Why Great People Struggle in the Wrong Culture
- Kim Meninger
- 8 hours ago
- 21 min read
In this episode of The Impostor Syndrome Files, we explore why great people struggle in the wrong culture. My guest this week is Julie Holunga, a fractional leadership and culture advisor who works with organizations to turn their stated values into everyday behaviors.
Julie shares how her early work examining women in the workforce shaped her perspective on leadership and culture, and why focusing on individuals alone is not enough to create meaningful change. Using her “pickling” metaphor, she explains how even the healthiest individuals struggle to thrive in environments that don’t support them. This insight has guided her work helping organizations align culture, behavior and leadership in a way that creates sustainable success.
In our conversation, we talk about why organizations often tolerate high-performing individuals whose behavior undermines the broader team and how that sends powerful signals about what is truly valued. Julie explains how these patterns erode confidence, psychological safety and long-term performance, even when short-term results look strong.
We also explore how past experiences shape present reactions in ways many people don’t recognize. Julie shares examples of how a single piece of feedback can influence behavior decades later and how unexamined “hot buttons” can escalate everyday workplace interactions into larger conflicts. We discuss why most people are unaware of these triggers until they are activated and what it takes to build greater self-awareness.
About My Guest
Julie Holunga is a leadership advisor who develops professionals to amplify their influence and impact. She works with teams and leaders to instill her Trusted Voice Paradigm to increase effective communications, make conflict constructive, and develop leaders who lead with integrity. Julie is on a mission to rid the world of Lazy Leadership. Through these programs, leaders get out of their way, develop trusting relationships with key stakeholders, and positively impact the organization's bottom line. Her expertise lies within professional services: law, accounting, and investment firms, specializing in the careers of female leaders. Check out her TEDx talk on the power of leadership language!
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Website: https://www.julieholunga.com/
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Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome, Julie. I'm so excited for our conversation today, I would love to start by inviting you to tell us a little bit about yourself.
Julie Holunga
Sure. My name is Julie Holunga. I am a fractional Leadership and Culture advisor, and I work with teams and companies to really help them put what they say in words of like how they define culture, how they define leadership into action. And I started doing this work many moons ago, first in we have this in common. In Boston, working at Harvard Business School on an initiative examining women in the workforce and essentially, as this is what in the early 2000s the infrastructures that weren't in place to support and advance women into leadership positions, and coincidentally, at the time, is when our daughter was born. So it really reinforced this desire that I wanted my daughter to have the same opportunities professionally as her brother. And from there, we moved to Canada, and I was home for a couple months for the first time ever as a mom, and thought, I love my kids, and this is not me, and I need a balance. And I actually started working with two alumni from Harvard Business School who had just started a company, and it really gave me that balance of doing the work that I love and being able to still be home and support the family as well. And we moved to Denver, and that's when both kids were in school, and I realized, you know, I spend most of my day advising either professionals on their leadership or their roles, or going for promotions or working with leaders, trying to promote others or recruit really talented women. And I thought to myself, I'm advising everyone else, but I'm not taking my own medicine and, and I needed to really start doing what I, what I love doing. And it was then becoming this advisor to both teams and companies and individuals on, on really making not only their careers, which is part of it, but the environments that we all work in, to be as healthy as, as possible. And I think about this, I heard this years ago, this metaphor that we can work on ourselves, or we can work on one person, as an advisor, and that person can thrive. But, and I think of it as like a really healthy, crispy cucumber, you know, in the heat of the summer. But if they go back into an environment that is vinegar, they become a pickle, right? And I love pickles. I love pickled anything. But that's not what we want in the workforce in terms of the environment that we're in. So I find that really helping people, both individuals, but then that collective whole, like, what's the environment? What are we trying to do here, and what does it look like for us as a team, like that intact team, maybe for us as a company? I was talking with a client yesterday about, you know, national or international companies. There's a different vibe. You know, you're in Boston, I'm in Denver, there's a slightly different vibe there. Or if we talk about Europe or Asia, there's, you know, different sense how things get done. We can have this overarching of who we want to be, but how that plays out each day might be slightly different.
