Why Good Leaders Go Bad – Steven D’Souza

In this episode of Work’s Not Working… Let’s Fix It!, Siân Harrington sits down with Steven D’Souza – award-winning educator, executive coach and senior partner at Korn Ferry – to explore a question few leaders dare to ask: what if the problem isn’t our systems or strategies… but ourselves?

Because as Steven explains, every leader carries a “shadow” – the unseen habits, fears and defences that quietly shape decisions, relationships and culture. When ignored, these shadows can derail even the smartest leaders. When understood, they can become a source of wisdom, empathy and real change.

Drawing on psychology, biology, culture and meaning, Steven reveals how our past shows up in the present – from childhood messages that still drive our behaviour, to toxic corporate patterns that reward overconfidence and silence feedback.

Together, we unpack:

• Why strength under stress so often becomes a weakness in disguise
• How organisational cultures create their own “blind spots” and ethical drift
• What leaders can do to confront their shadow and build healthier, more human workplaces.

Key Takeaways

• Every leader has a shadow – the part they suppress or deny – and it always shows up at work.
• Most derailment isn’t about incompetence but about unexamined patterns under stress.
• Toxic culture thrives when leaders reward results and ignore behaviour.
• Emotional literacy, self-awareness and courage to receive feedback are core leadership skills.
• The future of leadership isn’t perfection – it’s wholeness: knowing both your shadow and your light.

Whether you’re a CEO, manager or HR leader this episode will change how you think about leadership maturity and what it really means to be whole at work.

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Transcript

Steven D'Souza: 0:00

The term shadows as applied to psychology and the workplace is a term devised by the psychologist Carl Jung, and he used it as a metaphor, almost like an archetype that would describe all the things that are unconscious, that may be feelings, maybe emotions, that are from the past. Yet they're with us now in the present, similar to the way that our shadow is with us wherever we go. So his idea here was that the past is not dead, as William Faulkner, the American essayist said, that's not even past, it's present in how leaders act and how they operate in their lives, not just at work, but in their whole lives now. So to give you a simple example, let's say as a child, you were told, don't be selfish. You must share everything you have. As an adult, we might find ourselves being overly generous. We might find ourselves giving our time when we need to show actually a bit more boundary and a bit more protection. The implications of that is we didn't learn that in the present. We sort of learned that in the past, and yet it went into our unconscious, but it impacts us in the present. So the idea of the shadow is psychologically how do we become aware of what it is that impacts us, not only negatively, but also maybe some gifts that we have that are positive but also hidden in our shadow.

Siân Harrington: 1:21

Hey everyone, welcome to Work's Not Working, a show about forward-thinking people leaders, innovators and academics, and how they think we can fix work to make it more meaningful, healthy, inclusive and sustainable. Brought to you by The People Space.

Siân Harrington: 1:38

Hi, I'm Sian Harrington, and today we're shining a light on the parts of work we usually keep in the dark. Because let's be honest, every leader, every team, every organization has shadows. The unspoken tensions, the blind spots, the patterns we repeat without even realizing. But what if those shadows weren't something to hide, but something to understand? What if by facing them we could unlock more trust, creativity, and meaning at work? That's the question we're exploring with Stephen D'Souza, award-winning educator, executive coach, and best-selling author. Steven's worked with leaders at Goldman Sachs, PwC, and the UN, among others. And his new book, Shadows at Work, argues that our biggest leadership breakthroughs often come from the very things we try to suppress.

Siân Harrington: 2:29

So in this episode, we'll uncover why even the best leaders derail when their strengths are overplayed under stress. How corporate cultures quietly reward shadow behaviour, from bias to burnout, and what it really takes to create organizations that see the whole human, not just the job title.

Siân Harrington: 2:48

But first, a little bit more about my guest. Stephen's career has spanned everything from the priesthood to global consulting, a senior partner at Corn Ferry. He's the author of five acclaimed books, including Not Knowing, winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year, and his new book, Shadows at Work, will challenge you to rethink what leadership maturity truly means. So if you've ever wondered why good people sometimes do bad things at work, and how to build a culture where we can talk about it, then this one's for you. Thank you for joining me today, Steven. We're going to be talking about shadows, our shadows. So let's just jump straight in. And so you say our shadows, the part of ourselves that we suppress, we deny, they show up at work whether we like it or not. So can you explain what you mean by that in layman's terms?

