Kicking the Door Down with Louise Humpington: Mycelium, Megalomania and Mayhem

The Mycelium Network of Leadership: Building Connected, Resilient Organisations

Have you ever wondered how the natural world can guide us toward better workplace connectivity and resilience? In this podcast, we explore the fascinating analogy of the mycelium network—nature's incredible underground communication web—and how it offers powerful lessons for governance, leadership, and organisational culture. If you've ever questioned traditional hierarchical structures or struggled with communication gaps within teams, this insight might just transform your perspective. Drawing from this powerful and insightful interview with Louise Humpington, a specialist in organisational ecosystems inspired by fungi communication networks, we'll delve into how embracing a networked approach can improve psychological safety, inclusivity, and risk management in workplaces. By understanding and applying these natural principles, you can foster a more adaptive, resilient, and human-centered organisation.

Unlocking the Power of the Underground: What is the Mycelium Network?

The concept of the mycelium network originates from the world of fungi and forests. Louise Humpington explains that mycelium is the underground web connecting fungi, trees, insects, and plants—a sophisticated 450-million-year-old system that enables communication, resource sharing, and mutual support. 

Imagine this network in your workplace: Each employee or team represents a node within the ecosystem, interconnected through a web of relationships, communication channels, and shared knowledge. When one part of the system encounters stress or harm, the others come together to rebuild and support. This interconnectedness ensures not only survival but also adaptability and growth.The Key Lessons from Nature's Communication Web

• Every node (person or team) is connected

• Damage to one node triggers support from others

• Knowledge sharing is continuous and reciprocal

• Gaps or risks in communication can threaten the entire ecosystem

Louise emphasises that this natural network is a model for how organisations should operate: fostering interconnected relationships, transparent communication, and collective resilience.

Cultivating Psychological Safety and Inclusion Through the Network

One of the most significant benefits of a mycelium-inspired approach is creating psychological safety—a workplace environment where individuals feel safe to speak up, admit mistakes, and share concerns without fear of criticism. Louise highlights how psychological safety is crucial for innovation, risk mitigation, and inclusion.Without the ability to voice concerns—whether about AI bias, safety issues, or personal challenges—organizations risk harm, legal liabilities, and loss of talent. Embedding inclusion as a normative aspect of organizational culture ensures that differences are valued, supported, and protected, rather than tolerated or ignored.Practical Steps to Build This Ecosystem

• Embed psychological safety into core policies and practices

• Promote open communication and active listening

• Encourage diversity of perspectives and experiences

• Create safe spaces for feedback and dissent

Louise advocates for leadership that acts as a gardener—nurturing connections and removing barriers that hinder growth and understanding.

The Risks and Rewards of a Networked Governance Approach

Traditional governance models are often linear—causal, hierarchical, and sequential. Louise challenges this by proposing a dynamic, networked approach that maps relationships and risks across all nodes, including silos and cross-functional interactions.In her view, these interconnected systems reveal risks that linear models overlook, such as the gaps between teams or underrepresented voices. When one part of the network comes under stress, the entire system's resilience depends on how well the nodes support each other.Key Strategies for Networked Governance

• Map relationships and knowledge flows within your organization

• Recognize and address gaps or silos that may cause vulnerabilities

• Foster cross-team collaboration and shared accountability

• Use data and feedback to identify early signs of stress or harm

This approach allows organisations to be proactive rather than reactive—avoiding the 'glitches' that can escalate into bigger failures, much like adding damaging DNA into a biological system.

Challenging Old Models: From Storming to Rewilding Teams

Louise and I critique the traditional "Storming, Norming, Forming" model of team development, arguing that it’s outdated in the context of diverse, neurodiverse, and AI-enabled workplaces. Instead, she advocates for a ‘rewilded’ view—embracing complexity, difference, and continuous learning.Modern teams are ecosystems with fluid relationships, where inclusion of varied genders, backgrounds, and neurodiversity enriches performance. Leaders must shift from control-based models to facilitative, trust-based systems that allow for experimentation, failure, and growth.Creating Adaptive Teams

• Recognise and leverage individual differences

• Encourage safe experimentation and learning from failure

• Rethink onboarding as a sandbox for growth

• Promote trauma-informed leadership—acknowledging unseen challenges

This requires a fundamental mindset change: leaders as cultivators of connections, not command-and-control enforcers.

