Blaire Palmer is a leading expert on workplace culture and leadership, known for her ability to challenge conventional thinking and inspire meaningful organisational change.
As a Culture Specialist at That People Thing since 2009 and a celebrated speaker with The Inspirational Leadership Speakers Agency, Blaire helps businesses reimagine how they lead, collaborate, and create environments where people can thrive.
With a background spanning BBC journalism, executive coaching, and authorship of three acclaimed books, she brings both insight and real-world experience to her work with global brands.
In this interview, Blaire shares her thoughts on how leaders can create inclusive, trusting, and empowering workplaces – especially in fast-paced environments where human connection can easily be lost.
Q: How can business leaders prioritise empowering their employees in high-pressure or fast-paced environments?
Blaire Palmer: “The first question I have, actually, is: why is everything so fast paced and high pressure? I think we’ve got into this way of thinking, as business owners or leaders, that everything has to be done, and it all has to be done yesterday. Every day is just a race to get things complete. But not everything should be like that.
I think we have to slow business down. We have to slow our thinking down. We have to look at what’s making it so busy. That’s the first piece. Yes, there are going to be priorities. Yes, there are going to be deadlines. But not everything has to be urgent and important and if it is, we have to look at why that is.
Given that we do work in high-paced, high-pressure environments, I think we need to distribute decision-making. When all the decisions have to be pushed up the hierarchy so that senior people can sign them off, then that’s very slow. You need to be able to empower your people with information so that they can make decisions, because they’re the ones that know their job best.”
Q: From your experience, what are some of the most effective ways organisations can build genuinely inclusive cultures, especially for women in leadership?
Blaire Palmer: “I think the most important quality leaders need, if they want to create inclusivity, is the willingness to listen. We all think we’re listening, but we’re not. We’re not really going and standing in the shoes of other people in our businesses or the kinds of people we would like to have in our businesses, but who, for some reason, aren’t coming to work for us.
Listening is more than just understanding. It’s about really putting yourself in their shoes and looking at the world through a different lens. I talk about going and standing on someone else’s mountain. You’re standing on a mountain, and you see the world your way.
When you go and stand on someone else’s mountain, you see it from a different angle. Suddenly, you can start to see the barriers and the unintentional things that you’re doing which make it difficult for those people to either work for you, or to bring their uniqueness to the job you’ve hired them for.
So, go and stand on other people’s mountains. Really, really listen and start to see the world through their lens. Then, together, you can come up with solutions to make the organisation more inclusive to them, and to a whole variety of other people.”
Q: How can leaders create safe spaces where employees feel comfortable sharing their ideas and concerns?
Blaire Palmer: “I talk a lot about listening, and I think that’s the first element of creating a safe space. It sounds really cliché, like, surely there must be something more cutting-edge than that, but I don’t see a lot of real listening happening.
What I see is an environment where people feel it’s unsafe to share what they really think. So, they say what feels safe, which might be a little flavour of how they’re really feeling, but it’s not the whole picture. The full truth would be very uncomfortable for senior people – who are often the ones making decisions about that person’s future. No one wants to shake things up like that.
Listening is where it starts. The other element is to be aware of something called the power gradient. It’s much safer to speak your mind when you’re senior to junior people, than it is for junior people to speak their minds to senior people, because there’s more at stake. You might say, “My door is always open, come to me, tell me what you really think.” But that’s easy for you to say. You’ve got nothing to lose.
They, on the other hand, have a huge amount to lose. So, you have to demonstrate through your actions that you’re willing to hear very uncomfortable things, and not try to brush them away or present a counter-argument. You need to be willing to really hear what they’re telling you, sit with the discomfort, and accept that it may well be you who’s making it hard for them.”
Q: What are some practical strategies for leaders to foster collaboration and engagement in hybrid teams?
Blaire Palmer: “One of the things I think is missing from a lot of organisations is true collaboration. We have internal competitive dynamics. People are formed into teams, and those teams start to compete, for resources, for recognition, for credit, for territory.
When they’re saying: ‘Oh, it wasn’t our team’s fault, it was this other team’, or pushing ownership and accountability out onto others, or trying to take credit for things that weren’t entirely their doing – all their focus is internal.
What senior leaders need to do is bring the purpose of the organisation to life and encourage their people to think more like the CEO. The CEO sees the whole picture; not divided into departments or functions. Their attention is focused outwards. What’s going on in our industry? What opportunities or threats might impact our mission or purpose? What’s coming around the corner?
If you can get your people focusing outward, on the real challenges and possibilities the organisation faces, then they’ll begin to collaborate, because there will be more to gain than there is to lose.”
Q: For business owners looking to future-proof their organisations, what key trends in workplace culture and leadership should they be preparing for now?
Blaire Palmer: “We live in a world that is very distrusting of authority figures, and for pretty good reason. People don’t trust leaders in business, in politics, or in the media. That’s potentially very dangerous for our organisations.
You can’t have a happy, healthy, innovative organisation where people are willing to bring their whole selves to work and do their best, if they don’t trust. And you have to remember that, when they walk through the door, they’re not a blank slate. They’re already operating in a world of low trust.
So, the number one priority has to be to create a trusting environment, one where you are worthy of trust, but also where you demonstrate that you trust your people. Trust their intent. Second is technology.
We’re entering a whole new world in terms of tech, and I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface of how we could be using our people’s human talent. I encourage leaders to ask: what are we getting in the way of? How can we bring people’s humanity to the forefront, because that’s what they uniquely offer?
Third, we’re trying to operate our businesses like machines and expecting machine-like output from our people, and our people are breaking. Emotional intelligence is going down. Burnout is going up. Lunchtime yoga is a sticking plaster over a more fundamental problem.
If people are struggling with stress, burnout, or recurring conflict, you must acknowledge that it’s not for individuals to handle alone. Something systemic is creating that environment. So, ask: are our expectations of human employees humane? What can we do to make the workplace a healthy, humane environment, so people can bring their humanity in service of what we’re trying to achieve for our customers and clients?”
This exclusive interview with Blaire Palmer was conducted by Louisa Mason-Hayes, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at The Inspirational Leadership Speakers Agency.
