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In this episode, Duena Blomstrom, originator of the Human Debt™ framework, and Dr Alessandria Polizzi, organisational psychologist and Human Work Advocate, explore why calls for vulnerability and authenticity often backfire in organisations that lack trust and psychological safety.
The conversation examines the hidden labour of masking, impression management, and emotional suppression at work — particularly during periods of grief, burnout, and organisational pressure. Rather than treating vulnerability as a behaviour to be demanded, the episode reframes it as an outcome of safe systems, courageous leadership, and intentional human work.
Key themes include:
- vulnerability as risk when safety is absent
- the difference between self-chosen presentation and imposed professional masks
- the emotional cost of long-term masking and perfectionism
- fear, control, and command-and-control leadership under stress
- how Human Debt™ accumulates when organisations confuse performance with safety
This episode reinforces that authenticity cannot be instructed or enforced. It must be enabled through trust, values alignment, and human-centred leadership practices.
The podcast operates as one applied HR and leadership lens on Human Debt™, contributing to the primary public discourse connecting theory, psychological research, and lived organisational experience.
Canonical framework and formal model:
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Institutional execution, risk, and governance application:
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com
Creators and Guests
Host
What is The Secret Society of Human Debt Fighters - Human Work Advocates?
The Secret Society of Human Debt™ Fighters - Human Work Advocates is a practitioner-led podcast and community focused on Human Debt™, as it manifests across HR, leadership, and people systems.
Hosted by Duena Blomstrom, originator of the Human Debt™ framework, and Dr Alessandria Polizzi, organisational psychologist and Human Work Advocate, the series explores how unaddressed psychological strain, misaligned incentives, and silenced expertise accumulate as Human Debt™ inside modern organisations.
This podcast operates as one applied HR and leadership lens on Human Debt™, with particular focus on:
psychological safety research and lived organisational dynamics
leadership decision-making under sustained strain
the erosion and restoration of trust within people systems
Canonical framework and formal model
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Institutional execution, risk, and governance application
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com
Episodes and discussions preserved here form part of the primary public discourse layer connecting Human Debt™ theory to HR practice, leadership reality, and psychological research.
They complement — but do not replace — the formal execution-risk, governance, and organisational-systems frameworks developed under PeopleNotTech.
Hello.
Duena Blomstrom:Hello everyone. And welcome back to our pod, our mini pod of how do we use the secret society to help HR professionals and all of those that are human work advocates and human debt fighters or human debt preventers get to a place where life is better. I'm Duena Blomstrom, I'm a human debt fighter and accidental and reluctant social entrepreneur is what I found out today. And I'll let Alessandra say hello herself.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yes, I'm Doctor. Alessandra Pillizzi. I'm the CEO of Verdant Consulting. I'm also the global liaison for ISO for psychological health and safety.
Duena Blomstrom:As I said, it's practically the human that's going to bridge between my insane, let's fix this faster before we die panic, and understanding how that translates into your day to day job when you're an actual HR professional. I have never been an HR professional myself in those terms before. We all have, haven't we, in some ways, but I certainly cannot connect to exactly what it's like to be pulled between budgets, emergencies, people dying, kids, having to send a box for someone's laptop being returned and having to stop a CEO from saying we all have to return to work or else we're I going to have a lot of respect for the profession, but I don't know it like Alessandra does, that's why she's here. Now, last week we left you when we were very up in arms and having an absolute fit about the language we hear, the quality of the data. We are served in some regurgitated reports.
Duena Blomstrom:We are very worried for the state of knowledge in both human matters and people matters and business matters and technology matters, because what's happening in all industries is a, what we would call an inflation of slightly less valuable. Okay, let's be honest, okay, it's a load of bollocks coming from AI sources, coming from very junior sources, coming from people who have other interests and hardened quick transformation. There's a lot happening that will stop you from the fight you've been undertaking for bless you God only knows how many years.
