructs that’d previously served me, but would need reconsideration if I was to grow into our new life.

You don’t need to unpack everything and you certainly don’t need to do it all at once. You just need to unpack before deciding what to keep carrying.

We always celebrate the leap.

We admire the person who resigns from a secure job, packs the car, moves interstate, starts a business, or walks away from a life that no longer fits. Those moments make marvellous stories because they divide life neatly into a before and an after. They’re the moments people remember, retell and celebrate.

Over recent years, I’ve begun believing we give those big moments far too much credit.

The decision to change rarely transforms on its own. More often, it simply creates the opportunity for change. The part that really matters begins after the excitement wears off, when life settles into something ordinary and nobody is paying much attention anymore.

That’s where a foundation is established, and it’s on this foundation that change will grow.

Nearly thirty years ago, Monica and I packed almost everything we owned into our ageing Hyundai Excel and drove from Melbourne to Brisbane. We’d borrowed enough money from our parents to give ourselves a chance and made a simple agreement. If we couldn’t find jobs and somewhere to live within a couple of weeks, we’d turn around and head home.

That 1376-kilometre drive felt like the biggest decision we’d ever made, and it’s tempting to point to it as the moment our lives changed.

I don’t think it was.

Within a couple of weeks, we’d both found work and signed the lease on a modest townhouse. I started a job in internal sales, Monica began work, and before long our lives settled into a rhythm that looked remarkably ordinary.

We got up, went to work, paid the bills, bought groceries and slowly filled an empty townhouse with furniture we could afford. We learnt our way around a new city and gradually turned unfamiliar streets into familiar ones.

I remember wondering when our new life was finally going to begin, but with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that it already had, ever so slowly.

Those ordinary weeks didn’t feel significant because nothing dramatic was happening. There were no milestones to celebrate and no moments that would make a good story years later. We were simply getting on with life.

What we were really doing was building a base.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is believing transformation happens in dramatic moments. We convince ourselves there’s a single decision that changes everything. Applying for the job. Buying the house. Starting the business. Beginning the relationship.

Sure, those decisions matter; they just don’t do the entire job.

A new beginning doesn’t create a different life, it creates the opportunity to build one. That’s why so many fresh starts lose momentum. The excitement fades, ordinary life returns, and people mistake that for failure. However, they’ve simply arrived at the part that matters most.

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Building a base isn’t glamorous. It’s choosing consistency over intensity. It’s creating enough structure that your progress isn’t dependent on feeling motivated every day. Motivation comes and goes, but a solid base remains.

That base looks different for everyone.

For one person, it might be steady employment after months of uncertainty. For someone else, it could be rebuilding trust, creating healthier routines, getting on top of finances, or finally finding somewhere that feels like home.

The details change, but the principle doesn’t. Nothing lasting is built without a foundation.

I’ve seen this play out repeatedly throughout my life and career. The people who sustain meaningful change are rarely the ones who make the biggest entrance. More often, they’re the ones who quietly keep showing up after everyone else has moved on to the next exciting thing.

Those people are building a base while everyone else is chasing another beginning.

Hoping for change without first building a base is a little like trying to build the second storey of a house before pouring the slab. You might make progress for a while, but eventually the structure has nothing strong enough to support it.

And building the foundation for lasting transformation or recovery is usually far less glamorous than we’d like it to be.

Base building happens in conversations that aren’t particularly memorable, routines that seem almost boring, and promises you quietly keep to yourself. It happens while you’re going to work, making dinner, paying bills, and doing all the ordinary things that barely seem worth mentioning.

Those days don’t feel like milestones, yet they’re often the days that shape your future more than any of the dramatic moments ever will.

People sometimes ask me when my life really started to change and for years I would have pointed to the drive from Melbourne to Brisbane. It was bold, uncertain and easy to recall, but today I’d give a different answer.

I’d point to the months that followed.

Ordinary Tuesdays. Routine Thursday nights. Mornings that mirrored the ones before them. Days that wouldn’t make it into a movie. Those were the days that quietly built a different life.

Looking back, I no longer think the drive to Brisbane changed my life, it created the space to build a base from which change would eventually spring.

Before you rush towards a new beginning, take a moment to look around. Consider what you are creating that will endure once the initial excitement wears off, as this will be your foundation.

The future has a way of challenging whatever lies beneath it and recovery and change built on a firm base will always have the greatest chance of survival.

Twenty-something years ago, my wife, Monica, and I packed most of what we owned into our early nineties model Hyundai Excel and headed north, destination Brisbane. To say we were relocating to Brisbane makes it sound far more planned than it was. Neither of us had a job waiting. We also had nowhere to live, and even if we found a place to rent, we barely had enough for the bond.

The plan was simple, albeit flimsy. We would get to Brisbane and if we found work and somewhere to live within a couple of weeks, then we’d stay. If we ran out of time or money first, we’d turn around and limp back to Melbourne.

We’d borrowed a bit of cash from our parents, filled the Excel’s petrol tank and packed it until there wasn’t much room left for us. The trip didn’t feel bold or brave; it felt rushed and reckless but staying in Melbourne felt harder than leaving it.

So, we left.

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By the time we reached Kalkallo, about forty minutes north of Melbourne, the sun was rising. Kalkallo was little more than a petrol station back then, but it signaled Melbourne was behind us, and the long part of the drive had begun.

Around that point, I noticed my hands ease off the steering wheel.

Nothing had improved, at least not in any proper sense. We’d left our family, the people we knew, and what little safety we had. We were driving towards a new city with a scant plan at best. In truth, we’d made life far less secure, not more.

And yet, I felt relieved.

Back in Melbourne, I’d been carrying a level of strain for so long that I barely noticed it anymore. That strain sat uncomfortably on my shoulders, constantly in my head, and showed in the way I went through each day. I felt stuck in a life I didn’t understand but kept repeating all the same. Somewhere beyond Kalkallo, with Melbourne even further behind us, some of that strain lifted.

Now, I don’t want to paint Melbourne as the problem because it wasn’t. Melbourne had been home for over twenty years and had been good to me. My family was there, along with people I loved, places I knew well, and memories that still run deep today.

But Melbourne had also become tied to a challenging part of my life. I was hostage to habits I couldn’t yet see clearly, let alone change, and I kept doing much the same things and ending up back in much the same place. After a while, even being stuck felt normal.

Leaving didn’t fix any of that, but it gave me some distance from it, and distance was a point from which I could begin.

Sometimes, before you can grow, you need movement.

For Monica and me, that meant moving to another state. Most of the time, the move required for growth to begin won’t be that big. You may need to change jobs, move teams, or step back from a role that has taken too much from you. You may need to walk away from someone or simply stop giving so much time to something that leaves you worn out.

The move isn’t the growth, but it gives you the room in which growth can begin.

We frequently talk about change as though it all happens inside us. Try harder, sort out your thinking, or show more grit. That advice is fair, but it misses the way our surrounds shape what we do, often without us seeing it.

For example, stay long enough in a place where every task is urgent, and soon you treat every request as urgent too. You say yes before you’ve thought about it, or you take on more because letting someone down feels worse than running yourself into the ground. After a while, being flat out doesn’t feel odd, it simply feels like work.

The same thing can happen to people. If every honest conversation ends in a fight, you learn to keep things to yourself, not because you don’t care, but because saying less is easier. Even your diary can box you in. The same meetings come around each week, more jobs get added, and your time is gone before you’ve had much say in it.

Eventually you think the entire problem is you, and sometimes part of it is. But what’s around you can make the problem much worse, and it can keep you in the same old loop long after you’ve decided you want to change. The problem is you are in the same spot and have little room to grow and change.

This doesn’t mean you should quit each time work gets tough, or pack the car when life goes flat. The move you need may be quite small. It could mean dropping a meeting you no longer need to attend, handing work back to the person who should own it, or taking one part of the weekend before someone else claims it.

None of this looks grand, but it doesn’t need to. What matters is whether it gives you room you didn’t have before.

What needs to move so you can begin?

I’ve seen people leave jobs that had worn them down for years and look better within weeks. They sleep well again, have more energy, and their sense of humour returns. You can almost see the weight come off them and for a while, it feels as though the move has solved the whole thing. Then some of the old habits turn up in the new job. They take on too much, or put off a hard discussion, or perhaps keep work they should pass on because showing someone else how to do it seems like more effort.

