By Jyee Byrne | Founder, Wolfpack Support Services
What if the person struggling isn’t the only thing that needs to change?
Imagine walking into a workplace where employees are constantly under pressure.
Deadlines are being missed.
Communication is deteriorating.
People are becoming frustrated.
Staff are taking more sick leave.
Mistakes are increasing.
And the people who were once reliable are beginning to struggle.
Management notices.
Something needs to change.
So what happens?
More performance meetings.
Additional training.
New procedures.
Stricter expectations.
Perhaps a resilience workshop to help employees manage stress.
But here’s a question worth asking before investing in another solution.
What if the problem isn’t simply the people?
What if the organisation itself is contributing to the behaviour it’s trying to correct?
This is one of the most important questions we explore through the Wolfpack Way of understanding human behaviour.
Because sometimes the behaviour we see in an individual is influenced by the conditions surrounding them.
And if we only focus on changing the individual, we might completely overlook what needs to change around them.
We Keep Trying to Fix People Without Examining Their Environment
Think about how organisations generally respond when something goes wrong.
An employee becomes frustrated.
They need to improve their attitude.
A team struggles with communication.
They need communication training.
Staff are overwhelmed.
They need better stress management.
Performance declines.
They need to work more efficiently.
Sometimes these conclusions are reasonable.
People have responsibilities.
Skills matter.
Professional behaviour matters.
And employees should be accountable for meeting reasonable expectations.
But there’s another side to this conversation.
What if the workload has become unreasonable?
What if expectations constantly change?
What if employees receive conflicting instructions?
What if people are responsible for outcomes without having the authority or resources to achieve them?
What if managers are unintentionally creating additional pressure through poor communication?
What if the workplace culture rewards overworking while discouraging people from asking for help?
And what if these conditions are affecting multiple employees?
At what point do we stop asking what’s wrong with the individual and start examining the environment they’re working inside?
That is where understanding human behaviour becomes an organisational responsibility.
Behaviour Doesn’t Happen in Isolation
In my book, See the Human: The Human Hologram and the Wolfpack Way of Understanding Behaviour, I introduce an educational framework called the Human Hologram™.
It encourages us to consider human behaviour from six directions.
SEEN. What are we observing?
BENEATH. What might be happening inside the person?
AROUND. What relationships, expectations, conditions and systems surround them?
BEFORE. What experiences came before this moment?
NOW. How much pressure are they carrying, and how much capacity is available?
NEXT. What happens because of the behaviour and our response?
For this conversation, I want to focus on one direction.
AROUND.
Because when organisations experience behavioural or performance problems, they often focus heavily on the individual.
Their attitude.
Their motivation.
Their communication.
Their resilience.
Their capability.
But people don’t operate independently from the environments around them.
Their behaviour is influenced by relationships, expectations, resources, organisational culture, leadership and the systems they work within.
This doesn’t mean the environment explains every behaviour.
And it certainly doesn’t remove personal responsibility.
It means the environment deserves examination alongside the individual.
The problem cannot always be solved at the same place it becomes visible.
Sometimes behaviour becomes visible in an employee, even when part of the pressure contributing to it is being created elsewhere.
The Reliable Employee Who Eventually Stops Coping
Imagine an employee who has worked for an organisation for several years.
They’re experienced.
Competent.
Dependable.
They’re the person everybody turns to when something goes wrong.
A colleague needs assistance.
Ask them.
A deadline is approaching.
They’ll handle it.
Someone makes a mistake.
They’ll fix it.
A new employee needs guidance.
They’ll provide it.
Eventually, their capability becomes the reason everyone keeps giving them more responsibility.
They manage.
So they receive more.
They manage that too.
Until something changes.
Two employees leave the organisation.
Their responsibilities are redistributed.
A new system is introduced.
Management increases performance expectations.
And the reliable employee continues absorbing the additional workload.
Nobody necessarily intends to overload them.
It simply happens.
One responsibility at a time.
Then the employee begins struggling.
They become forgetful.
Their patience decreases.
They make mistakes.
They stop contributing ideas.
Their communication becomes shorter.
Management notices.
“What’s happened to them?”
“They used to be so reliable.”
“They need to manage their workload better.”
