51吃瓜

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

right imagine you're the head of an hr team and you get asked to present the team's vision for the future workforce of the largest sports wear company in europe but instead of sitting down and putting together the usual dull powerpoint slide presentation you instead decide to make a james bond style movie you have the md kidnapped he's tied up he's stuffed into a chest and he does multiple takes until he's bruised and battered no that's not the plot of some kind of comedy drama film that's what actually happened at the world's second biggest sports wear company adidas where our guest tony cook was running hr the idea we had was that we'd make it into a movie in a james bong sort way and we brought in our own people to be actors whereby the d was actually hijacked and kidnapped and he played his part yeah and he was a good sport he was a great sport because it bet he had to be tied up rumble into an old old chest somewhere and we had to do about four or five different takes that he was full of cuts and bruises at the end of tony spent twenty years transforming hr from the inside out creating everything from oscars to speed dating for talent his approach was so successful that other markets started to copy initiatives without asking permission and he did all this without a huge budget in fact it often cost nothing and i have to tell you how cost effective of the hr team where we'll we've done this video because when we brought the a group in from our production team from outside he felt that we would need six barely hard cases to hijack ja hard d at a rate of three hundred and fifty pounds a day which i thought was outrageous so i went and got my own friends that go to the football with and they did this for three but here's the thing added adidas as hq called tony and his team the north mafia because they consistently over performed by doing things that own way usually without asking for permission this is virtually unheard of in a twenty billion pound corporation so today we're asking what happens when hr goes rogue hello and welcome to truth lies and work the award winning podcast by behavioral science needs to 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 a and i'm a business owner and we are here to help you simplify the science of what now i guess today is tony cook he's the author of the wag chronicles of a maverick in a corporate world and a former of vp of human resources at added adidas us who's spent decades proving the hr doesn't have to be the department that everyone dread his approach was to make hr more human by appealing to people's sense of humor and showing genuine personality what makes tony's story really interesting is that his baggage approach didn't just improve employee engagement it created a ton factory that is still producing leaders across the globe today his initiatives were so effective the hq kept stealing them and rolling them out worldwide after his very quick break we're gonna join lia anna she interviews tony will discover why hr has become the villain of the workplace and what happens when you decide to change that reputation from the inside out see you in a second 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 my name is tony cook the twenty r is in a huge sports where company so the role was hr and interesting enough the the the brand is a household name but the interesting thing was that whilst the brand and the product was leading edge the was then the personnel function wasn't and ga gross now an an author yes that much is true this is the resource of maybe four five sick maybe for six years years worth of work and it came above because the the the vp in global had challenged me to do it and she suggested that because i was a good storyteller i'd write a good book and what i've tried to do with the book is two things really tough memoir so it it's my story since i i joined the organization but also it's a i hope it's gonna be a handy resource book for people as well that they can click into various chapters if they were either about to do something similar or they didn't know how to do it or they wanted to and i'd be very honest about it we've made big mistakes and to use a football terminology and angie i say we've made some own goals so one one of one of the the chapters is called own goals and another calamity so stuff that we had to go at and we and didn't wear quite well stuff that we've done and made mistakes along the way people can learn from that if they've got hr functions that are much much smaller than nas and the trying to do things than themselves so it's hit the streets it's on amazon it's also with waters stones so it's for hr people it's for people managers it's for leaders and it's written and purely with a smile on people's faces it's nothing heavy i wanna carry on with what you were saying that in terms of this stereotype we have around hr people being quite rigid bureaucratic probably a little bit uni inspiring at times where does that come from personally i think there's still some remnants of personnel in people's veins i think it's a it's a convenient positioning for businesses i i often think of of hr as a you know what at christmas is you have to pant and there's always a pant villain and i think sometimes it's convenient in any organization for for someone to be the one who gets the blame for someone who's the body of of the pant and i think sometimes hr allows itself to be that way where the where the ones who's be being beaten over the heads but it's convenient for hr as well because if they wanna be the the lawmakers and they wanna be the ones who put the rules in place fine but be careful because you're you're making a position for yourselves there that does lend itself to be inhuman and does lend itself to not be inflexible or or create i what's the move you last night i called the assassins and even in that now there's a there's a part of where they say it's a good job we haven't got a hr function so even on on you know tv tv movies the positioning hr is the bodies and the pant mind if you're naughty you'll go into hr if if you are are doing not the right thing or you're you're not being woken enough we'll send you into into hr and i think that's our fault so what i'm i'm trying trying to get people to have a think about is look you you you can be human the same as everybody else if you wanna go and stand up and belt out oasis at a karaoke and make a complete show of yourself why not because you're human the same as everybody else and i think sometimes people forget hr people are human and they have frail but they should have caught about them they should have personality about them but i worried that we are all saying what hr of the lawmakers in hr if you naughty you'd go into there let's show a bit of personality as as well and that's partner with the business and champion people we could do two things we could champion people and partnered with the business at the same time to get a win win i think i think there's a lot of perception of hr that we are for the business and not for the people so it if people say well you know i was thinking about putting the grievance and sent about something that isn't right in the business but i won't because hr on the businesses side that that's all fault because that's the the positioning and the brand that we are creating for ourselves so a big on brand with within hr i don't i don't think we spend enough time thinking about the way we brands ourselves and what our brand values are because we think our branding must be for marketing and it's not marketing we wanna be able to go out to our internal people like to call them customers not not staff i hate that word staff but that internal customers because if if if we never had them we wouldn't be here they've we no need for us to be here so i want us to go out and ask them what you think of us how brave would that be if we go to the punt and say what do you think of us what should we keep doing that you like what should we stop doing that you don't like and what should we start doing all of this notion of i've actually being brave enough to go people lia say we wanna partner with you we we are human beings as the same as you how could we work together tell us what you think of us and we'll create brands that's in line with our corporate values but also what what our internal customers are wanting us to be because ultimately with a support function we're back of house i want to ask you why is it why is it important that we make this shift why is it what does it mean to the to the business commercially and the people in it if hr becomes a partner rather than as you say the the villain pant vi so when they say yes our engagement levels are through the group and everybody loves working here and you say to them says who they've got no evidence to show you the only people who can tell you the are the employees and you'd be surprised that i think sometimes it's convenient to say from a people point of view we're in great shape yep but it says who and that you're go ask the employees and the employees say that's not the case so it's a very very danes assumption that companies make yet everyone's fine well how can you tell us that when nobody leaves and i think the fact that people don't leave it might just be just tread wars and look and and just staying in the same job hitting the pay up so don't tell me that because nobody leaves that engages us through the roof if if we if we had better profile in an organization at a more front facing profile i think it helps from the middle that we bring you people in because invariably when we recruit hr will be there at some point when an individual starts in in our organization so hr have got an opportunity to be a brands ambassador you know so if we bring somebody and they start on on on monday morning probably the first person they're gonna say at some point is hr and the impression they will gain of the organization is is through us and that's where we get the chance to be front facing rather than back office so if you ever have a look at a a welcome aboard session that you do an onboarding session you'll you'll have a look and you'll see is it is it overly administrative and and box ticking or is it more hearts and minds where people learn about the business on what the business is trying to do spend tan talking about the mission division the values of the organization because i i i look sometimes at the values of organizations and and people pay lip service to it and i you get you see them stuck on a wall or the the that you you see the the pieces the paper curled up at the end where people are public put on the war for years and years and a look at some of them lia and they could be a home in any organization be it a four both company boots the chemist they could be belong to greg's the baker's because they're all the same but the hr job in my opinion is to help individuals understand how they can help putting these values to life so i think i think hr should wear several hats some of them these light word and hats but apart from being the lawmakers they they should be brands ambassadors as well they should be salespeople also for the organization and then i'm picking it also from a recruitment point of view you know we need to make make people want to be hr people had not not just at the moment of time people i think they love being working in sales or they love working in merchandising does not many people who are desperate desperate desperate to be hr and when they do become hr in an organizer why can't we develop them to be more commercial so they could go into commercial roles because they just stay in that role and that's it or from a developmental point of view they become in not generalist but it would be brilliant if we add people within an hr who bothered there asked us more to learn about the business and to be more commercial and then to have an appetite to go and take bigger roles in in the business i think that would be brilliant if people call themselves hr business partners and you sat them down said well tell me about the business what your your your key strategic priorities are i did a a talk for the ci not longer though and for fun it was only for fun i asked them could they tell me what the turnover of the business was simple question other words how much revenue to generate you'd be surprised the number of people you didn't know what the turnover was of their own business so i think there's a lot of work to do that if you want to be a hr business partner learn about the business stop just thinking that you are a hr and you're a rule maker go in there and try to understand what the who's the businesses competitors what obstacles are put of the business in terms of the way drive driving you numbers through within new accounts i think that would be exciting for nature rather than just allowed themselves to be categorized and pitching holders for their hr we go in there if we're in trouble or if we have a query on our pension so tony just explained why hr has become the convenient scape goat in organizations the pant villain that everyone blames when things go wrong but here's what a story gets really interesting tony didn't just complain about hr reputation he decided to completely reinvent what it means to be w and that led to some pretty unconventional initiatives that drove engagements through the roof including something called dive in that had hq thinking tony had finally lost his mind and built a swimming pool so let's just start off with what wag actually means can i ask get i've heard you described hr is w what does that mean the the the w pieces is is in a fun sort of way getting the best out of people by appealing to people's senses of of humor so there's been a lot of times occasions where i've seen lots of confrontational situations where you can take the sting out of them by being human at being light hearted about about stuff so w wag for me is taking formality out and things clearly there'll always be times when you have to be official and formal and straight faced but i've found that you can you can do an awful lot more you would lawful from more hearts and minds by showing that you're you're human and that's why i i come up with the word wag it in in other words it's an informal way and and chronic also in the title wag chronic is is informal ways of telling stories and telling the news what's your advice to hr leaders today how do they prepare for for the workforce of of twenty thousand thirty yeah well for twenty thirty embrace technologies by all means but no matter what organization you're in there's one common common denominator private sector public sector and it's about it's about the frail of f of people whatever there is people that is politics so there's always a place for hr i think my my view for for twenty thirty yet embrace all that's good embrace working from home embrace flexible working and i everything else but start working hard now to create a brand within your organization in hr where people can readily see what you're about that you mean business that you are a genuine business partner you know the business inside our bat upside and your best mates with sales with marketing you don't have any falls and you've got that this is another big one go out of your way to establish relationships where you're being proactive rather than wait and sit an ivory tower to peep knock on your door what's our policy on handling grievances that time's gone gone now we need to start being far more proactive and bacon another thing you should do by the way is set fire to hack the words hr i'd come up with a new a new title for twenty thirty we are personnel we got battles over the heads with that we've now got great hr people are toy with the idea of i thought if you've seen it and people and culture is the is the sexiest one i've at the moment that i've i've stumbled upon culture always on everybody's lips now and the one i'm noticing more and more ours is managing performance and getting good tunes out of people to drive the business forward well you you shouldn't be in charge of culture don't put yourself honors being in charge of culture because there are people within the business who quite willingly will say well it says that in your title so therefore for you're in charge of culture it's it's nothing to do with me in they wash the hands of it put put templates in place by all beings but you're not in charge of culture i'm awful sorry it's the whole business that's supposed to be in charge those stories about the oscars and speed dating show exactly what tony means by being wag using humor and creativity to solve real business problems but here's the crucial question how do you balance innovation with getting permission from hq because tony learned the lessened the hard way when his initiatives became so popular that other markets started copying them suddenly hate hq wanted to know why they weren't consulted first so when tony was finally given permission to be creative to make that james bond movie about workforce twenty twenty the results were spectacular but it taught him something important about the difference between asking for forgiveness and asking for permission we can hear that story after his very short break quick announcement for all listeners yeah i've got a i've got a new toy on my i'm my 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 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 if you like this podcast that i think you'll love scott episode in back in december where the infamous obsessed golden talks about empowering employees so go listen to success stories where you get your podcasts turning in terms of this way of working you you call yourself a maverick and that you tested the patience of the senior leaders that that you worked with what was it that you were actually doing differently we felt that we weren't doing enough from reward and recognition point of view lia and we felt that we were taking people for granted when they were doing early beds and late chose almost every day to be able to drive a number and i didn't want the people thinking we were taken them for granted so we created something called the adi oscars and the adi oscars was essentially at the end of every year we'd pick up the values within the organization and we'd make a fuss of the people who had demonstrated these values the most at all and we didn't put any money involved or we didn't the said them to honolulu for fortnight or eddie it was just the thought of them being major full sovereign recognized in front of their peers which is probably the best way to recognize anyone ever at a gathered pace and people look forward to it every december and the the poor where we did it would be packed to the raft and people were desperate to see if they get a mention or if he'd actually win something because it would be the the employees themselves who would nominate ali lia elliott so with nothing to do with and elliott it would be the people who you work around who would say she's a brilliant collaborator she's got so much respect she always willing to mock him with other people she always bags of ideas let's put it in for collaboration so with like on on the oscars we would talk to the people who nominated lia elliott and we put it on a big screen and we'd say in the shortlist the nominations for collaboration are first one lia elliott and it might be me or it might be out who nominate you and we wax lyric about the great things from a collaborative point of view lia done yeah and it was brilliant and people loved it and we put it on our internal comm but it's something that we did in north york or another one we did with speed dating we put speed dating in place the idea was we we'd ask other the markets if they need any talents that we might have and we'd say we're looking for these talents in merchandising or sales and they might have talents that we could bring on board brilliant idea cost effective again also if cost isn't not the flight to get in feed them put them at a whole go home so not no big investments but again because it was an initiative that we put in place i think people will copy in it and people want to to to take it on board but the mistake we made and and it it is a mistake is that we'd never went and we got holy water first and said we're go do this if you don't minds let me sell it to you let me make sure you think it would wear another markets we didn't we just got on with on but not because we were bad or because we were mis mischievous we just told it just to make thing to do in in our in our minds so our area of responsibility but we didn't get permission for it and we didn't ask anybody was it okay to do it don't forget we're not paying money else i think the only money we paid ours was to give people a cappuccino you on a lemon and mu at the end but there was no one got any any awards so it was cost neutral anyway the guys in group found out about it and i was carpet because we didn't ask for permission to do a a rewards and recognition type an initiative i think what what if i may saying this can say pissed off yeah frustrating straight what pissed group off i think most was i never went and asked for permission to do it because i just thought it was the right thing to do our guys loved it but i think the store book the camel back was other markets lia and started asking about it and how we did it so they copied to so half of europe had oscars and the group didn't know anything about it so i had to tell them what it was and then they pinched it off me and they changed it from oscars to superstar and then it become then a a global hate hq initiative but the that's an example of something that we we did another one we did was the numbers weren't quite good white weren't quite good enough so myself and the d at the time came up with an idea called target busters so we said if we can quickly get a little bit more sales in we'll reach budget we'll reach out our target and it'll put us back in good shape for the rest of the year a short initiative that paid for itself but it meant it was an initiative we'd put in place and we didn't get blessing and and it my learning goes i put it in the book if you're going to do new initiatives as a market where you're working for the hq you're good have to play the game and give the impression that you want holy water over these initiatives rather than do it yourself but we're not do it ourselves because gangster we do it ourselves because we just thought it was the right thing to do one of the values was was creativity so we thought well let's be creative we never ever went crazy with cash and the things were always novel ways of doing things that meant the employee engagement went through the through the ceiling in terms of numbers but the guys at at group would much prefer us to do more stayed more streamline streamlined ways in doing things that the guys in in hq liked the funniest one was when we created a thing called diving our dive was because i felt that we were embracing dives diversity inclusion enough and i wanted to make sure that the people we had in the business were reflective of the consumers so meant that