Mike Hohnen

When you accepted your current role, you received an inheritance. Nobody mentioned it in the interview. It wasn’t in the contract. But it was waiting for you on day one, along with the laptop and the lanyard.

You inherited a complete set of rules about how people relate to each other in this place. Who can challenge whom. What emotions are acceptable and what gets you labelled “difficult.” How conflict gets handled — or more likely, how it gets avoided. Whose opinions carry weight before they’ve even spoken, and whose get politely noted and never mentioned again.

These rules were written by people you’ve never met. They were solving problems you may never have heard of, in circumstances that may have completely changed. But the rules survived. Rules always do.

You learned your inheritance not by reading it but by bumping into its edges. The raised eyebrow when you suggested something. The careful pause before someone said “that’s an interesting idea” — meaning it wasn’t. The stories people told about what happened the last time someone tried to change things. Nobody sat you down and explained the rules. You absorbed them the way children absorb the rules of their family — not through instruction, but through reaction.

And that’s not a casual comparison. Families work exactly this way. Your family’s rules about anger, about vulnerability, about who gets to be right and who learns to keep the peace — you didn’t write those. You inherited them from people who inherited them from people who inherited them. Nobody chose them. They just accumulated, one Christmas dinner at a time, until they felt like the natural order of things rather than a set of decisions someone made decades ago.

Organisations are families in this specific sense: they pass down patterns of relating that outlive the people who created them. A founder who couldn’t tolerate disagreement creates a culture of consensus. That culture hires for consensus. Thirty years later, everyone agrees with everyone and nobody can explain why decisions take so long. The founder retired in 2011. Their inheritance is still running the place.

Manfred Kets de Vries calls this the shadow of the leader — the way a senior leader’s psychology imprints on an organisation and persists long after they’ve gone. But it’s not just founders. Every crisis, every badly handled departure, every unresolved conflict adds a clause to the will. The inheritance keeps growing. And every new person who arrives receives the full bequest whether they want it or not.

The part that should make you uncomfortable: you’re no longer just an heir. You’ve become an executor. That raised eyebrow? It’s yours now. That careful pause before “interesting idea”? You’ve started doing it. The stories about what happened last time? You’re telling them. You went from inheriting the rules to enforcing them without noticing the transition.

So: what exactly did you inherit when you joined this organisation? What rules are you living by that you never chose? And which of them would you genuinely keep — by choice — if someone read you the will and asked?

Because an inheritance you can see is an inheritance you can contest. And a pattern you’ve been passing on unconsciously is, for the first time, something you can decide to break.

Every organisation I’ve ever worked with says it values honesty. Open door policies. Speak-up cultures. “We want to hear from you.” Town halls with anonymous question boxes. Feedback surveys with reassuring promises of confidentiality.

And yet.

Most people in most organisations have learned — not from the policy, but from the reaction — exactly what happens when you actually say what you think. It’s rarely dramatic. Nobody gets marched out. It’s subtler than that. It’s the slight pause before the response. The “thanks for raising that” that clearly means the opposite. The way your point gets acknowledged in the meeting and then absolutely nothing changes afterwards.

People are quick learners. They read the room long before they read the policy.

April’s issue explored why people stay silent — the real mechanics behind it. This month, I want to ask a different question: where does all that unsaid stuff actually go?

Because it doesn’t disappear.

The plumbing problem

Think of it like plumbing. An organisation’s formal channels — meetings, feedback processes, one-to-ones — are supposed to be the pipes through which truth flows. But when people learn those pipes aren’t safe, they don’t stop having things to say. The pressure doesn’t reduce. The truth just finds other routes.

It comes out as gossip. As the meeting-after-the-meeting. As passive-aggressive emails copied to one more person than necessary. As resistance to change that nobody can quite explain. As two departments locked in low-level conflict that has nothing to do with what they think they’re arguing about.

And here’s what’s interesting: most organisations treat every one of these as a separate problem. They see gossip and diagnose a “gossip culture.” They see passive aggression and book a communication skills workshop. They see the meeting-after-the-meeting and label certain people as “political.” They notice resistance to change and conclude that people just don’t like change.

But these aren’t separate problems. They’re the same problem, showing up in different places. They’re where truth comes out when it can’t come out where it should.

The underground economy

Chris Argyris, who spent decades studying how organisations actually communicate (as opposed to how they think they communicate), called these things “undiscussables” — the topics everyone knows about but nobody raises. And then he made an observation that still stops me in my tracks: the undiscussability of the undiscussable is itself undiscussable.