The Hidden Dangers of Over-Reliance on AI and Data

While AI presents exciting opportunities,

https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisehumpington/

Kicking The Door Down

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hi and welcome to Kicking the Door Down. I'm Deb Airy, your host on Kicking the Door Down, and today I have Louise Humpingdon with me. And Louise works on special activities specifically around the mycelium. Now, I am not going to sit here and explain what that means. So I am going to ask Louise to do that. But essentially, all the principles and topics that we as listeners have said we need to do in the workplace, they should be important. How do we do them? That is what Louise looks into. So, Louise, please, welcome to the show. How are you? Very well, thanks, Dev. How are you? Yeah, I'm really well thanks. As I was saying just before, I've been really looking forward to this. I've been on holiday and I've been thinking about this podcast a lot because really, when I drill down to all the coaching and the managerial leadership training that I've either delivered or been part of, this really sits with me. This sits and resonates. What you're going to talk about today sits with my core values and my core strengths. And it's something I have been banging the drum off for years that should be a fundamental part of business and leadership training, not just a noise to have. So I am so excited about this.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Absolutely. Right. Well, let me kick off with explaining to you what I mean by the mycelium network. And it came about, my friend Kate and I went to see Merlin Sheldrake, who is a mycologist. So that's an expert biologist in mushrooms, basically, or fungi. And that's what mycelium is. Mycelium is the underground network that connects all of these funguses, but also connects all of the other natural organic matter within the forest. It's how the trees communicate with each other, it's how the bugs communicate with each other, it's how the mushrooms and the flowers, that whole natural world environment has this unbelievably sophisticated 450 million year old communication and knowledge sharing network that sits under the forest floor. And it got me to thinking, chili, do you know what? That is exactly what governance should look like. That is exactly what accountability networks and communication networks and knowledge sharing networks should look like. We all sit in our own little ecosystems, every single one of us, whether that's in work or school or at home. And we all have our own sort of, you know, people or other bits of fungus around us. But every single node is connected to each other. And how we then communicate, how we connect and where the gaps of risk lie between those ecosystems is what I think is a really, really important part of how we get better at all the breakdowns that happen when you don't share knowledge, when you don't communicate effectively, when you don't have psychological safety and support. So within the mycelium network, for example, if one aspect of the network comes under stress or um or damage, the other networks all gather around and they start to rebuild it using their knowledge and using their nodes to recognize that harm's been caused, to gather around it and to use their own different ecosystem attributes in order to rebuild that bit that's had harm caused. And if that's not an amazing opportunity and goal for humanity, I don't know what is. And so what I'm really interested in is exploring how this looks in different workplaces and what we need to do in order to firstly improve the way that we all relate to each other, that we all support each other, um, but also how we identify risks. Because actually, you know, if you're the board of, you know, on a CEO of a on a board or a board of directors or something like that, that's your your governance principle is all around what can we do to ensure that we mitigate harm where we foresee it. Um and that for me means that things like diversity and inclusion and psychological safety and team performance become a necessary part of the controls and the guardrails that allow people to go, do you know what? Made a mistake, whoops, sorry. Um, what can we do to actually, you know, positively um see that as being a learning opportunity rather than something to criticize somebody about? What can we do as leaders? What can we do as teammates to create those connections and support mechanisms that benefit us all? And actually, when you're talking about AI, which is the space in which I'm doing a lot of my work and thinking at the moment, actually it becomes an active liability. Because if you don't have diversity and inclusion embedded within the design structure of the tool that you are developing, quite often harms can be caused post-deployment that end up end up being a remedial mop-up exercise instead of something that foreseeably could have been prevented. If you don't have the psychological safety for someone to say, hold on a second, I'm not sure this is going to work for people that I represent or for someone from my background or from my point of view, if you don't have the ability to upline those concerns in a way that doesn't get dismissed or erased or, you know, shouted down, you are going to end up causing harms, which then become a legal and therefore bottom line liability for the governance team up the line. And so actually, this whole networked approach to communication, knowledge sharing, and risk are all intertwined in a way that I think is really interesting and very, very different from the way that we have always done governance previously, which is causal and sequential and linear. Can't do that anymore with AI. But it also means that we've got the opportunity to look back on how we operate as teams, how we operate as businesses, and look at what the risks are that sit between those gaps, between those silos. I know that's a lot, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

No, no, it's fine. It is a lot, but actually it's a lot of interesting topics. Um, and you're right with AI, because I use it a lot, but also I'm very, very aware that whatever I put in, it takes it down a rabbit hole. So it comes, it mirrors my narrative and eventually starts to learn, doesn't it? And it comes back with my narrative. So very much my AI, for example, is debon, debon speed, essentially. It is it is everything that's me. What it doesn't do is unless I ask it to, is challenge my narrative. So it's it doesn't come back with any other minority perception per perception, it doesn't come back with um, you know, a different gender's, you know, um, idea of what I might be talking about or anything like that too. So I'm very aware of that, even in just my own small space. So apply that to a working environment or larger strategies, if you've only got one person's narrative being pumped into that IR, you're only going to get that perspective back. So actually, it is really important to have as many people using it as possible if I'm on the right thread. But also what you were saying there about the missile, I was just thinking back to managing various different teams. And you're right, if there is something that's gone wrong, maybe there's an individual that's um left, maybe there's a problem, maybe something that's happened at work, then everyone will move around to try and fix that problem. Um, and that is like a natural absorption of an issue, and that's how historically things have been solved and it goes on. However, if people rallying around to resolve that problem haven't got the skill sets or the right understanding of what's happened, then they're going to fix it in the wrong way. It's almost going to become like a glitch. And what I've noticed in the past is yeah, when that glitch is there, a bit like adding the wrong dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park, a bit like adding that. That's the best way of I can explain it. You add the wrong bit of DNA into that uh process or whatever it is that it might fix for a period of time, but it won't last forever, and it's gonna it's gonna break um or it's gonna mutate into something else, and it actually can go very, very wrong down the line. Um and I've seen that happen as well. Um, and at the time it seems like the right thing to do, and it probably it might even have been the right thing to do at the time, but it's more like a sticking plaster effect rather than actually fixing it. So I like how you're describing the missile um network because it actually takes it down a layer and a layer again into the ecosystem of how teams and businesses actually operate, and that's where many companies forget to go to. They might do highbrow and high, you know, high-end strategies that they effectively think, well, this will trickle down and everyone will be fine. But actually, if the network isn't correct or there's glitches in the network, it won't work.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

