Why your best people still do weird shit

Most “people problems” at work aren’t attitude problems. They’re training gaps.

Anyone who’s trained a puppy will recognise this.

At some point, you’re out on a walk and your puppy spots another dog. While you’re still teaching it to stay calm and do what you ask, it bolts forward and yanks your arm. If it catches you off guard, it might even reach the thing it wants, which usually causes a whole lot more drama.

You get annoyed. The other owner gets annoyed. The dogs get more worked up.

Everyone leaves feeling tense and frustrated.

I know this well because I’m right in the middle of it with Pedro, my seven-month-old cocker spaniel, who currently has more hormones flying around than sense.

Pedro isn’t trying to be defiant. He’s not “being dominant”. What’s happening is much simpler and much more human than that: his nervous system gets dysregulated, he spots something stimulating, and he reacts before there’s any capacity to pause or choose differently.

So that’s what we’re training.

Impulse control.

Here’s the parallel for leaders.

If you’re not actively helping your team build this same capacity, you’re probably dealing with the same problems over and over again, even when you’ve hired smart, kind, experienced people.

Passive-aggressive emails sent in a tone someone would never use in person. People interrupting repeatedly in meetings. Senior leaders stumbling or freezing when asked a tricky question after a presentation. Rumours spreading because a few staff heard that “something’s coming” and filled in the gaps themselves.

These aren’t personality flaws. And they’re rarely about bad intent.

If it is, well then you've made a wrong hire.

When it's involving good-intentioned people, it's actually nervous-system reactions happening faster than they know how to manage.

This is why even your best people still do weird shit sometimes.

The solution isn’t micromanagement or being controlling. It’s training everyone, including yourself, in the subtle skills needed to act in line with organisational values when they feel anxious, threatened, excited, or under pressure, rather than reacting from emotions they don’t yet know how to work with.

Yes, you need to give clear guidance in advance about how things should be handled, and you need to explain what you’re doing as you’re doing it. But that’s not enough on its own. Death by policy or Standard Operating Procedures won't solve it.

People bring lifelong habits with them to work. It’s not that they don’t know what’s best, or that they’re willfully doing the opposite. Often, they quite literally can’t stop themselves in the moment. Even when they have the foundations in place, certain scenarios will press hidden buttons they didn't even know about.

I’ve been there myself.

In a previous role, during a conversation about money, I sent a slightly snippy email to my CEO. It came straight from anxiety. My director rang me immediately. Not annoyed. Not frustrated. He just asked if I was OK and what was going on.

I burst into tears.

It was embarrassing, and also exactly what was needed. That simple, kind question stopped me pushing the anxiety outward and forced me to look at what was underneath it. What I eventually saw was a set of money-mindset issues: I wanted to be earning more, and I didn’t know how to ask for it in a straightforward way.

I respected my CEO. I liked her. I knew that email wasn’t helpful, and if we’d been in a meeting together there’s no way I would have reacted like that.

The issue wasn’t attitude or values. It was impulse control. I created a story in my head and reacted to it immediately. There was no gap in between.

Most leaders will recognise this pattern. Sensible, thoughtful, experienced people sometimes do things that don’t make sense, even to themselves.

The gap is what needs training.

Impulse control has two core parts. So in a way it IS a Standard Operating Procedure, but one that's for the mind and nervous system.

First, people need to be able to notice their reactions as they’re happening, not hours later. Irritation, anxiety, pressure, defensiveness — all starting internally, often before a word has been spoken.

Second, they need the ability to stop themselves from acting on that reaction automatically.

Only then does the next part become possible: questioning interpretation.

What am I making this mean? That I’m not being heard? That I’ve done something wrong? That I’m not respected? That my job might be under threat?

Teams can misinterpret situations in countless ways, and this includes areas that are deeply sensitive and uncomfortable. Sometimes people assume behaviour is coming from an “ism” when it isn’t. Sometimes they’ve simply misunderstood. And sometimes, to be clear, someone really is behaving badly.

None of that makes poor behaviour acceptable. But if we jump straight to assuming a cause, without checking what’s actually going on, we make things harder to resolve.

After someone catches their interpretation, they need to be able to ask what else might be happening, and then have the skills to check it out. That involves a whole set of small, practical communication skills.

But none of this works without the first step: noticing the reaction and not bolting like Pedro.

This is why mindfulness and meditation matter far more than people realise — and also why they’ve been so badly misunderstood.

