EP#07🌿Why Your Team Can't Focus; The Hidden Cost of Unpredictable Leadership on Teamwork & Engagement

Q: Does your team spend more energy reading the room than doing their best work?

When we can't predict our environment, we operate in a consistent, low level state of alertness. It's not full panic, just enough tension that you can't fully settle, can't fully listen, can't fully think. Quality drops, mistakes increase. Not because people are careless because they're spending cognitive and emotional energy bracing for impact instead of having a laugh with who's sitting next to them and doing their work.

Josey Atoa
Jun 18
9 min read

Updated: Jun 22

Predictability and stability aren't about running a perfect operation. They're about being someone your team doesn't have to brace against.

In this episode I unpack why these two environmental conditions move the dial on culture more than almost anything else and why when the leader becomes unpredictable, they become the biggest threat inside their own circle.

I share two real stories, a man on a commercial farm driven to a health and safety risk nobody saw coming, and a COVID moment where one decision changed the entire atmosphere of a team.

I walk through the nervous system science behind why uncertainty costs people their focus, their confidence and their best work and leave you with a cliff-hanger you'll have to tune into next episode to resolve.

When the ground isn't reliable, people stop growing. They stop risking. They stop bringing their best. This episode shows you exactly what that looks like and why it matters more than you think.

EP#07 - Listen Now

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On with the episode...

Are you the same leader on a bad day as a good day, or is your team bracing for impact?

Does your team spend more energy reading the room than doing their best work?

Is unpredictability in your environment quietly costing you performance without anyone naming it?

Welcome back.

Continuing on from the previous episode, can you think about a time you worked for someone or in an environment that was unpredictable? Some days you knew where you stood, other days you genuinely couldn't tell.

Ahead is a discussion about predictability and stability, how it's one of foundational areas to work on that has longer lasting, wider impact across your team. I can't wait to explain why and how you're at the centre of this.

I've also got two stories about how these things can get tipped so easily and create an environment of unease. I'm stoked you’re back.

Checking in, how did you go reflecting on how you handle mistakes? Did you need to open up a conversation about mistakes and create some safety and ownership around them with your team? If you did, I'd love to hear how that went, especially if you had an opportunity to deal with something differently than you may have before.

We are back into the second core area of teamwork. As defined in my leadership self-assessment, this is an environmental condition, a foundation of your team dynamic.

Predictability and stability in teams is so important as these things have a lasting impact on how your team feel about you, their environment and that affects how they do their work and work with others.

In this episode, I'll dive into how it shows up or doesn't and the follow-up episode are ideas on how you can improve things. I mentioned earlier that I believe there are four areas that have a wider impact when worked on in teams. I refer to these as the environmental conditions around everyone. These dynamics move the dial on culture more than other things because they're based on nervous system regulation in your working environment, that resonates through to us as individuals.

Do I feel safe? Is there trust around me? Is my environment stable? Are the things around me predictable? And do I have confidence that I will be told when something will affect me?

And am I confident in the person that is in front of everything leading the way?

In organizational research, team predictability refers to two things, the consistency of team processes and leadership behaviour. Team stability refers to keeping team members consistent over time, keeping everyone together and making sure that the people are acting respectfully and supportive of one another.

Together these things reduce anxiety, build trust and create environments where members can confidently anticipate leaders and teammates' delivery actions and collaborate safely with each other. That groundwork, common values and expectations of behaviour are set up by the leader.

The leader then has two responsibilities.

Can my team read me? Am I the same person on a bad day as a good day? Do they know how I'll respond?

Is the ground reliable? Will people be informed when things change? Is someone looking ahead so nobody gets blindsided?

One is about trusting the person, the other is about trusting the systems.

Both produce the same feeling in a team member safety without having to think about it, which is exactly what frees people up to do their best work.

Simon Sinek's book, Leaders Eat Last, references the circle of safety. The leader's job is to hold the circle. Threats come from outside; inside the circle, people should feel protected enough to focus on the work and each other. When the leader is unpredictable, they become the threat inside the circle. I mentioned this heavily in episode three that you're a condition for your team that's either positive or negative.

And a leader that becomes a negative, that's the most destabilizing thing that can happen to a team.

Not a difficult client, not a system crash, the person who is supposed to be holding the circle becoming the source of the instability. When that happens, we do hit the nervous system connection and people move to survive away from thrive.

According to research, and I can completely relate to this, when we can't predict our environment, we operate in a consistent, low level state of alertness. It's not full panic, just enough tension that you can't fully settle, can't fully listen, can't fully think. Quality drops, mistakes increase. Not because people are careless because they're spending cognitive and emotional energy bracing for impact instead of having a laugh with who's sitting next to them and doing their work.

My first story is the consequences of not regulating someone's work environment.

We are on a large commercial produce farm, veggies. We had a guy who did a lot of work across several blocks with large diggers, shifting stock around, moving coal for burning, supplying heat to glass houses. He was literally in some large machinery all day. And I kept getting complaints about how fast he was driving those machines around. He was nearly taking people out. The roads were gravel. He was kicking that up and it was flicking in people's faces in their lunch while he sped round corners.

The boss and I called him in for a meeting. The man's manager and my boss had already spoken to him, and he'd just shut down when they approached him. In this meeting, his job was on the line. I could tell he was holding on to something and kept prompting.