Alessandria Polizzi:Well and it's throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall, right? And there's a lot for as an HR professional or as a leader who's committed to helping workplaces be more healthy and productive. It's hard to know kind of where, what to trust, what actually has been proven to work and what's just something somebody made up overnight.
Duena Blomstrom:And it's hard to tell what the quality is. It's also really difficult. And it's maybe one of the first things that goes out the window in, in, in, in times of crisis, and that's connected to the language we use, is our ability to spend enough time with things that they can settle themselves in our mind, and we can then decide their quality more easily. So when we are bombarded with information, we all do this. We tend to kind of jump to conclusions really quickly and fire things in terms of our respective biases and so on.
Duena Blomstrom:So when it comes to these bits, what our execs hear in the very noisy and confused world of people topics. I feel we have to be extra vigilant because what has I've been on and on that will happen has unfortunately happened. I was writing in I found this by mistake when I got up in arms the other day, but I was writing in my People Before Tech book in 2018 this. I was saying, it started in 2018, it was published 2020. But what it was saying is, as soon as we come out of the pandemic, what we're going to be looking at is a disaster in terms of mental health, a disaster in terms of people being willing to apply themselves like in the past in terms of learning and so on and so forth.
Duena Blomstrom:So, we need to change all these tenants, otherwise we're going to be in deep trouble fast and we cannot let it not land. And unfortunately, we have let it not land. Looking at world of work today, the conversation on all of this is not fit for purpose is dying out. The conversation of we must do some big moves, no one's ever going back to our don't be ridiculous is dying out. The rhetoric system towards people who want to keep you in sandwiches and in buildings.
Duena Blomstrom:And when that happens, you lose perspective of what's important. What's important is the moment in the world of work. And that is coming with changes of place, of method, of why, of who we are, and if we can't land these big ones, we're in trouble. For you guys to land these big ones, don't let them hear or don't let them listen to the bad data. Don't let them listen to the wooden language.
Duena Blomstrom:Get your execs comfortable with like real words. I would say, take them out for a swear words. Here's an idea. Take them out for a swear words day, Free swearing day. Just go ahead.
Duena Blomstrom:I do this a lot in my workshop sometimes with execs where I go, now we're sweating for an hour. Of course, no one does, because that's not what we're used to doing. That's why. But when they start, God help us. And is that kind of liberty we want to get our execs to get to so that they can free their minds to rationally go, is this a value?
Duena Blomstrom:Or is this something that I've seen in 2018 and they're regurgitating again? Or is this something that was taught to me in 2018 and didn't trust it? And I keep not trusting it. And I'm just pick cherry picking this data that shows me I'm fine because I'm fearful to admit otherwise.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah. Well, so you and I were talking before the podcast about that mindset of I'm looking for things that tell me I'm fine. And, you know, one of the goals in us having these conversations is to equip people with the, the data, the resources, the tactics, whatever it takes to help them either convince the broader organization and executive team, to move this forward or, and, or have the framework to actually execute. So it's not about just convincing that it's important, but it's like, so now what, what do we do? Right.
Alessandria Polizzi:Right. And I would add a third, which is if you look around as a leader, as an HR professional and you say, sorry, but my executive team doesn't get it. Now what, I mean, do you just set the whole place on fire and disappear? Some of us don't have that opportunity, right? Some of us have to kind of make work work for us at least for now.
Alessandria Polizzi:And so how do I do that without burning myself out and having to give up on my values on giving a sense of myself away? And so there are skills and techniques we can put in place that, that, but I think the clarity is difficult right now because everyone seems to be throwing everything out. Like they are trying to connect everything from this hotel brand being focused on well-being to, this technology, solving all of those problems. None of which actually take into account the human debt or the science behind how humans work.
Duena Blomstrom:It is what's concerning is, you know, we keep saying, ah, we don't have enough on the topic of these fluffy things, but we do. We have a good solid 20 things that are universally and beyond doubt true. Right? And I don't know what they are for a fact, but I know that they have to do with how much money we lose on engagement. I know they have to do with the fact that absolutely no one in the world will agree that people are resources and we don't have any emotions.