the peep all of our employees i didn't want them to be steady typical white males i wanted them to be a complete mix right across the patch of all of our consumers so i asked people to join me a creator the team called diving in now you probably wear out a a pit dive from diversity and a pinched in from inclusion and the idea dive in was you immerse yourself you take chances you throw yourself in and we launched that and it was a common the good thing was it was a common together of people from every background you could think of every single background and we we brought the and we said by how are we gonna fix things here how can we make ourselves more more diverse and inclusive so we had the first meeting we brought the the board of directors in they loved the great idea and everybody bought into this notion of diving and it was our initiative but the people loved it and everybody has a voice all it was was a movement to bring in a fun full light hearted way that sometimes very difficult notion of diversity inclusion to life through the people and everything we always did it was the people not the the the management team who brought the stuff to life so if if it was if it was no goods and a fellow to us it was because of us if it was a great success it was because the people who brought it to to like some didn't wear but i wanted to share them with people just to try and change this this perception of hr being very stayed and very formal and humorous so be assured that our hr people out there have got a sense to you so i can remember a a case when when we were brought in as a as all hr into germany and the the challenge was paint a picture of what workforce twenty twenty will look like so this might have been twenty eighteen and we were given the task you know what what will it look like in twenty twenty what will hr look like and the challenge was given to us by the the head of hr to put the time lady and rather than do slides and pink pictures the idea we had was that we'd make it into a movie in a james bond sort way and we we brought in our own people to be actors whereby the md was at was at was actually hijacked and kidnapped and he played as part and again saves same story yeah and he was a good sport he was a great sport because it meant he had to be tied up and the rumble into an old old chest somewhere and we had to do about four to five different takes and he was full of cuts and bruises at the end it but it was a it was a good sport now she gave us permission to do that that time whereas previously we didn't now because it was done with their blessing it then became a group initiative so we used that video that we made about a secret ingredients for what workforce twenty twenty would look like and gave it a james bond feel and spies and we brought up people in from holland and somebody came and somebody else came in from prague to star and because she'd give us permission i think she found some money for me to get an edited and director and stuff like that that seemed to be a best seller but the the learning for me was she told me to do it rather than be go do it without getting permission first i have to ask you what was the secret ingredient for workforce twenty twenty well at the idea was that that that there was at the nefarious gangster whose hears about it to seat the secret ingredient and he wanted to pinch it and to pinch he went away and hijacked r and unless we gave her the secret ingredients he was gonna kill the the the and it was when received by everyone to tell you the through but the ingredient was about developing people the ingredient was about succession plan about engagements about people become a generalist and not are not specialists the ingredient was about not keeping people in the same role maybe for more than four to five years the ingredient it was about zigzag people developmental mentally so rather than just develop vertically they develop horizontally and and it a zig zigzag source because it would be quicker to get them developed rather than just sit wait to the same department and just wait for opportunities to grow we'd say no we're gonna intervene and we've got zig zag you across all of the business so that was the ingredient and this the fire gangs there was desperate to get hold of it so we could take it they could go and recruit the best people and have the best company and have the best numbers ultimately we feel us the way have an obligation from an e point of view player value proposition i wanted it to be leading edge so anyone who went on to our e i wanted them to see this video to see christ these people mean business here they are good business people that they're embracing and bring it to life all the great things about people development and you can see it your very eyes but rather than have three hundred and forty nine slides about what we do we thought be a good idea to to bring it to life and i have to tell you by the way and elliott how cost effective of the hr team where when we've done this video because when we brought the a group in from our production team from outside to be able to get the nd hijacked he felt that we would need six barely hard cases to high ja d at a rate of three hundred and fifty pound a day six a three hundred and fifty pound a day which thought was outrageous so i went and got my own friends that had go to the football with and they did it for free so we were all the times we were all the time trying to be cost effective at everything that that that we did and i i to you earlier earlier that the md because he was that proud next excited of some of the stuff we were doing he he would naturally tell his colleagues and his counterparts when he was in md meetings or by the way we're doing this by the way we're doing that and the mds clearly went back to their hr ds and said there's a great idea there you might wanna to go and see how out works or reach out and and and asked for some advice or some tips which they did but they probably would rem mold it so what we've done the oscars because i'm sure they put their all little spin on it and then before it was taken off don't forget group called the superstar so i think it's it's a model that we would create and we'd say well it's here if you if you wanna use it by all means user it but we never has a ownership of it i think these are all ideas that we would just take off the conveyor belt and then the guys would would get them mold them look at them learn from them or do something themselves in a similar manner you're clearly the type of of guy sorry the that ask for forgiveness rather than permission so if you don't mind me asking how did you manage to balance this innovation and actually keep your job was there any points where you like might have took that to the wire a little bit yeah did there's beef fallout there's there's there's no issues with that and i think it was more frustration because it in the coal light of day they would probably say when i was when i was thrown back on the airplanes to go home from from germany it's a good idea it really works where it's cost effective it does engage with the world of god that aligns people with our commercial objectives the the difficulty there i had was i i had a real stolen in my shoe that we weren't an encouraging people to be innovative and creative so why have a value of creativity if you don't wear hard to bring it to life or you give people license to bring it to life so what whether when i was carpet by people over in in germany it was i think the message tended to be look for jesus sake when you just tell us first or would you get blessing first we look the ideas and i think the other difficulty was when are the markets heard about it so for example the the md when he went to md meetings would quite proudly say oh we put this in place where's the balance between kind of yes asking for for permission or just doing it anyway think your yolanda you you finds it at a the art what i think is to develop good relationships with the people who are who would group i think that's key so for example with me we we had somebody in the group in germany hr who did embrace creativity but she she's allowed people to go away and be creative so this time you're actually being afforded the opportunity be to be creative so tony is wag he's a bit of a maverick he often just does things without asking permission first but the key question that you're asking sure and we were asking is did this work did this efforts pay off spot alert yeah they did and as an organization the reputation it has now in terms of of talent and people development it's phenomenal isn't it the track record in terms of leadership development yeah i'm about linkedin i still followed the the pete the employees who it was then still in the organization and and you're right and i do regard and say it on linkedin it's it's a conveyor belt of of people that that's another interesting thing there i think we were seen as a talent factory and and the the greatest kicker get is when you hear stories of people who've been on our conveyor belt who've gone into america into senior roles amsterdam senior roles lots and lots of them have gone to germany into the hq with senior roles just started a good week someone's gone to south africa now to take a a senior role as well and it's great news because we we felt and i still feel that that there good development and and developing people it i think that's that's an expectation now with with new recruits so all think it's nice to have i think when you come to a an organization as big as that one and and they're good talents it's a hygiene fat out at all at all take us a motivate and i think when when you start the new role a business that size you should have a real movie start approach to developing people the only supervisor is if if someone says yet beat me i wanna be developed it means that you might be brought from one place to another so the rule we had in place beat me i'm a talent i wanna be developed i'm very very mobile and we come up with a role and we say there's a role for you yeah but it didn't want that it that that's moscow i didn't what moscow i want is amsterdam but you can't pick and choose where you go with with a business we're we're trying to have a number here but yeah if we were developing people for bigger roles the deal was if you come on board we may need you to go to any part of the world and that's why i'm so proud that you see lots and lots of people come off the conveyor belt the biggest kick can get is to watch people go to applause when they see their colleagues and the business being recognized and rewarded for doing something great for being really pleased when i could stop a cleaner in the corridor and ask them what the sense of purposes is and they would tell you they wanna be the best in the particular industry and essentially i in know all honesty to remember that we're only a year wants so let's the it's though what's our last i get a kick out of it and bring joy and what's liverpool pool with the champions league there were loads of leadership programs that we had that we named after product which was always well received but we got to we got to the training and development party late on we did start we were serious about training and development for a long while and then i think people see the value of it again same story some of the training and development programs we started like call once some bottles people in in essence it means getting people ready for leadership in the fullness of time and that was well subscribed to the same idea we did it because it was the right thing to do group heads about it and their group sent for the people i think i think we partnered you you remember dale carnegie mh yeah so i think we did stuff for dale carnegie so we didn't do all our ourselves dale carnegie came in and we put a program together call tomorrow's people which which now the seniors is i mean real scene is whose first taste of training and development was tomorrow's people which is great news isn't that it's such a story of transformation tone from the inside out if there's somebody listening who was a hr leader who who's maybe in the opportunity that you were in to try and drive this type of change is there anything you'd say start here or this work because or this is kind of the golden rule well the golden rule as as will always be collaborate with the hq or collaborate with seniors or collaborate with the decision makers even if i i said you again you think you're doing things for the right reasons play the game on play fair so find good partners in senior roles at an early stage would be once second tip is stop just thinking that your hr and remember that there's a big bad wells out there in terms of your organization and you'd be so respected if you ask questions that would nothing to do with hr so if you would if you were to go and ask the salesperson person which markets to we trying to penetrate or you were going to ask cro what's our latest product coming you'll be remembered for being c and people people will will respect you for being intrigued by what's going on in the business and that you then from a hr point of view might be able to be thinking about solutions for for problems that are coming around the corner will be another tip and and the last one i i think that that has helped me enormously is is let people see that you're human so when you're if you're a business partner create partnerships with your business partners but let them see that you are human the same as that you told us to think that you're a machine all the time or that you haven't got bad days and good days or that you haven't lost your temper with someone or you didn't cri your eyes out at a a movie that you're watching everyone is is human soul news just in our hr people so so remember that rather than think that you've got to have this a loop i never make mistakes impression or personality you you do and people will warm to you more if the if they know all genuine and sincere you are as a person as well as a professional nature what's the mafia story we genuinely accused of being in mad we had a management team the management team essentially the the the k most senior was myself the and the andy and every year when we did we did our numbers and we did our performance we would over perform we've always over perform and we always used to have a little stash from our over performance that we used for other things and the group always asked us have you got any money to contribute to any other parts of the organization who maybe hadn't had such a a good year as as ours and we'd say no more for surrey we haven't we spent it lot all gone and but we've made our contribution to you so play fair vuitton and did say well have you got in that pocket we'd say nothing it's empty and they'd say well let's to you know the profit out and be said it's empty as well we've give it all all let me and then they they couldn't understand how we were able to do so somebody fantastic numbers from a performance point of view and so we were the the second biggest markets but invariably on our numbers were always brilliant and it was because we are brilliant people we had hearts and minds they were all driven the as a fantastic sense of of purpose and that was the reason that was only the reason but we had a a lady who could come on onboard and charge of reward and she had a call it was one me know it the way it's it's managed in the matrix so the the the head of the function is in the hate hq but the people live with us so the reward person forms are reward person and said right i want you to report into me any time these three people so it was me the fd and the end i wanna know what they're doing i wanna know how they get the numbers i wanna know what they do over salary review i wanna know what happens when it comes to bonuses and every single thing he's done was whiter than white everything was always above board but they just couldn't understand our we had such an a amazing organization and we and we did and it's no secret do stuff sometimes our own way but all above board have told you speed dating i told you oscars all the stuff that we done we done for the right reasons and it turns out that there was a perception that we were called the north mafia but note being north york analyst three with the heads of the families in in the mafia because we did our own thing we never sold anybody it was like a fam family it was all close knit no one could get in no one could get out but we didn't know once until this woman told us that that was the title they have for us that we were the north the north mafia so there's a there's a there's another film there's another book maybe sorry i know all this is a wanna learn more about you your work at your book where is the best place for them to do that the book is on amazon lia the book is it wars stones i think on my linkedin there's a there's a link that's sends you straight to amazon it's in paper it's in har back amazon linkedin and i'm more than happy to help anyone but any questions that come through yours or through this conversation or they can ask me more than happy to assist that was tony cook and honestly if every eight child department was half as creative and results focused as his team was workplaces would be completely transformed in my opinion let's wrap up with our top three takeaways for leaders who want to create genuine change from within their organization i must say anyone who is familiar with hr two point o this aligns very nicely and really just show what a maverick and an innovator tony is so lesson one collaborate with senior stakeholders early tony's biggest learning was that even the best ideas need to buy in from decision makers so build those relationships before you need them not after lesson two learn the business inside and out don't just be an hr person be a business partner who understand the revenue and competitors and strategic priorities turning challenge hate hr professionals to know what their company's turnover do you and lesson three show your human side stop being the rule and let people see your human with frail bad days and emotions people warm to authenticity not perfection and here's the proof that tony's approach actually works added us became known as the talent factory with a conveyor belt of leaders going to senior roles across america amsterdam germany and around the world really that's the business impact of making hr genuinely human at one of the world's most recognizable brands you can find tony's booked wag chronicles of a maverick in a corporate world on amazon and water stones and connect with him on linkedin for more hr innovation ideas as always all the links you need are in the shu notes that's all for today remember hr doesn't have to be the villain you can be the one who changes the show entirely but of course it's your call whether you've nice for permission first this is truth lies and work we will see you next week

hello and welcome to truth lies and work the award podcast web behavioral science meets workplace culture we are brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name is leon and i'm a charge occupational psychologist my name is a i'm a business owner and together we help you simplify the science of work back welcome back it is firmly september territory firmly firm yeah this week will bring you something little special yes we are so you may remember from back in the summer how we talked about resignation can typically peak in september because it's true those long summer nights allowed for lot of thinking a lot of reflection so traditionally as well coin with that the run up to christmas and into the new year is a pretty good time to get job printing so we thought we'd share a conversation on how you can stand out in your team whether you've just joined it or if you're looking for that step up yes so if you were here with us over summer you'll remember the first half of a long chat we had on another podcast called nerd journey that shows run by john white and nick cor and they're both former it ops professionals now they're in tech sales they've made almost three fifty episodes helping people in tech figure out their careers the sort of advice they wish that someone had given them earlier on in that first part we talked about the pressure on managers why so many teams are suddenly bigger what happens when organizations get flatter and how leaders can still do their jobs well when everything feels a little bit uncertain yeah that was back in episode two two four which came come out about mid august if i remember if you haven't heard it then feel free to go back and start with that one because that's part one and that's this is part two although it is you you can still listen to this as standalone that episode really seemed to hit home with a lot of you because we had messages saying it felt very close to what's going on at work right now so today we're bringing you the second half of that conversation this part is more about being in the team so how you get clear on what your job actually is how you stand out for the right reasons without burning yourself out and why good managers need people around them too so they don't end up passing all that stress straight down the line so after this very very quick break we're gonna bring you part two of our conversation with john and nick on the nerd journey podcast hubspot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers and here's perfect example leave 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 to 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 that's what i'd say is to highlight dia your curiosity your ability to correct your ability to list them i would snap up anyone you would had no experience at all i would snap up anyone with their skills into a manageable john this sounds a lot like the episode you did solo recently about the first time manager your job description been deleted and fighting the urge to answer the question that was directly from a coaching course that i did that as part of my first time manager training that my my employer provided or you know made available didn't make mandatory but i think it's exactly what lia just mentioned is it seems less efficient by time right if somebody comes to you with a problem and use you know how to solve it so you could just solve it but then it's more efficient to guide them through the process of learning how to solve the problem themselves even if it's short term takes more time oh this is something i could do in thirty seconds and it's gonna take me five minutes to teach you how to do it but i get back that thirty seconds for every single problem like this that you're going to bring to me instead of fixing yourself yeah and you're building somebody's of these capability and confidence and thought processing and whilst doing that which is great for their own professional development you're creating a space for them where they feel safe to ask you the stupid questions that they know you know the answers to and then feel you to have that space where you've then led them that they come to that answer or that conclusion that's a genuine interaction human interaction that breathes this