The Leader Who Got Called Out By a Junior Night Shift Worker

One of the stories I tell often happened on an offshore project in the North Sea.

I was part of the senior leadership team. We had made visible leadership one of our cultural measures of success — the idea that the leadership team would be present and available, not just in the offices but across all operations.

One evening I was pulled aside in the galley by a junior member of the night shift team. In front of everyone, he asked — louder than necessary — why I hadn't been out to visit their team all hitch. They'd been there ten days.

He was right. I hadn't. And I went.

What stays with me about that moment isn't the embarrassment. It's what it represented. A junior employee felt confident enough — safe enough — to hold a senior leader accountable for a cultural commitment we had all made.

That's not insubordination. That's a healthy organisation. The best cultures aren't ones where leaders enforce the standards. They're ones where everyone does.