386. Why Workplace Whistleblowing is So Rare w/ Nuala Walsh (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 386 of the Brainy Business Understanding the psychology of why people buy. Today's episode is all about whistleblowing with Nuala Walsh. Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello. Hello, everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about blowing the whistle at work, or rather why so few people blow the whistle even when they intend to or say they will or know something is wrong. This episode, which originally aired in May of 2021, is a conversation with my friend Nuala Walsh, who was recently on the show talking about her new book, Tune in, which goes even deeper into a lot of these fascina insights and how you can remove your blind, deaf and dumb spots to be a better leader and make less errors. Fascinating stuff. Now, the reason I refreshed this episode today is because of this upcoming Friday's episode with Hugh Massey where we focus on psychological safety and its importance at work. I specifically talked about this research and the conversation with Nuala and it felt like the perfect time to refresh this one. Plus, Hugh and I connected at a Global association of Applied Applied Behavioral Scientists event where I was fortunate enough to be speaking about one of my books, what your employees need and can't tell you. And Nuala is a founding member of gabs, so it felt like a win win. As you listen today, think about yourself and your own workplace. How would you act in the situations presented here? Would you blow the whistle? Would your teammates, your bosses? Are you sure? Don't forget there are links for everything, including past episodes, books and articles, all waiting for you in the show, not for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 386. All right, let's talk about blowing the whistle at work. Nuala Walsh, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Thank you very much, Melina. Lovely to be here.

Yeah, I'm so excited to have you. And I feel like you're sort of a repeat guest in that you were part of when the GABS team, when the Global association of Applied Behavioral Scientists first was launching, had a group of four of you come and join and have a conversation, I believe for. And we were talking about all of that and so people have heard you and your name before. But this is the first time actually really talking with you about your work. So I would love if you can just give a little bit of background of who you are, your work in behavioral science and what you do.

Sure. Well, I guess I would probably classify myself as maybe a late behavioral scientist. I have, I have a number of roles. Today I am a founder and CEO of Mind Equity Consulting where I advise on behavior change, brand and reputation, culture and communications. And I do that mostly for private sector organizations, most recently, interestingly enough for airlines, retail banks and some in the oil and gas industry. But it's really just applying a range of, you know, the typical organization and consumer psychology solutions. My working career as an exec spans three decades, would you believe in a range of FTSE 50 and Fortune 500 companies, mostly in financial services, BlackRock, Standard Life, Merrill and PA. But at the moment what I really, what I mostly enjoy doing is a gabs, as you mentioned, Mind equity, as I mentioned. And also I have a number of other roles that really lend themselves incredibly well to this whole area of behavioural science. Firstly as a non exec at TS Lombard, which is a financial services research investment research company. And again with the changes in how clients and consumers are thinking, that's an area of huge interest to all behavioral scientists. But also do a huge amount for sports in the discrimination space. So for world athletics for example, I sit on their gender advisor commissary and the whole purpose there is to level the game, level the playing field, if you like it, for athletics. And a huge number of initiatives have been done there and it's actually interesting because it's very similar to the inclusion advisory board at the Football association which of course football as we know has been in the news this week for that European breakaway super league which caused a lot of hairs over this side of the Atlantic. I can tell you a lot. It's amazing how people reversed decisions at the first sign of noise, but that's maybe another topic for another day, but an interesting topic by people reversing decisions. So but with the, but to be fair, the Football association and you know, UEFA and a number of the major associations have a huge responsibility in that space. Mostly DNI worked again to level the field and reduce discrimination. So there's a lot going there on there. And then you know, the other, I guess gender based one is UN women where I sit on the board there mostly in the uk but we've very strong links in with, with New York obviously. And again that's specifically gender rather than the broader based. So all of this plays to a very diverse field. And that's why at the moment that all of these areas, I think, play, you know, play directly to have a strong ethical underpin as well, which is what I've been studying of late.