Before long, they’re busy again and wondering why a new job feels a lot like the old one.

That doesn’t mean leaving was a mistake. The old job may have left them too tired to see what was going on. Once they got out of it, they had enough room to work out which parts came from the job and which parts came with them.

And that’s when the genuine work begins.

We often expect the move to do too much. A new job won’t teach you to set limits unless you set them. A calmer life won’t make each choice easy and a new city won’t wipe out the parts of your past that you’ve brought along for the ride.

The move gives you an opening, but you still must do something with it.

Brisbane wasn’t a cure for me. I didn’t cross the Queensland border and become a new man. Most of what I needed to face had come north with us in the Excel, packed in among our clothes and belongings.

But Brisbane gave me a break from the life I’d been living. Brisbane didn’t know who I had been in Melbourne. There were no old habits waiting for me each morning, and no one expected me to keep playing the same part. For the first time in years, there was a gap between what had been and what might come next.

Granted, I didn’t always use that gap well. Some things took years to learn, and a few lessons came back more than once because I clearly hadn’t understood them the first time. Growth wasn’t clean or quick, and it looked nothing like the straight road north.

Still, the room mattered.

We often try to change by adding more to our lives without realising they are already full. We sign up for a course, set a new goal, or start another habit, then try to force it into the small time we have left. Nothing else stops, meaning there is little space to fit that new thing.

When it falls over, we blame a lack of grit. But grit may not be the issue, there simply may have been nowhere for the new thing to fit.

Before asking what else you should start, ask what can move. What can you stop doing, give to someone else, or step back from? What keeps pulling you towards a part of yourself you’re trying to leave behind? You may find that the same problem has followed you through two jobs, a few managers, and several firm vows that this time will be different. That’s not much fun to admit, but at least you now know it wasn’t left behind at the last place.

From there, the start is often quite plain. You have the talk you’ve been putting off, or you stand firm, even when it feels awkward. They’re small steps, but most growth looks like that; slow, patchy and messier than we make it sound years later.

Decades on from that northward journey in the crowded Hyundai Excel, I can still picture the road near Kalkallo and remember my hands easing around the wheel.

I hadn’t changed; nothing was resolved, and the life I wanted was still a long way off. Actually, I’m not sure I even knew what I wanted that life to look like.

But I moved, and that move opened a space for growth.

That was where I could begin.

I’ve made decisions throughout my career that felt like the right only to appear significantly different shortly.

Not necessarily dramatic ones, just decisions I made when moving quickly, perhaps a little too quickly. Sometimes they were judgement calls I made in the absence of enough information or without engaging all the right people. There’s been many times I’ve made a decision that seemed perfect in my head only to land awkwardly with the people who then had to put that decision into action. In the moment, those errors of judgement are easy to justify, and unfortunately, they’re a part of leadership that’s grounded in progress rather than perfection. You rarely have the luxury of all the right information, at the right time, with the right people present, so you just do the best you can.

The genuine test of leadership is what happens after that bad decision is made. Once a leader realises they’ve made a poor decision, the first instinct is rarely noble and that’s an aspect of human nature I touched on with an everyday example in my recent article, The Power of a Quick Sorry.

At times when I’ve made a poor decision, and there has been many, my first instinct is often far from noble. I wish I could claim it always was, but sometimes my first impulse is to explain, add context or, at my worst, subtly shift the blame, while emphasising “I don’t mean to blame” while clearly doing so.

I don’t like admitting that, but it’s true.

There have been many times when feedback on a decision has come to me, and rather than show curiosity my position has been to protect my competence and the version of me that I want people to see.

Between a poor decision and correction of that decision there is a space where trust can grow, or rapidly descend in the opposite direction. Trust does not erode in that space because a leader got something wrong, because people can live with that. Reasonable people acknowledge that leadership is messy, and they know decisions get made under pressure, with scant information and trade-offs. What they struggle with is the performance that follows the mistake. They grow cynical when a poor decision is followed by a long explanation and staged or disingenuous apology.

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Glassdoor’s Worklife Trends 2026 report was recently released and it highlights the point I’m driving at here. There’s a growing use of words like “disconnect,” “miscommunication,” “distrust,” and “misalignment” when people mention senior leadership or management. In fact, from 2024 to 2025, Glassdoor reviews showed a 149% increase in the use of the word “misalignment” when describing leaders (Glassdoor 2026) and that points to something we should all take notice of.

Trust doesn’t drop in one single moment but happens when people keep noticing a leader won’t take accountability for poor decisions. When a team raises a concern and gets an explanation instead of a hearing, they may not react in isolation. However, when it happens enough, people begin to question the leader’s authenticity. Eventually in these situations, the leader stop hearing the truth early enough to do anything useful with it.

Certainty and credibility are not interchangeable. Certainty in leadership emphasises strength, commitment to decision-making and absence of doubts. While there is a place for this, certainty without self-awareness can make any challenge feel like a threat to leadership and have you protecting your pride while believing you’re protecting the team. That’s a deception of the ego, and most of us are more vulnerable to it than we think.

Real self-awareness is practical and not the version we talk about in leadership programs. Self-awareness is noticing when your body tightens because someone has challenged you and catching the moment before you build your defense rather than listening.

That sort of self-awareness is not soft, rather it is peak emotional intelligence.

Progress over perfection, a phrase I use routinely, applies, but only if we use it with honest intent. Progress over perfection emphasises progress, implying that there is an intent and movement towards the right outcomes. The phrase cannot be called upon as a convenient excuse for poor decisions or failing to be openly accountable for them.

To grow trust from our people, our learning must be real, visible, and lead to a change in behaviour.

Private reflection matters, but it doesn’t always repair the public impact of a poor decision. If you made the call in the room, then some part of your learning may also need to happen in that same room. That public learning can’t be some performative and awkward leadership confession. The learning must have enough honesty and vulnerability that people believe change is possible.

Such a moment can be as simple as; I’ve thought more about yesterday’s decision and recognise that I moved too quickly. I didn’t have enough of the right people in the conversation, and I can see that created confusion. We’re going to pause, get the right input, and reset the approach.

That kind of statement does not make a leader look weak; it earns them easier trust.

The Edelman 2026 Trust Barometer adds another useful layer to the discussion, reporting that 70% of people globally are unwilling or hesitant to trust someone with different values, facts, problem-solving approaches, or cultural backgrounds. Edelman also argues that employers are well-placed to help broker trust because workplaces still bring people together across these differences (Edelman 2026). And that matters because workplaces are full of different pressures, perspectives, values, and backgrounds.

A leader’s job is not to bulldoze through all those differences with confidence and hope people follow. Their job is to create enough trust that people can tell the truth before the damage is done, and that takes humility from them.

I am better at this than I used to be. I’m far from perfect but getting better.

Your team does not need you to be flawless. They need to know that when you get it wrong, truth has a better chance than your pride.

For years I sat through meetings in silence. I usually understood what was being discussed and often had ideas to contribute, but I stayed silent as a longstanding story played over in my head; You’re the least experienced person in the room. Keep listening. Someone smarter will come up with the answer.

Initially, there was some truth to that. I was young, relatively inexperienced, and surrounded by people who had far more experience than myself. The problem was that I kept telling myself that story long after it had stopped being true.

Years passed and I gained experience while advancing into more senior roles. No longer was I the new guy with nothing to say, but whenever I walked into a room full of senior executives, that old story would surface.

Don’t embarrass yourself. Just listen.

I’d think of an idea, run it through my head, then decide someone else probably had a better one, only to see that same idea raised a few minutes later and receive enthusiastic agreement from the room. I would sit there thinking, That’s exactly what I was going to say.

Eventually, I realised I’d grown professionally, but the story I told myself repeatedly, hadn’t kept pace with that growth.

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I suspect most of us do this in one way or another. Human beings are remarkably loyal to the stories they tell themselves. Once a self-narrative becomes part of our identity, it can be difficult to let go of, even when the evidence no longer supports it. Over time, those stories stop feeling like beliefs and start feeling like facts.

Someone who lacked confidence as a teenager may still think of themselves as insecure at forty. Someone who failed in business years ago may continue to see themselves as a poor decision-maker, despite years of good judgement and success.

