Today, he is applying those lessons through The Navigator, an approach focused on understanding human behavior and improving communication.
After more than 37 years working in behavioral health, Michael Sherbun has learned that some of the most revealing moments in an organization happen when things do not go according to plan. An employee questions a decision, a patient situation becomes difficult, or an unexpected problem requires an immediate response. In those moments, leaders must do more than demonstrate their knowledge or authority. They must also consider how their response will affect the people involved.
Sherbun has held clinical and executive leadership positions throughout his career, including responsibilities involving hospital operations, quality improvement, staff development, and organizational change. His experience has taken him from working directly with individuals experiencing behavioral health challenges to overseeing complex healthcare operations and supporting the professionals responsible for delivering care.
Those experiences have shaped his understanding of leadership and the relationship between organizational culture and human behavior.
“When something goes wrong, people pay attention to how you respond,” Sherbun explains. “They notice whether you are interested in understanding the problem or simply finding someone responsible for it. They also remember how you treated them during the process.”
For Sherbun, these observations have become increasingly important as organizations place greater emphasis on employee engagement, workplace culture, and leadership development. While policies and organizational values provide structure, he believes employees develop their understanding of workplace culture primarily through their everyday experiences.
What Healthcare Leadership Taught Him About Human Behavior
Sherbun’s professional background has given him opportunities to observe human behavior from several perspectives. Early in his career, he worked directly with children, adolescents, and individuals experiencing behavioral health challenges. As his responsibilities expanded into hospital administration and executive leadership, he began examining many of the same behavioral patterns within professional teams and organizations.
He found that the circumstances were often different, but some of the underlying concerns were surprisingly familiar.
People wanted to feel respected, understand what was happening, and believe they had some influence over decisions affecting their lives. When those expectations were challenged, their behavior sometimes changed.
“In healthcare, you learn very quickly that people do not always respond to situations the way you expect them to,” Sherbun says. “Someone may become defensive, question a decision, or stop communicating altogether. Early in your career, you may focus on the behavior itself. With experience, you begin asking what might be influencing that reaction.”
That shift in perspective became particularly important as Sherbun moved into positions where he was responsible for managing employees, evaluating operational practices, and implementing organizational changes.
He learned that explaining why a decision was necessary did not automatically mean employees would feel comfortable with it. Someone could understand the reasoning behind a new procedure while remaining concerned about how it would affect their responsibilities, professional confidence, or daily work.
Sherbun also became more aware of how authority influences communication. A question from a colleague may feel very different when it comes from someone responsible for evaluating an employee’s performance.
“I have had to remind myself that just because I believe I am having an open conversation does not mean the other person experiences it that way,” he says. “When you are responsible for making decisions, you have to recognize that your position can influence what people feel comfortable telling you.”
He believes this awareness is essential for leaders who want to understand what is actually happening within their organizations.
Why Employees Sometimes Stop Speaking Up
One of the leadership challenges Sherbun has observed is the tendency to interpret a lack of disagreement as evidence that employees are satisfied.
In demanding professional environments, employees may become reluctant to raise concerns if previous conversations have left them feeling dismissed, embarrassed, or uncertain about how their feedback will be received.
Sherbun believes this can create a misleading impression of organizational stability.
“When people stop bringing problems to you, it is easy to assume things are going well,” he explains. “But sometimes they have simply decided that raising concerns is not worth the frustration. That is something leaders need to pay attention to.”
Throughout his healthcare career, Sherbun has been involved in quality improvement and operational initiatives where identifying problems was essential to improving performance. He understands that organizations cannot address concerns they do not know exist.
However, he also recognizes that encouraging employees to speak openly involves more than telling them their opinions are welcome.
People pay attention to what happens after someone raises a difficult issue. If the response is consistently defensive or dismissive, employees may become more cautious about what they share.
Sherbun does not believe leaders should accept every criticism or reverse decisions simply because someone disagrees. He has spent much of his career in environments where accountability, professional standards, and patient safety must remain priorities.
The challenge is maintaining those responsibilities while creating enough trust for employees to discuss problems honestly.
“I think there is a difference between someone challenging your authority and someone trying to tell you something you need to hear,” he says. “As a leader, you have to be willing to consider that possibility, even when the conversation is uncomfortable.”
The People Who Carry an Organization’s Stress
Another lesson Sherbun has taken from his career involves the employees who become known for their ability to manage difficult situations.
In healthcare organizations, certain professionals develop reputations for remaining calm during crises, supporting colleagues, and handling challenging responsibilities. Their reliability makes them valuable members of a team, but it can also create additional pressure.
Sherbun has observed how organizations may repeatedly turn to these individuals without recognizing how much responsibility they are already carrying.
“When someone handles difficult situations well, people naturally begin relying on them,” he explains. “Eventually, that person may become the one everyone turns to when something goes wrong. What we sometimes forget is that being capable of managing stress does not mean the stress has no effect.”