I'm telling you this as an Ordained Buddhist.

While Buddhism doesn't have a monopoly on these practices, if you do your research you'll find a lot of mindfulness and kindness-based approaches used in Western culture, and workplaces, can trace their roots back 2500 years, to the Buddha sat under a tree in India.

Meditation in this tradition was never about wellbeing. It wasn’t designed to help you relax at the end of a long day or feel vaguely nicer about life. It was always about working directly with mental states. Completely, and irreversibly, breaking free from views and behaviours that lead to more suffering in yourself and others.

Traditionally, there are two broad approaches.

Samatha practices are about calming and steadying the mind. You notice reactions as they arise and prevent yourself from behaving on that basis. Instead, you deliberately cultivate mental states that are calmer and more emotionally buoyant. This can be as simple as mindfulness of breathing, or more active breathwork to settle the body.

Buddhism also has a set of practices known as the Brahma Viharas — loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Again these are 2,500-year-old methods, tried and tested across cultures and time-periods, not something nice and fluffy invented by a lifestyle influencer. The point isn’t just to stop “negative” states, but to actively cultivate ones that make clearer, steadier behaviour more likely.

Then there are vipassana practices, which are about seeing experience more clearly. This isn’t abstract or mystical. Even that simple question, “What am I making this mean?”, is a wisdom practice. When you change how you interpret a situation, the emotional reaction often shifts with it.

None of this is fancy. You don’t need to be a Buddhist, and you don’t need the terminology. All of it translates easily into everyday language.

But if you’re not doing something at this level, you’re probably dealing with far more stress and friction than you need to.

I often hear people say they go for a run to clear their head. That can help, but you can’t go for a run in the middle of a presentation or a difficult conversation. And running won’t help you notice and challenge the stories you’re carrying about the people you work with, stories that quietly drive your stress and behaviour.

Things like, “If I tell him the project’s going badly, he’ll be disappointed and I won’t get promoted,” when that was never actually the case.

This is why telling people to “be more resilient” or “have a better attitude” misses the point. You can’t ask for behaviour change without giving people the tools to make it possible in real time.

I’ve created a free meditation and reflection playlist on YouTube called Less Stress, More Impact. It’s designed specifically for work-related dynamics and brings together both the calming and the insight-building elements I’ve described here.

It’s based on fifteen years of my own practice as a Buddhist and mindfulness practitioner, alongside years working in high-pressure roles. I’ve rarely managed more than ten minutes of daily practice myself. Some people do an hour. I haven’t. A creative, ADHD-leaning mind has its limits.

The point isn’t purity. It’s usefulness.

If you’re a leader, I’d suggest starting by trying the practices yourself. Notice what changes in how you handle pressure, conversations, and uncertainty. Then we can talk about how to introduce this kind of training to your team in a way that genuinely helps them do their jobs better.

Because most so-called people problems aren’t about motivation or character.

They’re about untrained minds, doing exactly what they’ve always done.

And I'm not being offensive when I say our minds are like dogs.

The training never stops.

You MUST keep practising.

You MUST keep creating the supportive conditions needed for your team to keep practising these essential skills for work - instead of deprioritising them as some kind of fuffy wellbeing thing.

Here's why.

That email I sent?

I was already meant to be Ordained within my Buddhist Community by that point - and would have been if it wasn't for COVID ruining the chance for me to go on a three month retreat in Spain.

Ordination partly marks the point at which highly-regarded leaders in our Order consider you to be predominantly living by our ethical values - which include kindness and mindfulness.

I'd been training for Ordination intensively for seven years. Practising mindfulness for 10.

I'd gone on multiple two week retreats, meditating for 4-6 hours a day, working with my mind, observing and transforming my mental states. I even went on a four-week silent meditation retreat in 2015. That shifted a lot. I had a weekly ethical reflection group. A study group. I was teaching too.

Professionally, I had spent years controlling my impulses in other high-pressure environments, in which people were genuinely at risk of dying every day.

And I still wrote that snippy email and sent it impulsively.

Despite having all that training, knowledge and experience.

So with all the humility I can muster:

If I still find this stuff difficult, with everything I have in place to manage my emotional reactions, imagine how hard this is for some of your team?

Exactly.

A one off workshop isn't going to cut it. And don't let anyone try to tell you (or sell you) otherwise.

I've already accepted this is a lifelong practice. If you're serious about making a difference, then you must too.

Here's the link to that playlist.