Truth, Lies and Work

what would you think if you saw this in your workplace so a junior employees is having a heated argument with the ceo boys are raised disagreements are flying and the new employees are watching with little fear and a lot of in ent this situation is when the kids on tiktok would drop the popcorn emerge in the comments but this isn't a con try video created to farm engagement this was real life for our guests i would see junior folks arguing with my dad who is the ceo and they'd have these like really heated discussions oh man is that person gonna get fired now because they just disagreed with the cfo and ever be like no no this is that's the kind of culture we have of course you should disagree with whoever that's how we have rigorous thinking and then i left that and went into my first quote real job out in the real world and i was horrified by how meetings were run and i was like what is happening here this this cannot be real like there's no goal we're showing up unprepared conversations are wandering people aren't speaking up like is this really what meetings are like in other places that was mainly camp stuart and she was talking about her family business where difficult meetings were sometimes the best part of everyone's day but the moment made me left the environment entered the real world of corporate meetings she was horrified so she became obsessed with one question what if meetings aren't the problem what are food just been doing them catastrophic wrong today mimi is gonna show us how to turn your most dreaded meetings into your most productive ones and it stars with understanding that not all difficult meetings are created equal hello and welcome to truth lies and work the award winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name is lia i'm a charged occupational psychologist my name is a i'm a business owner and we are here help the science of work our guests today is mainly camp stuart host of the modern manager podcast and author of momentum and yes she genuinely believes meetings can be enjoyable now before you roll your eyes mainly isn't talking about this forced fun or mandatory team building rubbish she's talking about the kind of meetings where real decisions get made where people feel like an accident speak up and where you walk out thinking that was actually worth my time but here's what makes m approach so practical she recognizes that not all meetings are created equal a feedback conversation with an underperforming team member requires completely different preparation that a high stakes decision making meeting with seven opinionated stakeholders and that difficult meeting that you know you've been dread all weak the one we are convinced everyone's gonna hate your proposal well man has got a technique that once turned an expected hour long battle into a fifty minute consensus we're gonna get to that later so after this quick break will join lia and mimi and start with the fundamentals how do you actually prepare for a difficult meeting what different kinds of meetings are there and how do you give difficult feedback to your boss see in a second now i'm sure you've heard that we only use twenty percent of our brain i'm gonna stop you right there that's myth actually we might only use certain areas of our brain time but the neuroscience imaging shows we do in fact over time use all of our brain i you know i think the myth stands from lee lee stop for this and now me to work you need to stop talking and let me face something okay oh sorry carry on well you have heard here that we use more than twenty percent of our brain but my analogy was if we use twenty percent of our brains where discovered that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data to see where else was going you were it percent that's just silly that's like buying a cake and only eating one slice which would never happen but the point is and lastly you use hooks hubspot then you're massively missing out yep their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business imagine being able to free all those insights that attracting into emails call logs and transcripts and everything else five years ago we had to go through all this data manually and frankly who's got the time and thanks to hubspot you can access all that you meet unstructured data really easily when you know more you grow more visit dot com today my name is mimi can't stewart i have a podcast called the modern manager and i work with managers helping them get out from being overwhelmed by the job of leading people and build a strong healthy culture where everyone gets to be their best help and do their best work i also wrote a book called momentum creating effective engaging and enjoyable meetings and meetings are my jam so i help a lot of people make their meetings a productive use of time how you prepare for what people might see is a difficult meeting when you have a difficult meeting you should do all the normal things you should do to prepare for meeting but there's some additional things that you should do so first i think it's helpful to understand the different kinds of difficult meetings because some people might be thinking in our head right now oh a difficult meeting is i have to give somebody feedback and i'm worried about how they're gonna take it which is very different than we're going into a meeting to make a tough decision and i know we're gonna have to really grapple with some trade offs and that's gonna be hard for folks which is different from we had to prepare some harm something happened in our workplace culture something between some people and there was some unfortunate outcomes from that and we gotta bring these two people together or i need to meet with somebody and really do some repair work on our relationship and even that is different from i have some bad news to share this budget got cut and so the project is gonna have to shift or i'm we're having new a lay off and so people are gonna have to hear this bad news so all of those different kinds of meetings require similar but slightly different preparation because of what it is that makes them difficult it all starts though with really understanding why do you think this is gonna be hard and really unpacking your assumption and getting clear for yourself are you worried about their reaction are you worried about emotions flying in the meeting and somebody getting really heated in a discussion and you're not sure how to manage that in the team and you don't wanna look like you don't know how to facilitate what's going on for you that makes this feel like it's gonna be hard and just get clear on that and start to explore why would this be true what do i know about the people or the person who i'm talking with is is this a reasonable assumption and if it's not because you start to step back and look at some fact patterns then you can kinda let some of that anxiety go and if it is can you be okay with that can you be okay with you're gonna have to make trade offs and people are not gonna be happy but you can move on people will live with that everyone will get past it can you be okay with the fact that you might not really know how to say what you're gonna say but you're gonna do the best you can and you're gonna come out of that meeting and you're gonna be glad you had that conversation even though it was uncomfortable so it all starts with just preparing yourself and then it goes into preparing what's actually gonna happen at the meeting you said you prepared differently for different types of meetings so i'm thinking you submit the the common meetings you might have that people might cool difficult might be around performance might around having that conversation to you isn't quite hitting the mark how do you prepare for that conversation so when you're having to have a feedback conversation you wanna get really clear about what the outcome is so are you trying to get this person to understand themselves differently and to change to a specific behavior or are you trying to bring them into this conversation and have them help unpack what is going on is this really more of a conversation of exploration in and depending on the outcome that you're driving for you're gonna shape your conversation a little bit differently if you know this person is always missing deadlines and what you need them to do is send you things at a certain time and you have a whole plan for how you're gonna help them do that it's a little different than if you go in and saying you know i really wanna understand what's going on why is this so hard for you and you might not come to a solution in that conversation but you might still make progress towards a solution so getting really clear on your outcome and this is true for all kinds of meetings you have to know what the outcome is same thing with the difficult conversation that's making a decision are you actually gonna make the decision in the meeting do you know which decision is the right option you're trying to drive towards or is it really open and you're going to be exploring options and you don't know where it's gonna land but the goal is just to have a decision by the end again those are slightly different outcomes and so you're gonna prepare differently for those is it better to go into that meeting one way or the other or does it depend on on the type of feedback you're giving like should you go into it in a with a more collaborative approach is that more effective or is it entirely based on context it's a little based on context but it's also based on is this a first time moment or is this a pattern of behavior if this is the first time that you're giving someone feedback on something it's generally good to go in with a little bit more curiosity because you don't know what's going on for them you don't know if it's a skill gap if it's a misunderstanding and they don't really know about the expectations that you have if they don't have a process down and you there's something in your training something's going on outside in their life that's interfering so you wanna go in and really just say hey i noticed this what's going on i'd like to understand more about why this expectation is not being met if it's a repeated behavior and you've talked to this person already at least once if not twice that's when you wanna go in and say alright this is clearly a problem we tried to address in a couple different ways here's more of what we need to see or here's what we need to do what kind of support can i offer or here's our plan help me make this plan this one i'm laying out for you let's work on it together so you can still be collaborative but you're being a little bit more direct because this is becoming a larger problem than the first time if you go in with the solution and it's the first time you're raising something your solution is probably not going to be the right one because you're probably trying to solve for the wrong problem so if someone's always late to meetings and you go in and you say you need to set a calendar reminder for two minutes before the meeting to get your push into that seat that might not be the problem it might not be that they're distracted and they need more calendar alerts it might be that they're in back to back meetings all day long and they need to go use the restroom but they need to fill up their coffee they need to stretch their legs so a calendar is not gonna help that so being curious is a a great place to start i love that being curious i think such an important tray in in a manager one of the things i hear from listeners who get in touch what they worry about is if there is something happening in in the person's life there is something going on there isn't necessarily work related in and the anxiety people feel about that in terms of how to handle it whether it be a mental health issue or a caring responsibility something it's completely out the scope of of a a manager role at work how do they either prepare for that or had both had they prepare that and how they handle it in that moment in a way it's appropriate and doesn't overs step the role of a manager so first again starting with curiosity right we don't wanna make assumptions about what someone's happening in their life or what they're going through what we wanna do is observe and share those behaviors i've noticed that you're missing deadlines more than usual i've saw in that meeting you were really distracted i could see that you were kind of checking your screen off the side of the camera or you had your video off in the last three meetings and that's abnormal what's going on so we wanna do the same thing of starting with the facts and the observations of what we know and not making assumptions about the cause of those things then in the meeting if somebody says yeah you know i got my kids at home all week and so i've been off camera great find out is this a temporary thing maybe it's not even something you have to deal with because you know it's two more days of the kids being off on vacation and then they're gonna go back to normal and so you can either say okay fine we'll let it go for two days or help them problem solve is there something they can do with their kids during important meetings so that they can be uninterrupted and on camera if it's something that's personal that they don't wanna share that's also okay they they don't have any obligation to tell you what's going on they can just say i'm having really hard time at home and you could say great is there something we can do here to support you you know is this a temporary thing is there something we can do to alleviate some things on your plate is there something i can do differently as your manager to help make things a little easier for you right now while you're going through this moment and can we just stay in touch so that you can let me know if things are improving or if things are getting worse and how we can support you and that can be enough now if they start spilling their guts and you're like wait a second hear i do not need to hear about your divorce i do not need to hear about your sick mother i do not this is like overwhelming and way outside the scope that's all okay some people do that some people will start crying actually had that happen where i had a team member start crying to me about something going on in her personal life and i felt very unprepared and i said you know of course first just be human i'm so sorry you're dealing with that that sounds horrible like my heart is going out to you right now right show some empathy because they're sharing something very vulnerable with you and then you don't have to solve all our problems you can help point them in the right direction right have you talked to someone in hr about this i think there were some resources available no do you need some help finding the right person to support you through this like i'm not i'm not sure that i'm the right person but i'd be happy to help you find the right person guide them towards something that is a solution that's actually gonna help them rather than feeling like you have to carry it all on your own is it the same process when we're giving feedback to somebody who's more seeing than us it's all very similar meaning you always wanna start with those facts right what is your outcome and then what are the observations or the facts that you have to support that the key though is to frame out and think about how is this gonna land best for the other person and this is true whether you're giving feedback to a team member to appear to your boss but is especially true when there's a power dynamic to your boss and you really want them to hear something that is even more vulnerable for you to share so write it out right out your specific goal i want my boss to stop doing x i want my boss to start doing x and then think about the exact words that you wanna use to share do you wanna talk about how when they send you things over email for last minute it causes a big shuffle in your life and you feel like you can't manage against that deadline and you don't know how to prioritize things that's all great but that's probably not how you wanna say it there's probably a different way of framing it that's gonna help them here at best so you wanna really think from their perspective how can i present this information in a way that they are gonna be most open understanding the situation to understanding the challenge that i'm facing and to understanding the behavior that i need them to change or i'm asking them to change and when you can frame it in that way they're gonna be a little more receptive and the other little tip i like is when you wanna give someone feedback it's really helpful to start with a simple phrase something along the lines of this is hard for me to say or this might be hard for you to hear but i feel like it's important for me to say it for the sake of our relationship because i care about you because i care about our relationship because i care about your growth because i really wanna be my best in this role whatever that meaning is whatever that reason is put it put some context around it and stay that up upfront it's it actually creates a moment of of empathy and the other person to see that this is hard for you to say and you're saying it because you care because you wanna give them this gift of feedback not because you're being obnoxious or you're trying to you know be judgmental or say something that is mean and put them down you're actually saying this because you really want to do well on your job and you want them to be able to support you in that way and if this behavior doesn't change it's just gonna continue to create problems or friction or unnecessary harm that you don't really need and that they don't really want for you going back to your examples because i think that's such a common won't common one that people will feel getting a last minute request from their manager how would you reframe that in a way that is gonna gonna go down a bit better with them so i might say something like i i'm not sure if you've noticed that you've sent a lot of things to me kinda last minute by email which is fine i'm always happy to handle things and and keep projects moving but i'm not so sure that you realize that it's causing some challenges for me around managing deadlines and prioritizing i i would love to just sit with you and figure out if there's a different way that we can handle those last minute requests or if you can just help me figure out how to rep prioritize work so that when those come in i know what i should really focus on right you're coming them and saying you know this is not a huge deal i'm not complaining i'm just trying to understand is there a different way we can handle this which is very different than coming and saying every time you send me a last minute request it really throws me off my game i don't know what to do i get really lost i get really frustrated i have to work late and it's a really a problem right like nobody wants to hear that nobody wants to hear that they're creating all these problems but if you frame and in the i'm not sure you even know you're doing this because a lot of times we're not even aware of these behaviors that are so challenging for others so i don't even know if you know that you're sending over a lot of last minute requests and i'm happy to always handle them right don't need to create more problems by saying please stop doing this you're saying is there a different way we can handle it and those solutions then could be something as simple as can you just put a deadline of when this needs to get back so that i understand how to prioritize it in my work not just can you get this done right away what is right away i don't know you need in the next hour do you need it in the next two days like how do can you help me figure out how to rep prioritize just by putting in a deadline or can you just note in that email this is more important than x y z thing or is it okay if i come back to you with here's what i'm thinking about how to rep prioritize can you sign off on this so i can get to work just be you've prepared with some options that also shows that you've been thoughtful about not just the problem but the solutions and what's gonna work best for you and then you can try and find a match between what you want and what they want so we've covered feedback conversations you know the one on one difficult meetings but here's where things get a little complicated group meetings this is where you got multiple people multiple opinions and somehow you need to make a decision that's putting a leave at least someone unhappy you've likely come across people who are overt challenging in a meeting or maybe they wanna dig in and want more information before making decisions maybe it's a senior leader whose intent on hijacking the conversation so after the break mimi will explain exactly how to deal with all of these hey just a quick word about another show on the spot podcast network called hospital flow chart with the incredible joe fear joe's not about chasing unicorns or building multi billion dollar start his thing is helping you design a business that works for your life so you've got the money you need and the time to enjoy it and as a psychologist i approve this message yeah he's talking systems mindset tweaks little reframe all the stuff that's gonna make you good money without working yourself into the ground and if you're curious about ai check out his august episode on the so called ai gold rush even i learned a few things and i live with an absolute nerd i am a nerd so go listen to h flow chat wherever to get your podcasts well i wanna shift gears a little bit and talk about difficult decision making meetings because we think a lot about difficult conversations which often happen in these kind of feedback spaces but a lot of manager i work with say that the most challenging meetings that they have are actually with a group of people when you're trying to make a decision and you've got all these different people and all these different perspectives and you've gotta come together and no one's gonna be perfectly happy at the end and those conversations go a little differently they still start with what is the situation here what is the outcome that we're driving for but some of the pieces in the preparation that folks miss is getting really clear on who are actually the decision makers is this really a full group decision is it going to be majority wins do we need to get to consensus or is there actually one person in the meeting who is the actual decision maker and everyone else is just getting input and then what's the criteria and as all the criteria equal i was working with a team and they had to make a decision about sub leasing some of their space and there were folks in the meeting who really just wanted to make the most money possible get the best bid on the sub lease and that was it and there were other people who felt like these people are gonna be in our office all the time we wanna have a community we wanna be working alongside people who we'd like and so even if they're not gonna pay us the most money if they're nice folks we'd rather have them around every day than some other folks who are just kinda here in the space with us and there were a couple other criteria they were also thinking about and at first it can feel like well we're just now at a bad one person versus another and you as the meeting leader or manager have to kind of figure out how to corral all these people and get them to agree on something but when you step back and what we did was say alright let's just lay out what are all the criteria here and then let's rank them what's actually most important and we use a weighted criteria matrix where we said this criteria is worth ten percent and this criteria is worth twenty five percent and this criteria is worth sixty percent and that actually helped us then look at the different options and calculate in a more kind of data driven way what the best decision was and we didn't have to still go with that decision the group actually then said okay let's look at the rankings how do we feel about this it gave us something tangible to work from so that we could take some of the emotions out and have a more thoughtful conversation and it stopping being about my perspective versus your perspective it started being about what makes the most sense given the context that we've all agreed as important does that also help to diffuse that situation when you might have have a bit of hate happening in a meeting absolutely i mean emotions aren't gonna run high and that is just a fact of being human and as a meeting leader it is part of your job to help take down the emotions and some of that is gonna come from come shifting from protective ground holding and people starting kind of letting go of their this is the thing that most thing that matters and not it's all i care about and so i have to win and getting it onto to paper and putting it into numbers and looking at data and making it more objective how does this mean our long term goal right if we do this what are the unintended consequences what are the trade offs right the more that we can get away from this is what i care about to this is what's best for the goal we're trying to achieve and that was another piece that's how we waited our criteria in that meeting was what actually matters here not just the criteria but what's the long term goal do we need this money because in order to be sustainable as an organization that revenue is essential or can we take a little less of money because that's not the most important thing for us in the long run in the long run is actually that we wanna have a tenant that stays and so we wanna make sure that this tenant is excited about being in this office for the next three five seven years with us right do we actually with the opposite because we're growing and so we wouldn't have a tenant that's gonna be here for two years and be out so that we can take over that space so we don't wanna to actually have a relationship with these people that we're gonna feel really bad about in a couple of years so looking at that long term bulk can also help diffuse and then lastly always always feel free to take a break whether you're having a feedback conversation that gets emotional or people are kinda going at each other in a decision making meeting or emotions are running high because you're talking about really sensitive stuff it is always okay to say i i like to take a break right now i think we'll be really good for us to just go stretch our legs get some fresh air i get a glass of water and you can either say and let's come back in five minutes and we'll we'll start up again i think we just need a little bit of energy reset or say i think we should think about this for a little bit i'm gonna schedule us a meeting for tomorrow to come back together after we've all had time to process because a lot of time those emotions in the room they're temporary something was said that triggered us the conversation starts spinning and we have to dig our heels in and we kinda do it almost automatically without realizing that we're now being unhelpful and just having a little bit of space a little bit of break gives you a chance to kind of regulate your system if it's a short break again walking around taking some brass get a glass of water back can help regulate and if it's a longer break then we actually get some distance and a lot of times after people sleep they wake up the next day and they have a totally different perspective or they're completely calm and like sometimes even feel bad about the way they showed up in that last meeting and they're ready to come in with a much more thoughtful kind of more collaborative approach if you will that person is the meeting leader who is the expert or the the the kind of department leader at that field but your boss is there and starting to hog the meeting about it i started to hog the the opinions and and not not maybe honoring this criteria that we set out and how we said it'd work how do you approach that in the meeting or is it message to approach that after the meeting well this go back to some preparation that you can do so there's things that you can do before during and after the meeting to help manage some of those behaviors so if you know that someone is likely to be a challenging participant talk to them beforehand lay out the situation get give them a chance to share their thoughts understand where they're coming from because that will help you then better prepare for how they're gonna act in the meeting so that you can better guide them you can also just say to them in the meeting ahead of time i really wanna hear from a lot of folks your opinion is gonna weigh really heavy because of the position that you have in this company and i don't want that to overs shadow some of the other perspectives so i'd really love it if you could wait until other people have shared to then share what you're thinking because i know it's gonna land so importantly and i i wanna make sure we hear it but i also wanna make sure that we hear from folks so you can give them as some guidance in a way that kind of still shows the honor that they to serve as being the senior person but it's also asking them to help you out as the meeting leader and then during the meeting if you've planned well you can incorporate other activities i always say talking in a meeting is just one of the many many things we can do and it's often actually not the best thing that we can do so if you wanna get different perspectives have people write things down on a virtual sticky board and put all of their perspectives why is this going to you know why is this decision risky instead of going around the room and having people say them out loud which first of all people often don't wanna disagree and so they're they might not tell you out loud because they don't wanna be the person who syncs the decision but if you give an anonymous whiteboard put it online have people type in their answers you'll service a lot of risks and then you don't have to worry so much about one person hog the mic because everyone is having equal time to share and then after the meeting you can always go back and talk to folks right if the decision wasn't made because somebody's really holding out and you feel like wow we're really heading in the wrong direction here and this one person is not willing to re control but we need everybody to buy in it's okay to say at the end of the meeting i think we're not quite ready to make a decision what other information or what other people need to be involved so that we can feel confident in making this decision figure out what that next step is and then after the meeting go gather that information or go talk to those people and also talk to the person who was holding out to really understand why were you so against this like what's really going on because when someone digs their heels and that strongly and you need them to buy in there's usually more than what they're willing to say in the meeting that you need to understand and so you can take that time after to go and have that one on one conversation the other thing that you wanna think about is how much of this conversation is about people's need for certainty and more information and more data and how much of it is truly about getting to a better decision and i remember working with one team where there was someone who just always wanted to know more was always i need more detail on this i wanna know more i need more information i need more understanding of our strategy i need more and it was really unhelpful i mean it started out helpful because they're surfacing some things of like oh yeah there's maybe some gaps in our thinking and then we wanna fill in but at some point it starts becoming unhelpful because more data is not always better for a decision sometimes you need to move forward and learn from the decision being made so there's also the opportunity to say i wanna make sure that we're able to move forward today because we need to get this work off the ground so let's just play out what if the data came back and said x is that gonna change how we feel what if it said why would that change how it feel if we need this data how hard is it to get it how quickly come we get it what's the cost of getting it and is that cost worth the outcome that we're driving towards and that's one way that you can help somebody who's maybe asking for a little too much to take a step back and say alright i see it's gonna take us three weeks to be able to pull all that information together in a way that's gonna be relevant and we don't have three weeks before we need to launch this decision so alright i'm willing to go with a group here who says we believe enough that this data would come back true so let's try it or let's just skinny down our decision let's take this other part off the table and see if we can move forward with this piece of it while we test out or get some more information about this other piece so you don't wanna get lost in the weeds you wanna still be able to move forward and again pulling up into the bigger context can help you do that so mimi has given us all these strategies for managing difficult meetings the preparation the frameworks the techniques for dealing with challenging participants but here's what i love she's also honest about the fact that sometimes your assumptions about how a difficult meeting will be are completely wrong which brings us to one of my favorite stories from this interview miami had cope plan this big decision making meeting with seven or eight people and she and her colleague were convinced that have to do a lot of convincing they thought it was gonna be brutal mainly prepared for battle and what actually happened what you're about to find out oh and by the way the technique they use is something you can implement in your next difficult meeting so here's mainly on what it calls a zero to five strategy have you ever had a meeting that that was gonna be you thought was can be really difficult bad news type meeting how you approached it how it all worked out did it go a bit differently than you expected is there an example you can talk us through sure i'm actually gonna tell you an example but i think there's a little bit of the opposite which is we thought i was gonna be a really hard meeting i was c planning with another team member and we had a big decision to make and it was with a big group of folks i think seven or eight people plus me and my partner and we were definitely concerned that we were gonna have to do a lot of convincing to get people to agree with this plan so we decided the approach that we would take was to lay out the decision and our explanation as to why we felt like this was the right choice and then have people vote from a zero to a five very start with me before any conversation you said if you are a zero that means there is a hundred percent no you are definitely not okay with this decision if you're a one or a two you're saying i don't like this i have some serious concerns if you're a three you're like i'm neutral i i could go with this if this is what the group wants i don't feel strongly either way but something my preference but i'm not gonna stop it if you're a four you really like it but there a couple questions you like to add but you're you're on board and a five is i wholeheartedly agree let's just do it and we started the meeting by asking everyone to put up their hand or put into the zoom chat the number and if you wanna do it anonymously you can do it anonymously as while using a pool and we were shocked we got all fours and fives which was not what we expected we thought this was gonna be so tough but people were actually really bought in to what we had laid out and so we ended up having a very short fifteen minute meeting instead of what we had planned to be an hour long meeting now i've used the same technique in other conversations and it doesn't always end up like that but it can and sometimes that goes back to the assumptions that we're making and how we can get ourselves worked up about something that's not real and if we can pause and step back and say why am i really worried about here and then how can i prepare what information do i need to have ready how can i frame this in a way that people can hear can actually help you alleviate some of that anxiety and also help you enter our conversation and see what is actually on the table howard we actually responding instead of making all those assumptions up upfront so i'll quickly say the other value of doing this kind of zero through five activity is then the people who say zero one or two you can focus on the very specific issues that they have what are the risks that they are concerned about what information do they feel is missing what why are they so against this decision and if you do it anonymously again you continue having anonymous input and to say okay anyone who has a zero one or two can you please put into the anonymous survey tool what your concerns are if you do it as a group or people's names are associated you can say hey amy i we saw that you were one we really like to understand what your concerns are and give me the floor to lay those out you can also even open up and say i don't know who the ones and the twos were but i'm curious why might someone had say that they were a one right give the floor open to anyone and then doesn't have to be a one who responds it could be anyone who says well here is a potential watch out or i guess this could be concerning to some folks and use it as a way to get some of that thinking in the room but then you can really focus in on the points of concern rather than trying to sell a whole decision or unpack all of it when there's actually a lot of agreement happening in the room already but that's not a bad thing right it might be that this decision really isn't the right decision it's not the right option and so you don't wanna shut that down just because you've done all this work to prepare for this to be the thing because you wanna come and open and saying we think this is the right thing but we're having this conversation because we wanna make sure and so if it's turning out to not be the right decision that's also okay let's just be really clear about why so when risks or concerns or alternatives are being offered up and it starts to spin in that way user criteria as a starting point how does this relate to our bigger goal how does this fit with our criteria let's make sure that we're grounding this not just an opinion but in the facts or the bigger context i've been in meetings and this somebody who is just very negative or very passive aggressive and no matter how the person leading it is try to reset it this person just digs in what do you do in that situation particularly as it isn't matter it's new to that team is any advice you'd give to for dealing with somebody who is very negative yeah i had a similar situation i took over a team that was pre when the last manager left and it always starts with you coming in with curiosity and wanting to know these people and getting us an opportunity to build a relationship with each one of them because they all carry baggage just like you carry baggage and so you wanna come in and you wanna give yourself time to understand who are these people how do they work what was working well before that i wanna keep and build on and what wasn't working well and if you ask those questions what do you love about working on this team what do you find hard about working this team what did your old manager do that you hope i don't do now what are the things that you hope i'll do that could be different or new or what opportunities do you see give people a chance to tell you because that's gonna be a great source of insight and guidance for how you can start to work with these folks in ways that are different than what they're used to but also in ways that they want to work if you come in and you have your whole plan set this is how i love to work this is what we're gonna do you have no relationship of trust to go from and they're gonna sit there and go oh my gosh really another person who's gonna tell us how to do this that's not what they want they want you to be their partner so if you're in a meeting and it's not going well and someone keeps digging their heels in all the time take some time to talk to that person what's going on for them again so much is happening in the background whether it's previous experiences whether it's stuff happening out in their life whether it's they just came from another meeting and they were really angry about that and just carry that emotion into this next meeting there's usually more to the picture so the more that we can just talk to our team members and help them to see how their behaviors are helping or hurting our team we can we have something to go from then would you recommend that this new manager speaks to individuals before the meeting would it better to to stop that conversation as a group well it depends on which meeting we're talking about so i like in the very beginning starting with a new team of taking some time both collectively and individually with each person so when it comes to the collective one of my favorite activities to do is to have them tell me the story of their team who got here first how did you form what are the things that like the big celebratory moments that you've had the big successes you've had along the way of your team's journey really just give them a chance to tell you how they came to be who they are as a collective and again that could be an opportunity to them to share what they love about working with each other what's worked really well that they hope you're gonna keep what they would like to change use that time for them to bond with each other as they're getting to know you and you're getting to know them then i like to do someone on one things where you're just talking with each person who are you what do you care about how do you like to work what are your pet peeve what are your aspirations in your career what do you wanna learn how do you wanna grow use this as a great great opportunity to just let them tell you who they are instead of you trying to figure it out all on your own and then the last piece of this is you should share who you are with all of them as well so you can do this collectively i think it's a nice way to do it is to say here's who i am here's how i came here here's what excites me and if you're a new manager like brand brand new and you've never managed a team before it's okay to tell them that's too this is my first team i'm so excited to be working with all of you and i know i have a lot to learn here are three things i've started doing to help me get up that learning her faster i have a mentor i'm reading some books i listen to the modern manager podcast or truth work lies i do all these things because i wanna show up as the best manager possible and i really hope you're gonna give me feedback along the way and help me show up in a way that works best for you all so use that as a chance for them to get to know you and what your growth goals are and the more vulnerable where you are the more you tell them this is what i like this is what i don't like if you see me doing this thing please don't take it the wrong way just come and tell me that's gonna set you up for a foundation of trust like the past manager maybe didn't have i wanna take it back to these kind of bad news hard decisions type of conversations particularly if you've got some news it is gonna devastate the team layoffs is a good example of of that but there are many others how do you prepare for that scenario where you know it's gonna be in a emo meeting so i like to always have by talking points prepared i wanna know what it is that i'm gonna say and i wanna have the specific words laid out for me so in the case of after a lot of times your company is gonna give you talking points but if you're sharing other news like project budget got cut or something's going on with a client and they're really unhappy and you know need the team to really like rally and figure out what's going on which means people are gonna have to work late and redo work and you just know it's not gonna be exciting for them figure out what you wanna say write it down practice the different framing of how you're going convey this in the way that you think it's gonna land best for the people in the room and what they care about and also think through are different scenarios how might people respond if someone starts crying what do you wanna do how do you wanna react to that if someone gets really angry how do you wanna react to that if someone throws their hands up and it's just like fine whatever like this is what always happens how do you wanna react to that who do you wanna be how do you wanna show up in those moments and the more that you can kind of rehearse in your brain because there's actually this really cool thing that happens in our brain where and i'm telling you is that psychologist here as you know better than i do but when we rehearse in our brain it's giving our body almost like the muscle memory of having lived through that so the more that you can practice different scenarios and just think through what are the words i wanna say how do wanna show up how am i gonna stay calm the better prepared you'll be and then the last thing i'll say and this is true for all difficult difficult conversations i really like knowing my personal signals for my emotions meaning what is happening for me and my body that tells me i'm nervous i'm angry i'm frustrated i'm scared i'm sad i'm worried whatever those things are for me when i get nervous i get really cold like super super cold on my hands like are so freezing and even sometimes i shiver which is not how a lot of people show up when they're nervous they get warm and heated and kind of crunch that doesn't happen for me but when i feel my hands on i notice oh my gosh my hands are really cold i go oh i'm really nervous right now and that gives me an opportunity to say what why am i being so nervous what's going on i also noticed that my heart will start to race i'm gonna say something i think is gonna land not well with someone i know for me it's my heart races i don't get pink cheeks i don't get clam but my heart raises so if you know your signals then in the conversation you can catch yourself better and understand where your emotions might be starting to interfere with how you wanna show up and it gives you a chance to just take a breath name the emotion for yourself and say okay i can still do this and i'm gonna show up thoughtfully and not let the emotions take over before a difficult meeting take ten minutes block your calendar for the ten minutes beforehand and the ten minutes afterwards so that you have space to prepare and process especially if you are a busy manager and you have lots of different meetings or lots of different to do's and you are used to running back to back you don't wanna walk into any difficult meeting feeling rushed you wanna feel calm and centered and prepared you wanna be able to review your notes that you took about your goal your talking points how you wanna frame something you wanna center into how i wanna show up do i wanna be courageous do i wanna be clear and articulate do i wanna be kind and curious think ro of all of that before your meeting use those ten minutes to get yourself ready so you can show up as your best self to facilitate that conversation and then same thing afterwards you're probably gonna be flooded with all kinds of sensory information and emotions and you want that time after to process before you have to jump into your next thing you don't wanna be feeling rushed to get out of that meeting and jump into another conversation or start working on a client proposal or whatever might be so give yourself the gift of blocking that time at afterwards so you can go take a walk you can just cry if you need to you can go outside and scream you can get some water whatever you need to do to process so that you're ready for whatever comes next there's plenty of jokes and memes online about meetings and rightly so to be honest however two of the biggest questions around meetings generally are when should a meeting have been an email and two can we ban meetings altogether lia anne put these questions to mimi how can you tell the difference as a manager at what should be a meeting and what should be an email so i have in my book seven different reasons why you wanna have a meeting and one reason why you should never have a meeting and the primary reason you should never have a meeting is to give information with one little caveat if the information is really complex if it's sensitive if there's emotional pieces to it if there's a nuance of course you wanna have that meeting where you share information but if you're just talking about standard information let me explain all the stuff to you not a good reason for a meeting and it's why a lot of meetings run as long as they do because we spend the first ten fifteen twenty thirty minutes going through a slide presentation giving information and there's so many problems with that because one nobody wants to sit for half an hour and stare at a screen it is not en we lose attention we cannot focus for that long second people need time to process different brains process information differently so for some folks sure give them thirty minutes of presentation and they are gonna have their brain firing and be ready to respond for other people they're not gonna come up with their best ideas or their best questions for twenty four to forty eight hours after they've seen your presentation and now it's probably too late because they're probably not gonna circle back and say by the way i was thinking about this here's my question so using information sharing in your meetings is making them longer and also not a good use of everyone's time and not a good focus of their attention i've heard of some some starship up some found is going all a little bit quirky and going and we're just gonna cancel meetings meetings don't belong here watch your take on that i never like to say that there is like hard and fast really hard and fast rules so every culture should do it right for them meaning if people know you don't have meetings in your company they can sign up for that there are definitely introverts and some people who just really don't like being a meetings no matter what you do to make them engaging so if you are very clear that that is your culture and you hire people who want to work in that culture good for you most of us though find meetings to be very valuable because of the relationships that get built in meetings and let's be clear a one on one conversation is a meeting a meeting doesn't have to have five people to be a meeting just a one on one conversation is still a meeting so they're are great places for building relationships you get the energy and the collaborative ideas yes you can brainstorm outside of a meeting and i actually do recommend that most teams who are doing brainstorming sessions start by brainstorming individually outside of the meeting and then ring those ideas into the meeting and do a second round of brainstorming together because you're gonna get different creativity and juices flowing when you're in a group and you're having that conversation and some decisions you can try all you want to write slack messages back and forth and write memos and leave comments but you gotta just be in conversation with folks you need that real time back and forth and then nuance being able to see someone's facial expression to understand how important is this to them where they energized that emotion doesn't usually come across in a document so meetings have their place they're just not the only tool that was mimi camp stuart and i think there's one clear lesson here meetings aren't your enemy bad meetings are your enemy so when someone says this should have been an email what they're really saying is you wasted my time by sharing information i could have read on my own but decisions discussions building relationships working through complex trade offs those genuinely need meetings and when you prepare properly they can actually be the best part of your day and noah listens will take so much your way from and want to learn more about you your podcast your book your work where's the best place for them to go you can find about everything on man k s dot com m a m i e k s dot com you'll find the link to my podcast the modern manager and my business media which is all about meetings and my book momentum and one last word on your podcast because i've been listening to it i'm a fan tells what people can can expect we cover everything you might need to know to be an effective manager so i have guests like yourself lia who is also a guest on my show and we talk about pretty much everything that is related to being an effective manager and being a good team leader everything from productivity and time management to difficult conversations and meetings to decision making and strategic thinking really covers the bandwidth of really practical things for how you can shop a be team leader and i'm so excited because ul were also a guest on my show so people can know how fabulous it is because of course you always gone on great shows and share great wisdom yourself you can find mimi at m k s dot com that's m a m i e k s dot com and you should go and find her you're can find out more about our podcast the modern manager her book momentum and her business meteor your which is about making meetings better oh you're gonna hear lia am on the modern manager podcast in the next few weeks yes you will this is truth lies and work we will see next week

