Building Better Cultures

The Belonging Question
Diversity gets measured. Belonging gets felt. What actually creates it in an organisation?
In this best-bits episode of Building Better Cultures, we delve back into Episodes 72 and 77 to hear about structural DEI accountability from Wema Hoover, and belonging as a fundamental human need in teams from Peter Docker. Both have operated at real scale, so this is practice rather than theory.
Wema Hoover is direct about where most organisations get stuck. The barrier isn't a lack of good intentions, it's that the good intentions stop at communication. Saying what you stand for feels like progress, and a statement posted in a moment of public attention feels like action, but neither survives contact with the following quarter. What actually moves things is a diagnostic: what do our hiring numbers look like, what do our leadership teams look like, can we measure impact rather than activity? Then expectations set explicitly with leadership groups, and consequences when those expectations aren't met, repeated until the work is simply how the organisation operates rather than a programme with a start and end date. Asked what leaders should do, her answer starts closer to home: look in the mirror. Educate yourself, understand where your own gaps are, create the space for dialogue, and pay attention to the people who don't have the networks or the sponsorship, because talent doesn't surface on its own in systems that were never designed to surface it.
Peter Docker builds belonging from the ground up, starting with a child who wants to be part of a group of friends and a street where neighbours look out for each other's kids. That gets him to a distinction worth borrowing: taking responsibility is not the same as being held accountable. One is chosen, the other is imposed, and people choose it when they feel they belong. He takes it to the Iraq deployment in 2003, where what mattered wasn't checking in on the task but checking in on the person, and then to the very ordinary version of the same thing for teams working apart: a postcard, a bar of chocolate, a call that isn't about work. He finishes on the strongest version of the argument. In genuinely extreme situations, people put themselves on the line for each other, and they don't do it because of rules or standards. They do it because they belong, and what works there works everywhere else too.
The common thread? Belonging isn't a programme or a policy. It's built in the small, deliberate things leaders do, and measured in what people choose to do when nobody is making them.
Key Takeaways
Good intentions are not the problem, stopping at them is. Most organisations know what they want to say. Far fewer check whether anything changed.

A statement is not a strategy. It's naive to think a post in a moment of public attention sustains anything on its own.

Start with the diagnostic. Hiring data, the make-up of leadership teams, and honest measurement of impact tell you where you actually are, which is where the work starts.

Expectations need consequences attached. Set them with leadership groups, be clear about what happens when they're not met, or you're describing an aspiration rather than running a business.

The goal is for it to stop being a programme. When it's embedded in how the organisation works, it no longer needs a banner.

Leaders look in the mirror first. Educating yourself and understanding your own gaps comes before trying to change anyone else.

Notice who doesn't have the network. Sponsorship and visibility are how talent gets discovered, and the systems were never built to do that evenly, so it has to be deliberate.

Taking responsibility is different from being held accountable. One is chosen and one is imposed, and people choose it when they feel part of something.

Check in on the person, not the task. In a war zone or on a Tuesday, the question that matters is how are you, not where are we on the deliverable.

Distance makes the small things bigger. A postcard, a chocolate bar or a call that isn't about work does more for connection than another meeting.

In extreme situations people put themselves on the line for each other, and not because of the rules. They do it because they belong, and what works there works in business too.

Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction: diversity gets measured, belonging gets felt
00:28 – Wema Hoover: what are the real barriers to equitable and inclusive cultures?
01:10 – Why a statement in the moment doesn't sustain change
01:30 – The diagnostic: hiring data, leadership teams, and measuring impact
02:30 – Setting expectations with leaders, and what happens when they're not met
03:10 – Embedding it so it stops being a programme
03:30 – What role do leaders play?
04:10 – Looking in the mirror first
04:50 – Creating the space for dialogue
05:30 – Seeing the people without the networks or the sponsorship
06:09 – Peter Docker: belonging as a fundamental human need
07:32 – Taking responsibility vs being held accountable
07:50 – The street, the neighbours, and looking out for each other's kids
08:44 – Iraq, 2003: checking in on the person rather than the task
09:38 – The small things that travel: a postcard, a chocolate bar, a phone call
10:26 – Why hybrid makes human connection matter more, not less
12:32 – People who put themselves on the line, and why they do it
13:05 – Wrap-up
Hear the full conversations
EP072 – Wema Hoover: https://www.inspiringchange.ie/podcast/episode/1fb175bb/80-unlocking-the-power-of-diversity-building-a-culture-of-inclusion-and-equity-wema-hoover
EP077 – Peter Docker: https://www.inspiringchange.ie/podcast/episode/fa7c2f53/87-lead-from-behind-how-to-cultivate-healthy-cultures-and-empower-teams-peter-docker
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belonging, diversity equity and inclusion, DEI, inclusion, workplace culture, leadership, accountability, sponsorship, psychological safety, hybrid working, human connection, teams, employee engagement, internal communications, military leadership, Wema Hoover, Peter Docker, Scott McInnes, Building Better Cultures, Inspiring Change, best bits, podcast compilation

Bounce (Best Bits)
Resilience gets thrown around a lot at work these days, but it's more than a buzzword.
In this best-bits episode of Building Better Cultures, taken from Episodes 39 and 84, we hear an incredible story of resilience from Ryan Campbell, and the psychology that explains it from psychologist Niamh Fitzpatrick.
Ryan Campbell was a kid who wanted to fly before he could really explain why, and who went solo on his fifteenth birthday. A few years later he was in a heavily modified light aircraft, alone, crossing oceans on a round-the-world flight. Then, aged 21, on an ordinary day at work in an ordinary aircraft, the engine failed at low level and he went into the trees. He woke up in hospital rebuilt with titanium and was told he had a complete spinal cord injury. In a split second, as he puts it, the very thing that made him him was gone.
What happens next is the part worth staying for. Stuck halfway through learning to roll over on a rehab mat, twisted up and looking out through a gap under his own elbow, he sees Ben: a quadriplegic who had slipped while mopping a floor, with no feeling below the chest and barely any hand movement. Ryan had been feeling sorry for himself. He realised he was lucky to be a paraplegic. That was the first lesson, and it became the first item on a checklist he built for adversity, borrowed from the way pilots handle an emergency: gratitude, confidence, resilience.
Niamh Fitzpatrick brings the psychology. She is practical about what leaders can actually do, starting with the uncomfortable truth that you cannot read a room over video, so you have to know people's baseline well enough to notice when it shifts. She is also firm about something most of us get wrong: measuring your own hardship against someone who has it worse doesn't make you feel better, it just makes your feelings inadmissible. And she closes on Viktor Frankl.
The common thread? Resilience isn't a personality you either have or you don't. Both guests describe it as something you build, deliberately, usually while you're in the middle of the thing.
Key Takeaways
Adversity deserves a checklist. Pilots don't improvise in an emergency, they work a drill: aviate, navigate, communicate. Ryan built the same thing for setbacks so he wasn't deciding how to cope while coping.

Start with gratitude, because it changes the size of the problem. Finding something to be thankful for, however small, shrinks the challenge and gives you perspective before you begin.

Perspective usually arrives through other people. Ben didn't say anything profound to Ryan. He was simply there, and that was enough to reframe everything.

Confidence doesn't require the whole plan. You need to believe you can take the next step, not that you can see the entire route. That is a much smaller thing to ask of yourself.

Expect obstacles and you'll adapt faster. Resilience, in Ryan's version, is anticipating the need to change course rather than being surprised by it.

Leaders can't read a room over video, so learn the baseline. Know how someone usually sounds, looks and turns up, and you'll notice the change that matters.

You don't need to be a therapist to notice. Use your senses, trust what you're seeing, and know enough about people's lives to put it in context.

Don't hold your feelings to someone else's account. Someone always has it objectively worse. That doesn't make what you're carrying any lighter, and comparison mostly just adds guilt.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour. Feeling anxious or low when something difficult has happened isn't a malfunction, it's a normal response to something that isn't okay.

Allowing the feelings is what lets you move. Naming what you feel is what gets you to the point of asking what needs to change, internally or externally.

Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction: resilience is more than a buzzword
00:25 – Ryan Campbell: a kid obsessed with aviation, and flying solo at fifteen
01:45 – The modified aircraft, and the round-the-world flight
02:25 – One ordinary day at work, aged 21
03:26 – Hospital, titanium, and the news of a spinal cord injury
04:05 – The rehab gym, and meeting Ben
05:51 – Why he decided he was lucky, and what Ben taught him about gratitude
06:33 – Building the checklist: step one, gratitude
07:17 – Step two, confidence, and only needing to see the next step
08:39 – Step three, resilience, and anticipating the need to adapt
09:02 – Niamh Fitzpatrick: what leaders should be watching for
09:52 – Learning someone's baseline, even over video
10:37 – Why comparing your hardship to someone else's doesn't help
12:18 – One piece of advice: an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour
13:22 – Wrap-up
Hear the full conversations
EP Ryan Campbell: 39 | How to successfully navigate change | Podcasts
EP Niamh Fitzpatrick: 99 | The Pandemic Pushed Mental Health Out of the Workplace Shadows | Niamh Fitzpatrick | Podcasts
Resources & Links
Download your free copy of Bridging the Connection Gap Report: Bridging The Connection Gap | Inspiring Change
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resilience, adversity, mental health at work, wellbeing, psychology, gratitude, mindset, leadership, psychological safety, emotional awareness, aviation, spinal cord injury, recovery, perspective, Viktor Frankl, Ryan Campbell, Niamh Fitzpatrick, Scott McInnes, Building Better Cultures, Inspiring Change, best bits, podcast compilation

How We Work Now (Best Bits)
Office, home, hybrid. Are we any clearer on how it actually works?
In this best-bits episode of Building Better Cultures, Scott McInnes goes back to Episodes 71 and 37 with Chris Dyer and Jane Sparrow to hear how organisational culture is evolving as we work out how we'll probably be working for the next century. And that comes down to finding a happy balance between what employers need and what employees want.
Chris Dyer starts with a definition worth stealing: culture is the norms. It is the way we work, the things people pick up in their first week, seen and unseen. From there he walks through the seven pillars he found repeated across the best organisations, from transparency and positive leadership to celebrating what makes people different rather than what makes them the same. He is especially good on mistakes, using the Post-it note, which began life as a failed glue, to make the point that how you respond to a mistake tells people whether it is safe to try anything. Then he gets specific about transparency: sharing goals across teams so people aren't unknowingly competing with each other, and sharing the numbers every month, good news or bad, including how long the company could keep going before layoffs.
Jane Sparrow picks up the space in between. The third culture is neither home nor office but a new place that leaders have to shape deliberately, and she is clear that scrambling for the right tech and tools is the easy part. What takes work is the conversations, because everyone's situation is different. She closes on something worth sitting with: information from the centre, the comms team or HR, only really lands when a leader translates it into what it means for us.
The common thread? This is less about where we work and more about whether culture survives the shift. Neither guest thinks it happens on its own.
Key Takeaways
Culture is the norms, not the posters. It is what people learn in their first week about how things actually get done, including the unwritten bits.

Great cultures are consistent, not identical. The same pillars show up across very different organisations, each expressed in its own way.

Celebrate what makes people unique, not what makes them the same. Organisations put real effort into differentiating themselves to customers, then ask their people to blend in.

How you handle mistakes sets the ceiling on ambition. Punish them and people stop trying things. The Post-it note exists because someone documented a glue that failed.

A mistake and an error are not the same thing. Getting something consistently wrong that training should have covered points at bad process, stress or multitasking. Trying something new and misjudging it is worth talking about, not punishing.

Transparency starts with goals. If teams cannot see each other's objectives, organisations end up creating competition nobody intended.

Share the numbers, including the bad ones. Telling people how long the company can keep going is uncomfortable, and it is also what trust looks like under pressure.

The third culture has to be built on purpose. The space between home and office is new, and leaders shaping it deliberately is the difference between a culture and a vacuum.

Tools are the easy part. Getting the right tech was the scramble. The harder, more valuable work is the conversations around it, because every person's situation is different.