Kim Meninger
I'm so glad you're acknowledging the interplay between the individual and the system that they belong to, right? Because I do think that, you know, I've been coaching for almost 15 years now, and I've worked with some fantastic individuals, but I do think a lot about that pickling that you're describing, right?
Julie Holunga
Yeah, you can use that.
Kim Meninger
I love it and, and I think, you know, I often think about how we can create lots of change, but it's hard to do that in a vacuum. And so if the system doesn't change, you know that really limits our growth. And so when you think about we're in this sort of very chaotic moment in history, and there are lots of question marks around which paths organizations are going to take. Are they generally receptive to the conversation that you're talking about, or like, what's the common reaction when you are they coming to you and saying, We have this problem and we want you to help us? Or are they sort of tiptoeing into it. What does it look like out there?
Julie Holunga
Both, yeah, there might be, I'm just thinking of I've just started working with a bank, and they, they approached me. They were talking there. There's been a lot of change within the bank. They have the right people in place, but now there's. That next layer of, how do we operate, especially when things get tough, right? Whether that's day to day or, you know, God forbid, knock on wood, we don't go through another pandemic-type situation. So they come to me. I also have had other clients where they come to me because the leadership wants it wants some whether it's as simple as skill building or they want to shift the way they give feedback as a whole, they're almost always are skeptics, and it really depends who the skeptics are and how loud they are, but I have heard more than once, unfortunately, you can't teach a dog new tricks. That's pretty disheartening to me, because those are usually the people that need me the most. [That's true.] And their team or their colleagues will tell me that. But if they don't want to change the way they think, the way they behave, the way they act. I could be literally the best, you know, consultant trainer out there. And it doesn't matter.
Kim Meninger
That I think about too is an unfortunate issue of you can't measure the essence of something [right]. So companies think they're doing well, but have no imagination or no way of, of knowing how much better they could be [exactly] right? So convincing them that it's worth the effort and investment to make these changes can be tricky if they already feel like we know what we're doing right.
Julie Holunga
And especially when money's on the line, like, I mean, that's the honest truth, you know, and I hear it all the time. You know, this person's a rainmaker, or they're, you know, they bring in a lot of sales, or they, if they are, that revenue-generating person, and they behave poorly. That's saying it nicely. You know, people tend to turn a blind eye, which is so unfortunate, because then I always hear down the line, why didn't we just get rid of him? It's like this avalanche effect that I don't have time to deal with this, or I don't want to lose the money, even if they that subconscious, right? Like he's making my team, like, if it's a sales team, or if you think about someone's who's a lawyer, accountant, you know, on a billable hour, or a portfolio manager, and they're making a lot of money for the company, there's a lot of hesitation to ask them to change their ways, even if they're losing tons of people, because no one wants to work with that individual.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, and that's the part that always stands out to me, is, yes, you may be making a lot of money over here, but what are you losing by exactly person here, right?
Julie Holunga
And it's usually a longer impact. You know, it's not that direct like but look at his monthly numbers or right? It's more what's happening a year, two years from now.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, yeah, the and the ripple effect, even on the people who stay right, who don't feel safe around that start to doubt themselves, you know, shrink because they're afraid of, you know, how that person's going to react. All of that adds up.
Julie Holunga
Yeah, yeah, and the confidence is the big piece. You know, we were laughing before we started recording about someone I worked with 25 years ago and called me Julia, and you were laughing that that stuck with me, right? And I hear that all the time from even from senior leaders in their 40s, 50s, who tell me, Well, you know, my first boss, or someone early on in my career, told me I talk too much, and so I stopped talking. And now you know, 20 years later, they're not speaking up in a meeting, and they have a lot of good information to share. That's one comment that was made 20 years ago sticks with them, and that's, that's the unfortunate thing, that it's that lasting effect.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, that's so true, and especially early in your career, too, where you don't have the experience or the you know, sort of ability to recognize that people's feedback is biased and that you don't have to take all feedback, right?