trust in this connection and psychological safety so you're not only gaining that thirty seconds back for every pub in the future you're gaining enormous amounts of of trust and connection which are too vital things that that you need as a manager and generally an organizational life we we really need right now we were talking to a guy called andrew palmer who's from the economist yesterday all day before interviewing for our podcast and he runs own podcast is all getting very matter now called boss class i think which an economist economist podcast he was telling a lot of time he went to the production facility in the uk for toyota and he said and you probably guys might have heard of this but in certainly in in the uk i think my around the world they've got the big production line lots of people there working and there's a cord at the top of it which you can pull just get in was not heard this there's a cord you can pull and everything stops and you can ask a question or you can see if something's wrong with a with the machine you're working on or perhaps you just wanna go to the toilet you pull this cord and it stops and everybody stops and so i just understood how many times a day do you think it stopped at they think it gets pulled and i guess six or eight in an organization of two thousand employees sorry they'd also stop it to celebrate something or share good news or a win but yeah two thousand employees how many times each day was that cord pulled do you guys wanna have a guess or do did do you wanna to tell you yeah no i guess i'm gonna say less than three and i was gonna say twenty interesting andrew andrew's said twenty do you remember the number fourteen hundred no it was it was a multiple of the number of people seven times for a single person fourteen thousand fourteen thousand times a day that court's pulled fourteen thousand times someone stops it even just for like a second but they stopped the entire production line because they see something they're not a hundred percent sure about are not comfortable with now in terms of psychological safety can you imagine that that you're able seven times a day to stop the entire production of a plant just because something you're going is that supposed to be there should that be tighter anyway that i thought i was a great story and it's a great podcast by the way by by the economist that's amazing and you're right it's a reflection on culture that the organization is fostered that people have the psychological safety to pull the cord i just wonder about the intermediate steps on how to do that but that's probably something that will listen to your interview about well yeah because he does talk this is quite interesting because we said the same question like yeah but your first day that first poll what do you do and he's like almost like they say like a bit of a laugh the first day you have to pull it the first thing you do you just go up there grab it pull and then it's out the way it's like back in the uk we used to be a thing if you ever worked in a bar the first day you had to go and deliberately break a glass on the floor because then it's out the way and it's done and everyone's laughed at you and then you crack on with your work and this is where it and a great manager with the coaching skills is gonna do this intuitively or intentionally anyway you know they're gonna go to her a new employee or a more junior employee and say does this look right to you there's something wrong here that i'm missing was the way that we can improve it and they go well yeah if you maybe thought about just tweaking this you know find well if that's what needs tweaking but you're sharing that openness and vulnerability ability to go have your set your voice is important here too and that's probably the first baby step is you're literally asking them to pull the cord while we're talking about managers i wanna go back to the concept of hiding the wires leanne that we talked about an episode two hundred thirty eight so if my organization is flatter i'm a manager with more people how much more difficult is it for me to hide those wires is it more difficult because i have more people or is it the same i'm not sure it is it is any harder or easier given that context i think the important thing about hiding the wires is whether is a manager you have somebody that you can share that emotional load with that stressful situation with whether it's your a senior manager whether it's a peer whether it's an exterior coach whether it's an internal coach mentor a therapist it's who do you go to go oh my gosh this happened it's so annoying you won't believe what they're asking me to do now rather than saying that to your team i'm not sure necessary the structure matters too much it it could of course impact the relationship you have with your direct my manager perhaps they've been made redundant and they're not there anymore so it might require res shifting of of your your social support network but i think ultimately it's yeah it's it's finding something beyond your immediate team context and the support you need to to that probably should have explained what hide the wires means before i asked about it or while i asked about it but my understanding of what you shared before was that you're essentially taking and not thrust the emotional blow back or frustration from a situation you were in as a manager and putting it into a situation you have to take care of with one of your employees exactly yeah it's jo into that team meeting and saying you won't believe what they've asked us to do now it's what a psychologist call emotional regulation it's understanding having that self awareness to candice to think that i'm feeling angry like expressing that anger in this context right now isn't gonna serve me or my team that's not to say that that anger doesn't need to be expressed it does which is why you need somebody whether it be a senior leader or a coach or or someone else being mindful having that self awareness of how you operate emotionally jobs your behavior is going to have a direct impact on the mood motivation of your team so if that's not gonna be positive then hide the wires that's funny i i don't think that i realized that that is where i got that behavior it's definitely from that interview because it is a difficult thing right when you're asked to relay something that you don't necessarily agree with or you have some emotional friction with to not pass along your reaction you need the reaction from the people who you're getting feedback from to be an intermediary because hey you know part of the job is like if that is causing some blow back at the individual contributor level then as a manager it's your responsibility to to kind of aggregate that and pass that back up but to inject one's own reaction into that chain is probably not fair you don't want to necessarily queue people and burden them with with your burdens exactly and he also don't want to make an assumption that your team will have the same reaction because we don't work in a vacuum it might be that you've been asked to do that by a particularly difficult manager in a particularly difficult time you've had a bad morning anyway it might be the actually the idea isn't that bad it just needs a different view or a few tweaks if you take that to your team with with the context of you won't believe what they're asking those to do now this is outrageous i can't believe it you're putting them in a sit already in in a place of cognitive bias they're gonna think it's a bad idea unless they got great levels of psychological safety go john i think i think it's an alright idea like either way you don't wanna put them in a in a position where they have to do the work to change your mind before they can that you can explore the idea or the possibility you wanna go to neutral space to understand exactly what their thoughts are chances are they're probably gonna be the same as yours on the off chance that they're not then yeah it's worth having some patience in that moment and maybe the person who's passed that along to you isn't the origin of the idea either mh is always that too could we flip the earlier conversation that we had about a manager managing a large number of people on their team to being a member of a team that might be fifteen or twenty people i think for the individual contributors it might be a little bit difficult to stand out as a high performer or to get time and attention even just for help in a situation where the manager has twice as many people to manage do you have any ideas or guidance maybe that we can we can pass along the difficulty is and this is this is the is the business equivalent of the psychologist it depends because if very much depends on what the manager of that team is like whether they are overwhelmed and aren't in the space to look out for you know great people whether they they already have their office door shop because they've got their working mains to the nights they've not got time for your staff if we take it if we take a situation as let's assume that they are a decent manager and they want to find people who are good i think it it'll depend with urea sales environment which case is very target driven to the way to stand out in sales is to be really good at sales to bring home to close but just closed decent deals and be a decent human being about it so that's a different thing if you are for example let's say the you're a backend end developer well it is what's your target there is it is it commits is it book free is it whatever i'm struggling to think of something that is university will do this and your manager will understand well sorry we'll we'll appreciate you will notice you just like if you're out dating those book that tell you like you know the pickup artist is saying just go and wear a yellow feather bow or something that'll will work on all the women of course it won't and it course it doesn't work anyway but it just makes you stand out a little bit for a second to be not boring and those books obviously i'm not knowing i think they're rubbish but they were trying to pedal this idea of there's a simple trick one simple hack that your manager doesn't want you to know sort of thing that's what they wanted you to do and the problem is that the way i see i don't know if there is something but luckily we're joined by psychologist who might have a better better idea i think you found it i just don't think you put your finger on it what you talked about the the example of of sales is perfect because it's such role clarity in sales roles there's so much clarity over exactly what my job is exactly what my outcomes seem to be exactly how they're can be measured exactly how i'm targeted exactly how that relates to the the revenue i'm generating the company there's so much clarity in sales because it's an employee you know exactly what it is that you have to do a transactional level to deliver the outcomes of your role if you can go as an employee to your manager and say i want to understand exactly what your expectations are of me exactly what great looks like exactly what it is you want to deliver how do i make you look great because i know as as a salesperson person i make my sales manager look great by hitting my target a hundred and twenty percent how do i make you look great in a compliance role at a hr role at a in operations role what are the objectives that i need to hit and trying to gain that role clarity which actually a lot of people don't have typically in in their roles so trying to gain that world clarity is gonna be really helpful in having that honest conversation with with your manager and i think ultimate to as long as you know exactly what you have to deliver and you're doing what you can to deliver it and where you can above and beyond and where you can make your manager look good or make their life is your life your colleagues easier that's what exceptional performance looks like to me in a non sales role it's somebody here is very clear what they need to deliver very willing to support their colleagues in helping them deliver two for the team and very much there as a supportive member of staff to the manager should they also need support in in moments like that is it is easy in in part is probably not because you're gonna need a very good manager he's gonna have that clarity themselves in and feel feel confident having that conversation with you but that's where i would i would start and would that be something that we would want to make sure we do regularly seeking that clarity of role especially in a world where the team might have been reorganized or restructured or or have a new focus or a new goal or have been impacted by layoffs absolutely and it's actually a really an opportunity if you have gone through this team change to bring that comm into your manager in a very open and just curious way now whatever everything has changed people have moved on how has that change expectations of the team of the organization what we want to deliver it goes back to you know i'm sure you've heard about it and talked about before but around kind of formation of teams we have a major team and teams go back into forming and storming and norm and and that process is gonna start again on part of that process getting through it effectively is people having clarity over what it is exactly the team is trying to achieve and my individual role in that mission delivery so yeah if you've had a recent change like that it's really your manager should be coming to you and telling you what this now new normal looks like but if they're not it'd be a great move to to go and have that proactive conversation with your manager with openness and and curiosity i know i asked this question but you all have sparked these thoughts in my mind i i remember there was a just like all these administrative tasks that i was responsible for for the team hey have you updated these things in our customer relationship management system on a weekly basis have you done this tasks a b and c that were responsible for every week i would have this wednesday reminder where i had to go in and check to make sure that everybody had done all these tasks and then i would go and remind people like hey i needed this done you know at the beginning of the day can you go in and do it now and the people who let me know you know in the middle of the day the day before hey this is done i'm done with us and i could like look back consistently and go oh these are the people that i always have to ask to do this task and these are the people that are always telling me that task is already done i would imagine that if i had a team that was twice as large that would be even more important hey here's the expectations that this stuff gets done every week as an intermediate part of our larger goal of x and if the manager's is not making it clear maybe because they're they're not trained as we talked about earlier then an individual contributor who can raise their hand and ask a question maybe in a in a one on one situation hey does this make your job easier if i as a member of the team do this on time or regularly or let you know that it's done early or if i help other people something along those lines and just asking that question if you say you really want to stand out in a team how many of your teammates you got twenty five teammates one manager how many your teammates are gonna get in their one to one are gonna say how do i make your job easier teammates to manager how do make your job easier how i make you look great to your boss how many people would think to ask that question so if you are asking for that one hack that we talked about what we joked about that seems to be here you've just you've just you've put your your finger on is you go and say what lightly anne says how do i make you look great or how do i make your job at easier like you just said that john the people who just brought their stuff on wednesday rather than you chase me on thursday you think about them i think i'd add to that as well as a manager it's being open and gracious to the people that aren't delivering it on time the ones that do always miss the deadlines and having that conversation as to why that is i'm not in an executor way you know is this something that you've find difficult to fit in your day you overload other places we need to go through the process again are you're not sure about it we know that colleagues who have who on your a diverse benefit from these type of administrative task by what we call body doubling so sitting with somebody else would that be beyond zoom or a post person to actually set aside a time to do this task with a colleague so it's finding out whether or actually that that could be a barrier to this task being done very few people actually just wanna do a bad job and just do it to be annoying some do and that's where we see you know that workplace in civility that's a great example workplace in civility somebody intentionally not meeting a deadline just to irritate you john but typically unless there you know there's something the culture that's going that and you'd feel that as a as a a larger collective of of the team i think if it's just a a couple of people here in there it could be something they that just isn't clicking rather than they just necessarily are choosing to miss the deadlines we could have more of conversation when nick and john from the nerd journey podcast after very quick break 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 so i love it do it yen after hello lia do another one 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 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 god talks about empowering employees so go listen to success stories wherever you get your podcasts i think it's probably important in the situations to assume good intentions i i don't know that i ever thought that people were doing that just to annoy me actually it just never even occurred to me so maybe i've internalized that assume good intentions if one sense is that that is going on then then there's a whole other set of issues that are that are probably inherent there including you know just hostility in the in the environment in general or instability or other problems going on so i i really do like the idea of grace the job of the manager isn't to to come down on people and yell and scream you know or do the the equivalent right because that probably isn't really that helpful you know take that opportunity to to coach and and ask if there's you know something else going on is there something underlying this behavior i remember having a member of staff who just didn't enjoy the administrative side of their role were exceptional in every other area but this paperwork if she just wasn't was never top of their prize they said leave it last minute and then missed lines to point where the month then would come and you know this outcome as they require this paperwork couldn't be counted i'd sit with them in a one to one and had kinda say you know we kind of here again and we've tried all these different things you know what is it and she's like i'm you know how busy am i've done this and i've done all these great things and my breakthrough environment was when i said i can't make you look good if you're not giving me the outcomes i know how great you are but the people above me they don't know how great you are they're just looking at outcomes on a on a spreadsheet and that for her is that connection between oh i see you can't make me look good without delivering this then just shifted the behavior in her because then she realized it because she didn't wanna be doing a bad job she didn't wanna look like she was doing a bad job so sometimes having those just on his conversations as well that i know it seems annoying but without that we can't get this outcome through and that means that i can't shout from the top of the rooftops about what an amazing job you're doing because i see it in every other aspect of of your bot josh really weird that's just triggered me now a memory of when i was at school and must been about thirteen or something doing french i remember the teacher taking x me down and saying look i know you're good at french or better than most of the people in the class of french but you don't do the homework so how can i possibly grade you better than anyone else we don't put decent homework in and i was like oh got a good point how was she how else often can she prove i'm good and i think i ended up getting an a french or something about that year from that teacher now two things first of all that was like thirty six years ago and still i remember distinctly and secondly i bet she said that to everyone but it worked in both of those examples the person giving the feedback the manager the teacher was showing the person on the other side that they wanted them to do well they made it safe for that person and let them know i'm on your side i'm cheering for you but you're in control of where it goes from here sort of like there's nothing more i can do on my side maybe not saying it like that but that's the message absolutely let you see champion them what a great or role of of management you want be a great manager to jump in your people celebrate them you know we show off their achievements and and let them know she said that you are on this i even wanna show off their achievements because that as a mind makes me look great if my team is smashing it then i'm doing a great job too you we all we're all on the same side we were all gonna win together i think it's having that yeah having that conversation i love that i love that imagining sitting down with your boss and they said to you i'm on your side i i want to celebrate everything you do you'd be on half the rest of the day after a conversation like that and even if you don't have a great manager i think a lot of people think that in order for me as part of a twenty five person team to be amazing and get all the things i want then all the people have to lose i have to win and i'm looking enough to lose order me to win but but the said if everyone if on the team or the majority of the team will let's really produce some incredible work let's really lets it opera sla let's do whatever it is that's the metric we as many of you possible work together we all look great it's not a zero sum game is it no it's not even if it's a zero sum game you can take it out of some other team or even your competitors in the marketplace right even better yeah even better i really like that insight of coaching and and laying it out and say hey i'm i'm on your side and the phrase helped me help you was kind of ruined by that movie jerry maguire but maybe it's not a cliche anymore that movie you know maybe twenty years old and and people don't remember it but if that line is delivered with with honesty and compassion then i think that that that can be very effective we were talking to him to a guy called jeff what's joey's actor surname lab leblanc jeff jeff lab leblanc jeff le leblanc and and he's done a study on kindness in leadership and we we spoke maybe for about six or eight minutes on ted las and if you watched it or anything or come across it he thinks