The longer a story survives, the harder it becomes to notice. Eventually, it becomes the lens through which we interpret ourselves and the world around us. The trouble is that we often grow faster than our self-image. While skills improve and experience accumulates, we continue judging ourselves using information that is years, sometimes decades, out of date.

The cost of an outdated self-story isn’t always significant, but it can narrow what’s possible. The story becomes the reason we don’t apply for a role, share an idea or put our hand up for the opportunity. These stories often encourage caution when confidence would be more appropriate.

This is where unlearning becomes important. Not because we should ignore weaknesses or convince ourselves we’re capable of anything, but because some beliefs eventually outlive their usefulness.

Most limiting beliefs begin as reasonable observations. At one point, you genuinely may have lacked confidence, skills or experience, but the mistake is assuming those observations became permanent truths.

A question I’ve found useful is: Is this belief describing who I am today, or who I was years ago?

It’s a simple question, but it can reveal just how much of our thinking is based on outdated information.

Psychologist Carol Dweck built much of her work around the concept of a growth mindset. At its core is the idea that people can learn, improve and develop through effort, practice and experience. That idea challenges one of the assumptions hidden inside many limiting self-narratives; that personal qualities are fixed.

A related concept comes from Albert Bandura whose research showed that people are more likely to take action when they believe they can succeed. In other words, belief influences behaviour before results appear. The stories we tell ourselves shape what we’re willing to attempt.

Updating an old narrative doesn’t require significant reinvention. It usually starts by identifying a belief you’ve carried for a long time. Not a preference or personality trait, but a statement about capability. Maybe it’s, I’m not strategic, I’m not confident or, I’m not good at difficult conversations.

Once you’ve identified the outdated belief, look for current evidence rather than historical evidence. Reflect on recent experiences or ask a trusted colleague for feedback. Many people are carrying stories about themselves that nobody else believes anymore and identifying contrary evidence is a key step in shedding those outdated stories.

The final step is action, to create new evidence and start shaping an updated and valid story. Speak up in the meeting. Volunteer for the project. Have the difficult conversation. Put your hand up for the opportunity. Every time you step outside of the outdated story provides evidence it no longer applies.

We often think growth is about adding something, like skills, knowledge and more experience. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s about letting something go.

Perhaps the hardest person to unlearn is yourself.

And perhaps your next stage of growth doesn’t begin with learning something new. Perhaps it begins with recognising that one of the stories you’ve been carrying around is no longer true.

On my way to the office this morning, while travelling along the motorway at some speed, a light truck suddenly drifted across into my lane, causing me to hit the brakes. It wasn’t aggressive driving and his indicator was on but, I presume, he just hadn’t seen me.

As I hit the brakes, I instinctively thumped the horn and braced for the reaction we’ve all come to expect in those situations. A shrug, some dangerous brake tapping or even the universally recognised single digit signal for, whatever mate.

Instead, the driver immediately wound down his window, reached out his arm with obvious intent, and gave me a quick wave. It wasn't an angry wave though, it was clearly apologetic and seemingly saying, sorry mate, that was my mistake.

The gesture caught me off guard. In an instant there was nothing left to be angry about, and the irritation that’d flared up seconds earlier dissipated as quickly as it had arrived.

As I continued driving, I pondered why such a small interaction had felt so significant. The mistake had happened, yet a simple acknowledgement of responsibility had completely changed my response to it.

We all make mistakes; it’s human. We forget to return a call, miss a deadline, or make a poor decision that affects our team. However, the mistake itself is often not the cause of the greatest damage; rather, the actual damage comes from what happens next.

Most of us instinctively protect ourselves when we realise we’ve got something wrong. We explain the circumstances, point to the pressures we were under, or focus on our intentions rather than the outcome. Nobody enjoys being wrong. But in leadership roles, we see countless examples of how differently people respond to their own mistakes. While one leader explains why it wasn’t their fault another says, “I got that wrong. Here’s what I’ll do differently next time.” The latter diffuses problems, while the former fuels conflict.

Most people don’t expect leaders to get everything right. What they want to know is whether someone can recognise an error, own it, and move forward. Accountability, particularly when shown rapidly, builds credibility far more effectively than defensiveness ever does.

The same principles operate in our personal lives. People can usually forgive a forgotten birthday, or an insensitive comment. What often causes the lasting damage is the refusal to acknowledge and own those oversights.

I’ve certainly been guilty of this myself. There have been times when I knew I should apologise but wanted the other person to understand my intentions first. I wanted them to know I had meant no harm, as though good intent somehow erased poor impact. Of course, it doesn’t work that way. You can mean well and still get it wrong. Acknowledging the impact of our actions doesn’t diminish us; it shows maturity.

So why do so many of us struggle to apologise quickly? Pride and fear are commonly the drivers. We worry that admitting fault will make us look weak, incompetent, or foolish. We see apologising as losing when, in reality, a genuine apology is simply an acknowledgement of reality. More accurately and in its simplest form, it’s honesty. And honesty has a remarkable ability to defuse tension before it has the chance to grow. The longer we avoid apologising, the more complicated things become.

By the time I arrived at work, the near miss had already faded. What stayed with me was the wave.

That driver will probably never know it, but his moment of humility changed the tone of my morning. What could have become another frustrating commute became a quiet reminder of the person I want to be when I get something wrong.

Not a bad outcome from a near miss on the motorway.

Live Well, Lead Better is a publication about leadership, culture and personal growth. Today I’m sharing something related, but a little different.

The Way Through (working title) is in the late stages of drafting and will be my debut book. It’s a memoir about struggle, recovery and identity, while also exploring my 10 Principles of Recovery that emerged from those experiences. Following is a chapter from that manuscript, and I’d genuinely love any feedback on the writing, impact, or simply what resonates with you as a reader.

The Way Through - Move, then begin

We were on the Hume Highway and barely past Kalkallo when I felt it for the first time.

Relief.

Not happiness exactly because happiness feels too neat for what it was. This was more like space opening up inside my chest as though I’d been clenching every muscle in my body for years and had finally loosened my grip without realising it.

The highway stretched out in front of us while the early morning slowly pushed the night away. Headlights cut through the fog and green road signs flashed past. The car was packed with bags, clothes and random bits of our life shoved wherever they’d fit. Monica sat beside me with her feet up on the dash, calm as ever, while I gripped the steering wheel like I was ultimately responsible for keeping the whole plan together. Ironically though there wasn’t much of a plan.

We had no jobs lined up in Brisbane and nowhere to live as such. and just a little bit of money courtesy of mum and dad.. All we had was a rough agreement that if we could find work and somewhere to live within two or so weeks, we’d stay. If not, we’d come home.

Privately, I didn’t want to come back.

I’d spent years wanting out of Melbourne. Back in school, escape had become its own fantasy. I used to imagine schools, friends, versions of myself. Somewhere nobody knew me as the awkward kid, the easy target, the boy who could get mocked, cornered or humiliated and somehow still be expected to laugh along with it. Later, the fantasy changed shape but not substance. I still wanted some clean break from everything that’d happened and from the person I’d slowly become while trying to survive it all.

Now, at twenty-two, I was finally doing something that felt like escape. Weirdly though, it didn’t feel dramatic at all. There was no movie moment. Just the road, the hum of tyres against bitumen and Monica beside me while the early morning lights of Melbourne faded in the rear-view mirror.

I glanced across at Mon and she caught me looking.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just looking forward to it, I guess.”

“Do you reckon we’ll stay up there?” I asked a moment later.

She shrugged. “Who knows. It’s a fate thing. We get jobs and find somewhere to live, we stay. We don’t, we come back.”

A fate thing.

That was Monica all over. She had this ability to sit with contentment inside uncertainty. She didn’t need guarantees before moving forward or every possible outcome mapped out in advance. I envied that having spent most of my life craving certainty because certainty felt safe. If I knew what was coming, I could prepare for it and if I could prepare, maybe I could
protect myself.

That wiring had started years earlier in school corridors and locker rooms where unpredictability never felt exciting. It felt dangerous.

But somewhere along the Hume, uncertainty started to feel different. Not safe exactly, but possible.

The fresh start mattered more than I let on. I wanted Brisbane to work with a desperation I tried to disguise as excitement. I wanted jobs to appear quickly, a rental to be ready and  I wanted the move to become permanent before doubt had time to catch up with us.

“First thing’s jobs,” Monica said with a laugh. “Otherwise we’ll be broke in about five minutes.”