Steven D'Souza: 3:40

Yes, it is a strange term. And let me just outline what do we mean by shadows and why might it be relevant. We'll look at the implications in our conversation, Sian. But generally the term shadows as applied to psychology and the workplace is a term devised by the psychologist Carl Jung, and he used it as a metaphor, almost like an archetype, that would describe all the things that are unconscious, that may be feelings, maybe emotions, that are from the past, yet they're with us now in the present, similar to the way that our shadow is with us wherever we go. So his idea here was that the past is not dead, as William Faulkner, the American essayist said, it's not even past. It's present in how leaders act and how they operate in their lives, not just at work, but in their whole lives now.

Steven D'Souza: 4:31

So to give you a simple example, let's say as a as a child, you were told don't be selfish. You must share everything you have. As an adult, we might find ourselves being overly generous. We might find ourselves giving our time when we need to show actually a bit more boundary and a bit more protection. The implications of that is we didn't learn that in the present. We sort of learned that in the past. And yet it went into our unconscious, but it impacts us in the present. So the idea of the shadow is psychologically, how do we become aware of what it is that impacts us, not only negatively, but also maybe some gifts that we have that are positive but are also hidden in our shadow. So for example, it might be creativity, it might be some of other maybe speaking, maybe communicating well. So often we might be told as a kid, don't be a show-off, you know, and so we might shut down the part of us because we're afraid to stand out, for example.

Steven D'Souza: 5:28

Now that was the most common definition of shadow, which is the psychological definition. But what I've tried to do, Sian, is to extend that definition, to recognize that we're not only psychological beings, that we're biological beings, that there's a physiological shadow as well. So the work of Robert Sapolsky, who's an evolutionary biologist, has looked at how our genetics, our DNA, our cultural history, our hormones affect our behavior. It's not simply what we've gone through psychologically or mentally, very much that our physiology, our embodiment impacts on how we can behave and the kind of actions that we can take place in the workplace, but also in the rest of our lives. So that's an interesting dynamic, and I think it's worth paying more attention to in terms of organizational life and leadership.

Steven D'Souza: 6:21

The third aspect of shadow is I wanted to take it beyond the individual. So if we think of simply as the shadow as being the me that I don't see, there's a sense of a social and cultural shadow, which is the we that we don't see. So this is looking at the topic of culture, which I think you've touched upon in previous articles, Sian, and looking at the impact of toxic cultures. But often we tend to focus, as you rightly said in the past, on you know, on the idea of bad leaders. But that story is insufficient to explain why toxic behavior happens in organizations, why people derail, and we need to be able to take a social and a cultural lens. So that's a third aspect of the shadow.

Steven D'Souza: 7:07

And the last one is what I call the spiritual lens, which is about meaning and purpose. Often the shadow isn't something that's just about something that's say that we're trying to understand psychologically to get ahead at work, but it's related to how do we find meaning in the workplace. And often it comes in the period of midlife when we start feeling a sense of restlessness or regret. Perhaps we've made decisions earlier on in our career for, let's say, for security or let's say for prestige. And yet the time comes to think about are we really being fulfilled now? And what is it that we could have had, let's say, in a shadow life or shadow career that we're not expressing now. So what I've tried to do is to look at the shadow or the topic of the shadow through these four lenses, and not to say that they're separate, they're very much interrelated, and their metaphor is more like a kaleidoscope where they come together and we need to look at them as a whole rather than just focusing on psychology or just focusing on the social aspect.

Siân Harrington: 8:10

I'm sure there's loads of different ways we could, angles we could go off on, in this podcast. But for time, we're going to have to concentrate, I think, on one particular area. So I am interested in how that shows up at work, particularly with leaders or as you talked about with colleagues. Very interesting to think about that meaning bit as well, actually, because I hadn't thought of that in light of the shadows. So give me an example of how a shadow could show up at work in a leader, so that we can understand what what we're talking about in that concept.