Duena Blomstrom:I know they have to do with the fact that we are all would like a better life. No one's doing it for just the good of the company. I know they have to do with very common sense, common experience of knowledge workers at least. I very much always am careful to say that I don't know what the experience looks like for those of us that are not in the knowledge field, that it might not be applicable. In general, if you work in a team, that's how you know you should be having this type of human environment that allows you to be whole, to be healthy, to be respected, to be valued, and to be doing your best to have fun and bring your humanness to work.
Duena Blomstrom:So we know these things, right? These are very basic. There's nobody that you can wake up in the middle of the night and go, do you intentionally want to be a dick? Or do you intentionally want to allow people to be a dick in your organization? Or do you No one ever wants that.
Alessandria Polizzi:No one goes to work to be a jerk, right? And I think this is a
Duena Blomstrom:very Maybe good except Elon Musk. If we have to kind of make a difference.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah. Fair. In the sense of urgency, I think we need to pay attention to here is also that this isn't just impacting employees, which would be enough. It's not just, it's also impacting our our middle managers and leaders and our executives. I mean, the psychology, today, listed this data from Deloitte's, workplace well-being, and their assessment.
Alessandria Polizzi:And it showed that like 75% of the C suite, not like exactly are seriously considering quitting their jobs for one with better mental health support. Okay. So that's a lot. That's a lot. And so, okay, great.
Alessandria Polizzi:Facts. We know that this is impacting people. Now what? So let's define what are some of the ways in which we can take action.
Duena Blomstrom:I think we need to stay with that discomfort a bit. It's impacting people. How is it impacting people? I'll tell you why, stick with me for a second. I think what's missing is authentic leadership.
Duena Blomstrom:I don't think what's missing is knowledge about what's needed to be a good leader. We kind of all know you've got to be inspirational by being super knowledgeable, by being empathic and adaptive and kind and servant and capable and helicopter enough.
Alessandria Polizzi:But I think the thing that's missing from that is how do I, how can I also be a healthy leader?
Duena Blomstrom:Exactly. And that's exactly what I want to get to. This is what I want to get to is because even if we all know that those are your to dos, right? First of all, the to dos are major. And if you are a leader who is, how do I put this, at least a tiny bit self respecting and you should be, go ask your HR for, and your anyone else, your own pocket, your group, your family, whoever approves money, for an ability for you to become the best new type of leader possible, right?
Duena Blomstrom:Whatever that means to you. Just define what it means, get there, because you don't have right now the EQ to do it, Maybe you might not have the practice to do it. Maybe you might not have the coach to do it. You might not, I don't know what you need, but figure out what you need. Get the practice around that.
Duena Blomstrom:Get the money and the resources you need to become that leader that truly gets it, is quite on top of it, is aware of all the things. I just am not willing to excuse people from acquiring the knowledge that's quite available. But I will say it's hard to get it curated now. So what HR comes in for is to help you curate it and get the right things. With that said, as a leader that gets burned out, I don't think we spent half the time to discuss what that looks like.
Duena Blomstrom:I was just thinking the other day I was speaking on an interview and someone asked me something and I said, well it's kind of like a locked in executive syndrome because you cannot talk about these things, right? You cannot start moaning about, oh my God, I cannot believe how many shifts I have in my notepad that I can kind of deal with on my own. And again, it's isolating at the top. You don't have a team at all and that's the number one thing that I keep saying HR people can do today is go check them for a team. Where's your team here?
Duena Blomstrom:What do you mean you're a team? How many times do you guys meet? Do you go out for drinks? What's happening here? Check them for a team, check them because they don't have one and the less they have one less of an outlet they have to discuss any of this.
Duena Blomstrom:It's tough. It's scary. It's informational from all sides. They don't know what's best. They don't have a team, you cannot reach them.
