17/04/2025

Ending the Them and Us Era. 

There’s a seductive lie in most organisations:
That someone else is going to fix the culture.

“Leadership needs to sort this.”
“They should bring in better comms.”
“That’s above my pay grade.”

It’s understandable. When disconnection feels systemic, we assume the fix has to be, too. 

However…

Cultures don’t change by decree. They change by behaviour.
They don’t shift with new logos or strategy decks—they shift in conversation, in decision-making, in what we tolerate and what we question.

So while senior leaders have an outsized influence, they can’t carry the whole thing. Culture isn’t owned by the org chart—it’s shaped by whoever’s in the room (or on the call). If you’re in the building, you’re in the culture. That includes you. Yes, even if you’re freelance, or hybrid, or “just trying to get through this quarter”.

Because Them and Us doesn’t wait for permission to spread.
And neither should we wait for permission to change it.

The good news is, the antidote isn’t dramatic and it doesn’t require a six-figure budget or a two-day reset retreat in the Lake District. It starts with noticing. With interrupting the narrative. With choosing curiosity instead of assumption. It starts small—but it starts now.

And it starts with you.

 

Stop Waiting for the Memo (and Why Culture Is a Feedback Loop)

If you’re waiting for a “No More Office Tribalism” memo to land, you’ll be waiting a while.Possibly until the end of the financial year. Possibly until the heat-death of the universe.

Cultures don’t shift because someone writes a punchy email, they shift when people behave differently—and when those new behaviours start getting noticed, echoed, and repeated.

As the brilliant Edgar Schein once put it:

“If you want to understand an organisation’s culture, don’t read the values on the wall—watch what people do when something goes wrong.”

Because that’s where culture really lives:

• In how we respond to friction
• In whether we escalate or enquire
• In whether we assume the worst, or ask better questions

Culture is a feedback loop

It’s less about what’s declared and more about what’s normalised. It’s built through every interaction, email, or offhand comment that tells people:

This is how things work around here.
This is what gets rewarded.
This is what gets ignored.

In a Them and Us environment, the loop is self-reinforcing:

• You feel excluded
• You stop including others
• The other team notices
• They withdraw
• The silence gets interpreted as disinterest or disdain
• And round we go

Breaking that cycle doesn’t take heroics. It takes interruptions. Tiny, intentional ones.

The Next Time…

…someone says “They always do this”, ask “Why do you think that is?”
…you’re tempted to vent to your own team, consider whether you could open a conversation with the other one instead.
…a plan is made, ask “Who haven’t we included yet?”

These aren’t dramatic acts. But they’re disruptive ones. They push against the grain, nd that’s how cultures change: not through campaigns, but through conversations.

 

What Everyone Can Do Today

You don’t need to go and build a bridge in the Quantocks or throw an axe in the South Downs to shift Them and Us, you just need a bit of awareness, a few better habits, and a willingness to go first.

Here’s what’s within reach—right now, today, from wherever you’re working:

 

Interrogate Your Assumptions

Someone says: “Product are always last-minute.” Your brain nods. Of course they are. That’s just what they’re like.

Now pause.

Is that actually true—or just the story you’ve rehearsed because it fits the mood?

Asking “What story am I telling myself about them?” is a powerful way to interrupt the bias and re-open curiosity. It’s a favourite move of researcher Brené Brown—and it works because it turns instinct into inquiry.

 

Build Micro-Connections

No one’s saying you need to be best mates with Procurement, but when was the last time you had a quick, non-transactional chat with someone from another team?

According to MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab, informal interactions—banter, Slack threads, even “how was your weekend?”—are core to trust and team performance – they aren’t distractions. They’re culture-building moments.

 

Swap Judgement for Curiosity

Judgement says: “They didn’t include us again.”  Curiosity says: “I wonder why we weren’t looped in—have we made our needs visible enough?”

That shift might seem subtle, but it changes the energy of a conversation entirely, from passive-aggressive to open-ended and from defensive to collaborative.

 

Use Plural Pronouns (Yes, Really)

“We missed something.”

Better than

“They dropped the ball.”

Inclusive language sends a signal. It moves the dynamic from blame to shared responsibility.