Yeah. And so where you said you've had lots of roles over the years and was it just sort of naturally got into the change conversation and the diversity, equity, inclusion space that it just sort of happened, or did you have a particular interest that drove you into that space, would you say?

That's a great question. Actually, in the beginning, as it were, my first one was no, I chose UN women. My first role was within UN women and then it became a springboard. So I guess after 30 years in corporate life, I was in investment management, financial services, which is incredibly male dominated, as people know. You do see the challenges from a gender perspective. And for many years actually, and interestingly maybe for the first 25 out of my 30 years, I didn't really think that there was an issue. I'd been climbing the ladder pretty, you know, pretty rapidly and I just didn't see it. And I guess it was only. They do say that the further up you go that the more you, the quicker you see it. And I did start to see it much more clearly, if you like. And I saw things happening to other people that shouldn't have really been happening. And that's why I guess I started to get involved. And I was very moved by the UN Women's agenda. Not from a corporate perspective, but actually from the broader piece, from trafficking women and all of the other women as a weapon of war, if you like that side of things far more. And the benefit of working with UN women is that you sort of got out of the mode of pay me and promote me, which is the obsession if you're in corporate land, particularly if you're in financial services, of course. And it gave you a much broader perspective of the gender agenda, which is far, far more than, I guess, the narrow perspective that you have when you're just working all the time and it takes up so much of your life and you only see, you only see that gender agenda through the corporate lens. And so that was one of the reasons why. And then as I said, that was just a springboard into. Because I was in UN Women, I was invited to join World Athletics and hilariously, I'm the only non athlete at the table. There are representatives from all around the world, 263 different Member Federations at World Athletics, they are all former Olympians. So they do laugh at my pathetic little efforts. But nevertheless it's a great group. And again, you see you get a real insight into politics in a very different way there because it is member based. And similarly at the Football Association, I sit at the advisory board there. And again, I'm actually the only non footballer, non coach, non referee in the whole group. I think I was their first corporate appointment. And I, and I, you know, I take my hat off to them there actually, because it has been so, it has been historically and traditionally male dominated and football dominated. So you couldn't get a role there unless you, you know, lived and breathed football. And I don't and I didn't. So on the one hand where I felt I was qualified from a D and I perspective, I certainly wasn't from a football perspective. But nevertheless, I give full credit to the chair there because when people talk about I want to diverse hire, what I have found in my own experiences that they don't mean it at all. The candidate pool gets very, very broad and you're rolled in. And a lot of women are just rolled in as a list filler, a candidate list filler. But actually people tend to revert to type and 9 times out of 10 they want to see a broad list. They may want a woman, but they will always take the candidate that is familiar in one respect, familiar, you know, similar, regardless of how capable they are. So that's, I think that's been a great insight. And as I said that if companies want to move in this space, they should take lessons like they did at the essay. Take people who are out of the comfort zone and who, and who can add a really, really valuable dimension to the board because of that cognitive diversity that I bring to that board in particular.

Yeah, I think, I mean, it's such a good point. And like you said, you're talking about diversity. And so when in so many ways it feels like the people that you would be bringing in, like, well, of course they need to know something about football because like we're all about football and people are going to have interest in this. And so that's given, you know, I reminded of just a couple weeks ago I had John Levy on the show talking about his book you're invited and we were talking about trust. And he was saying how, you know, this sort of mix of like, what makes trust. And so for so many people, you, you start with what ends up being competence. Like in a business you would hire for competence first, then honesty and like maybe you think about benevolence at some point, but that's really how you hire people. And in reality, the way that we trust others and what it's built on is this like they have my best interest at heart comes first. It's really got the most weight to it. So that benevolence is most important. Then honesty, like if someone is then dishonest, it can kind of mess things up. And competency is the very last thing that really should matter. And really that background of a knowledge of football is so not important in all these other aspects really. I mean you need some people that have that. But that's what the management of the organization is about versus the board members. You know, that diversity makes a really big difference. And so like you said, I think it's such a good point as you were saying, you know, people want to see the list to feel like they're checking the diversity box. But then whether it's familiarity bias or some of these other in group biases that we have and people don't even notice, I know there's been a lot of trainings and requests. I'm sure you've been getting these too about unconscious bias training within organizations and things like that. And so I guess what sort of. Do you have a quick tip or thought on some of that for people that are looking within their organizations to not just say they care about diversity and inclusion, but actually want to go the extra mile and really implement that.