Read that again.

Organisations don’t just avoid the truth. They avoid talking about the fact that they avoid the truth. And they avoid talking about that too. Three layers of denial, each one reinforcing the others.

What you end up with is something like an underground economy. Truth becomes contraband — and like all contraband, it doesn’t disappear just because it’s been made illegitimate. It simply moves to a black market. There are dealers — the people who always seem to know what’s really going on. There’s currency — insider knowledge, traded carefully. And there are risks — being seen as negative, as not a team player, as disloyal.

This economy is running in every organisation, right now, underneath the official one. And it’s expensive. Not because the gossip itself causes damage, but because maintaining the gap between what’s said officially and what’s known unofficially takes enormous energy. Energy that could be going somewhere useful.

The real cost

Here’s what I think gets missed: most of what organisations diagnose as “culture problems” are actually the redirected output of truths that had nowhere legitimate to go. You’re not dealing with difficult people. You’re dealing with a system that turned honesty into contraband — and then wondering why a black market appeared.

The question isn’t how to stop the gossip, fix the politics, or overcome the resistance. The question is: what made the formal channels feel so unsafe that people built an entire alternative system to work around them?

That’s a harder question. But it’s the right one.

#WorkplaceCulture #PsychologicalSafety #LeadershipDevelopment

There’s a principle in systems theory that most organisations consistently ignore.

You can optimise every single component in a system and still end up with a system that doesn’t work. Because a system isn’t defined by its parts. It’s defined by the connections between them.

I’ve been reading Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report, and this principle is written across every page. Not explicitly. But it’s there if you know where to look.

Manager engagement has collapsed. Down nine points since 2022.

95% of organisations have seen zero measurable profit impact from their AI investments.

Global employee engagement has dropped to 20%. The cost? Roughly $10 trillion a year.

Leaders are lonelier, angrier, and sadder than the people they lead.

These aren’t separate problems. They’re symptoms of the same thing.

Organisations keep optimising the parts. Better skills training for managers. More sophisticated AI tools. New wellbeing programmes. Smarter performance frameworks. Each one a perfectly reasonable investment. Each one aimed at improving a component.

And none of it is working. Because nobody is paying attention to the connections.

What connects a manager to their team? A relationship. What determines whether employees actually adopt AI? Whether their manager champions it. What protects a leader from the emotional toll of the role? Feeling connected and supported. And what determines whether a client stays or leaves? Not your product. The quality of the relationship they have with your people.

The connections are the system. And the connections are relational. Internal and external.

When you optimise parts in isolation, you don’t get a better system. You get a faster collection of disconnected components. A well-trained manager who still can’t have an honest conversation with their team. A brilliant AI tool that nobody trusts enough to use. And a client who looks happy on paper but is already talking to your competitor.

Gallup’s data tells us that best-practice organisations achieve 79% manager engagement. Nearly four times the global average. They’re not doing four times more training. They’re investing in something different altogether. They’re investing in the connections.

Most organisations are still stuck in an industrial-age mindset. Improve the individual parts and the machine runs better. But organisations aren’t machines. They’re living systems. And in living systems, the quality of the relationships determines everything.

You can have the best strategy, the best technology, and the most talented people in the market. If the connections between them are weak, you don’t have a system. You have an expensive collection of parts.

What would change if your organisation stopped optimising components and started investing in connections?

#Leadership #SystemsThinking #EmployeeEngagement #RelationshipsMatter #Gallup2026#TheRelationshipAdvantage

I’ve been reading the new Gallup State of the Global Workplace report. One number stopped me cold.

Manager engagement has dropped nine points since 2022. From 31% to 22%.

The “engagement premium” that managers used to enjoy over their teams? Gone. Managers are now barely more engaged than the people they lead.

This is dangerous.

Gallup’s own research consistently shows that engagement happens at the team level. The manager is the single biggest influence on whether a team is engaged or checked out. When managers disengage, the effect cascades. Teams drift. Trust erodes. Performance drops.

We’re not talking about a marginal dip. We’re talking about the transmission mechanism for culture breaking down.

Meanwhile, organisations are cutting management layers. The managers who remain are stretched across bigger teams with less capacity for the conversations that actually matter. Less time to check in. Less time to listen. Less time to build the relationships that hold everything together.

The cost? Gallup puts it at roughly $10 trillion in lost productivity globally. About 9% of GDP. That’s not a soft skills problem. That’s an economic crisis.

But what I find most interestin is this:

Best-practice organisations still achieve 79% manager engagement. Nearly four times the global average. Same economy. Same pressures. Same disruption. Radically different results.