that that is the the way that every manager should be think that every manager should watch the entire series men to end that i haven't watched all of watched the first two seasons he said that ted las is the perfect manager because he brings humility kindness thoughtful but then he won't give up on people for those people who aren't in psychology and those people are just like i just want some kind like thing to hang this hang this whole idea of a great manager or on watch t one see happens that is so interesting i've never seen it i guess i need to watch it now i think you would love it nick the optimism and and maybe investment in the process of improving the team as opposed to the outcome of winning was something that i took away but that that was maybe reinforcing my bias you know i i was loving told that what i believe is right well there's a very very good psychologist that that believes that too yes they is there a secondary theme and everything we just talked about in that feedback that conversation help me help you or i'm a champion for you of encouraging the individual contributor to sort of be an entrepreneur of their own reputation within the company and even outside it an entrepreneur of your own reputation wife for phenomenal turn of phrase eyes so just make sure i've understood what you're saying there you're saying that it just doesn't like to use the word owning your own brand well i definitely don't oh that that's a real thing he's it that's that's definitely true like it it's sort of like nails on a chalkboard when people say personal brand it's just ugh it just makes my skin crawl i don't know why it just does seriously though like the entrepreneurial spirit you know i wanna start something up i wanna do well i wanna solve problems maybe that is something we could apply to our own reputation and and making sure that it's strong there is a sort of an opposite to that i'm saying that if someone is an entrepreneur then they don't like taking instruction from anyone and therefore it might be a little bit more difficult i think though that that's just like the sort of like the opposite side of it i do think it's a good turn of phrase you've said something i've never thought about before and i think i i don't want to talk about it just to top off the top of my head because i i don't know what i'm talking about but i do think that surely everybody want you know i answer it most people wanna do a good job most want to be recognized for doing a good job is it not as simple as what you've been saying and the anne been saying i'm just going well what does a good job look like let me just strive to do that every single day and then all the hacks and tricks and you know building your internal brand up through an organization or entrepreneur it doesn't matter because people just go bob you know what he always delivers a day early and his always exceptional work and you know what if he's got a problem someone's got a problem on a friday afternoon he'll drop what he's doing go over and help them and then go back and finish his work be more bob what is that overs simplifying i don't think you're ever simplifying what i like about this thought is that it gives us back an element of control in a work environment that at the moment feels like we're we're very much lacking control in terms of those those more interest back questions which are a perfect questions for anybody who is currently feeling unsafe at work fearful losing their job or who haven't recently been laid off is going to that intros intersection of what type of professional do i wanna be what does meaningful work look like to me what i won't be remembered for what do i wanna be known for what work makes me proud who am i as a person what are my values is it that i'm kind and that central to my management style is it that i wanna work with people who are smarter than me is it that i believe in equity and i wanna help celebrate the voice of underrepresented groups our society it's such a wonderful moment to actually think about what do i want work to mean to me and in that will come in intentional around the behaviors you enact in the way you operate in the world in your workplace that you will craft that whatever you wanna call it that brand that presence that that bob as you set up but i think it's a wonderful time to to do that intros intersection and think about exactly what it is that that you wanna do how you wanna do it where you wanna do it and with that year that that intentional will will trickle over over time and yeah in it in a world of uncertainty what a wonderful way to feel like we were gaining taking some control back so in the in the spirit of that intention being more bob there's nothing more true when you're running a podcast that has to have a specific theme you make it based on the audience based on what you wanna say to the world what you wanna put out there and as a podcast or or content creator of any time of any kind sometimes your focus changes over time because you refine and crystallize who you wanna be and the message you wanna send out into the world so being that both of you are experienced podcast hosts can you give us a perspective on how your shows thesis crystal personalization or focus has changed over time and and what you've learned from it even about what culture is and isn't when were you started truth lies and work it was very much about helping business owners and leaders embed best practice in environments that didn't have that support internally so didn't have organizational psychologists maybe didn't have even hr professionals and that intention is still very much at the core of the show but how it's morph over time has been very much in line with the chaos for lack of a better word that we've seen the word of work go through and one of the big changes in that was actually just moving to two episodes a week so in in our our second episode that we launch a weekly episode we called this week in work because we wanted to call out the elephant in the room that nobody seemed to be pointing at that it wasn't okay for the jamie diamonds of the world to scream and ran to his gems as about about how you know slack they are i is not okay to make tens thousands of layoffs in a blanket email that we saw from elon musk those practices aren't okay and it has a serious impact on the human experience but also organizational effectiveness and success so for we started this week can work and it it's mainly three segments that we've we've settled into is is looking at the new stories of of the week so we had one recently that we got some great feedback on around brew dog which is a a company in the uk that makes beer year they've had a very problematic culture for the last two years open letters from previous and current employees calling out fear of culture all the ways they're they're being discriminated against not treated fairly nothing's has changed that was over the series of of two three years that a latter would come out each year when they announced last week that they're training two hundred mental health first aid to improve well being and it's like that's not right that's not okay and that's not how you fix a toxic culture for a whole host of reasons if only that that's that's not what mental health essays for they're not there for prevention there for a point of crisis helping a person in a in a really difficult moment but you're also again putting the emphasis on the individual to try and solve a systemic organizational problem and that is just not okay so it's calling out bad practice like that that is being promoted in in mainstream news that this is a great thing in organization is doing it's not and this is why so that's when we talk about this week in terms of the the news we also highlight fresh voices or hot takes from people who may be on as well established in their industry but have great to say so it's giving them spaces for that we've had occupational psychology students on there we've had brand new entrepreneurs on there yeah people have got something interesting to say or a cause that they wanna push forward so we had somebody talking recently about pain equality and the how the business they're setting up is helping to support that in terms of providing extra care support and then we have the workplace surgery where we actually have questions from listeners who will email in and get in charged through social shores and they're experiencing problem and work and a lot of those problems are actually now coming from employees while the necessary business owners that we set out to be our core our kind of core audience we've had all sorts what we had out there's so many should i employ my spouse was one of them which is quite funny because we both work together we've had all sorts from my ex boyfriend has just become my new boss yep the really really interesting ones the main thing that i hope that people are getting from the podcast as it matures because every single week we're doing two episodes a week in every single week we try and make it just one percent better and some weeks we make it one percent worse it's a we make it ten percent worse but you know what it's like being a podcast you just you just like fan about the sound about the you know the the editing about keeping it tight but the core thing we i think we want people to get is that culture isn't about having the perfect workplace it's about just trying to be a decent human being whether you are a manager whether you're a business owner whether you're hr whether you're just on the ground pulling the you know pulling the cord just be a decent human being and try your very best and over time it will get better as long as you keep listening his truth glass and work of course of course i mean if you haven't smashed the subscribe button and rated them five stars and left review what are you doing thank you i think another thing that that we have tried to do over over the the years as well is try and pursue ideas that are introduced towards your our thursday episode i wanna speak to an expert guess and have that informal more content so i think probably one that we've that that did really well as we spoke to doctor sarah hughes from mines mines sarah hughes see of mind huge mental health charity in the uk and she was saying about how the conversation around mental health at work needs to expand beyond people being mental wellness and mental illness we're not talking of about how we support people with schizophrenia in the workplace or bipolar in the workplace pro stress in in the workplace so she kind of almost position this to towards as a cough action that is content created we also need to be part of expanding that conversation so since then we've interviewed we've had a guest on who costs himself as sc hip who's doing incredible advocacy work about how to live and and work with schizophrenia we've had an expert in psycho come on and talk about actually how we have there is one percent of our population is psychopathic therefore for a you're an organization of ten thousand people there's a fair chance you're gonna have some people in there that are psych psychopathic how we navigate that is it is it the worst thing is that maybe some roles that these people could be great in so it is moments like that as well it's picking up what we learn from people who are infinitely smarter than we are and figuring out ways and how we as podcasts can can expand that conversation for for our learning and for our our audience as well that sounds for me like an amazing mic drop moment leanne can you remind us again where people can find the the podcast yeah you can head over to truth lives and work dot com or were available wherever you find your podcast podcasts and all this we can work episodes we also post on youtube so if you wanna watch well as listen to us you can you can head over to their truth lies and work truth lies work truth lies work truth lies and work is it's truth lies and work and everything thank you so much for your time and your generosity to share your experiences thank you so much for having is it you ask such great questions and leave such great pauses time flies and it's a genuine pleasure being on it is it's such a pleasure and yeah you're such great interview and you you know the buttons to push to get bugs on on our little soap box for a little while so yeah thank you for holding holding this session for is and making it so much fun oh it was such a good chat with nick and john there's such amazing podcast i mean listening back there's so much in there yeah and and it sounds a bit weird talking about ourselves on a different podcast but the clarity bit in there i really liked when you know what good looks like in your role everything just feels a bit more solid because you can focus you're more confident and your manager actually knows what you're bringing to the table yeah clarity isn't talked about enough actually especially in terms of role clarity because when you don't have it you end up completely second guessing yourself all the time and that's when it can become really exhausted sting yeah exactly and that links into the other thing we touched on which is managers needing support too mh if they don't have someone to take the pressure it just ends up rolling downhill onto the team and we've seen that happen quite a lot yeah support networks is so important when you're listing a ball whether that's your peers whether it's a coach whether it's just someone vent to without that type of outlet you're gonna feel that and your whole team's is gonna feel it as well yeah and then there was that reminder about the people you really do remember at work it's not usually the loudest or the flash it's the ones who make things easier for everyone else the steady reliable decent people you actually want on your team they are bob be more bob be more bob be more bob if we did with part one that conversation and you just go in with part two you rub at go back to our august episodes i think it's number two two four and got more from john nick of course you do go and check out the nerd journey podcast they've got a huge back catalog it is made for people in tech but honestly it's useful for anyone and before we wrap up i just wanted to say a little thank you alan i'm not even sure you know this yet but we've just recently passed one point four million downloads this year this year alone this it's not is already september i there why it really is the to be fair it only happens because you lot your beautiful beautiful listeners keep listening you keep sharing it and you keep sending us your questions is really really important because we are going back next week to the traditional tuesday episodes if you've got questions about workplace prep for the workplace clinic please send them in just looking at show notes you'll see our email you will and as we talked about in that episode with nick and john the show has evolved over the years and we want to keep evolving evolving it so it stays interesting and relevant for you and we want your help with that tell us what you'd like more of or who you think we should be talking to next you can always find us on linkedin or just drop us a little message yes i'll be back next week with a brand new episode of truth lies and work bye love you bye love you bye

pitch picture this for me you're studying monkeys in the jungle and you discover one monkey who's hoarding all the bananas sitting on a massive pile fighting any other monkey who comes close while all the other monkeys to find food what would you do each study that monkey to figure out what was wrong with it right well according to our guests today that's exactly what we should be doing with billionaire business leaders and as humans we put that monkey on the cover of forbes and say that they're the pinnacle success in business and in life because they're hoarding wealth while other people go without and especially when they're hoarding wealth from the people who help them accrue it meet meghan french dunbar former magazine ceo business and anthropologists and quite possibly the only person who's ever got our entire fist stuck in a peanut bot giant in college no follow questions on that one apparently meghan built a nationally distributed magazine raised funding and look successful on paper but behind the scenes she was working herself to the bone chasing all the wrong metrics until the after zoom call during covid changed everything this moment over like a pumpkin beer in october crying my eyes out was like oh my god i have been thinking about success in the entire wrong way like this is success success as impact like the purpose the meaning today we're asking what if everything we've been told about business success is completely backwards this is gonna challenge how you think about growth profit and what it really means to win in business this hello and welcome to truth lies and work the award winning podcast by 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 charter occupational psychologist my name is a and i'm a business owner and we are here to help you pride the science of work meghan french dunbar has interviewed over a thousand business leaders career and in her a new book this isn't working she challenges the fundamental sump about how we build companies but this isn't just another one of those anti business manifesto is actually a road map for entrepreneurs who want to succeed but don't wanna sell their soul we're going to hear how active listening transformed her hiring process why she think shareholders supremacy is just destroying society and the surprising companies that are proving you can be wildly profitable while treating people extraordinarily well so in a moment we'll meet meghan properly and discover why the best job view of a life started with a conversation about fertility struggles oh and i accidentally in called her meghan fur long detroit in a previous episode so we'll find out how she responds to that just after the break hubspot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers and here's a perfect example leigh your turn more 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 call my name is meghan for long detroit what no no sorry wait it's megan french dunbar what i do study business i say that i'm my my best friend hannah when i was like talking about i don't know what i actually say that i do anymore she's like you're a business ant dermatologist you geek out about studying business and i have done for the last decade journalism events podcast podcasts all sorts of things and i've interviewed over a thousand business leaders in my time and i'm just super passionate about it i say the thing i'm probably most famous for as in college i woke up and i had my entire fist stuck inside of a peanut butter jar no follow on questions thank you we first met you in a thread where someone called you the best boss they've ever had and then weirdly said because you had some of the most deepest personal conversations i believe on day one tell us what was that first day and what the heck did you talk about i mean this is the thing about leadership that i think we sometimes forget is that the more human we are the better and i've as i i c founded and a ceo of a magazine that became nationally distributed publication in the us and events and podcast podcasts we did a fundraising round it was a nice nicely sized little media company and we are looking for a new editor in chief of the magazine and vanessa child my beloved hype woman walked in the door and she was just so human and so personable i was just doing interview after interview after interview and so many people are were showing me the shin most like polished versions of themselves and vanessa came in and yes there were accolades and a resume backup up her skills but she was just open and honest and human and was talking to me about her fertility journey and i opened up and talked to her about a miscarriage i had previously had and how we really as a team that was one of the things that we really worked on was giving people space to grieve to be human to whatever you're going through we will figure out ways to support you even though we're a small team and that was just that was day one and i hired her i think on the spot before we even finished the interview i just knew that she was gonna be the best and she was up until when i resigned and left company and we still work together to this day and i adore her mar i was to be vanessa how would i be able as a male be able to build a similar kind of rapport i think we've bi some concept of masculine and feminine characteristics or skills or traits and in reality they're just human traits and we've had societal conditioning that makes women feel like we're supposed to and allowed to be vulnerable and listening and comm and compassionate and all these things and that men are ghosts they're all the business skills that the leadership qualities that they're supposed to be decisive and competent and competitive and aggressive and all these things and we do it to disservice to every single human regardless of gender identity when we say you men can't access these particular traits these are feminine traits all of that to get to vulnerability and talking about things that are personal is something that anyone can do regardless of gender identity i mean my brother and sister had a very sincere fertility journey as well and i immediately think of my brother in that situation if vanessa had mentioned the challenges they were going through you know men often feel like they have to be a little bit more closed off in general as i've worked with them but my brother could have a hundred percent related to her or after her questions about it i mean that's the thing there's either opening up and being vulnerable and relating to people if there's something there that you understand and can develop that connection via empathy because you know you've bet it you've been there you've done it or it's just active listening like asking human beings to go a little bit further or share anything more that they wanna share about what it is that they have brought up instead of immediately changing the topic because it feels uncomfortable active listening is the go to and it's of every leader that i've interviewed the number one scale across the board that people say has made them the most effective at leadership and regardless of industry type of business is genuinely listening and actively listening and asking people to tell more about whatever it is that they wanna talk i learned this at a leadership program that i went through and there there's kind of two main principles with active listening one is if you are active listening literally don't do the thing that i first mentioned about emphasizing and bringing it relating to them with something that you've experienced active listening when you most of us we auto graphically listen you say something i went to greece the summer oh i went to greece two summers ago and that like we feel like we're building connection by finding some sort of mutual shared understanding of something so but when you take the when you say that then you're bringing the attention to your story active listening