coming up this week in work would you make one hundred phone calls a day for twenty four thousand pounds a year well a london firm is hiring salespeople people into dubai with brutal targets and barely any base pay they call it resilience but what does the psychology say about high pressure without support also this week starbucks wants staff to make eye contact write personal messages on cops and finish every order in four minutes sounds friendly but employees say it feels fake can mandate genuine connection will that to defeat the whole point and in truth or lie mas hierarchy of needs this famous pyramid is taught in every business school and stuck on every training slide but does it actually explain how human motivation works plus in the workplace surgery would you find your best employee if they were destroying team morale one business owner says their torn between performance and team culture this is truth lies and work the award winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name is leanne and i'm a chartered occupational psychologist my name is alan a business owner and together we help organizations but amazing work place sculptures so let's get right into it after this very quick word from all responses now i'm sure you've heard that we only use twenty percent of our brain i'm gonna stop you right there that's actually we might only use areas of our brain at time but the neuroscience imaging shows we do in fact over time use all of our bread i idea i think the myth stands from lee lee stop for this analogy me to work you need to stop talking and let me say something be okay oh sorry carry on well you have heard here that we use more than twenty percent of our brain but my analogy was if we use twenty percent of our brains well help discovered the most businesses only use twenty percent of their data to see where else was telling you will percent that's just silly that's like buying a cake and only eating one slice which would never happen but the point is and unless you use butt then you're massively messing out yep their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business imagine being able to free all those insights they're trapped into emails call logs and transcripts and everything else but years ago we had to go through all this data at manually and frankly who's got the time and thanks to hubspot you can access all that yummy unstructured data really easily when you know more you grow more visit hubspot dot com today welcome back it's leanne favorite time of the week is time for then huge round you'd find out the other week that your favorite time of the week is actually a gin on gin antonio on friday so this is your second favorite time of the week it's time for the news around yes it is k the jingle out leigh what have you seen on the ten web this week i've got new word god bread crumb if you've not listed this before i try and guess please so bread crumb at hansel and gretel they dropped bread breadcrumbs so bread crumb is a trail back to some else so possibly bread crumb is following back to your original culture no but follow that through in terms of their following the breadcrumbs and what what happens to hansel and they're go the they're go in the oven things don't end well no it's similar right so this i think had been i believe picked up from the dating world right and then reap reapply to the business world so in the dating world it means that someone strings you along just enough that they hold your attention but never really commits okay so in the workplace this has been basically applied to mean when a manager or an organization hints that promotions raises an opportunities but never actually follows through so they basically they're leaving a small crumb trail to string you along yeah bit like i did when we first started dating yeah you absolutely did bread comment you i'm awful for human b i did but you stuck with it and we're together now and look at our way we're world famous podcast broadcasters anyway so so this is a bad thing isn't it it's not good so this is an article where did i see it can grade is that how you say it can what why not so they he said that you might hear things like someone's bread crumb you you might hear things like we're thinking about moving you into leadership we're just thinking about it right we need to finalize the budget we've all heard that one next quarter we'll revisit your development plan but then nothing you know structure no timeline no meaningful progress and it is quite relevant now because we are seeing signs of this on we're seeing pay growth slowing down we're seeing that internal mobility plan shrink with obviously of these organizations going for flatter structures and the job markets are are still a bit shaky the one thing that we know though we're not wired to wait forever no so in terms of behavioral science it's shows that were made motivated by progress we didn't talk about motivation a bit later you're on as well with mu hierarchy up your need aren't we but what we know is that even small wins are good it's that progress that that feels like we're getting somewhere but if that progress is promised not delivered then we lose trust and that impacts our motivation that goes down and then engagement turns in to resentment so yeah that is bread crumb our thoughts now i can see from a kind of like a leadership or business owner point of view you do wanna keep a good people around you may not be able to follow through but i will be tempted not bread crumb but maybe say look look would be really honest to be but nothing i nothing i can do over the next of like six months but i really want you to do to be the next manager i'm not promising anything but can we work towards it and if it comes off then you'll be the first in light is that fair or is that still bread crumb a bit i think that's there and i think that's the only thing you can do if you're an organization where budgets are i limited door opportunities on there right now i think like you said it's being honest and being transparent and people will respect that and it might not necessarily change their mind to leave but it's certainly gonna make them motivated and and performing until they do i mean there are other things that you could do if you're not able to offer that promotion working on extra project stretch projects job that's stretch project so stretch project is say oh so say in terms of i wanted to really get some experience in organizational change at a huge organization mh i might go and work alongside a psychologist in microsoft right the certain periods of the week to get an idea of of what that looks like right so it's a stretch in terms of it's not beyond my capability but it's stretching my capability in terms of mo national global level microsoft wharf shame you got meet bill exactly me in bill of cup another thing you could do a job crafting job crafting is actually really effect in terms of motivation development is basically when you say to somebody what's the best parts of your job what would you like to be doing more of and help and allowing that person to go do you know what i really enjoy podcasting mh so i would like to launch the business fashion podcast for the company so yeah there's other things that you can do for bottom line is i think if you're just being d manipulative people aren't gonna buy for too long and they'll lose trust and they'll lose my motivation and male leave i think that covers all of leadership isn't and management and business ownership mh if you if you if you tell lies you get find out the story about the pie piper of hammond mh and and my dad used to read it to me at night and he read it over and over and over again and at the end he said and promises once made should always be kept and he looked me rightly knee i hit it when he said that and i i think now from that point forward eddie any promise i make only make a promise if i can keep it i think now because i keep seeing my dad's eyes going i will find you and i will kick your ass mh anyway anyway there you go like life lesson from brian elliott there i'll what we've seen this week well i was on twitter as woman we called amanda z originally i think i saw this in ink dot com but it's a bit bit of a bit of digging she's she she writes for everything she's pretty great we have to get her on the part because she's like oh columnist is for ink anxious columnist for this columnist for that also lives in a place called snow in what's that is that washington so it's is a made place or it's from lord of the rings i'm not sure if she maybe she maybe be she she lives in lord of the rings but anyway that's not what i wanna talk about she did not go about the ceo of starbucks a brand new ceo called brian nickel and he has created guidelines for staff starbucks has seen about six consecutive quarters of sales declines so brian came in and he introduced a raft of new policies to reverse this so part of this is called the green apron service it's all part of this what calls back to starbucks plan and i'd like to make a joke joke about brian nickel nickel and diving by worm so the green apron service is all that stricter dress codes restriction on body piercing but also the interaction you have with your barrett barista i always gonna have wrong barr barista is actually quite tightly scripted i'll read from the article says they're told to pause for a second to make eye contact don't rush the moment it's according to the wall street journal who reviewed the manual you're also supposed to agree to customer by name if you can and make eye contact when you take the order and then finally you're supposed to write something meaningful on the cop and now someone does report they were fired for not doing this then i contact again when handing drink over our and keep all these down to less than four minutes because people are leaving because i was sticking too long there is a lock of backlash employees are saying this is what they call fabricated empathy and supposed to all these new things and reduce this time to process a customer the eye icon only call the good point in fact i think it might have been lots the author mind mindy z with a good point saying that newer staff although i'm uncomfortable whether eye contact might find that a little bit difficult feels like this cup backfire fire i mean i i understand why they're trying to do i think they're trying to make starbucks a little less corporate and more like yous of family were on coffee house but again this idea of fabrication is what is is wary i think it might be going wrong what are your thoughts what did they call it green apron green apron service see now i enjoy that because it's giving it's an iconic thing isn't it it's like a cultural landmark that green apron that people can connect with and i think the step that they've missed is because i can only assume this has come directly from from the leadership team without any employee consultation because of the backlash yeah is it why wouldn't you as a new ceo bring people into that conversation i'm new here that what does it mean to you this green apron service what do you miss what are we what's got lost in starbucks what do you wanna go back to and then creating what that means in terms of a philosophy or or values or desired behaviors is there could be much more acceptable because people have been involved in that chain has been consulted what does green apron service mean to you what we want it to mean for moving forward so i think that's that's problematic assuming that there wasn't any employee consultation by sounds if it wasn't done very widely or very overwhelmed the other thing starbucks had a bi scandal the last last two two years or so hasn't it what would the tax or oh well yeah and then they had accusations didn't they of like union busting within the oh really workforce there's been lawsuits for unfair dismissal there's been talk about potential child labor within the supply chain it there's a lot been happening and then we've had at the ceo move on didn't we so i think it's it's a time of transformation so i understand the sense of urgency for the new ceo but often what they called more what was it what's it i don't know what you're saying more speed less less less hay mode less taste more speed now the other way you you don't do you mean yeah more hasty less speed yeah that's yeah well you say the new the new ceo should have come in and bridge consultation what this new ceo brian nichols has have been busy doing is the first policy change was to reduced remote working to one day week weekend i'm guessing this oh what's his name brian brian come on brian peanut it unless you're a senior leader in which case being in the office is mandatory yet brian runs this seattle based head office from his place in california where it's much nicer weather brian's canceled brian's counsel and he wonders why this didn't go down well well exactly exactly are the z sums it up like this most human beings are good at recognizing one another's emotions if if a starbucks employee looks you in the ice smiles and writes something cheer on your cup while that's teething with fury on the inside chances are you will pick up on that yes i'll be honest ours i do enjoy starbucks it's probably my coffee chain of choice truth be told which might get me a canceled yeah maybe i would quite enjoy it if now knowing this i was going in starbucks and they're writing some quite salty messages on it like save me or i don't know will dance for tips i had to take my nose ring out for this job yeah yeah yeah yeah anyway we're all cancel of or joel joined brian in the hole what else have you seen in this week love would you make a hundred call the day for twenty four thousand pounds a year i kinda did yeah yeah one of my first jobs was selling advertising over the phone and i used to make a hundred marks on the on the piece paper and could dial a hundred times anyway sorry that that's that's about me this is not about me so you saying yes i'm saying i wouldn't do it now thank you for for giving us a different source of income but when i was a kid i could do it yeah i mean i think that's totally take the wind out of all this no it doesn't it's like it's an entry level expectation as it i went into sales as well in i was more inbound than by onboarding i still would take more than hundred calls a day for sure for advertising space fun times in a newspaper aisle the kids have known what a news newspaper is back to the article hundred hundred calls twenty four grand yes this is reported by the telegraph and it's about w wealth a london based financial planning firm with offices around the world including sun dubai so according to the report hoc trainee wealth managers in dubai are expected to make at least one hundred phone calls a day the advert which describes a role as not for the faint hearted so his candidates and must show exceptional resilience and a strong work ethic to succeed what do we know do we know the phone is the phone is the job is phone based for the first two years and the targets are explicit hundred calls a day at least one confirmed booking every day five hours of talk time five meetings secured each week and return trainees receive a starting sal of twenty four thousand pounds rising to just twenty nine thousand pounds by year three plus a five percent commission on any sales they make the advert also promises visa as a medical coverage which are monetary for dubai residents so sounds like they have to plus makes clear that success depends on stamina it frames as an opportunity for people with a competitive spirit who can thrive in a high pressure environment right it's all sounding very well for wall street at this point isn't it yep so the practice of aggressive calling the article goes on mention has been heavily restricted in recent years of cold calling financial products is actually banned in the uk after a crackdown by their financial conduct authority in twenty twenty three and similar rules in dubai limit call to between nine am and six pm h has insisted its trainees can comply with both sector of rules saying that people contacted have already expressed interest in the company services mean they're not technically cold calls but how many times you express interest in something you like did i didn't i know tick a box on my own form anyway i've for a more context i guess because this is an entry level position so it might sound a little bit me in terms of the work to pay ratio but for context hawk and wealth imagine it's huge so you'd imagine the senior employees get paid a lot because they manage two point five billion pounds in assets and have more than ten thousand clients across nine offices worldwide so what do we think out is this fair for an entry level position is it a bit is it a bit bro is it a bit wolf street thoughts i think well yes to all of those things and we can sit here in our era in our podcasting ivory tower and go well you know things should be better however sales is the best in my opinion sales is the best thing you can do to to get this yourself grounded for any kind of business now if you wanna be like i didn't know a fe sw consultant actually even then you need sales because you need to sell your stuff so i think i think it's you know how some countries do mandatory military service or do they call it there's a special name for it inscription coming but mh well i think that everyone should do man through one one year of sales phone sales hard phone i did door door sales that was brutal man brutal but also did see some very very strange things so so i think that should be manager are you gonna have to what strange things did you see oh well there was a couple quite quite openly enjoying into intercourse in the window i knocked in the door they locked up and and kinda looked him me as said give me a minute here second i also ended up sitting in in a tiny one bedroom terrace in halifax this is an nova scope this isn't an nova scotia this is in yorkshire in halifax with eight rot liners and there were the softest things in the world and that's what may be get our first party oh even because they were the lovely dogs in the world anyway that's not the point up sales i think sales are a really good base for everything and anything whatever whatever your job is is a good chance as of selling element to it also they're not telling people they have to do this this is a choice so you always say job design role design role you know clarity they're being quite clear about what it is mh they're not saying come work in our fast paced environment where you're gonna really enjoy who come comrade were they going you are gonna work like a dog man that that was a au u don't little what accident that was oh my goodness i wonder to have returning at canceled in this one episode i know i know so bottom line for me cool crack on yeah because you're not making people doing it and you're actually being really explicit so you're saying this is the job do you want it or not and so yeah anyway i agree with you i think they're being very explicit they're being very clear on what they want we all know what this role is we will see in this role some of us have done this role it is what it is they they're they're a firm that goes for the approach and we want people to burn bright and burn fast very few people are gonna stay in this this type of environment for the entirety of their career the majority people probably do it into the thirty and then and then tap out and go and do something else because they made their money so i think i think yeah it is it is what it is in jobs like this exists because we live in a capitalist society when money makes the world go around i can go into the psychology of it but i think it's no real mystery that if you don't have that purpose in your role if you don't have that autonomy if you're not given a things to do it is gonna hit your motivation levels it is gonna feel hard margin by outcomes is good but if it's not connected to a bigger purpose than it's not really gonna keep us going we know it can be stressful tiring tunnel vision competitive could bring in a lot of toxicity who knows i don't i don't think anyone is that surprised by what what the psychology this will will lead to over time probably toxic work environment burnout high turnover over but i think that's the point of what h is going for yeah but anyway i agree that they're chasing what they they will call a players they've find what they think an a player is and i'm sure in an organization that size of that that much under management two point five billion assets i'd imagine once you get get out of your training can start to some decent money and what we also don't know as well too fair they in five percent commission on any sale that they make that could add ordered up to lots and lots and lots so i'm absolutely yeah it's what it is is what i'd say on that i agree to if if you're listening to this and you wanna you want there's two movie recommendation i've got through the wall wall street anne already mentioned and pursuit of happiness and both of those are positioned as someone who is willing now put wolf for wall street goes off in a different direction to pursuit of happiness at will smith but both those people who are willing to work from the bottom up and they were successful and like if you wanna be in wealth management and you wanna earn you know two hundred fifty thousand pounds a year then perhaps this is the way you start i to be honest probably a lot of people at the top did start off on this anyway leigh anything else has to add before we go to our lovely break now okay so after the rate we've got truth or light is the new segment where i asked lia anne is something true or is something a lie bang on brand and we've got our world famous week birthday surgery we your questions to the end and don't go anywhere see in a second hey just a quick word about another show on the spot podcast network it's called h flow chart with the incredible joe fiat joe's not about chasing unicorns or building multi billion dollar start his thing is helping you design a business that works for your life so you've got the money you need and the time to enjoy it and as a psychologist i approve this message yeah he's talking systems mindset tweaks little reframe all the stuff it's gonna make you good money without working yourself into the ground and if you're curious about ai check out his august episode on the so called ai gold rush even i learned a few things and i live with an absolute nerd on i am nerd so go listen into halt flow chat wherever you get your hosts welcome back it is time for truth or lie is a jin is it a truth is it a lie is it a true truth truth a lie i'm not heard that wow i'll be honest i hadn't heard it into that actually came out of my mouth i no it exists yeah this just goes to on some kind of approval for process that way yeah and maybe maybe we just get someone else into do the vocals leaving but lovely melody thank you very very much this is our weekly myth busting segment segment where we take those psychological claims you see everywhere and ask does the evidence actually back this up so we've recently done left handed people we haven't done left handed people we've we've talked about left handed beat people are they more creative we've looked where the tall people are really are more successful at work we do one no this might be three this is maybe our third one you so this week's truth will lie does mas famous pyramid of needs accurately explain what motivates us and do we really need to satisfy our basic needs before we can pursue see it things like self esteem and reaching our full potential you can tell him reading from piece of paper basically is mas correct is it a load rubbish what your thoughts mas hierarchy means it's that famous pyramids you've all seen that you're all know what i'm talking about you've done one training session on leadership you've opened a textbook yeah you would have seen it it's five levels stacked up into a pyramid so at the bottom you got psychological needs like food sorry physiological needs like food and water then you've got safety and security then love and belonging then a esteem and recognition and finally self actual centralization at the peak which means basically becoming our best selves it's simple it's elegant it's everywhere and it's been taught in business schools and psychology department since the nineteen fifties the core idea that goes with it which is important to to know as well it's not just about the the levels the core idea is that you must satisfy each level before you can move up to the next so you can't worry about making friends if you're hungry you can't pursue your dreams if you don't feel safe yeah yeah yeah all seemed intuitive makes sense yes here is the first problem now abraham mas never drew a pyramid oh not once okay so where's pyramid confirmed well when when m proposed this theory it was in the nineteen forty nine forty three he described it in writing there was an article the pyramid was created seventeen years later in nineteen sixty by a business consultant called charles mc for an article about motivating workers so he uses a pyramid to help managers achieve maximum motivation at the lowest cost it's a catchy visual isn't it it's memorable it's perfect for training slides and it's stuck so this is a version everyone learns and it isn't even mas original idea poor mas so in terms of what basil actually said so he proposed that humans have five basic needs that are hardwired interest through evolution so the key idea is that these needs work in order so when you lack something it motivates you to get it but once you have it it stops motivating you so this means you focus on whatever need is currently unmet so if you're hungry that dominates your attention but once you're fed you can move on to worrying about safety once you feel safe you can focus on making friends and so an up ladder so yeah basically you can't focus on gaining respect recognition if you're worried about where your next meal is coming from that's the core logic of the theory actually i have no a question but just i want go back to that pursuit of happiness because if you watch that film it actually goes through those levels this claims yeah today's episode brought to you by the pursuit of happiness movie yeah it's i mean it's inspired movies it caught firing in the business world it's been used in all sorts of ways it's been used to design pay structures recognition programs employee motivation strategies and it is still taught as a foundational concept today second problem mas himself knew this was an incomplete theory oh so in the original paper he mentioned other needs like the desire to learn and appreciate beauty but he didn't know where to put them so he recognized that his list wasn't finished so after nineteen forty three m were split two into two paths so one was very practical working with businesses and the other was much more philosophical so he started studying people who seemed to have reach their full potential and asked what motivates them once they've achieved success so once they've got this self actual utilization and he found that they weren't driven by personal success anymore they were driven by bigger values so trust beauty justice making the world better there's there's nuance in there as we just said with this sixth level which never really got famous because he only developed this about two years before he actually passed away and it was published in and really obscure psychology journal that most people never read so the five level pyramid became a standard version taught in schools whilst only a handful of researchers knew about the sixth level and i came across a really interesting story when i looking into this from a psychology psychologist named hazel sc guest what a i know so she ran a weekend course on masa at cambridge she's spent ninety minutes teaching about the sixth level these transcend value beyond self interest when she marked the essays some students has still drawn the hierarchy with only five levels right have a self accusation at the top right and when she looked into it it's basically that was all the students with the background and business and management they just couldn't accept that there was a sixth level because they'd always known it as five whereas the psychology students were a little bit more as we tend to be to things changing so the problem is that one there's no pyramid two the pyramid wasn't complete and s mas himself said it wasn't it wasn't a finished thing it was a moving living theory that was still developing so problematic so the next question is has any other research showing that mas hierarchy needs can be backed up can so in this seventies two researchers reviewed every study that had tried to test mas hierarchy and their conclusion was this very little evidence supporting the idea that needs work in a rigid order right so yes we all have needs but flowing it step by step and a progression doesn't really make sense and i also you know got to think that if i need to eat before i i'm focused on being safe if i got a tiger running at me i'm like actually i'm a bit hungry i just finished my snack before i you know i finish your frost yeah yeah exactly doesn't doesn't quite work the other problem is that mas develop this theory on like the top one percent of exception chief so he studied people like albert einstein right so how can you kind of have an all encompassing theory of everybody about the human experience when you've only based on extraordinary individuals then there's a cultural problem it's a very western theory it's a very individualistic world climate towards that individual self actual virtualization and then going to to those transcend values but in a lot of cultures they're more collect people prioritize community harmony family obligations over individual achievement which we absolutely see bosnia don't make yeah so yeah so it's it's all it's all a bit difficult and i think really what one psychology is telling us human moderation is a lot messi there are some things that mas got right in that we have two types of needs so we have deficiency needs things like hunger safety and belongings they're driven by lacking and then we have growth needs things like learning creativity and the more you satisfy your growth needs the more you want them whereas the more you satisfy your deficiency needs you don't want it anymore right yeah so he got that right and there is some really interesting research that has been done with school children in poverty that have found that that yes if their basic needs are are met better than they'll perform better in in school so there is some truth there but there are better models i think now that kind of explain motivation you probably heard of some of them self determination there focus on three basic psychological needs autonomy competence and for then connected to others it's much more flexible as a model so yeah i think the problem is it's just not quite as robust as we want it to be it a theory and it's always been a theory and it was an incomplete theory so truth or lie the claim that mas hierarchy of needs was self actual capitalization at the top of the pyramid does to accurately describe human motivation no yeah it's a lie or at best it's very dramatic over simplification and i think that's the probably true of of the majority of truth and lies will talk about on here some will be absolutely bob and some will be surprisingly true like tall people are genuinely more successful and others are gonna be somewhere in the middle where it's based on truth but it's just been stretched to a point where it doesn't quite explain the complexity of of humans and the glorious of of all that messi so yeah i'm sorry mas it's not true we're talking of glorious messi of human nature which a beautiful turner phrase by the way it's time for our world famous weekly workers work works for a surgery no no it's time for our world famous weekly workplace surgery we put your questions till and you should know by now to chartered occupational psychology she knows everything she even though she says she doesn't and she does she knows everything else she doesn't know you're going look it up so we've got three questions for you today the first one is all about the highest performers and are they harming team morale so this person writes i run a small team and one employee stands out for their skill and output they're easily the most efficient person in the business and replacing them would not be easy the problem is they're difficult to work with i've got someone i work with is difficult to work with they're dismissive in meetings openly critical of colleagues and several team members have come to me with concerns i've had multiple conversations with them but nothing seems to change their work is excellent but the impact of morale is real should i let them go or should i keep them please should this day or should they go so that might be copyright right remarks to change that sorry what you are dealing with friend is a toxic superstar they are pesky little partridge pesky little partridge i love it it might feel like this person is contributing a lot to performance the reality is you would have to hire for superstars to just to make up the gate the negative impact of this toxic superstars is having on performance i think there's a good example of like the sunk cost fallacy isn't it and somebody's with the organization so long they've achieved so much you put so much into them they've put so much into the organization and feel like a massive massive loss i it won't be it won't be sad to say particularly because you said you've tried to speak to this person you tried to to coach them it's certainly worth another difficult conversation and if you wanna hear about how to have these conversations you on thursday we have an incredible guest who who talks about this try and have that conversation again try and explain the impact they're having on the team and on performance and the consequences it if they aren't able to turn some of these behaviors around always good to go in with a little bit of emphasis empathy something it going on with them is this a new thing or they always been a bit problematic or is this something new is a change in behavior could be a symptom of something that's happening outside of work which they need support with they need help with so be curious about that but ultimately in terms of what we know from the psychology toxic superstars might seem like they're worth it but they're really not they're not worth in terms of performance and then profitability in terms of morale in terms of your culture it's just not gonna work so you need to look at this now as a as a last ditch attempt to turn this person around or you're probably gonna have to perform its my out so what we're saying is that you need three people's worked to to make up for the deficit or the detrimental work that that the toxic stuff so in actual fact they might be exceeding at one thing sales for example that might they might be responsible for twenty five percent of all your sales but you also need to employ three of the people to pick up the mess that they've created around them exactly exactly and not just in terms of performance but in terms of the impact on on the team as well the thing is there there are some scenarios where you could have a toxic super superstar and be very isolated an individual contributor role that could work but they're always gonna be seen as a slight outside and i've been in teams like that where we've had people like that and they've they've never really been part of the full group so it did kinda create an os in them situation it just it just doesn't work sadly it just doesn't work if you wanna learn more about toxic superstars go back to what episode we did with ryan sherman from hogan oh yeah that was good yeah was really good and he explains it really well in terms of the impact on performance but yeah headline is you'd have to hire three people to make up for the negative impact this person having on performance of your business so are they worth hanging on to not really remember i talked about that sales job i had before i think i've mentioned this before is the last job i ever had back in two thousand and two and there was someone used to come in eleven o'clock in the morning we'd been from nine till five they in at eleven and leave at one and just basically hammer the phone put a lot of sales up on the board and then disappear off and they were a toxic super superstar because all of us what was like oh my god you're gonna come in and i feel really bad that i can't do that and i'm sure that the afternoons is gone we were all a bit like so yeah and i bet if you looked at performance i bet things dropped in terms of either call volumes or meetings booked i bet they did but of course the the the manager the sales manager was like well i don't care because i still got this guy yeah tough situation but i hope that helped okay onto your question number two how do i keep my remote team connected and motivated so i am growing i'm running i am growing a remote team i'm finding it harder to keep everyone engaged we tried a few things like regular check ins virtual socials but it still feels like people are drifting i don't want over engineer but i also know engagement doesn't happen by accident person's been reading some of your stuff what are the most effective ways to make sure remote employees still feel part of something and they stay motivated over the long term lee lovely so i think the things that you've tried a quite natural things for a business owner to try and that you think connection is about being friends do you think connection is about us all going on and having fun together and that's not really what employee engagement is the first thing that you need is a reason for people to be there what are they supporting what's the mission of the organization do they feel inspired by that motivated by that do they feel part of that in terms of understanding how their individual role contributes that mission delivery those two things lower and are gonna have a massive impact on engagement motivation if you currently don't have those very very clear and it might need revisiting if you're growing off in these things do need do visiting so that be my first thing is in terms of does everyone understand exactly what the organization is trying to do and does everybody understand their individual role in that mission delivery the third thing i would say about remote teams is that and this is the same for in person teams or hybrid teams none of this is different it's just about the level of of intention and clarity you're gonna need so people might need reminding a bit more about what that what the reason the organization is or or success stories of of how you've hit a really important goal or target that's supporting that mission needs to be communicated a lot more frequently a lot more regularly but beyond that it's it's very much the same whether you're out or not the other thing that you can do because we do know relationships are really really important in an organization in terms of engagement and it's gonna support as well this this this reason that people have for for turning up is just looking at your team and seeing how they interact have you got a team of individual contributors are they all doing something different because that's that's a hard team to bring together because everyone is essentially working individually then you might need more kind of team building activities to to get create that comrade artery more than likely you're gonna have people that will feed into each other in terms of their individual roles or perhaps you got a a supervisor in there and really it's about focusing on task cohesion because we all talk about team cohesion where we all want a relationship relationship we want people to to be best mates and have fun at work and all that kind of stuff and that's really cool but that's never gonna work if we don't have task adhesion for us that basically means that what i do will feed into what a does and then what i'll does will feed feedback into me and that's a seamless process and the task that's gets completed with with very little friction that is good and that helps me respect alice my colleague because he's done a task that then enables me to do my task so i'm gonna do that task even better so then it helps him out and and so it goes around and task cohesion also then foster team cohesion so you're gonna start to get that social connection so my thought would be it's lovely that you think about all these events and i think in person makeup can be really effective if you're in a fully remote team or plenty of zoom meetings that type of thing allowing time at the beginning of the zoom meeting to just have a chat about things but really it comes down to the fundamental structure of your business why are people there how are they supporting that mission and are the tasks that they're doing flowing into each other that they're not creating any friction making hardest people to connect on a more personal level i think the the the revelation i think for a lot of people listening to this is that they most people think i need remote teams i need this team cohesion you talk about so are they put into into place all the stuff that this guy this i think there's a guy yeah this guy saying he's he's tried but they don't think about the task cohesion and like i'll be honest i be in the last like three or four weeks that i've heard you use the word task cohesion and now i'm like oh i kinda get it so it does make it a bit more straightforward that if you just concentrate making tasks that are collaborative then the team occasion almost takes care of itself is that fair yeah as long as a test are are achievable and clear and people have have the resource and skills they need to do them yeah but in its simplest form absolutely i think it's particularly important to focus on this when we are seeing workplaces that are becoming more polarized or politics that we're going more polarized it comes back to civility right it's not be about my friend of being is being having workplace civility and that is just about mutual respect and and starting from there and very few people turn off to work and wanna do a crappy job yeah they wanna do a good job to help them do a good job by building this ta heat and making sure the tasks are clear and their measurable internet friction the process and their lumps and bumps there's nothing annoying people in terms of how the access information or communicate fix all of that stuff and as you say it all it'll will start to take care of itself when you've got those little there's little nuggets of team and then you can pick up in it because then people want to meet up but they'll wanna come to a social event because they they want to get to know people more but at the moment it sounds like there's just some basic things that you could do to actually just improve this and naturally move people towards wanting to to engage more in a personal love it love it okay well good luck with that question number three how do you protect your well being as a founder by the way if you are a founder then drop me an email we're building something for you and we're looking for some people some feedback on that so yeah interesting alright so i run a small but fast growing start and lately i've noticed how easy is to let my own well being slide the stress builds gradually and before you know it you're running on fumes i know i'm not alone in this know you're not but i don't wanna burn out i'd love to hear from someone who actually understands the founder mindset one of the most effective ways to look after your mental physical health when the business never really switches off there's at ps we're not looking for just theory i'm looking for practical habits tools or mindset shifts careful with that word out that genuinely make a difference what your thoughts do you wanna kick off on this one because you are you're a serial founder serial is a multiple out didn't found call it kellogg should yeah i invented to tell me the tiger that was me ra i think that's right what i do know what i've learned from leanne is to kind of segment your life so you've got work yes and then you've got your like personal time off with your family for example yeah don't ever to bleed into each other and one thing that i used to like doing when when i was quite stressed is i found it was really good is to have two email addresses is one which went nowhere and it was called angry owl at and my company and whenever i was really annoyed about something i'd write a big right someone sent me a crappy email i would write to reply but sent to angry knocked to them and then what's it gone gone forgotten all about it the second one was an email that was that that i called nudge so basically we're ping the same back to me in the morning so just in the last dying minutes of the day i probably sit down and go right these are all things are frustrating to me today these are things that i need to get done tomorrow this is what i can't work out send it off and then the next morning at eight am it ping back up in may in my inbox now you can do this gmail now actually using sn over we're back in the day we had this service for it and that really helped me to one think about what was bothering me for the day and then that gave me clarity to potentially process it overnight when i was sleeping and second it i came back in the morning i didn't feel overwhelmed because i knew what i was expect i was gonna see an email with me basically handing over to myself the following day and that did help me stop taking stuff home and they did help me clarify problems and also more than once i wrote something the out went why am i doing this i i'm not gonna do that so i just delete that bit from the email and i never thought about it again so i'm not sure if these are necessarily helpful answers but what are your thoughts psychologically what you've given a really good example there of practicing emotional regulation so not reacting in the moment taking some time to to yeah put it down and and come back to it with the a clearer emotional state to then make a a more logic based decision and with that actually in terms of writing it down or typing it out neuroscience assurances is that that helps again process and deal with the emotions because it the energy the blood flow goes from our amygdala or emotional brain to our prefrontal cortex are thinking brain so even that transfer of energy by writing it down can help you process those emotions so that's a really really good tactic i think other things that are really important and probably non sleep have to have a good sleep pattern it's nonsense that you know when you read it these entrepreneurs successfully and had four hour sleep night there's been loads of research into it and it's just not even possible like it is gonna have a detrimental impact on on your health on your cognition on your everything over time so sleep is really important get decent sleep good sleep pattern absolutely right in terms of s life and work i think there's such a common story we see marriages breaking down and families breaking a part of entrepreneurs who just aren't unable to to dig a dedicate the time again we know from a well being perspective relationships are really important probably the most important thing things i've heard that the entrepreneurs will do which i think are quite clever is they will have two different firms one for work one for life the two shall never never mix that work firm when they get in goes into a drawer yep and they might get it out again when say the kids are in bed and they've had their meal with their with their partner and they'll allow themselves half an hour before before they they go to bed can be really effective another one that i heard was i think it's came from ross simmons to runs remote company oh yeah yeah and he card yeah and he said that he basically will block out his diary in terms of everything he know he needs to do to keep balance so gym time with physical activity reading time or listening to a podcast listening to music that kind of decompression he'll put in their social events it has to go to then he'll put in the work then i'll have a routine where i'll have certain times the day where he'll allow himself to to answer emails it etcetera etcetera so i think just that discipline in that routine is gonna be really important they're probably the few off the top of my head i think a good place is to start and won't feel too overwhelming if you're wanting some more practical hands on support as well i'd recommend getting a coach getting a therapist to have someone to talk to some bounce ideas off i can feel very lonely on as a as a founder if you don't have somebody to do that with okay m so i think that's it for this week and our business that concludes our business join us next tuesday for another edition of this week in work if you are a super you wanna be involved there is a whatsapp group very secret tops group at whatsapp group you can email us about that and also just tell us if you like this stuff tell us what you like and what you don't like loads have got links in the show notes so you can get in touch with us thursday we've got m camp stewart what a woman oh my goodness now if i tell was about meetings you go yawn no no no you do not want to miss this as fabulous late anything to hide before we let these lovely people go subscribe come over to linkedin leave us a comment leave us a review that would be nice yeah and nice review yes or anything anything constructive please put it in an email of the details here in the share notes so we'll see you thursday bye bye bye

picture this you've built something special your team of fifteen feels like family everyone knows everyone the culture just works but now you're staring down growth maybe to fifty maybe to a hundred employees and this is ignoring fear what if scaling breaks everything we've built i got a call from the ceo to say help we're at two hundred and fifty employees we are getting investment to grow to four hundred in the next year and i just don't understand what's going on people used to be nice here and now you know we had a no assholes culture or we had an open door policy culture and things are starting to change and i looked up and i realized that it's just not what i want that is josh levine a work fu author and culture consultant who's helped companies like credit karma navigate exactly this transition growing your team and keeping great culture is the nightmare which keeps most founders up at night and josh is gonna explain there's a magic number where everything changes it's not one hundred it's not even seventy five according to josh your founders culture starts breaking down at just fifty employees that's when the physics of culture fundamentally shifts but here's the thing josh says you can scale without losing your soul it just requires something most founders hate doing letting go of control and getting explicit about what actually matters this is truth lies and work the award podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture we are brought to you by the hubspot us network the audio destination for business professionals my name is leanne i'm a chartered occupational psychologist my name is a i'm a business owner and we are here to help you simplify the science of work after this quick break will discover why your beau fault found culture has an expiration date of exactly fifty employees had to transform implicit behaviors into explicit values actually scale and why gary w forty approach proves you can grow without becoming sol this oh and josh is gonna reveal the one mistake that turns values into expensive wallpaper and also we'll talk about the recognition trap that destroyed wells fargo culture so even just a second now i'm sure you've heard that we only used twenty percent of our brain i'm gonna stop you right there that's actually we might only use in areas of our brain at time but the neuroscience imaging shows we do in fact over time use all of our brain i you know i think the myth stands from lee lee stop for this analogy to work you need to stop talking and let me face would be okay oh sorry carry on well you have heard here that we use more than twenty percent of our brain but my analogy was if we use twenty percent of our brains well hubspot discovered that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data see where else going you will percent that's just silly that's like buying a cake and only eating one slice which would never happen but the point is unless you use hubspot then you're massively messing out yep their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business imagine being able to free all those insights that are trapped into emails call logs and transcripts and everything else five years ago we had to go through all these data at manually and who's got the time and thanks to hubspot you can access all that you'll meat unstructured data really easily when you know more you grow more visit dot com today my name is josh levine i'm a work fu in in the in north america focused on the power of company culture to change bottom lines and people's lives and my job on this earth i believe is to convince more businesses about the power of company culture and how it needs to be a rigorous business tool that can be deployed and employed in a way that makes business run even better and people super super engaged and i have a book a podcast and a company all called great mondays let's talk about someone who's maybe going and they got the fifteenth employee and they're looking to grow maybe to a hundred employees over the next few years talk me through what they should be thinking about what transition they're gonna go through what happens that the let's call it the physics of culture is when you grow you start with these the the a small group of people and you know all of those people and it is as mammals we look to our leaders for what success looks like and this is the foundational kind of a pixel of culture and you're gonna look to the leaders and so your founders are the ones that are establishing you you may not even realize it are establishing how you work so culture is the cause and effect of every decision that you make and so i center my definition on choices and decisions so we're talking about business decisions big and small when you are smaller as an organization that behavior those choices are watched very closely by your colleagues and your and your employees this individual contributors now you think about growing as an organization and what happens is the larger the organization the greater the distance between the individual contributor and the leaders and you have additional leaders in between and so there's a few things that are gonna happen that distance is creating a little more space there's less fidelity between what they're saying and what you're doing and what starts to happen and your your listeners your community will not be surprised to here is that silos begin to form silos can be within particular functions or in particular locations groups in nineteen ninety two robin dunbar scientists did a an experiment an observational experiment to test the cognitive limits on stable social relationships and he went and observed tribes of chimpanzees and what he found was that the upper limit was a hundred and fifty individuals beyond that the relationships the amount of energy it took to build those relationships within that tribe within that group was more than the benefit so if you think about a chimp either nurturing a a youth in the group right or a an adult male going out and hunting or protecting that all works until about a hundred and fifty and when we're talking about chimpanzees we're talking about life and death we're talking about work even though it can feel like life in death it's not and so the amount of energy that we're willing to put into the system to learn who build relationships with all of these people is gonna be a lot less because god damn i'm busy i got things to do and so what i've observed is that number actually comes down and the number when we're thinking about silos the number is a fifty two somewhere between fifty and a hundred and so when your organization you can have a founder culture up until about fifty employees you probably didn't need to pay attention to it if you didn't care about it then once you start to grow beyond that it becomes a little bit bigger not impossible to to continue to be consistent but it is a moment when that transition happens from a founder culture to a more organization wide culture because of that space in that distance between who the employee is and the leaders you're going to find that other groups that are naturally forming which aren't bad by the way inherently they're gonna establish their own cultures also not bad that's not a bad thing in and of itself but what happens is and the when i get a when i get the phone call from a panicked founder and this happened with the company the there's a a company here in the united states called credit karma and they were acquired by intuit who were in charge of they run that product quickbooks i think everybody knows more about them so they got acquired for a gazillion dollars it was a lot of money credit karma the product is a free credit tracking app really nice really well designed and then they sell you credit cards on top of that that's how they make their money okay so very valuable to intuit it before that i got a call from the ceo to say help we're at two hundred and fifty employees we are getting investment to grow to four hundred in the next year and i just don't understand what's going on people used to be nice here and now you know we had a no assholes culture or we had an open door policy culture and things are starting to change and i looked up and i realized that it's just not what i want so can you explain what a founder culture is compared to someone over fifty and what would you call that so a founder culture and this is gonna happen regardless this is gonna if you don't do anything this is what's gonna happen which is the leader is the one to set the tone about how decisions are made and what's most important if they show up late two meetings everybody else is showing up late if they are talking about mistakes that they made in public and how i've learned from them then everybody's going to see and feel that permission to talk about their mistakes if there are if the leader shows up in a suit and tie everybody else is gonna tend to dress more formally so it's even as practical and tactical as that so that's gonna be a founder culture and what you want to do and what many founders are loa to do is say i actually aspire to more and i'm going to put our culture down in a formal way and say here's what we're looking for here's how we're going to do it and part of the problem is that the founder has to let go of that authority and they have to endo endo everybody else with more authority and so you give everybody more of a framework to act and understand right the tools to understand how they should be acting how i am gonna deliver on an ownership value is gonna be very different than how maybe a sales leader might do it right practically speaking right and so by formal it it becomes an organization's culture so organizational culture and that is when you can start to scale it just like anything else we gotta get some software in here to be able to scale our onboarding to be able to scale our hiring or reviews or whatever it might be how we collaborate we need to create a system i need to system this in order to make sure that everybody is going oh yes this is what my ex but is expected of me and here's is how i'm gonna do it and my manager always talking about these principles or these values and they understand how they need to manage or lead or act or decide how to make choices regardless of where they are in the organization and so it becomes the scaling effect and the the problem is that most organizations show at two hundred three hundred four hundred five hundred and it has shifted from a founder culture to an organizational in an organization culture but nobody knows it and so all of a sudden the founders is like why don't i have the influence anymore why can't why is this changing and so that is why it's really important when you're scaling to be able to to pull out and talk about culture not just as a subset of hr hr job or the cocktail party or the swag or whatever it might be we need to be thinking about it in a much more rigorous way and that way we can then when when scaling issues show up and an organization is going off in the wrong direction or the sales team you know they're notoriously you know you're gonna have a high performing asshole in there and you can have that conversation and it's like wait i thought you said you wanted us to sell more yeah but not at the cost of den integrating your your colleagues and that's one of our values that's what we can talk about so my hope is that everybody listening makes that makes that leap understands that culture is important and putting a little bit of effort into identifying cod and communicating early is gonna help set that framework now those things can change they should change values can change but putting it up there and making it part and parcel of your organization and how you bring people in how you reward them and how you talk to them and lead them that's gonna be a make a big difference once you you know prep for that hyper growth stage so up until fifty the founder kind of sets the culture above fifty then it's down to i'm guessing you to find some values and then the managers are the ones who were to ensure that or the senior leaders the ones to ensure that those values are upheld it depends on the organization depends how distributed are depends how you know many folks are out there but you get the point so whose responsibility is it i would push back and say it's everybody's responsibility everybody's responsibility but and as a manager you are implicitly a leader and you need to make sure that your team understands that it is important to be thinking about these values so i'm sure many people you and i included have experienced this where they launch or company might launch values and then it might be on our computer screens it might be on our you know security tags or whatever it is but no one ever talks about them again and it's that is the common way that folks that that leaders or executives will think about values because they think well once i put it up my job's done that's that's not that is the starting point not the ending point and that's my that's the premise of my whole mission is no it's not just you know the one thing we do two years ago it's actually something that we have to talk about and invest in and the rewards the returns are enormous but they're not immediate and so it is a long term investment and you have to believe it because if you just launch values and then forget it you're worse off than if you hadn't launched values in the first place to get back to you to answer your question who's responsible for ensuring these values while the leaders need to demonstrate and model that they are important they need to remind people that this is something that's important they need to talk about it because as much as i think about culture is the most important thing that a business can do most people don't and they get busy doing the things that a business is supposed to do this is a fundamental tool that doesn't have a direct immediate connection it does not go out and make a hundred phone calls and sell more software and you're gonna see the result it needs to be something that you believe deeply and it needs to be something that is continuous it is part and parcel of how you do your work and if you lead as if you model that if you lead it if you talk about it if you manage if you establish a training program to help managers understand what it means because this isn't easy you might have three four or five values but those things those values have definitions and they have comfort you they're gotta understand what they are and you have to apply them and changing your behavior is a very hard thing to do because you have an instinct and you have pressure time pressure budgetary pressure since you're fighting against all these sort of normal functions of business and that's why i can feel hard and that's why it can be like ugh enough already i'm exhausted only after you've invested in it for one two three four years and then you start to see the results of an organization that understands people who understand that there are rules of the road there are expectations and i will act on this these pieces these parts and begin to deliver in a way that is more productive more effective more efficient because there is clarity there's a common goal a common understanding and i don't feel like my work is under underappreciated i don't feel like i'm moving in this direction and then we shift and go in this direction and we shift and go in this direction you may have new initiatives but those values stay the same how we do it it is something that we are going to do together the science backed this up somewhere between fifty and one hundred employees those informal cultural norms that just happen naturally will stop working the distance between leadership and employees becomes too great and that's when silos form that's when you get the panic called josh mentioned people used to be nice what happened after the break we'll dive into josh solution values that actually work as business told not war decorations hey just a quick word about another show on the spot podcast network it's called h flo china with the incredible joe fiat joe's not about chasing unicorns or building multi billion dollar start his thing is helping you design a business that works for your life so you've got the money you need and the time to enjoy it and as a psychologist i approve this message yeah he's talking systems mindset tweaks little reframe all the stuff that's gonna make you good money without working yourself into the ground and of you're curious about ai check out his august episode on the so called ai gold rush even i learned a few things and i live with an absolute nerd i am a nerd so go and listen to a halt flow chat wherever you get your podcasts welcome back values is such a buzz word but people rarely do more than come up with some words that they print out and stick on a wall somewhere josh believes that values are the most important thing you should be focusing on when you start to hit that magic fifty mark here's the practical tip the takeaway tip when we're thinking about out an organization that's starting to hit fifty or hit a hundred or hit two hundred you want to very quickly think about how do you identify what are the most important things and we're talking about choices and decisions most important decisions that are gonna move the needle how do you cod them how do you make sure that they get written down and then how do you articulate that how do you put that out in the world now the tool that i use are values so when we're thinking about the six components of culture that's the second component values and values are the three to five most important choices or or or decisions that are gonna move the needle for you in the next three to three to five years and that is and i i don't particularly care if you call them values it can be principles they can be leadership actions whatever it might be but what it does is and and here comes you know josh from brand strategy josh which is where i kind of cut my teeth is it is a container a cognitive container for for communicating with everybody what am expecting what am i expecting of you how are you making choices the silos in and of themselves aren't bad the way that they operate they're gonna have their own ways of operating that's not bad but what we have to be cognizant a cognizant of is the the expectations that we have around the organization that are the most important that are the things that are gonna make or break that you wanna invest your time energy attention into that is what is going to be the connective tissue across an organization as you continue to grow when you're a founder and you're hitting thirty five you're hitting forty five you're hitting fifty five move from implicit culture implicit values implicit behaviors to an explicit values explicit culture explicit behaviors what do i mean by that i'm just doing when i do and everybody follows along and they're gonna do that too to the reason why everybody i'm doing this is because of x y and z because it's important for us to own the work as we grow for example i wanna make sure that a single person is responsible for this particular