No, it doesn't matter what you do at that top level, if actually it's not feeding down to everybody within that network. And, you know, if you want to take it back to really basic um coaching and executive leadership principles, it's the golden thread argument, isn't it? That every single aspect of that golden thread has to be in alignment, otherwise, no one's aligned. So you've got your organizational objectives and you've got your oversight by the board, you've got your leadership structures and your management principles and the way that you operate. And that's going to be different for every organization. You've got your departments and the KPIs and the indicators that they have to achieve. Then you've got the teams and the microcosms of how, you know, one leader can be so instrumental positively or negatively, or one team member can be a really influential person, even if they're not even in a leadership position. And so how those interactions all engage. And when you get something out of alignment, the whole thing goes to part. But when you then start thinking about that alignment, not just going up and down, but also going across networks, across teams, and across silos, that's when you start realizing that actually that straight up and down linear structure isn't sufficient anymore. It needs to be more dynamic than that in order to identify what those groups are and flag up the risks between them.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Yeah, it does, doesn't it? And this this leads on to do you remember the old um in storming what is it storming, norming, forming storming, norming, forming yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's it. And this is where um, you know, adding III into that as well, this it and and different um, you know, different genders, different um social backgrounds, um uh new neurodiverse individuals, adding all of these people into it gets us so far away from that old view of how companies and teams are formed. Yeah, that I I would just have that in the bin these days. It just does not does not work. I don't even think it worked at the time, to be honest, unless you're, you know, one team of carbon copy person, then it might have worked. But now you can throw that away. But unfortunately, I find companies still rely on that. You know, you talk to many people, they still rely on that and refer back to it.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

How do you feel about that? I feel the same way that you do, if I'm being completely honest. I think that a lot of executive coaching principles and theories were possibly not even fine for the time, but they were accepted at the time because we were less able to articulate difference then than we are now. So it was, you know, post-industrial, very patriarchal structures designed mostly by men for men. Let's be honest about that. Um, and those coaching techniques and principles fitted for those people or for that neurotypical audience. When you then start articulating that not everybody fits into that profile or that pattern, that actually we are more aware of the differences in a positive way and the value that comes from recognizing and seeing those differences. You also have to then go back to the theories that have underpinned how and why systems and structures have been developed in the way that they have, and what supporting principles have been the foundations of why and how those teams have developed in the way that they have. So that's the one aspect of it. The other aspect of it, which I think is absolutely crucial to identify and to be completely upfront about, is the hidden differences or the hidden things. So the stuff which is going on or has informed a person's history and past that maybe as a workplace environment you're not aware of and frankly not entitled to be aware of. You know, when we're talking about trauma-informed leadership, for example, it is a recognition that there's a significant portion of the population who have either experienced adverse childhood experiences or experienced trauma as an adult, we have absolutely no idea, for the most part, who's been subjected to what. And nor is it our business to ask, frankly. But what we do need to do is make sure that the environments in which we operate and the leadership um systems that we set up and the team culture that emerges from that are not harmful, even if we don't know what the root cause of somebody's trauma or behavior or experience might be. So if we start embedding psychological safety and inclusion as normative, then we stand half a chance of not having to have those conversations about reasonable adjustments and why this difference is different and why that thing's important. Like if you start embedding those principles at foundational level, it means that you are treating more people as being um different in a positive way than neurotypical or you know uh someone who actually benefits from the kind of very tight um and structured patriarchal systems that we've all been sort of embedded within and worked within. You know, if you treat inclusion as normative, then you don't have to single people out. You don't have to ask them questions which actually, you know, could be traumatizing or triggering in themselves. Um it's nobody's business. Um and I remember coming across this is an appalling example, um, a woman who had um been experiencing something extraordinarily traumatic at home most weekends. And every morning on a Monday, for the most part, she was late or not performing well. And so instead of actually trying to understand and recognise what the pattern of behaviour was and why Mondays were different, they simply put her on workplace performance um measures because that was the HR process. And this is, I'm not going to name them, but it was a major, major organization which operates across the entire of the UK and is operating within a healthcare space as well, and frankly, ought to know better. So, you know, if we can't even get it right because we are so driven by the rules and the policy that don't that that by virtue of their very um structure exclude people, all that we're going to do is cause harm or propound it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