Steven D'Souza: 8:43

Yeah, so shadows can be, as what I want to know, is how do the shadows occur in the workplace? So there are many ways, Sian. One of the principal ways is that often a shadow can occur unconsciously as a strength overplayed. And this is the most common definition. So normally shadows occur under pressure and under stress. So when we're at our best selves and things are going well, it's unlikely that a shadow behavior might emerge. But when we're under stress, when we're under pressure, we don't actually act very rationally or very consciously, maybe more often than not, that we're irrational, according to some. But we tend to be much more likely to display our shadow when we're under pressure.

Steven D'Souza: 9:25

So for example, under stress, my sense of decisiveness might become impulsivity, or my sense of cautiousness might become like a paralytic inaction that can have harmful consequences. So it tends to be exasperated under stress. So that's one area in the workplace that the shadows definitely emerge.

Steven D'Souza: 9:48

The second is this idea of shadows emerging as we climb an organization and as we gain more power in an organization. So there's a lot of research that shows that as we gain more seniority, we can become more entitled. So we sense that you know the rules don't apply to us, and we think of ourselves as somehow immune to the boundaries or procedures that others are a part of, but also that we can become overconfident and we can take more risk and not really have an accurate self-perception. So the gap between how I see myself and how others see us, and the reality of that can be skewed.

Steven D'Souza: 10:28

The third reason is, and related to that thing, is the idea that as we become or senior, we receive less feedback and people don't give us an accurate view of our own behavior because of obviously the construction of fear, and that has a huge impact in terms of the shadow and that we're not even aware because or less aware because we're not getting that feedback mechanism from others, which is a which is a critical aspect t here.

Steven D'Souza: 10:57

And lastly, just the point you made, we spoke about in defining the shadow around culture, and so we need to go beyond individuals. So, how does let's say hyper competition between teams foster shadow behavior? How do incentives like bonuses, for example, where credit can't be distributed evenly, how does that encourage behavior that might be more risk-taking, that might be more selfish, that might be less looking at the good of the organization and individuals as a whole? So those are the some of the areas in which shadows manifest in in terms of the workplace.

Siân Harrington: 11:34

Could you give me a story of maybe some organization or a person that you've worked with where their shadows had an impact on the business? Obviously, names don't need to be mentioned if incorrect. But what did that look like in practice?

Steven D'Souza: 11:52

Yeah, it's an interesting one. I was asked to by a CEO of a large company, asked to coach and managing director in the city. And this was a high performer. He was, you know, earning millions for the organization, yet at the same time he had severe anger outbursts where he would confront individuals, particularly those who are junior to him in the team, and that the turnover was extremely high. So even though he was a star performer, nobody wanted to work with him. And he wasn't able to build a team that was sustainable, that would get results for the organization as a whole, and it was damaging their kind of culture within the organization.

Steven D'Souza: 12:35

So one thing I did, I said about coaching him, Sian, and looking at, you know, what is his story? So not focusing only on the present, but thinking about his relationship to anger. Anger is often put into the shadow for many of us. We have like a what I call a foreign relationship to anger. You know, either we are fused and anger is identity, or anger, well, I'm not an angry person, it's almost like treated like a foreign land. So for this particular person, anger was very much part of their identity. And I did a lifeline where I asked them to trace, you know, what was their story. And as they were describing their early life to me, it was describing how in their worst organization that they worked for was nothing compared to how anger was at home. And I said, huh? He said, yes. You know, he had parents that would shout and scream at each other, and that was the the way that they communicated and the way they got things done at home.