Information needs a translator. A message from HR or the comms team becomes real when a line leader explains what it means for this team, and asks what we start, stop and continue doing.

Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction: less about where we work, more about how culture survives the shift
00:31 – Chris Dyer: culture is the norms, seen and unseen
01:41 – The seven pillars found across great company cultures
02:23 – Transparency, positive leadership, listening and celebrating what makes people unique
02:51 – Recognition that actually works
03:19 – What you do when someone makes a mistake
03:47 – The Post-it note, and the failure it came from
04:30 – Transparency in practice: shared goals, and why teams end up competing by accident
05:33 – Sharing the numbers every month, good news or bad
05:51 – Jane Sparrow: the third culture, and why tools alone won't build it
08:23 – Managing vs leading, and the leader's role when people are under strain
09:56 – Building connection deliberately, and mixing up how you do it
10:56 – Why information only lands when a leader translates it
11:20 – Wrap-up
Hear the full conversations
EP071 – Chris Dyer: Listen here
EP037 – Jane Sparrow: Listen Here
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Empathy Isn't Soft 
When did you last ask someone how they actually were, and really listen?
Everyone says empathy matters. Nobody actually teaches it. In this best-bits episode of Building Better Cultures, Scott McInnes goes back to two conversations about why that needs to change: Rob Volpe (EP092) on empathy as a practical leadership tool, and Niamh Fitzpatrick (EP084) on the emotional aftermath of the pandemic.
Rob Volpe starts by taking apart the definition most of us use. Walking in someone else's shoes is only half the job, and the half everyone skips is taking your own shoes off first, setting down your judgement and your own perspective before you step into theirs. He makes the business case without flinching: empathy is the secret ingredient in communication, decisions, problem solving and trust, and the organisations that have it see more loyalty, more innovation and a stronger sense of belonging. He also names the trap leaders fall into, worrying that being empathetic will cost them respect, and the stereotype of the strong leader that keeps the whole thing stuck. Niamh Fitzpatrick comes at it from psychology. She talks about tribe, why belonging is something you find rather than something you are assigned, and the people she deliberately gravitates towards: the ones who acknowledge how they feel. Then she answers the question of why it took a global pandemic to put mental health into everyday conversation.
The common thread? Empathy is a skill, not a personality trait. It can be learned, and it is doing real work whether or not anyone names it.
Key Takeaways
Take your own shoes off first. Empathy is not just imagining someone else's position, it is setting down your own judgement and perspective long enough to understand theirs properly.

There is more than one kind of empathy. Cognitive empathy is perspective taking, not emotion, and it is the one most of us need at work. Confusing it with feeling other people's feelings is why so many leaders back away from it.

Empathy is a data point, not a distraction. If you are making decisions without understanding how they land on people, you are working with incomplete information.

Self-awareness is the missing ingredient, and calendars have squeezed it out. Back-to-back calls removed the breathing space between stimulus and response, and scrolling in the two minutes you do get is not a reset.

Leaders are stuck between knowing and fearing. Most accept that building empathy is part of their job, most find it hard, and many quietly worry that showing it will cost them respect. The opposite is true.

Empathy is not new, it just stopped being championed. Henry Ford wrote in 1918 that the secret of success lies in seeing the other person's point of view as well as your own. It got squashed out of us since, and it is time to bring it back.

Your tribe is more dispersed than you think. Family, friends, colleagues, even people you have never met online. Knowing what you value is what lets you find them.

Work can absolutely be a tribe, and there is nothing wrong with that. Belonging at work is not a lesser form of belonging.

We lost the things that were quietly holding us up. When life changed overnight, the props that kept people's mental health going, sport, gatherings, a walk somewhere further than two kilometres away, were taken away.

Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction: empathy keeps coming up, but nobody teaches it
00:28 – Rob Volpe: what empathy actually is, and why "walking in their shoes" is only half of it
02:35 – Self-awareness, and the breathing space we lost between meetings
04:12 – Why empathy is the secret ingredient at work
05:02 – The business case: loyalty, innovation, belonging and the empathy gap
06:45 – Cognitive vs emotional empathy, the strong-leader stereotype, and Henry Ford in 1918
07:55 – Niamh Fitzpatrick: tribe, belonging and finding your people
12:32 – Why it took a global pandemic to put mental health on the table
13:20 – Wrap-up
Hear the full conversations
EP092 Rob Volpe: https://inspiringchange.libsyn.com/107-empathy-compassion-in-organisational-culture-rob-volpe
EP084 Niamh Fitzpatrick: https://inspiringchange.libsyn.com/99-the-pandemic-pushed-mental-health-out-of-the-workplace-shadows-niamh-fitzpatrick
Resources & Links
Download our new Research: Bridging the Connection Gap
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Tags
empathy, empathetic leadership, leadership, workplace culture, psychological safety, belonging, tribe, mental health at work, wellbeing, emotional intelligence, cognitive empathy, self-awareness, employee retention, employee engagement, internal communications, pandemic recovery, Rob Volpe, Niamh Fitzpatrick, Scott McInnes, Building Better Cultures, Inspiring Change, best bits, podcast compilation

Data convinces. Stories move people. So why do we still lead with the spreadsheet?
In this best-bits episode of Building Better Cultures, Scott McInnes goes back to two conversations about the power of narrative at work: Richard Newman (EP108) on the neuroscience of emotional engagement, and Alison Esse (EP012) on purpose-led storytelling at scale.
Richard Newman explains what actually happens in the brain when you open with a chart instead of a story. Spreadsheets speak to the logical mind, but the emotional brain decides first and it decides whether anything gets through at all. He walks through the leadership retreat where nobody could remember a single decision three months later, why "cognitive fatigue" is a better diagnosis than screen fatigue, and the line that sums up the whole problem: we treat people like human doings rather than human beings. Alison Esse picks up the organisational side: the corporate narrative, the red thread that has to run from the frontline to the CEO, and why leaders are so often the worst people at telling their own stories.
The common thread? Engage people emotionally first, logically second. Do it the other way round and nothing sticks.
Key Takeaways
The emotional brain gets there first. Every input passes through it before the logical mind sees it, so if you open with data you have already lost the room.
Data convinces, stories move. Being right is not the same as being understood, and it is definitely not the same as being acted on.
If nobody can repeat it, it did not land. People remember stories and quote lines from them. Nobody quotes a slide.
It is cognitive fatigue, not screen fatigue. People will happily binge four hours of Netflix after a long week, so the screen is not the problem, being engaged logically all day with no emotional connection is.
Storytelling is misunderstood, not soft. It is not anecdotes about your weekend, and it does not need the hero's journey. It is sharing information in the way the brain wants to receive it.
Every organisation needs a red thread. A narrative that connects the frontline to the CEO gives people something to believe in and repeat.
Leaders are often worst at telling their own story. The people with the most to share are usually the most reluctant, which is why story champions matter.
Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction: why we still lead with the spreadsheet
00:30 – Richard Newman: how stories help leaders influence, and the retreat nobody remembered
04:00 – Inception, and why a story goes deeper than a slide
05:00 – Cognitive fatigue vs screen fatigue
05:38 – "Human doings, not human beings": engage emotionally first, logically second
05:47 – Alison Esse: corporate narrative, purpose and the red thread from frontline to CEO
10:16 – Wrap-up: what story is your organisation telling right now?
Hear the full conversations
EP108 – Richard Newman: https://inspiringchange.libsyn.com/108-the-science-of-storytelling-how-it-works-richard-newman
EP012 – Alison Esse: https://inspiringchange.libsyn.com/ep12-alison-esse-co-founder-the-storytellers
Resources & Links
Download our new Research: Bridging the Connection Gap
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Tags
storytelling, business storytelling, communication, leadership communication, neuroscience, emotional engagement, cognitive fatigue, corporate narrative, purpose, internal communications, employee engagement, workplace culture, influence, presentation skills, Richard Newman, Alison Esse, Scott McInnes, Building Better Cultures, Inspiring Change, best bits, podcast compilation