So I mean, you know, and I'm again listening to what you're saying, and I'm thinking, you know, back to my experience and my teams and the the managers that I've seen historically, and always the mo the the best performing teams um and the happiest teams, if you like, the most engaged teams, were always from an environment that, you know, it wasn't the fact that they had different people in there, didn't matter. No one saw that, it was encouraged uh with much more flexibility around working times. Um, and and what it did do is it then bred this um rich tapestry of experience in those teams where people flourished, people could come to the table with their ideas, they didn't feel stupid for that, they didn't feel um, they didn't feel stupid for grazing their knees if things were wrong. The blame culture was minimal to zero. Um, obviously there was accountability, which is what I mean by that. Um, but you had people that drove the business instead of following a process, and the knock-on effect from that, that there was less engagement or involvement, I should say, from a HR perspective. There was less need for pips, there was less need for all that, um, and there was less risk on the business down the road. So if you got more positivity, more creativity, more productive, more productive environment, increase in revenue if it was sales, and less engagement and less risk from HR and um litigation issues, it was a no-brainer to me, but it is it's it does take a different type of leader from the old style process KPI-driven leader. It does take it much more psychologically aware and emotionally intelligent, I'd say.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Yeah, absolutely. And and I mean, you know, let's let's also be frank that the bottom line is always the bottom line for most businesses. Actually, if you don't if you don't want to see this from a it's the right thing to do because we're all human beings and ought to not be arseholes, um, you know, think about it from a bottom line perspective. You know, the billions and billions of pounds every year that are lost to mental ill health um within workplace environments because of um sickness, because of, you know, issues around retention, um basically should be the argument in and of themselves. Um and and so Amy Edmondson, she's um Harvard Business School, she talks a lot about sort of psychological within safety within teams. Um, and she's done a huge amount of uh of work around that. And they always perform better. So, as you said, your retention rates go up, your sick list levels go down, your happiness and performance is elevated, and you are looking at teams which are higher performing and higher functioning, and therefore more effective and more bottom line impactful for the business. Um, and you know, that should be obvious, but it apparently isn't. And so, what I'm also interested in is, you know, why is that? Why is it that even when you've got these really, really good economic arguments for saying, well, hold on a second, if you do this, then there's all these bottom line benefits to it. So what is stopping organizations still from not pursuing that? What is the barrier? What are the blockers? And that's a really, really interesting conversation. And I think a lot of it comes down to exactly what you've been talking about, these very, very traditional structures, very traditional sort of, you know, management techniques and styles and leadership, you know, things that, you know, we all do our MBA and then, you know, follow the playbook and da-da-da-da-da. But I also think that there has become almost a paralysis within us for trying and failing. And the impact of that is just phenomenal. So, you know, you and I have talked before about the importance of being able to give it a go and not getting it right and not feeling like you're going to be held up or erased or, you know, considered, you know, underperforming or anything like that. But we've got to have the safety and the psychological ability or psychological safety around us to be able to go, do you know what? I'm going to give this a shot, and it might not work out, but that'll be okay. And that is a massive, massive shift from the way that KPIs and performance indicators have been the thing that gets hammered on people in PDRs continuously. The matrix to which people are beholden, and you know, the objective structures which come from the top down. That if we can create a bit of space for flexibility and for trying things and for being innovative and being dynamically creative and all of that, then you stand half a chance of actually probably coming up with some pretty interesting um innovations, which could be really beneficial for the business. But also, as I said, creating this space where it's okay to make a mistake, it's okay to cock it up. You know, what I've always said to my staff is go and give it a shot and come back to me with whatever the outcome is. Don't worry about if it goes wrong. There is nothing you can do that can't be fixed. But go and give it a shot to begin with, because that's part of leadership development. It's part of recognizing the potential of people within the team and getting to know what their strengths are. Um, because you might be really surprised. Um, and people frequently surprise themselves when they're given the freedom to say, come on, give it a go. I mean, you know. I do it with my kids all the time. Come on, give it a shot and tell me, yeah, tell me what happened. And we sort of we we say that's fine for developing children. Why do we not say it's fine for developing teammates?

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Totally agree. And I I I'm I'm fully that I've always been behind that. I'm a full advocate of that. Just go and graze your knees. And like you say, you can't break. I always say you can't break it, which is true, you can't. And I I've noticed there's this there seems to be a split. There's the original hierarchy that rely on the KPI, almost hide behind the safety of a KPI, let's call it. They're hiding behind the safety of that, because that's a process. We shall not, thou shalt not deviate from the process, sort of a thing. Um, and that is a very rigid way of dealing with it. But then I've also noticed there's a new trend of individuals coming through. Perhaps it's an age, perhaps, you know, I wouldn't want to be a teenager again, put it that way. But the pressure on being correct and doing it right first time on the younger generation, both male and female, seems to be horrendous right now. Um, and yeah, it's almost like when they come into the workplace, you have to re-educate them that it's okay. You're not gonna be the CEO tomorrow, by the way, as well. And you know, there there is a process of learning that you have to go through. And don't worry if you're wrong, it's nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed of. No one's gonna point finger or take the mic. So is there is there two educational points there that leaders have to understand that they have to do that um and give them the space and they have to be okay to fall over? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

