"It’s all just us, talking"

Early in my management career, someone in my team made a decision I didn’t understand.

I felt a familiar pull, the urge to step in, fix it, bring things back “on track.”
But I caught myself.

Instead of jumping to conclusions, I asked why they’d chosen that path.

The answer?

They were responding to something I’d said in a previous meeting, a throwaway comment I’d barely remembered.
Something I hadn’t meant as a directive…
…had shaped their sense of what was safe to do.

That was a humbling moment.

It reminded me that I’m not outside the system, steering it like a conductor.
I am the system, just like everyone else.

The way I respond in meetings, the questions I ask, the fears I show or hide, all of it shapes the environment we’re working in.

Stacey reminds us that we don’t operate in a world of known inputs and predictable outputs.
Human systems don’t behave like machines.
They shift moment by moment, through conversations shaped by meaning, memory, and emotion.

When we think we’re the ones designing the system, we forget that we’re being shaped by it too.

And that’s the risk. Not just that we overestimate our control, but that we underestimate our participation.

If we want to shift the system, we have to start by noticing how we’re already reinforcing it.

And then choose, in small moments, to show up differently.

Until next time,
Dermot
The Messy Middle

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