you know for each particular project so we don't lose that i wanna make sure that as we grow know we don't throw people under the bus we don't make choices that are bad for our community we don't have trade offs that den integrate our peers or our colleagues we hire the best people and that doesn't mean that they happen to have the skin same skin tone as you or come from the same university these are all the things that are important when you're scaling and so you need to think about how do you articulate the three to five things that are most important so one of the components of culture is recognition everybody has been part of a recognition rewards program so that's not a surprise that's not a big the problem with most recognition programs is that they reward the wrong thing recognition programs are should be built to reward and recognize values driven behaviors it is a tool for emphasizing rep and under scoring the choices that people are making because there are too many examples through a help modern history of organizations that have turned the screws on recognizing and rewarding output causing poor behavior to get to those i'm talking about here in the united states the banking system wells fargo about a decade ago they needed to pump their quarterly numbers and so they essentially were rewarding their personal bankers to open more new accounts and so you know what they did i mean some of them were able to have that conversation and do that honestly but there were people were opening fake false accounts because they were being rewarded and worse maybe even dis with punishment how come you didn't hit your numbers and that caused a massive problem within the organization when it was exposed and of course it was exposed and they had to there was a leadership turnover there were lawsuits it was awful and so when we think about rewarding values driven behaviors we're talking about rewarding how we get to the outcomes if we want people to innovate then we need to reward taking risks smart risks and making mistakes because you can't just tell people to do new things louder you have to go to the cause you have to allow them to make mistakes to experiment to you know end up in dead ends it's just not gonna succeed without that and that's like that's one of my favorite examples it's because all the when when innovation became such a big buzz word all these leaders were looking around it's like how come you're not innovating everybody you need to do more innovate you need to create more things but then on the other hand they were like failure no good why aren't you doing creating more new things you're doing it wrong so what we really need is to be we need to define what it means to make good decisions that drive great outcomes right we are talking about bottom line we are talking about making money we are talking about creating value so do the hard work reverse engineer two how am i getting to the three to five things that are the most important ways that we're gonna get to do our work better if the small organization those three five things are gonna be different than a massive global enterprise those things are gonna change you need to make sure that you understand where you are now reevaluate what those priorities are and then move forward with that the wells fargo scandal is a textbook case of what a psychologists call gold displacement employees were rewarded for hitting a single metric opening more accounts without regard for how those targets were achieved under intense pressure many took shortcuts creating millions of fake accounts to meet sales goals it worked on paper but ultimately cost the bank billions in fines and destroyed trust when organization's focus only on outcomes people will find the quickest route to those outcomes even if it damages the system around them by contrast rewarding behaviors that align with values such as transparency or integrity collaboration helped create the psychological safety teams need to speak up challenge poor practice and act responsibly and that word josh keeps returning to trust in distributed organizations trust is no longer a byproduct of proximity it can't be left chance it has to be intentionally designed into processes incentives and communication systems trust has become the new currency of modern work the bottom line is you are building trust when you have values and they are well explained and they are used to help you help you and your team make decisions and you can make a bet you can make decisions better and that is rewarded and recognized then you're building trust and trust is the the holy kernel at the center of all of this trust that i i am going to be doing the right thing i understand how to make this decision trust that if i mess up i'm okay i'm not gonna be fired i'm learning trust that if i ask somebody else to do something are gonna do it trust that the the decisions my leaders make are aligned with those values trust in other people that they have your back and when you can actually this is where the roi comes in because it does take a lot of energy to to to make this go and i'll tell you one more thing and this is why it's becoming even more important because we are working more and more in distributed environments i don't see you anymore i don't see you as much in person and if you don't invest in this you invest in those relationships invest in those the trust building exercises that group dynamic that stickiness that cohesive goes it goes down and down and down and down we have to we can't just say great we're giving up square footage to save all this money and we don't have to come in you don't have to commute tada everything's gonna be just as good you have to replace it with the building and strengthening of relationships the building and strengthening of trust that used to occur as a you know a byproduct of the square footage that we shared it's great it's very scalable if you get it right unfortunately most leaders most businesses most organizations most managers don't understand that that is part of their job now and they need to build that into the work that they're doing with their teams because distributed work is can be really productive if you have trust if you're thinking this all sounds nice in theory well josh shared an example that proves it works at scale gary ridge from w forty is one of josh most popular guests and he didn't just talk about culture he lived it for decades he actually reframe failure as learning not as a slogan but as an actual practice people shared fe stories publicly and were thanked for it so he was the leader than the executive of w forty through its major growth years and what i appreciate about his approach is one he took the long view he really believed and we talked we've talked about this that culture takes time it doesn't just happen instantly he also made a very big effort per our conversation around innovation to reframe failure as learning it was one of those things as a chief executive you you just kind of have a thing that you care about and for him one of those big things was re framing failure as learning and so he would do these sort of learning exposed learning stories and he would have people talk about there failures and make it okay and say great thank you because the essence of how they got to w d forty is that w d one through thirty nine didn't work so that's the story between that's that's w d forty and that is the essence that is the history that is the authenticity of the organization and that to me is such a incredible proof case study in understanding that that power the other really really important thing and this is a trend that i've seen across many great culture led organizations there was a leadership philosophy that he esp and his leaders esp which is that it was their job to help their employees step into being the best of their selves their best self and you could imagine something saying no our job is to make a great product that people will sell and and people will buy that will sell and people will buy but what he understood is in by investing and framing in that that you're flipping the the kind of traditional org chart from top down to bottom up and you see yourselves as supporting the branches of the tree and what you get isn't immediate success but you get earn long term trust and loyalty because i'm not just asking you for your fingers or your arms or your brains i'm investing in you i'm asked i i want i care about you as a person and so you not do you don't just get a paycheck of course you do and you get satisfaction from doing a job well done and seeing your your work you know have an impact on the world but you also get something a competitive advantage that that no no other business is gonna give you which is an investment in you as a human i care about you and so you better believe when another organization comes along and says out i've got a new position i'm gonna double your salary you're gonna think long and hard before you take that because gary and his team have provided you with much more than the than the cash that you get at the end of every two weeks you wanna empower those people because we're no longer in the machine age where i'm asking you just to do the thing that i want you to do i want you to do the the the thing that you think is gonna make the biggest difference to get us there and that is what's gonna help us move at the speed of the market and gary was a fore father of this thinking which is i investing in you as a human i'm gonna lift you up i believe in you here is what our group our team our company is trying to achieve how do you think we should do it best what do you think we're we're trying we should do and by reversing that and empowering those people then then we're gonna see the kinds of gains and benefits that are going to not just keep up but lead the market that's how you create long term value that's how you create an organization that can make a difference create value in a way that no one's create a value before and become a market leader if you are a business leader sitting at thirty five employees staring at growth here is your key takeaway start making the implicit explicit now don't wait for the crisis at two hundred fifty define your three to five critical decisions build recognition around those behaviors and accept that your founder culture will need to evolve and doesn't make bigger than you because as josh says culture is a long term investment the returns are enormous but they're not immediate remember culture eats strategy for breakfast but only if you feed it properly you can find josh book great mondays and his tools at the domain great mondays dot com i ask josh who should be reading his book and perhaps who shouldn't so tell us what is your book cover who should be reading it so great mondays is a book i wrote five or six years ago in order to help advance the conversation around company culture and we started with the definition and what i realized is that there was a lot a lot of definitions out there in the world around what come culture is because as i said culture is something that we can be proactively and i'll use this term designing to actually change and improve how we do our work and so in the book it is organized into the six components of culture purpose values and behaviors recognition rituals and cues and it's for anyone who wants to understand how to influence change or lead their culture in an organization right so i work with a lot of hyper growth technology companies in the bay area and beyond but these principles are universal enough that even if you are running a small creative group if you are a manager of twelve people even if you are an individual you understand you start to learn and see what the ways that the kind of the tools that you need to be able to influence how people engage with you and your work i'm sure people want to know a bit more about you great monday's radio great mondays book where's is the best place to go great mondays dot com is where you can find everything i have links to all of that as well as the great mondays classroom where you can find free tools from the book as well as explanations about how to craft exercises to define your purpose values and behaviors recognition rituals and queues and please find me on linkedin that's where i that's where i kinda spend most of my time online and i would love to love to see you if you heard me on the program just let me know look for josh levine with a little lightning bolt and you we can know we can connect this is truth work we'll see you next week

coming up this week in work mister beast is vibe checking new hires with ninety day trials that means temporary contracts rental cars and a clear shot at proving you're and a player is it actually smart hiring or just a way to avoid commitment and in our new segment truth all lie we ask are tall people really more successful presidential candidates or ceo boardroom the even you last team meeting the tall people seem to be winning you could say they're standing head and shoulders above everyone else there is real data behind this one but the question is does height cause success or is it something far more interesting that's going on plus in the workplace surgery one business owner asks how do you build a reliable team when you're used to doing everything yourself and how do you do it without losing control of the quality this is work the award winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name is leanne i'm a charge occupational psychologist my name is a i'm a business owner and together we help organizations build amazing workplace coaches so let's get right into it after a quick word from my beautiful sponsors now i'm sure you've heard that we only use twenty percent of our brain i'm gonna stop you right there that's actually we might only use in areas of our brain at time but the neuroscience imaging shows we do in fact over time use all of our brain i do i think the myths dan's from lee lee stop for this analogy to work you need to stop talking and let me say something okay oh sorry carry on well you have heard here that we use more than twenty percent of about our brain but my analogy was if we use twenty percent of our brains well hubspot discover the most businesses only use twenty percent of their data to see where else was going you will win percent that's just silly that's like buying a cake and only eating one slice which would never happen but the point is unless you use hubspot then you're massively missing out yep their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business imagine be able to free all those insights trapped into emails call logs and transcripts and everything else five years ago we had to go through all this data manually and frankly who's got the time and thanks to hubspot you can access all that yummy meat unstructured data really easily when you know more you grow more visit hubspot dot com today welcome back it's leigh favorite time the week it's time for the news roundup it is time for new round up a jingle jingle is being cute leigh what have you seen got a new words lovely late what is it then digital hangover okay do you want you want to guess yeah go probably feeling like a little bit overwhelmed with digital stuff it's like if you've got a hangover you drunk too much if you've got a digital hangover you've probably consumed to much digitally yeah a digital hangover you nailed it a i came across it inside oncology magazine and a bit of a pop pop psycho moment for me this week and it because it's a really great piece by ali roth har it's it's farah it's sorry ali and it properly it i thought it's proper good so it's that feeling when you've been on your laptop all day your mindless scrolling instagram guilty and then suddenly you're starting to feel wired and drained at the same time have you ever felt that i don't really feel wide and ingrained i think i just feel overwhelmed and like yes they house was really really rubbish day yesterday stage didn't feel like doing anything didn't feel motivated and i spent in the morning just watching youtube shorts and something else don't think that helped at all yeah it it makes you a bit restless isn't it yeah well that is what a digital hangover is so what's actually happening apparently is your brain is over stimulated by the lights of sounds and rapid visual input but your body just sitting still and that mismatch creates what she called what ali calls a century disconnect which leaves us feeling jittery tired and restless that's what i felt yesterday i thought i had too much coffee but that's probably it well there you go you had a additional hung over still the science if you deep in dig into it could be slightly more worrying because it has been found that too much screen time has been linked to thin in the outer layer of the brain that's a part that deals with problem solving decision making you remember when people lost their absolute shares about chat gp and the brain imaging right about how it's it was starting again to to thin this gray matter in our brain didn't did you miss that our linkedin lost their minds over it and it it's not wrong it it's a really interesting study but it's not it's not really new we've seen this before with you know tv is gonna rock your brain type thing that's where all all comes from of the same is is is true when you're just scrolling on the tint web it can actually start to to affect your brain physiological speaking and that could be messing with memory and movement and emotions as well as so maybe that was why you're feeling a little it blue yesterday so ali included some practical suggestions in her articles as to how you might manage or get over additional hangover she says get tactile to hold something touched or sip something say that word texted textured yeah okay very good pretty good what should i say you're textured textured textured okay so whole some me textured like a what like a dog yeah i more of a fluffy pillow but yeah you could the same thing i guess i guess what you're get getting is just starting to stimulate your body as well as your mind at go analog so read a few pages of a book or do some slow handwriting try the twenty twenty twenty rules every twenty minutes look at something twenty feet away for twenty seconds and she described screens a sugar for the brains taste could but no nourishment so that's a digital hangover our thoughts i i like that i i like i love analog but the problem is obviously living here in this country is we can't really get what we don't can't amazon in the nearest time amazon is germany so i use the kindle so i'm thinking can go and read a book but i'm gonna pick up my hen guy i'm gonna read my books so that's not really the same thing i i started doing you remember be sitting there last thursday and i spent all day just going through we're building a secret product that we can't tell we're about and i and i just wrote it all out in a notebook mh with a pencil right i got to the point where had to sharpen it three or four times and i was like this is this is good i might be right i i felt that i learned or absorb much more are you using a pencil paper than i would if i typed into her chernobyl notebook yeah i think there's actually some some science that shows that actually that in terms of absorbing information actually kind of writing it out can can help with the memory of it can i i'm sorry i'm so distracted because i love you so much jenny and i love that you sit there with your notebook and you're so interested and so engaged with it i would like to talk you about the pressure in which you put your pencil on paper because it makes a noise it for me is a bit like like nails on a chalkboard i didn't know so i can't sit next to you when you you're rice you notebook but i have to go away or put some had headphones in but i equally i don't wanna to s the process because you look so happy but if you seen me move away but just put on somewhere some white noise that's fine i've got a pencil lay the tempt like something now is almost too much okay i promise you i will bear that in mind i may even swap the ballpoint paint no no honestly continue to use your pencil i'll just i'll just remove myself we'll build we're building a new house list if you if you follow along with anything on online instagram or whatever i think go i think might put some stuff on there i haven't so they know that's an exclusive business that's exclusive have you heard it here first building a new house so what we'll do is i'll i'll add you an extra wing which would be the pencil writing wing yes and i'll sound proof it and and i'll just go in there and oh i can make a secret door i can make a door of pencils right okay i wanna finish this part as soon i can because i wanna design my door of pencils anyway anyway yeah that's a digital hangover and when i started reading a bit more into it there's another side to it as well which is kind of more later to shame so when you feel like you know when you process something online it doesn't go down very well and you start to spiral to have i said something or full yep and then and then you could there's that side of it as well can apparently be a digital hangover moderation i think is the key here isn't it yeah yeah and i'm just knowing yourself i was i was usually know our regular listeners we had a somewhat of a challenging summer i had to delete my news up i couldn't i couldn't deal couldn't deal getting sucked into all sorts of darkness anyway that's what is it called digital hanger how what are you think leigh knock who's there hr hr who hr we wanna talk to you about that joke you told in the meeting go vastly and inappropriate that is what i've been reading about i've been reading about being funny in the workplace and how it can sometimes backfire so that's a really good example of how you're not funny i thought i thought it bigger brilliant but levi to to the to the conversation conversation yes sure okay fair enough oh well that fell on on stony ground where we will talk about that because a recent study by peter mcgraw adam ba and caleb warren from a collection of university universities is basically america it's like academic club i quebec collab they're originally in let me have a little look they're originally and yes so i read in fizz dot org that's that's not fizz as my fizzy drinks that's p h y s physics dot org essentially what they're saying is it might be too risky to use humor in the workplace so humor obviously we all know very nature is very personal like jimmy carr might make meal laugh please don't cancel me cancel him but others might be horrified about what he jokes about so the researchers are saying that you run the risk of being really bland and boring if you tell clean jokes and people are think you're dull but then you go the other way and you start telling jokes like jimmy car might in the work workplace that's where hr will knock on your door and will will want to have a bit of a conversation with you let me read from the article it says for a joke to be funny it has to break certain social rules while simultaneously seeming harmless jokes that are too lame at yawn but jokes that violate too many rules may end up triggering outrage landing a joke is hard enough that comedy club their note but in an office environment the razor a thin line between polarity and upset becomes even harder to walk now they did also point out leanne anne that the same joke put could provoke a different reaction told by a man or a woman so they said this this is this closing again there is harsh backlash for women the men for behavior scenes sensible norm violating so i think what i'm reading from that is that i tell the joke you tell exact same joke and in a in a broader setting people might be a bit more shocked if you were perhaps a little bit more don't know what the works salty exactly exactly what are your thoughts i think nothing will make humor last funny than a bunch of psychologist studying in tell that to too with all respect peter mcgraw you have several books on this no and do you know and i i read articles on this and i've read journals on this and i find it really interesting but it it completely takes the topic that is that is light and and funny and makes it very serious and intros perspective and and steep in in discrimination bias and social norms and it's do you know what i think the thing is let's not forget funny person who wants to bring that energy to the office you're not a comedian on a stage jimmy carr is funny i agree he's funny he pushes it what i like about jimmy cars is he's like he doesn't discriminate who will he will rip any anyone and everyone to shreds including himself yes actually which i think is important but if he talked away he did on stage in the office he would get sa he would get disciplined you know you just can't it's different it's a different world adding think it's about authenticity isn't it if you're making a joke that there is i think is a shared experience of the people in the office or his something that is uniting in a way or it's just part of kind of your your kind of what's it called when you have your rituals and the work workplace then it's fine but i think if you're trying too hard to be funny that's when you're possibly yeah stepping into something that's a bit awkward and also the whole like oh can not see anything anymore because was so sensitive and it's like if people aren't laughing it's probably not funny mh so don't but yeah i don't know i remember i remember one of i told this so many times and we thought it was always funny because they it came part of our ritual when you know alec mh alec went listening because the only watches on your tool when we start stopping up but on the off chance years hi alec so alec was in the office in manchester and adrian was there of one of the other managers and adrian had some gossip as he typically did and alec went shut the door which is a very northern expression for short sure yeah agent didn't get this and actually got up and close the office door so so it just became this whole thing that it was like if you actually needed to shut the door you just go shut the door right and that's fun we weren't taking the mick out of adrian because all three was where they're laughing together right and it it creates this kind of this ritual within team it can be very bonding as know it's all it really just depend on it which i know isn't useful but you're probably not as funny as you think you it's probably the rough world to live by right yeah i think so and i mean also you talk about managers there and there's there's two aspects to that is the first of all if you are a manager and you're making jokes so maybe your team feel compelled to laugh at you and on the other hand if but like if your manager does make a joke and you don't laugh is that gonna are you can get trouble for that in theory you know this is a whole minefield field and i think that as a manager you can probably probably makes things a little brighter and probably make some jokes but don't be the office joe because then you just paint yourself to a corner of either people have to laugh at you or you're gonna go too far and get cancel that's my thoughts i agree i think it comes down on you there's it's much easier to get it wrong that it is to get right if you're trying to be the funny person at work alright so let's all be dark and humorous at work lee what else have you seen i've seen is vibe checking new hires the way to recruit a players this was the question raised in business inside of this week reporting on a new hiring approach inside the empire of jimmy donaldson you might i've heard of jimmy donaldson but i know you've heard of mister beast the world's biggest youtube but on the off chance that you haven't come across in mister beast runs one of the most watched youtube channels on the planet he has more than two fifty million subscribers and a business that now spans loads of stuff burgers chocolate video games all sorts and according to a business side of his production company in greenville north carolina has introduced a ninety day trial period for all new hires known and internally as a vibe check in terms of the vibe check what it means what they're looking for is employees are on temporary contracts as important they're not permanent temporary contracts but the company provides short term housing and a rental car to make the transition easier assuming that the majority of people have to move to greenville the goal according to the company is to give both sides a realistic view of the job before committing long term and the business side in piece went on explain that the trial helps test whether someone could adapt to the speed and pressure of mister bases content fat turnaround around high stakes productions and very high kirby creativity precision and within that probably very high levels of resilience well the companies it should be mentioned have experimented with sim systems zap are a big fan of zappos at zappos well they famously offered new recruits of two thousand dollar bonus to quit after four weeks if they weren't fully committed it's kinda cool it's kinda cool isn't it our business insider also pointed out that there are risks so a mila cast a professor at mit loan school of management warned that trial period can backfire fire it's if they use maintain a rotating pool of temporary workers rather than genuine long term hires what starts at the fair try before you buy existing can easily turn into a way of avoiding commitment for the company not for the employee so what do you think out is by checking the secret to finding a players you've always said that you you're not a big fan of the a player and a player model i can understand my mister beast ones a goods lightning the newborn in the world i can understand i don't know do you know what i wanna do i'd wanna go to our friends over the kirk group and go is first of all is this even something you can do the uk it does it tick all the hr boxes personally i like this idea personally i like the idea of going on a few dates with eight no that's you can't say that going on metaphorically or figuratively you'd be going on a few dates within a employee before you actually give you sort of signed the deal i don't know you've you've been quite vocal about work trails before you've been quite vocal about a players i think me without leanne anne would have gone love this i'm doing this me with leanne anne go i need to learn a bit more and ask i'm what the right thing to do is i am not against work trials and i'm not against looking for top tan a players and my beef with it has always been it's too vague and it's used in a way that isn't very intentional and where i think mister beast might be onto something here is the article did go on to say that he has very clearly defined what he is looking before when he says a player and i like this so his own production guide he writes that a players are obsessive learn from mistakes are coach intelligent don't make excuses believe in youtube see the value of this company and are the best in the goddamn down world their job do you got a job goddamn so i i applaud that they have taken the time to actually define what an a player looks like in the the business of mister beast and i think that what's really interesting is when when we can talk about live checks or things like that we're talking about culture fit which we know is actually a really poor predictor of future performance i think it's about seven percent to give you an idea i think handwriting is about five percent right okay this it's almost useless yeah all almost useless so i don't think what mister mitsubishi is actually talking about necessarily is culture fit but more that what he is defined is behaviors that are and characteristics that are typically predictive of high job performance including intelligence and coach ability coach ability is probably an intelligent combine public two things that you know when you talk about i'd rather hire for attitude than experience well that's what you should be hiring for in terms of of attitude really is are you coach and i think having a trial period is gonna enable the team to understand if this person is coach and then they'll talk you about things like do they believe in youtube are obsessed about this platform that we are and having you know worked in content creation for the last five years or so you do get obsessed with podcast podcasts you do get obsessed with what it means to create content so i think it helps to be around people like that because when we talk to our appears on the pod network like phil avenue from no jo sonia thompson from inclusion marketing we get so excited speaking could you feed us that energy so i can totally see in a high pressure relentless environment of content creation having this kind of obsessive love for the platform and the content you're creating is really important so actually i think i think that mister beast might be onto something here in the way that he is to find what it means to be a play in the organization he's putting in a trial period that's very supported in terms of the housing in terms of car you can kind of mimic what life will look like and i think that's a pretty smart thing to do my concern is always is somebody gonna read this a and a business to go we're we're gonna introduce this new thing it's a vibe check it's gonna hire somebody of three months if we don't like and we'll get rid and it's not there's gonna be much more to it than that much more thought through but i thought it was interesting yeah what do you think yeah i agree i think it's a really really good idea and it's like all of these ideas whatever i bring you something i've seen on x or something and like i think this a great idea you'll always go yes but if it's not as simple as that the one thing that you always say this if you do one thing you train your managers and then if you do a second thing then you should define the job you've got you got name for it when you define analysis job analysis you should define the role carefully and i think what he's done here is to be fair looking at is is description it is very well defined so yeah very very good okay my love we will take shot break i think so after the break we've got the brand new truth or lie segment where i ask leanne am something i've heard and she tells me whether it's a load of rubbish or not and also we've got the well things we can work for surgery we up at your questions if and don't go anywhere see you in a second hey just a quick word about another show on the hopes spot podcast network it's called h flow chart with the incredible joe fear joe's not about chasing unicorns or building multi billion dollar start his thing is helping you design a business that works for your life so you've got the money you need and the time to enjoy it and as a psychologist i approve this message yeah he's talking systems mindset tweaks little reframe all the stuff that's gonna make you good money without working yourself into the ground and if you're curious about ai check out his august episode on the so called ai gold rush even island learned a few things and i live with an app sleep nerd i am nerd so go and listen to your h flow chat wherever you get your podcasts welcome back it is time for truth or lie it's our weekly myth busting segment this is where we're gonna take those little psychology sound like you see on tiktok or tech tubes we call youtube shorts or in linkedin and we say dust this actually stack up is it true yes because let's be on a psychology pop psychology it's full of neat little claims isn't it and they feel true they feel intuitive they're symbol they're catch they spread light wildfire but when you scratch the surface a lot of them are built on half truths if any truth at all now i don't often do name dropping here but i'm going to today last week we had the pleasure having breakfast with the linkedin powerhouse y all he is if you've ever been on linkedin you'll know who he is is a bosnian guy lives in zen up in the north of bosnia make a bounce of three hours and where we are mh and he's just all over he also works for linkedin now i think they've brought on so cool oh yeah yeah he's effortlessly cool used to be a dj he's done this he used to be a rapper he's really cool so we've always we've seen him quite a lot on talking to him online but this is the first time we actually met yeah when he stood up from the table i was a little taken about it because i'm i'm not like particularly at tall i think i'm fine eleven but still he was he was wait all of the i was like oh hello oh you're a big guy so anyway i'm digress because i'm just a little bit i a little bit stars truck boat meeting him me he he's a really cool guy anyway my question to julian is our successful people tall or at tall people successful is correlation between being tall and being successful because i'm thinking about tony robbins he's tall guy he's very successful a lot of people i've met who've been extremely successful have been pretty tall above average tall if that's a word lee truth all lie or tall people more successful well there's a lot behind this one actually and i think this idea really kind of took off after malcolm glad book a link right so he pointed out in that that american chief executives are far more like to be over six foot tall and then various media outlets run with it discussions explode online and suddenly everybody is convinced that if yeah if you're gonna be successful you're gonna have to you're gonna have to grow eat the beans i don't know what about what helps you grow platforms shoes platform shoes the reasoning is i guess that that simple psychology reasoning is pretty simple that hike c conveys authority so physically taller people command more presence in a room when you glance around a boardroom yeah the tall people do seem to stand out and they do seem a little lower represented but then maybe that's a male thing and male men tend to be taller i digress let's start with what's actually true so i guess that's a pop psychology where the idea came from the anecdotal evidence but there is actually some real data behind this so in two thousand and four psychologist timothy judge and daniel cable published a comprehensive study examining height and workplace success so they ran a meta analysis we enjoy meta analysis l y because oh i don't know i know what long digital study is i don't know what meta analysis so a meta analysis is when they combine the results of multiple studies alright to say there's been twelve studies on height and workplace success they're gonna gather data of all of these twelve studies to look at it with one question in mind so you got more data from across different methodologies perhaps different cultures potentially a bigger sample size like it yeah so we like that they found that height does correlate with career success and the correlation was point two six which in psychology is considered a small to moderate effect so some it's cool if you ever see this in an article like oh it there's a correlation of point two six if you square that you'll get the percentage that's cool yeah so you join a square point two six not point two six times not point two six is oh six points times by a hundred six point seven six percent six point seven six percent so it's quite low so it's quite low yeah quite low yeah okay alright but there is some more things to i mean it is a stick sick statistically significant in that it's higher than chance yeah there is there is something else to this though when the same research is calculated height in terms of earnings they found that each inch of height predicted about six hundred pounds from more annual earnings which over a thirty year career adds up to roughly a hundred and twenty five thousand pounds so not an insignificant amount money and what's really cool is this pattern showed up across the world they found it in the us brazil india and the uk it's not just one culture at where height is an advantage and that's important because a lot of these cities are usually confined in very western type coaches then there are presidents so since nineteen hundred the taller candidate in the us election has won eighty one percent that's bigger yeah of american presidential elections quite striking i go back further in history so before photographs grass will widely circulated it drops to sixty percent oh so it's still above chance but the effect seems to get strong on people can actually see how tall the candidates are so yet the correlation is real gotta ask the next obvious question why mh well there are three main theories of emerged from the research as to why height might be and it advantage in work so first there is per bias that basically means that we perceive tall people differently so in another study in two thousand and twelve they found that we basically showed people photos are the same person but digitally altered them to be taller or shorter i should like to be digitally altered be taller that would be nice so the taller versions were rated as more leader like more dominant and healthier the same person same face just stretching vertically suddenly made them chief executive material this is probably from evolution those was roots so throughout human history physical size has typically been linked to fighting ability and dominance bigger parent is on average more dangerous and when groups face conflict whether with rival groups or protecting resources having physically imposing individuals on your side was the advantage did you have that you had that in the pubs right you had all your big door big door behind you yep make it feel safe that's well had to be fair i was behind them if put it came off i didn't stand that front i was not a leader or i was definitely a follower in that situation you had you had your back up yeah so that's that's the first one in terms of how he is how heat how height is perceived the second is that height actually correlates modestly with some traits that matter it works so taller individuals do score slightly higher on intelligence tests the correlation is small about point one to point two six so again the small kind of single digit percentages depending on the study that likely reflects childhood nutrition and soc economic status more than high actually causing intelligence so yeah there's that one and the third is self fulfilling prophecy which is really really powerful actually if you're treated like a leader from age five because you're the tool in class you get practice being a leader you get positive reinforcement you about confidence that by the time you're thirty five of an interviewing for a management position you've had thirty years of of people deferring to you and that shows in how you carry yourself so here's where the popular version goes wrong a little bit so when business magazines all correct buyers column say tall people are more successful they're usually making it sound like height causes success but the researcher shows it is a bit more complicated than that so as we said this the effect of size is modest that correlation of point two six as we worked out means about seventy percent of the variance and earnings so that leaves ninety three percent explained by other factors so your actual skills your education your industry your network your work ethic look timing all of it and of course context matters enormously so those original researchers that we mentioned that did the matter analysis judge and cable they broke down their results by occupation in sales the correlation between height and earnings was point four one so that's substantial effect yes yeah no point four one not before four eight that's squared is seventeen percent so quite a bit before year yeah yeah because sales is all about that on those first impressions but in technical or professional work the correlation dropped to point three zero so still there but much weaker so your height math is less when you're writing code than when you're pitching to clients that doesn't make business leader in sales that you're gonna start looking for tall people it's it's it's like we said it's not quite that quite that direct there's also the c coordination problem does hype make you successful or do privileged children who grow up to be that will also happen to grow taller because they're better nutrition healthcare care and less childhood dress yeah probably and then you've gotta to think about are we assessing candidates on what they've achieved in the privileged setting they have or what they've the obstacles have had to overcome to be competing at the same level so i talked about this with sonya on her podcast that basically it's for me getting into the unit into university isn't as oppressive as someone who was maybe a care from age seven for the right family who lived in you know poor shocking or background didn't go to we've got a school blah blah blah contacts can make a big a big difference so yeah so there you go on the effect operates differently for men and women we should say as well so for men the height advantage is mediated by perceptions of dominance and physical health so people see a tall and think strong protective leader for women it's primarily mediated by perceived intelligence the dominance association doesn't always carry over in the same way the perceptions so yeah one thing to be really clear about it is discrimination like i said you can't go and hire somebody for their height that is not the way not the way to do it unless of course you're recruiting astronauts for nasa and they need to be a certain height to press a button i know but then you've prove of the job you've done your job analysis so there you go well that is that is kind of the of it so truth or lie well the claim that taller people are more successful at work is true but does come with some caveat so the correlation is real it has been replicated across cultures it's not just fe height genuinely does give people a smallest statistical advantage particularly in leadership roles and client facing positions but the popular version does overs simplify it height doesn't cause success it just affects how others perceive you and it correlates weekly with some other traits and as we said in other more technical roles doesn't seem to make much of a difference the effect is more modest so there you go is it true yes but don't know exaggerate looking for a guy finance six weeks blue eyes do you know what i watched something talking about jimmy car earlier i watched little short from jimmy carr on tube and he was talking about someone said something about money like rich people or whatever and jimmy carter said look money is just a proxy for competence so in theory now don't come me is what jimmy said but he said women like men with money because it's a proxy four competence so if they've got money they're showing they're competent at life they said you could also go and find people who can put up shelves and they're very popular we women because it shows competence you might go someone in a bar a bar person so i said ba because i'm using this example of other a man so this person might be might be on like six thousand an hour eight thousand and know how whatever a bar people are on these days but the competence makes them attractive so maybe it's a similar kind of thing is that the height is just a proxy for safety perhaps i don't know there is a perception that we hold isn't that when somebody has sun characteristics that they're displaying tours that we can observe without knowing somebody very well and height is something like that as is competence in very isn't exactly those examples that that you've given and it is true you know we make those snap judgments if it's seven seconds we make a judgment on on somebody and then that initial judgment needs to be shaped mortgage and it's the a pretty privilege that is it exists as well in terms of facial structure but i think the the key thing here is one don't discriminate you can't recruit some just for their height unless you can absolutely prove it necessary the job and if you are short if you are short queen like me five foot three don't worry your career isn't doomed please remember from most statistics ninety three percent of career success is explained by other factors than height so don't despair it's gonna be okay i love it out of it also i think did you say the the the the people who did the study were called judge cable yeah that is a tv show i've watched two tv detectives judge cable get it by office cable anyway right sal move the world famous weekly do up by surgery where i put your questions to leanne anne lee i've got question number one they've summarized it but loss how would do you build a reliable team when you're used to doing everything yourself so it says dale i run a small service based business and i've reached the point running to scale but i'm realizing the biggest bottleneck is me i'm still handling everything myself from the truth is i haven't found anyone i fully trust to take things off my plate i wanna build a solid team but i'm finding it hard to let things go where do you even start with this do you outsource first do you hyper properly how do you free at the time that without losing control of the quality lee i i've personally gone through this when i've grown a couple my companies i've going it's actually more work to show someone how to do the work than it is just to do it myself so i feel i feel i doesn't give us a name but i feel this person's this person's hurt lee how we're gonna deal with this i feel this is a common thing for managers as well when you're bringing on new people to your team and feel like so much effort to have to share with them or coach them to get to the right answer rather than just give it to them i think the thing is is you as your know out as your business continues to scale are you doing it that yourself just becomes unreasonable or manageable it gets a point where you're going to break so in terms of of handling it in a way that it's gonna really feel like you'll you want people to take things off your plate i would spend a week tracking the time you take during stuff whether you use toggle whether you make rough notes in your diary you write it down things everything you do whether it be speaking to clients whether it be admin task talking to your accountant whether it be product development everything you do write it down then reflect on that after a week and look at the percentage things you're doing that are below your pig pay rate that really the empty of a company should not be doing or the tasks that are taking up so much of your time that aren't contributing to you growing your business or the task that you hate to do you loa doing those is the tasks that are worth prioritizing in terms of passing off to somebody else and more than likely the majority of those tasks won't be things you wouldn't fully or you wouldn't trust somebody else to do because they are gonna be the admin things or they're gonna be the more transactional elements over your job all they're gonna be things if you hate them more likely they don't feed into your lean into your skill set very naturally see so i'm distract yourself un comfortably for me that's around detail i really struggle proof proofreading for example i got i struggle i really struggle when i had to do that part my job i would you know when he can get the computer to read it out just i'd have to do that it's a great tip though yeah it is but it it's time intensive because it takes a lot longer to listen to somebody read it out then just to read it yourself so it probably doubled my test time and somebody who's got that that skill set to send that attention to detail so it's gonna be things like that that you'll want to pass on happily what you're basically gonna do then is figure out the tasks that you need somebody else to do and then you'll be able to answer you the questions do you outsource it it could be a software that you need it could be a process that you need it could be a person it could be an agency it could be multiple people it's gonna give you an idea of what you need and then what i want you to do is do a journey exercise for me which i know most go oh i don't wanna do that i know but bear with me alright so once you you created this list and particularly things that you hate to do and you don't to spend time doing i want you to reflect on what could you be doing what would your life look like if you didn't have to do those things why would your business be how would your energy levels be feeling how fulfilled would you in your work how much further on do you think your business would be and really kind of feel this wonderful space that you'll be in once you started to hand these tasks over to other people this really is as much as as you've said you know without giving up give of any control or or loss of quality this is much a psychological process of giving up your baby that you've built and trusting somebody else to to do that for you you need to really coach yourself on how wonderful it's gonna be to free up your energy to free up your time to free up your creativity to focus on the things you really need need to build your business that would be in my advice even think about hiring somebody is to actually go through go through that exercise to see what it is exactly that you need and then we've talked those before about job analysis and all that type of thing in terms of recruitment that would be your next step but i think that's the first thing is to figure out what you wanna hand over what your life will look like when it is i'm really get excited about that yeah and i think they're probably from business owners point of view there is a sort of psychological danger here that you feel that if you do hand over your baby or you do hand over your tasks then one you might not be needed anymore and if you've built a business to say fifteen twenty employees then you've always been needed and and and so there's that becomes part of your nature is you you you need to be needed and the second thing is possibly a fear of going well what actually am i gonna do in my day there's also a guy called aaron fletcher o i followed quite a while ago and he talks about this framework delegate automate kill and he's like any task you're doing the idea is that you can first book and you delegate it if you can't delegate it can you automate it if you can't automate it just kill it just stop doing it and engine one's so weird as a business owner when you just stop doing things i know what i i went through a period now or i just don't reply to emails because of is important email again that really had annoys because some of the emails are hers but i just like i was spending too much time on my emails and is just suck my energy like no no if it's important the email again not suggesting that you do that in real life anyway lee are you ready for question number two yes this one's a bit of a sad one what do you do when you know you have to let someone one go even though they're trying their best to stay so this person writes i've got an employee who was put on a pit that stands for performance improvement plan see check me out a little while ago to her credit she didn't give up she'd been working really hard taking feedback seriously improving a bit by bit a genuine believe she'll complete the pip successfully but i've also been told to make a cut in the team and whether i got a performance or senior she's the one who's gonna have to go regardless as it feels awful she's giving a hundred and ten percent believing that effort will save her job oh this is sad and i already know it won't i have to congratulate for improving them let go anyway i know this is part of being a manager but how do you do without feeling like you've betrayed someone who did everything right this person like this was the person wrote sounds like they really care yeah yeah this is this is so so brutal isn't it yeah so unfortunate i think my one question is you've been told that you're gonna have to let somebody go you haven't mentioned the time period between this but it sounds like it's quite short i'd wanna treat this as two very different things right because what this person is potentially gonna absorb and internalize is that they're not good enough because they were put on a pit they gave a hundred ten percent they still weren't good enough and they lost their job this isn't what's happening here what's happening here is that they've been put on a pip you've worked with him as a brilliant manager does she's given a hundred and ten percent the the point where she'll complete the pip successfully congratulations well done you're a we did it together wonderful that has to be a separate thing conversation too unfortunately the business have to make cuts and your role has been identified as as being laid off because the distinction is you are good enough to do this role you've proved that sadly this role is no longer available you know it's not about year you're not being made redundant as a person or a professional the role is being made in redundant i think if you've got a little bit of time between this hopefully a couple of weeks maybe a month would be even better yes it is gonna be emotional roller coaster for her because she's gone through the stress and worry or will she lose her job to them retaining her job to then and i've to be losing her job through a lay off but the confidence she is gonna internalize knowing that she puts the effort in she can improve she is coach she passed the pip is so important to to help her understand and as you say congratulate her for the other conversation needs to be a separate one of course there are lots of things here in terms of just the organization really need to make this lay off and you might wanna go back with this this little statistic that an organization that makes a one percent lay so even even one person we'll see typically a thirty percent voluntary turnover rate in the following twelve months so that means that three other the members your team are likely to leave because the organization feels unstable they don't have that job security so start looking elsewhere so really if for sake of one person you gotta ask if there's another way if there's another way to save money the no rate would reduce cost because actually the longer term impact on the organization is gonna be quite detrimental compared to just trying to figure out way to to keep hold of this person so i think that's it's it's really tough but i think that's a key thing to to think about here is that they're two separate activities that need to be handled in two separate ways and you're absolutely right to congratulate her for improving you should celebrate that and it's a different conversation as to to why that job is and you know what i would maybe so that's a point negotiation for your senior manager try negotiate a a time period between these two things happening just to help her internalize the achievement and also hopefully give the organization sometime to think about what they really need to do this because it is really really detrimental final word i'll say on it is there are still things that you can do even if she is maybe redundant it to help her move forward and that is things like checking in with your network see if any jobs are available offering her stellar references getting her coaching support for her cv and her linkedin profile and all that to everything call outsourcing that is really gonna help and give her the confidence that you believing her so much that you're going to people you know in your network and recommending her as an employee and that again is gonna help to internalize the achievement of successfully completing her pip so yeah i hope that helps in ways it's a horrible situation but handle them separately celebrate the win manage the loss is empathetic and is practically supportive as you can and have a conversation with some senior your management just say really is this really what we wanna do right now fabulous advice and it's i'm glad you said that at the end because my thought was straight away do i want to be warning this person her now that this might be coming and and from what you're saying is no trying to negotiate it so that she can significant so she can finish pip you graduated for that and then you a little bit of time before you have to start talking about the the role being that was really really interesting definition there using saying the role has been made redundant not you and that's probably something very very important that to i hope everyone picks up on okay i've got question number three how do you this such a common question i think how do you keep great people when you can't compete on pay i'm finding it's harder and harder to hold on to good people it's not that there are unhappy in fact most people will say they enjoy working for my small business but have lost a couple of brilliant team members recently to bigger companies that can offer more money better perks and clear at career paths we doing what we can we've got flex flowers we've got decent benefits we've got great culture but in a competitive market it doesn't seem to be enough have you seen anything that actually works when it comes to retention especially for small businesses like mine the can't throwing money the problem i have something to say about this but go on no no you prefer first barry we've got an interview this this thursday coming out with josh levine and he talks exactly about this and in fact he interviewed someone called gary ridge who was the ceo for a long time of w forty you know that little all cans of oil and he talks exactly about this he says that if you invest in people and you genuinely care about them they ain't going down the street for a twenty percent bump because why would they so anyway that so if you if this if this tickle your pick or this this this question definitely listen to this thursday's episode with josh levine because you'll learn all about that lee i took over your bit there sorry not at all not at all great great addition and yes definitely check out interview with josh on thursday there are a few things that absolutely if people feel valued they're not gonna jump as easily equally we've i think there's an element if we need to be a bit realistic is is small business owners right now in that the economy is a bit pants people cost living is still raging on how price they're going people don't have as much money there's a sense of urgency to to try and get some control on it before it completely spirals so there is gonna be an element of people will look for more money if that's what they need to to not even live the flashy live that they want just to pay the bills and put food on the table particularly they have a family there's gonna be an element of in a competitive market big companies are just gonna win over things like salary and benefits but where they won't win in the long term is around the heart and the value and the recognition and the flexibility that you can offer people and i think there's a really there's a couple of really good opportunities here in terms of the people that you want to recruit so i was talking to somebody the other day who is in an md who prioritized roles within their business as part time that they'd hire more people put on a part time basis so they could give good working opportunities to people who had just had a baby and returning to work so they didn't want full time workload but wanted to feel something like they're you know doing something work wise something beyond being mum or being dad they found that they have huge numbers of applications a very high retention rate because they're offering work that specifically suits somebody of candidates that are typically underserved within the job market that's gonna be the same with people with disabilities people with chronic health conditions neuro diverse people would probably benefit in in some ways from from part time and more flexible work so it could be that you need to get a bit more innovative in the roles that you offer one really simple thing go to a four day work week i guarantee my friend keep pay the same four day work week i'm not even sure the big company be able to no no to out compete with you there again you wanna talk to our friends over at curve group who not only have a reduced working meet but help clients to do it finally i was say from the clients that we worked with who do go through this because we we work with small businesses clear career paths is probably one of the most valuable things that you can really think about because people will stay in your organization for so long if they feel well if feel supported they love the people they work with they've got the flexibility but if they can't see a career path and they're an ambitious person they just wanna get to the you know the the goal that they set themselves for their career in a short and long term they will come a point where their time with you in in in your organization just is gonna come to an end because you can't fulfill that that career need that said there are a lot of small businesses that actually can fulfill that career but just don't talk about it and i talk about how to do it whether it be to do some comments within clients organizations or or sa it might be that you offer somebody six months to go and work with another business owner that that you know of you can offer more stretch opportunities it might even be that you go i completely understand that's what you wanna do the best of luck to you i hope we see you again someday i hope you come back once you've got that that experience so i think that's probably the the key things that that you can do but i think yeah in terms of career development that's something that's really actually quite practical that you can probably dig into a little bit more because especially in your question you said that bigger companies could offer clearer career paths i think there's probably some work that you can do around that in terms of but understanding the career opportunities that could be available in your smaller business yeah excellent advice i all say from a business point of view if you can't pay people more then if you were to make more profit you could so perhaps get everyone around and say right we've got a target so we are now going to try and increase our margins by x or our sales by y and what we'll do is we will just pro rat that on everyone's salary and then perhaps give another bonus or perhaps run that every you know every year we've got our sort of like a our our profits sharing project or something which which then people would be able to generate more income anyway like anything else to add before we say could goodbye the only thing i'd add is the probably the last thing you wanna do is actually ask people what what would entice them to stay because they might say it's a career path they might say it's perks actually and you you've you know you you could do more in there it might not be about the money it could be something else so just check actually that that you are giving your people everything that they need and if you haven't trained your managers i'd suggest you do that too okay so we're back on thursday with joshua levine we talked about a future work a work i think he calls himself sure yeah interesting guy he's got loads of comments get lot of thoughts on culture leadership values and also that great story about gary ridge from the w forty we're trying to get gary on the pod so if you're listening and you know who gary is gary if you're listening drop us an email i will answer that email so we'll see you on thursday for the episode episode with judge levin we'll see you next tuesday for another this week in work the truth and lie and also the workings weekly can episode your questions to we anne lee do you wanna send anything else before we go subscribe and follow linkedin for the combos bye bye