Perhaps.
But let’s examine the situation differently.
Did their capability disappear?
Or did the organisation gradually increase their responsibilities beyond what they could reasonably manage?
Sometimes the most capable employee becomes the person carrying the most unreasonable expectations.
And because they’ve demonstrated they can handle pressure, everyone assumes they can continue handling more.
Until their capacity changes.
Then the organisation responds to the performance decline without examining how it contributed to the load.
This is where we risk confusing an individual performance problem with a broader organisational problem.
When the System Creates the Behaviour It Punishes
Let’s take the example further.
An employee is consistently interrupted throughout the day.
Their manager changes priorities without warning.
They receive urgent requests from several different people.
They are expected to attend meetings while completing work that requires uninterrupted concentration.
The employee begins missing deadlines.
Management responds by introducing additional reporting requirements.
Now the employee must spend more time documenting their progress.
More meetings are scheduled.
More updates are requested.
More pressure is added.
The employee struggles further.
Management becomes increasingly frustrated.
The employee is now described as unreliable.
But consider what’s happening.
The system may be contributing to the behaviour, then responding in a way that increases the conditions contributing to it.
That doesn’t automatically mean the employee is doing everything correctly.
Perhaps they need to communicate sooner.
Perhaps they need better prioritisation skills.
Perhaps they made decisions that contributed to the problem.
Those things deserve attention.
But they aren’t the entire picture.
If we want performance to improve, we need to understand whether our response is addressing the difficulty or making it harder.
Because adding more pressure to someone who is already overloaded is not automatically an effective performance strategy.
Sometimes it becomes part of the problem.
The Difference Between Managing Behaviour and Understanding the Conditions
Organisations need rules.
Workplaces need expectations.
Managers need authority.
Employees need accountability.
Without those things, organisations struggle to function.
But there is an important difference between establishing expectations and understanding whether the conditions allow people to meet them.
Imagine two employees working in the same organisation.
They have the same job description.
The same responsibilities.
The same deadlines.
And the same performance expectations.
One manages comfortably.
The other struggles.
It’s tempting to conclude that the second employee lacks resilience or capability.
Maybe they do need additional training.
But what else might differ?
One employee has years of experience.
The other is still learning.
One has a quiet environment where they can concentrate.
The other experiences constant interruptions.
One has adequate support.
The other is covering responsibilities beyond their role.
One has enough time to recover between demanding periods.
The other is repeatedly moving from one high-pressure situation into another.
Same expectations.
Different conditions.
Different available capacity.
Treating everyone identically doesn’t automatically mean the demands affect everyone equally.
This doesn’t require organisations to remove standards or personalise every task.
It requires leaders to recognise that identical expectations can create different levels of pressure.
And effective leadership involves understanding those differences before deciding what action is appropriate.
Your Organisational Culture Might Be Rewarding the Problem
Let’s explore something else.
Workplace culture.
Most organisations have official values.
Teamwork.
Respect.
Accountability.
Communication.
Integrity.
But culture isn’t simply what appears on the website or office wall.
It’s also what people experience through everyday expectations and decisions.
Consider an organisation that regularly praises employees who stay late.
The people who answer emails outside working hours are described as dedicated.
The employee who takes on additional responsibilities receives recognition.
The person who never asks for help becomes the example everyone else is encouraged to follow.
Meanwhile, employees who establish reasonable boundaries worry they’ll be seen as less committed.
What behaviour is the organisation rewarding?
Perhaps it’s unintentionally encouraging employees to demonstrate commitment by continually accepting additional pressure.
Now imagine someone eventually becomes overwhelmed.
The organisation tells them:
“You need better work-life balance.”
But what behaviour has the organisation spent years rewarding?
There may be a contradiction between the culture it claims to promote and the behaviours it actually reinforces.
Organisations teach people what matters through what they reward, tolerate and repeatedly expect.
This is why leadership needs to examine more than individual behaviour.
Sometimes an organisation’s culture encourages patterns that eventually become expensive for the people maintaining them.
And when those patterns begin creating difficulties, the organisation needs to recognise its contribution.
What If Your Leadership Style Is Adding Pressure?
This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable.
Because it’s easy to examine an employee’s behaviour.