There it was again. Practical. Grounded. Real.

I focused back at the road as dawn spread over the hills beside the highway, washing everything in a soft blue-red light, and for the first time in years I let myself believe something might actually get better. Maybe distance really could change things.

Back at Mum and Dad’s place, the whole decision had happened ridiculously fast. After everything that’d gone on and feeling completely stuck, Mon and I ended up sitting at the kitchen table with an atlas trying to figure out where we could disappear to.

At first, the destination barely mattered.

“What about Darwin?” I’d asked.

“Too hot,” Mon said instantly.

“Perth?”

“Looks nice on TV.”

That was honestly the level of research we were working with.

Eventually Monica said, “What about Queensland? I’ve been there on holidays before. Loved it.”

“You mean Brisbane or the Gold Coast?”

“Nah, Brisbane,” she said confidently despite having absolutely no evidence to support the claim. “More jobs there.”

“What about Sydney?” I asked.

“No chance,” she said. “Too busy. And it’s expensive. We may as well stay in Melbourne.”

And somehow that settled it.

So we sat there staring at a map of Brisbane as though it magically explained our future. We didn’t know the suburbs, didn’t know where people lived or worked or even what areas were good or bad. But maps have a funny way of making uncertainty feel organised. Everything looks manageable from above.

“What do you reckon?” Mon asked eventually. “Should we?”

“Why not?” I said.

Not exactly a carefully considered plan, but honestly, if we’d overthought it, we probably never would’ve left. We would’ve found too many reasons to stay put, too many risks. Sometimes overthinking is really just fear pretending to be logic.

Within half an hour we’d decided. Brisbane.

Looking back now, I can see I misunderstood part of what we were doing. I thought I was leaving pain behind, like pain belonged to Melbourne and couldn’t cross borders. I thought Brisbane might somehow give me a clean slate.

That’s not really how it works, but I didn’t know that yet.

All I knew was Melbourne had become crowded with versions of me I didn’t know how to carry anymore. Brisbane felt blank, and blank felt hopeful.

The further north we drove, the lighter I started to feel. Open highways do that when you’re convinced you’re driving toward something better.

As we took turns at the wheel we talked about where we might live, what jobs we’d get and whether Brisbane would feel like home, but scattered amongst my hope was some fear. I worried Brisbane wouldn’t work out that we’d run out of money and have to crawl back to Melbourne embarrassed and defeated again. There was scant strength left in me for more failure

Deeper than all that though, there was another fear I couldn’t say out loud.

What if Brisbane worked and I still felt exactly the same?

That’s the part nobody wants to think about when they’re building their whole future around escape. You don’t want to admit the past might’ve packed itself into the car with you.

So instead, I focused on the road. Movement felt like progress, and at that point in my life I needed progress in any form I could manage.

When we finally reached Queensland, it honestly did feel different. The air felt warmer, the light seemed sharper somehow and even the roads helped. I didn’t have memories attached to every street corner yet, and that alone was a relief.

We found somewhere temporary to stay and began turning the move into a real life. There’s nothing glamorous about that part. Fresh starts sound romantic until you’re reading classifieds, filling out rental applications and trying to calculate whether you can afford petrol and groceries in the same week.

Still, there was energy in it. Every application felt like a small step forward. Every inspection felt like a possibility.

Within two weeks we’d found both. Jobs and somewhere to live.

I got a job working as an internal sales clerk for a packaging company. Not exactly dream-career material, but it was work. It was structure and gave shape to my days again.

Mon found work in payroll earning slightly more than me. We didn’t have much money that first year and some weeks were genuinely tight. There were nights  trying to work out whether we could afford takeaway or whether we needed that money for petrol instead.

But weirdly, those years still felt hopeful because for the first time in a long time, it felt like we were building something instead of just surviving.

And we’d made it out.

That mattered to me more than anything.

I wanted the move to mean I was fixed now. I wanted Brisbane itself to be the cure, but slowly cracks started appearing in that idea.

At work, even normal conflict rattled me. Customers getting frustrated , managers questioning something or internal disagreements. Nothing major, but my body reacted like danger had walked in the room because underneath it all, I was still carrying the same wiring I’d developed years earlier.

Conflict still made me panic. A sharp tone still made me shrink inside myself and criticism always felt personal.

I’d changed cities, but my nervous system hadn’t caught up yet.

That was the hard lesson Brisbane started teaching me. Changing your environment creates space, but it doesn’t automatically change you.

The move helped, more than I can explain, honestly. It gave me distance from the places where I’d fallen apart. It gave Mon and me something new to build together. It gave me room to breathe. But fear came with me. So did shame. So did all the survival habits I’d built over years without realising it.

At first, that felt disappointing. I thought the fresh start would feel fresher than it did, but over time I realised something important. The move wasn't healing. It was the beginning of healing.

Sometimes you need to leave before you’re capable of changing. Sometimes you need distance from the noise, the routines and the memories before you can hear yourself clearly again. But distance alone doesn’t do the work. You still take yourself with you.

Back then, I was carrying a lot.

Still, I’m grateful for that version of me sitting in the driver’s seat on the Hume Highway believing change was possible, even if he misunderstood what change actually required. Hope still got us moving, and sometimes movement comes first, long before understanding does.

I was in a meeting a few years ago where a clunky process requiring no less than three levels of approval for a simple action was being discussed. The process was slow, frustrating to team members and far from customer centric.

Being relatively new to my role, I simply asked, “Why do we still do it this way?”

I didn’t intend it to be a loaded question, and I genuinely thought it would be easy to answer. I was just curious as to why a particular action required so many sign offs.

The room changed in an instant, as though I’d asked something deeply personal of everyone present. Nobody became defensive, or aggressive, but there was a palpable change in the mood.

Finally, someone voiced what I sensed was the case, “That’s just the process Ash.”

And on we went, as though that question was put to bed and never to be raised again.

I’ve thought about that moment numerous times since, because it captures something that sits underneath organisational culture more often than we acknowledge. People don’t just follow rules because the rules are good, they follow them because the broader group has taught them what happens when you don’t.

This is why the old five monkeys’ story has stuck around for so long.

You’ve probably heard some version of the story. Five monkeys are in a cage with a ladder leading to a bunch of bananas. Every time one of the monkeys tries to climb up to the bananas, they all get sprayed with cold water. It doesn’t take long before they all stop going anywhere near the ladder, fearful of that cold water spray.

Then, the monkeys are all replaced, one at a time. The newcomers have never been sprayed themselves, but they quickly learn the same rule because if they head for the ladder the other monkeys pull them back. the sequence persists after all originals are gone. By that point, none of them know where the rule came from, they just know that this is how things are done.

Now, the exact version of the five monkeys’ story that gets shared in leadership circles has probably done more rounds in slide decks than research journals, but it certainly didn’t come from nowhere. The five monkeys story traces its roots to Gordon Stephenson’s 1967 research, which introduced ‘cultural acquisition’ and showed how groups transmit learned behaviour. Essentially, groups pass behaviour on and teach each other what’s safe, what’s risky, and what not to touch. The challenge is that often the rules continue to propagate long after the original risk has passed.

That idea holds up very well in corporate life and often manifests as the infamous line, “We’ve just always done it that way.” Because every workplace has “ladders” with bananas at the top. Every organisation has things no one questions anymore and processes that exist but can’t be fully explained. When we look around any organisation, we see reactions that were built for a particular moment, under a particular leader, in response to a particular problem, and then never revisited once the moment passed.

Culture often hangs around long after the reason for it has disappeared.

A lot of redundant workplace habits began as useful systems, in fact if you look far enough back in time, they were usually created in response to a specific problem and never revisited. For example, a hiring freeze introduced during a past downturn.

That stuff leaves a mark.

The issue is that most organisations are very good at introducing controls and not nearly as good at removing them, so the response becomes the routine and then the routine becomes tradition. Eventually, traditions become untouchable practices.

People learn culture from social cues far more than formal messaging.

Organisations spend a lot of time talking about values, which is an important discourse to encourage, but most people don’t learn values from a laminated poster or a polished all-hands presentation, they learn them by watching what happens;

Who gets backed?
Who gets shut down?
Who gets quietly sidelined?
Who gets called troublesome?

That’s culture.

You can tell a team to challenge ideas, but if the first person who does gets the look, the silence or the polite shut-down, everyone else gets the message fast.