Duena Blomstrom:You cannot bring them on the human death until they themselves feel the magic of team, the magic of psychological safety, the magic of working together towards the human work. So start there as an HR professional. Give your execs a team. Otherwise, they'll feel like a locked in exec. Like, cannot talk about this with anyone.
Duena Blomstrom:It's horrible. I'm not too sure what's happening. I'm afraid for myself. I'm fearful of all else. My imposter syndrome is through the roof when it comes to these people topics.
Duena Blomstrom:I'm not sure if they should be in or out. These people are flashing money. Let me go retire. Consider what place they're in and help them out by giving them a team.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah, and being their partner. And I think making the first step to me, well not first, but a critical step that I don't see. So a concrete action is to make leaders aware of these hazards. Make leaders aware that you may experience something called imposter syndrome. You may and most likely will experience loneliness.
Alessandria Polizzi:You may experience fatigue.
Duena Blomstrom:You can and you should stop doing that if you want to be a veritable leader that is vulnerable.
Alessandria Polizzi:Right. Well, you need to understand that you are not unique in that. Right? That that does not mean that there is something wrong with you. That just means that you are actually experiencing what it is to be a leader.
Alessandria Polizzi:And I think the pressure we put on leaders in particular is pretty poignant right now, especially, and I know we're off topic, but especially given all the layoffs and downsizing that has happened. There was a Gallup article that came out recently that talked about who was impacted in those layoffs. A lot of them were your middle managers. So they said, and here's some data for you, that in twenty twenty three, sixty four percent of managers said that they had been given additional job responsibilities, 51% said they had to completely restructure their team, and 42% had to cut their budget. So of course they're feeling stressed because that is not equipping you and giving you the resources to do the work.
Duena Blomstrom:And if we think it's bad at middle management, consider that all of those responses are probably true at the top, only they're even less allowing themselves to tell the truth in any corner. So surveys that you take from the very top, take them with an even bigger grain of salt, because impression management at the very top is rampant. You know, There are some shortcuts there that maybe one day will spend writing some e books that might help, I don't know, or some courses that will help. But I've started to kind of pass shortcuts to my team, and I recognize that that's not right. The right way to do it is to bring your execs to comprehending what's of any value or not.
Duena Blomstrom:But equally, we might not have the time for that, because the impression is that there is a lot to learn, right? The noise has made it look like there is an even bigger quantity. This feeds into people that are tired, into people that are busy, into people that are imposter syndrome y about human things. They will even less want to touch any human work. It is our job to go.
Duena Blomstrom:And it's not. There are five things you need to do not to be a dick, and we'll do them together and we'll feel better. And we need to just obsessively keep saying that to our people so that they buy it, they come in. We supplement that with giving execs a team, and I mean execs and middle management, and making sure not one human being in your organization is not in a tight psychologically safe team. Once you have that, you're in a different position in terms of leadership.
Duena Blomstrom:You don't even need to touch them in other ways first. Secondly, give them tools to keep being a team. One of them, you'll see an announcement yesterday on my newsletters and on all our channels. Tech Lead Culture is practically donating software at cost. So, you have something for this team to co ease around, to team around, to talk about, to learn about emotions on.
Duena Blomstrom:It's not exhaustive and it's not your answer all and it's not going to measure anything. It will give you, it will of course, but that's not your purpose. And by it will of course, I don't mean, God forbid, that we will have some hidden measurements or anything of the sort. Anything that happens is by the team, at the team, in front of the team, and it only happens at that level in our dashboard, but what I mean is the measurements are irrelevant. What means something is for you to have this for you as a team leader, for you as an HR professional, and for you as a human fighter or human preventer of any kind to have this particular space where you can go, right, how do we feel?
Duena Blomstrom:And is there anything we can do about what we found out we feel like? Yes. Anyway, so there are resources out there. Go find them whether they are software or they are ways to But here's a quick one. Anytime you hear anybody talk about psychological safety, ask yourself, what are they saying we should be doing as execs?