Steven D'Souza: 13:33

Now for this individual, obviously it's not about saying that was permissive in in the workplace where he was now, but somehow he had taken that behavior and almost imprinted on how he behaved with his colleagues, and that came out in his language, that came out in his demeanour, that came out in his inability to listen and just really lose it, lose himself. And he had tried, you know, the anger management techniques and he had tried pausing and breathing, yet this wasn't having any impact on him because he wasn't seeing how his past was influencing the present and working out, identifying what were those things and what were the needs that were not getting met as a child, and how could he act in a different way in the present? So we did a lot of more deeper leadership work, and obviously there's a fine line here between coaching and therapy, and it's not crossing into the line of therapy, but it's asking, you know, how is it that what were you trying to achieve and that you couldn't as a child? How does the anger serve you? And is there a way that you can get the same outcome but without the same behavior?

Steven D'Souza: 14:41

So it was a lot of deeper work, but the point I'm making is that working with the shadow was much more effective than let's say working on a more transactional basis that didn't solve the underlying issue in this particular person's case. So often, you know, we tend to think about ourselves as rational adults walking about the workplace. But for many of us, there's like an inner child that does get wounded, that does feel jealous, that does react, that does feel, you know, there's a whole range of it, gamut of emotions. But, you know, my argument is we need to start to pay attention to them because we're not walking as some as, let's say, neutral, neutral beings. We're walking as whole human beings. And by being cognizant, we're less likely to act out our shadow behaviours and shadow patterns. So that's a specific example of an executive that I worked with.

Siân Harrington: 15:36

For an organization that's a dilemma, isn't it? Because you've got somebody that is your top performer, you know, financially you don't want to get rid of them. But as you said, there's you know other issues that come from that. And actually some leaders, some CEOs would have had blind spot themselves there and thought, well, he's bringing the money in, you know, at the end of the day, we can lose the junior people and keep keep this person. Whereas, in that particular case, obviously they identified that there was another issue that needed solving. I think that's a dilemma lots of businesses face. We've certainly all worked with people like that, I think.

Steven D'Souza: 16:15

Yes. You're absolutely right, Sian. And this is probably related to the toxic culture part, you know, when leaders behave badly and yet there's no visible accountability, and then we have the problems which people attrition, bad behaviours encouraged, and it becomes that becomes part of the norm. So you're absolutely right. I think in in terms of this CEO could see the impact not just on performance for one individual, but could see the wider impact in what's this message sending out to the organization as a whole, and had the courage to hold that leader accountable. And actually, when that leader didn't change their behavior, they were exited from the organization and I helped plan that and work with them through that process. So it's holding the feet to the fire and having the courage as a leader to say, you know, this is not acceptable, and this is what we expect. And not many organizations do that, particularly if we have high performers that are bringing in, you know, bringing in the commercial to keep the company going.

Siân Harrington: 17:17

So we all have shadows, so we're bringing them to work, as you said, every day, but we're not cognizant of them, a lot of people. How does that play out between colleagues if we think less about the sort of the leader to more junior stuff? I'm seeing this is this is going to be causing conflict that we perhaps don't recognize is the reason for that conflict. How does that play out?

Steven D'Souza: 17:42

Yes, I think it plays out in the interpersonal dynamics where more is unsaid than is said. So, you know, there's an example I give in the book of a senior pharma executive called Fatima. And she had earned her position and you know, been really at the top of of her game, but she had somebody junior working with her called Ralph, who had a PhD. And Fatima, I think what the dynamic was that Ralph felt that Fatima wasn't giving him assignments that would really allow him to shine. And Fatima felt Ralph was almost like going behind her back and emailing her boss directly with ideas. So on the surface it appears, you know, what's it maybe what's going on. But underneath that dynamo was a lot of fear, was a lot of unconscious and shadow type of behavior that wasn't really talked about.

Steven D'Souza: 18:36

For example, and we talked about Ralph having the doctorate, and he was also a middle child. And when he shared with me, you know, often he felt he was ignored to get any attention, you know, either the youngest or the oldest. And he felt Fatima was ignoring him. Now Fatima felt Ralph was getting the prestige because of the PhD, which she actually lacked, but she had fought hard to get her senior position. So what was happening was it was almost like passive aggression rather than open communication and being able to understand, you know, what was driving the other person. And it's not necessarily about, you know, tell me your childhood history, but it's about what's important to you here, understanding what are the unsaid needs that are causing the conflict.