That’s one of the reasons the five monkeys story remains useful. It points to something true about group behaviour; that we take our cues from the crowd, watch the reaction and then we adjust.

Conformity can look healthy right up until it starts costing you.

Most culturally stuck workplaces don’t look messy from the outside; in fact they look aligned. A tidy exterior can hide avoided questions.

But settled doesn’t always mean healthy. Sometimes it means people have worked out which questions aren’t worth asking anymore, like “Why do we still do it this way?”

Quiet conformity stalls improvement and people stop asking ‘Why do we still do this?’ so small inefficiencies persist. When no one challenges the routine, useful changes never get suggested.

New people usually spot cultural nonsense first.

That’s the gift of fresh eyes; new starters haven’t had time to normalise the odd bits yet. Consequently, they notice duplication, waste and clunky workarounds that appear normal to those in the organisation with tenure.

As a result, newcomers often ask the best questions and the real test for organisational culture is what happens next. Does the team stop and think? Or does it smile, say “that’s just how we do it,” and teach the new person to stop asking?

That moment tells you nearly everything you need to know about the organisation’s culture.

Good cultures stay open long enough to look at their habits and don’t assume almost every process is wise just because it has survived. They make room for challenge.

In the end, that’s why the five monkeys story still lands. Not because it gives us a perfect science lesson, but because it gives us a very recognisable human lesson about how organisational culture can operate.

A lot of organisational culture is just shared behaviours that nobody has properly re-examined in years. And once that sets in, people stop checking whether the ladder is still a problem, they just learn, from everyone around them, not to touch it.

Share Live well, Lead better

A few years ago I sat through a particular leadership conference where speaker after speaker talked about the transformation journey their organisation was on. Every one of them was going to become more innovative, more customer focused, more agile or in some cases, all of the above.

The presentations were polished, the vision statements were compelling and I have little doubt the intentions were good. But what left me curious wasn’t what happened on the day, it was what happened afterwards.

I’ve thought about that conference multiple times since and wondered, did they really achieve the visions outlined in their bold and compelling resolutions?

You see, it’s easy to declare a destination. It’s much harder to make the hundreds of small decisions and take the actions required to reach it. Those little decisions are the ones that really count, the ones that compound and drive is towards that big resolution.

Whenever I find myself reflecting on that idea, I think of Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly and the song, Little Decisions, from his 1985 album, Post.

Confession time; I’ve been a fan of Paul Kelly for as long as I can remember. His music has always felt uniquely Australian to me, not because of the places and characters in his songs, but because of his ability to find meaning in everyday life. Kelly notices things most of us overlook, like a conversation, a memory, a street corner or even a relationship under strain. For Kelly, small moments become stories and ordinary experiences become something worth paying attention to.

Listening to the Kelly’s Little Decisions now, more than forty years after it was released, it feels less like a song about decision-making per se and more like a reminder about how life actually unfolds, one small decision at a time.

Most of us can point to a handful of moments that changed our direction, perhaps that role we accepted or an opportunity we pursued. Those moments matter and they often become landmarks in the stories we tell about ourselves. What we ignore in the narrative however is everything that came afterwards. The initial decision creates possibility while the outcome depends on what happens next. That’s where things become less exciting and considerably more important. That’s where the little decisions we make and the actions we actually take decide whether that big decision comes to fruition.

Across multiple organisations, I’ve seen leadership become captivated by the big decision but failing to follow through with all the required little decisions and actions to make it happen. For a while, everyone talks about the future, but the little decisions required to continue in that direction fall away as reality resumes.

The real work in a big decision or resolution begins when leaders decide whether to have the difficult conversation they’ve been avoiding or when they respond to setbacks. It begins when people choose whether to behave in ways that support the change or retreat to familiar habits. Those choices rarely attract attention. Nobody writes case studies about them, yet they’re often the difference between a successful transformation and another initiative that quietly disappears.

Cultural transformation as an example is largely a collection of repeated little decisions aligned with the direction set; it’s built in meetings, conversations and moments of pressure. It takes shape through what leaders tolerate, what they encourage and what they consistently model.

The same principle applies well beyond the workplace.

Looking back over my own life, I’m increasingly aware that many of the outcomes I’m grateful for weren’t created by dramatic acts of courage or a single brilliant decision. They emerged gradually from choices that seemed fairly ordinary at the time. Indeed, my life has been shaped by all the little decisions, akin to those that Kelly sings of.

None of the little decisions I’ve made felt significant in isolation. There was no sense that they were shaping the future. In fact, most passed unnoticed. That’s the nature of little decisions, they don’t announce their importance when they arrive.

We tend to notice outcomes more than processes. We see the successful business, the healthy lifestyle, the trusted leader, the strong relationship. What we don’t see are the years spent making little choices that appeared insignificant on any given day. Perhaps that’s why people often underestimate the power of consistency.

We want change to arrive in dramatic moments because dramatic moments are easier to recognise and they make for a more dramataic narrative. However, life is usually less tidy than that. Most meaningful progress happens slowly enough that we barely notice it while it’s occurring. Then one day we look back and realise we’ve travelled much further than we thought, driven by all the little decisions we’ve made along the way.

That’s what I enjoy most about the song, Little Decisions, it doesn’t celebrate heroic achievements or life-changing revelations. Instead, it draws attention to something much more familiar, the small choices that fill our days and the way they quietly shape our future. And the older I get, the more convincing that idea becomes.

Don’t get me wrong, the big decisions matter. They give us direction and help us decide where we want to go. But when I look at the people I most admire, whether they’re leaders, athletes, artists, business owners or simply good human beings, their success rarely seems to rest on a handful of defining moments. More often, it reflects years of making thoughtful little decisions when nobody was watching.

The little decisions rarely feel important when we're making them but looking back, they're often the only reason the big decisions mattered at all.

I write about emotional intelligence because it is the most powerful way to positively shape life and leadership outcomes. I've spent years researching emotional intelligence and finding effective ways to apply it to life and leadership. I've progressively improved my application of the skills , but I've not mastered them , I'm not even close. This article, like most of my writings, centres on practical awareness rather than perfection. When it comes to recognising reactive instincts in the heat of a discussion, I've made progress over many years, but I'm still nowhere near perfect.

There are still times when tired, stretched, or feeling criticised when I react before I've really listened. Indeed, times when my words or actions race ahead of rational thought, often with regrettable outcomes. It might be in a meeting where someone legitimately questions a decision I've made, or at home when a conversation catches me at a bad moment. In both situations the same thing happens: my body tightens, my stomach fills with an anxious energy, and I feel a pull to respond before I've properly comprehended what's actually being said. It's as though my words are spilling out before I've ever formed them in my mind.

That moment has a name, the amygdala hijack.

The phrase amygdala hijack was popularised by psychologist and author Daniel Goleman, who drew on neuroscience research including the work of Joseph LeDoux. LeDoux's work in relation to the brain and fear responses helped explain how we react to perceived threats or danger before slower, more considered thinking has a chance to catch up. 

The almond-shaped amygdala sits deep in the centre of the brain and functions to detect threats. This neural configuration goes back to early human evolution, when the fight-or-flight response developed as a reflex to the many physical dangers around us. When the amygdala senses danger, it triggers a fast emotional response before the frontal lobe gets involved. The frontal lobe is responsible for executive functions such as rational thinking and sound decision-making. The sensory pathway to the amygdala is much quicker than the one to the frontal cortex, which is useful when a threat is real and immediate.

When the amygdala quickly hijacks your thinking it temporarily crowds out the more deliberate parts of the brain. During a hijack, with your frontal lobe relegated to a back seat, you have less access to impulse control, perspective, and good judgement. You're less able to pause, weigh things up, and actually choose your response. Instead you interrupt, misread tone, jump to conclusions, or say something you end up regretting. What I find useful about understanding this is that it explains why a moment can feel so much bigger than it is or why an innocent question from a family member or colleague can suddenly feel like a full frontal attack.

At work we're most susceptible to the amygdala hijack when the pressure is already building and someone challenges something we care about. At home it might be a small comment that lands heavily on a day when you're already carrying too much. The setting changes but the pattern doesn't; stress accumulates quietly in the background, resilience slowly erodes, and then one more thing tips you over the edge.