some of our most almost heartbreaking i would say interviews were with young people who had to work from home they felt lonely one of them talked about being depressed one of them talked about feeling like a soul hu i mean who says that i must hu that is professor en per along with professor elena mitchell who will hear from in just a second she's been studying the world of hybrid remote and in office workplaces for years and more importantly what impact this has on people forced to work an environment that just doesn't suit them that woman was counting every task she did because she had to be in the office to do them if she would have maybe just been given a flexible assignment where she had a hybrid role versus an in office role she might have been able to find some happiness there she ultimately ended up leaving that company because she just was too upset about where she was working this research remote hybrid and in office work turned off countless stories like these stories of people fed up burn out or just worn down by the mismatch between where they had to work and where they worked best today we're asking the question every leader that needs to face what if hybrid isn't the best of both wells but it's actually the worst ina and elena have spent years mapping nine different work personas from the offices who never want to leave the office to the avatars who live entirely online and the integrator trying to bridge both worlds and in this conversation you'll hear what happens when those worlds collide why hybrid can feel like a trap and what you the leader can do to stop alignment problems turning into resignation hello and welcome to truth lies and work the award winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture brought to you by the hook spot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name is leanne i'm a choice occupational psychologist and my name is a i'm a business owner and we are here to help you simplify the science of work after this very quick break will get into the nine personas that determine how people likes to work by hybrid sparks conflict and how to move from misaligned to half aligned without losing your mind or your best people see you in a second now i'm sure you've heard that we only use twenty percent of our brain i'm gonna stop you right there that's actually we might only use areas of our brain at time but the neuroscience imaging shows we do in fact over time use all of our bread i do know i think the myths stems from lee lee stop for this analogy to work you need to stop talking and let me say something okay oh sorry carry on well you have heard here that we use more than twenty percent of our brain but my analogy was if we use twenty percent of our brains well discover that most businesses has only used twenty percent of their data to see where else was going late you will percent that's just silly that's like buying a cake and only eating one slice which would never happen but the point is and unless you use butt then you're massively messing out yep their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business imagine being able to free all those insights they're trapped into emails call logs and transcripts and everything else five years ago we had to go through all this days manually and frankly who's got the time and thanks to hubspot you can access all that yummy meat unstructured data really easily when you know more you grow more visit hubspot dot com today let's join a as he interviews en under later my name is ina p i'm a professor at drake university and our pom college of business and i teach leadership and organizational behavior yeah and i am elena mitchell i am also a professor at drake university i teach in information systems specifically so really looking at how we use technology to work together so in our book little bit of background you know and i both have been studying this topic of virtual teams and working together through the use of technology for decades and we had already started working on this project pre pandemic and so we were looking to explore how companies were providing space to their employees and the different spaces that they were working in and we were looking at multiple different companies but then the pandemic happened and really disrupted our work but also gave us an opportunity to learn from different types of companies about what they were doing and so we really looked at three different companies with three different strategies so the first company kind of embraced their office space and wanted everybody to come back and be there all the time the second really just became very happy with that remote work option and really encourage people to stay there and then the third kind of mixed the two approaches together and came up with the hybrid strategy so we had three companies in those three buckets and then we wanted to look at the alignment of those three different companies and how the the employees that they had working in those different arrangements actually ended up fitting with the strategies that they had chosen probably the easiest way to think about the word alignment is to think about the word fit how big of a fit you are to your company and vice versa how well the company fits its employee so it goes both ways even before we finished the book we had an article in harvard business review that outlined to the nine personas that we bound and that was so fun because as people as our friends and and people that we work with were reading about those nine personas they would message us and say oh this is what i am this is me right and so they could really see like what their company strategy is what their preferences is and what that means for them and how they fit into their company and then our goal is ultimately to share the stories of those personas and then show how we can get them to work together because yes we are not in we are not trying to sway anybody one way or another we recognize that there's differences in in what company's goals would be and what employee preferences would be and and those can even change over time some of what we found from the people that we talk to is while they see themselves solidly in this bucket right now at this phase of their career or this phase of their life they could see changes happening in the future that might shift them to another bucket and so that was also interesting it's not like it's not a static decision of what we like right now and why right i mean we opened the book by saying same is out choice is in and we think that that is quite frankly perhaps the biggest gift that the pandemic gave us to understand that there are choices out there and to understand that you can in fact find your alignment if you listen to what you prefer and if you really ask smart questions of potential future employers let's talk about these personas for a second i don't give us all nine because then people won't buy the book but can you tell us perhaps share a couple of them and will be interesting if maybe elena and you if you had different personas i would probably say one of the personas that i really loved because i was surprised to find it was what we call the officers so those are people who are absolutely gun h i am pro office i don't know wanna work anywhere else this is where i feel at home i was in the office even before it was allowed for me to go back to the office during the pandemic and now that we're all back i never wanna go back i will never take a job that is not office based i was shocked to hear the number of people that we had in our participant pool who fell into that bucket because i'm not in that bucket personally so to me the officers were a very very interesting persona so opposite of that one with the officers who wanted be in the office we would have avatars right so avatars are people who want to work remote and they want they benefit from that and they're happy to be there and so that kind of is is the place that they fit in and they maybe were working there before they find that to be the they the most beneficial use of their skills and knowledge and productivity is just being able to work remotely on their own schedule and and their avatars says the how they're kind of seeing right in their right for their technology systems you know and i don't talk a lot about what are personas are and i definitely think that that shifts with your roles right like what i was working as a faculty member probably the am more of a hybrid preference would be where i am but then since i've moved into a new role which is exactly what i was talking about before since i've moved into a new role i'm in the office all the time and that's the expectation that i would have and and luckily i'm able to find value in that and and that kind of hopefully what the book does is help to give people tips for finding value in the different strategies that their companies have got chosen to to awareness point i mean being that i'm am in a faculty role i am more of that kind of mixed persona so those we call integrator so people who kind of like a best of both worlds experience and i actually i would like to think that i'm one of the original integrator because i always have worked in a hybrid modality i would always come to the office on my teaching base and prefer to work from my home office on my non teaching base because that's where i could get quiet time to focus on writing and doing my research where back in the day almost everybody would always come to the office regardless so i think that i'm one of the og so it seems like elena your persona has changed because of your role and then ina your persona has stayed because of your preference but are there any people who just perhaps have like a hectic home life where they just wanna get away from it and that's what pushes them towards opposite yes we especially we talked to what this is some of the surprising stuff that we found female executives surprisingly we found almost like a significant trend where they prefer to be in the office because it gave them a little bit more separation from what their expectations would be if they were to be in a remote or out or a home kind of position yes and and on the opposite of that by the way we also found and that was a very significant trend that by the way has been replicated by others students published the book that male executives and high level ranking leaders within organizations actually lean more towards the avatar persona preferring to work from home so some gender stereotypes that we would normally have and that i believe people continue to have as elena said that's one of the surprising things that we uncover with our research but again some of the gender stereotypes would lead people to to to imagine that women would be more of that avatar persona and men would be more of that officer persona and what we find that especially if you look at higher ranking male and female leaders it's really flipped you mentioned hybrid there which to an outsider who has not got your knowledge or your expertise or look to your research they might think oh that's the best of all worlds but i can also see a scenario where it's gonna create the officers and the avatars and their life battling each other what did you find around the hybrid that is exactly what we found we actually found that hybrid is both the best of both worlds and potentially could be the worst of both worlds and the reason for that is precisely as you're pointing out people who prefer to be in the office full time are kind of upset us to well wire we hybrid why can't we just like rip the band date and say everybody back to the office all the time and then people who prefer to be mostly remote or like well why are we hybrid why don't we just say they just stay home all the time so you know those two extremes were like the company's halfway where i want them to be why don't they just move fully to where i want them to be and so there was a lot of back and forth between the officers in the ava avatars in hybrid settings whereas you know the integrator in hybrid settings which are in perfect alignment with their hybrid company obviously we're kind of caught in the middle and so i think that that's a really important thing for hybrid organizations to realize is that even though the hybrid strategy might seem as the best of both worlds it actually may create a lot of more rift between employees that you really really need to domain it very carefully from a human resource perspective so this may not be a question you could answer but if hybrid isn't the solution did you come across a perfect solution that's a very interesting question i think that what i would say is that the perfect solution is not it's not realistic right like there is no perfection you know there would always be somebody who would not be happy right but whatever might come close if you will to a perfect solution to me one of the lessons that that specifically from the book that we're trying to communicate is just be clear be clear in terms of your expectations be clear in terms of how your tactics your implementation tactics match what you say because otherwise it's confusing and people don't know what's expected to them people don't know what the right way to act is they don't have an ability to adapt because they don't know what they are adapting to one thing that we did find in follow up research by the way which we had been doing since the book was published is that people are very adaptive in fact and that you know they have moved more people have moved closer to alignment with their companies while we were collecting the the the data for our book we found that about fifty percent of of our participants were fully aligned and then in the follow up research that we've been doing now we are actually finding that that level of alignment has risen up to sixty five to seventy percent of the workforce so that's you know a good two thirds of the workforce are now aligned but that is happening when people know what's expected of them and so to go back to the idea of what's a perfect solution the perfect solution is just to know what you want to do and to communicate it very clearly and to make sure that your actions or what we call implementation tactics actually match your workplace strategy i remember one interview that we did where an employee was in a working for a company that wanted everybody in the office right and this employee was just every day counting all the tasks that they did and how unnecessary it was that she was physically there so she just would you know i did this this and this and and none of them nec me being in the office so i definitely think yes there's not a perfect solution but the thing is that you really have to pay attention to if your employees are feeling like that employee did and feeling like probably that task that they the task that they were doing could have been done somewhere else and she really wanted to be doing them somewhere else so maybe you want to accommodate that or maybe it's not the right fit right but i also i get nervous if if every company is picking their strategy and then every company and then every employee is picking their preference and working for a company with that preference have we like negated all diversity of employees and thought that we just have the same similar types of people in the same similar types of organizations like that would be a challenge too so i think it's just important to recognize there are different choices that can be made there are different preferences those shift over time which i illustrated in my own example but you just have to pay attention to it and make sure you're you know adjusting as needed right and that's a really really important point i think that there are two levels always right like there is the macro level like what the organization stands for broadly speaking let's say it's a company that believes in being in the office or it's a company that believes in you know freedom and whatnot and once to be fully remote whatever so that's the broader level but i think to elena a point and that kind of seems contradictory to our book a little bit although it's not is if you are looking for that perfect alignment does that mean that in an office company all the employees there would be what we call officers and what would that do to the diversity of thought and perspectives among the workers in that company or conversely if you're are a fully remote company what we call remote first if all of your employees wanna work from home does that negate that other diversity of perspectives and so therefore a second level of alignment needs to come in and that's a little bit more of that micro level so within the context of your big picture strategy how do you still attract and retain some employees that might not be a perfect alignment to your strategy but maybe they are halfway aligned maybe they agree and love some aspects of your organization maybe your mission maybe your vision whatnot so how do you accommodate those people to where or you meet them halfway so it's always going to be some sort of a macro big picture here is my main message here is who we are here is why we are that but then looking at the composition of your workforce and making sure that you're making mini my pro adjustments as necessary to be sure that you have that diversity of thoughts and opinions it's always been a blend it's just a people for some reason fail to recognize it and i think that the media has actually done a disservice and honestly that probably one of the reason why elena and i wrote this book is because once we got into this research a little bit more we realized how many myths are out there in the media and they are amplified by very loud voices like deal elon musk or the jamie dim of the world and that's just not true and in research by the way we have always looked at virtual we call it on a continuum so you know you can be fully in office you can be fully online but most people are kind of a mix of both so it's always been the case that we've been a mix of involved here's where leaders get tripped up it's not job titles it's tasks we used to say dress for your day but now it might be more appropriate to say locate for your day i would say based on our interviews a lot of it individual standards to fall more towards a work from home preference and i think that that might be due to the fact that they are very comfortable with technology and a lot of their work can be more legitimately if you will done from home although i would say that even a lot of it individuals that we spoke with would say that some type of in person interaction from time to time was beneficial so even though their preference may have been for more fully remote type of you know work arrangements they still would see some value in a hybrid arrangement a lot of the marketing impacts of people that we spoke with tended to prefer a lot of the communications professional that we spoke with tended to perform more in office based work just because they kinda of felt like they fit off of each other what we did observe was tasks stiff differences in task right like if you know you're going to be head down on a spreadsheet and that's what you're gonna be doing today i think that we found people to be fairly flexible on that right like if i if i wanna be not interrupted i'm happy to be doing this from my house or from a pod in my office where people can't find me like i think it depended on the task if you need to be more collaborative or you wanna check in with people then i think then the office was making sense so i don't know that we looked at job titles but task i would say we we saw some some clear separation between where task like task location fits for example like where that task makes the most sense for you to do yes one of the leaders that we spoke with i was very impressed with that comment that you made she said it used to be back in the day that we used to tell employees dress for your day you know so like on days where you have meetings maybe you dress up a little bit on days where it's more heads down work maybe you kind of you know dress down a little bit but now she said we actually tell people find your work location based on your day and so that's what we ended up referring to in hour book as task location set so depending on whatever it is on your calendar for the day it may be more beneficial for you to work home or it may be more beneficial for you to come into the office we'll be back after this short break where we start to understand whose responsibility is to decide on whether you work fully remote in the office or a mixture of both hey just a quick word about another show on the spot podcast network it's called h and flow chart with the incredible joe fiat joe's not about chasing unicorns or building multi billion dollar start his thing is helping you design a business that works for your life so you've got the money you need and the time to enjoy it and as a psychologist i approve this message yeah he's talking systems mindset tweaks little reframe all the stuff that's gonna make you good money without working yourself into the ground and if you're curious about ai check out his august episode on the so called ai gold rush even i learned a few things and i live with an absolute nerd on i am nerd so go and listen to h flow chat wherever to get your podcasts welcome back okay let's get practical who actually caused this decision about the work policy should it be the leaders setting the rules or do the team set the tone iain has taken might surprise you i feel that there's a bit of a chicken egg situation because it's like who decides what the alignment is who decides we are all off or we're gonna be main in the office is it the organization or does the organization listen to what the team wants how does how one even navigate that when we started the research we kind of found out that organizations were like i said already about fifty percent aligned with their workforce which actually shocked us because that was we started the research during the pandemic and write us organizations were coming out of the pandemic and were kind of wasting their bets if you will as to what workplace strategy they were gonna adapt whether office for where it's remote for store hybrid and they already had a very decent i would say level of alignment i mean fifty percent of the workforce being on the same page as you especially when the pandemic just blew everything apart if you will to me was a very large number of alignment right so that leads me to believe that organizations are not just coming up with those strategies out of a hat but they must be reading the tea leaves at least to a degree and knowing what their are workers or at least a significant majority of the workers would appreciate and would like and i know you know speaking specifically about the office for company that we started i know for a fact that that was the case for them i believe the remote first company that we started also realized that people just love being remote and absolutely decided to stay there so some of those strategies although of course naturally they would come from the company to kind of answer your question they coming out of at least an implicit understanding that the leadership team has of what the workforce is willing to do and where they are at i think that that's true i think in every case we were talking to employees at all levels and so certainly as an individual you get to make those choices about if you're working there and and how you're doing that and as a team lead or as a manager you get to make choices about how you're engaging with your team and then at the organizational higher level you get to decide about what that what that right mix is for you so it i think it's happening at all all levels in in different ways you mentioned mentioned something before you said that i think you said sixty five percent alignment with some of the companies you've found now mh as a manager i'd be asking is that okay is that enough do i need to striving for a hundred percent that's a very good question so i i would like to point out the sixty five percent alignment right now in in in our in our opinion is almost kind of just a natural alignment that happened where people after you know coming out of the pandemic their organization's kind of initially being a little bit lukewarm about what they expected people to do and then over the next several years after you know the world opened up after a lockdown organizations becoming a little bit more clear in what they expected so some of that alignment that we saw moving from fifty percent roughly to sixty five percent roughly on average is kind of just that natural momentum if you will and now i think that what we're seeing in the data now is that things have stalled but people are pretty set in their preferences and that organizations are becoming pretty set in what they want to do as far as their workplace strategy and so to answer your question no sixty five percent is not okay we can't just rely on this natural momentum that was happening natural alignment that was happening as people were figuring out what's expected of me what do i actually like what works for my life i think that now is really the time to get on board with this you know alignment idea and really figure out how i can improve those numbers because let's think about what that means right i mean if you're half a line maybe it's kind of okay ish but if you're fully misaligned then that hits your engagement levels that hits your commitment to your organization and eventually those things actually show up in your performance and so you begin to be present versus to be engaged at work so alignment is really really important and you can't just say okay it's five and a half years after the pandemic now we've decided we're you know we're gonna pursue this strategy and that's that you know people just need to adapt no as a leader as an organization it is your role to help people adapt i wouldn't think that a hundred percent alignment is where we need to be so if we have about sixty five percent who are just perfect alignment full alignment with the strategy that your company has chosen that's great some percent of that is also gonna be half aligned right like maybe you are requiring everybody to work remote you have some percent that likes hybrid and they're they they like the remote but they also like sometime in the office right so they're half aligned but then you also have some percent that wants to be in the office all the time and so they're misaligned they're not really matching up with what you're doing i don't know that you need to pay all of your time and attention on that population that isn't isn't matched up with what you're doing but if you could at least nudge them to value the hybrid mh then you then then they're only half aligned rather than fully misaligned right so that's the part the the example that i mentioned earlier where that that woman was counting every task she did in theory because she had to be in the office to do them if she would have maybe just been given a flexible assignment where she had a hybrid role versus an in office role she might have been able to find some happiness there she ultimately ended up leaving that company because she just was too upset about where she was working but if she could have had some flexibility i suspect that would have been a half aligned pitch situation and she would have been a little bit more happier yes and that's a really really super important point so the balance of you know the sixty five so the thirty five percent that is a combination of half aligned in misaligned and maybe half a aligned is not that bad you know and so really how do you perhaps move the misaligned to maybe half alignment versus to alignment one thing that we have been finding out is that people are flexible but they are flexible to a degree and what we mean by that is they wouldn't jump over an alignment point they would jump to the next alignment point so if you are misaligned you would more likely jump to being half aligned versus jump all the way to being fully aligned and so again from an hr perspective how do you a ensure that you know who is where in terms of their alignment because i actually challenge that you know a lot of organizations don't know their specific mix so how do you find out the mix within your company and b how do you then focus your effort it's not necessarily on getting everybody on board which we also talked about from a diversity perspective is probably not a very good thing but how do you make sure that people are at least a little bit closer so maybe half a aligned to your company by the way if you think about it in the literature and i know we don't wanna get too technical in in in in kind of academic here but there is such a thing as person organization fit theory in in in organizational behavior and management literature and one thing that we know is that when you you know the reason whether you feel that you fit to your organization or not is very much multifaceted so there are many different reasons for why you may fit feel a fit or a mis fit to your company in our language that would be alignment or a mis and so if you think about alignment as just one facet of the broader person organization fit what are some other facets that you can offer to employees to kind of still make sure that they feel like they belong to your company so maybe they are halfway in agreement with you as far as the location or the modality what we call workplace alignment but maybe they are in full alignment or in full agreement with you as an organization on other aspects like you know maybe they like their salary maybe they like their boss maybe they like their team members so how do you make sure that you supplement some other kind of aspects of of their overall work experience so that though they are in half alignment in terms of workplace location preferences there in full alignment on other aspects of person organization fit so that you can have different people on board to again promote that diversity of talked opinions within your workforce mh what about those few people hopefully few people who are just not at all aligned with your work strategy there well i mean the example i shared we did they did lose that person right she was unhappy and ultimately went somewhere else and there's probably other examples if i think about some of the people that we talked to who were similar certainly you wouldn't want policies to rid review of employees that were really were valuable and and creating a real meaning for your company no know in my opinion mis lima is not good for the company and it's not good for you and so if you hate your work modality fit so you let's say you prefer it to work from home and the companies an office based company so you're in perfect mis lima unless there is something else that is really really really so wonderful and amazing about this company that you love it on so many other levels and you can put up with that which by the way i am very hard pressed to think of an example from our research where that was the case i would say that it's in your best benefit and we actually talk about that in the book we have a whole chapter dedicated to what if you're misaligned to now and and one of the things that we say is if you can't get yourself to at least half alignment then get out and i mean that's the that's the beauty of today's workplace that's the beauty of this same is out and choices in idea of a of a workplace they are up options out there and yes of course the job market right now is not looking very hot but hopefully that changes in in in the good thing again is that there are opportunities for you there are companies that you can find that they're are better fit or a better alignment with your work location preferences so it's it's just not psychologically healthy for people to keep themselves in a situation that make the makes them miserable quite frankly i know there we're specific examples of employees that we talk to that worked for a company that required you to be in the office and they were working remotely because they were geographically in a different place than those offices were and i think as a technology researcher of course i think that that's wonderful i value the ability for people to live anywhere in the world and still contribute to that company they aren't gonna fit in with what the workplace strategy is because they can't physically be there they don't live enough close enough region of to be able to make that happen maybe they come in quarterly maybe they do something else but it does limit their ability to grow in that organization which does impact someone's overall happiness but if that's the if that's the only way you can get their expertise and that's the only way they can contribute then they're gonna have to figure out how to make that work or not you're saying we've got sixty five percent alignment mh how do you actually measure that what are you doing to get to that number so that's a great question we actually have developed a scale a survey that measures people workplace preferences and so based on that survey we know if your preference more leans to work towards a work from office or more hybrid kind of mix or your preference is more towards remote work and then it's simply a matter of matching so if you know your work preference well what is the strategy of your company so if if your company wants you to be in the office in your personal workplace preference is to be in the office then that's how you get to alignment so those are with the aligned people or conversely if your company is a remote first company in your preferences to work mostly remote well that's also alignment you know on that other end of the spectrum so basically alignment is like the two to calculate it it's a two step process first measure your employees so that you find out what they are personal preference is and then simply match that against the strategy of your company and so when you do that you would realize that regardless what the strategy of your company is whether it's office whether it's hybrid whether it's remote in any of one of those three situations you are likely to have at least three buckets or three personas as we call them of employees some of them will be una aligned persona some of them would be a half aligned persona and some of them would be a misaligned persona and by the way in the hybrid case it gets really interesting because there's obviously aligned persona so those are people who prefer to work hybrid and their company's hybrid but in hybrid companies there is two half aligned personas and there is no misaligned persona right because if you are a remote preferring employee working for a hybrid company well you're kind of halfway there and conversely if you're an office preferring employee working for a hybrid company then you're also halfway there so that's kind of bad dilemma that we talked about earlier with hybrid is that there is a core group of aligned people and then they are two opposing group of groups of half aligned people which may seem like oh wonderful in hybrid i do not have anybody who is fully misaligned but actually the fact that you have two half aligned buckets or personas makes things very interesting in the book we have a matrix that kind of shows you and illustrates this visually so you could see all of our hr audience members will love it's little nine box so you can see kind of where people are fitting in there so that's that's a helpful tool that we have i don't know whether you can answer this question here but if the pandemic hadn't have happened do you think we still would be going towards hybrid and remote i love that question one of the companies that i was working with during the pandemic was a grocery store and what what they told me was that what the pandemic did for online grocery ordering was it moved them i'm had five years and projections of where they would have been and i feel the same way about the hybrid in remote we probably would have always gotten there but it just happened so much faster because of the pandemic even leaders in the office our as we call it company absolutely recognize recognized that remote work is here to stay so i think it's kind of a myth that organizations who are choosing to go back to the office are just kind of going back in time they are modernizing their work processes as well so yes the pandemic moved us forward but everybody was moving in that direction already and the other thing i will add there is we've been working remotely for decades there's research all the way back to the nineteen eighties where they were studying women who are working from home and and and having kind of remote support of the jobs that they were doing so we've been doing it a long time it's just it's just that rapid movement and rapid mass adoption that that was kind of unprecedented one very a very interesting thing historically if you think about it i read some wear and that just blew my mind if you really think about it even the roman empire was a virtual empire right because you kind of have to manage your colonies virtually and of course technology back then was a horse riding through you know space so that you can deliver a letter from the emperor to the you know administrator of the egyptian province if you will but that kind of a way of virtual working so we've always been virtual i suppose it's just that now making it way easier than riding a horse for europe you talked them about younger people so let's imagine someone who's twenty four years old they start they ended work when they're eighteen which will be twenty twenty give or take fifty percent of their of their work life has been sort of affected by this pandemic mh does that mean that they are potentially skewed one way or the other or is there no difference a lot of the younger people that we spoke with and again that is something that had been replicated and other research that had been published or discussed in the media too younger people actually do lean towards an office preference and that maybe because of their experience the pandemic where they felt just you know removed from the world if you will and we also know a lot of mental health issues and all of that occurred probably because of that isolation but i think younger people very much realize that they need the mentoring they need the support they don't really know what work is about and how do you learn what work is about if you're just sitting in front of a computer some of our most almost heartbreaking i would say interviews were with young people who had to work from home because let's say their organization was working from home you know it was a work from home company they felt lonely one of them talked about being depressed one of them talked about feeling like a stole hu i mean who's says about i'm a stole hu you know and and so i i think the majority of young people definitely prefer to be in an office at least some of the time if not all of the time but to elena point too they also had great awareness at some point in time when i learned the ropes when i learned my job when i form you know networks and relationships within the company and when i start having other life demands for example maybe i get married maybe have children down the road maybe my preferences would change so they were not blind to the fact that although they prefer the office now they could potentially want a hybrid or maybe a fully remote work situation down the road and there as they are live develops it turns out that alignment isn't fixed over an entire career as life changes preferences can sometimes change perhaps at the beginning of your career you have child so hybrid working is perfect then mid career you're building your professional network so mainly office based is much more advantageous then in your lake career you value freedom maybe even creating a home office so you can work next to a lake of course this complicates things a little but it does show that there is no one fits all policy you need to be somewhat flexible we came across many stores where people reflected on the fact that they might changed their preference so our interviews were they happened at one point in time right so we didn't follow up with people at multiple points in time to understand exactly whether they may have changed or not but we certainly had a lot of people reflecting on the fact that i will perhaps change when my life situation change so a lot of moms for example would say currently i lean to towards preferring working from home or at least hybrid just because that gives you more flexibility with balancing motherhood and you know employment but i also know that when my kids are then with all these crazy activities that we all have to sign up our kids for for some reason you know i know that i will have a lot more free time and i would actually want to be more in the office so that i can reconnect with my coworkers a little bit better and get more plugged in again so people were reflecting on potential changes down the road i will say that the follow ups study that we've we conducted we did conduct that study with the same participant that we had interviewed i don't necessarily know that enough time had passed you know because it was two years later for actual life changes to have occurred but people certainly did report switching preferences more based on just the personal realization of what really works for them relative to where their employer is so that's some of that natural real realign that occurred that i talked about earlier where people you know saw some benefits that they previously didn't perhaps of their employer's chosen strategy and kind of got on board in fact one guy that we talked to whole career in the office and then decided to move to a lake so now he and his in the kind of like final chapter of his career he's working on a lake and he's looking at the water every day and sitting at his desk and he's just loving that life he still gets to mentor new employees and he does all of that remotely but that is just another example where where gets you looked back and think like i can accept this different way of doing things and i think that goes again to the heart of our story which is alignment is not static it's a very very developmental very dynamic very much of a life process and again understanding that same list is out and choice is in is extremely extremely empowering because that literally tells you you just have to stay self aware you have to kind of listen to your own self you know you know how your life is changing how your preferences is are changing and there are choices out there so one of the things that i think we both hope and when the book on that is we hope that organizations continue to be as diverse as their own employees in terms of the strategies that they offer we certainly don't wanna see a workplace where it's kind of how pre covid the office brain to supreme we don't wanna see that we want to continue to see options out there we want to continue to have companies decide that being in the office is best for them and we wanna continue to see how companies decide that you know what hybrid is actually best for us and we wanna see how you know some companies continue to decide that being remote is best for them because that's what gives choices to people and allows people to find alignment for themselves as they move through their life and through their career hiring is where mis sneaks in and the fix is actually pretty simple stop selling the fantasy and just describe the day i think as far as recruitment goes i think a lot of organizations are living a lot on the table but not actually explaining exactly what people are gonna find themselves in should they join the organization i think for example one of the attractive points of remote first is hey i get to work from home oh that's wonderful and that's wonderful i mean like i said i work from home half of my week and i love that right however oftentimes people are not told exactly what that experience would be like for some individuals working from home is perfectly fine but main individuals may find themselves lonely and isolated and so you are not explaining that to potentially recruit as an organization you risking eventually hiring people who would be misaligned same thing with office forward you know like office forward companies oftentimes you know almost shy away from really communicating how important it is for employees to be in the office but then they have that expectation that employees are in the office so in hr we have this term that's called realistic job preview and i think that organization's absolutely need to incorporate very detailed and honest information about hey this is what your work experience will be should you join this company so that they can kind of ensure that people at least have an awareness of exactly what's going to happen when they become a member of a certain employer we do talk about and we have some hr tips in our book and some recruitment tips in our book but i think are helpful if i think about some specific examples we talk to some interns during our interviews too so they got to say like wow i would worked for remote and i don't feel like i knew anything or anyone mh or wow i had to go to the office at all the time and and there was you know nobody there or something like that so there were all kinds of different feelings about that certainly we shared that female executives do like to be in the office and that male executives have a slight to preference towards remote the junior level kind of younger newer employees they really do value and benefit from that time in the office and maybe maybe that's just part of the training piece that needs to happen but but i also think we have we had some new employees that went to go work fully remote and they were fine so mh it's just gonna vary but it is it is an important part of the job and an important piece is understanding like right now i'm a new hire and i don't really know what i'm doing or who i'm talking to and so i find a lot of value from being in the office regularly and maybe that's a rotation that i do until eventually i reach a level where i can have some more flexibility so i think that that piece is important interesting so let's talk about the book mh so can you tell us who should read it and perhaps who shouldn't read it yeah i think that there's lots of benefits from reading the stories in our book we had interviews with just eighty nine different individuals and they represent employees leaders organizational decision makers so all different levels and what i think is most beneficial from hearing those stories is everybody kind of understands their own partner hopefully is understanding of their own preferences and then maybe really kind of having thoughts about what other people are choosing and so this really shares kind of behind the curtain with what other people's choices might be and maybe helps you to have a little bit more understanding for why they choose that preference or why they prefer to work in the office every day or why they prefer to have a remote position and helps you kind of see how you can work together with them so i think they're in value for just individual employees who are in an office working with other office employees who may or may not be in the office i also think that there's value from an hr perspective just to understand how you can bring those employees together and then the managers team leaders kind of organizational decision makers can benefit from it too because they understand you know what goes what happens when you make such a decision about your workplace strategy and what that does maybe alienate aids or to creates challenges for some who don't have the same part our goal was not to convince people either way our goal was actually to open people's minds and eyes about the diversity that exists out there so one thing that we talk about in the book is we talk about persona as we call it persona diversity how many different types of preferences around there how many different combination of what your company wants you to do versus what you want to do we actually discover nine different personas so workplaces are very diverse in terms of the alignment preferences of their employees and we really wanted people to know that and as elena mentioned is not just leaders who we wanted to know that we wanted coworkers workers to know that because one of the things that we sell is that oftentimes people didn't appreciate the fact that their are own coworkers have a different preference or fall within a different persona type and sometimes it was almost therapeutic during our interviews a lot of as they were talking about their own work experiences and the work experiences of their team members they would literally have aha moments during the interview where they would realize hearing themselves talk about these issues that you know what i have this preference but so many other people have a different preference so it was very eye opening for our own interview is to realize that people do in fact fall under or alongside a very wide continuum of of alignment preferences and that's again one of the main goals of the book is to open people's minds to that diversity if people want to follow you follow your work by the book where is the best place them to go go to amazon by the book we have a website too it's the the new workplace book dot com so you can find find us there too well there you have it hybrid might win by default but only if leaders are clear about the why and honest about the trade offs that's how you keep culture from turning to cardboard so hybrid is not the solution but it kind of is the key is to try and allow flexibility allowing your team to decide where they can do their best work but at the same time try to ensure that people get facetime when they actually need it before we wrap up i'll ask elena and en their predictions for work in twenty five years time where is all this heading i think you'll be able to guess their response twenty fifty would you expect to see workplace about the same as now very different assuming me when it all like batteries for ai robots like in matrix that's what i was thinking is i don't know if if the workplace will look the same because of those robots that might be coming in i don't know i feel like the workplace would move could continue to to move towards more flexibility just because technologies is empowering and enabling that i think that there is a lot of realizations right now that being in each other's presence at least from time to time is also really important so personally to me if i were to put a wage on what workplace waste strategy might be most you know prevalent if you will in twenty fifty i would probably say hybrid yeah i i mean i love this question i love to think ahead to the future of what it might look like of course the technology piece plays into this a little bit but we are social beings and we do desire relationships and connectivity and so i do think at some point that time spent together in a room is probably gonna be valuable but maybe you're getting those connections filled somewhere else maybe it doesn't have you know a lot of our interviews we ask to we ask this kind of question like what would you hope for the future of work and people really really did talk about purpose and meaning and like finding something that fills their cup and gives them gives them value in their days and so i do think that that will continue to be important i think people do want to do something that it's meaningful to them and so what that looks like i guess we'll have to see but i think it involves some combination right so hybrid is probably a good answer if you're if you're bedding this is truth lies and work we will see you next week