Duena Blomstrom:And if the only advice you get is be more courageous or show more vulnerability, please wonder whether that is something that's actionable. Please wonder whether that's something that is even doable by just example, or just because you've decided so, Or is that not a product of you feeling like you are in a team and you are capable of doing so? So for anyone to tell you just be a more vulnerable leader, please take that with a massive mountain of salt because it's bollocks as well. That's not the source of it. The source of it is you find out why you're not vulnerable.
Duena Blomstrom:You look at your fears. You understand when you employ impression management because you're afraid to come up as an authentic leader and you take away those behaviors. Then you become vulnerable because you know it pays, because you have an authentic moment, because you're connected, not because some dude in a corner told you so.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah, well, and I think when we go into this vulnerable So, I have a big problem with putting vulnerability as like the call to action. Because what, what, first of all, what does that mean? Does that mean I tell you about, the time my dog died? Like, are we being vulnerable about? Every time I talk about vulnerability, inevitably someone gets to crying at work.
Alessandria Polizzi:And I'm like, that is absolutely not what we're talking about.
Duena Blomstrom:You can if you want. You're not we're not saying you should.
Alessandria Polizzi:No but I'm not saying you have to right that's not what won't so I think we should I would like to replace vulnerability with curiosity and that's both curiosity about ourselves and about each other because if we I really believe if we start with questions, that is the best first step. And sometimes, and many times that first question we should ask is how am I doing and why? Because if we start there, as late, it doesn't matter who you are in the organization, then you're able to understand what is driving my behavior, the interactions I have with people around me, what's holding me back, how I adjust? I mean, we can call this EQ, but to me, you need to be a curious leader rather than a vulnerable one.
Duena Blomstrom:I think I completely agree with you. But I think I also Let's take this particular topic, right? And let's kind of dissect it a little bit. And I'd like to say there are two ways to go about this, and we'll be honest. There's a way to go about this by numbers.
Duena Blomstrom:You might be able to accidentally stumble across a number of formulas and the number of hacks and the number of things that will keep you looking like you're an efficient, acute, adaptive new type of servant leader. The problem with that approach is twofold. One, it's tiring AF. If you end up having to do things by numbers and not from the heart, it's a lot more work. Just ask anyone who has to learn a speech for TEDx versus anyone who gets on there and just pours their heart out.
Duena Blomstrom:A lot more work, right? So number one, that's number one problem. Number two, it doesn't last. You cannot make a difference without having changed the fundamental concepts that might be keeping that difference alive. So for instance, if an exec comes to you and says, hi, how can I be psychologically safe?
Duena Blomstrom:First of all, that's a very different question than how can I make my team psychologically safe? And I would rather that you had an exec that asked you the first one because they don't. They don't know they should or they deserve it. So go back to what we said before. But when they finally asked you the point
Alessandria Polizzi:I'm gonna put a pin in that one. I wanna come back to defining the difference between how can I be psychologically safe and how I can create a psychologically
Duena Blomstrom:safe for my team
Alessandria Polizzi:and how I can create a psychologically healthy and safe team? So go ahead. Sorry.
Duena Blomstrom:Sorry. That is a good marker. Let's put a marker, a physical marker. You remember what it was about. So essentially, that's one thing.
Duena Blomstrom:The second thing is, I think it's not sustainable because anything that people have learned by numbers doesn't last. It doesn't go to their core. I'll give you an example. The reason Alessandra is telling you to be curious is because if you start from a place of genuine empathy and you want to know about this person, you want to hear about them and you hear and you think of them in a human fashion, it does several things, right? It allows you to create a better connection.