The difference isn’t circumstance. It’s intention. These organisations have decided that investing in how their managers lead, and specifically how they relate to their teams, is a strategic priority. Not a nice-to-have. Not a training budget line item. A competitive advantage.

Most organisations still treat management development as a skills transfer exercise. Teach them to delegate. Teach them to give feedback. Teach them to run a meeting. All useful. None sufficient.

What the best organisations understand is that management is fundamentally relational. The quality of the relationship between a manager and their team determines engagement, and engagement determines everything else.

When I work with managers, the breakthrough moment is almost always the same. It’s when they stop looking outward for the problem and realise: “I am the biggest influence on how this team experiences work.”

That’s not a burden. It’s an opportunity. And it’s one that 78% of the world’s managers are currently missing.

What would change in your organisation if every manager understood that their most important job isn’t managing tasks, but building relationships?

#Leadership #EmployeeEngagement #ManagementDevelopment #RelationshipsMatter #Gallup2026 #TheRelationshipAdvantage

George Saunders, in a recent interview, made a distinction that stopped me: kindness is not the same as niceness.

He defines kindness as “your ability to be in a moment without a whole lot of monkey mind going on. Because then you’re more likely to be able to posit what could be helpful in that situation.”

That’s not soft. That’s one of the hardest capabilities a leader can develop — genuine presence.

But in our productivity-obsessed workplaces, niceness has become the default. It’s efficient. It’s the minimum viable interaction. Pleasant tone, brief acknowledgement, no friction, move on. Box ticked.

The problem? Niceness doesn’t build relationships. And here’s what most leaders miss: it doesn’t even maintain them.

There’s an asymmetry at play. The leader thinks: “I was pleasant, handled that fine, relationship steady.” But the other person experiences something different: another interaction where they weren’t really seen, another moment confirming they’re a function, not a person.

What feels like holding steady to one party feels like slow withdrawal to the other.

Those micro-diminishments accumulate. They’re why people say “nothing was ever wrong exactly” when explaining why they left, why they stopped bringing ideas, why they quietly disengaged.

We all see through nice. We know the difference between someone managing the surface and someone actually being there.

Kindness requires slowing down. It asks us to be present enough to sense what this person, in this moment, genuinely needs — which sometimes isn’t the comfortable response at all.

That’s hard when we’re stressed, afraid, short of time. Which means kindness isn’t a personality trait. It’s a capacity. One that organisations either support or systematically undermine.

Leaders who settle for nice think they’re being professional. They’re actually making tiny withdrawals from a relationship account they believe they’re maintaining.

And eventually, the balance hits zero.

We measure everything else at work. Performance metrics, engagement scores, productivity indicators, customer satisfaction. Dashboards for days.

But when it comes to workplace relationships—arguably the foundation of everything else we’re trying to achieve—we tend to rely on vibes. “The team seems good.” “Culture feels strong.” “Everyone’s getting along.”

The irony isn’t lost on me. I’ve spent the year encouraging you to think about the why behind workplace relationships rather than rushing to techniques and quick fixes. And now, for the final issue of the year, I’m about to get practical.

Consider it a holiday gift.

The Space Between

Here’s something worth sitting with: when we talk about relationships, we use spatial language. We’re close to someone. There’s distance with a colleague. We need to bridge a gap with a client. We talk about relationships as if they exist in the space between people—not inside either person.

And maybe that’s exactly right.

A relationship isn’t a property of you or a property of me. It’s the quality of the space we’ve created between us. Is it expansive or cramped? Warm or brittle? Safe enough for honesty, or so fragile that we stick to the script?

Try this: look up from your screen for a moment. Think about an important work relationship—a colleague, a direct report, your manager, a client. Don’t think about them. Think about the space between you. What’s its quality? What does it feel like to be in that space?

Now ask: what would be different if that space were different?

The Space Is Not Fixed

Here’s the shift that matters: we often treat relationship quality as luck of the draw. Chemistry. Personality fit. Either you click or you don’t.

But we’re shaping that space with every interaction. Every meeting, every message, every moment of attention or inattention. The question isn’t whether we’re influencing our relationships—we are, constantly. The question is whether we’re doing it deliberately or by accident.

This reframes the whole measurement problem. You’re not trying to assess a fixed thing. You’re trying to notice the quality of something you’re actively creating.

What’s Actually Worth Watching

Once you’re thinking spatially, the signals become clearer. Not “how is this person doing?” but “what’s happening in this space?”

