Welcome to The People Insider — a weekly brief for anyone who employs people in South Africa.
Every Wednesday: one headline, one tool, one leadership story, one stat and one question. Under five minutes. No fluff. Let's get into it.
01 — THE HEADLINE
Feel like you're only getting half your team's thinking? Here's how to unlock the rest
Created with Tess Gouws, who helps teams get unstuck at Goya XD.
Ever feel like it's always the same people giving input or carrying the conversation in a team meeting?
Individuals normally stay quiet in team settings for 3 reasons:
Some are afraid of being wrong in front of everyone, so they nod along with whatever is already on the table.
Some are still thinking it through when the meeting moves on, and you get their real insight two hours later, in a message, after the call is made.
And some have simply learned that speaking up isn’t worth it, because last time they offered up something, it was dismissed with a "yes, but…" or even worse: “that won’t work”, followed by a change of subject.
Do that third one a few times and you have trained a whole team to keep its head down.
And it's a business problem
You are paying every person in that room for their thinking, and if you always walk out with just a fraction of it, your business is poorer for it. In a set of studies going back to 1985, researchers gave small groups a decision and deliberately split the key facts between them, so no one person had the whole picture.
Mass confusion reigned…
And because some people stayed quiet, most groups never pooled their information, so their decisions were consistently off target. That is what happens when you cannot unlock the whole team's engagement.
The fix is one banned word
One solution comes from the world of improv. The rule that keeps an improv scene alive is that whatever your partner hands you, you accept and build on. No contradicting "but"; instead, you go: "Yes, and…"
The same thing works in a meeting, because everyone is quietly watching what happens to the person who just spoke. Build on someone's half-formed idea in front of the room, and you have shown everyone else it is safe to offer theirs.
The simplest way to force the habit is to ban one word: "but." Make your first response to any idea "Yes, and…" and watch what changes. You can still get to no. You just take the idea seriously, out loud, first, and the person who offered it sees their thinking used instead of filed.
It's a small thing, and it won't stick first time, of course, but if you keep the rule in place and make it a habit, people should start to feel heard and encouraged to contribute.
WHAT TO DO NOW
Ban "but" in your next meeting, out loud. Tell the team the rule has changed, then make your first response to every idea "Yes, and…", building on it before you touch its flaws. You can still land on no; you just look at it properly, in public, first.
Go after the quiet ones on purpose. The person who understands the problem best often likes the floor least. Ask them by name, and give people a way to feed in before and after the meeting too, so the slow processors and the shy still get counted.
Want help unlocking your team? Book a call with Tess, or say hi on LinkedIn.
02 — TOOL OF THE WEEK
One tool shaping how people work
FLEET SAFETY / DRIVER RISK
When a vehicle won't start for a drunk driver
Booze Cap is a breathalyser wired into a vehicle, so the engine simply will not start unless the driver blows clean. Fleet managers already test drivers at the depot gate, but that does nothing about the beers at a border-post shebeen or a long lunch at a truck stop. Booze Cap moves the test into the vehicle, every trip.
Founder Sally Mazhandu added facial recognition and randomised retests, so a sober colleague cannot blow on the driver's behalf, with a monitored emergency override for genuine device faults. If driving is part of anyone's job at your company, it takes your single biggest liability off the road at the source, before the key turns rather than after the crash.
03 — LEADERSHIP STORY
Two heads, one throne: the case for sharing the job at the top
Every founder eventually becomes the bottleneck. The company grows, and the person who once ran product, sales, hiring and the investor calls is now the thing slowing all of them down. The reflex is to work harder. The sharper move can be to stop being the only one at the top.
2026 has become the year of shared leadership. In January, Spotify's Daniel Ek stepped back to executive chairman and handed the CEO job to two long-serving lieutenants; Netflix, Oracle and Comcast are all running versions of it.
And it is not just a title change: Harvard Business Review studied 87 companies with co-CEOs and found they delivered average annual shareholder returns of 9.5%, against 6.9% for their benchmarks, with almost 60% beating the market.
"Over the last few years, I've turned over a large part of the day-to-day management and strategic direction of Spotify to Alex and Gustav. This change simply matches titles to how we already operate."
You do not need a co-CEO to use the idea. A real second-in-command with genuine authority does the same job: It lifts the ceiling you have become on your own company. The trap, say those who have tried it, is splitting things 50/50 for fairness, which just produces paralysis. Clear domains, real authority, one shared vision.
The question worth sitting with: What are you still the only person allowed to decide, and what is that costing your company's growth?
04 — THE STAT
52%
is the share of Western Cape employers who say university graduates arrive with the skills their business actually needs, a University of Cape Town survey of 426 businesses found. Put the other way: nearly half say graduates do not meet their needs. And it starts earlier down the ladder.
More than 70% of these employers struggle to find workers with the right skills at all, and about half say even vocational graduates need practical training before they are productive.
It is a Western Cape study, but the pattern is national and familiar: the qualification on the CV and the capability in the seat are not the same thing.
Source: University of Cape Town survey of 426 Western Cape businesses, July 2026
05 — EVENTS
What’s coming up
13 AUGUST – CAPE TOWN
Work Rewired: Hiring, Skills and Careers in the AI Economy
A short, sharp session at Innovation City on how AI is reshaping hiring, how skills are assessed, and what "future-ready talent" actually looks like.
13 AUGUST – ONLINE
Led By Her: SA to the Netherlands, All You Need to Know
A Lekker Network session with two South Africans who moved to the Netherlands and built careers there: visas, the honest cost-of-living and culture-shock version, and whether the move is actually doable.
14 AUGUST – ONLINE COURSE
Navigating Important Payroll Legislation
A half-day online course with the chair of the Payroll Authors Group of SA on the payroll rules that trip employers up: long-service awards, bursaries, reimbursements, post-termination pay, and the latest UIF, Compensation Fund and BCEA updates.
Got an event SA employers should know about? Reply and tell us.
06 — QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Think back to your last important decision. Whose input did you never actually hear, and might it have changed the call?
07 — BROUGHT TO YOU BY
PREMIUM SPONSOR
Jem helps South African employers manage and support their deskless, frontline teams: payslips, leave, HR admin, team comms and financial-wellness benefits (including earned-wage access), all over WhatsApp. Trusted by 200+ employers and 250,000+ workers.
This space is reserved for a small handful of partners we're glad to stand behind, and we've kept 4 more spots open. If your product belongs in front of South African business owners, hit reply and let's talk.
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