When it comes to hiring at the top. And if we're sticking to the topic of actually hiring diversity rather than general diversity, because we could be here for a very long time if we were talking about what the companies could and should do generally. But when it comes to hiring, I mean I look to the executive search agents quite a lot to help and I'm actually going to join the board of an executive search firm and. Which is a marvelous. Feeding ground is the wrong word. But I'm sure they won't mind me call saying a feeding ground. We've already discussed it. But for behavioral science, because it's an area that they don't that actually they talk about putting the client first rather than, you know, which they do put the client first, but they don't put the candidate first. And part of that the client experience and the candidate experienced, you know, one day you're the client, the next day you're the candidate. I mean, I've been on both sides of the tables many, many times in my career. And one thing that companies can do is again ironically is to listen to the recruitment Agencies not to choose the person because that's not their job, but their job is to make sure that if, you know, if a company has four or five, and this matters because it's at the top and this change starts at the top with the executive search hires, which, it's not about hiring a product manager or, or a junior marketing manager, it has to be the C suite because these are the individuals who will affect most change quickest. But when companies don't listen or listen enough to the recruitment agents who are, who do have that level of independence and objectivity and if you go through a two month process with your executive search firm saying I want difference, I want difference and show me the broadest list you've got, we really don't want the same old fund manager that we had before, we want a different type. And then guess what, they're down to the last two, guess who they're going to pick. Nine times out of ten they pick the same type. And it's a terrible thing for the person, for the non fund manager who actually comes to the point where they believe it and the company, it's not that they will regret it because people tend not to. They don't miss what they've never had. So they're very comfortable picking, call it the same fund management type that they've had before because they know no differently. So it's not like the FA for example, where they've always got the footballer. They don't know what it's like to have the non footballer. So they don't realize, oh, look at all this extra learning we could have had. So confirmation bias, they go back and comfort themselves and say, oh, you know, they really like the candidate. It's not that the candidate is wrong, it's the opportunity cost of what they could have had. So what companies can do is listen, you know, take the, take the outside view if you like and listen to these other groups and who are, who have that independent objectivity more than, more than themselves because really what they're doing is they're, they're falling prey to their own, to their own biases when, when it comes to that final, final decision for roles.

Yeah.

And so I just, for everyone who's listening, I'm going to be linking back to the episode on confirmation bias where you just mentioned, I know I had mentioned familiarity bias. I'm also going to be linking to, I think that, you know, status quo bias relates a lot there, maybe a little bit of loss aversion. We've got some of that Pre factual thinking, worried about how I might regret this if I make a bad choice. So those will all be linked within the show notes as well as on change management, you know, because we were talking about that as well. And Nuala was guest lecturer in the class I taught on internal communication and change management at Tech Texas A and M University. Talking about a lot of this as well. That'll come back around. So depending on when you're listening, there's probably another class coming and, you know, that could be up there again. So let's jump in to the reason I asked you here today, which that's not true. I asked you here today because I adore you and I enjoy speaking with you. And there was a good opportunity that came about because you recently authored an article in the Harvard Business Review. Congratulations. Congratulations, by the way.

Thank you very much.

Definitely one of those bucket list pieces, to be sure. And your article is kind of. It's about whistleblowing, speaking up. And it's called how to Encourage Employees to Speak up when they See Wrongdoing. And I know it's based on some research project that you'd done, but tell us a little bit about, you know, what's the project as it is, we'll of course link to the article in the show notes, but, you know, tell us what that's about and what people would find in that article and that research.