Is it a space where people ask for help—or struggle quietly to preserve the appearance of competence?

Is it a space where mistakes get shared and solved—or hidden and managed?

Is it a space that can hold disagreement—or one where conflict has been politely suffocated?

Is it a space of genuine curiosity—or ritual exchanges that everyone knows mean nothing?

These are subjective observations, yes. But subjective isn’t the same as imaginary. You already sense this stuff. You’re just not treating it as data.

If the Space Needs Improving

The good news buried in all of this: if we’re shaping the space anyway, we can shape it better.

For managers, this might start with how you open your one-to-ones. Instead of “how are you?” (which invites “fine”), try something with a bit more texture:

“What’s got your attention at the moment?”

“What’s one thing that’s working—and one thing that isn’t?”

“On a scale of 1-10, how’s this week been? What would make it one point higher?”

The specific question matters less than what it signals: that this is a space where honesty is welcome. And that signal gets stronger when you go first—sharing something real before asking for something real.

In remote and hybrid teams, this matters even more. When Teams is your main meeting space, you lose ambient awareness—the corridor sense of how people are actually doing. Check-ins become your only window into the space. Make them count.

A Different Kind of Attention

We probably can’t measure relationships the way we measure quarterly targets. But maybe measurement was never the right frame. Measurement is done to something—extracting data to judge from a distance.

Relationships ask for something different. Not measurement, but attention. Not assessment, but presence. Not “how do I score this?” but “what’s the quality of the space I’m helping to create?”

The signals are there. They’ve always been there. We just need to stop staring at dashboards long enough to notice them.

“Just be yourself.” It’s the well-meaning advice that’s launched a thousand leadership development programmes and probably twice as many LinkedIn posts. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most leaders who try to “be themselves” at work are actually stuck at a surprisingly unsophisticated stage of authenticity.

The problem isn’t that they’re being inauthentic. It’s that they’ve mistaken self-expression for genuine presence.

The Authenticity We’re Taught

Walk into any leadership workshop and you’ll hear the familiar refrain: authentic leadership means bringing your whole self to work, staying true to your values, having the courage to show vulnerability, sharing your truth. It’s framed as an act of personal courage—revealing who you really are despite the risk.

This version of authenticity is deeply individualistic. It positions you at the centre: your truth, your feelings, your values, your story. And whilst there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it’s a bit like learning to play tennis by only practising your serve. You’re missing half the game.

The Developmental Shift

What if authenticity isn’t actually about you at all?

Developmental psychology suggests that authenticity evolves through distinct stages. Early in our leadership journey, authenticity is about self-expression—figuring out who we are and having the courage to show it. This is necessary and important. We need to develop a coherent sense of self before we can do anything more sophisticated with it.

But mature authenticity looks entirely different. It’s the capacity to be genuinely present to what’s happening between people, to sense what a relationship or moment actually needs, and to respond from a place of real attunement rather than rehearsed self-presentation.

The shift is from “How can I be true to myself in this situation?” to “What does genuine presence look like here?”

What This Looks Like in Practice

Consider Sarah, a senior leader facing a team in crisis. The conventional authenticity playbook might encourage her to share her own anxiety, to be vulnerable about not having all the answers, to “bring her whole self” to the meeting.

But what if the team doesn’t need Sarah’s whole self right now? What if they need her calm, her confidence, her ability to hold steady whilst they’re falling apart? What if the most authentic thing Sarah can do is not share her anxiety, but instead be fully present to theirs?

This isn’t about being fake. It’s about having developed enough relational sophistication to distinguish between what wants to be expressed and what wants to be witnessed. Sometimes the most authentic leadership is holding back your immediate reaction so you can truly hear someone else’s.

Or think about James, who prides himself on “being the same person in every room”—the same directness, the same humour, the same energy whether he’s with his team, the board, or a nervous new starter. He calls this authenticity. His team might call it inflexibility.

Meanwhile, his colleague Michelle consciously shifts her presence based on context. She’s more playful with some colleagues, more formal with others, more directive in crises and more exploratory in strategy sessions. She’s not performing different personas; she’s responding to what each relationship genuinely needs from her. That’s not multiple personalities—it’s relational maturity.

The Paradox

Here’s where it gets interesting: the leaders who seem most authentic are often the ones who’ve stopped trying to be themselves.

They’re not asking “Am I being true to me?” They’re asking “Am I being genuinely present to what’s happening here?” They’ve developed the capacity to be different with different people whilst remaining entirely coherent. Their authenticity isn’t revealed; it’s enacted in relationship.