Julie Holunga
Right. Where that feedback maybe comes from has nothing to do with you. [Exactly.] Yeah, yeah.
Kim Meninger
Yeah. So that's interesting, and I wonder how that may or may not play into your work of, of how do we, how do we even on Earth, some of these stories that. We've been telling ourselves for years that aren't even true, or maybe they may, and maybe they were true at one point, but aren't anymore.
Julie Holunga
Well, exactly. So there's an easy answer. They work with someone like you, right? Because you and I hear it, [yeah,] and we know is that a story telling yourself, or what's the story? Or so I try to tell people, especially if I'm teaching or facilitating a conversation, and conflict comes up, there's usually a story there, whether it's between two people or it's a story that someone told themselves years ago, and it comes up. It keeps coming up, like this happened with some clients of mine amongst the team. And the leader had a good relationship with everyone on their team. There are eight of them on her that report to her, which is a lot, but that's another story. And she had to take someone off of a engagement and a project, because he wasn't delivering, and she made some they both made some mistakes in terms of their communication and what to your point, what wasn't being said, what wasn't unearthed. And so they brought me in. We this all kind of bubbled up in front of everyone, which was interesting. And what came out of it was that she was going so fast, so she was being reactive. A client had called her complaining about this individual on her team. Instead of going to that team member and saying, Hey, what's going on here? What don't I know? What am I not aware of? She's like, I'm, I'm really sorry about this, but I'm taking you off of this project and putting you over here. I'm bringing this person in, and of course, that individual was really upset by it, like was working really hard. It came to be that the client was, you know, the one a little bit at fault, not a little bit a lot at fault, of not giving them the information that they need. So the individual then couldn't do what he needed to do, but in that heated moment, with all the emotions, and we've all been there, he said to his boss, you're such a micro manager. And that set her off, because literally, 30 years before her first role as a people leader. She was told she was a micromanager, and it just blew up. And, you know, it didn't fix overnight, but over time, many, many conversations, we were able to kind of peel that back and figure out, why didn't you tell her that the client wasn't giving you what you needed, and why did you react and not have that awareness that this was kind of pushing a button, poking the bear for you? Yeah, but it was amazing. And they're they still work together. This is probably six, seven years ago now, and they have a great relationship because they were able to unearth all of that.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, that is fascinating.
Julie Holunga
Both of it. Stories, right? Like, and he did share with me privately that he was trying to not dump on her and give her more work. And he really good intentions, like, there's no criticism there, yes, but it just didn't land the way he wanted to or needed it to.
Kim Meninger
It's amazing how very small but well-intentioned steps acutely into these bigger problems, right? Yeah, and, and this is so aligned with what I think about a lot too, is I used to joke and I, and I still believe this, everyone should have to go through therapy before they go into the workplace, because they're all baggage with them, and we don't know, right? Like, we don't know that we're triggering other people, and sometimes we don't know, like you said, why we've been triggered, because it's just an automatic reaction. But when you talked about, she didn't know that that he was poking the bear by saying that like that, to me, feels like a really important opportunity for all leaders and everyone, but certainly leaders, to take a look at and say, Hey, what are my hot buttons? [Exactly.] Where are they coming from?
Julie Holunga
Right. And I don't know if you've seen this, but this is but this is what I've seen, is people don't know until it's been triggered.
Kim Meininger
Yes, that's right, yes, right.
Julie Holunga
So it's like, it's not like you can say to someone, Hey, what are your hot buttons? I don't know.
