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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.221: How to Spot Horrible Bosses & Avoid Becoming One and Other Tips for Modern Leaders, with Jenny Green, click here to hear it now.

Sometimes the most important lessons of leadership come from the everyday realities of working life. The uncomfortable, human parts that rarely make it into leadership textbooks.

This week on Leading with Integrity, I was joined by marketing expert Jenny Green, and our conversation took an unusual but important turn. Instead of exploring leadership theory or frameworks, we focused on two topics that almost every workplace encounters yet rarely discusses openly: the realities faced by working parents, and the subtle behaviours that can make a boss uncomfortable, inappropriate, or simply unpleasant to work for.

At first glance those subjects might seem unrelated, but the more we talked, the clearer it became that both are really about the same thing: leadership culture. The way leaders think about people’s lives outside of work, the tone they set for behaviour in the workplace, and the level of empathy they bring to everyday interactions all shape the environment their teams operate within.

What emerged from the discussion was a reminder that leadership isn’t just about delivering results. It’s about creating a workplace where people can actually do their best work; without feeling that they have to leave part of themselves at the door.

One of the main themes of our conversation was the challenge of balancing professional responsibilities with the demands of parenting.

For many leaders, this can be easy to underestimate. After all, the workplace traditionally expects employees to be fully focused on their roles during working hours. But as Jenny pointed out, that expectation can ignore a basic reality: parenting doesn’t switch off when the working day begins.

In fact, expecting parents to neatly compartmentalise those responsibilities can be unrealistic; it’s difficult for many parents to simply leave family concerns behind when they arrive at work, especially when those concerns might involve childcare logistics, school issues, or unexpected disruptions.

I was going to say “This doesn’t mean that work becomes secondary.” but then I was reminded of the truism about ‘living to work vs working to live’ and I honestly believe work should be secondary in all of our lives, whether we’re parents or not. So for true leaders, what this does mean is acknowledging that employees are human beings with full lives outside the office. Leaders who recognise that fact tend to create environments where people feel trusted and supported rather than judged or pressured.

Trust matters. When employees feel understood, they’re more likely to remain engaged, motivated, and loyal to the organisation and its leadership. When they feel that their circumstances are seen as inconveniences, however, the opposite tends to happen. Ultimately, the challenge for leaders is not to eliminate the complexities of working parenthood (which is impossible) but to create systems and cultures that accommodate those realities instead of pretending they don’t exist; sticking your head in the sand or your fingers in your ears metaphorically or literally, taking quite a childish (irony there!) view won’t help your team succeed.

Another insight from our discussion was that good leadership often appears in surprisingly small gestures.

Jenny shared a story from early in her career about a manager who asked team members to list their preferred shifts when building the rota. On the surface this might seem like a minor administrative detail, yet the reasoning behind it was powerful because this manager recognised that if people were constantly forced into schedules they disliked, morale would suffer and the team would become harder to manage.

Instead the manager had the insight to realise offering flexibility, choice, and dialogue about working patterns would be hugely appreciated by the team, pay dividends in staff happiness and lead to higher loyalty and productivity. That approach stood out precisely because it wasn’t the easiest option. It required more effort from the manager, more coordination, and more flexibility.

But it also reflected a simple leadership philosophy: if you want the best from people, you have to consider what their working experience is actually like.

Too often leadership advice focuses on grand strategies or sweeping cultural changes. In reality, the everyday decisions leaders make (like how schedules are set, how conversations are handled, how people’s circumstances are acknowledged) often have a much greater impact on the experience of employees in your team or company.

Leadership culture is built less through slogans and more through small decisions repeated consistently over time.

Alongside the topic of working parents, we also explored a more uncomfortable subject: the “creepy boss”.

Most people have encountered some version of this character during their careers. Sometimes it’s overtly inappropriate behaviour. Other times it’s subtler, awkward comments, intrusive questions, or behaviour that creates discomfort without clearly crossing a formal boundary.

These moments may seem small individually, but collectively they shape how safe and respected people feel in their workplace.

What makes the issue particularly challenging is that many leaders don’t realise they are creating these uncomfortable dynamics. Behaviour that one person considers harmless humour might be deeply uncomfortable for someone else. That’s why awareness and self-reflection matter so much. Leaders need to consider not just their intentions, but the impact their words and actions have on others.