The topic is pretty well known and the problem is well known. And the question is fundamentally, do you speak up or do you stay silent when you see wrongdoing? And the problem is too many people witness the wrongdoing and stay silent. And that was really the, I guess, the motivation to explore this topic. Because, you know, in my experience, I guess I had seen so many people stand by when things went wrong and often at a very senior level. And the question has to be asked, what can be done? So the driver for the article was what can be done? What can companies really do? Firstly, to get the bystanders. And my fascinations with the bystander effect is to how do you shift bystanders to actually act? So it wasn't speaking up per se, it was bystanders generally. In this case, I applied it to whistleblowing, but I would actually apply it could be applied to anything. And I had done a huge amount of research into the bystander factory and I loved that topic, but it was too difficult for a thesis, if you like, to be able to execute in the short space of time. As I said, the focus went to whistleblowing. And speaking up because there are so many, so many tragic stories of people, you know, who have spoken up. And my Netflix agenda, I always gravitate towards the whistleblowers. Now I don't think there's one I haven't seen or a story I haven't read about it. Now because when I was starting this research I asked the question, do people regret it? And initially I thought, well, of course they don't regret it because they would congratulate themselves for being virtuous and doing the right thing and all the rest. But actually I've read so much in so many interviews from, you know, the big whistleblowers, if you like, and there are quite a few big names in this space. People have done it across different industries and they're the ones that become the Hollywood movie or the Netflix series. But those individuals, most of them actually say they do regret it. And then I found a study that probably had the most shocking statistics of any study I'd ever seen that showed that 82% of of whistleblowers suffered harassment. That isn't a huge surprise. But 60% of those lost their jobs, probably not a huge surprise either. And 17% lost their homes, which you wouldn't think about. You wouldn't think about that knock on backfire effect. You probably should, but you mightn't jump to that. And the one that I didn't jump to at all in my own head was that 10% of those people attempt suicide and that's a high price to pay for speaking up. And so on the one hand, when I was doing the article, I was slightly conflicted if I tell the truth, because here I am saying speak up, speak up. But actually, so I tried to weave into it. Listen up. The listen up point was I don't want to encourage people to speak up if this is going to be the price, unless you can do both at the same time. So I tried to incorporate some of the lessons I present a reframe framework. But it absolutely balances encouraging people to speak up but also encouraging leaders and how to deal with that when it happens, because that's as big a problem as asking people to speak up. And what companies typically do now is they focus on one and not the other. So they might encourage people to speak up and they have their wonderful codes of conduct. Not that I've ever seen a ten pound tome encouraging me to speak up or anyone else, but. But that's what companies tend to rely on, the old, the old 10 pound manual. But it doesn't work. So when I did the research, it was an extensive piece of research, far more than is reported in the article because I, you know, I'm probably a magpie, I couldn't resist trying, you know, testing everything. So I did test a huge number of factors which was fantastic. But it took me to a, to a process where the longer is, you might say I might take people through, you know, that the typical model of awareness, interest, intention. But when I came to the, the fourth piece, which was behavior, nobody did it. So yes, I gave them nearly a thousand people, you know, an unethical scenario when they were to, you know, decide what would you do. And you know, they were outraged. Most of them are outraged with the scenario and they were going to speak up and they were going to do this, that and the other. But when it came to it, and I tested them at the very end of the experiment and there were 923 people and only 10% took the most basic form of action, they weren't actually going to, they were just going to take the first step, which was to find out how. So that was just, it wasn't even go report this terrible misdemeanor. It was just please take the first step. So if they weren't going to take the first step, you know, what chance did you have of people pushing it through? But I found quite a few clues, if you like, directional strategies that I incorporated in that model to show leaders, if you like, in companies how, if they work together with ethics and compliance departments and don't treat this as just a siloed instance, that there is a way of having a far more integrated and holistic strategy to solving this problem. But it does require ethics, compliance and communications. And some companies will call that hr, some will have, will call it the internal comms. But involving risk and compliance is a phenomenal way forward. And interestingly, since the article came out, unbelievably, the response I've had from ethics and compliance team has just been staggering. I've had more comments, more discussions, if you like, with ethics and compliance groups because they're typically the isolated group, they're typically the group that are left to implement these programs. You know, care very deeply about them, but don't get to go beyond that. And in some companies they're seen as the back office and sometimes they're the second and third cousin. They might be the second line of defence, but they're the second or the third cousin in some companies, wrongly, but practically that sometimes is the case. So that's why I think their feedback and their interest in actually taking something solid and applying it because they will also typically have a seat at the top table. So the head of risk and compliance. Not every company has an ethics person, but Risk and compliance see this as a marvelous tool to, you know, to forge a new path forward, you know, with, with all of this behavioral science behind it.