Kim Meninger
I don't know. Yeah, just interact with me enough and you'll find out. [Right, right.] Yeah. It's really funny, because even on a personal note, like I joke that my husband has this one particular hot button where, if I say, are you in a bad mood? Whoa, if he wasn't, then he is now. [Right.] So I've learned, you know, to reframe my question. But it became one of those things where, after enough times I was like. What's really going on here? When I that question, and he was able, you know, once we started talking about it, to recognize like, oh, that's something that people used to say to me years ago, and it always bothered me because I wasn't and I felt like they were projecting onto me. And yeah, it's like, oh, it makes sense. But this is a totally different scenario. It's been years, you know, and I think this is showing up all over workplaces, especially because people are under so much stress, like you said. [Yes.] Everybody's kind of at their wit's end right now because of overwork and chaos in the world and everything on around us, right?
Julie Holunga
Right. And just drinking from the fire hose. They don't take a moment to check in with themselves, or even to have the awareness like, Hmm, when I make this comment, are you in a bad mood? I get the same reaction. I find like I often people ask me, you know, what is one thing you wish all leaders would do? And I just wish they would pause right and just take a moment. I'm not saying like some big woo, woo. You know, that's not me. Take a second. What's going on here? Why am I reacting this way? Why is this individual responding to me this way? And sometimes it can't be in that moment, like you're having a hard conversation. It can't be in that moment. It may be that you come back, you know, in my house, my husband talks about the 24-hour rules and, and of just, you know, give it 24 hours. And like the kids, our kids make fun of him all the time, like, Dad, come on. Like I want to, I want to comment on someone's post. I can't wait 24 hours. You know, this Instagram story is going to be gone, whatever they're on these days. But there is real power to that. Like you, you walk away from something you can have a less emotional and more intellectual response.
Kim Meninger
Yes, yeah, I could not agree with you more. I think the power of the pause is so underestimated, and it's not something that most people are taught, right? [No.] We both went to the same business school, did she? Right? You know.
Julie Holunga
I didn’t learn it. I loved my experience, but I didn't learn any of this there. No.
Kim Meninger
No and so, you know, people are really the really good technical experts at what they do, and then they end up getting promoted into higher and higher levels of responsibility. Sometimes they go through good leadership development programs, but basic, awareness of their own psychology, right, and just of their, their, their own, like you said, the stories they tell themselves or their, their, their own sensitivities, yeah, so important when you have that much responsibility for the people around You, and so just It might feel and I know that it's hard, because everybody feels like they need more time, but one of the things that I often joke about is, hey, you're going to use the time either way. You can either use it proactively, upfront, or you can use it cleaning up the mess.
Julie Holunga
Exactly, right? That's so funny. You mentioned that because I literally just last month was teaching a group more of skeptics than open minded, just saying about feedback and hard conversations. And this was the fourth session of this topic. And what kept coming up previously was I don't have time for this. If I do this, then it's at the expense of being home with my kids. One, one person actually said to me, if I have this hard conversation, I'm not giving my son a bath tonight. Is that what you want me to do? So that's like, oh, skeptic, skeptic. So we started having this conversation about this time trade fallacy, right? Like, this idea of, like, I don't have time to have that hard conversation. That might be 20 minutes today, but if I don't deal with it, and it escalates and escalates and escalates, and I keep sweeping it under the rug, and then all of a sudden, there's this, you know, hill under the rug, and I trip over it, and it's disastrous. [Yes.] That did not work with the skeptic, just FYI, but I thought it would, I thought it would help him.
Kim Meninger
It feels so logical to me, you know? And, yeah, I think that, that's a story that he told.
