Five 10-minute curated insights in a private podcast to help you face CEO pressures. Then, each Wednesday, The Leadership Letter delivers one piece of clear, honest thinking from someone who has spent 20 years in the seat you're sitting in. Practical enough to use. Human enough to matter.
Us, them, and the leader who refuses to choose
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Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more. READ TIME: 9 MINUTES | 3 JUNE, 2026 | READ ON PHILHSC.COM It doesn’t take long to see ‘us’ and ‘them’ cultures in organisations. It shows up in militaries, emergency services, break rooms and executive team meetings, and it operates whether it’s intended or not. I felt it soon after enlisting in the Army and again in my corporate jobs. I started paying closer attention to it recently. As the worst of COVID passed and the teams I work with began rebuilding, I noticed how much harder belonging had become to manufacture, and how quickly tired people reach for an enemy to explain the exhaustion. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s how soldiers talk about officers and how paramedics talk about ‘management’. Bus drivers talk this way about ‘the depot’ and nurses talk this way about doctors. The words carry an almost affectionate contempt, a kind of shorthand that bonds the people saying it as much as it diminishes the people being described. This is the act of ‘othering’ and it’s one of the most reliable social behaviours humans produce. And it’s easy to treat othering as a failure of character but I don’t think it is. I think it’s a feature of how groups work. And once you see it as a feature rather than a bug, you can lead differently because leadership here is a choice anyone can make from wherever they sit. The trick to leading when othering exists is to do it without exiling yourself from your own people, and that might be easier than it sounds.
See you next Wednesday, Phil Hayes-St Clair |
The Leadership Letter with Phil Hayes-St Clair
Five 10-minute curated insights in a private podcast to help you face CEO pressures. Then, each Wednesday, The Leadership Letter delivers one piece of clear, honest thinking from someone who has spent 20 years in the seat you're sitting in. Practical enough to use. Human enough to matter.
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