And I think there's a there's a couple of really good points that comes out of that, Deb. I think that the kind of leadership style that that relies upon structure and process and KPIs is what I would describe as lazy, lazy leadership. You don't have to get your hands dirty by dealing with actual humans. Boring. And it it I know. Humans are messy and complicated and difficult and brilliant, and that takes a particular skill set. And you know, depending on the industry, quite often those that get promoted up the line are the ones that have been good at the job, as opposed to being good at leadership or being good at management. Now, I come from a legal background, and I can tell you horror stories about some of the managers I've worked under because they were absolutely phenomenal lawyers, but rubbish leaders, rubbish managers. And so they got promoted up within this industry in recognition of their performance doing the job, but not necessarily given the skills or the confidence or the training to be brilliant performance leaders. And that is a skill in itself, which is where the whole point about training and understanding what is needed for that team, and it's going to be different for every team, because it depends on the people in that team. There is no playbook that says this is how you become a really good leader. You have to have the flexibility and the knowledge to then apply things in different contexts as appropriate for that environment and for those people. And the other part of it is the education point. And I think you're absolutely right. You know, our education system for decades has been teaching kids to pass exams by rote. They have not had to engage in the kind of critical thinking that you and I had to when we were at school. You know, we didn't have access to the internet, we didn't have access, we had to go and find an actual book and read lots of different points of view and then work out what our um position was or our perspective was. We were taught to analyze, we were taught to critically think, we were taught to problem solve in the way that our education was delivered to us. And that shifted quite palpably, I think probably about 20 years ago, where all of a sudden the KPIs came into the room, the bloody exams, you know, we have to perform for these exams, we have to perform for these KPIs, these, you know, key stage achievements or whatever it happened to be. And it's exactly what we were talking about. The the the linear system doesn't work in business and it doesn't work in education. And what you've got as a result now is kids who are just petrified of failing. And so what are they doing? They're going to an LLM and they're saying, please give me the answer, because I have never been taught to think for this for myself. And now they're being spoon-fed answers, which are coming from a platform that we know has got psychological, sorry, um, assumptions and biases and flawed data baked into the bottom layer. And unless you know how to prompt it cleverly, it will give you biased outputs. So, this is what we're now feeding our kids because they're too scared to say, oh, I don't know how to do this by myself. Nobody's ever taught me. I'm suddenly in a workplace environment. I'm not getting that support in the workplace environment either. I don't really know how to analyse or critically think. And I think actually, you know, if we're talking about what will be most beneficial for entry-level people going into a workplace any workplace environment for the first time, it's teaching them how to get it wrong, teaching them how to try, teaching them how to resolve, teaching them how to be okay with trying and failing, teaching them how to critically think, teaching them how to analyse. You know, if you can empower someone with those skills, they are going to be a phenomenal force to be reckoned with for you as an employee, because they can think differently, they can innovate, they can problem solve, they can receive less hand holding. Um, and I think that's a a real gap in the workplace environment, because in part, we haven't taught those kids how to do that within um our educational settings.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

No, we haven't. And I think I think leaders now need to be more aware of that than anything, because you know, rather than reduce the recruitment to different demographics, um, because that's the easiest thing to do, if we're being honest about it, it might be a case, I can't cope with that, I need to go somewhere else. We need to open our doors and say, because otherwise we're going to miss out on some phenomenal people as well, if we don't recruit those individuals. And I would rather spend a little bit of extra time in with a sandpit area, and that's probably the wrong term, but in my brain, that's that's the way I would address it. So this is this is your learning ground. The onboarding process has to be adaptive to those individuals. It cannot be the same, and that goes that goes on to the next sub onboarding, onboarding has got to change from the old way of doing it. An onboarding process should be different depending on the person that's coming on, and this is a prime example. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

And you know, again, going back to sort of traditional coaching mechanisms and traditional kind of academic thinking around this, you know, um, I can't remember who it is, so forgive me. I think he's called Stuck or something like that. Anyway, he talks about how um actually firms, whether they do it implicitly or explicitly, quite often use onboarding as a mechanism for breaking down the bad habits or the way of thinking that someone has developed from a previous environment, so that you can force people into the culture of that particular new environment. And part of part of that being successful, he argues, um, not that they should be doing it, but this is what happens, um, is that actually you have to kind of break them to make them. And I mean, what a horrible, horrible way to treat a human being. The idea that you have to break down habits that you consider to be not as good as your own, or you know, get them away from the way the a previous work environment has operated and force them into this sort of homogenized culture. What a horrible way of doing things. And whether whether companies do it explicitly or implicitly, I mean, quite often that's what what is is going on. Let's call a spade a spade here.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

It is, it is. And you know, I I it this gate I feel so uncomfortable with what you've just said there because it's so true and it gets you so angry. My little hands are sweating. I'm so angry about it. It's so yeah, it's so right. Companies do because they are they spend all this time and money on recruitment looking for a specific person, they go through a recruitment process, they get really excited about that person joining, and then it's almost at day one, they the history of that person, all their skill sets, forget it's done, burn it. You might as well burn it. Because actually, what they want them to do is become a carbon copy of whatever is in already in that work, and it's almost forget about everything else in the past. Well, what was the point? What was the point of going out to recruitment to find somebody brand new, sparkly, your new ideas, if actually you just want to burn that history and to to what you say, break them down? I mean, that is that is full-on mind control, isn't it? If you're going to go to the extent of breaking someone down, that's that's terminology that is Yeah, it is psychological warfare. It's exactly what it is, it's what every um manipulator does in a relationship, isn't it? It's it's it's completely opposite of psychological safety. And how can you be your own, um, using the the the buzzword authentic self if, well, essentially you can't, can you?

SPEAKER_01 31:16

And that's where and that's where valuing difference is not just tolerating it, not just accepting it, not just doing the legal HR thing to create um an environment in which you're not going to get sued because you've done the reasonable adjustment bit. It's not about that, it's about understanding what optimization is all about. How can the environment just shift a little bit to create a space where optimized performance is actually what you end up with and not just tolerated people?

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, touching back onto the lazy leadership thing, because there's nothing that winds me up more than that. And it's how some leaders will t deliberately turn a blind eye when they see something going wrong because it's uncomfortable to deal with it. Yeah. Um, so it's uncomfortable to deal with somebody else that's not allowing a psychologically safe environment. It's dealing with situations that aren't right. Whereas I think, you know, as leaders, it is definitely our job to be the trend setters, the ones that are creating that environment, because if we don't, no one else will. Um, and that's where you get bad habits forming within teams. So I think, you know, from your point of view, where would you start with a business then that you approached uh fictitious business? What would be the first thing you started talking about to them?

SPEAKER_01 32:39

No, the first thing I would do is not be talking, actually. First thing I'd be doing is listening. Thank God, love that. You can you cannot come up with effective solutions that are gonna have sustainability if I am coming in with my playbook and enforcing that on somebody else. Because otherwise it's just doing another thing that all the lazy leaders do. This is how I do it, this is what works for me, I'm gonna impose that on you. So the first thing I'd be doing is top and bottom, listening, understanding, helping to get it. And, you know, as as an ADHD woman, one of my superpowers is being able to come in and read the room. And it and it's not it's not something which is exclusive to ADHDers, but it is something that exists more typically, um, or more prevalently, I should say, in in people like me who have my kind of brain, because you come in, you are very, very astute to body language, to facial behaviors, to those unseen communications that come through the way that we all operate. Um, and you can also have 1500 tabs in your head open all together at once, which comes back to my mycelium network. Well, this person's behaving this way, and that's impacting on that, and that's causing this person to feel this, and that's affecting them. And da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And I can sit there and I can map out all the people in a room and the blockers and the barriers, and therefore also the areas in which we can create quite quick improvements really, really, really fast. But that what that requires me to do is listen, is to understand, is to hear. And that also builds trust and safety. It builds rapport, it allows people to feel validated, to feel heard, to feel like someone's actually going to come in and consider them and their perspective, not what can they do for the business better, but who are you? What is your learning style? What works for you as far as the way things happen at the moment? You know, are there and I think we, you know, going back to the sort of the lazy leadership point, sometimes it is just lazy. But let's also be give a little bit of credit to some people who might operate in that way. They don't mean to. They just don't know how to do it differently because they've never been taught. Now, for you and I, this kind of approach is quite instinctive, but for somebody else it's not. But there's still skills that can be taught. And so it's a it's a top and bottom-down approach. It's looking at how the teams operate, learning how they um how they what the dysfunctions in the team are in order to understand what can change in order to improve and optimize the efficiency of the team, the relationships between the team, the communication styles of the team. And it might be really simple things like, you know, if you've got somebody who thinks very quickly like me, I'm going to take up a lot more space and energy in a room because I can think on my feet, than someone else who maybe needs a bit more time to process. So agendas in advance, not having these sort of anxiety-driven, can we just have a quick conversation, please? Without any context to them. I mean, like, you know, these are things that happen all the time. There's lots and lots of little quick wins, but it's about assessing that entire team and then saying to that leader, honestly, how does this make you feel? How does um, you know, it feels to know that you are actually responsible for the human elements of their performance as well as the actual KPIs? And what can we do differently to make you feel empowered by that and not afraid of it? Because I think it's it's being afraid of what might happen. You might break someone or something, or and you know, quite a lot of the time when I've done EDI training, people recognise that there is support that's required, but they don't know how to do it. They don't know how to provide that support for a team member without asking the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing, and actually creating language, creating the ability to approach those difficult dialogues and those challenging conversations in a way which is trauma-informed, is a really, really important skill to getting it right for everybody. And when people don't feel able to do that, if empowered with that language, those skills, that's when it's very easy, because company structures usually kind of, you know, allow for it, to fall into the space of lady leadership, lazy leadership, even if it's not an active choice.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And you know, thinking back again, listening to what you're saying there, if I'm assessing previous managers that I've worked with, you know, those they're not necessarily bad people and not necessarily being lazy, but sometimes, as you say, they're not comfortable, or um, often if they've been put in a position because they were good at the job, then not their instinct or their ability to deal with conflict, for example, or challenging situations is not there either, because that's not their safe space. They're certainly not comfortable in that environment. Um, and you know, not having the right language or the right foundations to work from or or the right history of that situation where they might have already tested out their own uh ability in those situations means that they're fresh to it. And it's terrifying when you've got to do something for the first time. Imagine the first time you had to do a, I don't know, a performance review or something the first time. You feel like you're on stake, everyone's looking at you, and but that's it's a it's it's a horrible feeling. So yeah, if they're not being if they've not been allowed their own space to learn and train and graze their knees, that's tough for a new leader. Or an older leader.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

But it also means that the impact of getting that wrong falls on the people that are most always disproportionately impacted by harms. Those who are marginalized, those who are underrepresented, and those who are excluded from the decision-making conversations. So, you know, there is a really I I think your idea of, you know, the sandbox is a really, really important one. You know, leaders need to sandbox. Entry-level people need to sandbox. Anybody starting a new task needs to sandbox. You know, it's the language of technology is that you don't actually deploy something into the real world until it's been through some pretty rigorous sandbox testing. And, you know, maybe there's something we can all learn from that in in business um systems and structures and performance management frameworks and leadership and management. I think there's a lot we can learn from that.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Absolutely. And you know, um, you've got me on a subject now because there's something I've seen recently actually, there seems to be using AI to for leaders to know how to manage their team. So here's the process. What do I do next? How do I speak to X next? And this reliance on something like that for AI could also be a very dangerous thing. It's a nice to have as a checklist, but not to tell you how to start managing people. Um, and for me, that suggests flashpoints of danger because no one's taking into consideration personalities, um, things that are happening. As you mentioned there with the lady that has the horrendous weekend and then we'll come in on a Monday, AI is not going to know that. No, we shouldn't believe in management, doesn't do cantext, doesn't do emotion. So why we, you know, I think there's a danger point of um in inexperienced managers using AI and taking the checklist and turning it into, you know, a reality.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