Steven D'Souza: 19:23

So much interpersonal conflict, I think, is because of what's happening beneath the surface rather than what appears to be happening above the surface. So managers being cognizant of that, getting to know their people better, I think will help ease that and making it safe to explore why is this important to that person, what could be really happening here. But also we talked about self-awareness, really being aware of their own triggers, their own patterns about why they are responding in a particular way that allows them to have more choice.

Steven D'Souza: 19:57

I'll give a personal example. I remember like one of my managers saying to somebody, a new colleague, I'm really glad you're here. And I felt insight. I felt, why is he saying that to my colleague and not to me? And I felt a little tinge of jealousy and like pain. And I noticed that I sort of withdrew a bit and I almost treated my new colleague like a rival. And I was thinking, he's not a rival, what is that? And I am the eldest child. I have a brother one year younger, and I almost treated him like a rival. So, you know, what was playing out was something very deeply in me, but playing out in how I treated my colleague in the present, if I was not aware of that dynamic. So part of my own journey is how do I recognise when am I being triggered, when am I feeling something that is disproportionate to the situation at hand, and becoming curious about that, I'm bringing some sense of self-awareness that I can have a choice to act or to act or lead in a different way. And often the most powerful emotions like anger, jealousy, there's no space to talk about them in the workplace. We don't, you know, they're like off their the workplace. We just talk about the task at hand, but not about the process or the people process behind that. So developing that cognizance, developing the literacy around emotions, I think is very much missing in the workplace. And uh that is a task of leadership, in my in my opinion.

Siân Harrington: 21:33

So shadows aren't necessarily bad in their own right, but if we need to be able to recognize that that within ourselves and deal with it appropriately, such as we you know, we've all got everyone will have anger at some stage, everyone will have jealousy.

Steven D'Souza: 21:50

Yes, I think it's absolutely a part of being human. Like I start the book with a quote by Sir Michael Tippett, who was a British composer, and he wrote, he died at the age of 93, and he wrote a libretto called A Child of Our Time, and he wrote this in the time of the Second World War, which was a time of high conflict in in society, polarization, volatility, similar to the time that we're living now. Now, Sir Michael was a conscious objector, he was actually interned at Wormwood Scrubs Prison in the UK, and he said political activism is necessary, but it's not sufficient. We need to work on what causes us to project, let's say, anger or distrust or these kind of behaviors out into the workplace. And a line from his libretto was this I would know my shadow and my light, so shall I be whole. And he talked about the only way that we can sort of create better workplaces, better societies, is by leaders being able to know their shadow as much as their light. And I think that's the critical message here, Sian. How do we encourage leaders to have the self-awareness of both and recognizing our complexity, that we're neither all good or all bad, yet we're this complex and that what's makes us human.

Siân Harrington: 23:12

So one way we can see this is, if you don't recognize that, is that you've got a blind spot, like a leadership blind spot. And if you think of where we are with some of our leaders in the world, both political and corporate, we seem to have moved back to the rather how do I say what people might describe as a strong leader? I certainly wouldn't, but a less maybe emotionally literate leader in some companies. And we've also seen a lot of big, big failures recently. We've had Boeing, Theranos, a whole range. Do you think those scandals are actually driven by the leadership blind spots to their shadow behaviours? Are they really corporate crisis shadow stories I guess I'm asking?

Steven D'Souza: 23:56

Yeah, it's an interesting one. You know, I I like that you take a systemic perspective, Sian, in The People Space. You don't just focus on this idea of the bad leader. And I think that's absolutely right. I don't think anybody considers themselves bad, even if we other people judge them to be so. And they don't intend to go out and do something destructive on the whole. Yet there is this idea of the power paradox where those who are least suited to power seek it, and those who are most suited tend not to. And those that do achieve it and are least suited, they tend to, once they achieve power, tend to quickly derail. So that's something that we need to be cognizant and be aware of. You know, how do we select people for positions of power? And there's a lot of dynamics around this where we tend to judge on overconfidence, the point that we make, rather than on competence.