coming up this week in work two new workplace words office f and a slot you've probably never heard of them but there's a good chance you're already living with the consequences so what are they why do they matter and what can leaders actually do about them and our brand new segment truth all lie are left handed people really more creative because they used the right side of their brain it's a claim you've heard everywhere and i have heard everywhere but does the science actually it up so we're digging into split brain surgery you don't really wanna think about that noble prize research and what creativity really requires plus in the workplace surgery a new leader has discovered disc profiling back i want to know if it's genuinely useful or just another person personality test with slick marketing stay tuned for that one i bet you can't guess which way is gonna go and this is truth to work the award podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture we are brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name is leanne i'm a charge occupational psychologist hi my name is allan a business owner and together we help organizations but amazing workplace culture you so let's get right into this after a very quick word for our sponsors hubspot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers and here's a perfect example leigh your turn moo house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive nine hundred page website even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze which is hubspot collection of ai tools help them write and optimize their content in just a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more time on their site if you're ready for impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com welcome back it's leanne favorite time of the week it is time for the news roundup it is you you say each your favorite time of the week but then also hope you have a lovely in tonic with cucumber and lime is your is your recent thing jim with cucumber and lime so is that your favorite time in the week or is it maybe well that's pretending for for for podcast production purposes it is your your favorite time the week isn't one of my favorite times of the week one of young favorite of the week it turns the news round what have you seen what have you seen my love i have any word well we know it is as because you said it in the in the top i do office bro yep okay office frog are you not listening for the gives a new word i try and guess what it is if leap frog is jumping over some things the office frog is is it when you take turns to try and jump over the office yes take a tram you jump over the office a bit like in the original the office the uk office which is better than you even know it's not i better the uk is it sad me to say that yes this would be honest now uk uk great but really cri as the america not anyway well sorry how have we get on to this so what is it office frog well this came from a forbes article and it it's it's the idea that jen said those pesky gems z is they are hopping from job to job like frogs on lily pads chasing better pay a better growth or just a better fit how dare they how dare they want a better life how dare they so they're not staying anywhere too long an employees starting to notice our thoughts i mean think you said oh how dare they want a really nice job a nice life when os jen extras and millennials had it really tough i would doubt doubt pitch you know well when i was a kid we seen that obviously that thing is a really old but i think it's monty python gonna sit there and go oh yeah but when i was a kid i had to i've got killed twice before breakfast and then to walk to the mill anyway sorry what was the question do you office frog you like it as a term do we think it's fair do we need to pay attention to it no yes yes no in that order say more i think it's a bit of a weird term i think it's just one of those is we've to have it all the time tiktok tiktok is i blame them because they say oh we've come up the brand new word and brand new term this is what jen z is doing and actually i'm pretty sure that most of them been doing that for a long time i needs to be something back in the day to say oh they acted like a monkey they never let go one branch until they got hold of another and that was more kinda like you don't quit one job tea and just seem common to me yeah yeah you know what i think i think you're right some of these some of these are kind of coined on social media by the gems that is themselves others i think are just a word to take the responsibility away from the organization and put it on the individual and i'm not i'm not lacking employer you're an office frog mh it's i alright children okay and dad isn't lacking you're just frog exactly and do you know what the article called did did kinda go on to call out some of this so peter j who's the ceo of kick resume described the so called office frogs as people who aren't afraid to take a leap of faith and some data from culture out back to or suggesting nearly half employees are active look to leave because trust relationship is dropping down and people are getting restless interesting because i would week last week was job hugging mh i've also got job frog and didn't we say don't be fooled that this lower retention is employee engagement the minute opportunities come up the minute people feel safe to leave they will and i think you're right you know this isn't this isn't no this really isn't know i think it was probably the the younger gen is like you out that kind of started this trend certainly the older millennials because we were the first generations to be showing that loyalty doesn't pay you know it's not the you're employed by with one employer until you retire with the god watch watching and two kids we watched our parents do that and that was great but then we got our ourselves made redundant i we so other people get made redundant recessions and stag wages and no pensions so we learned to self protect and i think as well there is just a hunger that comes from being young you wanna learn you want the better opportunity you're in a rush when you're early twenties it's not new i think the only word of caution that i would give is if you are if you are job hopping too frequently for example if it's less than twelve months questions will be asked if you've got four jobs in two years questions will be asked that's not say you can't defend it you can't explain it but it may put you at a disadvantage if the job mark is particularly competitive so a word of caution but i think organizations just need to accept their people are not gonna get meaningful work be paid fairly for it and be treated well they're gonna look for alternative as they well should if you want to do the whole like jumping around just do gig work do project work because i know that can that looks really good on a cv i did eight projects in eight months and and to be honest i mean i'm i'm not advocating you do this but if you do if you were to drop off you could always potential position on your resume as a as a project would that be dishonest yeah maybe a little bit whether you can get the references as well but people are gonna gonna require but you're right there are ways to cleverly structure your your resume not be a disadvantage i think the the real thing is as a business owner you have to ask yourself are you giving people a reason to stay and if you're not then the job hopping may be on june what's it called where office frog might be on you oh what have you seen this week well i've got my own new word i was bit jealous or yeah i know i but jealous if you couldn't the new words talking my own when i said got my new word it was in them harvard business review check me out as i'm speaking to you un drinking tea and i've got a mono in because i'm that fancy wow i didn't even know you what h hbo to be honest if could use your subscription to log in and so did you jj anyway so man new word is called slot what what do you what you think that pleasant pleasant yes it works lot i don't i don't enjoy the word no no i'm guessing it would be kind of like tasks that are just ugh not very good kind well no it was been kind no it's not okay it's a it's a new word that's a new word yeah nobody knows nobody knows well have you heard of ai s no right so something which is big on ex twitter t whatever you wanna call it an ai s is when all of the replies with the opposed are written by ai and so again so the post so a post is written by ai that's classed as ai slot it there's so much more ai or something more ai replies on twitter than that then you think yeah and once you start to understand and you could see patterns and you'll see the ai replies are basically empty they'll go what an amazing insight i love when i learn stuff like this no humans gonna write that and there's so many people out there are using ai to reply to post so that's what works it slot is similar but is when you use ai at work to produce something and it's a big rubbish now i'll just use that i just give you two two the majority of guest request that we get would call them worst called the guest slot that's what we called them but the no it's book because somebody writing a pitch gmail email sells pitch email using ai and it's not hectic yeah that's what six slot that's work slot someone who says oh i need to report on so so so they go to chat and say please write a report on the the tree frogs of amazon amazon their decline in the last five years i it comes up like you know that's that slot right the difference is what what this hp just article described it as empty content they said empty calories was there was what they used basically anything which comes out and says a lot of things but doesn't really say much mh is ai slump mh or work slow and that's fair we know a lot of people who also talk that way there we about let's say a lot and say nothing at all yeah that let's talks some of it made a career out of it news but the yeah the content looks fine you produce it but when you scratch a surface that there's no real substance now do stand to cost companies a little bit of money because the research from we see better up labs and stanford found that forty one percent of workers have been on receiving end of this work slot do you think well is it is it harmless no because usually if you ask someone to write it before and then someone sends it to you and you can't really put your pin on get your finger on why it's bad but you know it's bad do you have spend hours rewriting it and generally it's back two hours on average for people's spend rewriting this work slot so that's hours of lost productivity there's frustration there's trusts all that kind of thing lee what are your thoughts i think there are people out there who are lazy and not clever yes yes and there are people that are gonna engage in work sleep yes there are plenty of people out there that are that are lazy and clever yes so we'll leverage ai to the best of its ability and then spend the time putting the polish on yeah i'm a cto so much backlash against it that it's that it's like you you can never use ai for copyright or any kind of content creators just like of course you can it's it's a it's a speed a little way of just getting the bones of something on that can then use your expertise and knowledge and research to flesh out but yeah i think i think it's getting old quickly and i think i can see it i can see it reducing tick to the content creation because the stress won't work and the minute doesn't work there's no point in doing it so people have to pivot yes you're absolutely right as chat says all the time what else have you seen my love deloitte uk chief executive have received a seventeen percent pay rise taking his annual salary up to four point nine million pounds sorry i thought you said that was four point nine million four point nine million pounds that's is salary that's his annual salary yet rich is houston who runs deloitte in the uk it was reported in the times this week that pay has gone up by seven hundred thousand pounds in a single year wow taking him to almost five million pounds now on the surface you might say out fair enough i don't think i word what he might because deloitte is to be fair multi billion pound company it's one of the big four highly financial richard houston's been there for six years he's been in charge years he also has wider responsibilities across europe and sits under deloitte global executives so you might say do you know what he's only this good for you dick dick is in short for richard yes yes yeah just checking yep but actually if you look at it does start to get a bit oh no so richard got a seventeen percent pay right mh staff at deloitte in general got an average pay rise of two point nine percent okay equity partners who the senior leaders is just the low mister houston averaged four percent so while the vast majority are getting very small increases the bosses pay has jumped by almost five times that of the average deloitte employee yes but to be fair well performing chair people or ceos they usually get bonuses done they when businesses is good yeah you you think so that that might make it okay but here comes the awkward a bit out this is so good i'm so a few months ago at houston himself told staff and deloitte biggest division which is technology and transformation to expect smaller bonuses and fewer promotions because the division had under performed and in fact revenues in that part of the business had dropped by ten percent overall deloitte uk's revenues fell by one percent profits yes were up by four percent that was thanks to growth in other areas like tax and audit but the headline is still this revenue down warning to staff tightening belts and yet the chief executive takes home a double digit pay rise and the real shocker i think for means is when you put these ratios or you when you put this into ratios so mister houston is now paid sixty five times more the median deloitte salary of seventy five thousand pounds last year it was fifty eight times so the gap isn't just huge it growing mh which leaves a question how do leaders justify fire rewards at the top when the results don't seem to back them up and what message does descend to everyone else in the business our thoughts well it's yeah it's the message isn't it i think what you're saying there is get lots of ceos like the boeing ceo i think they dana boeing ceo is having had a pickle of a year isn't it he has but he still taken home like thirty million dollars or something as a salary i mean i i was about to say something like a career nose diaper but that's bad that's in bad taste so i will not be i will not be saying that it's just so we're clear right so houston's paid sixty five times the median salary so that means that there are sixty five people he could employ he didn't take any money yeah yeah yep right but his increase is seven hundred thousand for the medium seventy five thousand so actually just the increase alone could pay for ten median deloitte yeah yeah so if he if he went you know what i'm not taking his increase he's still gonna do very well and get paid the same as sixty five employees but he's also gonna save ten jobs it just seems really bad taste if be told really bad taste it does seem in bad taste and i think the only thing to say is deloitte isn't the only firm who's under scrutiny for this famously ceo to worker pay ratios in major companies are massive i think in the us it averages is about two hundred and seventy to one so by that comparison maybe he's not as bad but i think the thing is when the staff see bosses pay increasing at that rate when they're being told not to expect pay whereas is not to expect as much bonuses and loyalty starts to slip and then performance dips because that extra effort that you get from saying rule in this together just isn't there anymore and it is it is mainly a corporate problem but it's not confined to the corporate world small businesses can face similar risks as well if leaders are taking rewards in a way that feels out of step and house this with some of the clients that we work with although it'd be very unintentional mh these these things can happen so there's there's a few simple things that will go a long way to avoiding this trap the first thing is being really transparent people don't need every bracelet to see that of their md but they do wanna know how decisions are made how people are rewarded how bonus works that has to be really really transparent and especially if you're taking something away think about that proportion if times are tough it really lands well for it is to be seen as taking it doesn't land well for least be seen taking more of themselves and actually this is my frustration it comes to lay officer as you said out if just that pay rise hadn't been taken would it potentially say ten jobs and that i have beef for more from an organizational perspective because it's just gonna tag the organization for years to come and yeah so it could be anything it be profit sharing it could be better benefits it could be smaller gestures but the point is it's not just about money is it as you said it's the message and people wanna know that their contributions count not just the dicks at the top the ticks at the top by i that that should been in the headline i think is your my optic is that the right word when you don't really look at something properly there are plenty of i've quite a few people i wanna say the chairman of costco maybe i've made that up but there was somewhat a chair person or ceo who instead of taking the bonus split it amongst their employees because they said no one out you know we're not no one else getting bonus so i'm not getting bonuses so split so i'm sure everyone know we got like fifty quid or something but still it's like you say it's that extra bit and i've never actually earned four point nine four point or four million impact pounds i've never earned seven hundred barrels and that was just the increase but the figures is at that point you go hold do you need that extra seven hundred thousand does it really gonna make a difference when he just simply off anyway that's a different if if you're interested in that kind of conversation then go back two m d make meghan fur long detroit she was she was maybe episode two three four or something two three five she's really interesting woman but also she talked a lot about this kind of thing whilst also building a business being an entrepreneur herself and making money so it's not about like you could no one can make money is about come on guys don't be a dick there you go don't be a dick that's when it's when making more money it actually making things harder for you in other places you know it's just it's not worth it it's not worth it's not worth it it's not worth it anyway lee does that conclude our business that concludes our news roundup thank you para much okay thank you love all the links are in the show notes we will be converse you after this very short break with our brand new segment a second week of it truth or lie plus our wealth weekly by surgery happy your questions to lia anne we'll see you in just a second don't go anywhere quick announcement for all listeners yeah i've got a i've got a new toy on my on a little deck thing so i can make the voice change anyway sorry i love it do it again hello leanne do another one but we did interrupt your podcast listening for for this we actually interrupted it to tell you about one of our new favorite podcast podcasts it's called success story is hosted by scott d k and it is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals success story features question answer sessions and conversations on sales marketing business startups and entrepreneurship i'll if you like this podcast that i think you'll love scott episode in back in december where the infamous seth god talks about empowering employees so go listen to success stories wherever you get your podcasts welcome back it is time for a segment truth or lie we need up we need theme tuned for this yeah oh no no you the theme june yeah i'm not gonna thing during this week sorry i know i'm disappointed you anyway track time for truth all lie which is our weekly myth busting segment this is where we take all those psychology sound bites you've already seen on tiktok or linkedin post or the i call it tech tube which is the tiktok for the older generation or youtube shorts yep or maybe it's a management training session we're gonna ask you does the evidence actually back this up yeah i let's be honest psychology appears full of nice that neat claims that feel very true they're simple they're catchy and they spread fast but when you do scratch that service a lot of are built on half truths or they've been stretched way beyond the research entirely last week we talked about white noise and concentration and next week we're pick something that like we've said the in fact if you got an idea for it drop us an email but today our truth all liars is this a leanne are left handed people more creative because they use the right side of their brain just because you haven't heard that i think that is true isn't it that the left hand is controlled by the right hand side of the brain is that right i shall get into this right i'm sorry i'm jumping there late so yeah all left handed people more creative i i i've i've definitely heard this before i think the majority of people have so yes basically the left side of your brain is logical and analytical the right side is creative and autistic that's the thought and that's because the right hemisphere controls the left hand right so left handed means that right side of your brain is dominant which means it's creative and autistic abs so left handed scratches artistic i think and artistic so yes left hand must be more creative it's it's a nice little story isn't it but humans are a little bit more complicated than that a yes i thought they might be so let's start at the beginning the brain does have two hemisphere this is true and they are connected two hands that is also true so our two hemisphere in our brain are connected by a bundle of fibers and that's called the corpus colossal it's not important but i wanted to sound clever and yes each hemisphere does have its specialties so the left hemisphere or what we hear called the logical brain is more involved in language structure and step by s step by step processing so the thought sort of thing that you rely on when you're writing the email you have to be very precise you're working through a budget you're following a formula the right hemisphere on the other hand the creative brain in in you know little bunny is is stronger when the task needs imagination or patent spotting so it's when a designer is sketching out a new logo it might help you catch the meaning behind someone's expression it's what gets you swept up in a piece of musical out it's that whole picture awareness and that's a big part of what we call creative thinking so there is some truth there we have a left hemisphere a right hemisphere they control the other opposite sides the body so yeah it's it's that that part is true this idea caught on in the nineteen sixties it's very famous study from roger sp this is so famous it's actually included on the curriculum in the uk for a level psychology yeah it's one of like the the seminal works that that need to to be taught so basically and i'm gonna try and explain this really simply because it's a bit is a bit head for g but literally yeah literally so roger sp was studying patients who had a split brain blip so roger sp was studying patients who had a split brain procedure so that was when people had really severe forms of epilepsy they didn't know how to treat at the time so to stop procedure spreading surgeons would cut the corpus claws and there's fibers bring up don't like it connect the brains so yes so sp then realized that this gave him a chance to study two sides of the brain all mars if they're are separate minds because they're no longer connected they're no longer communicating with each other so he ran a series of experiments be with me so far yes okay just out of interest the people were like could still but they could still like walk about and eat and all that kind of stuff with it with this corpus christi things split okay yeah out you well yes there was some some complications which we're gonna go into okay okay you were just one else on sorry so one of the most famous experience what he did is he flashed a pitch of house in the patient's right eye okay yeah so cover the left eye showed that patient's right eye a picture of a house mh because of the way vision is wired that information went into the left hemisphere right yeah and in most people the left hemisphere has the language center to there so the patient could instantly say that's a house okay no problem when he flipped it to when he showed the house only in the left eye that information went to the right hemisphere the right hemisphere could recognize the picture perfectly well but it doesn't have the machinery for language so normally it would send that information across the left side of the brain so you could say the word but because those the hemisphere disconnected the information was trapped in the right hemisphere so when sp asked what do you see the patient was speechless they knew but they just couldn't say it but here's the really cool bit so what he does is he handed the patient a pencil in their left hand because this information is trapped in the right hemisphere mh and asked them to draw what they'd see and that's exactly what happened the patient sketched out a house wow they couldn't name it it couldn't say it but they could reproduce it wow huge breakthrough moment really to show that each half of the brain can take in and act on information but only the left hemisphere can put it into words that's where all of our language centers live so yeah completely groundbreaking unbelievable sp worn a nobel prize for showing it and because of this famous experiment because the right hemisphere could draw and imagine when the left couldn't mh and the right hemisphere means you're left handed mh this can of got over simplified and generalized to the creative right brain do we see i do see do have a question when i'll wait till the end you'll take questions at the end i'm guessing take questions at the end so the reason this is a bit of an over general generation is because we have to remember these people had surgical severed brains right in healthy brains the two sides concert conversation they're working as one so pop psychology stripped away that nuance and turned it into left ecological right equals creative makes sense but in terms of left hand there is also some nuance here so recent shows that left handed people are more likely to have language spread across both hemisphere rather than just the left they also have a larger corpus c c colossal the fibers that connect them mh there's more wiring between the two sides so that could make them a bit more flexible when switching tasks or making unusual connections but it's not like destined to be there are plenty of creative left hand and p prone plenty are brilliantly creative right hand so the best way to think about it right is like an orchestra so your brain is orchestra and on one side you've got the violin and they're carrying the melody and the other side you've got the brass and they might provide the power and then somewhere else you've got the precautions in their keeping the rhythm but you don't get a symphony from just one section you need them all working together and creativity is the same it doesn't belong to one hemisphere it takes the whole brain so in terms of truth or lie the idea that left are automatically more creative or that one side of your brain makes you logical while the other makes you autistic that is a lie the truth is really more interesting i think both hemisphere are working together and creativity comes from the hole but if i remember correctly when they covered the left when this guy par or sp cut covered to the left eye and showed a house to the right eye it could draw the house but couldn't say it mh did he ever cover the right eye i show house to the left eye and asked them to draw it i would need to read it again but i believe yes they tested it in different scenarios in and yeah the the yeah you couldn't couldn't do it i would have language and moment have and they did it in different ways as well so they also had it where they'd search like behind a a coverage tables objects on it and they could pick out like a key for example right that they've seen a picture of as well as drawing it like it was very much more physical so yeah be really interesting i would imagine nobel prize oversight committee would have asked that question back in nineteen sixties before they gave me the nobel prize so i mean i think it's enough isn't there even if he didn't do that not enough for me i'm disappointed with you richard sp was that his name sp sp i'm disappointed exploring back he's not around anymore no way no i don't believe he but but yeah a very cool study proper groundbreaking i used to choose to a level psychology students and we'd go through this one and their minds would be blown yeah it would take a lot of because it's so complicated as well having to reg this in an exam yeah it's it's it's confusing isn't it but but yeah very cool this is why psychology ace this is why humans are awesome and why it's hard to be very simple because we're very complex beings you are less complex than most but still quite complex saying i'm simple simple being that's very simple big no yeah that was absolutely fantastic i'm really i love these and but if you tell us when if you're listening what what you wanna hear next because i've got a whole list of things but you come first i will if you send me in a suggestion something you want me to ask and i will very happy to ask it next week or week after yes so thank you very much really enjoyed that thank you now is on two my favorite time of the week well one of the favorite time the weeks i also too enjoy jin friday it is time for the world famous weekly workplace surgery where i put your questions to lia if you've never heard this before lia as you already will know is a psychologist specializing in work and organizations she has the answers to the majority of your questions and if she doesn't very often chi and find some someone who does listen to last couple of episodes you'll hear we brought in some people from the curve group who our specialists in hr question number one this person says i've just discover desk d see is it actually useful for lil or just another personality tool okay let's see how this goes i've recently accepted with my first proper leadership role i'm confident in the technical side of the job managing people is all new to me and i wanna to approach you with a bit of structure i came across disk profiling while looking to different leadership tools sounds promising help you understand your own management style how your team operates what motivates people and so on but i'd never even heard of it before makes wonder is it widely used have either of you use disc in a team setting is it something worth exploring further no did know what i think with that might be the shortest to most complete answer just in case someone could pushes back and go wait a minute i've heard disc is alright what do you say to them you're incorrect how we really just leave it there now disc is very popular some fun facts about disc it was created by the same guy who wrote at the window common comics to be fair that guy was also a psychologist right but it was first it was you white it came from the model behind desk came in like nineteen twenty something and it a theory that's never really been improved and the scientific support for disc in terms of an accurate way of measuring personality or indeed behavior is very lacking it's not very robust and also if you're not sure deaf basically we'll ask people questions and then give you a color so you're a yellow you're a red or a blue you're a green and as as is jean my favorites are close in the world said to me leanne how have we got to the point where the complexity of the human psyche is distilled into a primary caller there we go mic dropped moment yeah it's so yeah disk disc isn't good speaking more broadly about psycho and i'm i'm pleased that you're curious and psycho can be useful in terms of understanding your team and and figuring out the best way to manage them broadly speaking there are psycho four into three buckets so you have kind of anything around intelligence which will include iq and e q you have personalities psycho and you have behavioral your psycho now you know what i always thought disc was personality right but when i looked into it more again recently it calls itself a behavior based psycho mh i i don't think i don't think it's either to be honest i think it's nonsense but i would wanna dump it more in the personality because you're trying to put people into a type which is very much steep in the personality literature personality inventories have two main buckets so they're either type where you'll get a color or an in p f and j whenever they are or they wanna continue like intro version to extra version we're all somewhat introverts or extra sits somewhere on a scale and that gives of course much more variety of profiles that will pop out you're not just gonna get sixteen or god a forbid for so yeah personality inventories can be useful if you pick a good one h hogan is a great test publisher for example as is s nhl the problem with personality when it comes to understand that your team is personality is pretty fixed it doesn't change much from the point of like twenty to seventy five if it's fairly fixed so you're kinda giving your team members permission not to change if you talk about their personality because they're gonna go oh well i i can't finish that report i'm not i'm not a i'm not red but i can't do that sales call i'm not a yellow it just limits people's potential that they'll use either for bad because they don't wanna do something they don't wanna do some grunt work or it will limit them in terms of imp syndrome and confidence so i don't think personality regardless of how a effective the tool is is particularly useful in this scenario i would go for a behavior based metric the real world group of one of my absolute favorites be is not a bad place to start as well is not the same kind of robustness of psychology behind melbourne is there is the tools from the real world group but it's a really nice place to start and we'll give you team roles that you can discuss but again its preferences it's not a defined like you are definitely this so good thinking honestly if you're using any psycho you really should be engaging an expert somebody who is trained in psycho like an occupational psychologist to really understand exactly the tool that you need to serve the the task you need it to but broadly speaking for this scenario i would say behavior based is the way to go look at bell and look at real group now can i just check because it is original letter not a letter but i'm pretending the letter said it sounds promising helping helped me understand my own management style how my team operates and what motivates people is all of that encompassed under behavior then is that where what we're looking at we should be looking at the behaviors which will help us with those three things exactly because behavior can be modified behavior can be changed behavior can be coached so in terms of a management style managers also need to be adaptable depending on the team there they're leading in the context they're leading it so for example with the early onset of covid we sort of barry sharp shift much more commanding and control levels of leadership people needed quick ounces go home this needs to close that needs to happen as the pandemic progressed it became much more open consultative this ship in terms of well how do we deal with this and how we ever overcome that when we've got a bit more time to do it so understanding your own on preferred style and how that looks in terms of the behaviors you enact in the workplace is gonna be really important for you to know when the context changes suddenly or you're given a task that is yeah contextual specific so for example if you're going through a merger or something like that so yeah it's great for understanding how you show up as a manager and how you might need to start working on behaviors that you don't naturally an act also in terms of how your team approach you're gonna see how your typical behaviors might differ to the typical behaviors of your team you might also get clues of people that you clash with who might be very similar to you until the paper is or indeed very different it could also show people that you might favor unfairly because this similarity and how they all work together so it it gives you just a really nice framework to understand yourself understand your team and understand how you can modify behaviors to get the performance you need in the context contextual fabulous okay so we're saying no to disc no to myers briggs no to anyone who does personality because personality test like myers briggs and disk are kind of equivalent of those things that went round talking about the pandemic of going what kind of chocolate bar are you you answer six question that tells you you're a kit catch or something because you could be because you have four you know don't go down that road down did way that was going sorry list mate so we say that's bad what's good is something that measures behavior and you said that the real world group is your favorite of that which will probably links in the show notes if you do have to do a personality test you rate hogan do you yeah hogan hogan nothing to do with hulk it's a very different thing if you just search truth lies work hogan you'll see we had an interview with the chief science officer doctor ryan sherman doctor who's who's wonderful for ryan ryan yeah not to say personality frame frameworks and tests don't have their place i think a team development is limited because it's fixed what you're gonna do with that recruitment different thing things as you're bringing in a personality but yeah i'd always go behavior for a team based interesting thank you very much okay so question number two how the senior leaders answer tough questions without without actually answering them oh this is gonna be interesting i've noticed something in company all hands meetings and press briefings when senior leaders get asked difficult or uncomfortable questions they somehow manage to respond without really committing to anything they don't dodge the question outright but they also don't land on a clear answer either it's like they've got a framework or scripting in their back pocket that helps them stay neutral and in control is there a technical leaders used to handle these moments or is it just practice late do you think this person's asking how they can do it or how they do it does the does the does the does the person writing in want to learn this skill or they're just curious about how these people have learned the skill i think maybe it's a little bit of both but i think is there a technique leaders can use yes is it just practice and yes also yes also yes yeah do you know what you use two words here they were absolutely nail down what leaders doing these moment they stay neutral they're in control right so neutrality comes from high levels of emotional regulation you don't panic you don't react immediately and senior leaders who are effective of very good at regulating their emotional emotional emotions and in terms of control it's it's showing that you people can trust you that you've got this you can provide that reassurance in moments are often very ambiguous so yet being neutral and in control are key things that leaders to trying do in their communications there are so many different frameworks and stuff out there that you can follow across psychology research across p and comm research marketing behavioral science as well there are so many so i thought i would maybe just share one that i quite like in terms of being science led and looking at how our psychology and our brains can can be used in moments like this to to look a loo as a leader but also sound very in control so this was a model that is developed by a neuroscience called david rock in the late no and it's called the sc model s c a r f i like it already yeah so it's based care and i like that the letters when you can yeah is it an acronym or is it an acronym no anna resin is different accurate that's just let's go with acronym because there's no one here to correct us true look forward to your letters so it's based on the neuroscience of kind of how our brains react to social threats so it's that kind of fight or flight area of neuroscience so how we got to things like embarrassment or power dynamics uncertainty the brain treats us as a threat and in the same way it treats it a similar way it treats it like physical danger so if a tough question comes up in public the brain is on high alert so senior leaders will be media trained in how to manage this in the moment so the staff basically says there's five things people are always scanning a contact for status am i respected here certainty do i know what's happening autonomy do i have any control related am i included in safe and fairness am i being treated just so bearing in mind this is for anyone who finds himself in a social or leadership context where there's a threat if you've been called to a town hall there's a good chance you're getting feeling a little bit of threat because you know a big organizational change coming so whilst you're feeling it the leader is also feeling it but wanting to control that in both them and in you so when the leader answers a tough question what they're really doing is managing these five areas and in that managing the context as well as the content interesting that makes sense yes so in terms of how this might apply to a town hall question let's say there's some layoffs coming because that seems to be happening you everywhere in a minute right so in terms of the first one they want to protect status they're gonna say things like i know how much effort people are putting in that's not going on no fist so i'm not taking any respect away from your states away from you okay then they give certainty we will be reviewing roles across the next three weeks and we'll get to keep everyone updated a timeline lever got an idea what's happening then they move to preserve autonomy so let's say something like managers will be speaking to teams individually this won't be handled top down with without input clever i feel reassured already then they build related so i was says like i know this is difficult i've been through this in my own career and it's never easy oh i say nice touch mh and then they framed the fairness so whatever decisions we make will be consistent across departments and based on clear criteria so if you've got somebody put their hand up and say am i gonna be laid off you've not got an to that question no but you've been protected in terms of of the respect and status people feel for you've got a bit of certainty you've got a bit of autonomy you feel more the leader's is more relatable and it seems like the process is there you've learned nothing to answer your question but you feel reassured and that's what that's what leaders do they're are regulating the emotional climate and that's why they pay on the quickbooks that makes us while they get four point nine million every a year but that totally makes sense and also you could see that quite often in i think you say quite often look like if you if at the end of football matches if he's if they're you know interviewing the manager and they've lost the manager will often seems to use that sort of thing yeah and it's the ones that that go off script and completely lose it we'll we'll get on they'll go viral work then and get on the news we'll be talking about them so yeah it's it's a cool module but just to kind of recap it so if you're leader listening and wanna kind of write this bit down we'll get it with to chat beauty or something what you're looking at in any of these difficult moments is status so protecting dignity don't undermine anyone certainty of timelines or next steps autonomy give people some control import related or empty connection and fairness be transparent about how decisions will be made and to be honest that's also a great model for managing change within your business any kind of comes in your business not just stuff that's a bit difficult okay lee i've got a final question for today which is from a business owner says i want to hand over the day to day running of my business but what kind of role am i actually hiring for this is really really good love this my husband and i run a small business with a brilliant team of three they're self sufficient in their own work but they still rely on me for day to day things like decision making etcetera etcetera i'm looking to step back from the day to day so i can focus more on growing the business to eventually have it running smoothly without needing me and my husband involved all time the issue is i'm ready to hire someone to take on a lot of this but i have no idea what to call the role i've seen everything from office manager to business manager to pa to director i don't wanna pitch it the wrong way has anyone else brought in someone's take over an operational management in a small business how you to define the role and what helped you attract the right kind of person this sound like a beef subject for you to get tea it does i'm gonna brush over that what do i call the role because at this point that's not not the question you need to answer mh it's the later questions you asked how do you define the role and what helped you attract the right kind of person how do you define the role spend time define the role and how do we do that a job analysis job analysis you almost call me out there no i knew i was confident i knew i need no it's such an important thing particularly for first hire to think about what exactly do i want this job to do it might be a very unusual job in a small business where you're bringing in what you're your fourth team member it could be very varied it could be that there isn't a typical job out there that would do this so the thing i would say is is spend some time you and your husband and do two exercises for me one just write down general tasks that you want this person to be very transactional things in your day you'd love for them to take away and get that all down on paper and then theme it so whether it's around people clients admin finance whatever it is so you've got rough kind of responsibility is list of what this person needs to do that's then gonna give you an idea of kind of the level of i guess senior this person is complexity and the task that they're gonna do and then i want you to take each one of those categories and go right say it's managing people supervising people i want you to then do a task called rep grid cold what rep grid okay rep grid but you basically say this is this is a psychology called psychology thing out you basically say right people management let's think about one person we know of who we think is a phenomenal manager let's keep that person in mind then we're gonna think about somebody who is an awful manager worse we've ever experienced and then think about somebody in the middle it's like they were okay they were average i then wanna say to you what let's take two of those people let's take the exceptional manager and the awful manager the exceptional manager what it was it that they did that made them exceptional and effective as a manager and things will start to come up by or they could communicate really well okay cool let's talk about dig into that how do they communicate and what way they communicate what made it so great was it they were empathetic was it they were direct was it that they were adaptable in their communication talk about it to death in terms of what that communication looked like and why it was effective then go to the person that was awful and go what did this person do in terms of communication that was so ineffective or indeed might have been effective effective but what did they do differently so then you can kinda see will our view of a great manager as somebody who is empathetic and transparent in their communication or idea of a terrible manager somebody who is overly direct and but empathetic in their communication well i now know that in my business for my ex perspective what i need the job to do for one and the type of person i wanna do it and looking for somebody who communicates openly and is empathetic and i'm not looking for somebody to who's the opposite of that that's kind of your first assessment criteria for your job that you're gonna advertise then you go through each one like okay finance what made this person particularly productive managing invoicing a blah lot and you go through that until you've basically got a list of what your ideal will look like and you're gonna get that more nuance when you're bring in the average person so you're gonna say this person was average at people management so what didn't they do that the amazing person did are they great what they just weren't very hands on they weren't very available they weren't very approachable whatever it is to get really nuanced once you then got this list of what we call competencies you can then create a recruitment process it's gonna assess these competencies and help you find the right person and that is the real kind of rough bones of a job analysis in terms of figuring out what the job is and a type of person you want to do it and then you design a recruitment strategy that's gonna our process it's gonna select the perfect person for that job whether that be your interview or work test or e you or whatever is that makes a life sense so basically it's rather than writing the job description of putting it up on our website and then see what happens when when people answer it you're essentially imagining what the perfect candidate would be writing an interview for that perfect candidate hoping they'd score ten out of ten and everything and then then that you've got this idea so if you got someone who's scored ninety five percent you're like well they're close enough that's good but you're actually properly measuring them as his eye exactly so say you included a role play in the recruitment process to do to manage a difficult conversation because you need somebody who communicate with empathy and you have one candidate who just didn't quite do it hit those behavior indicates in terms of empathy that you were hoping for so in in terms of being open being approached or being calm talking clearly holding silence for people to respond all those behavioral indicators that you'd say this looks like empathetic communication but that kinda scores ten out of turn on every other competency there's gonna be plenty of leaders that will go oh we can train him in that we can improve that he's so good at everything else but when you give back to your job and analysis you're like no this is the core thing of the job this is the thing that we said that we needed and the behaviors is candidate showing the behaviors that we said is what an awful the worst case star i would show then it's a non negotiable that that candidate is not suitable for that role and that's really hard to do when somebody is so capable in so many other areas particularly more commercial areas but the reality is you've spent the time ob accessing over what this job needs to do and the type of person that would do it well that you have to follow the data and the data is telling that person is not right fragile excellent magic i love it i love it okay so that's the end of the world week kurt says i'll be your questions the end we've got another one next week obviously next tuesday we've also got a new truth or lie if you've got a question you'd like me to put till then you just check the show there's a way to get in touch any other business before we let these good people go about their day tune on thursday we have another great expert interview for you on hybrid work we're gonna get the bottom bit out at me we are and if you've listened to any new podcast podcasts or episodes on hybrid work before you be going oh cool yeah okay let's learn how to do it this is not like that this is very different you'll be you'll be surprised i don't spoil surprise june and thursday we'll speak to that in the meantime do the normal things please subscribe like send us love letters there was a review that be where you be nice you absolutely who send us a poem oh i was very much for that yeah send us a poem yeah thank you wanna make it really then i would very much enjoy that you so we will see you on thursday bye bye bye bye

hello and welcome to truth lies and work the award winning podcast where behavioral science meets the workplace culture my name is leanne i'm a charter occupational psychologist my name is a i'm a business owner and we are here to help you simplify the science of work as always we are brought to you by the wonderful people at the hopes hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals will have a quick word from them before we dive today's episode yes we'll see in a second hope hubspot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers and here's a perfect example leigh your term moo house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive nine hundred page website even the tiniest updates to thirty minutes to publish push breeze which is hubspot collection of ai tools help them write and optimize their content in just a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more time on their site if you're ready for impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com welcome back we have a very special episode for you today is isabelle barr friend of the show the incredible professional behind the financial terms of working at brand her award winning book the future proof career is out in pay back as of this month yeah isabelle not only is a fabulous podcast we've learned a lot of lessons from isabelle she's famous for being part of the f ftc she's done lots of fancy jobs in in the f that's a financial times anyone does know what the f fta of you know f fta is she's also just a really really nice person and really honest i sat down with her and i talked about a book and i the things which i suppose might not always people might always wanna ask like for example why did you write another the bush business book does the world need the book on work so let's go and join isabelle barr with a i'll i'll the interview on this one i did so we are joined here with the incredible isabel barr friend of the show she's been on before but we've never had a full episode with her so i'm delighted to to introduce her as she is the host that is of working at podcast she's gotten an accompanying working newsletter she's the former of business editor an end of the independent on sunday journeys for the financial times editorial for financial times women in business forum author of a brand new book called the future proof court why am i introducing you you you introduce yourself that who you are what you do and what your famous for you bell so i'm isabel i am the host of the f t's working at podcast about the workplace management leadership i write the working at newsletter which goes out to f subscribers every wednesday and my book the future proof career how to thrive at any stage is coming out in april well like that is when i opened it up i realized is split nicely into two sections one for managers and one for people who are employees or potentially want to become managers i thought that was really smart but i was listening and going old or does that apply to me yes it will there are thousands of books on work why did you feel the world needed another one i really did hesitate before i signed the book deal because my desk is so full of books about work and management and leadership and i thought what can i add to it but i suppose what i am trying to do is write a book for people who are probably not the natural audience for a lot of those leadership and management books it's firmly aimed at people who want to get on at work and enjoy it but as a part of a fuller life you know you may not want to be the ceo but your job is important to you and you want meaning but you just want to learn how to get on with other people get a pay rise thrive it's a book about work for for or for mortals really for ordinary people yeah i wrote it for myself because i've made so many errors in my career and i just thought where am i gonna put some of this i hesitate to call it wisdom but life experience i suppose and hosting the podcast cost i come into contact with so many amazing people and some of their words are in the book and some of my experiences are in the book so it's a kind of it's a mix of everything it's a kind of everything i've learned about work is there anything that sticks out to you as perhaps an area you did make but in retrospect was quite mh quite a big learning i guess my biggest one is i have a lot of regrets around the fact that when my kids were small i took a step back with my career or rather i didn't put myself forward for promotion or management jobs now i can sort be slightly kind to myself and say culturally at at that time at the start of this century it was much harder for women who wants to work part time to have senior corporate jobs and i i did have a terrible experience where i was essentially you know removed from a job because i was part time not because i was bad at and that really scarred me but it did it took me a long time to step back up i thought i wouldn't have enough bandwidth for my children and for work and i regret then now because i think you know we can do everything we don't have to we don't have to be perfect in everything we do and i i think i was tripped up by partly my perfectionism and and partly by the cultural you know atmosphere of the day but i think that's changed now a lot of women now are able to work flexibly and you know fit work around family and care commitments and other commitments and not just women people man too so i hope i wouldn't have made the same mistake no but i don't know i mean we we get you carry a lot of guilt as a mother when your kids are small particularly so i really don't know and also you know i was able to pick my kids up from school two or three days a week all the time there were at primary school and that's a you know in retrospect that was a huge privilege you mentioned something in the book which made chuckle and it was around this idea of the tate of the world where white males are kind of feeling marginalized now obviously all similarity aside it is a silly problem but it's still a problem so as someone is enlightened as yourself and someone who's seen like in your book you do talk about these stories of where workplace wasn't very friendly to women back in the day how do you as a manager help these people help these white males who are fully marginalized to get over themselves i think this is a huge problem and i think it's gonna be the one of the most pressing issues in workplaces and i'm not sure if of saying get over yourselves is would be the way i would frame it because i think better way to frame it is to say when we talk about inclusion that means everybody and i think there have been some groups in workplaces i mean white men particularly but not just who have not felt included by inclusion they feel that everyone else is getting special treatment that may not be true but that's how they feel and actually how we feel is very separate from what's actually going on and it's very important so i'm quite keen on this idea it's a kind of new jargon where but of belonging which sort of moves on from inclusion somewhat and says everyone should be able to belong but i think we still have some way to go in terms of the kind of conversations we have in workplaces and how people feel about workplaces so you know i do not want d to go backwards but i do want us to sort of look forward and say actually some of the people have not been part of these comp you know there's been a sort of error of if you're not with us you're against us and people have felt marginalized and silenced and i think we're still in workplaces generally navigating how to how to bring everyone into the conversation i do think things have moved in the last couple of years but there's a lot more to go but i think the if you look at these polls that show that young people you know young women tend to be very left leaning and very liberal and young men not you know there's a massive gulf the ftc had a chart that went viral a couple of weeks ago showing the gulf between attitude between young men and young women and there there is this kind of risk of polarization with young men becoming more and more you know reactionary some people are at white miso you know they that the andrew tate of this world have a huge influence so the impact of online culture has not really been taken account in the workplace yet and i really hope that something that people are gonna be thinking about in the next few years otherwise we might end up with polarized workplaces and that's just not something that's gonna be helpful for anyone thanks to social media there does seem to be almost like it's got to be a so what's going on here there is this massive into generational shift i think and and that's as you say driven a lot by social media and tiktok particularly i think it's part of the same thing as the polarization of men and women for example how do we not have generational polarization and that's another part of the i guess the management peace but you know we can't fix society's problems in workplaces but we can make workplaces places where everyone feels that they have a role and they belong it might not be where your best friends are you may not get on with your colleagues but i suppose what i have always tried to do is suggest ways in which we can make things better i mean it might not be a fantastic solution but you know any improvement is an improvement so for those of us who are in gen x we can try to understand where gen z are coming from and that might involve looking at tiktok as i do quite a lot and it might also involve as i write in the book not putting a full stop on the end of your text and emails which they find hostile and from a gen z point of view it might be you know acknowledging there are different ways to do things or maybe learning to listen to people's experiences but that's not a gen z thing that's a youth thing you know it's always been the same in workplaces i think what has shifted is that when you and i were probably first in at workplace we expected not to be heard you know it was sort of do your job and just be grateful for it and actually it's quite good that i think it's great that gen are not grateful for their jobs because there's a lot of soul searching that hasn't been done in workplaces that really should be so actually it's keeping us on our toes and saying how can we improve i'm not saying they're right all the time because there are some aspects of you know youth culture that i think we're always gonna be problematic for older people it's not a it's not a right now this men thing i find the the speed with which some younger people expect their careers to progress quite alarming because actually there's no substitute for experience and you need to get you know i've heard of lots of instances of people with trainees who are asking for better tasks or more meaningful work without having mastered the basics so i think internet culture you know has given everyone this expectation that we can all have purposeful work that makes that fulfill us but actually sometimes there is grunt work that still needs to be done we have to lay the foundations for our careers and i suppose what i hope doesn't get lost is the need to work hard and be good at our jobs i don't i i i don't think that will end but i think there are some you know part of the inter generational pressure is a pressure from below for rapid acceleration and that's not the fault of gen people in gen it's it's what they consumed their whole lives from the internet you know we're all about self optimization self actual optimization the whole the podcast culture is so heavily weighted towards being the best version of ourselves but it's actually quite a lot of pressure on everybody i think there does seem to be a little bit resentment and i i have to hold my hands up and feel a little bit of resentment myself towards the younger generations like i mh and i i started out in management in the pulp sector allied back in the day seventy hour work weeks were of common i signed the opt out of the working time director whenever that came in was in ninety eight ninety nine yeah so i can see the argument of like why should the younger younger generation had it easy they should have bagel stations they should be have massages and still expect the same results for half as much work i think i would question whether they're expecting to do half as much work especially when you go you know when you got younger people going into what called greedy jobs you know the law consulting investment banking you know these are jobs that take up your whole life you don't have like work life balance so they're i think they're going in with their eyes open but i think surely it benefits all of us you know that that group of young goldman sachs trainees did a presentation a couple of years ago saying look we've had enough we're doing these seventy eight hour weeks and they actually presented to senior staff about why that needed to stop now i don't know what happened in that instance but that's an example of how maybe everyone could benefit from working a little bit less i think i'm sure everything's gonna come to a kind of equilibrium in the middle so when massive change happens you know we all go over here and then or some people go over here but actually i think it tends more towards the middle so i hope that what gen z will bring is a rec of workplaces that benefits everyone but i suppose the bottom line is if they don't like it they'll leave i think all the stats show that gen z a much less loyal than even young millennials they will job hop they don't care they will find another job so if they don't like what you're offering they'll go and actually that's quite refreshing because it means i mean it's annoying for managers but it means that the people who stay are bought into the corporate culture and you can bring them on board talk to them learn from them they can learn from you so i think there's a kind of post pandemic leveling out going a at the moment i think it can settle down so in your book you talked about spending a lot of time on tiktok and i'm guessing not learning dance moves i'm guessing just looking to see what's going on what was there anything that surprised you about their attitudes to work is a work expert such as yourself yeah i think it's a place to vent right so there's a lot you know the whole the quiet quitting lazy girl jobs all of those trends started on tiktok and that's not a surprise i think at when we were yeah when all of us were young we probably had shit jobs and shit managers the difference now is that people can go on tiktok vent about it and why not you know and some of them really funny i find it really funny and i think what i like about tiktok is that it brings a kind of humor that i think has been lacking i mean much as i love linkedin it can be quite a humorous place tiktok is you know work is part of our lives and i guess this is part of what i was trying to do in the book you know work is so so baked into our lives and yet sometimes it's over here at a distance you know we don't count it as our real life and tiktok is i think integrating real life into our sense of humor into who we are as people and even if we're gen x as i am too we can look at that and think yes that's absolutely that's really funny you know the the crappy manager gives you fifteen extra tasks at five twenty nine and know on on tiktok they'll just say that you know pick up their quote pick up their stanley cup and leave so it's kind of inspiring actually i sort of i like the attitude just pick picked on a really good point there from a managerial point of view for or from an organizational point of i remember the google used to be called the database of intentions and it was great for research and what people wanted next whereas it seems loud you've just made me think that tiktok is almost like the database of reactions and it's a great to find out what you're doing what generally we're doing wrong as managers was there anything that you any sort of recurring themes that managers should be aware of i think it is this respecting your boundaries which is where quite quitting came from you know you're not actually quitting you're just working the hours that you're paid for and not more and i think the idea that you should go the extra mile just because you should go the extra mile has been rendered redundant by the the quiet quitting team trend i mean that's passed somewhat but when you go on tiktok can you see what people think about their managers and these are generally in sort of service jobs or admin jobs office jobs sort of entry level jobs you know why you are just paid for the time you're paid for and you've talked about your time in in the pub but if you're the manager that's a slightly different thing from being the person who's being asked to do the you know pulling the pint so the grunt work as it often is on tiktok so yeah i just think what be aware that younger people have very different boundaries and we may not agree with that that light may go against all of our hard and tendencies to want to please our bosses but i think generational boss pleasing is possibly a thing of the past particularly in those kind of jobs how do managers appeal to the younger generation and get them to go the extra mile or is that just the wrong way you're looking it i think the peep i think you're right people will go the extra mile once they bought into the culture of the company so if you're inner professional you know knowledge worker type of job the kind of people that are going into those jobs do want to buy in they do want to go the extra mile but i think there is something to be said around boundary setting or as an as a thing that wasn't a thing when managers who are in their forties and fifties were young and even if you don't do anything about it just to be aware of it and actually not to exploit your workers you know but to gain their trust to communicate well to listen to them i think all of these are skills for the ages and it's not particularly generational but it will help enormously with your younger employees that you're aware of where that generation is coming from but i think you're right if people going to the law or consulting or any of these things are are gonna be prepared for long hours culture they have to be and if they don't want it they leave you use this phrase in the book which i love called the accidental manager i wanna know first what is it and secondly how would we recognize an accidental manager okay so it's not my phrase it's what it's i think the chartered management institute came up with it and it's great so an accidental manager is someone hasn't had any training to be a manager and that's a lot of people something like seventy or eighty percent managers haven't had any training so you know a lot of jobs are good at your job and you get promoted but what why does that mean you're gonna be a good manager so the sign of an accidental manager is someone who hasn't had any training has no idea about how to manage people as distinct from do the job properly and i think the the the managing of people part of it it is has often been forgotten particularly i think british the british are particularly bad at this actually and it also plays into why our productivity so low because we invest so little in management that we don't think about the impact that has on how well people work so an accidental manager is probably not a great communicator they're probably not listening to what their staff say they're probably telling rather than listening and cooperating so one an attribute of a very inexperienced or secure manager is micro is a very common thing so a micro manager doesn't trust the team and that might not be because the team aren't trustworthy or good at their jobs it's just that the manager hasn't learned how to let go hasn't yeah if you've been doing a job really well and then you get made a manager you still you've still got it in you to be wanting to control how that job is done and you just take that into your management role but that's such a counterproductive weight i mean i had some appalling man micro managers in my time and it's such a counterproductive way to work it it it destroys you because your mental health will be affected and it destroys the morale of the team because it feels like they're being you know sur all the time early in my career in the late nineties when management was actually not very much of a thing you know i had one manager who trusted me so little that when when they were off sick i had to travel to their house on the other side of london to visit them in their house and show them what i was doing i mean i kind of laugh about it now but you know the whole the whole sit you i mean you know i made a cup of tea and i took cake and stuff but that was a very strange relationship i was you know quite young i was in my twenties and my manager was much older but to invite your subordinate around to your house when you're sick to check up on them is i think something that wouldn't happen there let's put it that way when we're young in our careers and we don't have a lot of experience what is it that how do we know what is right and what's wrong i mean the internet gives a little and this was pre in i mean not pre properly pre internet but you know before the world of careers online and linkedin i had no idea none of us had any idea what else was going on in the world so if that was what my boss said was normal that was what was normal okay so just gonna take a really quick break we're back in a few seconds with more from the wonderful isabel quick announcement for all listeners yeah i've got a i've got a new toy on my i'm a little deck thing so i can make the voice jane anyway sorry i love it do it again hello lia do another one i'm but we did interrupted your podcast listening for for this we actually interrupted it to tell you about one of our new favorite podcast podcasts it's called success story it is hosted by scott d k and it is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals success story features question answer sessions and conversations on sales marketing business startups and entrepreneurship oh if you like this podcast that i think you'll love scott episode in back in december where the infamous seth golden talks about empowering employees so go listen to success stories where you get your podcasts welcome back let's rejoin the interview there's a story horrific and horrific story in your in your book about a manager in two pound coins which we won't go into here but that's another example not a manager actually just a call it just a colleague there's just another and i think you should buy the book just for that story because it is just pretty horrific but also like you say there's there's no there was nothing compare it to so honestly we were just living in a kind of vacuum and i think that's part of the goal that we don't really think about in generational people in gen x you know i'm in my fifties now people in their forties and fifties and sixties didn't grow up with the internet so we have a a world that at a very profound level is very different from the our children and even people in their late thirties so we don't think about it that often but it's it's really profound and it and it and it is part of our dna really that we grew up before the online world and that makes your outlook very profoundly different absolutely yeah it does just reminds me of we had another guest on who was talking about who was kind of in the same bracket as we are and he was saying that the difference is that there was so much more c when you're were a kid in that if you were caught on the street don't something naughty someone knew you're more or your dad yeah but i wonder if we're going back to that you know post pandemic with people working from home more people are at home a lot more you know we had that whole twenty or thirty years where a lot of women particularly were out at work all the time and the community aspect of things got a bit lost and plus the rise of the internet and now men and women are at home a lot more people get a lot more involved in their communities so i wondered if we might go back to some of that more old fashioned kind way of living i think one of the key themes that what goes through certainly in the second part of the book but i'm pretty sure in the first part as well is communication and it's a bit trick to say communication is key but you express it so perfectly and one of the things i really like about what you said was that actually listening is probably more important the most important part of of communication so water a managers getting wrong with the whole idea of listening i think listening is really hard and i'm really not like could it it myself i'm on this kind of mission partly through writing the book and talking to interesting people about listening partly through doing the podcast i think we have underestimated so profoundly the difficulty of listening it is a skill what has to be learnt and nobody been teaching it and in workplaces where we're on deadlines and it's you know you might be har so the single i've heard this over and over again the single most important thing that managers can do is give time every week to each of their reports so you talk to someone every week and this is particularly relevant in terms of mental health issues or you know people being unhappy in some respect and you can't fix it as a manager but it's a kind of early warning system and there's so much pressure on managers now you know they have to act as coaches therapists as well as occasionally discipline areas and that's a lot of pressure but if you can spend time every week with each person you who is your report it it doesn't even have to be completely work focused i mean that it might be cheesy in in your particular work context but just finding out how people are it's so important because i suppose the flip side of listening is that as someone said to me everyone wants to be heard so everyone sometimes people want to just vent they want to just talk or maybe they don't want to talk and quite often you can't do anything about it but you can listen to what they're saying and that is i hope i haven't underestimated how hard that is because when i was writing the book it was when i was at the beginning of trying to listen better and i'm still trying to listen better and i but i still really struggled so i think this is the biggest challenge in in workplaces is that the good communication and good listening is at the root of everything and yet nobody teaches it very few people talk about or they talk about it in a very tight way how how are we gonna get better at it it takes a lot of time and that's something that's in very short supply does the part you say about people about setting aside time to actually listen to people but then is also the part which i think a lot people find difficult which is setting aside within that conversation setting aside the silence required to allow someone to expand on a particular point so you say you're halfway through or three cause way through your journey of becoming a a a great listener what is it that you've developed or learned on your journey so far that others people might be able to emulate so what i find particularly hard is that i'm always looking for the point or the conclusion or the the thing that i'm going to take from whatever the person say is a sort of dis destination and i think is probably because i'm a journalist and all of our conversations are about what am i get their extract conversations what am i getting from you i might be interested in you but i'm getting something so my journey so far has been about letting go of that desire to extract meaning and when you extract meaning you then think what is the next thing that i'm going to do with this piece of information or what is the next thing i'm going to say so letting go of extraction and letting go of a pre a fixed idea of what i'm going to say next that's as far as i've got i can't say i'm brilliant tat i went on a leadership course a couple of weeks ago which was wonderful and i met some amazing people but it taught me more about my own shortcomings that that has been i think if anyone listening has the chance to go on or any sort of course and just be aware of how they're listening that's a really great start or even just you know in conversations with friends just being more aware of how you're listening and letting go of the desire to make meaning and to think of what you're going to say next that's as far as i've got so far but what you said about holding space you know that the samaritan do allowing silence that's i think incredibly hard particularly in a work context because space can be uncomfortable car i haven't got to the point where you think how do i bring silence into this at work because it just seems awkward often but i think it's something we we if we're serious about listening and if we're serious about some of the things we talked about earlier about including people whose views who we might not agree with we have to allow silence so how we fix this how do we tell the young generation that silence is actually right and it's okay to not know what to say next i think that's really hard because you're right social media is all about filling the void completely all the time twenty four seven if you want i think in workplaces we might have a really good opportunity to expand on silence because often you're grappling with quite difficult things it might be a process thing it might be a psychological thing but you know i think as managers there's a really good chance to just allow people to think you know there are some companies is it amazon or google one of the big tech companies used and possibly still does you know sends people meeting agendas in advance and then there's just a bit of silence at start of the meeting while you all think about it and i think building silence into our work might be a a brilliant thing i know it's an aspirational thing and as you say hard for younger generations to do but i suppose on the flip side of what the always on social media thing for a lot of younger people wellness and taking care of self self care is very big and part of that often is a meditation practice or a stillness practice or a gratitude practice and if you can link that kind of impulse to the workplace and say ashley we're just gonna take pause that might be that might be a way in because a lot of people do those things now and i i think they're great for for well being i'm quite bad at meditation i have tried it a few times but it's incredibly popular especially with younger cohorts and that might be the way in you have a bit in your book which i've not seen before and it says if you're a manager how do you make your manager listen to you there's a if you're listen to this you definitely go and read the book because it's a great section of that but one of the highlights of asked i think it's about being prepared actually having something at your fingertips for those unexpected moments with your manager because it's quite hard to get facetime i mean i'm talking in real life here when your someone who's quite heart you know higher in the high hierarchy and i do think there's something to be said for those unexpected moments so there's the unexpected moment you know you're making a coffee your boss is in the kitchen too that kind of moment have have something there that you can say that you're ready for preferably something that your team has done you know you don't have to sell for if that's not what you're about or just ask you know ask quite ask an ordinary question their people too and the second part of getting bosses to listen is to be quite intentional about networking which sounds really cynical but i i don't mean it in that way i mean how can you make the most of the limited time that you might have with a boss just think about how notch i guess it's about preparation so you don't panic and i've suffered from this a lot in my life you know being quite panic about talking to senior people and i think there are a lot of tricks you can learn around preparation that allow you to stop being kinda and allow you to say something that makes sense to them and even if it doesn't really make sense they might remember you although i recording a podcast this week and this is not in the book but it's interesting we were talking about people pleasing and about the wrong way to talk to people higher up the food chain in the new in terms of taking on tasks that you can't really do you haven't got the capacity for in order because you think there's gonna be some sort of reward for you further down the line so it's a sort of brown nose so that i guess that's the that's the wrong way to try to project yourself upwards i think i read in your book that there was a particular manager or number of managers who you admire and you learned a lot from so i mean can you maybe i don't know whether you can tell me who they are but i'd like to learn a bit about who taught you how to be a great manager yeah so i've heard some really great managers at the f and elsewhere i've been really lucky but i think they've been people that have been slightly ahead of me in terms of their life stage often not always but i had one particular manager called debbie har graves when i were when i had very young children and she had three children herself she had a very senior job at the f feet and she was a very good journalist but she was also showing modeling that you could have three kids and be a great journalist and be a great manager and be a really interesting funny and kind human being so for me i'm someone who likes to look up to a manager i have a probably because of my generation i have a fairly sort of old fashioned view of setting an example i guess while also being human and hu may so i think she was someone who really made a big impression on me and actually really helped to keep me in the workforce at a time when i was struggling to manage you know having it having kids and a big job on a national newspaper it's hard but she'd already done it and she modeled it brilliantly you talking your book about reverse mentoring so was that kind of was there s relationship between you and was it debbie you said oh i very much doubt it i really like reverse mentoring i think it's one of these things that's quite new and it wouldn't ever have been a thing when i was young but i love the idea of it and i can see how it's becoming much more popular i wish it had been a thing but i'm not sure i feel though i didn't have very much to offer when i was younger but that's really probably wrong and i think one of the good things about younger people now is that i think they do have quite a robust sense of self worth often and i think that's good i mean reverse mentoring started as you know young people showing managers how to use social media often and it's and it's progressed way beyond that and the best sort of reverse inventory is often younger people in workforce who come from diverse backgrounds reverse mentoring senior executives who are often although not exclusively white men and there so it's a it's a it's a bringing of life perspective as well as what you can learn in terms of the workplace or social media so it's a much richer kind of experience or it should be and i've talked to some people who've who've had really great experiences with reverse mentoring i would know i've got a amend i've got a men here at the f fta who's in her late twenties and i learn a huge amount her the way you spoke then about younger isabelle and the oh i'm not sure i've got much she she learned much from me sound very british gen x modest which doesn't sound like it was when you just said that you learned a lot from your men so what would you say to the younger isabella who's doesn't think they've got anything to offer to someone older i would say give yourself a shake you know what i mean it's like it's very difficult to throw back isn't it though because there's society and the workplace was so different yeah know it's very hard to explain now the constraints that were on younger people in the nineties and presumably before then i think it wasn't until probably i think julia h the workplace comment has made these distinctions between different eras of the office and when i am probably you started careers we were still fundamentally in the same era as the eighties and things haven't really moved on and i want and i don't think i can really project i can say oh my god you know i suppose what i did have to say was you know when you're young you can feel quite lost and i think the what would have been lovely would have been to have a much closer relationship with older colleagues and and more kind of mentoring or guiding relationship it was a bit sink swim when i started you were expected to know how to do it and if you failed you were cha whereas i like to think now there's a lot more guidance so what i would have liked when i was younger to it would been tab mentor and i mean one when i was at my very early twenties in my first jobs and i that just wasn't a thing people who are younger might feel they don't have anything to to contribute but i think they do they have so much i mean is there a message you can give to someone out there who might be feeling the same self confidence you you might might have felt back then going i don't really know i've got much to an offer but can you empower them a little bit because you're bringing a fresh perspective exact you know there are this idea of the corporate structures particularly in a corporate environment there is an element of this is how we've always done it or this is the easiest way to do it so a fresh eye whatever your age actually it's fascinating and i had an amazing experience when i first started doing the podcast i was working with an external production company who were who were coming in to the f feet where i've worked for twenty years and their ideas were so fresh and different and they were know they weren't coming from a big corporate they were coming from a startup podcast production company and they had a huge amount to teach me about working in different ways you know they used a asana and you know prop process tools in a way that i'd never seen before and i really learned a lot so when you've got someone coming into your workplace got experienced somewhere else what are the key elements of that that you can pick out for your workplace and when you got a grad trainee coming in what are the key elements of their outlook that they're bringing that you could capture for your workplace it's not just about process it's about culture and outlook but i think process is kind of under under talked about the way that people do things in different companies is a very rich source of enlightenment and innovation how do you manage people you really really dislike i really wanted to write about this because i think this is one of the great under talked about things at work i think in the rest of our lives we allow ourselves to not like people or accept that other people don't like us but somehow in workplaces there's a kind of bland and it's not really discussed unless someone is you know obnoxious but sometimes it's not that sometimes it's that your colleagues might trigger something in you that you're not even aware of and i think what i've learned from writing the book and doing the podcast and talking to psycho and others is that all of this comes from our own childhood so i suppose what i've learned is to look at what weird as individuals are bringing to that relationship where there is someone that you that really just sort of gives you the or you don't get on with what is it that you're bring who do they remind you of and it's almost always something from early childhood and even by acknowledging that it helps you to move to the next level of trying to deal with it in a kind of adult to adult way rather than reacting as a in a childish way and we see a lot of childish behavior in offices but a lot of it goes un reported obviously but we've all had experiences of where people just are behaving unbelievably and it all goes down to something really quite profound but we're probably not acknowledging so i just like to see a bit more acknowledgment of of what we're all bringing to the party rather than focusing on the people we don't like do you still think that anger is gonna be a big problem in the workplace yes huge and like half the world's democracies are going to the polls this year this is a huge year in terms of political polarization polarization in society a lot of economic pressures globally people are not happy in their wider world and in fact i just interviewed the author through book called lang which is a wonderful phrase you know a lot of people are lang they're not depressed but they are not happy they are not thriving or flourishing now don't tell me that your those people are not going in you know they're going into workplaces and bringing all of that and so when you're already in a bad place the crappy stuff that happens in workplaces is gonna set you off because the workplace is quite a boundary in place and it's sometimes okay to say to to be angry at a colleague you know you might not go too far but you know you can really lose your rag in in a workplace i think the the figures are just going up and up and i don't really know what to say to managers apart from be aware of it in your self fund in others because i don't know where this is going to end i think the external pressures on us when we when we walk through those revolving doors into our workplaces we're bringing them with us and that's gonna have a massive knock on effect on the news cycle the news is so depressing the over overwhelm the people feel from watching the news they're bringing that to work and they may be directly affected by you what's happening in ukraine what's happening in the middle east all of these things are just bubbling under and sometimes they bubble over that was the incredible isabel barr on an absolute legend her book the future career is now out in paper back if you haven't got it already go and buy it if you have got the hard back go and get the paper back as well have the whole set if you have already got the paper go and get another one give it away give it away to your a friend or wish we want commission here yeah i know all she has an audiobook book as well there you go there you go it is such a great book it as things like will ai replace replace is my toxic box and actual narcissist are full stops and emails a sign hostility how do i manage into generational tension and not get canceled she covers so many topics in this book is jam packed that are more the four day workweek micro dosing for creativity such an interesting area that is at extended opportunity habit it changing to boost productivity meaningful diversity talk honestly it's it has everything about organizational life and the future of work in there it is a best seller for a reason go and get it i will leave a link insurance so we will see you on tuesday if you haven't subscribed please consider subscribing because it does help when people find the show and also gives us little dopamine here when we see when see new subscriber and do you didn't do it we will see you on tuesday bye bye

coming up this week in work job hugging it's a workplace trend you probably haven't heard of but might already be living when staying an uni filling job feels safer than risking a move are we looking at loyalty or fear and what's it mean for leaders where isn't actually engagement and talking of risk this week harvard arthur brooks says the biggest career risk isn't actually failing it's living with regret because he never tried so why is our fear of future regret keep us playing safe and how tiny acts of courage build the confidence take bigger risks when it counts plus we have a brand new segment for you truth or lie we're putting workplace psychology claim under the microscope and trying to figure out what's right and what's just nonsense this is truth lies work the award winning podcast where behavioral science workplace culture brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name is leanne i'm a choice with patients i my name is a i'm a business owner and together we help organizations build amazing workplace culture so let's get right into this after a quick word from our beautiful very sexy sponsors very sexy hope spot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers and here's a perfect example leigh your turn moo house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive nine hundred page websites even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze which is hubspot collection of ai tools help them write and optimize their content in just a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more time on their site if you're ready for impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com okay welcome back it's leanne favorite tell reach before you do it before we do if you're noticing a little bit of a tonality or a nasal in our mh in our voices and we went back to the uk which was fabulous we love the uk for a holiday went back but like every time we got a cold so we're we're we're back on the airways with a little bit of a head cold but worst things happen let's see anyway lean talking worse things however have i mess this up any anymore more could i mess this up anymore probably but let's not dwell shall we so is the favorite time of the week it is time for the news roundup jingle sing be cute okay lee what have you seen have any word okay i'm looking new word yep okay go my new word is job hugging pop jogging job hugging job hugging is this like tree hugging kind of i guess not really well thank you for being kind yeah okay clinging on to something but day life like a koala like a koala indeed yeah i think i alluded to the intro of what this one is and i actually came across it in a linkedin paris by occupational psychology psychologist nicole williams who was fabulous she really is yeah so her pug easily you said do you remember quite questioning that whole wave of people when they were pulling back doing the bare minimum dis disengaged to protect themselves well this is a flip size so job hugging is what happens when people stay in jobs they don't love at not because they're engaged but because the world outside feels too uncertain and moving it's just a bit of a risk and i think if we honest that feels pretty real right now to everybody markets are a bit shaky job at the down and there is this kind of constant low level threat of just impending doom isn't their residency restructure residency redundancy restructure wars yeah it's making people cling to what feels safe what they know even if it isn't fulfilling and even if it is a little bit draining so nicole went on to point out this might be especially true for younger workers the generation we usually expect to be flexible and curious and mobile may now be choosing curious of progression and to be fair i think you know and nicole made this point as well we don't have any hard data on job hugging there's no kind of research out there but it does fit the pattern because whether it is quite quitting or job hugging what we're seeing is people who are just trying to feel safe in systems that don't give them much certainty and then that brings us on to to leadership really because if someone staying in your business out of fear that is not a win my friend that is not a win it might look like retention but underneath they're just a bit stuck i'm sort nicole graves some really good advice here she's started three things for leaders and hr teams to think about at one are we actually rewarding loyalty and consistency or just taking it for granted two are we acknowledging the pressure people are under emotionally and financially and three are we making job security part of the culture not just a vague line in the handbook our thoughts yeah well i suppose for the younger generation which i'm i'm gonna say younger i mean any younger than me but i'm gonna say someone who may old am really young but i would say and someone who maybe have sort of like twenty one twenty two train three they've been the job market for about six years seven years they've gone through god we've gone through covid pandemic work from home you can't work from home you should work from home jamie diamonds says you you're an idiot from working home there's so much disruption and we feel like we're on front this wars we follow with a brink of break of something really big and nasty happens to the economy to the world really so yeah i suppose that might be what you know what what humans is tony robbins said this i think you said that the two things that people want is certainty and uncertainty in their they want certainty know they're safe but uncertainty so they've got challenges mh and i think what we've got here is we've got uncertainty in terms of life work everything and then there's no uncertainty in challenges because then you're like well i can't change jobs on like get think what i'm rambling but basically i'm saying is that it's it's tough for everyone but i do feel for those guys we've been in work for six years and it's been a bit a shit for six years yeah and i think you know we've seen this before let's let's let's not forget the great resignation that came after the pandemic you know we saw lots of lovely high retention rates probably from twenty twenty twenty twenty two it's not real it's when nicole says that this is an engagement this is people just bid their time until the market picks up in and inevitably it will at some point and we'll see this max of people again and i think for any business owner listening now is really the time that you can invest in your employee experience in and employee engagement and really make a difference and potentially stop people from this job hooking and actually just making sure that they are engaged there was a study that i read fairly recently on this from some psychologists who looked at the greek financial crisis which was quite significant wasn't it and they kind of found that the ethical leadership is the key to helping people feel engaged rather than engage in job hugging so being consistent being fair being transparent i guess not taking advantage of people's insecurity right now by asking asking them to do more above and beyond than than they might have the energy or indeed the the cares for so yeah if you are looking to avoid a job hugging and foster more genuine employee engagement than leadership is gonna be huge right now so yeah there you go job hugging it might sound harmless it might sound like a really great thing for you because you got high retention rate right now oh but man do we not remember the great resignation the chaos that that brought the inflated salaries people are on let's not make the same mistakes as again yeah and just this links in nice to thursday's episode because the data shows that that people are staying in jobs and if we might go attention super but actually the react reaction actual actuality is they're hog their job and so the data is slightly flawed and that's a bit of a bit of a foreshadowing for this thursday mh coincidentally at what these him is weak well talking coincidence i saw something quite similar it's kinda similar to what you're saying it's fact there's a guy called simon s i'm sure you come across it i think you said the pursuit of why was one of his biggest books one percent one of his first books was that right pursuit i can't go on to youtube with that tripping over simon smith yes yeah he's he's everywhere he's also got a podcast called a bit of optimism and i was listening to the other the week and what aren't you last week most this is the key thing that came out of this episode with a guy called arthur most of us think the biggest risk work is failing but this arthur brooks he's a happiness expert i wanna be happiness expert he's happiness his expert in harvard university professor and he says he's actually the opposite because the biggest risk is living with regret because you never tried now this we all know this the you know the seven regrets of the dying and all that very famous article maybe like fifteen twenty years ago but this is specifically gear around work when we're looking at risk he calls it mental time travel so he says this is where how you sort imagine yourself in the future and you're cri a decision you made today so this fear of regret makes us play it safe so we may might not speak up in a meeting or might not hit a new idea or we don't go for the emotion that we think we're gonna get because our mental time travel like yeah but ones you don't get you'll be sadder by not getting it then than if you hadn't even applied and ironically this is what leads up to the real regret or real regret sorry a little later on the research shows that regret avoidance is one of the strongest drivers in human behavior but it pushes us towards caution and not growth noises from the article that i read around this by the way the book that the book is called the happiness files by arthur brooks so looks really i think you should definitely go by it now we're not saying necessarily that and neither arthur you should blow up your career or quit or whatever although interestingly arthur does he says he takes his life back down to this to the i think it says to the s which is the american way of saying you're basically just ripped everything out and starts again every ten years but he says i know i'm not sure i wanna do it i and i think that maybe that's something which if you are a harvard professor and that then you can do that you know if you just made sales director and then you go right i'm gonna go back to the sales floor and i'm gonna you know make cold calls that might not be exactly what you wanna do so the solution is instead he says to take micro risks so go to work take tiny sort of like low stakes suppose axel courage so go and say hello someone you share an idea you've had with your boss that's not fully formed asp some feedback you'd usually dodge because it might sound silly but just doing these little things sort of flexes that risk muscle and allows you to take you know many risks that if they don't pan out might be at worse slightly embarrassing but are definitely not gonna blow things up so you see how i'm kind of fixing with what you were saying then what your thoughts so farley yeah i mean it makes sense i think particularly as we get older do we get much more risk of it so if you are yeah probably forty plus in that kind of second half of your career then then yes we might be reluctant to take those risk and it actually might be a good time to do it because it's exploring those new opportunities that it really give us so much fulfillment and meaning the psychology of regret is really interesting one thing that i do remember off the top of my head is that we certainly it's truly you know that saying we don't regret the things regret the things you didn't do yeah not the things you did do yeah and the psychology kind of backs that up because it shows that we experienced more regret when we think about scenarios that we don't know how it ended or what the outcome would have been like then we imagine this whole wonderful existence that could have been the one that got away the job that we should have taken that holiday so yeah we would regret them because we really good at making making up something fabulous living something fabulous but this takes a bit more if it doesn't know so so yeah i like that approved yeah absolutely i think well what is interesting is that this arthur brooks kind of frames it as like a start up mentality so those people who start companies there are inherent risks companies huge risks in companies but the difference is that they're not they don't say i'm not gonna start because i might fail they're gonna they start because knowing that there's a risk of failure but also the success is just the prize is worth that failure and the other thing he pointed out which is really interesting me just read from me he said they called these micro nutrients of happiness and there's three enjoyment from doing something engaging satisfaction from progress and meaning from building something that matters that all fits in nice with entrepreneurs with founders that's exactly what they're doing because they're they're chart their own course there selling their own ship but i'm not sure if there's any anymore that studying in their own boots studying stunning is that of what is that a afraid don't get you say something about studying down to the s down to the studs i think it may that more like down to studs of a house but they made the studs of his boots i don't know so basically arthur other rest is very simple at work and in life the danger isn't failing it's getting to the end and wish you tried kind of similar to what you're saying there but also the opposite because if someone is job hugging then they are not willing to take the risk to go in there so maybe if you are job hold i'm being very unhappy for that's the point there we go there we go there yeah some money some money doesn't bring your happiness but apparently those three things doing something engaging satisfaction from progress and when we see what else to my notes say building something that matters that's where what you wanna be doing if you're interested a bit more and then go and check out simon podcast has a bit of optimism and go and find out arthur brooks and his book is called the happiness files lee any thoughts before move on to your article i should like to read that book and speak to arthur let we go out of you listening love to have you on the share open invitation what else do you see my love oh is there something big brewing at microsoft something going on there do you know we spoke to bill recently do you know what he's not into my calls but really few days i think give up his lodge for his cabin oh signals signals rough there yeah morning yeah could you imagine so right there's a story that that is kind of doing the rounds on socials and a couple of news outlets that start to to pick it up as well from microsoft so it comes from an original post of employee he's been with a company for seven years and the post opened with the words it's scaring me oh so what they said is is basically two senior engineers and a big project that have suddenly left another colleague there is quit is quietly asking for referrals for other jobs their own manager is booking a string of personal meetings back to back so all of it together is feeding this sense that something big is is happening under the surface now they did go on to say so some comments on this it could just be the usual what's called post vest season i'm not heard of this tour have you i know what vest is but i don't know what post vest well i i'm guessing that post vest comes after vest we're going on but what's vest vest thing i think is when you get your shares you get you yourself paid out yeah yeah i didn't know words how you go obviously see it's a point in the year when people who've earned their stock awards cash out and move on but what this employee says is that doesn't feel like the normal shuffle it feels like a bit more than that and they actually said this feels like something's brewing people are jumping ship now there's some comments underneath this is as well i'll average really just just add so much more richness so one person said the culture here at least in my team are dramatically shifted managers look like pin balls completely powerless another said that they no longer feel a sense of purpose so what your point with arthur was talking about they're just reacting to whatever the topic of the day is and despite making good money they've talked about wanting to do work that has more of an impact on the world around them while they're just helping another multi trillion dollar company squeeze out another percent of growth at the cost of their sanity wow yeah others have gone further in the comments adjustment microsoft is actually intentionally pushing out older or longer tenured employees so people over fifty five or with ten years of service by using the return to office rules or trump to performance issues or even offering packages for them to leave the acquisition is that the company prefers a workforce made up of of certain demographics in terms of age in terms of visa status as well because they can pay them less and control them more tightly so there you go well that seems to be something brewing at microsoft have you heard anything on the grapevine by i haven't now was this from a particular team like you know like linkedin or skype or getting say it's anonymous employees interesting also up the people who will put those comments underneath were they anonymous or well they was it linkedin no well it wouldn't have been anonymous no i don't think it's very brave to be able to to do that but i don't know i mean link microsoft a very very strange one because you look at their business model they've got so many different things going on none of them they seem to do particularly well i mean who who woke up recently mike i can't wait to go back to work and getting the microsoft teams call that software is horrendous skype let's just shut it down oh i'm fuming about that the number yeah they've shutdown yeah well do you think decent thing they did yeah exactly and also how hell did they mess up skype over the over the pandemic i know they i know what what what are they doing nothing i mean i'm sorry microsoft but nothing you do seems to be exceptional and the only exceptional stuff you do is when you do joint venture with someone else like the are they part of open ai or is ant car remember think they're funding one of them maybe old ai i can't remember yeah but it's just nothing seem like microsoft word it's just okay ain't it you know excel isn't just okay do you know what i've actually switched to google in the last six months really yeah your proper office go you proper office i've had my three six five subscription for for a long time canceled it not really it no no and there's so much more i just i don't know that there's anything like in the nefarious going on or we're about to see microsoft going bust or anything silly like that but it just it just feels in a in a in in a world where in a world where sounds good with you cold did it yeah in a world where bill can do anything why does he do everything a bit shit yeah but well where everyone's like building amazing things and there's some amazing stuff coming out microsoft just like yeah a bit white and a bit white rice on yeah that's my thoughts yeah fair i mean i have seen something around kind of build gates talking about the three day work week could be achieved or given ai so it might that they're about to go ai first or or make your whole departments ai led but who knows is this is just social media chatter a it's not been verified by microsoft but i do think a mood is revealing itself in terms of sentiment around these big these big companies how they treat their people how they operate in the world and the impact that they have of course culture doesn't collapse overnight but to me i just wanted whether there's just some signs that people start to lose faith and in big tech yeah could be could be only time will tell i suppose lee anything else to add or should we go to includes news roundup beautiful beautiful thank you so much right if you got by way if you got a new article you'd like an eye to to talk about or job in it yeah but you're in my case then then the links from the show notes and it could be something about you as well if it's interesting and it's from microsoft getting in touch right we'll see you have a very short break where we have the world famous weekly workplace surgery and we don't have the hot take which you've had for about the last eighteen months so i find out why just a second quick announcement for all listeners yeah i've got a i've got a new toy on my little deck thing so i can make the voice jane anyway sorry love it to again hello lia do another one but we did interrupt your podcast listening for for this we are actually interrupted it to tell you about one of our new favorite podcasts it's called success story is hosted by scott d k and it is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals success story features question answer sessions and conversations on sales marketing business startups and entrepreneurship oh if you like this podcast that i think you'll love scott's episode in back in december where the infamous seth god talks about empowering employees so go listen to success stories wherever you get your podcasts welcome back okay we've started something new this week it's called truth or lie bang on brand bang on brand and here's why we think this is a good segment psychology has become this gold mine for quick claims and you've seen on tiktok linkedin company trading days all but by psychologist and media credibility they sound smart you you know you they feel like they're definitely true and before you know it then all these little snippets that are bios psychologist are basically law and they shaped by the way we work call the way we learn the trouble is a lot of them don't actually hold up to scrutiny and often it's not that they're totally made up is that someone takes a little sliver of psychology overs it or just take an idea and push it a little bit too far lee you are a psychologist you don't do that do you well i don't but i think i think we're all guilty sometimes if ever simplifying it or just kind of clinging on to something that seems to make sense to us and there's some really famous ones that some you'd be aware of some you might not thinking styles in an auditory visual setting there's there's not really much positive data behind that yeah there's lots of years and years of stories that showing that that kind of that supported learning so i'm matching that to a person doesn't actually make a difference in how well people learn it's still a preference and it might help our engagement or concentration but it doesn't actually have a significant impact i was thought i was an order to i was thought i learned better if i listened rather them but me too me too but that's a thing it might be more of a preference and actually a a thing and then of course is myers briggs because we don't need to talk about that other than it's complete nonsense but there's still entire careers and organization being shaped by that for goodness now is why so yeah so it felt that that maybe this was our opportunity out to to put some put some things to write yeah and that's the real danger is that someone hears something on a course by some person at the big front of the room saying oh well this is the different order auditory this is the visual learning styles and then they go well that must be lost and then bring it into work and then they put it into the internal training and then it just becomes like said before law in the work it even just like it can affect like the the apps and the tools you're gonna buy for your team so this segment which going truth or lie is about putting those claims onto the microscope and asking does the evidence actually back them up so here is the first one and i'm really genuinely interested this just so you know usually what have what we usually have going on this ones what we decided on this one was that i was going to decide lia gave me selection of of of ideas and i chose one and i asked the question and i don't know what you're about to say mh so i'm gonna learn alongside you so truth lil playing white noise helps you concentrate excellent question it's the question should we me sure everyone understands what white noise is first of all yes and lots of different noise as white noise pink noise brown noise so white noise is a sound spread evenly across all the frequencies that humans can hear does sound a bit like yeah it's an ecstatic yeah pink noise is similar but heavier on the lower frequencies so maybe more like exactly water running for example might be more like pink noise and both are indeed marketed as focus boosters and it is easy to see why people believe it you see it done on youtube they've got tens of millions of views on videos with white noise spotify has whole pink noise playlist we see it in terms of a bit putting babies to sleep tiktok swearing by it it's a it's a nice story isn't it that the home is just gonna magically make our our brain perform better and but what does the research actually show well twenty twenty four is systemic review poor together thirteen different studies we like these types of studies i why we like these types of studies because they're longer channel no because it brings in more data for lots of difference so you'd have a bigger sample oh i see a bigger sample yes sample so thirty studies of children and young adults with adhd so what they found is that in that group those people who had adhd white or pink noise did help so in terms of performance on attention and memory task that improved not dramatically but reliably and a statistically significant weight which basically means more than chance right okay for people who didn't have adhd though it had the opposite effect so performance actually dropped really when listening to white noise yeah yeah so that's yeah and and what's interesting as well is this isn't i obviously this was from across thirteen studies but there's been another so there wasn't included in this that splits school children into three groups super like very focused average sub might have some trouble concentrating what they found is that with white noise the sub attentive kids improved in terms of their performance but the super attentive ones actually got worse so why so so why do you know why yeah oh do so i've tried i've tried to do in an analogy a and you know what i'm like sometimes he's hit and sometimes he's miss so let's seek so think of it like a pair of glasses mh right if your eyesight is blurry mh if you need some little help do you want of those sub sub attentive people you need some help so you're gonna put any glasses and it's gonna sharpen the image yep yeah if your vision is already fine mh but you put on somebody else's prescription of glasses it's just gonna make things worse oh yeah yeah yeah i don't need things to be sharpened yeah yeah yeah one doesn't need yeah you know so it's in the same way so noise can sharpen up an attention when it's weak but it can blur things if your focus is already strong i love it so white noise is glasses for the ear indeed i like it i like it i oh such sorry a fly maybe i went to try and smack it i smack my microphone i like white noise and i do you know what i used to have an app that would play the sounds of a coffee shop my little extra is that me was it so that was more extra that i wanted to be around people than it was to more than likely yeah more than like because actually it's if it's i don't know if you've read this out that feeds them perfectly to my next research finding is that there's there's another layer to it that in workplace or you're all indeed coffee shops if you want to kind of mass distractions then you can play white noise and actually across groups that can improve concentration so yeah so i think there's various different reasons as to why you like to be in a coffee shop but i'd imagine it's your actual version one needing the energy people to feel energized to to do your work but yeah and it can make if you're in the busy workplace it can make a space feel calm and easier to work in but that is very different from kind of a claim of super charging attention it's not so much that bold so i guess the verdict is typically it depends white pink noise can help people with adhd all those noisy environments concentrate more but if you're already focused in a quiet room then it's just like to get in the way got it so what we're saying here is that if you are good at concentrating it's not gonna help make a blind but and in fact it might make what make you worse if you are better concentrating like me then it will help does it say which in particular like pink white brown is a a particular no i couldn't come course any research it may specific claims as to which one is better so no but i think the general a lot of the research that i already seemed be beyond pink noise right but just like a slightly deeper so maybe that's just less annoying if it's a bit deeper you know didn't look at that but yeah noise noise i think the point is if you're having trouble concentrating then try it it might help if you're not having any problems