There's also potentially uh uh going back sorry, got my lawyer's hat back on, an actual, you know, bottom line liability to that as well. You start putting people's personal information and details, albeit accidentally, into an LLM, suddenly you have potentially breached GDPR, you have created um uh an environment in which privacy is not being handled correctly, um, because you can't give something like an LLM all of the information it would need to give you an adequate answer, an adequate output without actually there being a potential um breach of GDPR um and and certainly basic HR privacy um requirements. So, you know, there is a there is a potential um liability there. And I was actually I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, actually, and she was she was talking about um exactly within that context, how um when people are using AI note takers, for example, in meetings, suddenly, a bit like a sort of an analogy to um waiving privilege within a legal context, actually, the second that record that meeting has been recorded, that person is entitled under a subject access request to find out what's been said about them. Because you've put it in pro you've put it in writing, you've put it into, you have published that information. And it might sit on your server, but somebody says to me, or somebody says to you, um, okay, I know you had a meeting about me with, you know, so and so, or da-da-da-da-da. I want to see that. You have automatically exposed yourself to um everything that's been said about an individual. Um, and I think that should scare businesses about how they're using AI, but it also should make managers and leaders more cognizant of the way that they talk about people. Because there has been a lot of opacity within sort of team decisions and HR management performance decisions that actually quite often doesn't make sense to the person that's on the receiving end of it. You know, you don't know the context or the words that have been used about you to come to the business determination that you should not progress or shouldn't be given a promotion or should be put on performance measures or whatever. AI blows all that out of the water if you are recording those meetings.

SPEAKER_00 42:53

Yeah. Yeah. And let's face it, most of them are now because you've got co-pilot, even if you're not using read AI notes or whatever, but so many people are using co-pilot now. Um, um, which is, you know, and most of it's attached to your Microsoft or your team your Microsoft Teams or your Outlook. Um, and it just automatically drags that information back. So people are not are being very unaware of that, which is really, really dangerous. Um, and quite is it scary? I think it should be scary because you're absolutely right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

And it goes beyond beyond the organization as well, because you know, um, and and you can see how this has happened, you can see how this kind of situation has emerged. That we had, you know, you and I have been using Word and Excel for blooming decades for crying out loud, you know, and it was this static piece of software that was, you know, uploaded using a floppy disk onto your computer, and then a CD-ROM or whatever. Um, but it didn't do anything other than that, it was inert. You were in entirely. Control of it. And then all of a sudden, there was a little software update, and then there was a software update, and then there was a software update. And then all of a sudden, Microsoft comes along and goes, Hey, they didn't call it AI, did they? They said, Hey, we're going to give you for free this new thing called Copilot, which is going to help you to become more efficient and to support you in your whatever it is you're doing, blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden that gets embedded. And oh, a few weeks ago, all of a sudden, your pilot now has agentic abilities. Agents are different from generative AI because they go off and do entirely as they please, allegedly within rules and parameters, but the number of stories which are coming out from all sorts of different industries and globally about agents going rogue is just phenomenal. But Microsoft Copilot has a gentic ability now. So the second you open your Word document, not only is there a privacy risk because agent has, or you know, Copilot has access to all the information that you type on your commercially sensitive spreadsheet or your HR performance review or your client's, you know, pitch deck or investment report or whatever it is that you're working on, all of that's whooshing straight through into Microsoft. And, you know, who knows where that data's going. I think, you know, the whole opacity around data governance is something that actually is phenomenally scary, as well as the fact that it could potentially expose you to a legal liability if you have breached some of the privacy um laws that exist, or regulatory ones, depending on what industry you're working in. So it could be financial services or law, something like that. You know, there's already been a case called Munir and the home uh Secretary of State for the Home Office, which basically has said if you are a lawyer and you put client information into an open source LLM, you have waived privilege and you cannot get it back. End of. So that means everything you have put into that LLM becomes automatically disclosable to the other side. So there's a commercial sensitivity risk on that, that you might be handing your competitor or opponent commercially sensitive information. But there's also a massive exposure to the fundamental principle in law, which is what you tell your solicitor, with a few exceptions, stays between you and your solicitor. That's what privilege is. The second you use an open source LLM, that's gone. And that's a really scary position to be in.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Really scary. And like you say, you start typing in people's details, even if it's just somebody, if you're doing something at work and you start typing in people's details, that's that's it. That's a breach as well. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

Even if it's an identifying feature, even if you don't use their name, if someone can be identified by virtue of the information that you have given, then that could be enough to be a a breach of GDPR. And if you've got a very tiny team and you have used markers, which quite clearly identify the person to whom you are referring, even if you're not actually using their name, that could be enough.

