A Curious Space: Leadership, Culture and Teams

In this episode, Kate and Maddie dive into belonging: why it matters so much to individuals and organisations, what it actually looks and feels like in practice, and how you can start building it in your team today. Spoiler: it's not about writing a policy. It's about the small stuff.
What We Cover
1. Belonging beyond a slogan We talk about why belonging is so fundamental, to individuals and to organisations. Kate shares insights from Helen Beedham's new book People Glue, which looks at what makes organisations sticky: the kind that people want to join, stay in, and bring their best selves to. We explore the neuroscience of exclusion (yes, it literally hurts), why belonging is a collective responsibility, and why it takes more than one "inclusion month" to make it real.
2. Belonging vs inclusion vs fit There's an important distinction between diversity, inclusion, and belonging, and there's one word that comes up constantly in hiring that we really don't like. We look at why "cultural fit" is a lazy shorthand that often just means "like me," how it quietly blocks difference, and what a better question to be asking might be. We also take a small detour into the nine-box grid. Kate has feelings.
3. Designing belonging without erasing difference Diverse teams genuinely outperform, but only when they're well supported. We look at Randall Peterson's research on what helps diverse teams thrive, including building trust deliberately, guarding against coordination failures, and making decision-making transparent. We also talk about amplification, a simple but powerful practice that came out of the Obama administration's female staffers and still holds up brilliantly today.
Things to Try
Share who you are, not just what you do. As a leader, try telling your team something about yourself that has nothing to do with work. You're modelling that there's room here for full humans, not just job titles. It's a small act that signals a lot.
Start your next meeting with a check-in. Two words, one to ten, a mood thermometer, a llama picture: pick your format. The point is acknowledging that people arrive as whole people, not just resources. It also gives you useful information as a leader about who might need a bit more support.
Watch who has airtime. Run yourself a quiet experiment this week: observe who speaks in meetings, whose ideas land, and whose get talked over. Then deliberately invite in the quieter voices. Notice what shifts.
Try amplification. When someone's idea gets echoed by someone else, name the originator: "As Kate was saying..." It's simple, it's effective, and it changes the texture of a room over time.
Find Out More
People Glue by Helen Beedham
No Hard Feelings: Emotions at Work and How They Help Us Succeed by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy
Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown (or her podcast, for her thinking on belonging specifically)
Time to Think by Nancy Kline (on the Thinking Environment and equality of voice in meetings)
Randall Peterson's research on diversity and team performance https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/four-ways-get-best-out-diverse-teams-randall-s-peterson/ 
Agony Aunt/Culture Clinic
Got a culture challenge you'd like Kate and Maddie to think through? We're collecting questions for our Agony Aunt episodes at the end of this series. Send yours to hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com
If you enjoyed this episode, a five-star rating or a follow goes a long way for a new podcast. And if you know someone who'd love this, please share it with them.
Thanks to our producer Tim Fox and music creator Richard Flindell for making A Curious Space sound the way it does.

