No One Told Me This
No One Told Me This is a podcast about leadership, teams, and workplace culture, not as they’re meant to work, but as they’re actually experienced.
Hosted by Paul, the show explores the unspoken realities of working with people, the assumptions we make, the tensions we avoid, and the things we often learn the hard way. Through solo reflections, candid conversations, and the occasional deep dive, it’s a space to make sense of how work really gets done.
From culture drift and team dynamics to decision-making under pressure, each episode takes a grounded, thoughtful look at what leadership looks like in practice, especially when things aren’t neat or predictable.
Because sometimes the most important lessons aren’t the ones we’re taught. They’re the ones no one told us… or maybe we just weren’t listening.
No One Told Me This
S01E13 - Vertical vs Horizontal Relationships
Are people in your team going over heads, or across the room?
In small businesses, relationships matter. But how those relationships form, vertically (up and down the hierarchy) or horizontally (across the team), has a huge impact on how work actually gets done.
In this episode, I talk about vertical vs horizontal relationships, why teams quietly drift into unhelpful patterns, and how small shifts in “who you go to first” can change the whole rhythm of your business.
We’ll cover:
- What vertical and horizontal relationships look like in real life
- The warning signs of “over-vertical” and “over-horizontal” teams
- How owner-led businesses accidentally turn leaders into bottlenecks
- A simple rule of thumb to decide when to go up and when to go across
- A few questions to help you spot where relationships are quietly holding your team back
If your team feels slow, stuck, or strangely “stop–start”, this one’s worth a listen.