We know more than ever about trauma, mental health, neurodiversity, psychological safety and the psychosocial conditions that shape people’s experience of work.
That understanding has, without question, changed leadership for the better.
But the question now is: has the pendulum sometimes swung too far?
Are leaders becoming hesitant to have difficult performance conversations for fear of saying the wrong thing?
Have we started confusing psychological safety with comfort?
Can empathy become avoidance?
And if we remove challenge, consequence and responsibility in the name of care, are we actually helping people, or unintentionally taking away their agency?
These are uncomfortable questions. They are also increasingly important ones.
BENEATH THE BEHAVIOUR
A practical and deeply human session exploring what people carry beneath the surface, how it shows up at work and how leaders respond with care, clarity and accountability.
Hosted by Patrick Bruneau , Director Human Resources APAC, Jack Links
Bringing both senior HR leadership and a human behaviour lens, this conversation brings together very different perspectives on one of the most complex responsibilities of leadership today
Brigitte Fairbank, Chief People Officer, CatholicCare Sydney
Bringing significant lived experience alongside an extensive People and Culture career, and a powerful perspective on being met with humanity without being diminished by it.
Natalie Paul, Executive GM Client Development & Engagement, McMillan Shakespeare Group
Bringing the reality of leading a substantial commercial team, where care for the individual must sit alongside expectations, customers, performance and fairness to everyone else carrying the load.
Josette Moffatt, Director & Principal Consultant, Talent Ecology
Bringing the systems lens and perhaps the central question of the conversation:
What do I own? What do you own? And what does the organisation own? Because responsibility does not sit in one place.
And perhaps part of the challenge is becoming clearer about what we mean by safety. Psychological safety is not the same as comfort. Psychosocial risk asks whether aspects of the work itself are creating a risk of harm. Mental health is broader again. They intersect, but they are not interchangeable.
An organisation cannot tell people to simply become more resilient when the system itself is creating harm.
But nor can an organisation take responsibility for every reaction, every behaviour or every difficult experience.
A leader cannot solve everything for someone. And an individual should not be defined entirely by what has happened to them.
THE QUESTIONS WE NEED TO BE BRAVE ENOUGH TO ASK
Can a psychologically safe workplace still be a place where people are challenged, held accountable and sometimes uncomfortable?
When does compassion become over accommodation?
What happens to the rest of a team when the difficult conversation does not happen?
Could taking too much responsibility for someone actually take away their agency?
And are we still willing to believe that people are capable of growth, change and responsibility, even when we deeply understand what sits beneath their behaviour?
WHY THIS CONVERSATION MATTERS
Because leadership increasingly means holding tensions that do not have simple answers.
Humanity and accountability.
Context and consequence.
Support and expectation.
Psychological safety and challenge.
Care for the individual and fairness to the wider team.
The answer is not choosing one over the other. It is learning how to hold both well.
That is the work of mature leadership.
Perhaps one of the most respectful things we can do for another human being is understand what has shaped them, support them where support is genuinely needed, and still believe in their capacity for agency, responsibility and growth.
Beneath the Behaviour is just one of many powerful conversations across two days at The Thriving Workplace.
Come and be part of a conversation many leaders are wrestling with, but few are having openly.