That's part of why emotional intelligence matters, and I don't mean that as a leadership buzzword, it as a practical, everyday skill in both life and leadership. The ability to notice your own state, manage your reactions, and stay functional when emotions rise affects how you lead, how you work, and how you show up with the people around you. It also shapes whether people trust you.

Amygdala hijacks are more likely in environments marked by constant urgency, low trust, poor communication, and no real opportunity to recover. That's as true in personal life as it is at work. When you're exhausted, overloaded, or already carrying frustration from earlier in the day, there's less in the system to draw on when challenge arrives and your brain is more likely to choose that neural short out to your amygdala.

I recognise this in myself clearly. If I'm stressed or short on sleep, I'm more likely to get defensive in a conversation that was never adversarial to begin with. I can hear criticism in something that was only curiosity and I can quickly find myself responding to the feeling I had, rather than the words that were actually spoken. That's the real cost of an amygdala hijack. It doesn't just affect how you feel. It distorts how you think.

The question, though, is how does knowing about this neural shortcut risk help us?

For me, the first step is learning to notice the early signs. They nearly always arrive in the body before they show up in the mind: a tightening in the chest, thoughts speeding up, a strong urge to defend my position before I've heard the full picture. If I can recognise these sensations, I still have choices; the hijack is imminent but not inevitable.

The second step is deliberately slowing the moment down. A pause or deep breath helps. I might buy myself a little time by asking a question like, "Can you walk me through what you mean?" 

The third step is reminding myself that discomfort isn't danger. If you're like me, it might be worth reading that last sentence again. Feedback can sting and a tense exchange can feel like an attack even when nothing is actually under threat. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is simply register that this is a hard moment, not a harmful one. Those two things aren't the same.

The fourth step is doing something about the conditions that make reactivity more likely in the first place. It could be a sleep issue, workload or just the fact I am generally rundown. Emotional intelligence is much harder to access when you're already running on empty.

And when I still get it wrong, which happens, I try to repair it quickly. That means owning the tone rather than defending it and acknowledging when I was reactive. That's probably the part I care about most in all of this. Understanding the amygdala hijack doesn't hand me an excuse , rather it hands me a responsibility. If I know that stress degrades my judgement, I need to take the signs seriously and if I know I'm capable of reactive behaviour under pressure, I need to keep working on catching it sooner.

I'm better at that than I used to be. Not perfect. Better.

So now, whether I'm sitting in a meeting or standing in the kitchen at the end of a long day, I try to catch the shift before it becomes something I have to walk back. Because the real issue is rarely just the comment sitting in front of me.

It's whether I let stress and an amygdala hijack do the talking instead.

Leadership gets tested when things don’t go to plan. Not in the smooth quarters or polished strategy sessions, but in the messy moments where decisions carry weight, pressure builds, and people look to you for clarity. In the second part to our Q&A leadership series, Liza Lau and I look candidly for a candid Q&A at leadership when things go wrong, including resilience, accountability, communication, and what people actually need from leaders during difficult periods.

What does owning a mistake actually look like at senior level?

AW: Owning a mistake as a leader isn't just about saying the words "I was wrong", in fact making such a statement in the absence of conviction and action will do more harm than good to your credibility. ownership of a mistake, as a leader, is about taking full accountability without pivoting to excuses or shifting the blame up, down or sideways. Speed of response in the situation is also important. By rapidly accepting responsibility, without reservation, I’m also modeling appropriate authenticity through vulnerability. When that's paired with strong self-awareness, it stops being a "failure" and becomes a powerful leadership tool that builds deeper trust and psychological safety across the entire organization.

LL: It starts with courage. The courage to stand up and say — this didn't go the way it should have, and I own that. But owning a mistake isn't just the acknowledgement. It's what comes after. Go back to the source. Understand where it went wrong and why. Then bring solutions — not just an apology, but a clear path to mitigate the damage and prevent it happening again. Use it as a case study. What do we do differently next time? What do we put in place so we catch it earlier — or ask for guidance before it becomes a crisis? That's when something powerful happens. The people around you — your team, your stakeholders — watch how you handle it. And when they see a leader own it fully and move forward constructively, it creates safety. It tells everyone in the room: this is an organisation where you can put your hand up, learn, and do better. That safety is one of the most valuable things a senior leader can build.

When things go wrong, how much do you tell your team — and how much do you hold back?

AW: I aim for radical transparency on the "what" and the "why," of the situation while holding back the "noise" that doesn't help the team move forward. For me, it is about being honest about the reality of the situation so that the team feels respected and informed, while steery away from counterproductive discussions of blame. I consciously filter out any chaotic, unverified information or high-level pressures that would only serve to overwhelm my people and distract them from what we need to do. In a situation like I am the filter that provides clarity, ensuring my people have all the context they need to execute on the solution without the weight of unnecessary distractions.

LL: Transparency is non-negotiable for me. But there's a difference between being transparent and sharing everything. I communicate what is factual. What we know, what we don't know, and what we're doing about it. What I hold back is anything based on assumption, speculation, or incomplete information — because sharing that doesn't help the team, it just creates unnecessary fear. I also filter out anything that introduces politics into the situation. A crisis is hard enough. The last thing a team needs is noise that distracts them from solving the problem in front of them. Give people the facts. Be honest about the gaps. Focus everyone on what comes next.

What do your team need from you in the first 24 hours of a crisis?

AW: Those initial 24 hours are about providing a calm influence, steady guide and the clearest possible direction for your people. My experience is that my team needs three things immediately from me; presence, prioritization, and cadence. In those initial 24 hours I make it a point to be visible and accessible so they feel supported and safe to work towards the required solution. Stripping away secondary tasks gives them a singular, clear focus on the immediate problem. Finally, I set the cadence ensuring we are moving with urgency but not so fast as to overwhelm or drive poor decisions. It’s about being the person who absorbs the chaos so they can execute with a clear head.

LL: Presence and accessibility. Be there. Be reachable. That alone tells the team they're not navigating this alone. But the thing I've found matters most in those first 24 hours is giving the team space to speak. Not jumping straight to solutions — letting people share what they're seeing, what they're feeling, what they think needs to happen. That process of talking it through does something important. It helps the team absorb the situation together and move from reaction to action as a unit. A leader's job in that room isn't to have all the answers. It's to create the conditions where the answers can surface. When people feel heard and supported, problems get solved faster. That's what the first 24 hours are really about.

Keep your eye out for Part 3 of the Q&A, next week, when Liza and I look at the conversations that matter for a leader.

Whenever I’m anxious or under pressure, I catch myself doing this one little thing. At first I don't realise I'm doing it, but others often notice, glancing down and then politely looking away or, if they know me, giving a knowing grin.

That’s when I realise, I’m doing it again.

I’m untying my shoelaces, pulling up my socks and then re-tying those same laces. And to be clear my laces and socks we're fine to begin with. Yes, peculiar I know, but stay with me.

Yep! I have a nervous habit of untying my laces, pulling socks up and then re-tying my shoelaces. Not figuratively pulling up my socks like we’re always told to do, but literally pulling them up, occasionally taking my shoes off to make the adjustment, for good measure.

I’m unsure when or why it started, but for a long time I viewed it as something strange I needed to curb. After all, kicking off your shoes and adjusting  your socks is a bit, well, weird. It felt like one of those unconscious habits that revealed more than I wanted people to see, particularly in professional environments where composure is valued, and taking your shoes off is generally frowned upon.

Let's face facts, it’s not exactly a subtle habit.

Over time though, I’ve started to see this quirk a little differently. The sock-pulling itself isn’t important; it’s a signal that my body feels stress before my mind does

In a strange way, the sock ritual has become a somatic awareness, a small physical cue that my body is generating stress signals before my mind has caught up. The more I’ve paid attention to it, the more I’ve realised this otherwise odd unconscious habit is often connected to my nervous system regulation and my body’s attempt to manage pressure in real time.

Maybe you’re reading this thinking you don’t have an unconscious habit like mine, but the reality is most of us do, even if it's a little more subtle than kicking off your footwear for some sock readjustments. For some it’s coughing unnecessarily during tense moments, rubbing their nose when they’re uncomfortable, tapping a foot under the table or the old favourite, clicking pens repeatedly.

Unconscious habits like mine are often dismissed as quirks, but many are signals that our nervous system has recognised stress before our conscious thinking has fully processed it. 