Yeah, well, and I really appreciate the, like you said the way that you didn't take the article to just be about. Well, like just try to speak up and hopefully something else will change. And one of the statistics I know you didn't mention and I like you're saying it might not be shocking. I was shocked. I guess it's like you're not surprised to learn that people suffered harassment or that some people lost their jobs, but 82% of people being harassed and 60% losing jobs and 17% losing homes. I mean that is a huge deal. And of course the 10% to suicide, which is. Or attempting it.

Right.

Is just awful and something you don't think of but it makes it to where the other piece, like I said, you didn't say, is this, you know, it's only estimated that 1.4 of employees blow the whistle and actually do something which you know, your study showing a thousand people ish. That were all outraged at this story that they heard. And as they hear it, they think I'm going to say something. And then you know, just that little tiny. Will you go figure out how you lost 90% of them of not being willing to do something? Of course, you know, it's 1% or less or you know, whatnot that will actually go say something. And so focusing on to say this isn't a nature of people that is part of it. But that fear of repercussions when there are actual repercussions is reasonable. That's not, it's not reasonable to ask those people to go and do that but instead to look at and say it's not enough to say, well, we have a policy for that and people will stand up because they should, they'll want to and they, they should do that moral thing when the time comes and to say, you know, it's not enough company and you need to change something to make it so that people can in fact stand up. One of the pieces that I found very striking in the article and of course we can't talk about it all but again there will be a link to so people can go check it out. But I think even just something as simple as saying we have A zero tolerance policy for X. And you have a note in there that it's actually a bad idea to have a zero tolerance policy. Can you talk a little bit about that?

I was doing my own research on it and I thought, is it a good thing to have zero tolerance or not? And I like you originally straight off I said, well, what's wrong with that? And then I thought about it and I thought actually, and then I remembered all these risk and compliance meetings that I was at. If a company says we have no tolerance with zero tolerance, it says we don't tolerate error, actually. So if we think about what actually it says we don't tolerate error. Well, if you don't tolerate error, people are not going to be very keen to speak up and say, whoops, I made a mistake. And that was, that was, it was almost like a light bulb moment. I thought, well, I never thought of that. I always thought zero tolerance policies were good. And you know, people won't make mistakes then, will they? Well, they might, they might make mistakes, but they might aim not to. But what they do. So how do you actually, and that's a cultural thing, it also I think implicitly sends signals to people, you can't make mistakes because, you know, we pride zero tolerance and you know, you're making mistake. So that was just something that, again, that struck me that, well, I never thought of that before and I thought it was a great thing to, to think about actually, that the, the impact, the psychological impact that that has on people. So it felt that, yes, of course there were, there is a benefit to some extent because it says, you know, but maybe it's, it's, it's a reframing of how you say that and what you do with it, you know, rather than the opposite is, okay, you know, we want 100% satisfaction. I mean, that's really naff as well. But, you know, maybe, you know, so which way do you go? Do you want zero tolerance or 100% satisfaction? But there is something about, are people more motivated, you know, by fear or positivity? And so it play, it plays to that. But I did get a couple of comments actually again from the, from the ethics and compliance people who were quite surprised with that. And you know, maybe it was probably worth explaining, but that was the logic behind that one.