SPEAKER_00 47:10

Well, I was just thinking then, because not only is it enough to identify that person, but also there could be protective characteristics that you fall into all sorts of different areas of uh dissolution as well. Yeah. So people are forgetting that. It's all it's really interesting how we've gone through so much training to get this right, and then we've thrown an thrown AI into the mix and it's gone, oh, everyone's forgotten about it. It's sort of gone headfirst.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

All the AI hype, everyone's gone, oh, this is exciting, shiny new thing. You know, we've taken this sort of magpie approach to it rather than stepping back and going, hold on a second, what am I actually doing with this information? What am I actually putting in? And how am I genuinely assessing the outputs that are given as well? Because we know that AI is trained on the entire history's data sets. And we also know that humanity's version of history is absolutely flawed and biased and assumptive. You know, they there's that old adage, isn't there? Um, history is written by the victors or something like that. And uh and that's and that's it. So all the training data that's gone into the foundational layer of these LLMs is based on our biased, erase human history, where lots and lots of particular demographics, quite often with protected characteristics, are the ones who have been excluded from the conversations, but also have not had a fair representation of their version of things embedded into the LLM models. But there's also an opportunity there, you know, you talked earlier about not using it to test your assumptions, but actually, you know, give it that prompt. Say, right, okay, well, this is my point of view, and da-da-da-da-da. This is the dog. Now, give me the still person response. Now look at this from a different point of view. Now tell me if you were wanting to rip this apart, what you would be saying as an output now. And that is a really, really effective way of challenging your personal bias, making sure that you're not getting sucked into a little echo chamber of your own device, but also a way to say, okay, well, actually, I do need to look at this from a different point of view. And LMs actually are really quite good for things like that. So that's why I one of the ways in which I use it quite frequently is actually to test my own assumptions and biases to make sure that I am to the extent possible um looking at it from different points of view. But I'll also challenge it back. I mean, I did a piece to camera a few weeks ago, which is around South Africa and a big mistake having been made within its AI strategy, ironically, um, and it had hallucinated some information and they'd had to pull the draft. Yeah, I mean, you couldn't make it up really, could you? Um, but nevertheless, you know, everybody was like, okay, well, you know, they should have checked. I did a different angle on that as I usually do. But when I was using the AI in order to so the way I tend to use it if I'm sort of writing things or developing arguments is as a sounding board. I talk as I'm thinking. So I will go blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. This is what I think, this is what I think, challenge me, you know, any other ideas? Is there research I'm missing? Da-da-da-da. So I ask it to sort of help me to, you know, flesh out that research back. And it came back with, well, obviously it's South Africa, so you know, levels of capacity are much lower, and da da da. I'm like, hold on a second, do you realize who I am? Have you not remembered that I'm a person who has worked in international development and human rights and diversity and equity and inclusion are my thing? Like, what are you talking about? Don't sit there because it's an African country and make assumptions about who said what and what their capacity was. You don't know that. I don't know that. You can't say things like that. And it was like, oh yeah, okay, fair enough. But you know, question it bad, challenge. Because, you know, I've got enough experience from my career to pick up those things. But someone who hasn't had my background or experience won't necessarily pick up some of those things. And so we have to be really, really careful about what the outputs are as well. Because, you know, these are not thinking beings, they're not conscious, they're not sentient, they're large language models. They work on predictive behavior, predictive language. And so if this is the thing that everybody's always said forever, that's the thing it's gonna come up with because it's pattern matching. It's not coming up with unique, different arguments, it's saying, okay, what's humanity said about this forever? What is the most likely logical set of language or you know, words that would make up um the answer to that question? So it's gonna feed off the majority.

SPEAKER_00 51:55

So part part of the twining here is uh how to use how to use AI safely and securely, and how to challenge it absolutely. And how yeah, don't don't just believe everything it says. How how to quickly believe everything it's just yeah, never believe anything that it says. That's so true. Well, you only got to look at some of the images it throws up with people with seven fingers and stuff like that to to no never believe it. But you know, I think from a from from what we're talking about, it's so fascinating. Um, but you know, on on that on that note, Louise, we've been chatting for nearly an hour. I know, sorry. I know. No, I'm I'm fascinated. This is fascinating, and this is why I was so excited about it because AI is such a a topic, but combine it with combine it with the network that you talk about there. And I love the title Messillium because that does explain it actually beautifully, because it it makes it feel much more part of the world, part of the ecosystem that we live in, rather than just um hierarchy of individuals. It removes that and builds something for far more beautiful. Um, and that's exactly what it is. That's what we all are. That's the whole point of us being so different. So I love that. Would you would you mind um and I'm sure you'll say yes, but would you mind, therefore, if I put your details in the bio so that if people wanted to know more, they could reach out to you, Louise, and and and I encourage people to do that.

SPEAKER_01 53:25

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I mean if you're if you're interested in understanding what AI looks like within your industry, then give me a shout. I can help with mapping um um across those different sort of silos and nodes, if you like. Um, or if you are just wanting a slightly different conversation around leadership and team building and optimizing those things in a way which is psychologically safe, trauma informed, and genuinely is going to have a positive bottom line impact. Um, yeah, again, give me a shout.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

Brilliant. Thank you so much, Louise. I I like I say, I've been so looking forward to this. This has been brilliant. Um, and you've took me on a bit of a roller coaster remoteons as well, which is which is great. So thank you very, very much. And appreciate it, appreciate your time today. So, everybody, you've been listening. It's been my pleasure. Honestly, it's been my absolute pleasure. So, thank you to everybody listening to Kicking the Door Down today with Louise Humpingdon. Um, please um listen to this on you'll be finding it on Spotify or Apple, but hopefully you'll already know that by now if you're listening to it. Um, and I'll put Louise's deep contact details in the bio. But if you can't find them, reach out to me, or you can find um Louise on LinkedIn as well. So thank you very much, everybody, for listening to Kicking the Door Down.