Steven D'Souza: 24:47

And there's certainly a gender area to this dimension, and you know, the work of Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, why do so many incompetent men become leaders, is a clear testimony to that and the lack of really good testing because we tend to fall for the charismatic leader, as you said, rather than the one who's competent and good at what they do. So I think HR was responsible, has to take a lot of responsibility for how do we promote, how do we make good assessment and good judgments. So that's certainly an area.

Steven D'Souza: 25:25

And I do think that we need to look at organizations. I know that you spent time thinking, you know, what is it in organizations that creates poor and toxic environments, such as the fear, the inability to speak up. When people do speak up, then often they're scapegoated, and we can see this in the example of whistleblowers and how they're treated, whether that's at Boeing, the example that you gave, or at Theranos. Often whistleblowers are ejected from the organization, almost because there's a more of a psychodynamic view in the words of Simon Weston. He almost says that they're almost showing the good self that, you know, if we if we acknowledge that, then that means that we're bad and we don't want to feel shame, we don't want to feel guilt. So, you know, the anger and frustration gets projected onto the whistleblowers. So that's for certainly an area.

Steven D'Souza: 26:20

And then we talked about when people do behaviors that are not in line with the culture or the values that they're still rewarded, particularly those who have achieved positions of power. And we see that in cases like yes, we can talk about Harvey Weinstein, for example, as somebody who both felt entitled and abused power, but it was also the culture that supported it and enabled this individual to get away with what he did for many years. So I tend to not to think only about the individual or the company, but to look at that dynamic between the two and how they are interrelated.

Steven D'Souza: 26:58

And it is disturbing times. You talked about this dark period. I had commentators called this the dark mode shift. I think it's Matt Klein and Edmond Lau. And what they were trying to describe there is like the dark mode on a phone. It can be light or dark, and it's almost like we seem to have gone into a period where we might be regressing into more polarity, or we might be more highly conflictual, or we might be repealing laws that we felt were progressive, let's say on climate, etc.

Steven D'Souza: 27:28

But the invitation I'd like to offer is that the dark is also a period where things get really revealed and transformation and change can happen. So for example, the seed in the earth, the baby in the womb, we don't see what's happening, but obviously changes are taking place and there are important changes for transformation. But the important thing is we need to be able to lead from that place and not to deny that space. So what I encourage you to do is how do we face our shadow and confront it based on as a place of psychological maturity, actually. And that allows us to do things differently rather than to pretend that our shadows don't exist, that toxicity doesn't exist in our culture, and that everything will will be fine. So it's that sense of working with our shadows, which I think is critical for leaders, for HR, for organizations as a whole.

Siân Harrington: 28:21

So i fi I'm an employee, we talked, we touched on whistleblowing earlier, but if I'm an employee and I can actually see my manager, my boss, my leader's blind spots, and I want to try and tackle it, but it's very difficult because I feel that, maybe I'm being you know treated differently or whatever because of something that's there that's unspoken, as we said. What can I do to bring that up without overstepping the mark?

Steven D'Souza: 28:47

It's a tough one for an individual to do. You know, there was an article I saw that was can narcissists be coached? You know, for example, let's say in somebody with strong personalities, and let's say CEOs or political leaders, are they coachable? And many said no, narcissists will never listen to opinion. But one person wrote an article, yes, they do listen, but it may not listen to your opinion, but they would listen to another opinion, another person's opinion. So, you know, the first thing is if you're not able to communicate and you don't feel it's safe enough, you know, who is the nearest respected peer that that person would listen to and perhaps to explore to go and speak with that individual if it's safe. So often when it isn't possible to give direct feedback because of power dynamics, etc, and they are unwilling or unable to hear feedback from you, it might be do you know another person that they do listen to? And are you able to speak with them? So the respected peer, I think, is an important one.