What if the narratives running through your organization are shaping performance in ways you've never noticed? In this episode, Maddie and Kate explore the power of storytelling at three critical levels: the stories we tell ourselves, the stories around us, and the stories organizations tell.
From growth mindset to system traps, from medieval fairs to Patagonia's environmental activism, we unpack how deliberate storytelling can transform individual performance, team dynamics, and organizational culture. Plus, we share why appreciation matters more than you think, and what a housekeeper's trip to Hawaii can teach us about company values.
In This Episode
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
How self-narratives become self-fulfilling prophecies
The power of reframing and conducting a "story audit"
Carol Dweck's growth mindset research: why praising effort matters more than praising intelligence
Practice makes progress: shifting from fixed to growth mindsets
The Stories Around Us
The Pygmalion Effect: how expectations shape performance
System traps and the "drift to low performance"
Why the nine-box grid might be reinforcing the wrong narratives
The emotional bank account: why specific appreciation beats generic praise
How to escape the vortex of negative organisational narratives
The Stories Organizations Tell
Why leaders need to repeat messages until they're sick of saying them
How to honor organisational heritage while driving change
The Ritz Carlton's $2,000 laptop story and what it teaches about culture
Patagonia's environmental activism narrative and paying legal fees for protesters
Crafting change narratives that connect to existing organisational stories
One Thing to Try
If you're a leader running a project or implementing change, try writing the story of your initiative. Don't just focus on the what and why—think about:
How does this link to the past?
How does it build on existing organizational narratives?
How does this help evolve those stories?
What future are you trying to create?
Write it out, then share it with people and see if it lands differently.
Referenced in This Episode
Books:
Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
The Future of the Responsible Company: What We've Learned from Patagonia's First 50 Years by Patagonia
Time to Think, Nancy Kline
Research & Concepts:
Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset research (Stanford University)
The Pygmalion Effect (Rosenthal and Jacobson)
System traps: "Drift to Low Performance" and "Success to the Successful" from Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows
Gallup workplace engagement studies
Nancy Kline's work on appreciation and thinking environments
Watch:
Ted Lasso (Apple TV) - A masterclass in building culture through storytelling
Connect With Us
Got a question for our Agony Aunts episode? We'd love to hear from you! Send your workplace dilemmas, leadership challenges, or organizational puzzles to: hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com
About the Hosts
Maddie Fox is the founder of Madfox Group, working with organizations on leadership development, culture change, and coaching.
Kate Nicholroy is the founder of The Good Ideas Agency, specializing in innovation, systems thinking, and organizational development.
Credits
Music: Richard FlindellProducer: Tim Fox
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Your support helps us reach more curious leaders.
Coming Next Episode: Building cultures that enable belonging—and why you'd want to.

How individuals influence culture (and what Zorro can teach us about it)
Culture often gets talked about as something set by leaders, strategies and values decks.
In this episode of A Curious Space, we zoom in somewhere else.
We explore the role individuals play in shaping culture day to day, through small choices, habits and behaviours that quietly ripple out across teams and organisations.
We unpack a simple but powerful idea: we all have the power to significantly shape the cultures we are part of, especially when we do it together.
In this episode, Kate and Maddie discuss:
Why culture is made up of small actions rather than grand gestures
How individuals can influence culture intentionally, even without formal authority
Emotional contagion, mood hoovers and radiators
The spheres of control, influence and concern, and why they matter when change feels overwhelming
What Zorro can teach us about growing influence by starting small
How team identity shapes behaviour and outcomes
Why being deliberate about “how we want to be” as a team really matters
As ever, we share practical reflections, useful frameworks and ideas you can take straight back into your work.
References and further reading
Stephen Covey – Spheres of Control, Influence and Concern
Margaret Heffernan – Beyond Measure
Sean Achor – The Happiness Advantage
Haslam, Reicher & Platow – Research on leadership identity and “who we are”
Drexler–Sibbet Team Performance Model
Got a team dilemma?
We’re collecting questions, challenges and conundrums for our Agony Aunt episodes later in the series.
If you’ve got a tricky team dynamic, a culture question, or something you’d love a thoughtful outside perspective on, email us at:
hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com
Thank you
Huge thanks to our brilliant producer, Tim Fox, for keeping us on track and making the podcast sound far more coherent than it sometimes feels in the moment.
And thank you to our music creator, Richard Flindell,  for the soundtrack that carries us in and out of these conversations so beautifully.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it, rate it, or send it to someone who might need a reminder that small actions really do matter.

