The Leadership Behaviours That Decide EX During Change

What do leaders actually do that decides whether employees feel supported through change or quietly worn down by it? That is the question at the heart of this episode of CultureClub X, powered by CultureMonkey, as host Jodie O'Brien sits down with Debra Corey, an award-winning HR leader and the founder of Step It Up HR.

Debra has spent her entire career in HR, more than 20 years across the US and Europe, and now works as a consultant, speaker, trainer and author. As Chief Pay It Forward Officer at Step It Up HR, she helps organizations build people strategies and cultures that create real impact. She is a six time bestselling author, named among the top 101 global engagement influencers for eight consecutive years.

The conversation moves from the behaviors that steady people during change to the fear of becoming obsolete, why she gave her latest book such a blunt title, her three A's model, and why engagement is always a partnership between leaders and employees. Here is a full recap of what she shared.

What gives employees stability when everything is changing

Debra frames change leadership around two areas. The first is stability. When everything is going crazy around people, they need to be centered somewhere, and she recalls picturing someone on a tightrope balancing balls during the pandemic. The anchor, she argues, is your mission, vision, and values, which leaders should constantly refer back to so people can hold onto what the organization is all about.

The second area is behavior. Depending on the change itself and the individual, leaders need to bring out the behaviors that support people where they are in the moment. Her most recent book introduces the Great Boss Building Block Model with 14 building blocks, and she is quick to explain why there are so many: not one building block is going to work at the same time for the same person.

She makes the point with a self-deprecating gardening story. A terrible gardener living in the UK, she uses the same comfortable three-pronged tool for everything from planting to weeding, and keeps breaking it. The lesson for leaders is the same one her husband keeps repeating to her: the right tool and the right behavior for the right situation and person.

How did Debra Corey fall into HR in the first place

Debra describes her career in three phases: traditional HR in the US, a rebel phase after moving to Europe where she began questioning everything she had been taught, and her current pay it forward phase of books, blogs, interviews and client work. But the very start was accidental. A competitive gymnast in college, she kept changing majors before landing on communications and psychology.

In her final year she took a part-time job in human resources, loved it, and was hired full time after graduating. Five years in came her first big lesson: her boss fired her, telling her that everyone else had been there forever and that she had a lot more to offer. Debra calls it a gift, her first experience of being pushed outside her comfort zone, and it launched her through academia, financial institutions and consulting.

She credits Garry Ridge with the phrase she now uses for all of those stumbles: learning moments. What matters, she says, is what you do with them.

Can leaders beat the fear of becoming obsolete

Asked about FOBO, the fear of becoming obsolete, Debra is candid that everyone feels insecure at times, no matter how confident they are, and new technology sharpens that fear of being replaced. Her answer is to stay current. She keeps pushing new material out into the world partly because it helps other people, and partly because it forces her to keep learning.

Leaders who continually question, challenge, stay curious and try new things will not get left behind, she argues. Chasing perfection is the real trap: you are never going to be perfect as a leader, and believing you are is exactly what leaves you behind. The final piece is understanding yourself and understanding your people, which keeps you two steps ahead in supporting the business.

Why awareness is the first job of a leader during change

If a leader could change one thing tomorrow to improve engagement and retention, Debra says it comes back to personalization, and she illustrates it with an embarrassing story from her own career.

Newly relocated from the US to the UK, she managed her multicultural team exactly the way her American bosses had managed her. Three months in, a brave employee revealed that the team had formed a Debra Corey support group that met every Friday to share stories of how she had upset them that week.

The story stings, but her point is that she never intended any of it. Most bad bosses do not. When she interviewed people for her book, she heard plenty of bad boss stories and estimates nine out of 10 of those bosses did not act on purpose and probably never knew the damage they caused, because they did not have a brave employee willing to say it out loud.

Do bad bosses really ruin lives

Her latest book is titled Bad Bosses Ruin Lives: The Building Blocks for Being a Great Boss, and the bluntness was deliberate and, for a self-described optimist once nicknamed Susie Sunshine by a boss, deeply uncomfortable. The phrase surfaced while writing her second book with her CEO, when she told him about a boss who had ruined her life. A horrible day at work does not rinse away when you get home.

She chose discomfort on purpose, for herself and her readers, because in her words you need to be uncomfortable in order to change sometimes. Most of us are not ruining lives to that extent, she concedes, but we might be making things difficult, and a bold title forces the question.

How do the three A's turn engagement data into real change

Debra's model for stepping up your greatness has three A's: awareness, acceptance, and action, and she is emphatic that data fits under the first two. HR teams often build brilliant development programs and then send leaders to them without explaining why. Her husband, a former engineering leader, describes sitting in those classes frustrated, thinking only about getting back to his team.

Skip awareness and acceptance and leaders never truly engage or embrace change. That is why she says she absolutely loves data, whether it is the scores or the open comments that come out of an employee pulse survey tool. The numbers open the door to awareness; acceptance is what happens when a leader looks in the mirror.

What do great bosses and great employees have in common

Asked for a boss worth emulating, Debra names the tech company CEO she later co-wrote a book with. He pushed her to question and challenge everything while genuinely caring about people, so much so that employees who left five or 10 years ago still talk about the culture. His secret sauce was not swagger: he was brave, humble and human, the kind of leader who joked that he put his trousers on one leg at a time.

Great employees mirror that partnership. Debra genuinely believes engagement is never 100% the boss's job: employees have to own their development and their feedback, and organizations can even train people to take responsibility, as one company she interviewed does with its work from anywhere flexibility policy.

That ownership only works when people feel safe to use it. Debra cites a study she had read that day suggesting 45% of people are afraid to speak up in their company, which is why leaders have to open the door and build psychological safety at work before expecting employees to own their side of engagement.

Where employee listening fits into leading through change

Pull the threads together and a pattern emerges: stability gives people something to hold onto, but awareness is what tells a leader whether their good intentions are landing. Debra needed a brave employee to hold up the mirror. Most leaders will not get that lucky, which is exactly why structured listening matters: regular signals from employees that show the impact you are actually having, in every direction.

As Jodie notes in closing, change is constant, but how leaders listen, communicate and act makes all the difference in how employees experience it. That is the work CultureMonkey supports every day, helping leaders turn employee feedback and analytics into faster, more meaningful action on engagement and culture.

To continue the conversation with Debra, connect with her on LinkedIn or visit Step It Up HR, where she shares blogs, newsletters and free assessments. As she puts it, she loves a good challenge and will be honest if she cannot answer it.