Julie Holunga
it is exactly because what we know about the brain with all the advancement in imaging, and is that when we are, for instance, worried about kind of this hard conversation, or maybe, you know, my peer and I are in. An argument or disagreeing, or we just had this we're in a meeting and we're not on the same page. It's distracting. So it's taking away from the power of your brain, which is a muscle, just like your biceps, your quads, your glutes, whatever. And so then you're not it's a distraction. So you're not able to do whatever it is that you're doing, that you need to use your brain that deep thinking work. It's a distraction. It's slowing you down. [Yes.] And, and it that is a fact like you can't dispute that. And what I often hear I had a client, this is years ago. She had a post-it note on her monitor from one of the programs we had done around giving feedback, and she had the five steps that I teach on her monitor. And she had been avoiding this conversation, avoiding it. She didn't feel confident. This person was a little bit more senior to her. They were at the same level position-wise, but he was more senior in terms of experience, and she put it off, and she put it off, then we had this conversation. She's like, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. She had the conversation. It went better than she expected. It was uncomfortable, but it went better than she expected. A weight was lifted. You know, it's all good. Like, a month later, the guy's in her office, and he sees the note, and he's like, is that what you did to me? But I mean, it was a joke. It was absolutely fine. But she said to me that once she had that conversation, she didn't realize how much it was pulling her down and draining on her, because it was constantly, even subconscious, constantly on her mind. [Yes, yeah.] I don't have time to do it. I'm gonna put it on, you know, we're gonna put it on the back burner. Guess what? The flame is still gone. Water's still boiling.
Kim Meninger
That's right. That's exactly right. And I think about that as somebody, I personally am a high-anxiety person. I, you know, I'm very tightly wound, right? And so it is tempting to avoid conflict, and there are ways in which it feels safer to just kind of bury your head in the sand and hope that it goes away. But to your point, the energy that you're consuming by avoiding it is not in you know it. I can't think of the word, but it's not a small thing, right, right? And so I think that needs to be accounted for as well. And I often use, I don't know if you read the eat the, Eat the Frog, Brian book, right? I use that exactly all the time with things that they're procrastinating on. I'm like, [yeah,] eat the darn frog, because I'll be thinking about it and work totally okay, just doing get it over with.
Julie Holunga
Right, right? I actually did that this morning. I felt very good about myself once I did that.
Kim Meninger
Yes, and I think it's just really important to be intentional or mindful about how we are focusing our attention, or how we're using our brains, like you said right now, because we are more stimulated than ever before we have absolutely or things coming at us in a million different directions. And so to really think about it as to like attention, almost as a resource. You don't, if you don't blindly spend money, or you don't, you know you have to refuel your gas tank when you're exactly right. Like, how are you using your brain power?
Julie Holunga
Yeah, yeah, and how and where, and with whom, and yes, what's draining, and you know, where are you expending that energy? That because you can, but isn't necessarily the place that you're adding the most value.
Kim Meninger
Well, and to that point, I want to ask you this too, because you work with both teams and individuals, and I wonder if you have thoughts on how to know when it's time to say, I've done the work I can and this environment is just no longer right for me, because one of the things I often talk to people about is, if you're the common denominator in all of your work situations, right like, What are you taking with you to the next role that might keep you in the same space that you're in right now, right? And so there's always that internal work. But then there are also times when, genuinely, it's like, this isn't about me anymore. Yeah. So do you have a sense of, like, how to evaluate that?
Julie Holunga
I think it's always having that, it's a tough one, right? It's not black and white at all. And I even you know when one of the reasons that I moved from, you know, 15 years ago, working exclusively with individuals to more the team in the environment, is because I had two clients lie to me and. Yeah. And so I was coaching them based on lies, wow. And then I would talk to the senior leaders, and they would say, like, I that's not at all the case. And so it's, it's, you know, that's of all the I don't know, I think I'm up to like, probably 7000 between seven and 8000 people. I've worked with, you know, individually, in teams, and that, that's very rare, that people are so delusional, right? I'm going to believe it wasn't a conscious I'm going to lie to Julie. But what I often say to people is try, try something and if that doesn't work, try something else. And if you're constantly getting the same response, or you're changing your way of communicating, or you're changing how you approach a particular project or person, and nothing on the other end is changing. That might be that red flag, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and then, you know, from a culture standpoint, like, what's the behavior that the culture is allowing? Yeah, right. Like this example, you know, we were talking about the money makers. There was a firm I worked with years and years ago, and there was someone like, I couldn't believe the behavior that went on for a year, you know, inappropriate towards women, lying about connections, lying about money. You know, all the things that to me, it's like, Why is this person still here? Yeah, right. And they allowed it to go on and, and, you know, a year into it there, I mean, there was, it was complicated. I'm not going to say, I'm not, you know, there was a lot going on that, that got to that point. But one of the things that we talked about was that when you allow that behavior to happen. It is subconsciously sending a message to everyone. You can behave this way here. Yes, we allow that. It's okay, that's right.