Steven D'Souza: 29:47

Second is not to go alone. Often scapegoats happen because an individual who can easily be targeted. So having allies, I think, is a huge way to give feedback when it's unsafe. to do so as an individual. So you can look at how you can do this as a group or present this more as a team's opinion rather than an individual's opinion, which is, you know, much harder to ignore. But often, Sian, sometimes you can't change, you know, and if the manager's unable to take feedback, that's why most people do leave organizations because of their manager rather than because of the job. And that's an unfortunate case where they're not open to feedback or there's it's too dangerous to say exactly how someone feels. Often during that period then the important ally is somebody that you can speak to that can take away some of their emotional burden that you're carrying becomes becomes vital. So those are the initial thoughts.

Steven D'Souza: 30:45

Obviously in the perfect world one would have a conversation with the manager in the right space, carving the right time and be able to talk specifically about the behavior, trying to create more safety so that manager can hear the feedback. But it's challenging and I cannot pretend that all managers are able and or willing to hear that feedback. And that becomes, you know, the biggest factor whether we have shadow behaviors in cultures is the 'speak up' culture. You know, it's the work of psychological safety, the work of Megan Reitz and speak up. Being able to create cultures where people can speak and managers and leaders make it safe for their people to share. And that would be the biggest I think intervention that leaders can make in really helping encourage that behaviour, encourage people to voice, you know, what am I not seeing here, for example, if they add that encouraging alternative opinions to their own rather than just showing that they generally listen rather than uh dismissing or attacking or defending.

Siân Harrington: 31:53

So you've actually sort of touched on what I was going to ask next, which was just bring this to a practical life for an HR leader. So obviously they can start working to create speak up cultures, but how else can you work with this concept around shadows in a way that doesn't feel like it's too much psychological theory but is actionable things that you can do.

Steven D'Souza: 32:16

Yeah I think it must start with equipping the leaders to face their shadow. You know we do a lot of technical training let's say in communication skills or managing projects but we don't help our leaders manage things like projection, defenses, derailers, and which are critical you know, according to Gartner 50 to 70% of executives derail within the first 18 months. So that's probably because you know their strength, why they're recruited into the organization, they may be successful as an individual but they're not coming with their team and the context that made them successful. But it could also be because, you know, they're not in the environment where they they might be overplaying to their strengths and not being effective. And we tend to focus on the big cases you know we've seen the Astronomer CEO Cold play concert, the CEO of BP, the list litany goes on. But how many organizations beyond risk and compliance actually help leaders to look at issues affecting and how they might play out around power, how they might play out around projection or being defensive for example the listing point you mentioned and bringing curiosity rather than defensiveness to their employees.

Steven D'Souza: 33:30

So I think the first thing HR leaders can do is to make sure that they're treating the leader shadow not as something that's psychological but something that has a huge impact on the organization in terms of profit, in terms of productivity and in terms of cost. You can you gave the example of Boeing you know it's not just a profit cost where you know billions was knocked off the sharehold, the senior management team changed but there was a cost to human lives and 46 people died as a result of those two plane crashes huge significant cost to the firm and to their customers. S econd case looking at the Theranos case, lack of safety to speak up scapegoating and blame and hub risks and overconfidence led to thousands of inaccurate medical tests where people were misdiagnosed, some of them had illnesses such as cancer for example so huge implications and obviously that company and the CEOs or the leaders of that company were jailed. So there are huge consequences to not paying attention to shadow both personally in terms of my derailment as a leader but also organizationally to the success of our company and to our consumers and their wellbeing so I would say we need to frame it in that way.

Steven D'Souza: 34:53

The second thing I would say is spend more time related to that doing proper selection, proper promotion processes where you are avoiding that bias that puts the wrong people in in terms of positions of authority or that you are equipping those who are promoted to management or senior leaders with the right emotional skills and the right people skills that we talked about, which will become more vital as more work becomes outsourced to AI and becomes more transactional. So developing those human capacities becomes even more important now and their ability to make good judgments and awareness about the light and the shadow and equally the shadow of tech, we didn't talk much about it, but you've written a lot about it in The People Space around bias and all the other aspects of technology that we need to pay equally enough attention to in organizations. That keeping the critical scrutiny rather than the over idealism is important. And I always think it's both and it's not, you know, it's not throwing away the benefits and the vision. It's super important to be energized, to be cognizant of changes that are happening and to make space and to hold our doubt as you know Charles Handy had a lovely term, he called it – he they was looking at a promotion at a London business school. There was a guy who was perfect. He felt something wasn't quite right. And he didn't have any facts to support but he said I just knew and he called it 'decent doubt' and he said he actually he made a decision not to hire and it turned out that this person was not the right not because of something they knew at the time but holding a sense of decent doubt. I think becomes more critical as as as we progress.

