The science of workplace dysfunction

My interview with the Team Lab Podcast

My route to the study of human behaviour in workplaces was through cancer research, where my work focused on how the tissue microenvironment influences cellular behaviour, particularly the conditions that enable abnormal growth, tumour invasion, and metastasis. Cells become malignant within a permissive microenvironment that fail to register threat, while tumours co-opt surrounding systems to persist, amplify, and spread, causing disruption far beyond their point of origin.

Once you see this mechanism clearly in a biological system, it’s not hard to start seeing it human relational ecosystems.

The AI’s interpretation of my job description.

This systems-based understanding extends into organisations and is where I draw inspiration for my analyses of human-system interaction and group dynamics in workplaces. Workplaces function as environments that organise behaviour through incentive structures governing access, status, protection, legitimacy, and advancement. These structures covertly shape how people relate over time. Behaviour adapts to what sustains viability within the system, producing stable and highly predictable patterns of conduct, even if the conduct is morally questionable yet is perceived as upstanding.

This adaptation is formative in what I’ve written about as a passive assimilation process. Individuals who see themselves as ethical, principled, and well-intentioned, but lack the capacity to express these qualities, learn to withhold information, downplay and delay concerns, avoid pointing out problems, and redirect responsibility in response to organisational signals. They develop an understanding of what enables success through repeated participation in everyday work interactions, reshaping the moral disposition with which they entered the workplace.

What happens when you don't resist assimilation

From this perspective, workplace dynamics can be traced directly to how incentives are structured and enforced. Psychological safety, trust, scapegoating, and narcissistic behaviours feature in environments where authority and protection are exercised through informal rules rather than explicit accountability. People adjust themselves based on what preserves standing, limits risk, and maintains favour, which is why these patterns persist even in organisations that publicly endorse ethical values.

In this conversation with the Team Lab Podcast hosts, Angela Migliaccio and Cori Caldwell, we explore how everyday workplace interactions shape conduct over time, how people adapt to what is reinforced or discouraged, and how relational patterns stabilise within teams and organisations. The discussion focuses on how trust, psychological safety, scapegoating, and authority operate in practice rather than as stated ideals. This podcast offers a dose of reality by making sense of workplace behaviour as it unfolds to support discernment and deliberate choices about how to engage, adapt, or exit.

Let us know your thoughts about this conversation here and/or on their podcast page. You can find them on Apple iTunes, Spotify and YouTube.

---

Hack Narcissism and support my work

Hacking Narcissism is for people trying to make sense of a morally distorting and chaotic age. When moral development is disincentivised, people lose reliable reference points for discernment and struggle to distinguish between what’s real, what’s performative, and what’s covertly shaping their perception.

Narcissistic traits are expressed in everyone (often referred to as Cluster B traits). They flourish during periods of moral decline because they help secure status, protection, and significance in environments where norms of what appears correct, rather than what is grounded in moral principles, regulate behaviour. The effect of this behaviour is experienced in all types of relationships, including in workplaces, where people can be punished for violating norms they never agreed to and were never made explicit.

By supporting my research and writing, you’re supporting an effort to understand the processes shaping reality and relationships, to disentangle from dysfunctional relational dynamics, and to remain anchored to truths that guide perception rather than allowing external influences to shape it. Your support enables me to continue making sense of patterns that many people recognise but struggle to articulate, and to clarify the actions that allow people to free themselves from those patterns.

Here’s how you can help:

• Order my books: The Little Book of Assertiveness: Speak up with confidence and The Scapegoating Playbook at Work

• Support my work:

  • through a Substack subscription

  • by sharing my work with your loved ones and networks

  • by citing my work in your presentations and posts

  • by inviting me to speak, deliver training or consult for your organisation