K Shel Blogs

Every so often, I notice a pattern.

Someone at work decides I’m brilliant. Yes, I know how that sounds, but I have years of data on this. They tell me I’m refreshing, articulate, incisive. They’re energised by the way I think, the way I bring new perspectives and challenge. But then, more slowly, over time, something shifts. The wonder cools. I become something else – disconcerting, inflexible, a disruption to manage rather than an asset to leverage.

Initially I thought this might just be bad luck. Wrong person, wrong timing. But as I say, I have too much data for that. The pattern’s too consistent. It feels systemic rather than personal – a feedback loop playing out in the space between people when difference enters the room.

In robotics there’s a concept called the Uncanny Valley – when something looks almost human, but not quite, and that ‘not quite’ triggers unease. Maybe some of us – maybe I – occupy a similar space socially? We seem to fit perfectly at first: competent, communicative, ‘normal’. But then people sense difference – a tone that’s too direct, a truth that lands too sharply – and it’s unsettling.

Early interactions can be fluent because I’ve learned to mask. I can read cues, modulate tone, construct social fluency through conscious effort. But masking has a cost. It’s tiring to maintain, and at some point the act wanes. What shows through isn’t hostility or arrogance – it’s just authenticity. Yet to others, that shift can feel like a betrayal: as though the person they signed up for has changed.

In truth, what’s happening isn’t only personal; it’s relational. The system is already beginning to rebalance, adjusting its expectations around the difference it has detected – a small oscillation in a larger feedback loop. And I’m part of that system too, contributing to the dynamic even as I observe it.

That’s the first feedback signal in the loop.

The second comes when integrity meets hierarchy. I value precision, coherence, and responsibility. When I sense something wrong, I say it. That honesty is refreshing at first – a breath of clarity in a fog of politics. But systems have immune responses. Hierarchies depend on unspoken agreements and shared fictions. When you start to disturb those, however gently, you expose the wiring.

So what began as appreciation for difference becomes fear of disruption.

In system terms, it’s a homeostatic correction:

• Starting with attraction: novelty and capability are welcomed – the system draws you in.
• Leading unchecked to disturbance: authenticity introduces tension, exposing sensitive feedback loops and assumptions.
• And ending up at correction: rejection or withdrawal to restore equilibrium. The system spits you out.

This is how social systems protect themselves – but it’s also how they resist learning. And I’m implicated in this dynamic, not separate from it. My input introduces friction; the system’s response creates distance; my withdrawal confirms the pattern. We’re both maintaining the loop.

When you’ve spent years building the capacity to connect – leveraging insight, experience, and authenticity – rejection lands hard. The cycle of seduction and backlash creates a kind of learned hesitancy. You start pre-empting rejection by holding back, or withdrawing early. (That’s another system – one of self-protection – running in parallel.)

I need to learn to see these loops as data rather than drama. They reveal how difference functions inside complex human networks. The system values my clarity, until that clarity threatens its coherence. It rewards insight, until insight challenges comfort. It wants innovation, but only the kind that doesn’t change anything fundamental.

And I get it. Complexity is unsettling. Directness exposes power. Integrity introduces friction. But friction is where learning happens – where systems adapt or regress.

So what next?

My challenge in all this is to be able to work with the pattern instead of against it. Designing boundaries like feedback dampers: limiting the amplitude of the swings. Accepting that some relationships will stabilise, and others will not.

Integrity and flexibility aren’t opposites; they’re the balance in the system – twin conditions for influence. Integrity gives shape – a sense of coherence and purpose. Flexibility gives movement – the capacity to stay connected when the currents shift.

Integrity without flexibility becomes self-sabotage: a rigid stance that proves a point but changes nothing.

Flexibility without integrity becomes manipulation: a kind of social mimicry that leaves no trace of truth.

So maybe the art of my systems practice sits in the tension between the two – maintaining enough coherence to be recognisable, enough adaptability to be effective.

It’s not about convincing the system to cope with me, or erasing myself to cope with it. It’s about finding a way to stay in the relationship long enough for feedback to flow both ways – allowing each small interaction to carry the possibility of change. For both the system and for me.

Is that the real work of systems thinking in practice – to live at the edge, where stability meets transformation, where integrity bends just enough to let learning through?