I've always been interested in people: Why do we think the way we do? What shapes our behaviour? What is it that allows us to grow and change? That’s why studying psychology was always a no-brainer for me (pun absolutely intended).
But I also learned pretty quickly that you can’t fully understand an individual without understanding the environment and society they exist within. Growing up between a collectivist culture and a more individualistic one gave me an early appreciation for both sides of that equation: the person matters, but so does everything happening around them.
That was all well and good, but there was still the question of what I was actually going to do with any of it?
During my second year of university, feeling fairly lost about where psychology might take me, I stumbled across a course called Introduction to Industrial-Organizational Psychology (a mouthful, I know). In one of our first classes, my professor pointed out that most of us will spend an enormous portion of our adult lives at work, so shouldn’t we try to make work better for people?
Fast-forward twelve years, and that question still sits at the heart of the work I do in leadership development. Because the more I work with leaders, the more convinced I am that making work better requires us to look beyond the person leading. We have to look at the people around them, the environment they create, and the systems they’re operating within.
A lot of leadership development begins with the individual, and for good reason.
In many of the programs that I facilitate, self-awareness is our starting point. If you don’t understand who you are — what drives you, where your strengths lie, what tends to throw you off, or how other people might experience you — it’s difficult to meaningfully work on yourself as a leader.
Most of us probably think we’re more self-aware than we actually are. Research from organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich has suggested that while roughly 95% of people believe they are self-aware, only about 10–15% actually are.
This gap shows up in leadership development all the time. Yes, sometimes people walk into a program already able to name exactly where they need to grow. But other times, some are convinced that there isn’t much they need to work on at all.
Good leadership development creates opportunities to uncover things that we may not have seen yet. My goal isn't to tell someone that they're wrong about themselves, but rather to give them enough information and perspective to recognize where there may be room to grow.
That insight matters. But it’s also only the beginning. Leadership isn't just about understanding yourself more deeply. At some point, you have to turn your attention outward.
I talk a lot about becoming a better leader, as though leadership is primarily a form of individual self-improvement. But it isn't really something that you do for yourself.
I often ask those in my programs why they became leaders, and an overwhelming majority of them say that it’s about making a difference for other people: Helping someone grow, creating a stronger team, making work better, or having a positive influence on the environment around them.
That’s where my sociological side kicks in. Once you're leading other people, your own performance can no longer be the only measure that matters. You also have to ask: Are people able to contribute around me? Are they developing? Do they feel seen and understood? Am I creating the conditions for people to work well together, or am I unintentionally making that harder?
Leaders must consider whether they are creating conditions that encourage collaboration, rather than simply rewarding individual performance.
I've worked in environments where success was framed heavily through individual metrics, and that has never been particularly motivating for me. Tell me, instead, what we're doing to foster collaboration. Tell me what we're trying to accomplish together.
That's the kind of environment I want to be part of. And while leaders don't control every aspect of someone’s experience at work, they have an enormous influence over the conditions people experience every day.
The limitations of focusing only on the individual become especially clear when we talk about inclusion.
In 2020, following the Black Lives Matter movement, there was a big push for organizations everywhere to invest more heavily in DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives. There were workshops on unconscious bias, public commitments to inclusion, and a lot of conversations that many workplaces hadn't had before.
That work mattered. Understanding our own biases is foundational, and creating shared language and awareness can be an important starting point. The problem is when that's where the work ends.
You can teach an individual to recognize their biases, but what happens when they return to an organization where the same perspectives continue to be prioritized? What happens when policies, decision-making structures, or measures of success continue to reinforce the same behaviours?
Growing up in Malaysia gave me an early experience of what it can feel like when different cultures aren't treated as something separate. Different languages, traditions, religions, and even foods weren't confined to an "international" section of life, and that experience has shaped the way I think about genuine inclusion.
I like to use a food analogy here. For a long time, organizations treated DEI like a side dish. There was the work of the organization, and then, sitting alongside it, there was the DEI work.
But genuine inclusion has to be more like the spices and flavour profiles you use throughout the meal: Embedded in how the organization operates. It should influence how you hire, promote, communicate, design policies, run meetings, recognize performance, and make decisions.
That means looking beyond whether you've offered an inclusion workshop and asking the more uncomfortable questions. Whose voices are actually influencing our decisions? Who might be missing from the table? What behaviours get recognized and rewarded here? Do our policies and systems support the values we say we hold?
For leaders, the same principle applies.
Inclusion can't be something you occasionally practice, or a separate initiative that you support from a distance. It has to show up in the ordinary moments of leadership; who you listen to, what you notice, how you communicate, whose potential you recognize, and the opportunities you create for the people around you.
This way of thinking shows up in one of the foundational concepts we teach at The Humphrey Group: Audience-centredness. At its simplest, audience-centredness asks leaders to remember that communication isn't only about what you want to say. It begins with understanding who is on the other side of the conversation.
Who are they? What matters to them? What do they already believe? What concerns might they have? What pressures are they under? And what do you ultimately want them to think, feel, or do, as a result of the conversation?
You can even zoom out further. If you're speaking to someone on your team, consider what their manager may be asking of them? What priorities are they balancing? What constraints are they operating within that you may not be able to see? That context can completely change how a message lands.
Imagine that you want someone to take on a new responsibility. From your perspective, the value may be obvious. It's an opportunity to develop a new skill, gain visibility, and contribute to an important initiative. What’s not to love?
Well, perhaps they’re already struggling with competing priorities. Maybe their manager is evaluating them against an entirely different set of goals. Maybe they've taken on similar stretch opportunities before without receiving recognition for them. Or, perhaps what you see as an exciting opportunity simply isn't connected to what motivates them.
None of that necessarily means you change the ask. It does mean you need to understand the person receiving it, though. Audience-centredness doesn't mean you need to tell everyone exactly what they want to hear, but it does mean recognizing that your own perspective is only one part of the conversation.
The substance of your message may not change, but the way you communicate it can, and often should. The real skill is finding the point of connection between what you need to communicate and what matters to the person in front of you.
Which brings me back to the question that first drew me to industrial-organizational psychology all those years ago: How do we make work better for people? There is no single workshop, leadership model, or behaviour that answers that question, but I do think the answer requires leaders to get outside of themselves.
Self-awareness helps us understand how we show up. Audience-centredness helps us understand the people in front of us. A broader organizational lens helps us notice the environment and systems shaping what happens around us.
Because leadership isn't simply about becoming a more polished, confident, or capable version of yourself. It's about what your leadership makes possible for other people.
Are people more willing to speak because you're in the room? Do they have greater clarity? More opportunity to contribute? Space to grow? Do the systems and practices you influence make it easier for different people to succeed?
Perhaps that is the better question for leaders to keep coming back to. Not “what kind of leader am I becoming” but “what am I creating around me?” That’s how we can make work better for people.
The way leaders communicate shapes how people understand, contribute, and work together. At The Humphrey Group, we bring together mindset, tools, and practice coupled with technology to help leaders develop an exceptional communication skill set and communicate with greater intention.
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