Steven D'Souza: 36:39

And then the last point is around, you know, treating it systemically not focusing on individuals or individual bad leaders only because we don't learn the lessons if we just you know a leader is removed yet the culture persists and their behaviors persist. So we need to be able to look at our systems, our processes, our incentives and what is supporting the kind of culture that is creating the shadow behavior and the simple example was you know I talk about physiology are people exhausted, you know, are they working double shifts? Are they working hours? Are they given targets that encourage a lack of spaciousness. Lack of rest will always increase shadow behavior. So are we giving people meaning, are they finding that is they're just becoming the cogs and doing one part of the process or are we really spending enough time thinking about how can we make this a more meaningful task for them. So these are when I talk about the four elements, the four lenses, I think leaders need to pay attention to all four, not just one.

Siân Harrington: 37:53

Great. And before we wrap up, tell me how you got interested in this area and you alluded earlier to an example in yourself, but what's what's another shadow you've had to work on? How has it shaped you looking into shadows as a as a concept of leadership and culture?

Steven D'Souza: 38:10

Yes I actually my first Sian was actually trained as a priest and as a Catholic priest and I didn't end up following that. But I would say growing up, particularly as a child, is like a PhD in shame and guilt but also in compassion and forgiveness. But the opportunity there was to really look at what does it mean to be human, not just through one angle and what is it that drives our behavior. I was fortunate to be sponsored by the prison service as a student. So I worked with young offenders who were 14, 15 years old, one of them most dangerous at the time with lots of bullying and suicide young offenders institutions in in the UK. Yet these boys who had committed very serious crimes like murder, robbery and rape, they were not able to shave. Most of them were illiterate. Most of them had children even at that age. Many of them had absent fathers and didn't have parents that were actually available and present for them. Now that's not to excuse the behavior because it's totally wrong but it's understanding the complexity in why people and the context and the frame as it were of why people do what they do. And taking that into the world of work.

Steven D'Souza: 39:22

I've worked in NGOs and I've worked in pariah companies across many industries, what I find interesting is why somehow the NGO tends to have the more toxic culture and the pariah culture company might have the most engaged and collegiate culture. So it's an interesting dynamic so I became curious about this topic from that angle Sian and to answer the question, you know, what does it really take to have healthy organizations? What does it really take to have leaders that feel fulfilled and can flourish? And I circle back to the to the Michael Tippett line. I think it takes leaders who can be cognizant of their shadow they would know their shadow and their light and only then I think that we can have really healthy organizations.

Siân Harrington: 40:06

That was Steven D'Souza reminding us that leadership isn't about perfection it's about wholeness. What really stayed with me is this: 'I would know my shadow and my light, so shall I be whole' because until we understand what drives our reactions the jealousy, the fear, the need to be right, then we'll keep repeating the same patterns in new roles, new teams, new cultures.

Siân Harrington: 40:31

Steven's work is an invitation to stop outsourcing care to technology and start bringing more humanity back into how we lead. So if you're in HR or leadership, it's time to make space for those deeper conversations about emotion, ethics and what really drives behaviour at work. You can find out more about Steven's thinking in his book Shadows at Work, harness your dark side and unlock your leadership potential.

Siân Harrington: 40:57

Thanks for listening to Work's Not Working... Let's fix it. I'm Sian Harrington and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Follow me on LinkedIn at Siean Harrington ThePeopleSpace for more bold ideas and practical tools on the future of work head to wwwthepe com This episode was produced by Nigel Pritchard. Until next time stay bold stay curious and let's redesign work for everyone. Goodbye