is the main principles is how do i keep the how do i keep listening to the person who is speaking so you don't say the audio bio thing that you want your brain naturally comes up with keep the attention on them and then avoid yes no questions and like all of the follow on questions are can you do you wanna tell me more about that or is there anything from that that you wanna expand upon or how did that make you feel or anything that is open ended and invites them to gently go further if they want to i think the like simplest question that doesn't put pressure on is is there anything more that you wanted to talk about with that or is there anything more that i that i can understand that you can help me understand about that and it's such when you're with someone i'd been with people who are like master active listening and when you hear people like bill clinton i've never met him but people are when people like talk about bill clinton they used to be like he makes you feel like you're the only person in the room whenever you hear that that means that person is is an active listener because they actually even if it's one or two follow questions where they show they're genuinely engaged in what you have to say one we're very rarely actually present with the people that were together with at this point in life with everyone on phones and distracted by all the things and then two even if you are present with someone we often fall into that rhythm of i say something you say something i'm waiting to say something because that i wanna say but just asking people to expand and elaborate on what they are actually saying and being genuinely interested in it as a gorgeous skill to work on you think you as you said over a thousand people i always is active listening helped you to understand people better than just asking questions i i always i would come with my prepared questions but i would usually say you know here's all the questions that i think i'm gonna ask you and i'm a naturally curious human and when you say something that i wanna key in on i'm probably gonna follow up on that and the way that the person who i learned this from talked about it was the idea of you you just open the next door that interests you and so whenever anyone says something that i find to be particularly interesting it's it's it's honestly just actively being genuinely curious and staying present to like what are they actually saying and following through on a follow question i've had a lot of people be like that i talked about things in that interview that i've never spoken out loud before and i'm like i it's because we're we're not great at actually listening to each other when it comes down to it you know even if we have our prepared questions it's it's hard to stay present and engaged and listen to someone for a full hour which i think is what we're trying to tell people to do right now we've heard how meghan revolutionized her hiring process through genuine human connection but here's where his story gets really interesting and a little bit show yeah meghan built a magazine about conscious business practices but she was simultaneously burning herself out chasing traditional startup up metrics and also preaching the opposite message the irony was not lost on her and she's got some very strong opinions about what's broken in the business world we're talking forty percent of amazon workers filing injury claims and a profit of all cost mentality that she argues is literally destroying society but before you think this is just another anti corporate rant wait until you're hear about the companies that they're doing it right this and so much more is covered in a book this isn't working i'll ask meghan who it's for and perhaps more importantly who it's awful full your book is called this isn't working what isn't working i i mean i'll start with the meta the big thing that isn't working which is shareholder supremacy and the profit at all cost paradigm that has really just taken over the business world over the last fifty years that has caused business leaders to be incentivized to exploit human beings and resources to the best of their ability to make money as long as it's kind of legal i mean one of the statistics i found in the book is that the forty percent of employees have filed some sort of worker injury or worker health related concern at amazon like that is profit maximization like cutting corners on safety measures over working people like it is just squeezing every last drop of productivity and efficiency and not treating human beings as human beings like there there's monsanto covering up research that shows that their products are literally killing people there's purdue pharma showing pushing oxy knowing that it's highly addictive like there's all because of profit maximization and specifically publicly traded companies both milton friedman men's nineteen seventy article in the new york times about shareholders supremacy came out in the exact same year that the sec in the united states decided that we needed to do quarterly returns for publicly traded companies and so all a sudden we have profit as the end all be all and you have to do it as quickly as possible because you're gonna be judged on it every three months and you can look at pretty much most markers of societal well being from nineteen seventy on and most of them are like pre declining as a result of shareholders supremacy i think i understand why companies do this but is it not their responsibility to maximize it for shareholder so fiduciary responsibility this is like this gorgeous little phrase that we hide behind so that we can do whatever we need to maximize profit and say we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders and there is a new wave of businesses coming through benefit corporations here in the united states where it's a legally structured entity and your duty is to maximize your benefit to stakeholders not shareholders and so that is a legal obligation so that is one way to very clearly get around it the other point but i consistently make as when you're talking about fiduciary responsibility you could a hundred percent say that forty percent of workers like being hurt and all of the terrible business things that we do that is maximizing profit it might be in the short term in the long term it is the number one way to destroy your company the most resilient long term profitable organizations that have stood the test of time are investing in their workers are doing all these extraordinary things to make the lives of the people that they're working with better and in turn they have incredible retention rates loyalty through the roof customer brand deck was it like every single marker of business success there's one company ronnie syrup which in the us if you ever go to a coffee shop and say i want of an vanilla latte they have been around for a hundred years and they're like these people who started the flavored latte craze they're the syrup that are almost in like every single coffee shop they've grown twenty percent year over year for thirty four years in a row under their ceo melanie tobacco and they're nearly a billion dollar company because they invest in their workers they invest in all their stakeholders they treat people well and in turn those people help the company succeed firms of ind raj book which was one of my kind of first books that i read that blew my mind and i was like oh my gosh i have to learn more about this entire industry he's the c cofounder of conscious capitalism they studied businesses like this firms of end meaning companies that tried to maximize the benefit to all stakeholders they outperform the s and p fourteen to one throughout the length of their study like there's tons of research behind this like when you're saying fiduciary responsibility the best way to ensure that you are in fact ensuring fiduciary responsibility in the long term as to do oftentimes the very opposite of what most of these companies are doing mit recent research on the rate resignation found that the number one source of employees resignation is toxic workplaces you just said do the opposite so what we're saying our own thinking that what we're saying is do we look at z we look at mosque we look at bezos and apologize to you gentlemen if you are listening we'll look for them and do adam to do the opposite i mean you can be the richest man in the world and treat every single human around you like absolute garbage and build a gigantic house of cards that gets so big that like their mono monopoly at this point it's like and we're watching i mean what just happened with twitter an x like elon musk's reputation in the way that he treats humans out you know tesla's stock is down like it's it's starting to crumble beneath him my dad asked me when was last time i logged on to facebook the other day and i was like i think it was two thousand like these brands are losing customers and like they're shaky houses of cards and like there's i mean there's a million there's so many arguments that we could talk about with each of these things with amazon being the monopoly that it is it's it's hard to compete and he can do whatever he wants but like is that what we wanna model leadership after is that like really what we wanna emulate is a trillion error who's ruining people's lives like it's a personal question i guess i wanna talk more about the smaller companies is a fabulous but well i think it's fabulous book maybe you don't by bow burning and called small giants which talks about small smaller businesses that win and going through the entire book seems to be the theme that they care about people is a particular company the beginning was zed i wanna say zimmerman i think oh my gosh they're like one of my favorite case studies of the united states i've i told you i get really excited this is like the steve when thing where i'm like let me tell you all about z anyway i got to interview paul sag and they treat people very very well it was like the crux of their company but the thing that they did that flipped the entire thing on his head was instead of franchising which they very clearly could have done they were this incredibly successful deli they looked at how could we create a family of businesses all in the ann arbor michigan area where they were based so that we can boost the local economy and not just businesses that are you know a family of businesses but businesses that support and feed each other so they made a bakery that does the and like coffee shops and like everything that they do and then everyone who works at these owns percentage of all of the companies together so it's this diversified portfolio of small businesses that create immense economic opportunity for ann arbor but then also help break generational cycles of poverty because there's this gigantic employee profit distribution that's going because they have ownership in all the different companies they're just they're thinking about business as a way to create opportunity for people and then they also have this gigantic z train which is their corporate training where they're teaching people the skills that we should have been having in kindergarten like listening and communication and also open book management they are fully transparent with every single person on their team about finances every they're all making decisions together fully transparent which is one of the things that we love to do in organizations is hoard information and not share it with people and immediately make people feel like you don't trust them and that you don't respect them enough to share company financials even though it's the place that you asked them to work every single day so yeah z men's is one of my favorites there an extraordinary company i suppose the pushback would be well our okay for them they've been going decades they can do all this stuff i'm struggling to take home fifty thousand dollars a year as my business owner i can't start doing this stuff now like with with everything there's varying degrees of ways that you can turn up the volume on things i mean at most we had ten employees we are a very small company it was stressful i was going through all of the small business owner stuff of like oh my are we gonna make payroll next cycle like i have been there the last thing that i wanted to do was pop my head up to work on the business on the things that i a spouse that most companies that you know mid and large enterprises should be doing employee ownership profit distribution all those things i think that those come in layers as organizations get larger that doesn't mean though that as a small business you can't treat your people extraordinarily well i mean vanessa very sweet you know nominated me as this like best boss and then i mean we worked together six years ago when we were at a conscious company and we had a third party consultant come in and was because my company got acquired in two thousand seventeen and i stayed on a ceo and so i was a wholly owned subsidiary brand under and there are four other brands in this portfolio under our parent company and there was a third party consultant that came in and audited company culture of all four of the organizations and the parent company we're trying to do some culture work and they shared with me later that like i had the highest culture scores that they'd ever seen and i was a small business i was struggling this isn't to toot my own horn but it was very much from that place of leading like a human we i was completely flexible we i i now that there's a term results only workplace environments row workplaces that are you know very autonomous like work whatever hours you want work wherever you want you know here just make sure you're getting your stuff done treating people like humans unlimited time off and we did this stuff as a very very small business and i had one person leave in the five years i was there one employee quit and we punched above our weight and we're you know a fantastic little company so there's degrees to which you can do it and it's about like the next best step not you have to model yourselves after the ai fishers and the twenties of the world that have these humongous like they're you know they're doing very big things that small companies can't afford to do but as you get larger they're fixing to consider i mean fishing she makes timeless clothes for that are comfortable and predominantly cater to like fifty to seven year old women but she's been in business since nineteen eighty four nearly a billion dollar fashion empire and as one of the coolest leaders i have ever had the opportunity to meet when i got so that cover was our third cover of her magazine the first cover that she had ever done she's notoriously rec recur she's very very shy and very quiet and really does not like the media and but because of what my little magazine stood for her which was impact driven in businesses and businesses that do good for the people in the planet she we sent her a copy of the magazine and said hey do you wanna be on the cover and she said this is like the first time i'm in a grant to cover interview i went to gorgeous home at in irving new york and i thought that i was gonna be meeting miranda priest from the delaware wears product like fashion icon ceo mo i thought she was gonna be so new york and mean and i was like this like just like little country mouse from colorado wearing fifteen dollar power suit that i bought at marshall the like discount store here and i walk in and she's like the soft she's the kind she listens like she she starts the interview by asking me a ton of questions she's kind of shy like just not the type of leader i was expecting but then you learn about what she does with her organization which that i mean this was say they're the washington post or new york times wrote her up years and years ago she was like well when i started making enough profit that it felt like i had enough like naturally the only thing to do would be to give it to my employees like that doesn't there's no other they're the people that helped build the brand why would it go to anyone else she also built the brand organically and had very little outside investment so she was able to make decisions like this but she's a certified b corp she they started the entire one of the started entire programs around the sustainable apparel coalition they by twenty twenty made nearly all of their fabrics environmentally sustainable they do workers rights programs like every single stakeholder in their value chain they have found a way to improve their life in very significant ways like their employees all the way down to like their community they host leadership workshops and irving to new york and online programs like did one yesterday like there everything is about i have enough how do i get it back and it's unbelievable meghan's laid out the problem it's shareholder supremacy culture that's making banana hoarding monkeys into business heroes brand new sentence right there but here's what i absolutely love about her approach she's not just complaining about what's broken she's but years finding the companies that are proving there's a better way and these aren't just feel good stories we're talking about businesses that are dramatically outperforming traditional companies while treating people very very well meghan journey to understanding that this wasn't theoretical she learned it the hard way through her own start experience and that story is both heartbreaking and inspiring while meghan was building this conscious business magazine and interviewing all these amazing leaders she was simultaneously destroying herself chasing the exact opposite values and it all came crashing down during covid in the most unexpected way we'll hear how after this very short break quick announcement for all listeners yeah i've got a i've got a new toy on my my little deck thing so i can make the voice change anyway sorry love it do it again hello lia do another one but we did interrupt your podcast listening for for this we actually interrupted 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 i'll only if you like this podcast that i think you'll love scott episode in back in december where the infamous obsessed golden talks about empowering employees so go listen to success stories where you get your podcasts i think there's lots of different ways to think about building an organization and this is one of the things because like i got stuck on the grow scale as quickly as humanly possible and like is this with the magazine yeah i mean i was i mean it was out of necessity like we needed to make payroll and all the things and i was very achievement oriented and i was a spouse one thing publicly and then destroying my soul privately working myself to the bone and just miserably depressed and chronically stressed and all the things because i would i cared so much about what i was doing and i also had this narrative that i really needed to be successful as an entrepreneur you start scale grow sell like that's that's the formula right and we we did sell the company but as a distressed asset so it wasn't a fairy tale exit there was like a zero cash benefit and but it allowed our company to keep going for a few more years which is fabulous that is my story i have seen other ways to do business and that is like what i have been looking at so there is the speaking of small giants the tiny business route there is a book sharon row of eco bags wrote tiny business a few years ago and she talked to so she started her business in nineteen eighty nine and the entire reason she wanted to start a business was one she saw a hole in the market she was doing sustainable reusable bags before it was cool in nineteen eighty nine but she said she started the business so that she could have her ideal quality of life here's is what enough money looks like for me out of this thing here's is what enough money looks like for the few employees and i need to run it but my priority is time with my kids time with my family time with my friends time off for mental health physical health traveling all the things that bring me joy and make me flourish as a human being i'm prioritizing those and i have this business to support my life and for thirty plus years she ran the business at the same level said no to growth opportunities that definitely would have brought in more money because she did not want to wait to live the ideal life that she wanted until she retired which is what so many of us do which was like heartbreaking pre when last year she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died at age sixty seven she had been living the life that she wanted to the entire time and was as happiest as she in the entire world because she didn't take the blue pill and try to runner our company and grow it as large as possible so there's the tiny business route there's the ai route which it'll a lot of the companies that i talked to better you know thirty plus years in the making long term lifestyle brand very limited outside capital coming in so they can make whatever decisions they want there i think this new middle brand that i'm starting to see is people who are scaling quickly because not for purely for a financial gain but because of the benefit it brings to a number of people and so cool cool foods is one of my favorite examples of this i think they've just done a series b at ten million and lisa curtis as the founder she started it as a peace corps volunteer seeing the mori plant when she was doing her peace corps in africa and was like i wanna help these farmers most of them are women this is a super food and they should be being there should be a sustainable market for this so she brought the mori plant ring of powder bars all the things delta as like a side gig a side hustle from her full time jobs sold to the farmer's farmers market and multiple years later when i talked to her she said i'm scaling this like any like high scale fast quick entrepreneur would with tons of investment coming in because my ultimate goal is the more this scales the more money we distribute to these farmers and it's employee owned so it's scaling with intention it's scaling to improve the lives of everyone involved not just her and this is this is like the paradigm switch is like sure you can get insanely rich off of a company if you want to and have billions of dollars and not share that with any of the other people who helped you build that company that is your choice but like like it just like it's a moral question it's like not sharing the gigantic amount of wealth that you could accrue with the people who helped you build it why wouldn't you help hundreds or thousands of people pull themselves up and have wealth rather than just hoarding all there's a like fabulous tweet but i saw years ago that i referenced in the book has been taken down since this point but i still confirmed that it went up so woman who was saying if we if we were studying monkeys and there was one monkey who hoard all of the bananas in the jungle and just was freaking sitting on piles and piles and piles of bananas while the other monkeys were walking around struggling to find bananas we would study that monkey