Eventually He told us he was so stressed because up to five managers and sometimes team leaders below them all called him and he consistently had competing in priorities without knowing what was more important, who was more important, and felt unable to express. By the end of the day, he was wrecked.

People wouldn't listen to him when he said he was flat out. He had no respect. He was driving fast because he was so worried about letting people down and being fired because he wasn't able to keep up with the work.

There were immediate things put in place to support him, and wow, he was getting hammered.

Thankfully, it was an easy fix, he reported to one person. From then on, anyone that needed him had to approach his manager and his manager helped him regulate his work. There was no firing, no more complaints, he ended up being supported, patted on the back. Within a few days, happy dude, no health and safety risk, and the relief for him was incredible. fed back to me that some days he'd been so strung out he couldn't talk to his family once he got home.

This is a simple example but brought up loads of things that I questioned and discussed about why he didn't feel safe about saying something. That was far more of an issue than what he had been doing, although the consequences for both could have been appalling.

Looking after your team's environment is critical to good work. Higher performance, greater satisfaction, more reporting of mistakes, less mistakes over time, greater efficiencies. There is massive list of benefits. When you look after the people that are your responsibility, not just how the work gets done, but how the people that do the work are functioning. What do they need?

Okay, This is a COVID story, and I'm sorry to bring that word up. It's related directly to Simon's Sineks circle of safety, and one that I'll dive into more in the next episode In this team, we were split into two groups on site. We didn't have to work from home like the majority of the business. The drive to work was eerie, no traffic and I'm not sure about you but it was weird doing 50 in the car when you knew there was no one around. Anyway, I genuinely felt gratitude seeing other cars in the car park when I got to work.

Inside with the team on one particular day I noticed the radio was consistent with reminders of the fear we were feeling, the division happening across the world, I felt it was coming into the room with a consistent discussion coming from media. Someone fired up about vaccinations. We had strong people, opinions were divided. There was an atmosphere creeping into work that didn't feel good.

I sat with this for a few hours, gathered everyone, made a case. I felt like we had an opportunity just for a few hours to step away from the craziness. If we started judging each other, we were bringing the division into our environment.

I invited us to stop, to turn off the radio, to not talk about bloody COVID while we were together. A conscious decision to focus on feeling safe together, supporting each other regardless of opinion. And turning our focus to get in front of the work we had to do as a team.

So that's Simon's circle in real life.

We couldn't control what was happening outside. We absolutely could control what came into the inside.

I wanted us to make the conscious decision to protect the space.

I'll discuss the situation further in the next episode and let you know how that went down with the team.

Predictability and stability aren't about running a smooth operation.

They're about being someone your team doesn't have to brace against, and that also goes for their work. The research is clear. Simon’s circle, the nervous system science, it all points to the same thing.

When the ground isn't reliable, people stop growing. They stop risking. They stop bringing their best, they tune out.

According to Gallup's 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, only 23% of employees globally are engaged at work. That means that nearly four in five people are just hanging in there. Four in five. Not evolving, not bringing their best, surviving rather than thriving. And I'm all about you and your team thriving. It's an epic feeling when you and your team are supporting yourselves, each other and the work.

The business naturally always benefits. Looking after the environment around your people builds such a solid foundation. The difference when they see a leader who will protect their environment before the dollar, epic, epic impact.

I hope I've convinced you to have a look around you. If you're not sure whether this is your team, a high-vibing, high performing team is palpable. You can feel it as soon as you're around them. It's in the way they talk, act towards each other, how they have a laugh, their focus. And there is incredible integrity among them. No gossip. The leader will hear about things first. The team will dob each other in, knowing that the leader will deal with it well, rather than pointing fingers and building walls.

Your invitation now that we're at the end of this episode for further thought today, do you recognise any unpredictability in yourself or around your team? Areas you could disassemble easily and reconstruct with clarity, purpose, and value that focus on respecting people's right to come to work and know their space and what their workplace future looks like. If you haven't already, pop to the olivetree method.com

Complete the leadership self-assessment to see how you and your team are tracking at the moment. It will provide some ideas on how to support areas that might need help or frame up for you where you need help. I'm all about knowing the conditions around your team. If you don't know what's wrong, you can't fix it.

Next episode we explore ideas about how to improve predictability and stability by giving yourself permission to be human and vulnerable in front of the team. How setting up common values and starting to forward plan together signals to your team you've got them. I just love this stuff. These key areas in my experience have such profound effect on how your team feels, the energy, the focus that starts to happen, and the creative solutions just start to bloom when you start working with your team rather than telling them how to work. It's just gold.

We'll see you next episode. Can't wait to keep diving in on this one, finish it up.

Be blessed and I wish you the best workday. Ciao.

Resource Links:

03.54 Simon Sinek (Book) – Leaders Eat Last - https://simonsinek.com/books/leaders-eat-last

04.16 The Living Workplace Podcast - Episode #03 – Are You the Reason Teamwork is Tough? What No-One Says About Leadership

https://www.theolivetreemethod.com/post/are-you-the-reason-teamwork-is-tough-what-no-one-says-about-leadership

04.44 This concept originates from neuroscience and psychology research regarding how the brain manages uncertainty and energy.

10.19 Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace Report - https://www.ahtd.org/files/state-of-the-global-workplace-2024-key-insights.pdf 2026 report states that is now 20%, manager engagement hits 9 year low!

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