Episode
The Hidden Cost of a Drama-Free Workplace
- Podcast
- The Buoyant Leader
- Published
- May 5, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 366
- Processing state
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- https://howiejacobson.india-explore.in/captivate-podcast/the-hidden-cost-of-a-drama-free-workplace
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Summary
A team of Swedish researchers recently set out to answer a question on everyone’s mind: What happens when you drug a bunch of baby salmon with anti-anxiety meds? They exposed Atlantic salmon smolts — young salmon making their once-in-a-lifetime migration from river to sea — to clobazam, a benzodiazepine. (Clobazam is in the same family as Valium and Xanax. It takes the edge off.) They watched what happened when a predator was introduced. Normal salmon tighten up — they shoal, forming cohesive groups, doing the collective threat-response thing their species has been refining for millions of years. The drugged smolts didn't. They drifted apart. They moved as individuals. The drug did more than make the fish more relaxed. It made them miscalibrated . Their environment is genuinely full of threats, including birds of prey, otters, fish, and even terrifying-looking merganser ducks complete with serrated bills. Salmon’s nervous systems evolved to read those threats and respond. Clobazam makes them environmentally illiterate. The Experiment We’re Already Running I've been thinking about this study a lot lately — because most organizations are running the same experiment on their people, just without the benzos. Workplaces routinely ask people to perform calm. Don't bring drama. Don't catastrophize. Don't make a fuss. Stay positive. The implicit message — sometimes explicit — is that the appearance of being unbothered is the same thing as being well-adjusted, and well. It isn't. Performing calm and actually being regulated are very different states. The first is a flattening, where people’s perceptions respond in a similarly limp fashion to threats and opportunities. The second is a kind of capacity — the ability to take in information, including unwelcome information, and res…