A healthy workplace culture depends on this awareness. When leaders model respectful, thoughtful behaviour, teams tend to follow that example. When they ignore it, the opposite often happens. Culture, after all, spreads through behaviour far more than through policy. What is permitted, overlooked, or repeated tends to be how your culture is defined by those working in it.

The idea that people ‘check the emotions or the personal stuff at the door’ is one of those annoyingly persistent mindsets of what I would call old school (a.k.a. out of date, out of touch, obsolete…) leadership. The simple reality is and always has been this: people bring their entire lives with them to work, some people might be able to compartmentalize, bury or deny, but generally humans can’t just turn it off as they walk through the office door.

This concept of recognising the whole person has come up before in our leadership discussions, yet it still challenges some long-standing assumptions about professionalism (not a fan of this word, it’s too often weaponised by bad managers!) emotional intelligence and identity at work.

For decades, many workplaces operated under the idea that personal life should remain separate from professional life. Employees were expected to leave personal concerns outside the office and maintain a purely professional focus.

But modern workplaces are increasingly recognising that this separation is neither realistic nor healthy. Employees are not machines that switch modes when they walk through the office door. They are people with responsibilities, worries, joys, emotions, families, and pressures that inevitably influence how they show up at work.

Leaders who understand this tend to approach management differently. Rather than expecting employees to hide those realities, they build environments where people feel able to be honest about them and find the support they sometimes need. This isn’t about leaders therapising all their people, but what does and should matter is leaders who can be flexible, make adjustments, and remove workplace stresses when, for example, a parent is worried about their severely unwell child and shouldn’t have to focus on next week’s reporting deadline at work.

It’s not about reducing accountability or ‘letting people off’, but it is about understanding that empathy and performance aren’t opposing ideas. In many cases, empathy is exactly what allows people to perform at their best.

Looking back on the conversation, what struck me most was how human the discussion felt. We didn’t spend the episode analysing complex leadership frameworks or discussing abstract organisational theory; much as I would also have enjoyed that! Instead, we talked about the real people stuff that goes on in real human brains trying to work in real workplaces: parents juggling responsibilities, employees navigating awkward workplace dynamics, and leaders trying, sometimes imperfectly, to create environments where others can thrive.

That’s ultimately what leadership is about: creating safe environments where others can succeed.

It’s not strategy, vision, command, power, authority, control, or any of those other out-of-date words often wrongly used to describe leadership. No, it’s the everyday interactions that shape how people feel about their work, their colleagues, and their place within the organisation.

Supporting working parents, avoiding uncomfortable behaviours, and recognising the realities of people’s lives may not always appear on leadership development frameworks (spoiler: it does on mine!). Yet these are exactly the kinds of issues that define workplace culture in practice.

If leaders want engaged, motivated teams, the starting point is simple: treat people like people. And as this conversation with Jenny reminded me, sometimes the most meaningful leadership lessons come not from grand successes or catastrophic failures, but from the small moments that shape how we work together every day.

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Listen to the full episode on your preferred podcast platform, find the links here: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-221-how-to-spot-horrible-bosses-avoid-becoming-one-and-other-tips-for-modern-leaders-with-jenny-green-leadership

Or, if you’re a video person not an audio one, then you can watch on YouTube too: https://youtu.be/XFFazrmRrgg

Check in again next week for a conversation with Leadership Professor, Tony Silard about his work in fields such as loneliness, social dynamics, gender differences and their impact on leadership and work.

Thanks for reading, listening/watching, and supporting Leading with Integrity; there’s no show without you and I really do appreciate you!

Be a Leader Not a Boss,

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here to help new managers and first-time founders with their leadership skills, so they can become leaders not bosses, lead with integrity, and build happier, higher performing teams, more effective organisations, and, ultimately: successful teams.

Turn away from the dark side of management! If you’re a new manager or first-time leader and you’re feeling lonely, stuck, overwhelmed, or simply ready for your next chapter in leadership, the Integrity Leaders Community offers conversations, courses, resources and support to help you grow one step at a time. If you have a healthy love of sci-fi and want to learn more about leadership, then this is the community for you! Solopreneurs also welcome. 😉

Embrace the Light Side of Leadership today, at: Integrity Leaders: Community membership and learning, for new leaders or first-time founders.