In this episode of A Curious Space, Kate and Maddie explore one of the biggest (and most underestimated) forces shaping organisational culture: leaders and founders.
From emotional “weather systems” to decision-making habits and unexamined assumptions, this conversation looks at how culture is created every day — often unintentionally — through how leaders show up, decide, and relate to others.
Along the way, we share practical reflections, coaching insights, and one simple thing you can try immediately if you lead (or influence) others.
What we explore
1. Leaders and founders set the emotional temperatureHow leaders’ moods, stress levels and ways of showing up ripple through teams — whether they intend it or not. We explore why this impact is amplified in leadership roles and how awareness is the first lever for change.
2. Decision-making as culture in actionWho gets listened to, how decisions really get made (not just how governance says they should), and how leaders shape culture through what they prioritise, question, or bypass.
3. The unintended influence leaders carryFrom inherited beliefs and assumptions to past organisational experiences, leaders bring a lot with them. We unpack why unexamined assumptions can quietly undermine good intentions — and what helps surface them.
One thing to try
Before your next meeting, pause for 30 seconds and ask yourself:“How do I want to be in this room — and what will help me show up that way?”
It might be a breath, a reset, a smile before you click “join”, or building small gaps between meetings. Tiny shifts in presence can have outsized effects.
Find out more
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership – Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman & Kaley Warner Klemp(Including the simple but powerful above the line / below the line model)
Harvard Business Review article: If You Want to Be a Great Leader, Be PresentOn mindfulness, presence, and the measurable impact leaders have on team performance and wellbeing
Agony Aunt: your questions wanted
We’re collecting real dilemmas for our upcoming Agony Aunt–style bonus episodes.
If you have:
a tricky team dynamic
a leadership challenge
a culture or collaboration question
📩 Email us at hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com
We’d love to explore it with you.
Coming up next
In the next episode, we shift the lens away from leaders and ask:What role can everyone else play in shaping culture — regardless of job title?
Thanks for listening, and see you next time in A Curious Space.

In the first episode of A Curious Space, hosts Kate Nicholroy and Maddie Fox kick off their opening series with a practical exploration of organisational culture: what it really is, how it forms, and why leaders can’t afford to ignore it.
Moving beyond values statements and posters on the wall, Kate and Maddie unpack culture as “the way things actually get done around here” — the visible and invisible forces that shape behaviour, decision-making and performance. Using the iceberg model of culture, they explore the gap between what organisations say they value and what people experience day to day.
Through examples from Timpsons, Netflix and investment banking, they examine how different cultural choices play out in practice, why culture change takes time, and how small leadership behaviours can create powerful ripple effects. The episode also introduces new ways of thinking about organisations as living systems rather than machines — and what that means for leadership, trust and learning.
This episode is for leaders who know culture matters, and want to shape it intentionally rather than leaving it to chance.
Key leadership reflections:
Culture is tested most when leaders are under pressure
Small, repeated leadership behaviours create outsized cultural impact
People are quick to spot dissonance between stated values and lived reality
Owning the culture you actually have enables more honest hiring and engagement
Fear shuts down learning — and leaders set the tone for both
Resources mentioned:
Wheatley, Margaret — Leadership and the New Science
Heffernan, Margaret — Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes
Coyle, Daniel — The Culture Code
Morgan, Gareth — Images of Organization
McCord, Patty — Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility
Gratton, Lynda — work on organisational “hotspots” and high-performing teams
Brown, Brené — writing and talks on leadership, vulnerability and high performance
Send us your agony aunt suggestions, or your general thoughts to hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com  we'd love to hear from you!
This episode was recorded by your hosts Maddie Fox of MadFox Group, and Kate Nicholroy of the Good Ideas Agency.  It was produced by Tim Fox with original music by Richard Flindell.

Episode 0: Welcome to a Curious Space
What does it really mean to be human at work, and why does that matter more than ever right now?
Senior leaders are under more pressure than ever, to deliver results, keep teams engaged, and drive innovation, while navigating constant change and uncertainty. In this intro episode, Kate Nicholroy and Maddie Fox explain why curiosity and culture are the two most powerful levers you can pull to build high-performing, resilient organisations.
They share insights from their work as coaches and facilitators, explore the real challenges organisations face today, and explain what to expect from Season 1: practical, actionable ways to influence culture and make your organisation thrive.
If you lead people or teams, this is your space to think differently—and make work better for everyone.
Welcome to A Curious Space!