Name: When Workplace Culture Becomes a Hollywood Story
Uploaded: 2026-05-20
Duration: 18 min 17 s

Toxic cultures, unchecked power, and pressure-cooker leadership have become Hollywood's favorite raw material. But what those stories can teach us about diagnosing and fixing the real thing in our own workplaces? Former CNN journalist Brian Stelter, whose book Top of the Morning inspired the Emmy-winning series The Morning Show , joins Denise Shull, the performance coach who inspired a character on the Showtime drama Billions, to discuss how fiction can be formed by real organizational dynamics—and the concrete lessons on culture leaders can take back to their own fast-paced environments.

Denise Shull, Founder and CEO, The ReThink Group
Brian Stelter, Analyst, CNN; Producer, The Morning Show
Moderator: Indrani Sen, Senior Features Editor, Fortune;, Co-Chair, Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit

When Workplace Culture Becomes a Hollywood Story

Conferences

So both of you have had roles in creating hit workplace dramas that delve into the ways that high performance sometimes comes hand in hand with tension, drama, even toxicity. Denise, you've been described as the real-life inspiration for Wendy Rhodes, the psychiatrist and in-house performance coach of the fictional hedge fund depicted in Millions. In your professional life, you advise people in extremely high pressure environments, traders, investors, athletes, coaching them on risk, decision making, emotion, and performance under pressure. Hopefully not yelling at them like the clip we just saw. Um, what did Billions reveal about the work that you do that surprised you, if you have any specific examples I'd love to hear them. I'm actually having a little trouble hearing you or understand what was the end of that? Oh, what, what did Billions reveal about the work that you do? There's a lot more to a good decision than we think there is, um, you know, in short, it does reveal the emotion behind the decision. We're always talking about take the emotion out, behave rationally, like, you know, use your head, all of that. Like, the show does demonstrate how much emotion there is even in a financial decision, which is where everyone thinks at a minimum there's not. It's not true, not true. Um, Brian, you're an accomplished journalist and your book Top of the Morning inspired the Morning Show, which you've consulted on. What has it been like to see your own workplace, perhaps some of your own experiences in newsrooms transposed onto the screen for entertainment? Has watching that fictionalized version of a TV news operation given you any Insights into the real thing. It definitely has, and you know, I will be the first to say the morning show on Apple, it's a soap opera, you know, it is not entirely true to what really happens behind the scenes at morning television shows, but the tension is real, the drama is real, the stakes are real, the human relationships are real, and I think that's what we bring to life on the show. When I wrote this book a long time ago on morning TV, I had not worked in television yet. I was still at the New York Times. Now I'm at CNN and I have a better understanding as a former anchor myself of why anchors are sometimes called anchor monsters. Like there's a reason why some of these TV egos get so inflated. There's a reason why, you know, those heads sometimes explode in TV. So I think we have certainly dramatize that and we have fun with that on the morning show, but it's getting at something very real about how to manage talent, about what talent even is in 2026. The question for both of you, um, we're watching these high-pressure TV shows and these workplace settings. They, they tend to, they feel recognizable to any of us, even if we've never worked in a venture fund or or a newsroom. Um, are all companies on some level hives of drama and, and if so, why, why is there so much drama in the workplace? Well, for one, we're human beings, right? And like human beings. We don't know this, but like I just said, you have to have emotion to make a decision. We all have a whole variety of fear, frustration, disappointment, desire, like longing, jealousy, and so we recognize it, right? And it's everywhere. So it happens in these two venues. There are a lot of really quick decisions like the, the pressure is right now. So I think it intensifies the, the demonstration of those emotions as opposed to when you at least get 5 or 10 minutes to like make a decision, you know, um. But yeah, it's that we show real human feelings. We all relate to them and we get to see these powerful, successful people experience these difficulties, conflicts that we experienced that we sort of thought, you know, maybe they've got it all together. Right, and we find out the opposite is true, and that makes us kind of happy, right? As a media beat reporter, I always operate from this sense that nobody knows anything, right, that everyone's kind of faking it, that nobody really knows what to do, that even the top, you know, people who seem to have it all figured out don't, and that's what these shows are expressing in different ways. I also look, I think about my first job in high school, and even that was a hive of drama, working at an ice cream shop, yes. Yes, I mean, even, even the, you know, even the emotions there. So you know it's such a through line, and I actually think it's wild that there aren't more shows that dramatize this. You know, we can count on our hands like the number of great workplace dramas, and then there's maybe one more hand of great workplace comedies. There's not that many of these given that we spend most of our waking hours at a workplace with colleagues and everybody can relate to those feelings and emotions, right? We're obsessed with it, right? Yes, yes. Um, Denise, one of the themes, uh, in both of these shows actually and probably in most workplaces is secrets, what people know, what people don't know, and what eventually comes out in a work setting. What happens psychologically inside an organization when some people know something important and others don't? Wow, that's a really interesting question. One is that intuition is a real thing. So like you'll see, you'll hear it called intuition or you'll hear it