It’s harder to examine our own.
Imagine you’re leading a team.
You’re under pressure from senior management.
Deadlines are approaching.
Customers are unhappy.
Resources are limited.
You need results.
You begin checking on employees more frequently.
You send additional reminders.
You become less patient.
Your communication becomes sharper.
You start making decisions quickly without explaining the reasons.
Your team becomes increasingly frustrated.
Some employees withdraw.
Others become defensive.
Communication deteriorates.
You interpret their behaviour as resistance.
So you become firmer.
More supervision.
More expectations.
More pressure.
Now consider the possibility that your own response is contributing to the environment you’re trying to improve.
This doesn’t mean you’re responsible for every employee’s behaviour.
It doesn’t mean their actions are automatically justified.
It means you are part of the system.
Your behaviour influences the people around you.
Just as their behaviour influences you.
Leadership doesn’t place you outside the human system. It gives you greater responsibility for how you participate in it.
The Human Hologram reminds us that the person observing and responding to behaviour is also human.
We bring our own expectations.
Our own pressure.
Our own assumptions.
Our own capacity.
And our own learned patterns into the situation.
Sometimes the first thing that needs another look isn’t the employee.
It’s the leadership response.
The Same Pattern Across Multiple Employees
Here’s something worth paying attention to.
Imagine an organisation where one employee repeatedly struggles with a particular process.
Perhaps they need training.
Perhaps they misunderstand expectations.
Perhaps they need additional support.
Now imagine five employees are struggling with the same process.
Then ten.
Then an entirely different team experiences similar problems.
At what point do we examine the process itself?
If multiple capable employees repeatedly experience the same difficulty, that pattern is worth investigating.
Are the instructions clear?
Is the process unnecessarily complicated?
Are expectations realistic?
Are employees receiving adequate information?
Does the system require more time than the organisation allows?
Are people expected to make decisions without sufficient authority?
Is the process designed around how work actually happens?
Or are employees repeatedly developing workarounds just to keep things moving?
A recurring difficulty across multiple people doesn’t prove the system is responsible.
But it gives us a reason to investigate.
If different people keep experiencing the same problem, eventually we need to become curious about what they have in common.
And sometimes what they have in common is the system they’re working inside.
This Isn’t Just a Workplace Problem
The same principles apply beyond employment.
Schools and Education
Imagine a student who repeatedly becomes overwhelmed in a classroom.
The school focuses on improving the student’s behaviour.
Additional strategies are introduced.
Expectations become firmer.
But has anyone examined the classroom environment?
Noise.
Transitions.
Communication.
Predictability.
Sensory demands.
Relationships.
The way instructions are delivered.
Perhaps the student needs to develop additional skills.
But perhaps changes to the environment could also make learning more accessible.
Understanding both possibilities creates opportunities for more informed support.
Disability and Community Support
Imagine a person receiving support who becomes distressed whenever their routine changes.
Staff document the behaviour.
Additional behaviour management strategies are discussed.
But what if staffing arrangements change constantly?
What if communication is inconsistent?
What if the person isn’t involved in decisions affecting their day?
What if different workers have conflicting expectations?
The person’s distress matters.
So do the conditions surrounding it.
Person-centred support requires us to recognise the person, their preferences, their communication needs and the environment in which support occurs.
And where behaviour changes unexpectedly, possible health concerns should not be overlooked.
Sporting Clubs and Community Organisations
Imagine a sporting club experiencing ongoing conflict.
Members are becoming frustrated.
Volunteers are leaving.
Communication is deteriorating.
Leadership believes the problem is individual attitudes.
But perhaps responsibilities are unclear.
Expectations differ between committee members.
Decisions are poorly communicated.
Volunteers are carrying unreasonable workloads.
Or there is no effective process for addressing disagreements.
Again, individual behaviour matters.
But so does the environment.
Wherever human beings operate within systems, those systems can influence how people behave.
Understanding the System Doesn’t Remove Individual Responsibility
There’s an important boundary here.
Understanding organisational conditions should never become an excuse for harmful behaviour.
An employee can be under pressure and still be responsible for threatening a colleague.
A manager can be overwhelmed and still be accountable for intimidation or bullying.
A parent can be exhausted and still need to protect their children.