concentrating then well you won't be looking for a solution really so you don't you know it's not gonna super charge you it's not gonna make you like super focused a few people i fall on twitter they they they're quite often if they they what are the kids call it locking in where they lock in on a project they'll often just choose one track from an album and just play it over and over and over again for two days oh that sounds painful yeah sounds like a torture chamber doesn't yeah yeah depends which which depends which album is i suppose if there's something from rumors then perhaps that might be quite pleasant but then you'd end hating it but yeah anyway anyway right there we go if you have a truth or lie that you'd like leanne to investigate then we've got leanne anne investigation i like that then then get in touch with us you you know how to just check out the shannon it is now time for our world famous weekly workplace surgery we were i put your questions to tu anne that we have three this week as is our what basically we always have we always have three i can't find them now yes i can i found them okay so question number one great boss great team but the work is on fulfilling this is so i i didn't read the notes particularly honest production and so i just banged in like my my notes from my my bit but i realized this is actually scratch on point so highly lia anne i've been in my current role for a year the team is friendly my manager is supportive and there's nothing toxic about the environment but the work just doesn't feel meaningful it's hard to get projects over the line there's too much red tape too many stakeholders constant pushback i've spent a decade in big pharma so i'm used to some bureaucracy but this feels like a s and i'm starting to feel stuck what would you do when the people are great but the role itself just isn't giving you anything back lee in this situation it's important to know that this is not a long term solution for you but it is a good short term solution while you figuring out what is gonna be meaningful and fulfilling work to you because you're not an environment that is toxic you're know an environment is negatively impacting your human experience you're just an environment where you're not gaining any energy from it so over time that will lead to what is called moral burnout which is when our values and our beliefs and our ambitions are misaligned with the work that they were in and over time that will cause the same symptoms as burnout attachment from work cy exhaustion now it's a really good time to understand what is meaningful to you said you've been in big pharma for decade you're used to the bureaucracy but this also sounds like a bit a bit more difficult in this organization now is a time to reflect on what meaningful work means to you and a really big aspect of that is gonna be understanding what your values are what you stand by there's a really good in fact i can leave a link in ass sure notes like a generic type of like values list that basically has a value defines it and there's about forty of them you probably need to rate core values that you wanna live by and it's just going through them in and identifying the things that feel important to you so it could be for example around knowledge sharing around learning it could be around relationships communication it could be about feeling that you're having a positive impact on the world and so some kind of cherish way or it could be the environment there's lots of different ones that will help you understand what's important to you and then you can can think about what type of work am i gonna do that's gonna align with that that work doesn't have to necessarily be constrained within your financially paid work it could be work or be things in your community it could be things that you do with your kids or your dog or or your partner could be within hobbies but at some point you're gonna have to address this imbalance otherwise it is gonna start to have a negative impact there's loads of self coaching things you can do the wheel of life the vitals exercise that we've talked about a lot which is values interest temperament again i can leave links to these in the share notes or get in touch and i can i can send them a little booklet clip to you but i think at this point you're really understanding what meaningful work will mean and i wouldn't think about looking for another job till you've taken that time if you can afford it in case your courage to help with that reflection it really does make a difference go back a few episodes to our our coaching simulation wasn't not a live coaching session that we did at there's some exercises there that you'll be able to pick up on but yeah the good news is you're an organization isn't toxic it isn't gonna have a detrimental impact on your mental health or your well being in the short term so use this time whilst you have a great team you have a put manager to figure out the work that you do wanna do and then move when you're ready so really good advice and i think that you if if you'd ask me to answer this i've been like oh quit your job go do something that'll travel the world but obviously that seems a bit silly and lean got a really really sort of practical way of looking at things i you said it quite quickly and i'd want to just make sure no one's gloss over this idea of finding your your your purpose outside of work and there are lots of people who do jobs that they don't really enjoy but they have hobbies or they run a group offline or or online they run you know they do something volunteering i remember when we were when we we first met through samaritan both volunteering and i know for me that was like felt worthwhile whereas the i was doing at the time didn't feel that worthwhile to me so yeah not it's a sticky plaster bottom i hope you sort it out and if you do move on let us know come back and there and follow on us because it'd be closer to hear though okay so question number two how do i get my team to care as much as i do okay now answer so i'm a young entrepreneur and i've been reflecting on why our team isn't quite hitting the mark and the more i think about it the clear becomes they just don't seem to care about the work the same way i do i'm passionate about my business short term goals long term vision all of it but the team doesn't seem to feel the same connection or energy i know i can't force passion i also don't want to run a business i'm the only one driving things forward how do you actually build that sense of ownership motivation in teams especially when you're still finding your feet as a lead i think that last one might come to it might come into play in your answer there lee what would you say i mean it's a big ask for to expect any employee to care about your business as much as you do that's not impossible but it's a big asking you need to be very intentional but how you build your environment and your culture to achieve that in fact that's one of the tag on our oblong website is it build teams that love your business as much as you do so it is possible but it takes a lot of hard work a lot of intentional a lot planning a lot of skills is a leader there's only seven things you can do to build amazing workplace culture and this question i think we're relies on three of them very heavily first of all is a reason why are you asking your people to get out of bed in the morning how are they contributing to something positive life we just had from our our listener the question before they're they're not fan that that work for filling with what what are the values that the business stands what was it trying to achieve with its customers or what changed it trying to shape and the world or problems it trying to solve and how are you communicating that to your team in a way that is inspiring that is aspirational that people connect with in a way that aligns with their value so it could be not being very clear on the values of the business you're not being very clear on what the the long term mission is of the business it might be that there's some work around that you need to have to communicate that to your team and i also bring your team into that in terms of how they wanna shape it ownership comes from having ownership over the job as well it's not just throwing equity at them and hoping for the best they need to feel ownership over the mission so that is gonna require some consultation some discussion as as you know potentially with that the second thing you can do is a role so now that you have a really good reason the people in your organization need to understand how their individual role contributes that mission delivery it's the typical you know the jfk k jan story you don't know very quickly jfk k the president is visits nasa ass a jan what he's what he does there and jan replies i'm helping to put man on the mood doesn't have a direct impact actually building the rocket but feels like he's part of an organization to something incredible that's what you need people to understand is how the individual role whether it being sales in marketing in operations in hr contributes that mission delivery and also give them again ownership on autonomy over the role that they do how and where they work what yeah what autonomy they have within that in terms of control over those things and ideally something that's called job crafting so how they can craft role for themselves within the organization that still achieves the goals that you need to but meets their their own ambitions and strengths and develop opportunities and then finally recognition make sure you're paying your people fairly make sure you've got a decent benefits package make sure that the there is transparency in the organization about how decisions are made that's called organizational justice make sure people are taking all their holidays making sure people are thanked for for doing something awesome celebrated for delivering these goals for doing something that contributes long term vision it all needs to tie together like a flowing circle or cycle of of intention that reasonable world recognition that then feeds back into the reason world recognition continues to to get stronger and stronger so they're the three things to focus on i probably massively sounded simplified at to point me like that sounds pretty easy and it is really it just requires some thought behind what it is that you're you're trying to do that as my recommendation think about your reason make that really clear how you're communicating that to your people make sure they understand how that individual roles contribute and make sure they're getting the recognition they deserve to deliver work that's ultimately making your dreams come true i'm glad you said that last thing making your dreams come true because having done a few start up myself nobody's gonna care as much as you because these are your dreams these aren't your employees dreams there might be one or two people who share your dream but that's be honest i've done a few startups ups and most the people they come in because they enjoy living they're working there they enjoy the money is a sense of excitement but they don't share the same purpose as you and nor probably should they so yes it'll be follow the anne advice yes use the reason that the recognition and the role to get everything to get you as close your boss can but don't expect people to to care as much you do because i don't think i'm not sure they you know not sure that'll happen no and and there's a danger as well that i you see this with small businesses don't in particular they have a an employee that ends up between their number two because they do care as much about the mesh but they might sometimes lack the capability you need a different the business can i wanna be careful with that as well you wanna employ the people that are gonna drive the the vision and mission the organization forward whether they care as much about you do doesn't really matter as long as they care enough it resonates enough with them and they're being treated well they're gonna further further you know the mission of the organization absolutely okay so on to question number three i promoted a brilliant employee but she's a terrible manager can i keep her nine months ago i promoted one of our strongest performers into a management role she's hardworking focused and excellent to what she does or did the problem is she's not a natural manager she's introverted she struggles to lead and despite training and support she doesn't think about the wider team the role came with a twenty five percent pay rise and understandably she's not open to stepping back down i bet she's not but i just can't justify but i can't justify the salary if i'm still the world managing everyone at least at the same time i really don't want to lose her from the business is there any way to keep a great employee who's been promoted beyond their strengths without making the situation worse for everyone lee us a tough one at night i might need to engage in some tu love hair okay go to listener said with respect this is tough love you've made a number of mistakes here that you are now paying for you promoted a brilliant employee one of your strongest performance she wasn't a strong performance performer in a management role because you said that you're the only person managing everyone if she steps down this is a fundamental error that we promote high performing individual contributors assuming that they'll be able to manage the people that currently do their role at their in because they're good at that job it doesn't work like that management management has fundamentally different skill set to that that's your first mistake to quote someone we used to know a bit annoying the second thing as well you're making some really sweeping assumptions here that have actually nonsense she's not a natural manager few people are i think if you really wanna push the research you might find twenty percent of people that might just have the natural attributes so one needs to be a good manager but even then they need to understand what those attributes are how to how to apply them and have the self awareness of how to apply them in various management situations the majority of people can be coach and trained into being a phenomenal manager and yes there are a potential of people who will never be a great manager it is possible that this person falls that category but that's a minority of people so let's give her the benefit of the doubt she's introverted what's that got to do with the price fish yeah it talked like before but i'm sorry you caught me off guard i like that i like that yes we talked about that before there is no correlation between intra version version and management effectiveness actual let it go the reason that we assume ex are better managers is because there are more of them and they're much more vocal about how amazing they are in managers the only the only slight nuance in that is their introverts can be better at managing go more effective at managing people who are much more autonomous in their roles i want to be supported in coach but not handheld through the process can be more effective as as managers in situations where people need a lot more hand holding a lot more day to day this might be the case that you have a team that is needing much more day to day hand holding rather than a team that is independent you've got an interdependent team that could be one of the the issues that you've got this person also promotion internally that comes with its own challenges in terms of gaining that that respect and that bind for the team how that was managed you say that you're giving them training and support given the fundamental misunderstandings of what management is in your question lauren i would question the quality and effectiveness of that training and supports that might need looking at maybe getting somebody external who knows about management to train and coach up that manager before you you demoted her as somebody who has been demoted in my career if you don't know listen listen back talked about a few times but i think over the summer was our biggest career disasters mistake yeah it is really hard i was retained because i was given i was given better training and support to do the job that i was promoted to do that i hadn't been given previously and it all worked out swimming i stayed with the organization for a long time and continue to to move up so i would say if you're if you don't wanna give up on this person just yet engage an external management trainer coach who can work with this person and you as a manager to make sure that you're supporting that person correctly and if you really think it is the end of the line you're just gonna have to accept if you can't keep this pay rise and even if you could a emotion is brutal to deal with even if you're supported in the best possible way through it they will probably want to leave your business so i think it's the only way to keep this employees gonna be making this making this role work get makes perfect sense and the like said is it's so if you don't have a background in hr or workplace so i don't think like lia knows a lot about your temptation is to go and find the best performer goal well they're obviously that they should be the manager and in most cases that's a double like double kick in them we can't say that word but double kick in the head because because one you promote them and then they're about bad managing two you lose the performance you get from that person so yeah it just sound like a tough a tough situation jeff bezos talks from amazon he talks about a two way door and he says he he he'll implement an idea if he can roll it back this is something you couldn't roll back if anyone anyone's missing and thinking about doing this then perhaps try do a trial of a manager ship could you could you try a manager a job or is that just as bad i mean you could i think fundamental that you need somebody in your business who is gonna help you identify the people that have management potential can be trained to be great managers in having this selection process built in rather than you just going that one and hoping it's all gonna work out for the best and the thing is as well you need this because if you don't engage in this type of external consultancy to educate you on how to do this to design a presence of how you can identify talent within your business moving forward this problem is gonna continue to happen and it's one of the most disruptive things you can do in your businesses to promote somebody into a role they're not capable of doing on just have somebody view is an ineffective manager is gonna impact performance morale retention everything in ways that you really don't really don't want it to so now is a time to educate yourself and invest in this consultancy to understand what great management looks like in your organization how to identify how to nurture how to develop it and suddenly this person is paying the price for your and incompetence a bit of a bit of a downer on on this one i think it was just those is a bit tough love it was a bit of tough love but there's thing as you can do but the question the question in terms of of kind of is there anything i can do without making this situation worse for everyone the thing you can do is not engaged from external consultancy to to educate yourself on on what management is because it's gonna make it worse because you're gonna do it again and again and again and again so in terms of yet this this person it's unfortunate maybe there's a way to pull it back through the ways that i said but yeah the only thing you can do to make it boris is not learned from this okay so is that tough love if you want a little bit of tough love from lia you have a question a problem something about your workplace that you wants some advice on then the links are in the show notes of how to get in touch send over we would love to you your your question anonymously is the default but we're very happy to to shout you out if you if you want to be and if you're from microsoft you've got a question yeah we'd love to we'd love to hear about that and if you have a you have a psychology thoughts think what am i trying to say i don't theory that you think is true for our truth in life segments so that you've heard to go is that true like send it in yeah that we'll do some research yeah absolutely so i think that's all for now leanne is there anything else to add no join us again on thursday we'll be back with another expert guest interview we've got some cork coming up for you on the run up to christmas some really really cool people coming on the show we're back next tuesday with this week we can work if you wanna wanna connect go over to linkedin that's where i tend to hang out a sa surf from sk there sometimes times time sal sounds cool yeah yeah yeah bad it really subscribe love your review oh man all that good stuff alright we'll be speak to you next week and hopefully we we'll fix we'll fix our cold by then we don't have a lot like lemon juice whiskey and all the stuff that this supposed have for cold maybe make listen prefer our boys a little bit more friendly maybe okay right we'll see you next week bye bye

picture this you're in your mid twenties you're walking into a detroit manufacturing plan for your first day as head of labor relations your job involves firing at least one person every single week and you discover that you are very very different person to the person who did this job before there's was about a thousand ua workers and every week about an average five people got fired for eps absentee or performance or fill in the blank you know related issues and i didn't know getting into that space one i was the first woman to ever occupy that role and two most importantly i was the first one to not carry a gun that's amy bok chief people officer at kelly services and yes you heard that right everyone before her in that role carried a firearm to work instead i had to rely on armed security frequently to walk me to my car because there were individuals who were very disappointed with my decisions today amy giving us one of the most honest interviews we've ever had and what it really takes to lead people the right way amy tells a story at a story from her thirty year career in hr including how her then boss reacted to a heartbreaking miscarriage by a naked ceo stood on a table and how amy dealt with a literally crappy situation in a work toilet as well as plenty of practical advice for leaders and business owners just like you these are the confessions most c suite executives would never dare to share publicly but amy is not like most c suite executives hello and welcome to truth lies and work the award podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name is leanne i'm a church occupational psychologist my name is a i'm a business owner and we are here to help you simplify the science of work so to today we're getting something rare we're getting brutal honesty from the c suite amy bog has spent thirty years in hr rising from those terrifying days in the detroit factories to becoming chief people officer over a five billion dollar global workforce solutions company anthony and unlike most executives who give you polish talking points aim is about to share the messy reality including investigations and phantom pup naked barbie and compromising positions and the moment of mental told that her team couldn't stunned her so if you're a leader who's ever worried about getting it wrong or you're a small business owner wondering how to build culture without endless resources aim confessions are about to make you feel a lot less alone after this quick break we'll hear how a devastating personal loss changed amy's in higher leadership philosophy and why she was a first person in role who didn't need armed protection hubspot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers and here's a perfect example leigh your term moo house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive nine hundred page website even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze which is hubspot collection of ai tools help them write and optimize their content in just fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more time on their site if you're ready for impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com my name is amy bok i am privileged to serve as kelly services chief people officer here in the united states and kelly services is a global workforce solutions provider headquartered here in troy that connects talented people with companies and needs of skills it was founded in founded seventy nine years ago next month and we're roughly a five billion dollar organization when we we're the pioneers of the staffing business i wanna kick things off almost thirty years in hr is the was of a point where like an inflection point in your career or anything that stood out was like yeah things started to change here you know i unlike a lot of professional human resources people i started my career in the the manufacturing spaces in the labor relations and in the nineties right i was a young suburban sort of you know middle class white young woman working in an inner city detroit plant and i was join the labor relations which meant every every week on mondays and thursdays we determination hearing there's was about a thousand ua workers and every week on an average five people got fired for absentee or performance or fill in the blank you know related issues and it was my responsibility to to to fair out those decisions should we give the person a second chance should we keep the termination and i didn't know getting into that space one i was the first woman to ever occupy that role and two most importantly i was the first one to not carry a gun i didn't have us i didn't have i didn't have a permit to carry the gun and instead i had to rely on armed security frequently to walk me to my car because there were individuals who were very disappointed with my decisions and even the union would say hey amy i'm a little worried about that but what what it taught me and in sort of in those moments you know it taught me about humanity about connection you know there was a moment where i was working with a plant manager and and and that and actually the next plant which is the louisville kentucky plant where i learned a lot about the relationships and even though we could be in these contentious and sometimes adversary relationship we could care about the other we could demonstrate and care and connect and we started to do things outside of the room and so what what i learned was you know that that connection and that my my husband joking calls at the meeting before the meeting to plan the meeting which i'm fine it's funny but also true i learned that we didn't go into any of those conversations before pre agreeing how we were gonna see it play out and it was almost like we went in and we just sort of got into role and they argued and i argued and and then we negotiated it and then we settled but it was already already done because we were we were working through those outside of the room and that that connection that relationship that caring an investment has has carried me through my career i spent about a dozen years in manufacturing in that labor in that labor facing role both as you know first of the labor lead but then the hr lead for these large manufacturing plants and i remember i had a mentor at the time we said after about ten years it's you know working in labor can start to change your personality and it did i thought it starting to my personality i'm like i better get out of this otherwise i'm never gonna trust another human being again i have a note down here that there was a particular point that kinda changed the career to trajectory for you is that something you feel like you could talk to talk about i would love to and i'd love to share the advice that that may have hit me hard but was really great advice in nineteen ninety eight a lifetime ago after the heartbreaking loss of a pregnancy i'd been twenty two weeks pregnant and really looking for to welcome our first child and i found out that wasn't gonna be possible and i took a little bit of time off work and i came back to the office back to the plant and this is when i still that detroit plant and the plant manager at the time sat me down and he said i want you to know in in my career was much older than i he said i don't measure people by how they behave when they get what they want i measure them by how they behave when they don't get what they want and i gotta tell you that was like a gut punch at the time you know i i get that in other spaces but i didn't get that there and then i reflected that he was he was he was ref framing resilience he was ref framing grief and repair and recovery not as tough but also just had how to show up and and in the midst of loss and deep challenges and that experience shaped my leadership style both in terms of how i help you know my peers or you know those that work for me reshaping when things don't go the way they want it work but it also helps me to lean in in a more intimate and personal you know humans centered way when things are not going well for them outside of work and it's something i i invite your listeners to consider which is don't be afraid of having a hard conversation don't be afraid of looking someone in the eye that you know is going through a really challenging moment and sit in those in that spear in that same space with them and sitting with their humanity and the the the connection and the care that gets cultivated in those moments are priceless so you know doors and windows right so the door had closed but a window it opened the next conversation i had with him a week or two later was that there was a promotional opportunity for me to be considered for out of state i was too young and too and inexperienced for the opportunity but did they want did you want me to put did he want to put my name in the hat for the opportunity and i said absolutely and i went home and spoke to my husband and like how feel but moving and of course i would have much rather bed than pregnant but that just wasn't an option available and so we went all lynn and within six weeks we had sold house and we had moved out of state and i really feel like in some cases things you know things don't go the way you want but there's something else on the other side that may never fill that space but it absolutely is a gift of itself amy moved and started a new life but imagine your new boss told you very early on that your new team didn't actually like you very much most executives would never admit that this happened to them but amy not only admits it she says it's the best thing that ever happened to her career but before we hear that story let's hear what she thinks might be one of the main charges of rising up the ranks to the c suite so quickly two thoughts came to my mind i'd love to share both the first one is my ceo you know peter quickly said you know the the the the high higher are you rising the organization so if it's your for founder or led or you know sort of part of a larger group you you more and more gets filtered to you that meaning less and less truth gets spoken to you and that you have to look for the truth tellers more intentionally and you have to you have to welcome truth and and my practice for doing that is when i'm with my team is i always ask them when we're we're brainstorming ideas and i'm worried that they're just saying yes to me because they're they're that that we may not be having a full some you know sort of conversation about something as i invite them to tell me three reasons why that might fail let's talk about it like let's just invite three reasons why this is a bad idea i think it's a really great practice because it invites it's a very specific invitation to plan ahead for why why something might not work and then the other area i was thinking about is this i this myth that leaders people are born into being leaders and and that there's a certain prototype or personality type whether or not you do strike finder or desk or film you know you know myers briggs and i don't think that's true you know i do believe that our practice or habits you know our willingness to to be vulnerable sit and discomfort of you know receiving feedback having difficult conversations if there's concerns around somebody's performance makes us good leaders i certainly i certainly certainly not the person i was thirty years ago through a whole lot of practice self reflection and really good guidance from mentors and teammates were willing to say the hard thing to me so what did amy me thirty years ago do that she doesn't do today i remember distinctly a moment like two thousand six two thousand seven i'd moved out of the manufacturing environment and into a more professional it was with the utility but my with our local utility company but my moral was more of a professional corporate role and the pace i was moving and the decision making i was moving was more akin to that of the the manufacturing floor where i made probably a hundred decisions a day ninety of them were good five are questionable but the pace i was moving was unfamiliar to the team that was working for me and they didn't quite frankly my my my leader sat me down and god bless her she i followed her i followed her for a long time and still consider a a trusted adviser because she sat me down and she said amy i i tell you the pace that you're moving and the way that you're engaging your team they respect you they know you're smart they know you're capable but they don't like you and and they don't wanna work for you i'm like oh like a another gut punch but so grateful for her because all that all of what i was telling you before about slowing down investing the relationships demonstrating the care it's because i got it wrong not because i knew i how to do it right and she was willing to sit me down and say you're moving too fast you're talking too fast you mean i physically moving too fast like just the pace in which i was moving my body through the through the team space was was unsettling for the team and it was really important for me to learn how to match energy to invest in the care of people to learn about them as humans and that shifted a lot for me how important is it that your team likes she as a person i yeah if maybe a duo card i wouldn't use the like maybe it's the respect maybe it's the maybe it's the admire we're probably more than light right because it is respect admire appreciate feel seen and heard by and i should probably use those but i think they're vital skills and in the more and more in which technology disrupts how work gets done core human skills like empathy intellectual curiosity compassion i believe are going to become even more vital than they are today amy learned that connection beats command that's slowing down beats speed and here's where she drops another bombshell confession she actually calls her team on sunday sometimes in the three hundred and eighty interviews we've done on this podcast she's a first lady to actually admit this reality let's hear some more confessions after this short break quick announcement for all listeners yeah i've got a i've got a new toy on my i'm little deck thing so i can make the voice chain anyway so i love it too again hello lia do another one but we didn't interrupt your podcast listening for for this we actually interrupted it to tell you about one of our new favorite podcast podcasts it's called success story is hosted by scott d k and it is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals success story features question answer sessions and conversations on sales marketing business startups and entrepreneurship oh and if you like this podcast that i think you'll love scott's episode in back in december where the infamous seth gold talks about empowering employees so go listen to success stories where you get your podcasts welcome back let's hear amy's thoughts on how to build a culture when money is tight her surprisingly honest take on life balance and what she really thinks about the different generations in the workplace so let's get down to the businesses where you know it's really tough to keeping business maybe they've got twenty five people they go i'd love to give out all these perks like flex working work from home you know let's make let's make it the best workplace we can be particularly for the gen ads and millennials who demand this but financially i'm struggling here is there anything they can do years ago i took an improv class because i was terrible about speaking in public and elle when i when i tell you that story it's because i learned and improv training the first thing they i teach you is when you're when you're when when you're doing improv you can't reject anything you have to yes and and so that's become my mantra life yes and so when you tell me yes we have financial challenges we have we can't make payroll we're struggling to and also how do we care for people and so for me it's not a binary and this idea that how do you make both things be true how do you negotiate the the messy middle of that challenge of saying we have financial challenges and also i know you are so let's let's talk about that and negotiate what that might look like and each organization is gonna have different requirements it might be the the you know the physical office space and how how present people have to be to care for clients in person versus you know what can be done after children go to bed and can get picked up in the evenings and the ability to negotiate that what i found if i take it all the way back to the beginning it's hiring try taking the time to hire and setting expectations and understanding who the person is right because you need a somebody who has the ability to flex with you right because sometimes i'm be gonna need you to to to pull a late night or you know yesterday i was working on a project and i saw one of my teammates was online i'm like any chance i can call you if i promise to stay off camera and and we worked something out on a sunday which i and i said i don't try to do this very often but on sometimes the board meetings today i needed a little help with something and so saying the thing right i know this is a sacrificed to family i know we're in this challenge i need you to meet me here and then when that challenge is over when you're when you're you're thriving to take the time to celebrate as a team to recognize right letting that person know they're part of something bigger than themselves a lot of people are willing to make that sacrifice but they wanna know that they're they're in it with you one of my favorite tag i tell my team we do things with and four people not to them and so when you just think to somebody are saying you must be here at this salary you must be able to do this you must pop up the up you're doing something to them but if if you can gather them together and say this is our mission this is our this is our purpose this is what we're working towards can can we work together to set schedules to set hours to set to set you know roles you see the buy and going up so much more because they see themselves as something bigger than be part of something bigger than themselves so i don't think it's either or l i think it's a yes end i don't think in the what the three hundred and eighteen interviews have done don't think we've had something someone who's admitted that you sometimes you do have to just what you know work on a someday and sometimes you do just cheaply go do you mind if i just jump on a call with you and once people are like people was saying oh no we'd never do that and you're just you're giving us a glimpse into the real life i think absolutely yep because that same person i i don't i you know i have the privilege of not having to measure hours right i measure outcomes and so i told my team like i you know i trust you right you know the rachel bots definition of trust is one of my favorite dust definitions it's great for parents too because her definition is a confident relationship with the unknown love it right a confident relationship with the unknown so i don't have to see you right in person that back to my example like when i came into the workforce where need to be seen in order to be thought that you were doing your job you know i trust you to to know where you need to be and where you need to when you need to be it and what has to be delivered because we're outcome focused but i also know that there's you also know that at times i'm gonna need you to lean in on something and and i think that reciprocity that generosity of of of of trust earned right sometimes when people don't keep keep up the trust right if it's broken then you've gotta you've gotta negotiate a new relationship let's talk about these outcomes does that mean then that in theory and of course it would never ask never talk practical but in theory over your team could be working half as behalf as long as they're contracted to as long as they're bringing those outcomes there and consistently delivering the that outcome would you be fine with that so when you're saying that my insides are like making all sorts of weird feelings like all sorts of like no i do think there's a future like that and there's some work like that when you think about how work is negotiated and some that are gig workers or specifically outcome based teams that negotiate those for me it is less about like i i don't know that it'd would be comfortable somebody's being paid forty hours and working twenty hours and going why did what you ask me to that wouldn't make me feel great what would make me feel great is to say hey i'm able to do my core responsibility in those twenty hours and so i've picked up some i called it side hustle i picked up these side hustle that are helping this team over here or building new competencies or enriching enriching the lives of the company at large by doing these things and i've learned how to teach teach balance the team how to work with this level of efficiency and effectiveness so that we are able to progress and move up our value chain and so i think that would be more exciting for me for me when i think about that flexibility it's more about if you've got a doctor's appointment too if you need to if you need to ring off at four because you're spending time get your child's fill in the blank and then you're ringing back on after the child goes to bed fine fine and and if i need you on an occasional sunday which i promise i don't do it for very often you're willing to help me there too we've got five generations in workplace today i think is that right how we what's your thoughts then first of all on how you're seeing because you've got so many employees how are you seeing miss panning out in your real world when you've got these five generations i think about it a lot in in the spirit of not you know we're going back thirty years ago when i entered the workforce and and how did it feel to you know match the workplace i also think about it in terms of recognizing these newer generations and in particular thinking about the millennials and the gen z's in the way in which they're teaching us right so i often hear leaders hr leaders frustrated you know of labeling generations right you know that generation right so for me when i came to the workplace i remember i you know and i worked for at the time what was a a silent generation leader right so he was significantly older than i was and you know that's the just for context setting those are those born like nineteen thirty to nineteen forty five or so and i remember i got the audacity to ask him for feedback you know this is that role where i told you i took that i could took the big promotion was the head of hr for the flagship plan a thousand people in kentucky it would just recently gone union and i came back up to the headquarters to meet with the with the with the c churro at the time head of hr bob blah buckle and he said hey i'd love to get some feedback and on how you think i'm performing against expectations his exact line was you and your generation you all want feedback stuck with me because it reminded me that he was of a different he was just of a different era but i felt that level of judgment sort of sinking into my body and and and one of his peers sort of in a some different but some situation said you're getting paid every two weeks right isn't that your feedback like okay clearly i gotta i my expectations right and so so that was the way i experienced the gen are coming up with the boomers and the silent generation that was my experience thirty plus years ago and so as new generations come into the workforce so behind us right the millennials and then the gen z's and i hear some of my peers trying to first put paint a broad brush you know sort of paint paint paintbrush which i don't think is fair but i also think they're doing it in a way that den integrates the lived experiences and how much we have to learn from them right i i came into the workplace at a time where it was not okay to not be in the workplace after your leader and the expectation that you would stay until after your leader left and then these millennials they come behind and they're like hey wait actually i wanna work for an organization that's purpose driven them i wanna make sure that we have really good collaboration and by the way i care about my life outside of work and i'm i'm not willing to sacrifice that and the gen z even more right they're are teaching us native digital skills they're teaching us digital you know collaboration you know so we're my team and and you know the boomers used to say will only work happens when you're in person and the chin are like absolutely not i game with my best friend who lives you know sort of oh halfway around the world every night and we're thick thieves were so tightly bound and i just think each generation has this opportunity to teach something to the generation above just like they have the opportunity to learn from us and so i am much more comfortable talking about the work life integration in my messy life because the millennials in my life and because the gen z's and my life have given me the language for that and as all i've also demanded it of me in terms of seeing my full humanity and wanting to connect with me that way now if you're sitting there thinking this is all well and good for a fortune five hundred company but i've got twenty five people no budget will amy got you covered she's about to share exactly how to have those crucial conversations that mercy void including the fact that she still scripts and practices difficult conversations out loud plus she'll explain why not having hard conversations is actually a form of disrespect to your team angie she talks about framework called content pattern relationship that would change how you handle performance issues this is a practical stuff that works whether you have five employees or five thousand i can imagine someone perhaps sitting there going i've listening to this going i've got seventy five people i don't have an aim in my organization it's all me what aim is telling me to do now i've already got enough from my plate how am i supposed to start doing all the things you just told me i should start doing i think the first one is you're not alone right you know look around do a quick stakeholder assessment and consider who are your connectors right who are the leaders that that report to you who are who are good at staying connected to people i believe strongly but as james clear say you don't you don't rise to level of your your your your goals you you you fall to the level of your systems and you know having systems i probably just screw that up and set it completely backwards but the whole idea like your systems right like build in the routines set the practices and you go out like you might look for the next three month ago i don't time for that okay but then you ask yourself how are you staying connected with do you have do you have quarterly all team you know hands on do you have social connections do you have skip level meetings and you might look and inter at your your schedule and go i don't time for that right now maybe not that's okay i don't have time for the next thirty or sixty days but then i look out sixty ninety days and i start to build the systems and you sat set the prompts and you put it as an automatic reminder right automate as much as you can about those things so that every friday i have a i have a have a reminder on my calendar at seven thirty that says express gratitude every friday morning and it's a thirty minute block on my schedule and i go back through the week and i look at who has made an outside commitment in my week who have i seen got go above and beyond in a project or process i call them i send them a note i drop a handwritten card fill in the blank but i want i make sure that i take that time every week and then i have my regular team meetings and my my skip level meetings and my all team calls and they're just the practice i build we practice invest in your people that same way you're doing it with your clients you're doing it we are you're doing it with your your shareholders do it with your people just really quickly you said skip skip level meeting i've never heard up before oh sure it's a just a simple term if you can imagine like in an organizational structure if if if if sally reported to me and then sally has five people how often are you connecting with those five people below sally so you're probably talking to sally on a regular basis but how well are you spending time deeper in the organization and so we you talk about your seventy five people all seventy five don't report directly to you you've probably have five or seven to whom are leading those business lines or leading those those functional capabilities and but how often are you in spaces with them are you going to their team meetings are you inviting them in for you know for a you know a connected launch you know a chance to celebrate and just making sure those connections go beyond just your your inner circle you have alluded to angie specifically said a few times you've had to have some difficult conversations i'm over over your career have you got any kind like guidelines for someone who might have to have a difficult conversation with one of their employees coming up i have borne witness to some of the most extraordinarily well delivered difficult conversations and i've also born witness or delivered myself some incredible poor conversations and what i've seen in the difference is it comes down to the preparation and i'm not above saying elle that there are times i've scripted difficult conversations i've practiced them out loud i still sometimes will script a conversation if there's a you know high stakes right when when when emotions are high and there's a difference of opinion and there's high stakes is the definition of crucial conversation when i know that i'm potentially going to get dis regulated because i'm nervous going into the conversation then i'm practicing and i am also breathing the number of times i'm working with leaders and saying okay before we get on that call i want you to do some diaphragm breathing with me like we're gonna square breathe in for four hold for four out for four hold for four and i have them to do it two or three times so i can see them you know regulate there the their system better because i've seen the worst i've seen crying i've seen speed rushing through conversations i've seen poor language choices and that leaves such a scar on the individual to whom they're working with and i know i've left scars because of minus mismanagement and minus preparation that it worked really hard now to continue to have a hard conversations but to do the work to to prepare to practice and deliver it my best i think one of the biggest concerns i think with someone who's perhaps not an experienced manager or leader is that if they have these difficult conversations they're not gonna be liked is that legitimate no in fact i think it's the opposite when you don't have the hard hard conversation when you don't help a person understand why something that's doing is important i think you're demonstrating in my opinion i think people would would not necessarily have the right language for but there's a level of disrespect to the person if i i know i you know i think adam grant says i care so much about you i'm going to set this you know high expectation for you and i believe that's true in these these tough conversations i care so much about you i want you to be successful i need you to be successful i wanna sit and talk you through what i'm observing right again you on the cruise conversation principles they call filling the pool of shared meeting so ale it was you and me and i was giving you some feedback about something i'd say hey i'd us sit down and talk to for a couple minutes is now at good time i you know there's some a couple of things i've been observing and let inference right these are the facts and this is the store i'm telling myself i gotta observe these things l and here's the store i'm telling myself about those about those observations can you tell me a little bit about from your perspective what what i'm missing or what i don't understand and then you would tell me your side and i would say well here's why x is important and i need you to know that that this is really vital to our business success can we talk through how we can resolve though so we they they don't get in the way in the future whether or not it's you know still in the blank if it's technical skills or you soft skills let's talk about it i want you i need you to be successful you're a vital part of my team and i care so much about you wanna have this conversation were you using that kind of technique when you were having these what sounds frankly terrifying conversation with people where you should have been armed or you at armed guards was that the kind of conversations you were having sometimes but they you know i didn't have that language back then but sometimes it was hey this person actually has a mental health challenge or or they actually have an addiction and so i would work with the union and find them in in inpatient support you know in hospital support or we would get third party support in such a way that the person could have so humanity looked different it wasn't sometimes i would have the like hey i really care about you we really care about you or your leader really cares about you back then i didn't have the the role or the framework with the union management rate relationship feel to catch it upstream right to catch it early because i think the earlier detection you can avoid so many of these these mis alignments or misunderstandings i feel like that moment there is as defined a lot of the way that you think about how leaders turn show up so can you tell me what else do you think great leaders do that differentiates them from people who aren't so great it's a terrific question i you hear leaders all the time i'll say things like people are greatest assets and then they don't invest in them and they treat that more like lip service instead of really meaning it because what it really means when you say people are your greatest assets as one and you you treat them with honesty you treat them with integrity even when you don't know answers you give them you know you give them as much as you know and when you do know the answer you tell them as soon as it's appropriate that you tell them and you care about them in every dimension possible whether or not you have ten employees or in our case we have over five thousand i you know you you know my commitment to to my my cultural commitment to my ceo and to my team is that we're we're we're inspiring our leaders every month to make those personal connections to demonstrate care to see the humanity and each other to live into our noble purpose which is you know the nobility of work and how it changes lives but through our you know our through our daily commitment to each other i feel like there's so much that we that our listeners need to learn from both what you've learned in your experience and also the stuff that larger companies do most of our listeners have small businesses you know up to two hundred fifty people what what lessons could they learn from the larger organizations you've you've been exposed to when i think about how to scale our efforts i would start with the you know sort of the early framework you and i talked about before around practices and you know really getting clear on what your operating system what your practices are and setting them with a level of intentional so that somebody in your team is always ensuring that the type of rituals that you're looking for whether other huddle you know recognition celebrations you know business reviews that those rituals are put in place because this company operates you know sort of with those rituals at scale in terms of what we do at the very enterprise level down to what we expect you know sort of at the team based an individual level hire slowly invest early in a small business every hire is critical how you onboard the matters you know that when a person first starts right you think about these big milestone moments you when i talked about milestone in moments for me and and so in the middle of my career but that welcoming in and how you onboard to assimilate someone is vital making sure they understand mission and priorities but even more critical that you're choosing someone who can match the organization i was on a call with a with the over the girlfriend over the weekend telling me about her small business and how she she you know she was hired that the the she's the like an in the number two role the small organization and they were hiring somebody who's gonna challenge her she's not very good about sort of living within the the routines and and honoring the the requirements of an organization like so they're bringing this practice lead who's going to hold me accountable and but she touched by the fact that she admire this woman and she's really looking forward to working with her because she's gonna teach her something new and so making sure you're bringing people in who have complementary skills that you're hiring with the love of intention and and the flip side of that is if it's not working out don't wait the thing that i've learned over the thirty years is your team knows who's not carrying their weight and that frustration can den integrate their work spirit and you know they're everyone can have a season right where a really great worker has a season to which the team lifts them up and cares for them through but if you've got somebody who's not carrying their weight and they're not you know they're not doing the work to get to be able to carry the weight meaning and they're learning and growing into the role then you need to have those crucial conversations and chris conversation is one of my favorite books and they teach a they teach a a framework called content pattern relationship and over years of having to work leaders through caring for teams and exiting lower performers as i realize oftentimes leaders are coming to me at a relationship moment they're ready to say hey amy i'd like to exit sally like okay tell me tell me tell me your what the process you've been on through from here to now and they often tell me they had content conversations well i told sally that she was late three weeks ago and i told her she was late five days ago like okay well did you have a pattern conversation meaning that hey said i no you relate these three times and and this is why being on time is important and here's what happens when you're not on time and then you know working with her to figure out what it's gonna take for her to be on time and then having a relationship which conversation which is hey continue to notice pattern is persisting and we need to address this pattern because now i'm concerned about your ability to do this role and if we don't resolve that we're gonna be at risk for this not being of a sustainable relationship and and instead what i have leaders coming to me is saying i've had it i'm done with sally she's been late fifteen times and sally is not aware she doesn't know and leaders taking the time to have those pattern and relationship conversations in the right sequencing order content pattern relationship sort of sets the tone so that there there's clarity there's there's there's certainty around what could looks like and why it matters and then helping that person you know sort resolve whatever's is getting in the way of that success or self selecting out because they are aren't able to amy has a great sense of humor which i think is probably mandatory for someone who spent as long in hr as she has so before we ended the interview she wanted to share a few stories that perfectly capture the absurd reality of hr leadership she gave out three possible scenarios and asked him to guess which two had happened to amy and which one had not in my life i've had to do a lot of really challenging and investigations i'm gonna give you three investigative stories and i'm gonna ask you which two are true and which one i did not investigate so three stories i investigated two of these three stories one is a manufacturing location off shift supervisors have barbie naked barbie and compromising positions that they've left throughout the plant the second is a mysterious third shift def cater who chooses to feet from the bathroom leave their evidence on a regular basis in the manufacturing floor and the third is a group of senior leaders who go to an off offset retreat in order to bond together but and decide collectively sober that part of their bonding should be to strip themselves naked of any clothes and stand on a table two of these i investigated one i did not which one did i not investigate i wanna say the phantom shit i wanna say that's something the you that you don't come i just can't see you being bold and something like that in fact i did investigate the phantom cooper and and but the the story i did not investigate is the leadership team who you know sort of fancy themselves naked and stood on a table however i was at a dinner with a c the other night who said that she did and i was stunned and like wait what leaders got together and sober thought it would be a good idea to strip themselves naked and stand on a table as part of a a bonding experience she's was like yep i'm like did work are they bonded she said well they'll bonded over the fact they got fired so maybe it's the standing on the table that they just so specific and also just the getting up and getting down off the table has the opportunity for to expose a little more than you expected jake if probably you don't want think about that too much to dear you amy i think i've i finally i think before you go to develop i have absolutely loved time with you i i can't believe it's flown by if people want to learn more about you and i'm sure they do is there's somewhere they can go do you do anything online do your blog online or on linkedin i don't yet i have my schedule right now is just un reasonably busy but i'm looking forward to that next chapter but right now you could find man linkedin i'd love to stay connect with you you can send me linkedin messages if you have any questions or need any support on something to it is my my my privilege with you i have loved every moment of this time together that was the incredible amy boat and i think there are three key takeaways here for any business leader connection beats command aim and the hardware that moving faster and making a hundred decisions a day meant nothing if a team didn't want to work for slow down invest relationships and yes it matters if they like you to embrace the messy middle yes sometimes you work sundays no you're not comfortable with someone working twenty hours or forty hours pay it's okay to admit the complex reality instead pretending everything's perfect and number three have the conversation script it practice it breathe through it but have it not having difficult conversations isn't a kindness it's disrespectful your team knows who's not pulling their weight amy's confessions remind us that even see suite executives are learning as they go the differences is aim is brave enough to admit it find amy on linkedin she'd absolutely love to connect and remember we all deserve leaders who see our humanity even when they're having to make the hard decisions even if those decisions involve investigating make barbie this is truth some work see you next week

