Avoidance is not a strategy

TEDx days are funny things. On paper they’re a theme, a stage and a running order. In the room (and hopefully on the resulting videos) they’re something else entirely.

One Saturday in February a bunch of us gathered in the stunning (if chilly) Paisley Abbey for TEDxUWS 2026. The theme was ‘human connection’, which is broad enough to drive a truck through. And yet, listening to the talks, a much tighter thread began to emerge.

Not ‘connection is good’ (we all know that) but what gets in the way of connection and what it takes to restore it.

I noticed that most of the talks, in very different ways, were illuminating the same basic pattern:

• Something overwhelms a person or a system
• It gets avoided, buried or managed indirectly
• It then leaks out as symptoms
• Connection returns when the truth is faced and properly dealt with

Several speakers were in territory where the stakes are obvious. Physical issues, burnout, trauma, recovery, service, survival. It’s not my place to summarise anyone else’s story but what I will say is this: everyone who spoke that day was describing, in a host of eloquent and affecting ways, the human cost of avoidance.

What’s more, it’s the deeper kind of avoidance, in which your system (that can be your body or mind, but also your family or your organisation) knows that something’s wrong, and you do everything you can to not look directly at it.

The other observation that cropped up again and again was that avoidance is expensive. The bill is always huge, even if it doesn’t arrive straight away.

The workplace as a theatre of avoidance

In a way, my talk felt like the odd one out. It was the only one aimed squarely at work. But I got more convinced that it belonged there as the day went on.

Work is one of the biggest theatres of avoidance we have. Many of us spend a huge chunk of our adult lives there. It’s where status, fear and identity are ladled over decision-making. It’s where we can say ‘yeah fine thanks’ in meetings but be falling apart quietly on the inside. (And eventually, sometimes, not so quietly.)

Most leadership problems I see aren’t a lack of intelligence or strategy. They’re an avoidance problem.

Avoidance is often the difference between a group that can move and a group that can’t. In my work I often ask leaders to describe how they experience their organisation. Not in a brand-values way, but in a felt way. I get answers like:

• “We’re stuck.”
• “We’re tense.”
• “We’re exhausted.”
• “We’re constantly braced for impact.”
• “We can’t get traction.”
• “We’re fine on paper but something’s off.”

These are all symptoms. And symptoms are signals, saying ‘pay attention’.

In my TEDx talk I described three types of injury that show up over and over again in organisations. They all represent avoidance in different ways, and they all exemplify different types of blocked connection; between people and teams, or between what’s said out loud and what’s actually true.

The elephant: the conversation everyone can feel but no one will name
The hangover: unresolved history
The cupboard under the stairs: the taboo subjects no one goes near

None of these issues are rare. They’re not dysfunction. They’re just what crops up between groups of people when they work together. The choice leaders face is how to deal with it all.

More on this when the film comes out in a few weeks.

Connection isn’t a vibe

In the meantime, if there was one thing TEDxUWS reinforced for me, it’s that human connection doesn’t come from good intentions. In our personal lives, we know this instinctively. If you can’t speak freely, you can’t connect. If you’re constantly braced, you can’t relax into a relationship. And pain won’t be ignored: one way or another it gets out.

That, for me, was the real gift of the day. A reminder that regardless of whether we’re talking about bodies, communities or organisations, the same rule applies: if you want connection, you start by facing the thing you’ve been trying not to look at.

Explore more