to understand what was wrong with it and as humans we put that monkey on the cover of forbes and say that they're the pinnacle success in business and in life because they're hoarding wealth while other people go without and especially when they're hoarding wealth from the people who help them accrue it like it's just a values question for me and there are ways to build businesses that you can do the whole scale and exit thing and share it with other people that i'm seeing a lot of people do there's also new belgium brewery as another one they're colorado based i think when they sold in twenty twenty they were the third largest micro brewery in the world and they were employee owned so when they sold you the line workers were pulling in six figures like on these profit distribution checks and so i mean employee ownership is a huge thing that i advocate for there's you wanna a geek out about this ownership works pete s and know this is not just fringe like your bolder lady shouting for the rooftops about employee ownership this is pete s who's the global director of private equity at k k r who started ownership works and by twenty thirty their goal is to make every single k portfolio company employee owned because it makes the businesses more resilient long term profitability and it breaks generational cycles of poverty and decreases the soc economic divide it is like the number one way that we can actually start building a more equitable society and if k is doing this one the largest private equity companies in the world like i'm not like super out there i don't think i think from my research it seems to me that your magazine was just an incredible idea that was your passion but you just admitted that it was a tougher project than you thought given the chance over again would you do it again hundred percent a hundred percent i would do it again and i guess this is where like i one of the things i have talking about and thinking about a lot lately is how you define success which when you think about whatever your personal definition of successes is it is one of the most consequential paradigm or concepts that you have as a human being it determines often what you study what you spend your time on what you're willing to compromise and sacrifice it determines your quality of life your mental health your physical health like it all the way like throughout your entire life your success determines so many things about how you live and i very much subscribed to i i think it's probably very western ish ideals of success of achievement winning money influence all of those things i would say money not so much but like i i was a high achieve growing up high achieve no that was my thing i like to win i like to show people how impressive i was with ex validation and i felt successful when i did that and i feel like i got pretty pretty like from on paper it looked good just started company i had sold it i was still the ceo i was traveling all time and keynote speaking and the jug of a button i was thirty three and behind the scenes like i said i was miserable stressed overwhelmed like all of the terrible things panic attacks because i cared so much about this thing and running a small business is really hard running a print magazine like whole other conversation it's a very long answer but i promise it's gonna come around so when so i resigned from my company after i i was just so burnt out that i had nothing i had no gas left in my tank and was like i'm not the leader that my team deserves or that this community deserves i resigned on february first of twenty twenty and march thirteenth was my last day and on march seventeenth we in global lockdown and i went from being full time ceo full time mom to a nine month old and i did not ever in my game plan i want to be a full time mom i have adhd entrepreneurial afflicted like i i just like to create and do and be out and do the things and it was a very hard time so right in the middle of covid like parent companies shut down conscious company media my baby we are primarily events driven at this time covid they had their reasons like i totally agreed with them and we did a bon voyage ccm virtual call with all of my former team members and i showed up like half drunk like crying over this business just loss of identity everything was going wrong i was telling my husband and i was like a child's movie star who had peaked too soon i was in a dark place and i show up to this virtual zoom call and i sit back and i just love the question in like tell me about like your favorite memory or one of your favorite things that we did as an organization and it was like story after story of like oh my gosh like this do you guys remember that time that we had true colors brewery on stage and they had the former gang members who were talking about what it meant for them to have this economic opportunity and then the next day meghan interviewed walter rob from whole foods and then he called meghan on after the event and asked if we could get true colors brewery beer into every whole foods in the world and like that happened because of our event and it was like yes and like you know people are talking about funny stories impactful stories meaningful things relationships he meet with each other as coworkers things that they had learned and i in them this moment over like a pumpkin beer in october crying my eyes out was like oh my god i have been thinking about success and in the entire wrong way like this is success success as impact like the purpose the meaning we like as a little company that we were around for five years we had such an incredibly profound impact on people's lives the stories that we had of things that we had done that touch people's lives it was about experience i have an mba but like doing doing a business it's like an education that you can't get unless you actually do it but then the also the experience is like i had i took a float plane from vancouver to tiny island off the coast of british columbia as a speaker at an event and got to go to ai fisher home and interview her like the life experiences the memories that i made as a result of doing this the people that i met the friendships that i made the education that i got like all of that and when you look at are key intrinsic motivator daniel pink has book drive the three that he identifies are purpose mastery and autonomy and i had so much meaning and purpose i in terms of mastery learning growth learning about things i was passionate about like being a business anthropologists i just got to i get paid to go interview people and learn about business and like that's what i was doing for my career was the thing i was most passionate about and then autonomy like the freedom was the issue that i struggled with because i was a business owner and i felt like i had to work at all times and i couldn't i didn't have time for anything else but the life experiences that i had like i wouldn't trade for anything and everything but i did then has created the foundation for everything that i do now but now i'm taking lessons about how to treat myself and boundaries and how i value myself worth and implementing them and into this newer iteration of how i work and happiest i've ever been you mentioned there about some the impacts that you had in that organization you i think your exact words where and i think about the stories and the things that happened can you give us an example of something which happened which was just makes she get gives you goosebumps right now the one that i mentioned of we had there was a brewery in north carolina that they built a brewery to employ active rival gang members because the founder had discovered that the reason that they were having such pervasive gun violence in the community of wilmington north carolina was because the people who are members of these gangs didn't have access to economic opportunities so he built this extraordinary business and they were at our event we had this big annual event the conscious company leaders forum and they were telling their story the night before with you know two former gang members on the stage talking to our entire group of you know two hundred plus business owners and the next day walter rob who was the former c ceo of whole foods i was interviewing him and he had heard about the gang and he literally like found my cell phone number called me the next day and we were held to broker this deal to get true colors brewery into every whole foods in the world because of our little event so there's huge things like that but then there's also like i still have people that say things like oh i met my business partner at your event or there's jared meyers he climate at first united bank in florida he talked to me about so he was profile in one of our magazines is you know one of the top conscious business leaders in the country for that year and he said that it was the first time that he was able to like tang show his children that the way that he was doing business was celebrated and was the that there was a community of people who yes he wasn't profit at all cost and they didn't have their like diamond en crest yacht but he was doing business in a beautiful way that was improving people's lives and he was able to show his children like look your dad in a magazine like jessica this extraordinary entrepreneur from alabama her entire community came together to like celebrate her inclusion in the magazine and that helped her gain media attention for her company project runway i mean there was just so many stories like that of celebrating business people for doing the right thing and people learning about business practices implementing them and writing us about like how it changed their company there's yeah there's a lot and when i get tag about them it makes my heart feel really good because it's awesome the younger generation the folks that i interface with on a regular basis they give me so much hope like they are so much more aware and just conscious and like very like they have skills and knowledge base and communication skills and i'm like that took me twenty five years of adulthood to develop that thing that you seem to have at age twenty i have a mentor or men maddie who is twenty four she calls herself a baby adult and she gives me more help than any human life like they're just i find the up and coming generation that i talked to is inspired they're passionate they care about the right things and like there's also social media and comparison and i didn't even have social media and college and i i couldn't be more grateful because i don't even know how you keep your head together university of richmond they found they looked at students who base their idea of success on ex motivation money influenced title wealth all those things stacking fat cash whatever that is and students who had their idea of success re revolving around intrinsic motivation purpose autonomy growth of all the things they studied them later in life regardless of the level of success that they had achieved the ex motivated group later in life had the same level of life satisfaction as they did in college and increased levels of stress and depression the intrinsically motivated group had increased quality of life scores as compared to college and decreased level of stress and depression that is like when i got my head around that like yes living paycheck to paycheck i have been there i was there all through my twenties it is very stressful and when you get to a place where you are making enough money to cover your reasonable basic living expenses like the you know there's a tire study around this like once you hit a hundred thousand dollars in salary your happiness doesn't really increase after that tell me about this isn't working it first of all when's it out secondly who's it for thirdly who's it not for it came out august fifth who is it for i honestly on the title it says how working women can overcome stress guilt and overload find true success and i did right the very the introduction in the first chapter through the lens of that i was writing it for women and it is a leadership book you know we decided my publisher and i decided that we had frame as for working women because that is really a target market but every single principle in the book is for anyone who wants to be a better leader i have had men real men in my life who have already read the book and found it to be very useful and it is one of those things yes it is written for women but it is if you want to be a better leader understanding the perspectives and perhaps a bit of the experience of people who are not like you is one of the best ways to be a multifaceted leader deeper per s a good friend of mine she wrote the book the first the few the only about women of colors experience in the workplace i am not a woman of color and reading her book helped me understand being a better leader and a better manager because there are things that i was understanding about women of color having a very different experience than white women in the workplace that were eye opening for me so it is for people who want to understand how to either have a career without destroying yourself or build a business without just dragging people within it or both what i love about meghan french dunbar two point zero is that she's not telling people to abandon an ambition or stop caring about money she's saying there are different ways to define winning and the research backs up the intrinsic motivation approach so before we wrap up let's see how to find out more about m d the best place find me is megan french dunbar dot com and meghan is spelled with an h although i think i'm the only meghan french dunbar in the world so if you spell it on you'll find me just google it or on linkedin megan french dunbar and if anyone wants to go buy the book for twenty percent off i have a discount code just for your listeners that you can use at the has book group website where my book is as well as amazon barnes on all things but the discount code works at h tl w i'll give it to you that was megan french dunbar a aka a m d aca a meghan fur long detroit and her book may well make you redefine what rich and famous actually looks like in business context in twenty twenty five before we go let's talk about our top three takeaways for leaders who really do want to build businesses without becoming banana hoarding monkeys lesson one you need to learn how to actively listen because that builds genuine connections don't just wait for your turn to talk ask follow questions stay present and let people share what they actually want to share this is the number one skill of effective leaders and lesson two redefine success around stakeholder benefit not just profit for profit sake companies that do focus on employees customers and community can and do outperform traditional businesses fourteen to one this isn't just morally right it's financially smarter lesson number three choose intrinsic over x strings motivation sounds complicated but basically research has shown that people motivated by purpose autonomy and growth end up happier and less stressed than those chasing money titles and influence the quality of life matters far more than impressive metrics find meghan at meghan french dunbar dot com that's meghan with an h and use discount code tl l w for twenty percent off her book this isn't working at hatch book group dot com i will leave all the links in the show notes remember you don't have to choose between being successful and being human the best leaders are proving that you can have both so stop hoarding bananas start sharing them and remember in a world where you can be anything could be more m d this is truth lies and work for you'll see you next week

happy september hello and welcome to t 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 do you see this along with me at this point don't you my name is leanne i'm a biz no i'm i'm try occupational psychology he got it wrong my name is alan i'm a chartered business owner we not here to i be by the science of work yes lisa september guys happy september we made it through summer well no it's the saw uber no no it's not but it is that the change is a coming isn't it the kids are back at school september is the end of we wanna be corporate q three so we are looking towards the yeah the rest of the year and thinking how we make this all come together and make twenty twenty five a good one so this week we thought we'd do something a little bit different and i guess think this episode is your own mini self coaching session so yeah this this thing called the fresh start effect right you've heard about it usually around october time when the pumpkin spice latte start hitting our starbucks shelves and it's that temporal landmark that just acts as a natural stopping point for us to pause reflect and make some changes moving forward so yeah that's what we thought we do over the next twenty minutes i'm gonna guide you through for evidence based exercises that are gonna help you reflect on the summer set some directions for the autumn and create a focus plan for q four i'm sorry is there any of other way to do it as you know at the end of the year i think we're gonna have to be corporal for a second q four yes and i'm gonna be doing this right alongside you so you can hear what it sounds like in practice now just so you know i've read the a red outline but i've we've not done any of this before so you're gonna hear me probably stumbling and asking questions hopefully the same question that you'd be asking yeah and if you wanna do this as we go along i'm going to leave all of these exercises in the show notes so go there have a look through and you can work work your way through with us so we're gonna kick things off right after the bliss short break with something called stop which is from someone a psychologist name that i can't even say so we'll see in a second 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 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 our first little coaching exercise out and i'm not sure people do this enough right you sit down to plant make some big decisions explore some stuffs but do you before you do that you take a time to kind of just pause and stop and clear your mind so you're ready for it or just jump straight in from one meeting to the next normally at being honest normally if i've got an idea i'll jump on chat beauty and i'll chat it out while i'm out with the dog and and that often helps but it's not really a stop it's more of a jupiter well we're gonna start with the stop it's a it's a mindfulness technique and it comes from if you're interested because some actually a lot of the people i coach are really interesting in understanding the science behind it so i thought i did i'd explain some of it as well so stop comes from john k z madness based stress reduction program and it's been studied pretty extensively since the late seventies it is also used in dialect electrical behavior therapy and research has shown that even brief mindful pause is like this can improve our focus and our decision making because it's breaking our auto pilot patterns so stop is like an acronym is it it is it's exactly that so the s is stop what you are doing t is take a breath o is observed what's happening and proceed with intention is the p so whether you're walking driving or sitting down right now you can do this so let's do it together obviously if you're driving don't close your eyes yes don't do that don't do that okay so first we're gonna stop so a i want you to stop whatever is you're doing pause for a moment now take a deep breath i want you to inhale slowly through your nose and then exhale slowly through your mouth okay let's do that again through the nose and exhale through the mouth k now we observe so want you to ask yourself what's going on in your mind right now a little bit less than a few minutes ago yeah yeah i have to admit that i i was i was a little concern where you gave me so much time to to inhale i could only inhale two seconds but so what emotions are you feeling i don't know i'm necessarily feeling an emotion i just feel like they calm a tiny bit calmer mh and in general in terms of a kind of this point of the year what emotions are are keeping you i think there's a little bit of t about the final part of the year because it does go really quickly and it's if you're not careful you go all that's christmas and you go what do i actually done i kind of wasted the last couple of months so i'm worried about wasting september october and november not bothered about wasting december because it's that's meant to be wasted but so yeah that's kinda of where i'm thinking at the moment and what's happening in you in your body at the minute any tension excess energy restless yeah yeah i do feel a little bit of attention i'm always a little bit restless i think when it comes this time of year because i'm like i want to go ahead and do it i wanna go and do the things and action the things but i tend to just like i said before i tend to just start them and then go oh well i'm halfway through this neither the lose interest org go well i've gone down the wrong path okay so this is b the the most important rule of baron mindfulness activities notice it don't judge yourself for it you don't need to go to that step just notice that you're feeling a bit restless so you're feeling a bit energetic a bit a bit nervous we don't have to attach any judgment to that fair okay and now let's proceed with intention so given what you've just noticed what do you most need to do right now what would be the most helpful next step i think honestly i've got there's lots of things i want to get done by the end of the year i think honesty it'll be good to identify at the number one thing that that if i got that done he would make the most the most impact and as the american can say move the needle mh and how do you want to continue with this session what's the kind of the main thought feeling you're gonna take take through with you into it oh can you explain that give me an example so i guess is it something that you wanna be curious you just wanna explore ideas is it you wanna be focused you wanna nail down this number one thing is it that actually you just wanna talk about everything that's been going on and and reflect no i want i i at the end of this i would love to say right the one thing we're gonna do is x and the steps are broadly one two three super so we've stopped we've taken a breath we've observed that feeling a little bit at apprehensive with a little bit nervous a little bit overwhelm potentially by the next few months that's fair so we're gonna proceed with the intention of focus okay and trying to get all those thoughts if i said something else there then would that change the exercises you'd planned or would you still do the with a different idea it wouldn't change the exercises but it would change how i check your thought process behaviors and as we're going through it so if you said a curiosity rather than focus if you were then saying things like right that's what we need to do that's what we need to do like no no that's not the purpose of this session at this point would just