Yeah, well, it makes perfect sense and perhaps it's my background in behavioral sciences. Right. But the, the thing that logically you think is going to speak to the other person's logical brain of like, we have zero tolerance, which means Just report anything and whatever. But in the moment then you go, well, I can't say this. And then if you don't speak up about one thing and then something else happens, it escalates, it gets worse. And then you have those moments of like, well, but I didn't say anything six weeks ago when this other thing happened and now it' worse and it's this bigger problem and it builds up in the brain of being so much more than it would have been. So yeah, totally. Super. Makes sense. Absolutely.

Get it.

If you were to pick, you know, one other aspect, whether it's something that was really surprising to you in the research or in that reframe model, I know it's a seven part model that we again is in the article, but you know, if you were going to pick something for people that maybe has stood out in comments that people have asked about or something that was really interesting for you, where would you, what would you say about this importance for what companies should be doing to help make it easy for those within the organization to actually blow the whistle?

For me, that's quite an easy question, Molina, because the one that struck me most, as I said, I tested everything. I tested seven or eight different emotions. You know, do you think whistleblowing is, you know, stupid? A sense of responsibility, do you associate it with an act of. Sorry, the question was do you associate whistleblowing with an act of. When I had, you know, stupidity, courage, duty, responsibility, etc. Etc. And what struck me was the number of people who found it as an act, rated as an act of courage. And that tells you something. That tells you, that tells you. And that's what led me to the communicating the courage based stories. And actually the most comments that I've got have been around, so some people go to different ones but some people were most surprised at the point around using these courage based stories. And I'll go back to my examples of the whistleblowers themselves. These are marvelous and very tragic stories. I mean I'm particularly keen on Harry Markopoulos and telling the Bernie Madoff were going to be at the securities and Exchange Commission over a nine year period. So many times he tried and tried and tried and you know, he tried with financial advisors, he tried with the industry, tried with so many people, he tried with us personally, tried with lots of different associations but at the end of the day, you know, he was Cassandra and nobody listened. But if you, even if you take that story, I mean it's a great story, it is an inspirational story. I mean it Absolutely is. If, if you go, if you, if you. But on all of them are, I mean, okay, he's well known, some of the others aren't. He's also a little bit quirky, which, you know, the behavioral scientist in all of us will look at that and go, the out group. He was an absolute out group member. And I think that's also, you know, quite poignant. If you like, he was the nerd, he was the geek, if you like, in a true zone. Words, not mine. And that's how he described himself. And because of that, people didn't listen. So if companies choose to tell stories of people like that. But also, so I very specifically said in the article, it's not just these well known people, it's also to find people internally as well. Now I say that with a very strong caveat. You can't. But the thing about saying about people entirely isn't that they whistleblower because that's not going to work, is that they avoided a disaster. So going back to the point about zero tolerance. So if somebody prevents some kind of disaster, you can make a hero out of that story. You celebrate, you know, Mary, you know, who saved the company from XYZ and found this loss that nobody else found and you know, whatever, you celebrate her speaking up and finding something, you know, not putting anyone else at risk. So a positive thing. And if you tell those stories, I think that can shift the dial. And I was speaking to a company earlier on today about we're supplying a huge global financial services company. And they came to me and they said, well, you know, we're really thrilled. Last year, every year we ask our people and I'd say there are 500,000 people at least in the company. We ask our people every year these four questions. Would you speak up? Do you, you know, are you confident in telling your line manager or if you've got a problem, you know, these kind of questions. And their average was like around the 50s. But last year in lockdown, they were delighted. It had gone up to 60s, 60%, you know, positive, probably positivity. And you know, the thought, this was great. So I said, well that's grand, but people are sitting at home not looking at Fred beside them saying, oh, I don't. They don't have a problem right now. They're in their little office or their kitchen or wherever they are. It's very easy to say, to give a higher score, say, oh, yes, I'd report because I'm not looking at them right. You know, I'm not Afraid of anyone in the environment. The environment has completely changed. And then the other question was, well, have you tracked how many complaints you've had, you know, from in those four years? But they haven't. So thinking, what a spurious, what a spurious ridiculous number. It doesn't matter. So using these stories and evidence based, evidence based on tracking and metrics is absolutely key.