Research increasingly shows unconscious habits are stress signals, providing an early warning of disequilibrium in our nervous system. Psychologists and neuroscientists studying interoception, the brain’s interpretation of bodily signals, have found that physical responses to stress frequently appear before consciousness catches up. 

The challenge is we have been conditioned to ignore those stress signals presenting as unconscious habits, even the ones a little more discrete than my sock and shoes routine. Professional environments reward composure and emotional control, creating the impression that capable people should remain unaffected by pressure. As a result, people become dangerously good at managing appearances while ignoring early stress signals that come from our unconscious habits.

Whether or not we heed the early warning, the stress being signalled doesn’t disappear, rather surfacing as impatience, defensiveness or the inability to switch off. Organisational psychologists have long found that emotional strain often becomes behaviorally visible long before people openly acknowledge what’s happening internally.

This comes back to subconscious habits and how the nervous system manages stress. When stress isn’t recognised via the early signals of our unconscious habits, the body often keeps signalling in subtle and, eventually, not so subtle ways until the pressure becomes too difficult to ignore.

That's why I’ve begun to embrace the sock and shoe routine that has haunted me for years. When I catch myself pulling my socks up, I now take it as a cue from my nervous system instead of feeling embarrassed. Sometimes this reason is obvious, like I’m avoiding a necessary conversation, carrying pressure I haven’t acknowledged or I’m trying to control an outcome that simply can’t  be controlled. The stress signals manifesting as my need to adjust my socks and footwear creates the opportunity for me to respond earlier and more thoughtfully. It’s part of my nervous system regulation, allowing me to consider and deal with what my consciousness may not yet be aware of.

The more we become attuned to stress signals via unconscious habits, the better chance we have of responding constructively instead of operating purely from reflexive and reactive behaviour.

I still pull my socks up and re-tie my shoes when I’m anxious, and I probably always will. But I no longer see it as something I need to hide or eliminate, it helps me notice when I’m downplaying pressure so I can deal with it before it gets worse. 

For years, I thought the unconscious sock and shoe habit itself was the problem, but really, it was merely a subtle warning.

Is there an unconscious habit you have that could well be a stress signal?

Authenticity can feel risky, a moment that can strengthen your leadership or dissolve your influence if the foundation isn’t solid.

While often touted as key to leadership success, authenticity has the potential to erode effectiveness, authority and reputation if poorly executed. For this reason, many leaders view authenticity as a gamble, one they are unwilling to take, or conversely take without thought and preparedness. However, when self-awareness, context and timing are aligned, authenticity shifts from a gamble to an effective and powerful leadership tool.

Authenticity isn’t just saying what’s on your mind, rather it’s knowing when your voice adds value to the discussion. Leaders often confuse authenticity and authority, or fail to strike the right balance between timing, context and self-awareness. However, despite eluding many leaders, establishing the appropriate tension between these factors can result in an effective leadership authenticity that ceases to feel like a risk.

The tension is one that Tash Callewaert, founder of Boardroom HQ and creator of the Certainty Code, has seen consistently in her extensive work with leaders, where the challenge isn’t knowing who you are, but deciding when and how to stand firmly in it.

Walk into most boardrooms and you’ll notice a pattern. The loudest voices are rarely the most certain ones. Volume, I’ve come to understand, is often just anxiety in a good suit.

Real authenticity isn’t unfiltered openness. It’s knowing what you actually think, and trusting it enough to say it once, clearly, without needing the room to confirm it.

And while there exists a clear delineation between authority and authenticity, leaders frequently blur the line between them.

I once worked closely with someone who had significant authority but very little authenticity. He didn’t invite disagreement, he penalised it. Meetings weren’t exchanges, they were confirmations. And over time, the people around him stopped offering their real thinking and started offering him what he wanted to hear.

That’s the hidden cost of authority without authenticity. It doesn’t just affect the leader, it hollows out the people around them too.

The leaders who struggle most to balance the two are usually those who’ve confused authority with agreement. Real authority doesn’t need the room to comply. It’s secure enough to be questioned.

So why does authenticity feel like such a gamble, and does it need to?

I spent years in high-stakes rooms where the unspoken rule was simple: speak when you have something that matters and make it land. I learned to let the conversation run, read the room, and then, in a few carefully chosen words, drop my point at exactly the right moment. Not because I was managing anyone’s perception of me, but because I knew exactly what I thought and I trusted my timing.

What I was doing wasn’t performing authenticity. It was leading from certainty. And there’s a meaningful difference. Authenticity without self-certainty is exposure. You’re sharing yourself before you know yourself well enough to do it cleanly. That’s when authenticity feels like a gamble — because it is one.

Performative authenticity is simply that, while effective authenticity comes when it is backed by self-awareness and a clear understanding of the value a leader brings. This self-awareness, coupled with timing and context, drastically changes the dynamic and dissolves the perceived gamble. People can tell the difference between someone being open with purpose and someone simply trying to appear real.

The risk for leaders comes when they try to be authentic in the absence of these other key elements. In those moments, authenticity often gets blamed when their comments or behaviour don’t land as intended. The core issue usually runs deeper.

The question isn’t “how do I show up more authentically?” It’s “what am I certain about right now?” Those are very different starting points. One looks outward for feedback. The other looks inward for ground.

Self-certainty isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about knowing your values clearly enough that you can express them without needing the room to validate them. When that’s your foundation, authenticity stops being a risk and starts being a natural byproduct of simply knowing who you are.

A useful starting point: before your next high-stakes conversation, ask yourself one question: “What do I know to be true here?” Not what you think others want to hear, not what feels safe to say. What you actually know. That’s the ground. Stand there first.

Years ago I was invited to speak at a business networking event. I had a choice about how to use that platform. I chose to share my failings out loud. A business that had suffered. Decisions I hadn't made when I should have. A relocation that felt like starting over from scratch.

I didn’t do it to be liked. I did it because I’d already made peace with the story, and I knew that owning it was the only way to move cleanly forward.

What happened next surprised me. People leaned in. Not because I was polished, but because I was certain. Certain enough in who I was and what I’d learned that I didn’t need the room to receive it kindly. I just needed to say the true thing.

That’s when authenticity stops feeling like a gamble. Not when you’ve perfected your story, but when you’ve stopped needing anyone else to validate it.

In January 2009, a US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of geese shortly after takeoff, losing all engine power over one of the most densely populated areas on earth, New York City. With only seconds to react, Captain Chesley "Sully” Sullenberger was forced to navigate a dual-engine failure that would most likely end in disaster.

In the 208 seconds that followed, Sully reassured passengers, coordinated the crew and executed a seemingly textbook emergency landing, albeit in the Hudson River.

For those in leadership roles, Sully’s composure serves as a masterclass, proving that the ability to remain grounded and in emotional control is far more critical than any technical brilliance.

While hopefully none of us ever have to navigate the landing of an aircraft with 155 passengers onboard in the freezing Hudson River, the workplace operates in a similar way. In fact, we learn a lot about a leader by watching what happens around them, particularly in times of heightened pressure. How quickly do people raise problems or bad news? How direct are the conversations when the heat is on? What happens under pressure?

The patterns which emerge at such times clearly signal whether or not people trust their leader, and one of the biggest drivers of that trust isn’t technical brilliance, as you might expect. No, it’s whether the leader stays calm and steady when things don’t go to plan.

Otherwise capable leaders often get it wrong when pressure mounts. They rely on being right, speed of thinking, strong opinion and sharp analysis. Often these qualities assist, but if their emotional response is inconsistent, all of that brilliance amounts to very little.

When people can’t predict how you’ll react as a leader, they start managing you, in fact managing you becomes their primary focus, as opposed to managing the problem at hand. They focus their energy on choosing words carefully and holding back crucial details until the right moment. As a result, problems arise later than they should, communication fails, and the team spends energy managing interactions instead of focusing on the issue.

No measure of brilliance will compensate for a leader who becomes unpredictable under pressure. In fact, potentially it makes it worse, because the leader assumes the quality of their thinking will carry them through. It doesn’t. Their instability quickly becomes infectious and the problem spreads.

Let's break this myth right here; the trust of your people isn't built on how often you’re right, it's built on how people experience you when things are uncertain. Calm leaders create an environment where their emotional control makes it easier for people to be direct and to stay engaged, even when conversations get difficult. When this trusting environment exists and something goes wrong, the focus stays on understanding and responding, not on anticipating and managing your reaction.