being curious because you're trying me too too many things all at once since such a short period of time is that can be unproductive or it will leave you feeling that you've not explored all the ideas of curiosity was the thing similar if i let you run with curiosity and get to the end of we still not got that one thing that's gonna fill someone productive as well fair enough k so that's that's a stop exercise and which you you you don't need to do with somebody else in fact you rarely do just do it do it on on your own so stop take a breath observe how you're feeling what you're thinking what's happening with your body and how you want to seed with intention in a way that's gonna be helpful yeah i can see that really helping for example if you're about to go into a meeting or if you know i something bad up like a customer cancels or something like that then maybe just doing that rather and going oh my god you just go work wait won't don't you stop think about it so we said stop take a breath observe and decide how to proceed that stop exactly exactly and it's perfect in situations like that when you can feel yourself start to emotionally react very quickly great one for managers as well if they get blindsided by an email for a member of staff or a resignation that's taken us by a surprise it's a good a good one for that as well probably a good one for husbands as well yes or indeed lives fourteen indeed lovely that's our first exercise which is basic mindfulness now our second exercise is about reflection so this exercise was developed by the og of positive psychology martin s you've heard my yep yeah so him and his team at the university of pennsylvania completely changed a landscape of psychology in kind the nineties and and early northeast so what it's basically saying is that people who are reflective in a way that practices gratitude after just one week of doing this participants were happy and less depressed and this showed that this level of happiness stayed for one month three months six months later it's one of those positive psychology exercises it it's so well known people talk about gratitude journal and saying three things that you're grateful for it can sound a bit fluffy but actually it's some real real science behind it yeah when i was bankrupt i was really into the likes of chicken soup for the soul and tony robbins and all that kind of stuff and yeah it was it was kinda difficult to see what you would be grateful for so i i did do this and i did feel really stupid and sort of like west coast american and california about doing it but i did write down every morning what i was i was grateful for and every night was grateful for that day and it really massively helped because when you're sitting there in your bankrupt you got no money and you regarding have a bank account this that you need that sort of thing to remind you that it's not all a disaster it's also a really good way of evaluating all aspects of your life objectively we tend to focus on the bad thing right the thing that's not working out because evolutionary speaking that's where our attention is is drawn to lion yeah exactly but actually that and that tends to be around work as well doesn't know the things that are going wrong so the gratitude practice also just helps us identify other areas of life where things are really great so it might be that works a bit tougher for the minute but you're completely in love with your person and how wonderful is that or your kids are thriving or you know your dog would just want a competition or something in know yes i'm grateful for having dogs that don't win competitions and grateful for having a quiet someone with no children well and that's exactly what we're we're gonna do now actually so i thought we'd do a bit of a a bit of a seasonal version so you can do this for for the moment for the day before so three the great things have happened today three great things that happened yesterday we're gonna do a seasonal version because we're at this transitional point so i'll think back over this summer and i want you to bring to mind three good things that happened so they can be significant they can be small they can be work they could be personal it doesn't matter as long as it's felt meaningful for you so take a moment now out to identify your three good things for this summer and you do the same listener take the moment now and identify your three good things so if anyone not not listened to maybe about three months ago or two months ago then we got kicked out of the country we live in because of the we had a lawyer who was less than honest and so it didn't do the things he was gonna do so that was a bit of a disaster because we were devastated because that's what we were spending a summer from summer was gonna be in our beautiful house in mo bosnia her governor i know i'm sorry it's triggering however i'm really grateful that we had were friends with a lovely guy called nicolas who's in bulgaria who had a spare with a communal pool outside it and we could for a very reasonable price we're allow we'd be allowed us to stay for three months and i love that i i too and grateful for nico and this is where we need to extend the exercise a little bit i think people typically think about grass practices like oh well these are my three things i'm done let's move on for the day no we need little bit more time thinking about that thing we're grateful for so nico did you say his kindness is generosity why does that matter to you and what does it reveal about what's important to you what you value again regulators will know that we spent we spent probably the last seven eight years just traveling around sometimes every week we'd move and i hadn't realized how much i was enjoying the stability of our life when we're in monster how we've been there about eighteen months and we're planned to be there for two years in the same house and i hadn't really i hadn't really understood how much that was important to me at this point in my life maybe it's maybe it's it's because we spent so much time bouncing around maybe it's because a bit older now i we was what forty that was forty two forty three first i first started is traveling maybe forty actually now i'm approaching fifty perhaps i do want to just calm down a little bit so yeah that's probably that and then also i always it's gonna sound so cheesy but it always fills me with joy when someone is a decent person and we we we spoke to for example when our previous guests meghan fur a long brown if you've listened to the episode you know that adam poor was getting a name wrong but m she was a great person linkedin then we interviewed and we found out she was actually a great person in real life and that filled me with joy because i'm like yeah they often the opposite happens you think someone's cool and then they use you for something and then you're like oh mh but but yes so that's that's probably why and it's just under it's underlined how cool nico was and how he's like during fine no worries yeah caution come over yeah and it it's those values isn't it that it's so important to both with at kindness at generosity that that helping people and i think for me i'm also so really are really so grateful for that i guess when when you travel around you can start to have these thoughts aren't entirely true where you think you've taken time away from building relationships and you've taken time away from from the people who are really meaningful to you and i think for me coming back and spending time with nico again and made me realize that these relationships continue and they can be strengthened again in the future and and yes that's that's up absolutely what i'm grateful for as well so that's the idea and need to identify another the two things that you're grateful for you didn't inspect them a little bit more wise is it matter to what does it say about who you are who you want to be what does it revealed about what you value it's not just about happy memories it's really clues as to what energizes you and what you wanna carry into autumn so it might be the inter autumn we wanna continue to invest our energy and people who are kind and generous and on the same values levels we are are maybe not waste our time energy on some people who shown very different values during that period for us yes we will not be naming those those people okay so that's cool so the first one was that i think that i'm really grateful that that people are cool and and cool people are cool i like that second really quickly then what i'm really grateful for is just in terms of like the technical stack of producing a podcast obviously we have a podcast studio beautiful studio we've got lights we've got tele we got cameras got everything we obviously we couldn't take that so we ended up just taking our microphones and our phones and we've started i've now learned that a podcast particularly audio only you don't need thirty ninety percent of the tech we got at home so that's really cool and it also means that then you can go right well we can go and take our microphones and go and do a pod somewhere else we go away for four weeks and we'll just take our microphones and going hold with yeah yeah that's true we might be a bit more flexible in terms of of traveling and working rather than yeah stacking it all ahead absolutely and my final one is i'm really grateful for bulgarian wine but more specifically the wine international varieties of wine that available to byron bulgaria yes yes i am grateful little rosa yeah if you're not from europe then there's a there's a supermarket called little l d l it's german and they just stock the they just stock the best because they they'll stock maybe forty types of wine rather than four thousand load of those forty thirty five will be just exceptional so yes and what a lovely three because i know really shows how varied they can be we've got one that is very much kind of values relationships based one that's very much work and in practicality based and one that's just something that brings us a bit of joy on a friday afternoon in the sunshine to have a cool glass of rosie i'm grateful for that i'm also going gonna be very grateful my ap april spritz i'm gonna have light we're recording us on a saturday it's how dedicated we are guys you should be so thankful you really should okay so that was the x excise two which did have a name like the first three three good things so t t yeah so at this point you might be thinking leanne we're fifteen minutes in and we've not started planning yet no we haven't because we need to take a minute to ground ourselves in the present we need to take some time to look back and reflect and and grateful just breathe this optimism and hope in energy and hopefully i do feel a bit a bit more energized now going this because like there are cool people in the world and we have figured something about work and i'm gonna have a glass of ape spritz in about an hour you know i'm ready i'm ready let's do this okay so talking of doing it can we just pause for a second and done for quick bray yes then when we come back what are we doing after the break future self vision so after break will be looking ahead brilliant we'll see in a second quick announcement for all listeners yeah i've got a i've got a new toy on my my little deck thing so i can make my voice change anyway sorry love it do again hello lia do another one but we did interrupt your podcast listening for for this we actually interrupted 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 gold talks about empowering employees so go listen to success stories wherever you get your podcasts okay welcome back future self vision i think was what you said wasn't it yes so we're looking at something that stems from research from uc psychologist hal hi field so what hal did is use neuro imaging studies and found that when we think about our future selves our brains light up as if we're thinking about strangers which is somewhat problematic because we're not often kind to ourselves in the moment because we won't think about chilean that's that's nothing connected with me that's too abstract so it's it's hard to do things like save for a time or stick to long term goals because it feels like we're doing things of favors people were doing favors with people who don't really matter that much that that makes sense so when you think about for example i want i i want to be someone who goes to the gym like twice or three times a week i am not someone who goes to the gym three or four times a week i've go i don't i think i've been three or four times to my entire life so i wanna be that person but in my brain that person is just such a total stranger to me that i can't either i can't see the the the the way to get to be that person or it's very easy for me to say do you know what maybe tomorrow maybe tomorrow i'll go for a long walk yeah exactly exactly what this research went undefined is that when we actually visualize our future selves really vividly then we can make better long term decisions so actually one study people who saw dish digitally the age photos in themselves allocated thirty percent more money to retirement savings well that makes sense and i think there's there's something like a i think it's norman vincent peel said whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve which is a bit of a cheesy thing to say but from what i've understood is the some science that shows that when you imagine yourself doing something not your future self but imagine yourself doing something it's the same brain receptors on an fm mri that light up as if you're actually doing it mh is that is that right i mean make at all yeah no that sounds sounds great yeah so by vividly imagining it and we're not talking about this whole light you know sitting cross legged in the middle of field imagining just you know it's think about look at football the majority of football imagine scoring and it goes through their heads so vividly that when it comes to the point where they've gotten an opportunity to score they score same with racing drivers with rally drivers rally drivers imagine the course skier they're very famous for just imagining going through the course at the beginning of it so this isn't some kind of wonky that sort of new age thing this is actually it works and professional people use this they do and and it can be really practical as well so what we're gonna do to to use this neuroscience is imagine what a is gonna look like on december thirty first twenty twenty five so heading into new year's eve so guarantees is gonna be fatter waiting we don't know that a like would go into the gym but basically all you gonna do is just think about write it down or think out loud because it's probably better for the medium of audio i want you to describe to me what you're proud of what you achieve that you're really proud of by the end of december so let's fast forward to december i think what i'm proud of is getting our secret top secret project off the ground and at least three or four people having given us some money at basically we've sold it sold the consultancy mh so how does that feel do you have done that well i see it feels great and do you know what what's what's interesting and i know this there's gonna be very privileged position the money doesn't really interest me that much what interest what what i mean what i'd be so proud of is that i have managed to relay the value of our top secret project which obviously involves my wife doing consultancy around workplace well being i don't think it takes a genius to work out that that was that was the case but that i have managed to convince a stranger of the value that leanne is going to bring in advance and so therefore they trusted me enough to give me some money and i think that i just wanna be clear that when i say some money i'm not like going always gonna be cheap it's it's not gonna be cheap it's gonna be expensive but the difference is that if someone gives you some money for a future for a future event or a future outcome they trust you enough and that trust is so difficult to do it's like there's no real difference between someone giving you one pound and want someone give you a million pounds because to get someone to go from i'll have it for free to give you a pound for it there's a huge jump to get someone so unpack that and tell me but we'll have to my childhood to make me think like that well why is that the most the thing you're most proud of because we're gonna do loads of things over the next few months right we're gonna get some really cool guests on we might have another surge in grows we might do that other thing that we've been working on tit tapping away at why is it this secret well being project that you're achieving that is the thing you'll be most proud of i think partly because it's been about four years in the making behind the scenes it's the culmination of everything you know and things i've learned it'll also beat me going my marketing routes i used to load marketing i a marketing agency and i am done marketing for for years now i did of course to do a little bit on the podcast but it would be if we just if we finish the year and we didn't do anything like that looking at the opposite then all we've done is the podcast which is cool and it pays us nice amount of money thank you very much hubspot we love that money love hubspot love hubspot but that would be the same we've just achieved the same thing we did the year before mh whereas this is something different this is we have do you know what it is i think we've taken something or i will have taken something that doesn't exist and i will make it exist that's i know what i want my home that's what it's gonna be and that get that genuinely i felt myself feeling bit differently when i said that i bring something into the world that a the world needs or i believe they will and b i've brought it and it didn't exist and it does exist now brilliant so what we've done there what you've done there is by examining it a bit more and that's all coaching is right coaching questions like that which is essentially why is is the basis of any coaching question is you've taken it from oh we're gonna sell this product and people are gonna give money for it to i'm gonna create something that's not existed before that people need that's gonna make an impact i gonna feel really proud of that because that reflective of of who i am as a professional what gets me excited that is an excellent excellent goal out an excellent thing for for future out to be proud of can i just thank you listeners for going along with my sort of three or four minutes of rambling i think in a normal situation you probably would go away five minutes think about it and write it down so that's put it in them in this medium that'll be quite dull of dead iso asshole you would but i think you'd probably go through a similar a similar conversational process so either with your is you with yourself on pay but it might be that first thing you thought of that you're proud of your think actually that isn't the thing i'm gonna be most proud of gonna be something else but it's getting to that because that was your objective that one thing if this was more of a curiosity based exercise it might be more about what's not necessarily the thing you're most proud of but what's the thing that's the coolest thing that you've discovered or the best idea that you've you've had or you know is it's well switching it slightly to meet the objective that they were at but you wanted that one thing else is that your one thing yeah that's one thing brilliant so let's go to our next x exercise which is making it happen okay see the process here you see how we're building we're compounding out i like it i like it i feel like attempt to i'm a ted talk so make it happen i think you're gonna like the name of this exercise is it cheese nope it's whoop is say it again whoop i like it mh yeah so this is about by making it practical with a method it's a go setting method called whoop w o o p developed by another wonderful psychologist gabriel i i think is how you say it o wedding in nyu which is very cool and you know what that's the place that i think i wish i'd like an alternative life i would've going to nyu would you is at new york yeah oh you wouldn't last them you wouldn't last a month in new york no that version of ant couldn't go yeah that version there that would have been that not not the country bump from wales exactly yeah anyway so get real research basically it shows us that visualizing success isn't enough it's a good start so we've visualize it and that's good but if we didn't then change it into something more practical it could actually decrease our motivation because our brain brace thinks that you've already achieved it well okay yeah yeah fair enough yeah i think therefore it's done look that i love that oh yeah so i mean this won't be a surprise to anybody who's who's yeah is training coaching or is taking some coaching or basically read any book about goals yeah goals are really the thing that that make it happen having those specific plans and specifically with with this one as well most really effective goal setting is identifying the obstacles as well so that's what we're gonna do well so whoop stands for wish outcome obstacle plan okay okay so first we need the wish that one important thing that you want to achieve this autumn we know that is don't me yeah we we wanna get we wanna get this secret top secret project ra seven rx x seven we wanna get that out into the world is it challenging but achievable yeah okay looks like that's all i wish then out that is it so basically your wish has to be challenging but achievable challenging but achievable so if i was like right i'm gonna i'm gonna compete in the tour france to d france next year that is challenging but not achievable for me who i've literally forgotten to be it right how to ride a bike yeah yeah me oh if i said i wanted to build a website for rx x seven then that's achievable but not really challenging not for you not for you it depends on the person it'd be very challenging for me i don't know where stock but yes exactly challenging what achievable so that's our wish next outcome so i want you to imagine the best result if you achieve this wish what will be different what will be different what do you mean by what would be different what i'll be different about your work life once it's achieved so this is the outcome is it the yeah okay what will be different what's could be the biggest difference biggest outcome is probably that there will be something in the hands of other people that they didn't have before that's genuinely useful i'm just talking loud here that's a lovely one yeah that's probably and then the personal outcome for me is that once we've sold ten of these then i know myself and i'm probably gonna lose interest in it but i'll have created all of the stuff required for someone else to step in and run that process of getting more clients for you to to service and yeah that's probable talk talk me through what are are those good answers do yeah really good answers because again you're you're kind of it gets going back to that the biggest thing