His interest in this issue extends back to his work on caregiver burnout, including his writing about the challenges of sustaining a career in demanding helping professions.
Through his clinical and executive experience, Sherbun has come to believe that emotional exhaustion cannot always be understood by examining workloads alone.
Employees may also experience stress when expectations are unclear, difficult conversations remain unresolved, or they feel unable to acknowledge that they need assistance.
He believes leaders should pay particular attention to employees who rarely complain, especially when those individuals regularly accept responsibilities beyond their normal duties.
Sherbun also recognizes that some of the pressure comes from the employees themselves. People who take pride in being dependable may find it difficult to delegate responsibilities or acknowledge their limitations.
“I have seen people become so accustomed to solving problems that they begin to feel responsible for everything around them,” he says. “Sometimes the challenge is helping them recognize that supporting other people does not mean they have to personally carry every problem.”
For Sherbun, this is one reason communication plays an important role in burnout prevention. Organizations need opportunities to discuss expectations, distribute responsibilities, and recognize when employees are becoming overwhelmed.
How His Experiences Led to The Navigator
Over time, Sherbun began recognizing connections between the behavioral challenges he encountered in clinical settings and those he observed in families, schools, workplaces, and communities.
Although the circumstances differed, he noticed that difficult interactions often involved similar concerns about trust, control, expectations, and how people interpreted one another’s intentions.
These observations helped shape his work developing The Navigator, an approach centered on what he describes as The Psychology of Conversations.
The Navigator focuses on three interconnected areas: behavioral communication and leadership, de-escalation and relationship preservation, and burnout and stress prevention.
Sherbun believes these areas are closely related because the way people communicate influences how they respond to conflict, manage responsibility, and maintain relationships during stressful circumstances.
“Over the years, I began seeing similar patterns in very different environments,” he explains. “The way a teenager responds to a parent may look different from the way an employee responds to a supervisor, but both situations can involve concerns about being heard, feeling respected, or having some control over what happens next.”
Rather than treating communication as a collection of techniques for delivering information, Sherbun encourages people to consider the motivations and experiences influencing how that information is received.
The Navigator is being developed for four primary audiences: families, schools, workplaces, and communities. Its workplace-focused program, Navigator Workplace, addresses areas including leadership development, team communication, conflict resolution, employee engagement, and organizational culture.
For Sherbun, the objective is not to eliminate disagreement or encourage people to avoid difficult conversations. He believes healthy organizations need clear expectations, accountability, and the willingness to address problems directly.
What matters is how those conversations are handled and whether people can continue working together constructively afterward.
“I have never believed that preserving a relationship means avoiding accountability,” Sherbun says. “Sometimes you have to make a decision that someone strongly disagrees with. The question is whether you can address the issue without creating unnecessary damage to the working relationship.”
What He Wants Leaders to Understand About Organizational Culture
Looking back on his career, Sherbun believes one of the most important lessons he has learned is that leaders cannot evaluate organizational culture solely through formal policies, performance measures, or statements of organizational values.
Those measures have their place, particularly in complex healthcare environments where consistency and accountability are essential. However, he believes leaders must also consider what employees experience when circumstances become difficult.
Do people feel comfortable acknowledging mistakes? Can they question a decision without the conversation becoming personal? Are dependable employees receiving appropriate support, or are they quietly absorbing more responsibility than they can reasonably manage?
Sherbun believes these questions reveal important aspects of how an organization functions.
He also acknowledges that leadership requires ongoing self-examination. Experience can improve a person’s judgment, but it can also make leaders more confident in their assumptions than they should be.
“I have made decisions throughout my career that I believed were reasonable at the time, and later recognized that I could have approached the situation differently,” he says. “I think part of becoming a better leader is being willing to acknowledge that your understanding may not be complete.”
He does not believe leaders can prevent every conflict, satisfy every employee, or eliminate the pressures associated with demanding professional environments. In his experience, difficult decisions and disagreements are unavoidable whenever people work together.
However, leaders can influence whether those experiences strengthen or weaken trust within their organizations.
After decades of working in healthcare leadership, Sherbun has become less interested in evaluating difficult situations solely by whether an immediate problem was resolved. He also considers what happens afterward, including whether employees remain willing to communicate honestly, whether working relationships have been preserved, and whether the organization has learned something from the experience.
For Sherbun, those outcomes offer a meaningful indication of leadership effectiveness.
He believes organizations reveal their culture not only through the decisions they make, but through the way people are treated while those decisions are being made. When employees experience fairness, accountability, and respect during difficult circumstances, those experiences can influence how they approach the next challenge.
It is a perspective shaped by years of working with people under pressure and one that continues to inform Sherbun’s approach to behavioral communication, organizational leadership, and the development of The Navigator.