When a leader exhibits emotional control, people raise problems earlier, even if things seem uncertain. They speak more openly and tolerate difficult conversations instead of avoiding them, and that brings better decisions. This is why emotional control is a trait of strong leaders. Emotional control builds trust as people learn what to expect from you, especially under pressure.

One way to understand your impact as a leader is to look at how predictable you are when it counts. People don’t need leaders who are perfect, they need leaders who are consistent enough that they don’t have to second-guess your reactions. People need leaders who demonstrate consistent behavior.

Fortunately emotional control isn’t fixed and is built through small actions you repeat until they become an engrained part of your leadership style. Some simple ones include:

1. Try the tactical summary. Restating other people's points helps shift your thinking from defensive to clear reasoning,

2. Use a physical anchor. Just pressing your feet firmly into the floor or holding a pen can ground you and arrest a stress response.

3. Try being a third-party observer. Rather than feel you need to be actively engaged, step back and observe for a moment to avoid reactivity.

4. Normalize the strategic pause. You do not have to react instantly. Simply saying you want a moment to reflect projects confidence and gives you space to breathe.

5. Frame challenges as puzzles. Instead of seeing a problem as a threat, talk about it as a something for the team to solve together, again moving the group’s energy away from just being reactive

Brilliance grabs attention, but steady behavior builds lasting trust.

Over ten years ago, I had a manager we’ll call Dave for the purpose of discussion. Dave would regularly say to you, “I’m open to feedback.” He’d say it sincerely and he'd add it at the end of most meetings, almost matter-of-fact, like someone who was genuinely keen to hear your ideas, or have you build upon his thoughts. Dave also accepted your feedback, allowing you to suggest an idea, even challenge a decision or offer an alternative viewpoint, rarely shutting you down.

What took me some time to understand was what came next...

If the feedback happened to go along with where Dave was heading, then great, it fell on open ears and an equally open mind. If it didn’t, something would shift, ever so subtly. He’d listen, really listen. And then he'd begin walking you through why he was thinking that way. He'd give more context, a better explanation. By the time he was done, you understood and, routinely, you agreed. If you didn't agree, you at least had enough information to move past it.

When you spoke with Dave you felt heard, but nothing material actually changed.

Over time, people adjusted, not dramatically, but in small, invisible ways. They stopped pushing as hard, or filtered what they said, and they started offering feedback that was easier to receive. So after a while all Dave heard, almost always, was agreement dressed up as feedback.

I didn't think much of it back then, I actually thought I was working for one of the most open and approachable leaders around. But I do reflect on it considerably now, mostly because it's a pattern that's far easier to spot in someone else than in yourself.

Here’s the problem. The version of you that’s making work harder is the one you don’t see. It’s the one asking for feedback and assuming that means you’re open to it. A lot of the time, you’re not and all you're looking for is positive reinforcement. And it shows up not in whether you ask, but in how you respond once it arrives.

In this situation, you want to know you're on track, that you should stay the same course. You want to move forward without reopening decisions you've already spent energy on. So when something challenges your thinking or shows a potential to undo what you have already done, you engage with it, but in a way that's mostly about protecting your original position. You explain your reasoning or perhaps add context that somehow wasn't there before, or even go over the constraints. All of that is reasonable on the surface, but it also makes it harder for the feedback to land as it's intended, let alone convince you to make needed changes.

The pattern is this; you ask for input once the work is mostly formed and then respond quickly when something doesn't sit right, tightening your argument rather than sitting with the alternative. You take the parts that fit and conveniently gloss over the rest. Sometimes you ask a few more people until the response feels more comfortable.

None of this looks like resistance, in fact it looks like diligence.

What's happening underneath though is a filtering process, slick and automatic. Feedback that supports your direction moves through and feedback that challenges it gets explained away, softened, or filed somewhere you never return to.

Real feedback creates exposure. It can slow you down, force a rethink, surface something you got wrong and potentially create some rework. That all comes with a cost, especially when you've already put serious time into the outcome. Reinforcement protects you from that cost and while it feels efficient it almost never is. You see, when ideas don't get challenged early, the work carries more weight later. More time gets spent refining something that needs a rethink. The friction doesn't disappear, it just moves further down the line where it's harder to deal with and inevitably creates even more work.

The people around you notice too, they see when feedback leads to something changing and when it gets absorbed without impact. Over time they recalibrate. The sharper observations get held back and eventually what you hear gets pre-filtered for your comfort. That's when work starts feeling heavier than it should.

A better measure than how often you ask for feedback is what happens after the conversation ends. What changed because of what you heard? What did you sit with longer than you wanted to? Where did you actually adjust your thinking Those are harder questions and I confess that I don't always answer them honestly. Like everyone, I can be found traversing the short-term easier route at times.

I think back to Dave sometimes. He genuinely believed he was open to feedback, and in some real sense he was. He listened, engaged and created the conditions for people to speak up. What he didn't do, not consistently, was let any of it change his mind.

It's an easy pattern to repeat because from the inside it feels like you're doing the right thing. You asked, invited constructive feedback and listened, even nodded with empathy and understanding, as people gave it.

But the version of you that makes work harder than it needs to be isn't the one avoiding feedback…

It's the one who's learned to ask for it in a way that keeps everything exactly as it was.

My phone rang at work today which is nothing unusual really, happens many times a day. Although, it was my daughter calling and she rarely calls, especially during the work day. She's at university interstate and our communication is predominantly a funny text or the occasional FaceTime, rarely is it a call during the workday.

Within a split second of her name appearing on my phone screen I was jumping to the conclusion that something was wrong and that was the only reason for the unexpected call. I didn’t notice it happening in that moment, but I was jumping way ahead and filling in blanks quicker than I could answer the call.

By the time I picked up I’d already concluded that something was wrong and she was calling for help. Surely that was the only reason she'd be calling me during the day?

So what was it she needed? Nothing. Just a chat and nothing remotely like what I'd speculated. We talked about her week, what she’d been working on and her recent marks on some assignments, which were great by the way! It was easy, relaxed and non-eventful.

After the call I sat for a moment, realising I’d rushed straight to assuming the worst, even though there was no reason compelling me do so.

That gap between baseless speculation and reality is where a lot of unnecessary stress resides. Dr David Burns calls it “fortune telling" and it's one of numerous distortions he writes about in his work on cognitive behavioural therapy1. The idea is simple; we predict an outcome, frequently negative in nature, and then we treat that prediction as if it’s already true. We have no facts or anything at all that logically points us to the dire conclusion, but we land on it in nano-seconds. What makes it even trickier is how natural it feels, there’s no obvious line where you stop guessing and start believing. It just sort of happens, and once it does, everything else follows. Your mood shifts, your body tightens and you start reacting to something that hasn’t actually happened.

I catch myself in these small moments of fortune telling all too often. An unanswered message that someone has read or a conversation that seemed strained which I replay, looking for what I missed. In today’s example, my daughter calls unexpectedly and I instantly assume something bad has happened. None of these situations come with a clear explanation, especially in the absence of any real facts, so my mind provides one scenario and frequently that explanation is a negative one.

While I wasn't quick enough to catch my "fortune telling” today, I’ve found a few things help when I do. The first is just calling it out to myself, whether silently or even out loud; perhaps a simple statement like "I'm predicting the future again.” It sounds basic, but it changes my relationship with the negative thought. Externalising and calling out a thought is a powerful way to arrest it. Then, I check the evidence, asking what’s actually in front of me? What unknown facts am I replacing with assumptions?

Inevitably, there’s more than one explanation for everything, even if your brain has already locked onto a negative one. You don’t need to land on the most positive version, you just need to remember that your first explanation isn’t always the most realistic. Often I find the best thing to do is nothing at all, just for a moment, and I let the situation unfold before deciding what it means. You're not trying to stop those thoughts from showing up, that’s unrealistic, they’re part of how we’re wired, especially when it comes to people we care about. All you are trying to do is get a bit quicker at catching them, because when you don’t, you end up reacting to something that exists only in your head.

That call from my daughter was a good reminder that sometimes the story you tell yourself feels completely real, despite being divorced from reality. Often it turns out to just be exactly what it was at that moment, like a daughter calling her dad for a chat.