An organisation can have difficult working conditions and still be responsible for addressing unsafe behaviour.
And a person may deliberately behave harmfully even when their environment is reasonable.
The Human Hologram doesn’t assume every difficulty is caused by external pressure.
It asks us to consider the wider picture.
Sometimes the individual needs to change.
Sometimes the system needs to change.
Sometimes both need to change.
And where abuse, violence, coercion or serious safety concerns are present, protecting people must take priority over trying to explain the behaviour.
Understanding gives us context. It doesn’t remove accountability.
Effective systems should make expectations clear, respond appropriately to harmful behaviour and examine whether their own conditions are contributing to avoidable problems.
Those responsibilities can exist together.
A Practical Exercise: The Five-Question System Check
Before introducing another performance management process, behavioural intervention or resilience program, consider these five questions.
They can be used by managers, leadership teams, schools and community organisations.
1. What Behaviour Are We Actually Seeing?
Describe the behaviour without immediately attaching a judgement.
Are deadlines being missed?
Are mistakes increasing?
Is communication deteriorating?
Are people leaving?
Is conflict becoming more frequent?
Start with what can be observed.
Not simply what people believe it means.
2. Is This an Individual Difficulty or a Wider Pattern?
Is one person experiencing the problem?
Are several people affected?
Has the same difficulty occurred across different teams?
Did the problem begin after organisational changes?
Are similar complaints being raised repeatedly?
Look for patterns without assuming they prove a particular cause.
3. What Conditions Might Be Contributing?
Examine the environment.
Workload.
Staffing.
Expectations.
Communication.
Leadership.
Resources.
Organisational culture.
Role clarity.
Systems and processes.
What might be making the expected behaviour harder to achieve?
And what is already working well?
4. Is Our Response Helping or Adding More Pressure?
Have we introduced additional demands without removing anything?
Are we increasing supervision without addressing workload?
Are we repeating the same response and expecting a different outcome?
Are our communication methods making situations clearer or more confusing?
Are we responding to the actual problem or simply reacting to its most visible symptom?
5. What Is One Practical Change We Can Make?
This question matters most.
Because awareness without action can become another conversation that changes nothing.
Can we clarify priorities?
Improve communication?
Redistribute responsibilities?
Remove an unnecessary process?
Provide appropriate support?
Address an unsafe practice?
Establish clearer accountability?
Choose one meaningful change.
Implement it.
Review what happens.
If the difficulty continues, examine what else might be contributing.
The goal is not to prove the organisation is wrong or the individual is right.
The goal is to understand the problem well enough to make a more effective decision.
Why Resilience Training Alone Cannot Fix Every Workplace Problem
Let’s return to the workplace we started with.
Employees are overwhelmed.
Mistakes are increasing.
Communication is deteriorating.
Management decides the team needs resilience training.
Now, resilience education can be valuable.
People benefit from developing emotional awareness.
Communication skills.
Stress management strategies.
The ability to navigate challenges.
The ability to recover and make considered decisions under pressure.
Those are important capabilities.
But consider what happens if employees complete the training and return to exactly the same conditions.
The same unreasonable workload.
The same unclear expectations.
The same conflicting priorities.
The same lack of support.
The same communication problems.
What has actually changed?
The employees may have gained useful knowledge.
But the organisational conditions contributing to their difficulties may remain untouched.
This is why I believe we need to distinguish between building individual capability and addressing organisational pressure.
Both can matter.
But training people to tolerate pressure should never become a substitute for addressing unnecessary or unsafe pressure.
Sometimes people need to develop additional skills.
Sometimes leaders need to change their approach.
Sometimes organisations need to redesign how work is structured.
And sometimes all three need attention.
The challenge is recognising which response the situation requires.
Understanding Organisational Pressure Is a Leadership Skill
Leadership involves making decisions.
Setting expectations.
Allocating resources.
Managing performance.
Addressing conflict.
Developing people.
And taking responsibility when things go wrong.
But leadership also involves understanding how those decisions influence the people responsible for carrying them out.
A leader who only focuses on outcomes may miss the conditions producing those outcomes.
A leader who only focuses on employee wellbeing may struggle to maintain necessary expectations.