This is sophisticated work. It requires you to hold your sense of self lightly enough to be genuinely responsive, whilst holding it firmly enough to not lose yourself entirely. It asks you to develop what we might call “relational fluidity”—the ability to be genuinely different without fragmenting.

The Invitation

If you’re a leader who’s been trying to “find your authentic self” and then have the courage to show it, you might be working on yesterday’s challenge. The question isn’t whether you dare to be yourself. It’s whether you’ve developed the capacity to be genuinely present to others.

That’s a different kind of courage. Not the courage of self-revelation, but the courage of self-transcendence. Not “Here’s who I am, take it or leave it,” but “I’m genuinely here with you. What does this moment need?”

The most authentic thing you can do as a leader might not be bringing your whole self to work. It might be developing the wisdom to know which part of yourself each moment is asking for.

What version of authenticity are you practising? The question isn’t meant to judge—we all start where we start. But it might be worth noticing whether your authenticity is still primarily about you, or whether it’s beginning to be about the space between.

Throughout this four post series, I’ve explored the hidden costs of cutting middle management – from psychological toll to trust erosion.

Today, I want to paint a picture of what’s possible when managers embrace a fundamentally different way of operating.

The transformation isn’t just about managing larger spans of control. It’s about evolving from compliance officer to culture weaver.

? Two Different Directions

The difference is profound and directional.

? Compliance Officers are task-oriented, focused upward in the hierarchy. Their energy goes toward ticking boxes, meeting expectations from above, ensuring processes are followed and reports are submitted. They manage to satisfy their superiors.

? Culture Weavers are environment-oriented, focused outward and downward toward their people. Their energy goes toward creating conditions where those who report to them can thrive and do their best work. They lead to unleash potential.

One direction creates bureaucracy. The other creates possibility.

? Conversations Create Culture

As Carl Weick observed: “You change a culture by changing the conversation.” We become what we talk about.

This insight sits at the heart of the transformation from compliance officer to culture weaver. It’s a complete reorientation of the kinds of conversations managers have, especially with the people reporting to them.

Are your conversations about:

• Ticking boxes and micromanaging to-do lists?
• OR what people need in order to flourish?

The difference isn’t subtle – it’s transformational.

? What People Actually Need

When managers start asking “What do you need to flourish?” instead of “Did you complete your tasks?” something remarkable happens.

Two fundamental human needs emerge that were invisible in compliance-focused conversations:

? Validation – People need to be seen, recognised, and accepted for who they are. Not judged against some idealised template, but genuinely acknowledged as unique individuals with distinct strengths and perspectives.

? Constructive Feedback – Nobody wants criticism, but everybody craves genuine feedback. The ability to help people see what they could do differently to get better results or different outcomes is one of the most valuable gifts a manager can offer.

These aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re the foundation of human engagement and growth.

? The Weaving Process

Culture weaving happens in the micro-moments:

• In the quality of presence you bring to conversations
• In choosing curiosity over judgement
• In asking “How can I help you succeed?” rather than “Why didn’t you finish this?”

It’s about seeing your role as creating the conditions where people can do their best work, rather than ensuring they conform to predetermined processes.

Culture weavers understand that their primary job isn’t task management – it’s environment creation.

?? The Paradox of Control

Here’s the beautiful paradox: by letting go of compliance-focused control, culture weavers actually gain more influence over outcomes.

When you focus on creating conditions for people to thrive, they become more engaged, more creative, more committed to excellence.

The larger spans of control that seemed impossible for compliance officers become manageable for culture weavers. Why? Because you’re not trying to control everything – you’re creating an environment where people control themselves.

? From Constraint to Catalyst

This series started with the observation that cutting middle management creates relationship deficits that erode trust and meaning. But it doesn’t have to end there.

When managers evolve from compliance officers to culture weavers, larger spans become opportunities to build cultures of genuine engagement and performance. The constraint becomes the catalyst for a better way of leading.

The managers who make this transition don’t just survive organisational restructuring – they transform it into something more human, more meaningful, and ultimately more effective.

The conversation you have tomorrow with someone on your team is a choice: compliance check or culture weaving. What will you choose?

How are you shifting from compliance officer to culture weaver in your leadership role?

This concludes our series on the hidden costs of cutting middle management. Thank you for joining this exploration of more human-centred approaches to leadership and organisational design.

#Leadership #CultureWeaver #Management #WorkplaceCulture #HumanCentredLeadership #OrganisationalDevelopment #PeopleFirst