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Better At Work with Cathal Quinlan
Tesla's Secret to Creativity, A Listener Breaking Under Retail Burnout, and Cathal Finally Gets New Glasses
What if the colleague who drives you up the wall is the one your organisation can't afford to lose?
Cathal and Annette are back for a listener-questions special, picking up where last week's conversation with David [surname TBC], former Head of Design at Tesla, left off. The idea that stuck: every team has Mad Hatters and White Rabbits. The Mad Hatters bring the wild, disruptive, sometimes maddening ideas. The White Rabbits keep things running on time. Most organisations over-index on one and quietly punish the other, which is exactly how you lose the creative edge that made you competitive in the first place.
Cathal shares why the framework hit home, why psychological safety matters more than surface-level politeness, and why "I don't agree with you" should be a welcome sentence in any good team. He also references his recent LinkedIn post on the thing nobody tells you when you become a manager for the first time: there's no handbook. You're going to get it wrong sometimes. That's fine, as long as you keep showing up and keep supporting the ideas.
Then the listener question. Michelle wrote in from retail. She's covering two to three people's roles on her normal shifts and being called in on her days off. She's drained. She can't say no. She's breaking. Annette and Cathal unpack it honestly and the reframe is the gold: the days-off problem isn't the real problem. The root cause is the workload. And there's a way to raise it with her manager that doesn't torch the relationship, with a Plan B ready if it doesn't land.
Expect the glass-of-water stress analogy, a useful reframe on supporting failure at work, and a reminder that the people who held the retail and service economy together through Covid deserve better than being treated as infinitely elastic.
In this episode:
- Why Mad Hatters and White Rabbits need each other
- The LinkedIn post Cathal wrote about becoming a manager
- Why feeling threatened by a different viewpoint is a trap
- The glass of water and what stress does when you hold it too long
- How Michelle can raise the workload conversation, with a Plan B ready
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome back
01:35 Recap: David on curiosity at Tesla
05:38 The Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit
11:06 Why entrepreneurial thinkers need air cover
12:15 No handbook for being a manager
14:05 Why supporting failure is a leadership skill
15:03 Listener question: Michelle is running on empty
19:08 The glass of water test
20:14 How to reframe the conversation upwards
25:20 Respect for frontline workers
26:15 Next week: Jennifer Moss returns
Mentioned in this episode:
- Last week's interview with David Imai, former Head of Design at Tesla (Apple, Spotify, YouTube)
- Cathal's recent LinkedIn post on becoming a manager
- Next week: Jennifer Moss, author of Why Are We Here? Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants
Got a career dilemma of your own?
Send it in. We'll take it on anonymously, just like Michelle's. Details at betteratwork.net
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