And it works. Research from group psychologist Susan Fiske shows people are far more likely to behave collaboratively when they feel linguistically included. You’re not just being diplomatic, you’re rewiring the narrative in real-time.

 

A Quick List of Culture Nudges:

• Ask someone outside your team: “What’s making your job hard right now?”
• Give a cross-team compliment in public—not just in DMs.
• Invite someone to a meeting because they’ll benefit, not just because they’re essential.
• The next time someone jokes about “typical Sales”—don’t.

These aren’t grand gestures. But they are powerful ones. Culture doesn’t change through keynote slides. It changes through behaviour. And behaviour starts one decision at a time.

 

The Leader’s Box-Out: Be a Bridge, Not a Bouncer

If you’re in a leadership role and wondering whether this applies to you—yes. It does. (And no—you can’t delegate it to HR!)

Leadership in a Them and Us culture is a bit like owning a dog: If it chews the sofa and barks at the neighbours, sure—it’s everyone’s problem.

But it’s mostly yours.

That doesn’t mean you caused it. But it does mean you’re uniquely placed to change the tone.

In fact, research from Daniel Goleman suggests leaders act as emotional thermostats for organisations. People look to you not just for decisions, but for cues—how to behave, how to interpret tension, how to talk about other teams.

So here’s how you can set the temperature well:

 

 Model Cross-Team Trust

Speak with respect about other departments—even when it’s tempting not to. Your team will notice. And they’ll copy you.

Talk about people like they’re in the room. If you’re frustrated, express it constructively—not as character judgment, but as collaboration friction.

 

Name the Divide (Gently)

If tribal dynamics are bubbling under, don’t ignore them.
Call them in—not out.

“I’ve noticed we’ve started saying ‘they’ a lot when we talk about Ops. That worries me. Let’s explore that.”

Name the behaviour. De-dramatise it. Open space for dialogue.

 

Reward the Right Stuff

If you only spotlight individual heroes or intra-team wins, you reinforce separateness, but if you celebrate collaboration—especially between teams that rarely get praised together—you start to shift the story.

One cross-functional shout-out can undo ten cynical asides.

 

Accept That Culture Isn’t a KPI

You can’t tick this off. You can’t track it on a dashboard – Culture is maintenance, not a milestone.

Which means your job isn’t to fix everything—it’s to stay in the work, to model openness when things are messy and to create space for others to step in. To notice and nudge, again and again.

You don’t have to be a hero, you just have to be human—and be willing to go first.

 

A Shared Culture Is a Chosen Culture

Cultures don’t magically “get better.” They get chosen. Repeatedly. On purpose. Often on a Tuesday afternoon, with no biscuits and a dodgy Wi-Fi signal.

There’s a comforting lie that people sometimes fall into at work: the idea that culture is something someone else owns. That it lives in the HR handbook or sits behind the CEO’s eyes. But culture is co-authored, whether we mean to or not.

Every team has a choice to make—whether they want to keep trading in low-trust assumptions and weary sarcasm, or if they’d rather start building something more open, more connected, and (let’s be honest) less exhausting.

It’s not about agreeing on everything, it’s about staying in the room when you don’t. It’s about choosing curiosity over cynicism, and being just brave enough to go first.

As organisational psychologist Adam Grant puts it:

“A culture of original thinking isn’t built on having the best ideas—it’s built on having the safety to share them.”

That safety doesn’t come from ping pong tables or branded hoodies. It comes from the conversations people choose to have, and the tone they choose to set—even (especially) when things are difficult.

If Part 1 was about seeing the cracks, this part has been about making the choice to repair them. It won’t be fast, and it’s unlikely to be tidy, but it is absolutely possible.

And it starts with you.

 

Ready to reconnect your culture?

If what you’ve read here rings worryingly true—don’t worry. You’re not the only one seeing it, and you don’t have to fix it alone.

Whether you’re leading a team, supporting one, or just want to shift the dynamic in your corner of the organisation—we can help.

💬 Book a discovery call with us here: hello.leadhappy.co.uk/welcome
No jargon. No sales pitch. Just a proper conversation about where things are, and where they could be.

Let’s build a culture that works—for everyone in it.