denigrated by the behavioral finance people. It's real. There's a ton of academic research that shows it's real. And we all kind of know when we're being lied to, um, like we have that spidey sense, right? Like that's a real thing and we don't like it. Why don't we like it? The brain is always predicting if something is good or bad for us. So if we know someone is lying to us, it's a threat. We're like there's something we don't know that's creating a threat and then we may even overreact because maybe it's a little lie, but your brain is gonna say this is a threat. And people then react to threats, you know, I mean that we, we have an audience here with a lot of HR people, professionals. I wonder if you could talk about the difference between necessary confidentiality and, and when secrecy becomes a toxic culture. Well, I think by the same token, everyone understands that certain things do need to be confidential, that you don't need to know everything, you know, about a colleague or their salary or their whatever bad behavior they might be engaged in. Um, so there's a way to deliver the, the fact that it's confidential with respect and kindness, so you know you're not knowing. As opposed to being lied to when you're being told something that you get that spidey sense it's not true. I mean, at its core, it's like if you actually really listen to people and the person feels respected, they'll react better no matter what the subject, right? So it's almost like don't be secretive about the fact that there are secrets. Don't be, yeah, and don't be dismissive and don't be denigrating. Like why would you think that, you know, like so much is in tone delivery. That communicates like respect and hearing what the person asked maybe, right, right. I'll tell you what I can, I can, you know, I can say this, I can't say that. I hope you understand that it's not personal to you, right, right. Um, and Brian, I want to go back to something you said earlier about performing confidence and authority, which is a, is a thing that we do a lot in media, um, and it's certainly a big theme in the morning show. It's probably true in other fields too. How much of workplace dysfunction in your opinion comes from people faking it? Pretending to know more or control more than they really do. Yes, I sometimes like to ask folks, you know, who are, you know, kind of middle or rank and file, you know, actually, you know, keeping, keeping a channel on the air or keeping a website online, how many bosses do you feel like you have, you know, and do you feel like any of them are actually in charge, and you get really interestingly different answers sometimes, right, if folks feel like there's a dozen people who might think they They are in charge, but actually no one is in those cases. I think we see versions of that in the morning show. And as the seasons have gone on, I'm still a producer on the show. We're in the 5th season now. We're working on season 5 right now, and it's a great side hustle for me because the writers will come and ask me, we want X to happen, then we want Y and Z to happen. Can you help us get there? Can you help us make that plausible? Is there a plausible way for it to happen? And by the way, I would say, you know, oftentimes there's not, and so it's fun for me to try to brainstorm ways to make it possible, you know, I think that ultimately they are trying to depict a business that is In secular decline, right, broadcast television in all its ways, and in that environment, you know, it's a little bit, what's the line about academia, you know, the stakes are so low and so people behave a certain way. Like there's a little bit of that going on about people clinging on to what they have and trying not to change in an environment where it's slowly, gradually, but clearly declining. And I think in that environment hopefully people see through the calls for authority and the calls to fake confidence, but I certainly think that that's what we're seeing that for the last gosh, 20 years now at the actual big networks as they try to recreate themselves and rebuild themselves in real time. And but ultimately knowing that it's in decline creates, I think, even more pressure on those egos I mentioned. It makes some of those anchor monsters even bigger monsters sometimes. I'd let's talk more about Anchor Monster. Um, it's just something about the red light on the camera. Yes, you know, some people would die without the radio, you know, without, but that's what it is. It's not just in, in TV newsrooms, right, Denise? You've talked about the rainmaker, the hedge fund star who makes money but treats people badly. Every industry has some version of that kind of person, like the, you know, the brilliant jerk. Um, what should lead us do when the person creating the most value is also creating a huge amount of damage. Well, isn't that actually the question, like, really, no matter what environment, what show, like the person who creates the most value is creating the most damage. I mean, there's the, is the person at all interested in creating less damage or do they have some psychological need to create damage. Um, there's, you know, I'm always like, what are they feeling? Why are they feeling it? Can I know that? Do they want to know it? Because the problem is basically like we don't need to regulate emotions. We need to regulate behavior. Like what people feel is what they feel. Like, and the more they understand about it, the less they need to like act out onto other people. So I mean, in practicality, that's what I end up doing is helping them understand that whether it's against their team or their market. But like how do we do that in a world that thinks cognition is the most important thing, who, you know, overvalues rationality. Like you're acting out. Because it does something for you. So how do you interrupt that doing? I mean, the research, you all know the research says psychological safety is the most important thing on a team, but like the people leading the team sort of think, OK, well, it doesn't matter, you know, uh, I'm just gonna, I guess you could summarize that and say it's a different approach to both the conscious and the unconscious emotions going on in all of the people, but particularly the leader that's