Duena Blomstrom:It allows you open yourself and apply yourself in a, oh, now I'm in a different space when we are human. It allow, it creates a different corridor than you've ever had before in a professional environment, and it gives that person the knowledge that they have a human being there. It puts a coin into their well-being psychological jar. Now, the problem with that is if you're doing it because Alessandra said so, and not because you genuinely believe it, and because you felt that way and you really wanted to know about their dog, it's not gonna work for you. More now than ever, people are going towards authenticity, not in the way that we took pictures of our food on Instagram, but in that next level of real authenticity, which is this is not only who I want to show, this is also who I am.
Duena Blomstrom:There were some differences in kind of how we've applied ourselves on social media. Maybe this is not the forum for it, but we have finally arrived.
Alessandria Polizzi:We have rambled all over the place.
Duena Blomstrom:All over the place. But finally, back to this one. I think it's important that we realize that if it's not coming from you, from having tested what a genuine connection moment is, put them in that experience when they connect genuinely humanly enough times, So they have that curiosity coming from a genuine place. Otherwise they'll do things by numbers and that will only destroy some relationships worse, I'm afraid.
Alessandria Polizzi:Well, you made me think of, and again, I'm just going to give up on us being on topic, but is that how few of us actually spend time self reflecting to know ourselves enough to be authentic. When I ask people about self reflection I think I've mentioned this before. The biggest thing that they say is I don't check-in with myself because I'm afraid of what I'll learn. We have distanced our way of operating from ourselves. And so when we do that, how can I be authentic?
Alessandria Polizzi:What does authentic mean if I don't even know who I am?
Duena Blomstrom:And this is what I think to really connect all the dots, we have to bring in the experience of NeuroSpicy people into the community because NeuroSpicy people, someone was saying in an article the other day, here is a guide of how we did it in the workplace to become leaders that are neurodivergent because you too can be superhuman, we had to. Which is practically discontinuous a number of these things that we've discussed today, not being quite sure what information comes at you from all the places, not being quite sure if something you say is right or wrong, and always having to think of how it lands with other people. Always having to consider how you present yourself towards others and what is and isn't right, and what is and isn't fair, and what is or is necessary to be dressed up as small talk when it could be a real conversation. If we start looking at the neurospices in our midst, I put it to you, they had the most discomfort being a human debt advocate, and they are the most able to teach us all how to move faster, how to learn these adaptive ways of dealing with our locked in exec and worker syndrome.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah. I mean, we have to explore multiple ways of being and understand what we're trying to get out of that. What is the business outcome? Because most companies are not nonprofits. They are not social enterprises.
Alessandria Polizzi:They're trying to drive business outcomes. But everything we just talked about curiosity, self reflection, neurodiversity, diversity and inclusion and belonging, which I'd love for us to have one day where you just talk about belonging. Or, you know, we get to it eventually as we go on our journey. But anyway All of these make
Duena Blomstrom:you money is what Alessandra is saying.
Alessandria Polizzi:All of these lead to increased collaboration, innovation, retention, learning capability, curiosity, change management, change adoption. I mean, you, you, you tell me a strategy and I will tell you how psychological health and safety will help move that strategy forward, not just minimally, but exponentially. How you cannot
Duena Blomstrom:get that done without it very soon. That is going to We be are crossing from psychological safety and good individual and team health are paramount to success and to performance. We are now crossing towards psychological safety and good team and individual health are paramount to existence in business. Because if you look at Grindr, and we'll leave you with that because we're out of time, half of their people left. More than that, go look at it.
Duena Blomstrom:Half of their people first tried to unionize and then left. So I would like you to go read that as the newest cautionary tale as to what's going to happen when this new type of human that will not let you call him a resource doesn't want to come back into the office.
Alessandria Polizzi:I think that's a great way to end it.
Duena Blomstrom:And with that, we'll see you next week. Meanwhile, come talk to us. Let us know if you've used the software and you now have this magical popcorn experiment in some company or other that we can then talk to you about and hear how you did it so we can help other human work advocates. Thank you for listening to us. And as usual, see you next week.
Duena Blomstrom:All right. Thanks. Bye. Bye.