about that wish was that you've brought something into existence it didn't exist previously so even by extending that to thinking i know i'm gonna get bored because once it exists on board but i am also gonna have of built all the wrap around that somebody else can pick that up and and run with it so yeah it's gonna be different in that it exists it's a thing and it's a thing that somebody else can lead and in terms of how that's gonna make you feel you've brought something into existence you've given it beautiful structure so somebody else can can make something wonder another of it and you get to move one to the next exciting thing cool okay so that's what we're done what so far what what what yeah so the next o is obstacle so what is the biggest internal barrier so what is it within you something perhaps that could get in the way so we're not saying your biggest obstacle is that you don't know how to do google ads for example that's not the where the obstacle comes from the obstacle will come from me going oh i'll do it next week oh i'll do it next week and then christmas comes around and i'm not done it mh i suppose do you know what being real honest i think my biggest obstacle is that i would start planning this out and then i would go down so many rabbit holes go well you call if it did this and could that and cool it to the other thing and start building it so that by the time the first december comes i've actually built all the bits and pieces that fit with but i'm still not spoken to a single person mh that's the problem i there are some that there's two different types of business owners the people who like love going out there and selling something doesn't exist mh and i wish i was those but i'm i'm not really i don't think and i'm and then there's the other people who are sitting in a room and build it and then go and sell it and both of those people they've got pros and cons you wanna be somewhere between where you build the minimum viable product they're quit i'm bp our product go out there and engage the interest on it and then if there is interest then sell it and build the rest it i think to unpack that if you're being honest with just with yourself what's driving this pattern of thinking that results in this behavior to want to add tough to and explore more and and keep the curiosity going rather than the focus because if we wanted to be devil's avocado one could say that that is just a very nice way of thinking about procrastination i'm not procrastinating i'm i'm staying curious i say i say it's procrastinating mh so what is it that drives that is it fear of talking to people is it habits of just that's how you work there isn't a time pressure to it what's driving that it's probably one of two things it's probably the first one is that i just want it to be good so if someone says no to it i want them to say no to something which i think is good so i go okay it's not for you that's fine and there's probably a little bit of security there as well when you show something to the world and it's suddenly it's like half baked people will be like well that's a bit rubbish isn't it does it do that no it doesn't yet no no oh well it's not very good is it mh so there's that the other part of me which is just you've just thought of as potentially i know that once i've got it done or all once i'm about there selling it the the countdown begins to me losing interested in it mh that's probably more likely mh that i know that if i start having ten phone calls a week and i'm converting two to three of them and selling it then i've probably got nine week left mh and then i'm gonna lose interest we've identified though in your perfect outcome that that's built in you give yourself permission to lose interest i have yeah oh interesting interesting yes you're right i've given myself i've already built in the fact that we'll go and bring someone else in to manage this mh oh okay so actually that is if a spin on is put it on his head spinning you're saying that the quicker i get to the point of losing interest the quicker i can go off and do other cool things because i've got someone else in you to manage it yeah might be something in this coaching stuff you know maybe so let's go back again to that now we've had that that reflection so that that pattern of thinking which i'm gonna call procrastination fine and unless you said the fear of it not being good so the only way i see this continued or prolonged period of development should we say it rather than so it doesn't become procrastination the only way you can do that is knowing how it's good so how will you know this is good or good enough for an mvp well you need to go out there and show people it let's see what they say right so you can't judge yourself if its good enough no and this is the irony is that now it sounds like grown up powell is now joined the conversation and he's now looking back over at stupid who's sitting over there and going what hell are you talking about a few minutes ago because you're right you should be able to go out there you should be able to sell the dream and we go okay this is what we're building this is what we've got so far are you in if you're interested just give us a hundred quid to show us that you're definitely interested and then help us build out the rest of it and if you go out there and you collect a hundred quickly the here nor there so you go out there and collect ten people you're not gonna change the world of that money but you will have ten people who who have who have given you that more than one pound more than zero to say they're interested so yes that's interesting so actually in theory when we get back home in about in about week's time i could in theory just start emailing all or cold calling people mh yeah mate maybe maybe future i didn't hear that it is a lot more affordable it even fair i'm not frightened to cold calling and i'm not frightened to be emailing i'm not frightened talking to people but i don't think anybody even though have respect to the world or the greatest salespeople in the world i'm not sure they love cold calling coli manning no no well it's is one of those we love it when when you do it and you get a good outcome yeah because it makes us the uncomfortable thing worth it but if you don't then it's just sold destroying and say that having worked in outreach sales my myself yeah long some time ago okay inch this is really really good our excellent excellent reflection here so in terms of this obstacle it started that oh will it will be me potentially over thinking about it i want to spend a bit more time on development wanting to make sure it's really good afraid that the sooner i get it there i'm gonna lose interest well what we've actually said is from our outcome you've already given yourself permission to lose interest that's baked into into achieving the outcome and in terms of is it good enough you've now said on for further the reflection that actually that's part of it you need to take it when it's not quite good enough you need to go to sell the dream and get feedback from the market from potential customers so is it fair then that the main obstacle is gonna be procrastination yeah sadly yes okay so let's move on to the p let's finish the whoop yep okay so plan an if then statement for me so if you face the obstacle so if you face procrastination then i will what what's a specific action you can take to address the obstacle back when i did tele sales i used to write down the number of direct nodes i've got so i'd have a piece of paper and i'd i'd think in my head i'm making fifty sixty seventy cold calls a day and therefore and i'm selling three so therefore i'm getting forty seven people say no to me but actually what happened was i found that the majority of people just said may i in the middle of something or no they're not around or didn't answer whatever a so really i was getting like five no and three yes i was like oh oh so i'm like you know i want like a thirty percent or slightly more thirty eight percent success rate here and that helped me to reframe but so i'm saying this out loud because i'm trying to think what is it so if i find myself opening my laptop and going in right i'm just gonna very quickly build this panel into the software that's procrastination so i should be doing something what other tell me you know me better than most people in the world what would be my signs of procrastination i you just identified one there isn't it that open that laptop and if if you're if the first thing you're gonna do isn't something that's gonna contribute to the outcome then it's procrastination it might be that you have to build that panel because you had a conversation with somebody the day before that said or with five people that said that would be the main thing they'd wanna see so you'd have to do that so i guess it's it's identifying in that moment the minute you're you're putting off any task that is driving towards our output is one identifying it is procrastination that's the first thing and catching yourself in the moment isn't it reflecting on your route will also help with that in terms of what's the wish what's the outcome what's the obstacle am i in this moment ind too much in the obstacle what do you think the main reasons that you do procrastinate tonight i think one of the reasons that a lot of people procrastinate is especially if you have ownership of an idea and you go off and you say to people in the world in in in real life here's my idea what you think of my idea and they go it's a rubbish idea then you go well that was my idea and you and it kinda like they're talking there it feels like they're going well that's rubbish and therefore by extension you're rubbish mh so i think there's a lot of that so really what needs to happen for having is to take and i've do you know what's funny is that hi jeremy what's funny is that with a lot of people i've been speaking to i've coached through this thing i've gone look there are four stages ages and and the first one is you're a scientist and you just got an experiment and you're go and okay so this is what i think might work let's go and see if it'll work and and you go oh that was interesting it didn't work so what we to tweak to get that to work i think that's what i need to do i think i need to take the idea and treat it as a hypothesis that needs testing so if i may then yeah what you saying you're going around in circles here if i face procrastination that i will remember i'm a scientist oh yes yes that's probably it isn't it yeah so if is procrastination it's probably because i don't want someone to say it's a bad idea and then i have to remind myself it's not my idea is an idea nice lovely my course will be coming out of christmas at nine nine nine early better access exactly that though and show write that write that down afterwards one one once we finished finishes right down you whoop and and write that that statement down so if i face procrastination then i will remember i'm a scientist or or what was the exact thing you said again no i think that was wasn't don't remember your scientist new testing hypothesis an idea not the idea so it's not your idea it's an idea and it's actually my idea that helps all it is your idea i know also the sciences sounds so people don't want it then they're just wrong so that's another one if i face procrastination they'll i'll go to liam and for pep talk yes that's what i'll do oh no lovely so we we kept me on your roof what's your wish so wish is to have a number of people who've made some kind of financial commitment to the i got this forgotten already yeah no that right make financial commitment to the rx seven system or road map or blueprint that we're putting together mh o was obstacle outcome outcome how is that different to the wish so the best result so the outcome is if you remember this is a key one for you it exists in the world yeah and i've done all the wrap around so i've given myself permission to lose interest in it okay right yes so that's the outcome yes it it's it's ready it's generating revenue enough revenue to me to go and find someone else and put them in that role and yes and outcome is the best possible version of the wish coming true okay yeah what's your obstacle procrastination and what's your plan whenever i whenever i find as a procrastinating saying to myself it's just a hypothesis at this stage and i've as long as i keep hypo then i will come up with something or at the all at christmas if i've i've come with ten hypothesis spoken to two hundred people and nobody wants it well it's that's that's actually probably quite a good thing to find out rather than spending three months building something when no one wanted it in the first place yeah and it might be that after after four weeks of working you sit down october and create another loop yeah and what you've base and yeah what you plan to do and do write it out if you are listening and thinking i i think i i've got a whoop you do have a whoop you probably have more than one whoop but do write it out it does show that it's actually more effective when you physically physically do that energy transfer and between the brain and and yet it's it's very much a thing interesting you know you're talking before about how it's hard to en visit your future yourself mh you can actually use that to your advantage or if your journal if you journal in the third person particularly for experiencing something quite heavy emotionally you might say something like leanne had a really tough day today she did ten sales calls and everyone said no it makes her feel like she's not worthy your the idea to useless her so that she was wrong talking about yourself in the third person distance yourself even more from those emotions more so than just regular journey just because again the neuro imaging shows that the energy transfer goes from our amygdala kind of emotional brain to our prefrontal cortex or thinking brain so yeah there you go can you use some of these things to advantage so how are you feeling out you've got your whoop yeah i think so i think i think because i'm quite visual visual or overlay or whatever the word is then i would want to see it written down i so i think what we've said this this this is a bit of a con situation because we would normally write things down wouldn't wait yes so i think once i'd see it written down and i'm like okay but the the one thing that's alice because this is interesting i i knew a little bit about what you were gonna do i deliberately didn't look too much at your notes and i thought we were gonna end up with a plan to sell the rx accept to develop and sell rx seven by christmas and what we've actually end up with is simply go out there ask people if they want it and if they and if enough people don't change what i'm asking them yeah yeah absolutely i think it's almost kind of kind of one step further even end that we've gone through all the psychological processes we need to accept the transition feel like we've got the energy to move forward identify what that obstacle is gonna be in ourselves not that the market doesn't want to or or you know the advertising campaign will fail it's actually what's within me that's gonna potentially sabotage this so now when you go might your plan the plan will the plan will plan you'll be able to do that and you can do there loads of different frameworks to to help you actually do that step by step this is really more about the the planning for your psychological yourself to make this happen interesting something i never ever would have thought of doing and if you said to me do you wanna do this like nothing you know i don't i do not but is been very worthwhile you know what i think that's my favorite thing about coaching is when he gets somebody who's a bit skeptical yeah and then they starts to starts to be like oh alright yeah yeah no i did yeah yeah anyway so let's move on to our final exercise aisle which is energy intention to our closing reflection okay the destination is important now we know this but what's more important the journey exactly enjoying the journey okay so let's think about the end of september and this is where we can start to get a bit more practical as well what's the one thing you could have done by the end of september that you're gonna feel freaking great about i think it's gotta be that i've got at least have one phone call mh i think that's it because once you have one then you feel you know oh yeah i could do smaller more of these and yeah i wanna do some more of so i it's probably gotta have one phone call and to have one phone i probably hit need to probably spend a week or so thinking about exactly what it is that we're gonna deliver not like over covid i know you look at it me at wide eyes not procrastinating but just so this some ones so i don't go do you want to do this they go yeah how would you do it go no oh so i think we need to have a little bit of a a sort of a a plan mh but no that's it really and i kinda feel little bit excited in my ear let's so let's go and talk to some people by the way you're listening and you wanna be some my one of my first people check the show notes my email in there brilliant so it's kind of saying that we'd we would have had the first first customer call yep by end september what i like is you didn't even say that you'd converted it no that's good point why why was that important because like you said before the obstacle was that i wasn't going to book the calls the obstacle isn't that they'd say no and what's your outcome outcome is to have have a yourself something in place that i can hand off to someone else which is is that what's exactly yeah so the outcome was having having basically customers paying money for this yeah product and having a process around you can hand it off so the outcome is the conversion yeah so it's not reasonable to accept the outcome by the end of september know it's a good point yes good point sorry i was thinking yes good point so so normally what i'll do is go right okay what are they call them bee h big hairy or audacious girl audacious gold goals i'd be like okay so i wanna i have ten customers by the end of end of september what you're sent to me lee is no that's not your end of september goal that's probably your beginning december goal but that's not your end end to end of september your ended september goal is to i've spoken to at least one person by this you said that to me i didn't say that to you you said to me i said what what can you do by september that i was spoken to at least one person okay that was you telling me that but it's all i want to do is kinda really reinforce that it wasn't the conversion it wasn't getting that sale that's further down the line so remember that for you it's getting that that first conversation done and as you said some steps before that to be able to facilitate those conversations but will probably me mean you and me sitting down going through exactly what it is that that we're doing why it's important why people need it why it's so transformative etcetera etcetera yeah so basically the next four weeks we need to sit down how that conversation figure out exactly what it is that we're offering and you need to speak to at least one person about it okay okay that field achievable by september absolutely and how you reckon you gonna feel after you've had that phone call good i think i love talking to people on the phone about new ideas energized yeah energized yeah yeah lovely so then feeling energized feeling like we've achieved something how'd do you then think that's gonna influence your mindset going into october knowing that you still have three months until you have to achieve your perfect outcome yeah it's i think that's it once you make it's like everything isn't it you if you can get yourself to the gym then the then the likelihood is you'll spend an hour doing something and not just eating snacks in the foyer like i did once so if you can get it yourself to the gym so if you can get literally lecture that that that beating booked well you're you're gonna do something call that meeting and then you wanna book another one on another one so mh yes so you want to feel energized by the end of september yep and the way you're gonna get energized is having that conversation with the customer yep and the way you're gonna have a conversation with that customer is to just conversations to refine the product yes in its fine print we've got the got the foundations yes exactly so there's only actually three actions that need to be taken between announce september to make a massive step forward towards your your whoop by the end of the year so there you go there you go and easy it's kind of that one chicken can kinda nail or how you want to feel and you can shape your decisions and your choices and your actions to match that intention so again when you're maybe procrastinating you can you can use that as a statement as well as that you know i'm i'm i'm feeling like i'm procrastinating i wanna feel energized yeah it's all all ties together around how are we feeling good good yes that was good was kinda weird doing it with your wife and it was kind of even weird at doing it in public yeah so quite vulnerable isn't it yeah yeah so please don't please don't nasty to me on linkedin although i never go on so that i would see you being nasty if you wanna be do something like this with lia anne which i think you should because if you've listen this far you're obviously interested in it then get in touch because i'm sure you can make that happen for some people i'd be very yeah very very happy too and you can do this yourself as well i said i frame as self coaching session so of course it's it's ideal to do it with a trained coach it's also very effective to do it with somebody else whether it be a friend or a business partner or a colleague and you have that kind of mutual session together it's you can do by yourself as well so to run through them again ground yourself and stop reflect on a three good things connect with your future yourself make a concrete plan using rope and set energy intention for the weeks ahead and they're not just one time things as we said it might be your group will need to be revised at the end of september but stop can be a daily habit that you have three good things is perfect in terms of your journal and your yourself is also a really good one if you are finding yourself procrastinating from time to time there you go out you got your hope it's so thanks again for listening we're back on thursday with another amazing interview we're also back home in moscow so we you'll you'll probably noticed that things will be a little bit better quality audio on the last couple of interviews unfortunately had to use airpods and that wasn't it would just didn't cut it so we will see you next week and if you've enjoyed this then got back maybe listen to a few more of the summer ones from about june onwards because they're were little bit different at they are they are and let us know what your whoop is that'll be awesome get in touch on linkedin tell your whoop and we will whoop for you hashtag what's your whoop that's our new tag right we'll see you next week bye bye bye