Kim Meninger
You are. There are different rules for different people, right? Maybe we, we're okay with him doing it, yep, you don't get to do that, right?
Julie Holunga
Yep, yep, yeah, or even they don't recognize it, and then years later they're like, Why all of a sudden, is, has our culture shifted and we never used to be like this? [Yeah.] I know almost always, through a lot of peeling back that onion, you can figure out this happened, or this individual changed the tone of things and that, and we allowed something to go on that we shouldn't have, and oftentimes it's not. I truly believe that most people, the vast majority of people have good intentions. They're not coming into like, let me destroy the culture here, right?
Kim Meninger
Exactly, right. And it happens, yeah, it's not overnight. The boiling water, right, speed.
Julie Holunga
Right, right, exactly. Back to the frogs, yeah, yeah.
Kim Meninger
And I think that's, that's why it's so going back to the pause. That's why it's so helpful to create space to actually think about things. Because otherwise you just wake up one day and you're like, wait, what's been going on? Right? Paying attention.
Julie Holunga
Right. Exactly, exactly. And, and, like you said, with so much coming at us, we don't take the time to notice things. And it could be yelling in our face, and we're just not aware of it. [Yes, yeah.] Unfortunately, yeah.
Kim Meninger
So you kind of answered the question I was going to ask you, what I was like, just ask, what's the starting point for people thinking about, what can I do myself in terms of improving my own experience with the experience of others? And I think that pause button is so powerful. But is there anything else you would say, sort of an early step that people should be thinking about taking?
Julie Holunga
Yeah, yeah. I mean, whether you lead a team of people or you lead a project, the thing that I always want and talk to people about is, is identifying success. And I don't just mean, you know, the project is launched on March 1 or it's not always that tangible, but the intangibles as well, like, how will you know that you have been successful come the end of the year? Or something along those lines. And I really try to get them to go beneath the surface. I'm going to feel valued here, or I will be able. Able to see the impact I've had. And, okay, what does that impact look like? Oh, well, people are, you know, pausing, right? That might be something that you and I would, would notice, but really getting them to think beyond numbers or the tangibles. And I always say, like, if you carry out like I want to have an impact. I want to be a value to people. I want to empower people, and not just do for them. The numbers will come, the success will come, yes, but if you focus on, on solely the numbers or the bottom line, you might get there the first year, but it might not last, or it's not as sustainable, or you'll get it for a quarter, let's say, but it's not sustainable.
Kim Meninger
Yes, that's such a great, great point. I could talk to you all day, but I missed the time. I want to ask you, because you have such great insights, and you do amazing work. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and your work, sure.
Julie Holunga
So, you can go to my website, which is Julie Holunga dot com, or LinkedIn. I have a lot of content there, but not too much. I have one, one article a month. I because what we were talking about like that, the information that none of us can keep up with. So I try to keep it quick. Read four minutes done, just to get people thinking a little bit have that reflective time. But then also, like, what they can do, like, once they figure out, Oh, I'm being poked or something's triggering, what can I do about it?
Kim Meninger
Wonderful. I will make sure the links are in the show notes. And thank you so much for being here and for the work that you're doing.
Julie Holunga
Thank you, Kim, this has been really fun.