Effective leadership requires balancing both.
Human responsibility.
And organisational responsibility.
Individual capability.
And available capacity.
Performance expectations.
And the conditions required to meet them.
Accountability.
And the practical support that makes improvement possible.
This doesn’t mean leadership becomes easy.
It means decisions become more informed.
And informed decisions create better opportunities for sustainable improvement.
A good leader doesn’t simply ask why their people are struggling.
They also ask what their leadership and organisational systems might be contributing.
From Understanding the Problem to Building Better Systems
Reading about organisational behaviour is one thing.
Recognising these patterns in your own workplace is another.
And making meaningful changes requires more than agreeing that something needs to improve.
Consider a leadership team that understands the importance of clear communication.
Can they recognise when their own communication is creating confusion?
Consider a manager who understands employee capacity.
Can they identify when their expectations are exceeding available resources?
Consider an organisation that values accountability.
Can its leaders take responsibility for organisational decisions contributing to recurring problems?
These are not simply questions about knowledge.
They are questions about application.
And that is where practical education becomes valuable.
Because understanding a framework is useful.
Learning how to apply it when people, expectations and pressures collide is where meaningful development can begin.
Bringing the Wolfpack Way Into Your Organisation
Wolfpack Support Services | Leading Under Pressure Workshops
At Wolfpack Support Services, we focus on helping individuals, leaders and organisations better understand human behaviour under pressure.
Our educational workshops explore how behaviour, emotional regulation, capacity, communication, accountability and environmental conditions interact.
Through the Wolfpack Way, participants are encouraged to examine not only the behaviour they observe but also the conditions that may be contributing to it.
Our Leading Under Pressure workshop approach encourages leaders and teams to develop practical awareness around workplace pressure, communication and their own behavioural responses.
Workshop discussions and exercises can explore how to recognise unnecessary pressure, examine organisational patterns, communicate expectations and identify opportunities for more constructive responses.
The aim is not to remove every challenge.
It is not to eliminate accountability.
And it is not to suggest every workplace problem comes from leadership.
The aim is to develop a better understanding of how humans function inside organisations and how our decisions influence the environments we create.
These conversations can be valuable for business owners, managers, leadership teams, HR professionals, schools, community organisations and sporting clubs.
Your People Might Not Be the Only Thing That Needs to Change.
Before introducing another policy, performance meeting or training program, consider one question.
What if the system is contributing to the problem we’re trying to solve?
That question won’t automatically give you the answer.
But it might help you recognise something you’ve been overlooking.
And sometimes recognising the actual problem is the first step towards creating a better solution.
Bring the Wolfpack Way Into Your Workplace
Wolfpack Support Services provides practical educational workshops designed to support better understanding of human behaviour, emotional regulation, leadership and communication under pressure.
Enquire about a Leading Under Pressure workshop for your organisation.
Visit: wpss.com.au
See the Human: The Human Hologram and the Wolfpack Way of Understanding Behaviour is written by Jyee Byrne, founder of Wolfpack Support Services.
The Human Hologram™ and Wolfpack Way™ are educational frameworks designed to support awareness, reflection and more considered responses. They are not clinical assessment tools or substitutes for workplace safety obligations, professional advice or appropriate organisational risk management.
Final Thought: Sometimes the Environment Needs to Change
We spend enormous amounts of time trying to change individual behaviour.
Teaching people to communicate better.
Manage stress.
Become more resilient.
Improve performance.
Take responsibility.
And develop stronger emotional regulation.
All worthwhile goals.
But sometimes we overlook something fundamental.
Human beings don’t operate independently from the systems surrounding them.
They respond to expectations.
Relationships.
Leadership.
Resources.
Workload.
Culture.
And the conditions we create.
That doesn’t mean people have no choice.
It doesn’t mean accountability disappears.
It means understanding behaviour requires us to look beyond the person producing it.
Because sometimes the employee needs additional support.
Sometimes they need to take greater responsibility.
Sometimes they need to develop new skills.
And sometimes the organisation needs to stop creating unnecessary pressure.
The challenge is knowing the difference.
And we won’t discover that difference if we refuse to look beyond the behaviour.
Six directions. One human.
Start anywhere. Just don’t stop there.
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