Yeah, well, and you know, the problem there is we all like to think that we are ethical people who will do the right thing in the moment. And so we have this, whether it's optimism, bias or anything else to where we'll say yes, of course I would, I would stand up and say something. That's where you get, you know, Even in that 50% I would say is pretty low of people saying they would say something.

Right.

That's not a great stat to have in that way. But then in the moment, you know, there's this like cognitive dissonance piece of like, well, that's not the type of person I am. Or like how do I do, you know, and you struggle with, and you can rationalize away why you don't in.

The moment that you're still a good.

Person and you know that you're, you're struggling with all of that. So yeah, definitely, it's easy to say outside conscious brain wise. Like, of course I would say that on the survey and it's your boss, you know, like your company's asking you, are you going to be a good ethical person?

Yep.

Even people who don't think they would might, might say yes on that particular survey for fear of those repercussions, you know, that you don't feel like you can stand up. So I think it is such a, an important topic for sure. And that's not just, I think, you know, it is such an important topic to have out there. I appreciate the study that you've done, the thoughtfulness that went into the article. And I know all of your work as you talk about this reframe model and not just leaving the responsibility on employees to have to stand up, but making it so that they can safely do that, which helps make everything better for everyone involved. And so, you know, I'd say just thank you for all the work that you have done and everyone should go read this article regardless of what you do in business, entrepreneur, corporate, whatever, go check this out because it's really important to have some knowledge of what's going.

On and understanding more of your own.

Biases and how you can help others to do the right thing when that moment comes up and helping yourself for everyone who wants to get in touch with you, Nuala, to learn more about what you do, whether it's at Mind Equity or UN Women or all the amazing things that you're doing, what is the best way to connect with you and to learn more?

Thanks, Melina. Well, very simply, LinkedIn is, number one, the easiest. And secondly, just go straight to mindequity. So, Nuala, mindequity.co.uk.

Perfect.

Well, we'll definitely have links for that in the show. Notes might spell out your email address if we put it in there instead of actually putting on. Don't want to create spam for you. That's no fun for anybody.

The website's easy as well. Or just go straight to my Mind Equity website.

Yeah, absolutely. You can go check that out. We'll have a link to the Mind Equity website, we'll have a link to your LinkedIn. And for anybody who heard it here you have her email address. So you can go get that. That's a little bonus for the listeners that want to take notes. So thank you so much again, Nuala, for joining me on the show today and talking about this very, very important topic.

Thank you very much, Melina, and I hope to see you again soon. Thank you.

Of course, yeah. So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about whistleblowing today? For me, I really love examples like this which help us to see how our intentions don't always match our actions, or rather how they often don't match. We all like to think that we would do the right thing, that we would say something, make the call, raise the flag, blow the whistle. But as this study and other work shows, as time passes, even a very short time, our passion for the item at hand can really die down. I've linked to an episode and book in the show, Notes from Dolly Chug. The book is called A More Just Future. And one of the things I found so fascinating in that book was when Dolly talked about how the past feels so much more further away than the future does, even when the actual distance is the same.

And we talked about it when she.

Was on the show. So let's say something bad happened at work, something outrageous, one minute ago. How do you feel about it? What about 10 minutes ago a day? How compelled are you to take action when that bad thing happened a full week ago? It can feel like ages. You might convince yourself that it's weird to bring it up now, so you should hang around and see if something happens again. And then you'll be ready to speak up. Now let's imagine that you knew the same outrageously terrible thing was going to happen tomorrow. How do you feel about it? What would you do to speak up and stop it? How close does it feel when it's looming and going to happen next week versus having happened a week ago? It's really amazing stuff and one of several of my top related past episodes, books and and articles waiting for you in the show notes, along with ways to connect with Nuala and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 386.

And just like that.

Episode 386 on whistleblowing with Nuala Walsh is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Hugh Massey on the importance of sight, psychological safety and the role technology can play in that process. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.