When I was a boy, I wasn’t often seen. I was looked after, cared for. I was held and comforted, especially after some painful experience. But I wasn’t often seen. I was a good boy when inside I wanted to rage. I tried hard, all the time, when inside I wanted not to care. I was compliant, and therefore complicit, in not being fully appreciated.

Stopped in my tracks, I looked around the room and guessed again: ‘How many of you grew up in homes with a lot of yelling?’ Twenty-three of the twenty-five employees raised their hands.

The problem wasn’t conflict avoidance, I pointed out. The problem was fear: leftover childhood fears. Fear of the consequences of anger. And because the most senior people had never acknowledged the ways their leadership styles, the choices they made as leaders, were rooted in old patterns, the patterns were replicated and amplified.

We ask: How, indeed, have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want? More to the point, what am I willing to give up to stop being complicit?

How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?

Power in the hands of one afraid or unwilling to look in the mirror perpetuates an often silent, always seething violence in the workplace. Worse still, when a leader leads from his or her shadow, the dismembering havoc is perpetuated down the line until the company, the tribe, the community simply assumes this is how life must be.