Every generation likes to believe it has discovered something new about people.
We invent new management frameworks, new language around wellbeing, new personality assessments and new ways of measuring engagement. We attend leadership courses, introduce employee initiatives and spend enormous amounts of time trying to understand why people perform well in some environments and struggle in others.
And yet some of the most useful ideas about human behaviour are remarkably old.
Nearly a century ago, psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan was developing ideas about mental health that placed enormous importance on relationships, environment and the way people experience one another. Much has developed in psychology and psychiatry since then, of course, but there is something strikingly modern about the broader principle: you cannot fully understand a person without considering the relationships and environment around them.
That idea reaches far beyond mental healthcare.
It has something to say about workplaces, leadership, recruitment and the way we treat people when they’re struggling.
And I think we’re still getting quite a lot of it wrong.
Sometimes People Need You to Hold the Hope
We’ve probably all worked with somebody who has temporarily lost confidence in themselves.
Perhaps they’ve made a mistake.
Maybe they’ve had several difficult months.
They’ve been rejected for promotion, struggled with performance or simply reached a point where everything feels harder than it normally does.
When people get into that state, telling them to “be more positive” isn’t particularly useful.
What can matter enormously is having somebody around them who doesn’t share their pessimism.
A good manager can do this.
They can effectively say:
“I know you’re struggling to see it at the moment, but I’ve seen what you’re capable of. Let’s work through this.”
That isn’t pretending everything is fine.
It’s recognising that sometimes somebody’s temporary view of themselves isn’t the whole picture.
I’ve seen the same thing many times in recruitment.
A candidate comes to you after several rejections and has quietly decided they’re the problem. Sometimes one of the most valuable things you can do isn’t rewrite their CV or give them another interview technique.
It’s remind them of the evidence they’ve temporarily forgotten.
We Put People Into Boxes Far Too Quickly
We’re very good at labels.
High performer.
Underperformer.
Difficult employee.
Future leader.
Not management material.
Job hopper.
Too quiet.
Too commercial.
Not commercial enough.
Labels are efficient. That’s why organisations like them.
But they’re also dangerous.
Once we’ve decided somebody is “difficult”, we begin interpreting their behaviour through that label. A reasonable question becomes resistance. A disagreement becomes attitude. Silence becomes disengagement.
We stop being curious about what’s actually happening.
The same thing happens in recruitment.
Someone who has changed jobs several times becomes a “job hopper” before anybody asks why.
Perhaps two employers closed.
Perhaps one role was completely misrepresented.
Perhaps they relocated.
Perhaps they’ve spent several years trying to find the environment in which they genuinely perform best.
Context changes people.
Labels remove context.
That’s why good leadership and good recruitment both require curiosity.
Culture Happens in Tiny Moments
Ask an organisation about its culture and you’ll often hear about values.
Integrity. Excellence. Collaboration. People first.
Those words might be completely sincere.
But employees don’t experience culture through the values page on the company website.
They experience it at 4.45 on a difficult Tuesday.
They experience it when they make a mistake.
They experience it when they ask for help.
They experience it when a customer complains.
They experience it when somebody disagrees with the manager in a meeting.
They experience it when they’re struggling personally and their performance temporarily dips.
That’s where culture actually lives.
A manager who spends an hour talking about psychological safety and then humiliates somebody for making an error has communicated the real culture in about thirty seconds.
People pay enormous attention to small interactions.
Who gets listened to?
Who gets interrupted?
Who gets thanked?
Who gets blamed?
What happens when something goes wrong?
Culture isn’t what an organisation says when everything is going well.
It’s what people experience when something isn’t.
Removing Problems Isn’t the Same as Creating Wellbeing
This is something workplaces often misunderstand.
If complaints are down, absence is low and everybody is hitting their targets, it’s tempting to conclude that everything is fine.
Perhaps it is.
But functioning and thriving aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Somebody can turn up every morning, perform competently, hit their numbers and quietly feel completely disconnected from their work.
A team can have very little visible conflict because everybody has stopped saying what they actually think.
An employee can appear incredibly dependable because they’ve learned to absorb unreasonable amounts of pressure without complaining.