coming up this week in work would you sack your ceo over a secret office romance well nestle just did and it's not the affair that caused the backlash it was a secrecy so when does a relationship become a trust issue and what can business leaders learn from the fallout also this week it's been just over a thousand days since chat gb was unleashed on the world so is it killing jobs or transforming workplaces or quietly doing both guys they're still debating how to use it and in the workplace surgery are we over valuing experience and ignoring skills one hiring manager says the best candidates to keep getting overlooked and wants to know how to challenge your process at abc cvs over capability this is truth lies and work the award podcast wear behavioral science needs to workplace culture brought to you by the hopes hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name is leanne i'm a charter occupational psychologist and my name is a and i'm a business owner and together we help organizations but amazing workplace coaches so let's get right into this after a very quick word from our beautiful lovely sponsors hubspot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers and here's a perfect example leigh your turn moo house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive nine hundred page web site even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze which is hubspot collection of ai tools help them write and optimize their content in just a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more time on their site if you're ready for impossible growth like this visit dot com okay welcome back welcome back it is leanne favorite time week which we haven't done for ages seen a it's been a minute as the kids say minute yeah so it's probably been about six weeks since we don't problem work so without further ado even though that has been much a do so what we do now k jingle no we can you like what have you seen on the inter webs this week but there was one a scandal from a summer that none of us avoided it it was a cold play kids chaos my goodness if you have been living under a rock and didn't hear about that a tech ceo and his head of h of were caught mid cuddle at a cold concert and were swiftly out of a job and and a couple of marriages from one i hear but while that story made headlines for the drama what happened this week at nest lake could have actually more serious implications for leadership and workplace culture in general have you heard about this that nest they've just fired it's global ceo no i haven't unless they are famously are devoid at any kind of scandal whatsoever they're a very clean living for those of you who are under the age of forty back in the seventies and and eighties there was big scandal about nest but not about the ceo so what happened so i should've have looked at how to pronounce this lauren but f r e i x e yogurt at french lo f f i don't know i'm speaking lauren lauren we're on first name basis so yeah he was he was sacked with immediate effect because of a relationship we had with his direct subordinate which obviously created a clear conflict of interest but apparently that's not why he was sacked it was because of his failure to disclose it same time la run throughout has denied a relationship first investigation found nothing going wrong then they had a second investigation led by outside counsel and the complaints were upheld darling just understand this so this laurent was having a little bit of an affair or something with someone as in as a subordinate that yeah so many complaints through the whistleblower process right and then they they were like internally yeah no worries and then they got someone else to look at it externally actually yeah know there is a problem exactly exactly but what confuses me when i was was reading so many different thoughts about what confuses me is that laurent laurent denies the relationship throughout right so i don't know whether that's the type of relationship was or i don't know but he just denies it and so yeah he's been out nestle no severance no nothing he was being in a top job per year previously said that he spent forty years in nestle so apparently the employee involved wasn't on the executive board but reportedly benefited professionally but the rapid promotion in latin america and then with a move to the head office but apparently the official word from the board is it wasn't necessary the relationship that they took issue with it was a lack of disclosure i did not have sexual relations with that person yeah indeed and in that i'm not surprising in the wake of andy be as well that we saw at cop concert at shares did take a hit so nestle scrambled pretty quickly to to get him out and name a replacement yeah it's not the first time we've seen it obviously we saw it with andy byrne we've seen it from bp bernard loo stepping down after missing he'd sorry had but yeah after he hadn't been fully track proud about workplace relationships plural and then we also saw a steve used brooke pat mcdonald's fired find and made return his severance package after and the board for about three internal relationships not bet who his defense was well they were living it oh sick that's not gonna make it is it sorry sorry yes i'm i'm actually something was just quite quite aboard just before you go on i'm i'm sorry to interrupt you there with with obviously but i'm watching the morning show you can you suggest oh yeah i love the moisture and so now i can't look at anything without looking through the lens of the morning show you've seen it then it's very similar to what we're just talking about here and so now like everything seems in the morning show i'm just imagining steve ko playing it out sorry you were in invisible ko corral such a good show but you said that as if as if he was also been involved in some of this because you know it's just a story don't you know it's tv it's not real sorry allegedly allegedly well you heard it in first anyway what do we think is the man is the man in the room is this an issue is it is it a an imbalance of power that shouldn't be tolerated normalization is it just around the secrecy what does it say about leadership and how to hold it is accountable in twenty twenty five look i i don't know i've never been the ceo of nestle and i i know that you didn't know what i did for the first half of my life but it wasn't it wasn't being ceo of nest i don't know i mean if you have a relationship then you're supposed to go and disclose it to hr aren't that number as supposed to do and would that not be the most sensible thing to do i don't see why you wouldn't do that but then again i don't know what the internal politics are because maybe if you go do go and disclose it hr go no problem at all the door shots and they start typing on your record i don't know i don't know how that works like my mother used to say to you say to me just never lie if you get caught out just go yeah yeah it was me it was me george washington there's a whole story about george washington i think he said something like father i cannot lie was i who cut down the cherry tree now we are going back about not the cherry tree fucking cherry tree i mean that cherry tree at that age that would be about three hundred years old now i think that but he but now all geo he said no i'm gonna call it down i think that the whole point is that surely you should take you should tell the trees i don't know the internal politics of whether you disclose it or not i think this is probably a good time actually before we go back in the talk maybe brought about the psychology this to disclose our listeners that we are in a relationship in the wrong place so if you didn't have you hadn't heard that before listening and then i think it's important you should know that just in case there's a secondary external audit of our organization the podcast towers indeed indeed yeah to we felt our relationship started before we went into business together that is true that's different that is true but all of the employees here know about it yes all all both of them do both of them team supposed to i'd even add dogs know about it and then really employed no i just see them value value members of the team yeah obviously every organization is gonna have its own policy if you are business and you don't have a policy i advise you to we taught about some a surge actually before i think somebody had some issues with with personal relationships at work it depends i think you know what i think the thing is it's one thing if you are a manager in a small business and be fall in love with your colleague or your teammate i just think it's quite the other when you're the global ceo of a multi billion dollar business and the only partner you can find as happens to be your subordinate who you can do some favors for it's just i think you have to hold yourself to a higher standard at that point in terms of you know is it public company that you've got shareholders in and all thoughts in terms of governance and i just i just question why nec i would put themselves into a point where they're in a relationship and having to disclose it i just i just don't and i'm and i'm quite romantic but i just can't help but think there's a better way to go about sit actually this could be an absolute power struggle and there's lots of ego in in high powered leadership positions we know that in terms of personality we know that in terms of behavior we know by the number of man who get caught out in high powered positions because it goes to their head or somewhere else on their body so i just think that it's just so problematic because to everybody else it undermine trust in the organization in terms of how decisions are made we call that as a procedural or justice and it's a big aspect of employee engagement if you don't have procedural justice then you'll know anecdotally if you've worked in environment isn't fair and people are being treated differently you're not there very very long and of course it has massive impacts on psychological safety to be able to speak the fact that this was through whistleblower and the first investigation now nothing in the second one like oh it's so problematic i just think of you're a senior leader unless this is head over heels this is a love of my life i'm going to be with them forever just don't if the heart wants were the heart wants and if the heart really wants someone who we work there and you're the global ceo then why doesn't one of you step down now this is problematic well indeed who's stepping down oh yes exactly the first birthday was twenty million dollars a year or the person who doesn't and if it is true love then do all above board go to hr be very transparent to embarrassed it makes sure that person doesn't report into you or hate hr hands however it needs to be handled and if it doesn't work out you do break up don't fall another game with somebody else in same company that's just gonna undermine everything that you said initially you know yeah exactly and unless they do have like thousands and thousands of employees but still there are plenty more fish in the sea yeah yeah yeah pretty more kit kat in the break room is that nest very good very good yeah so so the kids are the key message here is the ceo of nestle just take a break that's the boat good it's about time you asked me what i saw yeah what you see this weekend so it as i said too but before i lose you before it's been there it's been around about a thousand days since the launch of chat now this isn't just my nerd in of actually having a big calendar and marking off the days it's just it was an article in let me have a look it was in city a m dot com that very famous use mh by a guy called henri lang lang g it sounds maybe germanic so i'm sorry henri if i got that wrong but a thousand days so he basically looked it and said right what's happened has it been the apocalypse that we thought it was i mean we'll use cha tea for funny images i know that we've done some funny things i tried to get chat gp i was talking who was told to it might be my brother i think on on what's happened i was because i've got an intolerance to eggs and i won't go into exactly how that intolerance manifests but i asked chat gb sent a picture of me and as i believe put me eating a spanish tortilla full of eggs on the toilet and let take it photo realistic and chat said no i'm afraid i can't do that i did say i can make a cartoon inversion was actually a bit more to be honest okay anyway so moving aside from that that's a that's a little overs share what have you use chat for in the last thousand days i use it to help me put the share notes together or the podcast podcasts i use it to translate journals that are in different languages i use it to give me a quick summary of something so for example i had somebody today that was like i just need like a two line explanation of the coaching program offering is a prize to to listen a bit of the chest and i had like a two hundred word just meant can you just give me this in one to two sentences and it was done and i sent off and it was it was lovely so yeah lots of things like that administrative type copy low level copy writing kind stuff yeah absolutely know i we we quite often use it for i mean i use it more than googling these days i think you do now the question is in terms of the workplace has it has it caused this sort of unemployment tsunami that everyone said it was gonna be well kind of the answer as supposed to is yes or no because first of all it has made some work a lot easier the alluded to before we can do stuff in days or minutes that would take us weeks or like whole department to do there are fancy people out there we haven't done it yet but they're front about that and create agents that hand over work to each other so you can do things like build and entire virtual marketing department i've seen people on twitter x t who who basically have created this scraping thing well they'll scrape an idea from youtube but trending idea from youtube they will then plummet into something else which would create a script and plummet into i think it's called eleven labs which will then create a voiceover over and then it will go into some stock imaging crates some back and then just spit out a tiktok ready to be uploaded and they're doing like water a minute also also i didn't know this existed but they're through a tiktok farms as you know about this tiktok farms yeah no so the places which have got like ten thousand phones with robotic arms that are basically just swiping on tiktok and what you can do is if you can pay to put your to to to have them go onto into your account and just swipe up and down and watch your videos over and over and over again to for for engagement interesting but it's not engaged mi it no of course it's nice it's cheating which is again which is welcoming coming down to the chat gp because you guess you can use it for what the stuff you were talking about there i'll your back notebook but some people are using a little bit to cheat they're trying to get their people to do get chat or gl or whatever to do their entire job which is kinda going against the poll i the employees trying to get yes i'm sorry yes okay right i'm away from engaged with farming now from tiktok finance a bit all over the place so it's questions you remember listen so the question is it eliminating jobs and is it yes right no sorry it's eliminating those jobs which are things like just data entry does eliminating those jobs or someone said go and find me a a quote that says this on the internet is eliminating amazing jobs like oh i'm just gonna go and upload something to to excel and he's to go and like enter that all day that is but we all seem to have moved up a little step because because for the majority of people that's not their whole job they're able to say to chat gp here here's some una ordered data paste it in can you put turn into an excel file for me and then ten seconds later they've got excel file up mh so they're not spending the hour putting everything to an excel file they're spending that time they can step away and go and do something else so which is really really cool late what are your thoughts so far need what do you think do you think check the ai is gonna take over all jobs no why i think i think it's i think it's a question of do i think ai is gonna take over all jobs no do i think ai will have the capabilities take over the majority of jobs yes right i think it's gonna be element of organizations choosing to be human first who's trying like human centric but i think human first might become a might become a thing i think just it it the way it is now i don't trust chap gp entirely in terms of accuracy i find mistakes hallucinations are a big thing it's being talked about now where you ask it to fact check its work and it's still wrong but it just makes things open you're absolutely right and i think it well that's why i always says to you you're absolutely right yeah sake yeah even claude today i was like you okay like i've asked you to correct these very specific things and you tell me it's done but it's not it's like you're absolutely right i'm so sorry let me do that again and then still didn't do it i like seriously honey you okay so i i don't know i just don't trust it them i certainly wouldn't trust it with any data that i'm working with in terms of organizations in terms of that collection to be able to then check it is gonna take it even longer so current capability no i don't think no and i think also what's really cool is because everyone got ai no one's got ai yeah so it's it's democrat the way that we that we can talk online and create content so it means that you either have to be very good at content or very human i think this is where is i mean it's doing things like a read there's a london biotech that raised two point eight million in funding with just two two employees and the rest of his ai very cool but then on the flip side there's a couple of people who've tried to do ai therapy and then very quietly and quickly shut it down thanks to the thanks for the backlash question so i think i think basically what what this article seems to be saying is that yes it's gonna change work look in fact let me just read the quote it says the question isn't whether ai will change work but whether you'll lead that change or follow it and i think this is the cool thing ai is brilliant to taken on the grunt work but it's even more important to be personal and even more important to be human because you'll stand up by being human agreed anyway what else have you seen my love changing the turn slightly nineteen ways to improve your life according science i have actually talked about this article before in the podcast but ages ago probably like a year maybe even eighteen months ago and i kinda thought it's a nice time to bring it back because september kind feels like a little bit of a reset doesn't it for a lot of people kids back autumn starting so yeah so i thought it'd be a nice time to to take some take some look at some ways to maybe reinvent invent how we're feeling about our lives and reframe how we're feeling about our lives and and maybe things we can do to improve our lives over the next few months according science so i've got all nineteen and i'm thinking you can just pick a number umbrella and i'll tell you what is number eight number eight yep find a garden to benefit from a garden garden or yes so this comes from an eco psychologist but you not heard that before theodore rose believe that we each have an ecological unconscious embedded within the core of our minds and when exposed the natural environment we can harvest the benefits of health sanity and contentment and the good news is you don't have trouble art to get the benefits whether it's your local park or your own back garden beautiful what was that what was his person name theodore door ro have you heard of post nominal determination yes mister rose at his name's mister rose and is ecological psychologist eco psychologist yeah yeah that he's just made that up personally if that doesn't exist what an eco psychology so i think it does what is it i think it does yeah heard about this before having like forest bathing touching grass is a kids like to say we got so much feedback didn't someone say she is horrendous when we put that clip on youtube yeah yeah and you were just taking mickey out of it but though seriously yeah anyway people hate me on youtube people hate me on youtube what so choose another number but can i choose another number cheers number fourteen number fourteen red simple pleasures oh like like you you're a simple place i am i am simple and i'm sometimes a pleasure always doubt it can often be the everyday things it brings us the most joy by red the power of mindfulness or discovering the power of mindfulness we can can reconnect with simple everyday pleasures so barney dunn who was on the site crunch podcast which is from the bp bts talked about that a lot more in terms of mindfulness we also talked about mindfulness with the fibrous doctor audrey tang she talked about it is it last christmas or the christmas yes is it that long ago think so almost two years ago yeah wow so yes anyway live nostalgia there from out no all form yeah simple what's your simple pleasure out i like making things i i bought myself a few two electric tools over the someone we're building this podcast studio book myself a little electric saw and a few things i like that i can i what i always think a simple pleasure is where you look up and you go oh my god it's t time mh something i and you're doing what you simply you know not playing computer games unnecessarily there was nothing wrong with that but yeah so my simple pleasure is that i also i also be like just sitting there and staring out into the garden we do do that sometimes it's bringing the two together you've seen number eight in number sixty yeah whatever yeah i like sitting and just looking in the garden and i like that you do what's your simple pleasure my most recent simple pleasure is do yes you've been proper boomer in really got that in into that over summer because i think it's a really good rate to if your mind because i think it because we had quite stressful some lots going on i found it quite a nice way to kinda keep my mind busy and keep it quiet without just watching rubbish on your phone can't me yeah get doom growing yeah totally me agree i love it so so listeners if you can imagine leanne anne with little little hoffman moon glass perched on the edge of her edge of her nose her hair up in a bond doing to doo corner on on an ipad that's what the ant gonna look like in thirty years time follow i now please should be got to break do you want more okay let's go for number one number one don't stress about not feeling happy this is a good one so it says we're often bombarded with surveys that announced where the happiest place deliveries or which habits we should be adopting to be happier but researchers in canada have discovered that actively pursuing happiness can lead participants to think of time as being scarce which made them unhappy they noted this finding adds depth to the growing body at work suggesting that the pursuit of happiness can ironically undermine well being letting go of that must do better at being happy goal it actually improve feelings after all yeah i think happiness can be can be a problematic metric anyway i can't you know happiness is a state it comes and goes contentment satisfaction fulfillment meaning perhaps better things to to pursue yeah totally agree that's lovely that's lovely so people wanna hear all nineteen how do they yeah i'll leave a link in the showroom and you can read it's an article from the bp bts which is very very good excellent right guys we're gonna go for a very quick break when we come back we have the hot take remember those we haven't one those for twenty years hot take and then we've got my favorite time the week which is the world famous week work by surgery up at your questions till the end did to get it right lia you lovely scene a second quick announcement for all listeners yeah i've got a i've got a new toy on my i'm a little deck thing so i can make the voice change anyway sorry love it do it again hello leanne do another one but we didn't interrupt your podcast listening for for this we actually interrupted it to tell you about one of our new favorite podcasts it's called success story it is hosted by scotch cla and it is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals success story features question answer sessions and conversations on sales marketing business startups and entrepreneurship oh and if you like this podcast that i think you'll love scott's episode in back in december where the infamous seth god talks about empowering employees so go listen to success stories wherever you get your podcast welcome back it is time for our hot take those honest expert perspectives that may make us rethink what we know about the world of work today we've got a new word go what's the you word rage bait rage bait okay now i'm acting like i don't know what it is but i'm pretty sure it's when someone makes says something like kind of provocative or sarcastic and it's designed to annoy them not to get not start like a conversation but to get a reaction yes it's poking the bear poking the bear there you go that's a much better way of it well sorry sorry vanessa i don't think vanessa coined the term rage base but she for she is here to talk about it she is yeah you you know what you probably heard of race bait because it's taught about lock particularly in terms of over the internet and we we kind of assume that it's it's an internet problem it's the headlines that that yeah make you wanna poke someone's eye out but it's also happening in offices too in meetings in messages and in day to day conversations and it's not just snowing it's cor cor because when someone uses language to provoke or be little it creates a power imbalance and people stop speaking up and trust disappears that psychological safety the word we all love and know just just isn't there and that's what today's guess vanessa y wants to challenge she has worked with thousands of leaders helping them move from we active to respected and she's noticed a pattern too many managers are confusing sharpness for strength and it's damaging teams let's meet vanessa so my hot take is rage bait so my nineteen year old son taught me this term and what rage fading means is when you do or say something that will intentionally provoke somebody and i'm seeing way too much rage bait in the workplace so let me give you a very quick example so my son if this is a really harmless example my son hates eggs and avocados so the other day i said to him aaron good morning i made you some exit avocados for breakfast okay so that's my rage bait i mean i know he hates it i'm intentionally provoking in him his eyeballs you know flew across his face up in to the upper sockets of his head the groan was large my laughter was enormous i just thought it was the funniest thing on the planet right so it those about his range bait but when you tell me that term i started seeing it in the workplace and it's a big no no because it has a big impact on culture i can give you a recent example a client of mine who's a very senior sales executive and excellent at what she does very savvy just really really good at her job started in a new organization and she was telling me that a couple of weeks in she was at a board meeting and one of the executive he he had said somebody sent to her you know you're new to the organization i'd blow off to get a fresh perspective from you tell us of your thoughts so she gave a few comments on things that she thought were going really well and things that she thought could improve and somebody said something like oh there's the new person trying to make changes that's without really understanding the context so immediately that was a bait so immediately if he felt fuck down she felt unsafe to contribute and she stayed silent for the rest of the meeting so what happens when your rate bait is psychological safety goes away and trust is diminished and so people don't feel safe to speak up and that has a huge impact on organization culture and i see it a lot and i see it a lot on executive teams right which people might find surprising that i think when people and i often wonder why you know and it could be sometimes this control sometimes you just see very dominant people sitting on an executive team you know they've been dominant their whole life they like power and control and there's nothing wrong with that as long as you don't overuse it and so they feel powerful when they be little other people quite frankly so sometimes i think it's intentional sometimes i actually don't think it's intentional i think it's lack of self awareness so i actually had a situation a couple years ago where an executive a president of a technology company who i admire respect he's a release smart guy was making some very sarcastic comments whose senior team and it had to give feedback and i said it it is not good because to your point it doesn't provide psychological safety and it shuts people down he had no idea he thought he's was being funny and sometimes it's sarcasm right people just think oh it's a good laugh no it's not a good laugh it really shuts down trust on your team and wants that trust starts to erode it's so difficult to get back isn't it it really is it really is and if you if you think about trust every relationship has a trust account right so if you think about a piggy bank right every relationship have has like this piggy bank this trust account so when you as a leader say something that's respectful you're putting a deposit in your trust account with that person when you say something that is you know when you demonstrate loyalty to that person trusting your in your a pause in your trust account when for example you are accountable to another person deposit in your trust account but when you rate rebate when you say something that another person feels to mean by what you're doing is you're making withdraw from your trust account so some people will say oh vanessa of this person you know we have a good relationship and so obviously sarcastic with them they're sarcastic with me and i say listen if your a trust account with that person has a lot of deposits right and it's full and you make once they're sarcastic to comment because you have good relationship listen it's gonna be a throw up but the relationship not gonna crumble but what you have to be very careful of is if you make too many withdraws then when you on top of that rage bait it's another withdrawal that's when the relationships starts to really crumble as you say there's there's i'm sure lots of of leaders that don't realize that they are rage bait in in this way and need it deed it showing to them right and that speaks to emotional intelligence right and emotional intelligence is one of the core competencies for leaders right what emotional intelligence means is i understand my emotions i can name them and i understand how they impact me and the people around me so in my executive coaching practice i'm actually coaching somebody who's a partner in her firm in her accounting firm and a lot went down in the pandemic so a lot of withdrawals remain from the organization of the trust account she's so angry now she has so much anger and what's happening is she's starting to get negative feedback so somebody gave her feedback on her tone and so i said to her you know what you have so much anger your tone probably is inappropriate so you gotta work on yourself first so we've got the people that are self aware the people that are very angry is there group people who just wanna be jerks you know i do feel like that's a small percentage of people i do you know i've been an executive coach for twenty years and i've probably come across two people who are just their jerks i find to be honest most people do lack self awareness i call those people who are unconscious they're completely unconscious of their behavior and how it's impacting people now when a part of my job as an executive coach is to help people develop consciousness to be super conscious of their behavior especially if you're in a leadership role because you as a leader make or break people's experience at work right so we've all had bad leaders we've all have many of us have left jobs because we had a terrible leader so you have a big responsibility as the leader because you make or break people's experience at work so what i find is when i give people feedback and say to them i'm like this leader gave feedback said your tone probably does suck and you gotta own that so let's just be accountable for it and she was mortified but she's like you know why you're right and ko is such a effective way isn't it of of helping somebody with this self reflection and building that that self awareness if people are wanting to to engage a coach as a coach how do you recommend they go about that process so i think when you engage a coach coach when you engage a coach it's very much about finding someone that's a good fit for you so when someone reaches out to me and says when vanessa i'm interested in coaching with you i always book a thirty minute meeting with him first and i say listen before you invest a penny let's talk i wanna tell you about my approach every coat has a different personality a different approach my approach is very tool based because that's what i like i'm very action oriented i set goals when i coach with people some coaches have a like a psychological or a psychology based background that's not i'm not a psychologist that's not my approach some people prefer that some people don't like it so i always say if you're looking to work with a coach book thirty minutes with them ask them what's your approach with your background with your education i would really recommend you work with someone who's a certified coach you know it took me over a year to get my certification and coaching is something that i've been coach for over fifteen years but there's a lot of people who call themselves coaches now and i've made the a mistake of hiring one or two of those people over the years who are not good coaches they don't know how to set goals they don't know how to really create transformation for you so those are some questions i was asked i would ask what's your background how do you create transformation what's your process how do you set goals those are some good questions you can ask the coach and you have to like the person too but feel like you have a good connection with them that was vanessa y i load my conversation with vanessa and i think she gave some really great tips there in terms of how to find a coach that suits you so do take note of that but in terms of other key takeaways i'll watch it out for you i think the instinct is when someone says something inflammatory to you or does this rage bait i know my first instinct is to go what how dare you what you're talking about and getting you united to defend my point that's my instinct sort of mechanism all is to get defensive or possibly you know on some of those bad days maybe shut people down but that i think is as minister point out is a bad thing to do because that's gonna shape the culture it just means then that someone might be rage bait you when you shut them down but then some that reduces this whole psychological safety talking about mh all people saying well i can't really go and tell alan anything because you would see how he's how he dealt with derek last week when derek was a bit cheeky so yeah i think that's really really important that if if you're gonna have to be carefully handle it because it what how you do something is how you do everything and with that i think if you are a leader who feels that you do have rage bait in your organization as vanessa said turn that turn that mirror back at you in case it is you're setting that turn and roll modeling that behavior because yeah it's it's very easy to unintentionally rage bay if for at stressed if with lots going on it might come through a sarcasm it could be a cutting comment it could just be shutting down some these ideas they've great for you know not great horrific example that vanessa gave but yeah if you want open openness internet accountability then you have to lead the tone that absolutely and don't forget like vanessa i said sarcasm is you can feel like sort of like someone trying to be funny but often it's just gonna mask something behind it there's something underneath sarcasm some people are just sarcastic but but but but the majority of times is there someone who's like says it's sarcastic because they haven't got the confidence command say non sarcastic so it's definitely worth taking that on board yeah so thank you vanessa vanessa you've also been very patient because we recorded them like three months ago i think before it was just before our summer our summer showed change so i did explain that she knew september it was it was a coming do check out the show you'll find ways to get in touch with vanessa and i'm sure she'd love to hear from me lily it's time for the world famous weekly by surgery where i put your questions to the lovely lia and you know by now if you that leanne is a you know i'm gonna say can say every week she's she's a she's sa just you heard at the top of the shows you don't she told you exactly she was if you're not listening that's not my problem okay question number november one of the surgery do any of these employee engagement platforms actually work or are we all just ticking boxes yes well done asking the questions that i think a lot of people have got particularly now two three years ago i was like we're on engagement survey but now everyone's was like oh i've got one it's automatic and it's ai driven hi allen anne i hi really need to stop drinking before you record through that literally at water hi adam anne and i run a small business and i genuinely care about building a good culture but i'm starting to wonder if these engagement platforms are all smoke and mirrors we've tried a couple over the years survey tools dashboards the works and honestly not much has changed the feedback comes in and then nothing no action no follow ups just a colorful report and a vague sense of we're listening oh i like that term so my question is this has anyone actually seen these tools make a difference or are they just expensive ways make hr feel that they're doing something lee what are your thoughts what an excellent question and to answer it sick has anyone actually seen these tools make a difference yes are they just expensive ways of making sure hr feel like they're doing something if it's the wrong tool yes this all comes down to the not all equal employee engagement tools are made equal they are all very different they all have different levels of of worth and value and scientific foundation so yeah and suddenly the popular the ones out there are pretty they're just not very robust so i think if you are looking for insights and this is cup comes down as well well have you lost the why if you run a small business and you're running an engagement and employee engagement survey it sounds like you've lost the why in terms of what you're doing it for the only reason to run any kind of insight survey is to provide you the data you need to act on that feedback and make changes than your business if that is not your intention and by the sounds of it it's either not your intention or it's been disconnected you're doing more harm than good running these surveys and not acting on it stop it immediately don't bother with it let it go just have conversations with your staff tell you managers to have conversations with your staff and and just go back to actually talking to people and finding out how they're thinking feeling about things if you want to have insights that will give you the information and data points that you need to make meaningful changes in your organization that can have a positive impact on the people in your business the only thing you need to think about is a scientific model that sits behind the employee engagement platform you're currently using or looking to use if you are looking at any employee engagement platform survey anything you have to ask that question to the consultant what is the scientific psychological model that sits behind this as long as that answer includes predictive model of employee engagement and it's backed up by research and they can provide you that research then cool it's great lovely if they can't tell you the model is a very famous organization who talks very openly about employee engagement even you know produces many reports and employee engagement can i find the model that sits behind their employee engagement survey can i hack can i hack did it just doesn't exist whereas something like the real world group for example has now built more of a culture server employee engagement but speaks very openly about the science and model if you use rx seven our employee engagement survey we took very openly about the science but behind it and and the model and how it all works the final thing i would say on this is that a really easy way to know if your employee engagement survey platform is bobbi ins is what it's what it's chalk out so for if it's just telling you how happy people are how much job satisfaction that they have then that's not very helpful how much discretion effort they're giving how likely they ought to advocate your business it's not very helpful because they're the outcomes of employee engagement so it's kinda like saying well i did a customer satisfaction server and i know my customers aren't happy but i don't know why you might not as what with you know what you're gonna do with that you wanna know why you wanna know what's driving job satisfaction or job dissatisfaction within your organization so you can actually do something about that so the best employee engagement service out there are gonna tell you exactly how much purpose somebody's these thing in their role meaning how clearly they are over their job responsibilities how much trust they feel they have in their job how much control what their relationships are like with their manages how resilient their feeling how your organization helps them build healthy boundaries between work and life so if you know that people are dissatisfied with their job and you've also got data to say that people are currently struggling with the their managers it's fairly easy ensures you don't need a psychologist to tell you if you're improve the relationships with your manager chances are people are gonna be more satisfied in a job if you do work with psychology psychologist we will tell you these accurate relationships and what you'd expect to see and rem measure it again in six months time long answer to say please don't write off every employee engagement platform or survey because the one that you've got with all the bells and whistles isn't very helpful take it back to why you're doing it what you wanna use the information for and then just talk to a third party somebody anybody a psychologist somebody in hr to do the research to actually find a science backed model that's gonna help you do it and if you do wanna have a little look at what a predictive mu of engagement looks like very roughly speaking head over to the hs website look at just google management standards hs and that will talk you through what we call the psycho social factors at work that can impact employee engagement and well being and i'll start to give you an understanding what actually you want to be measuring in your employee engagement survey fair fair firm brilliant okay if you want more details on the rx seven then check out these shown notes there's an email there you can talk to leanne or i about it i'm very happy to talk about that other engagement platforms are available but not as good good ones hi bob so question number two i was refused unpaid leave but then they approved it for someone else what can i do oh this sounds good last year i asked for three months unpaid to travel partly to manage my mental health after being diagnosed with adhd hr told me it wasn't possible and it even set i was running away from my problems well done on hr yeah you sound like a really good group of people there fast forward a few months and my colleague the central department similar role was granted a three month break one month paid to unpaid i feel completely dismissed like i wasn't taken seriously i've checked the hamper handbook and unpaid leave is allowed i don't wanna cause drama but doesn't feel right leah what can i do well i do have some thoughts but as this start to the very hr rooted question i thought we'd bring in the advice our friends over at the curve group regulators would have heard them before the c group is a fabulous organization that helps all sorts of businesses with their people hr and culture requirements so let's go in here from cat cooking normally leave such as sa cervical leave are at the company's discretion to approve depending on factors such as length of leave timing resource available to cover to name a few it may on the face of it feel like your request has been dismissed out of hand but there may have been other factors at play that you're not aware of the employers should have a process for dealing fairly with these types of request and normally this would involve explaining the reasons for rejecting such a request i think if you're unhappy with the way your request has been handled then we would suggest following your employer's grievance policy normally this means either raising an informal or formal written grievance which would then be heard by an independent manager so that was cat cog from the curve group not cat go as i i accidentally put on one of our linkedin post sorry about that cat late usage your thoughts i do i think i think can't give a beautiful explanation in terms of the the kind of the hr and and up first bit of advice was perfect ask why because it was last year that you asked for your leave it was under potentially very specific circumstances yes your colleague is colleague is in a similar role or same department but there's months between that request you don't know the reason for that request and and everything goes with it the situation the business is currently in the team that's currently in as cat said you know there's lots that it could be could be going on there of course yeah you went on to check the policy you could raise grievance all great advice what i would say for any business owner who is listing has had a scenario like this it's important to understand the psychology that's going on here which is why your employee is a little bit annoyed by this even if you feel that you have good reason and a lot of that comes in the why we can often feel that it's not necessary or the employee has no right to demand the reasons behind a decision being made but if you want to have an engaged culture if you wanna have an organization where your people feel valued and they want to contribute and go above and beyond this is a key aspect is often overlooked and i think we talked about it before they might haven't talked about it today procedural justice get simply explaining how decisions are made so people can see that there's transparency and fairness and equity and there's nobody being treated differently and and often there can be a perception of one fairness within an organization because of the leadership team hasn't taken the time to explain some of the reasons behind these decisions and that can also come from a good place i work with leaders who have come from a really good place by not wanting to worry their staff particularly during covid there's a lot of organizations it withheld information because i didn't wanna worry their teamed with with the chaos that was happening but that led to dis trust and everything else so why i'd say yeah cats perfect advice for for the person who were in i just wanted to add on if you are a business leader listening who's experienced this it's because this person isn't seeing or isn't feeling that they have procedural justice in the organization it might be time to start being more transparent about how these decisions are made if you've ever dealt with kids you've got them you've got niece nephews speaking as a former child of myself i can say if you if you've ever gone with two children you ice green van and bought one of them a ice cream and not the other that's the simplest version of procedural justice i think it's that i wear procedural yeah yeah that's simplest version so you've basically just done that to this person so no wonder they're a little bit na okay so question number three lee are we too focused on experience are we missing out on real talent when hiring so this person is a founder and ceo of a growing business they say i've just wrapped up a frustrating round of hiring we had several candidates with the right skills attitude and potential but they were overlooked in favor of people with more experience months later the role is still on filled the longer drags on the more convinced we're cleaning to old hiring habits that don't service anymore i see so the team here have overlooked these candidates in favor of people with more experience okay i think i understand is that what you got from that yep so experience is easy to justify but doesn't always mean someone will bring fresh ideas or fit the pace of a scale company i agree i want ability that sharp adaptable of foot forward thinking not just people who've done the job before so the question is is this is this founding team is this hiring team too focused on what candidates have done and are actually not looking at what they actually are capable of in the future yes great okay so thank you very much for listening should be fair i mean i think when i did para that in a slightly in a slightly clear clear way when you say it like that it's obvious but why might someone fall back into old habits are going well we just need to make sure that they can't that they have done this before it's a very common problem within recruitment that we have convinced ourselves that past experience past behavior is most you know important predictor of a future performance in behavior and that's not entirely wrong but it's not the most predictive adam grants book hidden potential talks all about this in the most beautiful ways and really calls out all the myths that we have in recruitment real world examples and how it's impacting organizations and a key one that he pulls out as around experience because experience doesn't really mean much if we don't dig down into what my experience is you could say say take take one of us out i'm looking for somebody with her five years experience in building a podcast i have five years experience in building a podcast you have five years experience in building podcast our experience is very different because i have five years experience guest scouting researching topics bringing in the science doing a bit of the promotion putting the kind the shareable together all that side of thing your experience is much more technical yours is in the editing and the audio processing and what else do you do i feel like you're trivial my role no really much more important than what i do i know you wait it's not it's not important it's as important but yes it's a different i can totally see it takes different skills you asked me to go out and find guests i mean i i've i've left guests hanging for months before i think and you gone out you ever go back to the rest and like no i didn't know know so so yeah i totally get what you're saying so my point is if you're not specific about the exact type of experience you want and understanding how that experience but just really knowledge skills and abilities what is what we mean when we say experience what the knowledge skills and abilities we've built during that experience that we've gained how does that predict how well i'm gonna perform in this job in the future and that should be based on a very solid job analysis and nobody does a job analysis honestly it and surprisingly because so many other areas will do that type of analysis like markers will do loads of market research before launching campaign why would you not do the same level of intros electrification to understand exact clear what campaign person is gonna work within your business deliver the outcomes you want it to it's a same processes but for some reason we're not using it for the most expensive thing we're ever gonna spend money on in our business you know what i mean really sorry it really bugs me so i think that the point is experience isn't necessarily the right metric but even when it can be useful we're not digging down enough into what actually that experience looks like what it's needed and what's gonna mean in our business you've also got a problem here in terms of that you're identifying people with the right skills that choosing potential but your your hiring team isn't this process should be very standardized you shouldn't have as a as a ceo looking at this recruitment process and and the outcomes of the assessments from the candidates a different point of view of who gets hired compared to your hr manager that shouldn't be allowed to happen because that there's some kind of bias in discrimination you should absolutely seamlessly come to the same same conclusion because there's a standardized scoring process throughout they will give you an objective this is a person that should get the first offer so there's lots of lots of issues here you're not clinging to old habits you're cling to bad habits and this requires an entire overhaul of how you recruit because as as you can see as you've said it is it leaving you with a long time to fill positions and that is expensive and annoying so yeah time for a rethink we are considering doing some kind of master class i've just i wouldn't say we're considering i thought about it for three minutes i totally lia anna lot and now potentially yeah broadcasting to get to the world but i think it'd be really interesting to do it on many mini master class on hiring because i certainly had no idea of what i was doing when i was hiring before i at you you've show me it is it is literally a tick box but a good at a good tick box of matrix the that the puts together a matrix of scores you tick them and then you score people and then at the end of it you literally go okay well this is the top ten percent this and everyone else says you know it's just a really scientific way of doing it so if you're interested that kind of thing then find something linkedin in or check all the show notes or some an email or something and tell us and if we get to we get more than twenty people emailing us will do that yes job analysis look it up have a read educate yourself okay so that's it for this week thank you so much for the let us thank you for listing this far thanks putting up for with all our rambling and a bit rambling money today we work but then it's been a while we've had a lot of pent up week work business indeed indeed a lot of summer of frustration yeah i know i know so if you're wondering why we're a little bit grumpy oh we were a bit grumpy over summer then go back to about episode i wanna say two two two or something yeah and it tells you why we had to leave our our home for three month switcher yeah it's a different story and i'm i don't wanna bring it up don't bring it up okay so leave we got anything else to say before we go i'll need to join us on thursday we are joined by an awesome guest amy bulk who is the chief people officer of kelly services a huge organization we're calling the episode can i give the spoiler the episode title the first hr leader not to carry a gun that is true is story is all true it's part two kind of an official part two of our of our hr series that we've done we're only doing two at the moment we got someone different for next week the first one if you haven't listened to it was when hr goes rogue was that was that what we called in it was with tony cook from adidas former adidas former ada adidas are also author also sc if if you had if you're from the states and you haven't heard a liverpool accent then go and listen to that because it's i could listen to it all day i absolutely a little bit so if you haven't subscribed subscribe if you haven't told us lately that you love us then do that as well what else that else should these lovely people be doing corinne join is on linkedin where the conversation continues if you wanna throw me some hate youtube seems to be the place to to do that or you can drop me an email like usually at my dressing in the bottom so yeah multiple ways to to door me order to hate me just just what just before we go i do wanna say that lean has been doing a friday thing called linkedin a f that i am enjoying very much and even if i wasn't married to our in business with it i'd still enjoy it go and subscribe to lean no you don't unsubscribe on linkedin what do you do you you see some news newsletter it's a news don't subscribe to the newsletter comes out every friday hilarious every months does sure you watch you used to write you used to do a now now now you used to do every friday and then you've moved it to a monthly newsletter that right no i still post every friday and have continued to post every friday the the best things people have said on linkedin that week and then once a month i put them all together in one place into the newsletter because there's a character limit on linkedin so often i have more than i able to post each week so once a month you'll get the whole bundle but thanks so much for following so closely to really so much to make we will right so i'm gonna go and have a frank conversation with my business partner gonna call me into our office to wrap a chat i hope that your day is gonna go better than mine and thank you for listening and subscribe nothing bye she's