When “South is up”: Rethinking how we define good work
I delivered a keynote, Leading in a Neurodiverse Workplace, to a group of leaders at a national insurance company. I started the presentation by sharing this slide and asking, ” Which is correct?” Almost all of the leaders responded with B – North is up.
We have deeply ingrained mental models that shape how we interact with each other and how to function at work – how people should communicate, where work should happen, and even what productivity sounds like. Like the map, these models feel right, not because they are universally correct, but because they are familiar. They’ve been shaped by our own experiences, preferences, and environments.
The challenge for leaders is that we often don’t realize we’re operating from these assumptions. We design meetings, evaluate performance, and define “fit” based on a north‑is‑up perspective. When someone shows up differently in how they think, process, or engage, it can be easy to interpret that as incorrect, instead of considering that we may simply be looking at a different (and equally valid) orientation – South is up.
I wanted leaders to experience what it could be like to be neurodivergent. I asked them to complete an activity where they listened to a manager speaking and took notes. In the first round, the background noise was mild—similar to what many of us would experience in a café or open office. In the second, the noise was amplified to simulate sensory overwhelm, a common experience of neurodivergent people.
It was the same message, the same task, but a very different experience.
Leaders felt and understood the difference – not just in their ability to capture information, but in their focus, confidence, and even how they felt about their own performance. For a neurodivergent team member, what might show up as a distraction, lack of engagement, or underperformance can sometimes be a mismatch between the environment and how they process the world.
Instead of a performance improvement plan, they may need an accommodation.
After the session, one leader shared that she frequently met with her staff in the open-concept cubicles around the office to provide a different energy than in an office or meeting room. After the session, she realized that she was viewing these meetings with a north-is-up mindset and making an assumption about where her staff would prefer to meet. She shared that going forward, she would ask her staff for their preferences instead of making assumptions.
What is one small change you could make to create more choice so people can work, think, and contribute in ways that set them up to succeed?
The day I called my landlord
When I was in my mid-20s, I lived in a small apartment in Toronto. I had this big blue candle that eventually melted into a pool of wax. I remember walking around with it fully melted in its container, wondering what to do with the wax. I couldn’t put it in my garbage can because it would melt the plastic bag. I ended up in the bathroom and looked at the liquid candle wax and the liquid water in the toilet, and thought, “Ah, perfect”. I dumped the wax down the toilet, flushed, and walked off. I didn’t think about it again. A couple of days later, my toilet stopped working. It wasn’t all of a sudden, but it just slowly got less and less functional. Eventually, I called my landlord, who sent a plumber. I remember standing in the bathroom as the plumber snaked the toilet, and saw the blue, not liquid, but congealed wax come out of the toilet. I thought, “Ah, yes, that is my fault.” I apologized, paid the plumber, and learned a good life lesson.
I share this story not to highlight the ignorance of my 20-year-old self, but to highlight my mindset. I had what I call a ‘renter’s mindset, which sounds like:
- “It’s not my fault.”
- “I did my part.”
- “It’s not my job.”
In contrast, an ‘ownership’ mindset sounds like:
- “What’s my role in this?”
- “What could I have done differently?”
- “How do I help find a solution?”
Self‑accountability is the shift from renting to owning and it applies to individuals and teams.
In The 5 Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, accountability is not about a leader holding others to account. It’s about team members holding themselves and each other accountable for behaviours and results. It requires us to step out of defensiveness and into responsibility. We need to consider our actions in a broader context – their impact on others and over time.
An important (and often overlooked) way to build self‑accountability is through feedback.
- When we ask for feedback, we take ownership of our growth.
- When we receive feedback openly, we build self‑awareness.
- When we offer feedback, we contribute to the collective standard of the team.
Without feedback, accountability breaks down. Teams hesitate to address points of difference, standards become inconsistent, and frustration builds under the surface.
With it, something different happens. Expectations become clearer, and performance improves. And most importantly, people begin to take responsibility, not because they’re told to, but because they recognize the impact of their actions.
Shifting from a renter’s mindset to an ownership mindset isn’t easy. It means having difficult conversations, asking for input we may not like, and seeing our role in situations we’d rather attribute to others. But it’s also where growth and better team performance live.
How do you encourage self-accountability in yourself and on your team?
AI adoption isn’t a training problem
I attended The Future of Work Canada conference last month and joined a session, Value over Volume: Human Centred AI adoption. One theme that stood out for me is that, with AI, we typically focus on productivity as efficiency – how fast we can produce, how much we can get done. But productivity isn’t just efficiency; it’s also effectiveness – better thinking, better judgment, better decisions. These are human strengths. As AI takes on more of the speed and scale, what’s left is distinctly human.
When I think of AI adoption and the need to focus not just on output and doing more, but on insight and doing better, I think of the important role Learning and Development can play in supporting organizations. In many organizations, the response to AI has been to train. Roll out sessions, build toolkits and teach people how to prompt more effectively. We’ve seen this pattern before – when something new emerges, we assume the gap is knowledge or skill.
But what if that’s not the real gap?
AI isn’t just another tool to learn; it changes how work itself happens. And the way we figure out what “good” looks like is not through training alone, but through use, experimentation, and shared learning.
This is where Learning and Development has an important role to play, but it’s a different role than many teams are used to. It’s less about delivering content and more about creating the conditions for learning. Conditions where people:
- Feel safe to try and not get it perfect.
- Can share what’s working (and what isn’t).
- Learn from each other in real time.
- Begin to build a new understanding of what effective work looks like in an AI-enabled environment.
Because if productivity now includes better thinking, judgment, and decision-making, then the work of L&D isn’t just to teach tools, it’s to help organizations learn how to learn in a new way.
Where is your organization defaulting to ‘AI adoption needs more training’, and how could L&D instead create the conditions for people to learn through use and experimentation?
In case you missed it
I’ve shared some additional posts online. Here they are, in case you missed them.
- How Metaphors Transform Leadership Faster Than Any Framework (video link)
- Lead, Learn Grow conversation cards to begin meetings (video link)
- Training Magazine: Evolving from Event to Ecosystem (article link)