On a spreadsheet, everything looks healthy.
Human beings are slightly more complicated.
A genuinely good workplace doesn’t simply try to remove problems.
It creates some of the things people actually need: confidence, belonging, development, autonomy, meaningful relationships and a sense that their contribution matters.
That’s a much higher standard than simply keeping complaints down.
Relationships Usually Matter More Than the Latest Technique
Management has an enormous appetite for techniques.
Feedback models.
Performance frameworks.
Motivation systems.
Communication methods.
Personality assessments.
Some are useful.
But none can compensate for a relationship without trust.
A manager can use the perfect feedback framework, but if the employee believes the manager doesn’t respect them, the conversation will probably fail.
A recruiter can have the world’s best candidate process, but if candidates don’t believe they’re being listened to, they’ll go elsewhere.
A business can introduce endless employee wellbeing initiatives, but if people don’t feel comfortable telling their manager they’re struggling, the posters won’t achieve very much.
People need to believe that the person across the table is genuinely interested in understanding them.
Trust first.
Technique second.
It’s remarkably simple.
Which is perhaps why organisations repeatedly try to replace it with something more complicated.
Stop Trying to Fix People Without Looking at Their Environment
This may be the most important lesson.
When somebody starts struggling at work, organisations often look immediately at the individual.
Does this person need resilience training?
Better time management?
Coaching?
Performance management?
A more positive attitude?
Sometimes the answer genuinely is individual development.
But before deciding that, look at the environment.
If five good employees have struggled in the same position, perhaps the employees aren’t the problem.
If a team constantly feels overwhelmed, perhaps everybody doesn’t simultaneously need resilience training.
Maybe the workload is unreasonable.
If people don’t speak honestly in meetings, perhaps they don’t all need communication coaching.
Maybe experience has taught them that speaking honestly isn’t particularly safe.
If staff turnover remains high under one manager, perhaps recruitment isn’t repeatedly finding the wrong people.
Maybe something else deserves examination.
There is an uncomfortable tendency in organisations to individualise systemic problems.
It’s much easier to tell somebody to become more resilient than to redesign an environment that requires unreasonable levels of resilience in the first place.
Recruitment Has a Responsibility Here Too
Recruitment is often described as matching skills to vacancies.
I’ve never thought that description goes far enough.
You’re putting a human being into an environment.
That environment will affect their confidence, performance, relationships and potentially several years of their life.
Someone can be exceptionally talented and still struggle in the wrong organisation.
Likewise, somebody who appeared average in one environment can become outstanding when they find the right manager, culture and opportunity.
That’s why recruitment can’t simply be about whether somebody can do the job.
The better question is:
“Can this person thrive in this environment?”
And employers should be asking the reverse:
“Have we created an environment where good people can thrive?”
Those questions lead to much better hiring decisions.
Perhaps We Don’t Need Another Framework
We’ve accumulated an extraordinary amount of knowledge about people.
We know that relationships matter.
We know people perform better when they feel trusted.
We know recognition matters.
We know chronic pressure eventually affects performance.
We know people need some degree of autonomy.
We know environments influence behaviour.
We know that being listened to matters.
None of this is particularly revolutionary.
The problem is applying it consistently when doing so becomes inconvenient.
It’s easy to talk about wellbeing until the numbers are down.
It’s easy to encourage openness until somebody says something leadership doesn’t particularly want to hear.
It’s easy to say people come first until putting people first costs money, time or short-term performance.
That’s where values become real.
Perhaps the future of work doesn’t require endlessly more complicated theories about human beings.
Perhaps some of the biggest improvements would come from becoming better at the things we’ve understood for generations.
See the person before the label.
Stay curious before judging.
Pay attention to the environment, not only the individual.
Remember that small interactions matter.
Build relationships before reaching for techniques.
And when somebody is struggling, occasionally be willing to believe in them while they’re having difficulty believing in themselves.
None of those ideas is particularly new.
That’s what makes the fact that we’re still struggling with them so interesting.
The question isn’t whether we understand people better than we did a century ago.
Of course we do.
The more useful question is:
How much of what we already understand are we actually prepared to practise?
