Culture by Design: What Makes You Want to Turn Up to Work?

15 July

With Dr Jo Braid, Rehabilitation Physician & Burnout Recovery Coach • Solo Episode Ep 191

Released: Wednesday 15 July 2026

Listen on: Spotify and Apple Podcasts — search The Burnout Recovery Podcast

Episode Overview

Most of us have heard the word 'culture' used in a workplace context so many times it's stopped meaning anything. Leadership retreats. Values statements on the wall. The all-hands meeting where someone reads from a slide.

This episode is about something different. It's about the window. The two-minute huddle. The colleague who asks how you are and actually waits for the answer.

This week, Dr Jo shares what happened when she walked into her new clinic room at Bathurst Health Service — after eleven years without a window — and what that moment clarified about the conditions that make us want to show up. She also revisits one of her favourite frameworks from the Stanford Director of Wellbeing course: Appreciative Inquiry. Not as a feel-good concept, but as a neuroscience-backed tool for building workplaces people actually want to be in.

Whether you lead a team of one or a team of fifty, this episode will shift how you think about what culture is and where it comes from.

Why This Episode Matters

Burnout doesn't only happen to individuals. It happens to teams. And one of the most consistent predictors of burnout — identified in Dr Christina Maslach's foundational research — is a lack of community at work. The sense that no one really sees you. That the environment you're operating in has drifted somewhere nobody designed.

The good news is that culture can be designed. And it doesn't require a title, a budget, or a leadership offsite. It requires intention — and a willingness to go first.

What You'll Learn

● Why small environmental details signal something much larger about belonging and safety at work

● What Appreciative Inquiry is, where it comes from, and why it's not toxic positivity

● The neuroscience of deficit-focused workplaces — what chronic 'what's wrong here' culture does to the prefrontal cortex

● How a two-minute team huddle can change the temperature of an entire clinical day

● The difference between culture by default drift and culture by design — and how to move from one to the other

● Why sleep deprivation skews your read of other people's intentions — and what that means for leadership

● How to shape the culture around you, regardless of your role or seniority

Key Insights from Dr Jo

Culture Is Already Happening Around You

Culture isn't something that exists above you and filters down. It lives in the room you're in right now — in whether someone checks in with the person rather than just the task list, in whether the wins get named before the day moves on. You are already participating in your workplace culture. The question is whether you're doing it by design or by default.

Appreciative Inquiry: Building on What's Working

Developed by David Cooperrider in the 1980s and now used in organisational development worldwide, Appreciative Inquiry flips the standard improvement question. Instead of asking what's wrong, it asks: when are we at our best? What conditions create that? And how do we do more of that deliberately? Dr Kim Cameron's research at the University of Michigan shows that organisations characterised by this kind of positive climate see significantly better performance, lower turnover, and reduced burnout — not despite the honesty, but because of it.

What Deficit Culture Does to the Brain

Chronic exposure to 'what's wrong here' environments elevates cortisol, narrows thinking, reduces creativity, and impairs the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for judgment, nuanced decision-making, and empathy. In other words, the very qualities that good clinical care depends on. This isn't a soft concern. This is a patient safety and staff retention issue.

The Huddle Is More Than a Handover

In Dr Jo's brain injury rehabilitation team, every day starts with a huddle. Not just a patient list review — a check-in with each other. How are we all going? What do we need to know before we walk into this day together? That two-minute question changes the temperature of the whole morning. It signals, in a profession that asks a lot of people a lot of the time, that we are people first.

Sleep Is a Culture Tool

Research from the Harvard Centre for Sleep and Cognition shows that sleep-deprived individuals rate their social interactions as more threatening, are less likely to notice positive cues in others, and are more prone to assuming the worst about other people's intentions. If you are running a team meeting or a difficult handover on four hours of sleep, your read of the room will be skewed. Sleep isn't just personal recovery. It is the neurological foundation of your capacity to show up for the people around you.

The Culture by Design Framework

Across Jo's four pillars of burnout recovery:

MINDSET — At the end of each workday, ask: when did I feel most like myself today at work? Not most productive — most like yourself. That question is a compass.

SUPPORT — Start a huddle. Two minutes, same time, same question. Someone has to go first — model that it's safe to be human.

MOVEMENT — Move away from default drift and towards intentional design. Notice what the culture actually feels like at 4pm on a Thursday. Then ask: what would we do differently if we were designing this from scratch?

SLEEP — Protect your sleep as a team responsibility, not just a personal one. Your capacity to lead, listen, and connect depends on it.

This Week's Action Step

Try one appreciative question — with yourself or your team. When were we at our best? Or at the end of a shift: what went well today? Just one. Notice what shifts.

Then share one thing you appreciate about your team culture with a colleague this week. Not via a form. Not in a meeting. Just tell them. Culture is built in moments like that.

Researchers Referenced in This Episode

● David Cooperrider — Appreciative Inquiry, Case Western Reserve University

● Dr Kim Cameron — positive organisational scholarship, University of Michigan

● Dr Christina Maslach — community as a key driver of burnout

● Harvard Centre for Sleep and Cognition — sleep deprivation and social inference

About Dr Jo Braid

Dr Jo Braid is a rehabilitation physician, burnout recovery coach, and host of The Burnout Recovery Podcast — ranked in the top 3% of podcasts globally with over 190 episodes. Based in Orange, Central West NSW, Jo works clinically at Bathurst Health Service and speaks nationally on clinician wellbeing and sustainable leadership. Her work is supported by MIGA.