behaving badly. I realized. Yeah I mean I guess what do you do with that, but I. The manager has to be empowered, I guess, to, to be able to make that distinction. Say that again. The manager has to be empowered from the top to be able to make that distinction about a player on their team who is, um, perhaps, you know, helping them meet all their goals, but, uh, but it's making everyone else miserable. Yeah, I mean, I'll say it again, I forgive me for sounding like a broken record, but I think the more we understand how human emotion actually works. It's not this leftover thing from like evolution. It's a real thing with information. We need it now. It's exaggerated and distorted by our past and by situations, but like if, if the workplace began to really understand how emotion works, I think there would be less bad behavior and more strategies to address it. Right. How about you, Brian? Anchor monsters, how do we deal with them and anchor monsters in ice cream shops as well? Yes, right, exactly. Well, you know, I'm thinking about the biggest news this week on my beat is Stephen Colbert signing off The Late Show, and he's been choosing to be so positive. He's radiated gratitude. He has said, I'd rather be grateful for the time I had on air than be angry that it's ending, even though he thinks he's probably the victim of a political hit and he thinks that there's all sorts of shenanigans going on behind the scenes. I really admire that and I found myself wanting to lift that up in my reports because we need those kind of role models, you know, we need, I mean, as someone who was canceled by CNN years ago and now I'm back at CNN, you know, you need role models in every phase of your career, phase of your life, about how to go about living a certain way, and I'm thinking about Colbert as exactly what you want to be. As opposed to I have someone in mind for what I just heard is the opposite about the kind of people who are fearful, who are acting out of fear, who are acting out of, you know, self, you know, protection, but those, but you're right, they're in every company. It just happens to be in my case in television with the morning show where we're dramatizing and making it real. I love that you brought up Stephen Colbert. I think he's actually kind of a great example, Denise, of what you're talking about, about emotion at work too. Like he's someone who you can kind of see his emotion constantly, um, you've said, Denise, that, um, you know, as you just mentioned. Taking the emotion out of it is a mess. And even that some of the emotions we think of as kind of banned in the workplace like fear, desire, jealousy, frustration, you're kind of not allowed to express a lot of these feelings in the in the workplace. What would it look like for a workplace to acknowledge these emotions without excusing bad behavior. I mean. You know, I come from a modern psychoanalytic background, which is not Freud, which is not you did this because your dad did that. It's, it's more about like what's your emotional experience? How do we help you have a different emotional experience, and everyone knows the value of being able to just say how they feel without fear of retribution, like in no judgment, not judging yourself and not judging the person. Like if we literally could give people the ability to talk to someone, you know, maybe it's your group, um, or it's a coach, where they can say what they really think and what they really feel, so they can find the feelings that help them make the decisions in their jobs, like it would be a radical change. It would literally be a radical change because all that happens is the emotion gets acted out. Like that's all that happens, you know, um, it gets, you know. Perpetrated onto some junior person or um yeah. We need real conversa we need to be able to have real conversations and like To take it one step further. My thing is that what we do. Like we need a real conversation about sexual desire and power. It's not as much in millions as it is in the morning show, but like we don't talk about it, you know, all human beings have sexual desire, and ones that have power may misapply that. Like we need to talk about it without judgment. The benefits will be astonishing. Last thought, um, for, for our audience here, HR leaders, um, what should HR leaders take seriously in workplace TV and our obsession with it as audiences, even if we know that it's exaggerated, sometimes satirical or surreal. Hm. I take that first. I was talking a lot. I was thinking you could say, yeah, but I'm learning a lot listening to you. I mean what comes to my mind is that idea that those secrets which eventually always come out and blow up in at least on the morning show, we're showing those blowing up and taking you in ways that are out of control in ways that I find really interesting, you know, but that's in a dramatic way. What's yours? What was the question again? What, what should, what should HR leaders take seriously about how obsessed we are with the drama of workplace TV? Well, that this stuff is actually real. Like we can know that it's dramatized, but like this stuff really happens. So let's like not pretend that it doesn't and then actually think about like, OK, how can we make a difference like. As opposed to just viewing it as entertainment. I mean, it's definitely dramatized, but. Also, we like it because it's real. And there are times where for me as a consultant on the morning show, we've worked on plot lines and ideas that I thought were kind of too outrageous, and then I swear they've come true two or three years later. It is breathtaking how often that happens. I was just in Washington when the dinner shooting happened. And by the way, the HR folks were so good to us afterwards. I was so grateful to work at an institution that knew how to support folks who had been through traumatic stress, but I'm not joking when I say we've talked about one of those plot lines for the morning show, and then I found myself in that ballroom. So it's constantly art imitating life and life imitating art, and so that is why there's a lot we can learn from these shows. Truth is. Truth is stranger than fiction. That's right. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you for such a rich conversation.