Episode 6 - Smart People, Emotional Reactions, Broken Cultures.
In episode 6 of The Culture 360 Podccast, host Stu Savage explores the complex dynamics of workplace culture through the lens of emotional reactions and rational thinking. Drawing from Dr. Steve Peters' The Chimp Paradox, Dan Goleman's insights in Emotional Intelligence, and Sam Harris' perspectives on mindfulness, Stu delves into how understanding our brain's systems can lead to healthier organisational environments. Tune in to discover practical tools for leaders and individuals to foster a reflective and connected workplace. Please click the audio link below or the YouTube video above to access the podcast:
Most organisational culture issues don’t start with strategy, structure, or systems.
They start with people.
More specifically, they start with how people think, react, and behave in all types of scenarios.
If you’ve ever wondered:
Why do intelligent people behave irrationally at work?
Why does conflict escalate so quickly?
Why emails are misread, and feedback feels personal?
Why emotions show up at work even when we pretend they shouldn’t?
Then this episode — and this article — is for you.
In Episode 6 of the Culture 360 Podcast, Smart People, Emotional Reactions, Broken Cultures, we explore the human psychology that sits underneath workplace behaviour and culture breakdown. This blog expands on the episode and gives you further resources to go deeper.
Culture Is Psychological Before It Is Strategic
Organisations often try to fix culture with:
Values statements
Communication frameworks
Leadership programmes
Engagement initiatives
These all matter — but they sit on top of something far more fundamental.
Culture is shaped moment by moment by how people interpret events, regulate emotion, and choose behaviour.
And that all happens in the brain.
To unpack this, Episode 6 draws on three powerful thinkers:
Dr Steve Peters – The Chimp Paradox
Daniel Goleman – Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
Sam Harris – Neuroscience, mindfulness, and self-awareness
Together, they offer a practical lens for understanding why cultures break — and how they can be evolved.
The Chimp, the Human, and the Computer
Dr Steve Peters’ Chimp Paradox model is one of the most useful frameworks for understanding workplace behaviour.
According to Peters, we all operate with three interacting systems:
🧠 The Chimp (Emotional Brain)
Fast, reactive, impulsive
Focused on survival, threat, and defence
Jumps to conclusions and personalises situations
If you’ve ever:
Sent an email you later regretted
Read a message and felt instantly attacked
Reacted in a meeting and thought, Why did I do that?
That was your chimp.
Your chimp isn’t bad — it’s emotional.
Your chimp has its own drives and values.
🧠 The Human (Rational Brain)
Logical, reflective, calm
Capable of pausing, listening, and choosing responses
The challenge?
The human brain is slow. When you’re triggered, it temporarily goes offline — which is why emotional reactions arrive before rational thought.
🧠 The Computer (Stored Patterns)
Habits, beliefs, fears, emotional memories
Past experiences that shape current reactions
When something triggers you, the chimp checks the computer for confirmation — all in a fraction of a second.
This explains up to 80% of workplace behaviour.
Why This Matters for Organisational Culture
Zoom out, and a workplace is essentially:
Dozens — sometimes thousands — of chimps interacting with other chimps, all running different computers, often before the human brain has woken up.
This is why:
Conflict escalates
Feedback feels personal
Communication breaks down
Pressure amplifies emotion
It’s not because people are difficult.
It’s because they’re human.
Once leaders understand this, culture becomes far easier to work with — and far less personal.
As Culture 360 guests have highlighted in earlier episodes:
Seek to understand before judgement or control
Always ask what’s underneath the behaviour
There is always something underneath.
Professor Steve Peters is an English psychiatrist who has worked with elite athletes including British Cycling. He has published 4 books, the most well known is ‘The Chimp Paradox’.
Emotional Intelligence: Self-Awareness Comes First
This is where Daniel Goleman’s work on Emotional Intelligence becomes critical.
Goleman identifies core EQ pillars:
Self-awareness
Self-regulation
Social awareness
Communication
Relationship management
But here’s the key point:
Self-awareness comes first.
You can’t regulate what you don’t recognise. You can’t change a behaviour you don’t notice. And you can’t manage your chimp if you don’t realise it’s driving the car.
Many organisations invest heavily in communication training and feedback models — but without self-awareness, none of it sticks.
Emotional Intelligence is arguably the most important skill for any leader to succeed in the future of work. So what is EQ? According to Daniel Goleman, an internationally known psychologist and also known as the father of emotional intelligence, emotional intelligence is a competence, a workplace ability, that makes you stand out from others.
Emotions Are Signals, Not Instructions
Emotions are real. They’re valid.
But they are data, not directives.
Culture breaks down when:
Emotion is allowed to run the organisation
People expect leaders or systems to manage their feelings
Being “happy” becomes a workplace entitlement
Self-awareness flips responsibility back where it belongs — with the individual.
A regulated culture isn’t emotionless. It simply creates space to feel and space to think.
You Are Not Your Thoughts or Feelings
Neuroscientist and author Sam Harris adds another crucial layer.
You don’t choose your first thought. You don’t choose your first emotional reaction.
They simply appear.
But — and this is the difference-maker — you do choose what happens next.
Harris encourages us to:
Observe thoughts rather than become them
Notice emotions without acting on them
Create space between stimulus and response
Practice meditation and mindfulness
In that space, even a small one, we regain control:
Over communication
Over behaviour
Over culture
This is self-awareness in action.
By examining the raw textures of difficult emotions like anger and sadness, Sam Harris explains how we can experience them without suffering, and how digging into awareness reveals a layer of openness below the mental state.
Practical Tools for Everyday Culture
So what can leaders, teams, and individuals actually do?
1. Understand Your Own Brain
You live in it every day — but most of us were never taught how it works.
Learning the basics of emotional processing changes everything.
2. Pause and Name the Emotion
Ask:
What am I feeling?
Why might it be there?
Naming emotion reduces its intensity.
3. Ask: “Is This My Chimp or My Human?”
That question alone creates distance from reaction.
4. Choose the Best Version of Yourself
What would the best version of you do here?
5. Slow the System Down
You don’t need to reply immediately. Pause emails. Ask clarifying questions. Assume less.
Leaders who say, “Let me think about that” model emotional maturity — and culture follows behaviour.
The Invitation
Culture is not just strategy, policy, or process.
Culture is human psychology at scale.
When we understand the chimp, the human, and the computer within each of us, we create workplaces where people feel:
Safer
More connected
More understood
More effective
A regulated culture will always outperform an emotional one.
In case you missed it…
In episode 4 of The Culture 360 Podcast (below), host Stu Savage engages with James Nelson, a counsellor and consultant, to explore the intricate relationship between counselling and organisational culture. They discuss James's journey into counselling, the importance of understanding organisational dynamics, and the role of emotional intelligence in fostering a healthy workplace. This episode dovetails nicely with the current episode 6. Please check it out below: