Episode 100 · 23 May 2024 · 34:43
5 Tips for a Happy Workplace from 5 Workplace Experts
5 Tips for a Happy Workplace from 5 Workplace Experts
0:000:00
Tip: click any timestamp below to jump there and keep playing.
Enjoying the show? Subscribe for free
Chapters & timestamps
Click any timestamp to jump the player to that moment.
Tip 1: Know Yourself with Dr. Ryne Sherman
Tip 2: Neurodiversity Is Your Competitive Advantage with Professor Nancy Doyle
Tip 3: The 4-Day Work Week Is Not a Fad with Joe O'Connor
Tip 4: Be More Gen Z with Isabel Berwick
Tip 5: Measure the ROI with Bruce Daisley
Recap of the first 5 tips
Show notes
100 Episodes, 5 Expert Tips for a Happier Workplace
Celebrating 100 episodes of Truth, Lies & Work — Al and Leanne mark the milestone by pulling together five of the most powerful, practical tips from five workplace experts who've joined the show.
From knowing yourself before you lead others, to why neurodiversity is a competitive advantage, to the case for the 4-day week, to why we should all be a bit more Gen Z, to Bruce Daisley's warning to measure the ROI — this episode distils 100 conversations into five ideas you can act on this week.
And it's only part one. Join them next Thursday for five more tips from leading psychologists and experts.
The 5 Tips at a Glance
1. Know Yourself — Dr. Ryne Sherman Dr. Ryne Sherman, Chief Science Officer at Hogan Assessment Systems, makes the case for understanding your entrepreneurial personality. Personality assessments offer a scientifically based way to make decisions about people — predicting everything from workplace performance to broader life outcomes. If you don't know your own drivers, you can't lead anyone else effectively.
2. Neurodiversity Is Your Competitive Advantage — Professor Nancy Doyle Professor Nancy Doyle, a leading expert in neurodiversity at work, explains how neurodiversity becomes a genuine advantage when done right. She challenges organisations to move beyond accommodation and into leveraging the unique strengths of neurodivergent individuals — while being honest about the challenges they face.
3. The 4-Day Work Week Is Not a Fad — Joe O'Connor Joe O'Connor, Director & Co-Founder at the Work Time Reduction Centre of Excellence, shares the research: increased productivity, better employee health, and no negative financial impact. The 4-day week works when approached as an innovation, not a perk.
4. Be More Gen Z — Isabel Berwick Isabel Berwick, host of the FT's Working It podcast, argues that embracing Gen Z's expectations leads to a more engaged and loyal workforce. Rather than rolling your eyes at the youngest cohort, there's a case that they're bringing the workplace forward for everyone.
5. Measure the ROI — Bruce Daisley Bruce Daisley, author of The Joy of Work and Fortitude, explains why resilience training often fails — and why leaders need to measure the ROI of workplace initiatives before rolling them out. The ability to bounce back is desirable, but when we witness real resilience, it looks collective, not individual.
🎧 Missed These Episodes?
Each tip comes from a full conversation with the expert. Go back and listen:
- Dr. Ryne Sherman — Episode 26
- Professor Nancy Doyle — Episode 41
- Joe O'Connor — Episode 36
- Isabel Berwick — Episode 85
- Bruce Daisley — Episode 78
📬 Join the Conversation
We'd love to hear your thoughts on these tips — and which ones you're trying at work.
- Email: hi@truthliesandwork.com
- Comment on our YouTube channel
- Connect with us on LinkedIn
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
Expand full transcript
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning psychology podcast brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of work.
Al ElliottYes, welcome, welcome to our Thursday episode. Thursday episodes are usually interviews. Tuesday episodes are a little bit more loosey-goosey. We— it's just Leanne and I talking, rounding up the latest news in the world of work. And then also we have that amazing weekly workplace surgery where I put your questions to Leanne. But Normally today we'd be going, okay, and the guest we've got on today is— but it's a bit different today, Lee, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottIt is. Today marks our 100th episode, which might not mean that much to you, listener. Maybe it does if you enjoy our content and you're glad that it's still coming thick and fast. But to us, this is the little pod that could. We joined HubSpot Network about 18 months ago on just 7 episodes and a mere few hundred downloads, and our growth has blown our minds, and that is down to our incredible listeners. Thank you so, so much for tuning in. week on week. So we want to do something special for you this week. We know we throw a lot of content at you, a lot of different ideas, a lot of different expert views. So today we have distilled more than 100 episodes, 180+ interviews with workplace culture experts into our top 10 tips.
Al ElliottYes, these are our top 10 tips from established names and researchers in the world of workplace psychology. This isn't just your average influencer who's bought 10,000 Twitter followers and now is like, oh, look at me, I'm really important. These are proper people. These are thought leaders of the very highest order.
Leanne ElliottSo over the next 2 Thursday episodes, we are aiming to bring you 10 tips to build a happy workplace. Let's start with you, the business leader. Along the way, we have spoken a lot about the importance of self-awareness in leadership. Great leaders are introspective. They work to understand themselves, their motivations, their own behaviours, and importantly, how that impacts their employees. I'm not sure there's anything I find more interesting than exploring the characteristics of, of business owners, or indeed the personality of entrepreneurs. I am married to one, so I have an in-house subject whenever I want it. Our first expert is Dr. Ryan Sherman, who we first spoke to back on episode 26, Why Personality Matters in Family Business. Ryan is Chief Science Officer at Hogan Assessment Systems, and is an expert on personality assessment, leadership, and organisational effectiveness. He's also the co-host of one of my favourite podcasts, The Science of Personality, where he shares the latest research on all of those topics. Dr. Ryan has received numerous awards for his research, including being named Rising Star in 2016 by the Association for Psychological Science and winning the Sage Youth Scholars Award in 2018. So, on this show, Ryan shared some of his latest research into entrepreneurial personalities and advises that all business leaders spend time to understand themselves. This lesson is timeless. After all, it was Aristotle that said, knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Al ElliottWhat personality assessments offer is a way to make decisions about people that is scientifically based, right? So there's lots of research showing that personality predicts pretty much everything, every meaningful difference in sort of life outcomes that we care about. It predicts criminal behavior, it predicts substance use, it predicts substance abuse. It predicts marriage, it predicts marriage longevity, it predicts actual longevity, how long we live, it predicts workplace performance really quite well. So that's one way to decide as well is to use a personality assessment because we know that this actually predicts workplace performance.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd it's a really impressive dataset collected by some of our colleagues in the Netherlands who actually were able to— I don't actually know how they did this. They were actually able to sort of not necessarily infiltrate, but get in with some organized crime organizations and get assessments from individuals there who are not currently in jail, right? So typically— or in prison, right? So typically when you have— we have other prison samples at Hogan, right? But these are people who were criminals who got caught or who were convicted anyway.
Leanne ElliottRight.
Al ElliottThese are individuals who are not convicted, who are not, you know, some of them may be under investigation, some of them may be being monitored, but none of them have been convicted of a crime at the time when they were assessed. So, and it's, as you might imagine, it's a hard sample to get. So it's not a huge sample. I think we've got about 60 or 70 folks in that sample. And the remarkable thing about their profile is just how similar it looks to that entrepreneurial profile. Profile. There are a couple of sort of, I would say, sort of key differences here. So a couple of things that I think stand out when we look at entrepreneurs and we look at criminals is that they're both in for destruction. They both are creative. They both can look at avenues for success. They're both looking at ways that, hey, how can I achieve? How can I solve some problem? How can I fix something? The difference is really about laws. It's how strict are the laws? And so in certain countries, And in fact, there's a business paper many, many years ago, I think it's a very overlooked paper, where this business professor essentially theorized that there's some fixed number of entrepreneurs in any population, and how many of them go to prison versus succeed really depends on how strict your laws are, right? If you have really strict laws, you put many of them in prison. If your laws aren't very strict, if you're pretty loose about what can happen, then many of them Go on to start these thriving businesses. And so that's one of the key differences is just sort of how strict the laws are locally. But the other difference that we see with entrepreneurs and organized criminals is there tends to be an empathy component. So we see a little bit more empathy in the entrepreneurs. At some deep level, the entrepreneurs might actually worry about harming other people. They really care more about that. Whereas the organized criminals have a little less. The other thing that we tend to see, and we don't have great data on this, but it seems to be the case, is that sort of background, right? So, I mean, Elon Musk has been a highly successful entrepreneur, but he didn't start from nothing, right? His parents had a pretty— provided a pretty strong financial base for him to start off with, and he also got a pretty good education, right? In the criminal world, we're often talking about people who don't have that, right? They didn't come from a strong socioeconomic background. They didn't come from a privileged area. They didn't get to go to the best schools or anything like that. And so, but they have the same desires that those entrepreneurs do, right? They want to disrupt. They want to change. They see problems. They see ways to fix it. They see ways that they can be involved and they want to gain status. And they'll come up with different creative means. If you don't have access to sort of legal means for achieving status and success, they will resort to illegal ones. Such an interesting guy, and definitely go and check out his podcast. The link will be in the show notes. Of course, we're not saying that all entrepreneurs have the making of a drug dealer, but it is important to understand that as entrepreneurs, our thinking can be a little more extreme or perhaps a little less typical. We explored this a little bit more with our next expert, Professor Nancy Doyle. Nancy Doyle is a professor of organizational psychology specializing in neurodiversity at work, and in 2022, she was named one of the world's most inspirational D&I leaders. Nancy is the founder of Genius Within, a neurodivergent-owned and led business with a mission to help neurodistinct individuals access their inner genius and be their best at work. She's also co-director of the Centre for Neurodiversity at Work, a non-executive director of Project 507, and perhaps above all, a proud ADHDer. We spoke to Professor Nancy Dawe back in episode 41, where she explained what neurodiversity is, and specifically how it can impact the entrepreneur. Her tip: done right, neurodiversity is your competitive advantage. Humans are as diverse in the way we think as we are in the way our faces look or our fingerprints. We are kind of all unique and distinct, um, and that kind of diversity in our, in our neurotype, in the way that we think, is, is natural. It's an evolutionary advantage. It means that we have specialists as well as generalists in a community. You know, some people that are really good at some things, some people that are quite good at most things, some people that, you know, that, that diversity of what people are capable of is an evolutionary advantage in a community. So this is is the kind of baseline understanding as argued by Judy Singer, the Australian sociologist who published her thesis about neurodiversity in 1998. So in mainstream education— let's take education because that's a universally known experience— so if you think about the modern classroom since then, since the Industrial Revolution, in order to succeed you have to survive the classroom, and that involves sitting still for 8 hours a day, 6 to 8 hours a day. It involves being literate, being numerate, doing fine motor control handwriting, and socializing in a large group in a sensory environment that can be quite overwhelming. So if you think about that context, anyone who can't do that got a label basically around the Industrial Revolution. But prior to the Industrial Revolution, there was no need to do those things. So if you think about reading and writing, it's, it's a weird skill, 2D sequential code, and we're going to do all our communication like that. After evolving for hundreds of thousands of years to communicate through song, through movement, through eye contact or not eye contact and just voice. And, you know, so all of these kind of flexibilities went out the window and all of a sudden we have to read and write. So the argument of neurodiversity is it's the world that's weird, not us. Basically, the world has gone weird. If you can't do the literacy, numeracy, sitting still, and weird hypersocial communication thing, there must be something wrong with you. You need a label, and now you're weird. So that's, that's our kind of argument from the neurodiversity movement, which is it's the world that's weird, not us. But the reality is that is the world, and we do have to live in it. And so because of that, lots of us find it very, very difficult to survive mainstream education. I didn't.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottUm, I was hospitalized at 14. I simply couldn't cope with it, and I spent the last 2 years of my secondary education working from home on a Monday, going into school on a Monday, picking up my work and doing it from home for the rest of the week. Um, and that's not an unusual experience for neurodivergent people. We find the mainstream education system incredibly difficult, increasingly so actually. It's got worse since I was at school. Um, and then we go into the workplace with these kind of hang-ups and Shame and lack of self-esteem, and then we struggle in our careers, or we find our niche and we go absolutely brilliantly. You know, it's kind of like nowhere in between. So, so that's why there are so many neurodivergent people who are unemployed, really disproportionate numbers of neurodivergent people who are unemployed, and then also disproportionately represented as entrepreneurs. 35% of entrepreneurs are dyslexic. If you're ADHD, you are twice as likely, um, to start a business when you graduate as a non-ADHDer. So you've got this kind of potential for, for innovation and creativity, but you've also got these big— we've got these big chips on our shoulders of not feeling valued and not feeling understood by a world that has become very automated and standardized and, you know, same. It's like a sausage factory, isn't it? You have to be— we have to be all Automatons in order to survive. We have to comply with all the rules, and those of us who, who find that difficult don't, and then we struggle. I mean, I've been in this game for 25 years, and, um, but before I even knew I had ADHD, by the way. I didn't even know that when I got into this game at all. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 38. Um, but, you know, yeah, 20 years ago I was kicking people's doors down to get them to talk about neurodiversity. I think this is my biggest problem with the education system is it all seems to be about compliance. It's about following the system. It's about learning the stuff that someone else decided you need to learn. And for me, it felt like there was no other way other than excelling at school. And then when I met people who quit school, um, who didn't enjoy school like I did, I just found a different, totally different world. I, as a, as a teen, I was such a weird teen. As a teen, I was building robots, I was doing electronics, I was— I had goats, you know what I mean? But that was just the way that my brain was wired, was not to be particularly academic, but to be a bit more creative. Now, we will be bringing you much more content on neurodiversity soon. And if you'd like to find out more about neurodiversity and being assessed, you definitely need to check out Genius Within. The link is in the show notes.
Leanne ElliottEntrepreneurs drive change. And that's why I love them. They shape the future because they're excited about all the possibilities. And as we've heard, that can come with some challenges. And when it comes to organizational life, it can lead to viral trends that then become fads and are perhaps never heard of again once entrepreneurs lose interest. The antidote to fads is evidence-led insights, and that leads us on to our next expert guest, Joe O'Connor. Joe is the mind behind the 4-Day Workweek Global pilot. He is currently the director and co-founder at Work Time Reduction Center of Excellence, where he has supported more than 200 employers and 10,000 employees to make the transition to reduced-hour productivity-based working. We spoke to Joe on episode 36, 4-Day Workweek 101. He explained the background behind the research, his key findings, and how organizations could implement the 4-day workweek effectively and sustainably. His advice shows exactly why the 4-day workweek is not a fad.
Al ElliottUm, I first got interested in the 4-day week and shorter working weeks more generally all the way back in 2018, back when really the 4-day week, if we're being honest, was more of a philosophical discussion than a practical one. There was a very small number of companies that were actually doing this. But I was reading some research on trials that had been taking place in Ireland and Denmark and in New Zealand and really got interested in this initially based on some research we had done in Ireland of public sector workers, which suggested there was a huge amount of working parents that had moved to shorter work weeks or to reduced hour schedules for less pay. But often their experience was that their responsibilities in the job, their expectations, and the output that they were producing was actually the same as it was when they were working 5 days. So this really inspired me to get involved with this more. And I designed and developed the first ever pilot project of the 4-day week in my home country in Ireland in early 2021. And then later, as CEO of 4 Day Week Global, led a number of the global trials, including the one in the UK that's been in the media quite recently. And really, the headline results from these trials, which no doubt some of you are Listeners will be familiar with was that for the most part, and for the overwhelming majority of participants, employees that took part in these trials were happier and they were healthier. Employers that took part in the trials found that they were better positioned to attract and to retain talent. But also the companies that took part found that they were actually more productive and more efficient. And that's the piece that often for people almost seems counterintuitive. How can you reduce the length of time that people are spending at work, but actually produce better business outcomes. And really what's fundamentally at the heart of that is that when we talk about the 4-day week, we're not just talking about reducing the number of hours that people spend at work. We're also talking about fundamentally changing the way that people work. I think if you look really hard at the businesses that took part in these trials and how they were able to make this a success, it was about using the 4-day week as a forcing function to streamline their operations, to make their processes more efficient, and to change their work practices in a way that enabled them to deliver better outcomes. So obviously, this is something which is not one size fits all. It depends on the industry, it depends on the business. But some of the typical things, particularly that we saw in companies that were more knowledge-based, was the low-hanging fruit was in things like overlong and unnecessary meetings, distractions and interruptions in the workday, It was in, you know, improving processes, eliminating low-value activities, or at least minimizing low-value activities, and making better, more mindful use of technology. So this is some of the things that we saw organizations really attack in order to be able to, you know, so what we're talking about here is not about doing the same work in the same way, because often that's a fear of employees. You know, if we're expected to deliver the same results in less time, then surely, you know, will it mean that our work is harder, it's faster, it's more intense? But when you look at the research, actually it found that these organizations were able to achieve this not through organizational speed-up but through organizational redesign, which effectively meant they were delivering the same output but with fewer or more efficient inputs.
Leanne ElliottIt's such fascinating research, and the 4-day workweek really is working in practice as well. So as we heard there, nearly 3,000 employees took part in the pilot from across 31 companies, all of which were working 4 days a week for 5 days' pay. That's the critical bit, guys. It's not putting everyone on part-time, it's 4 days per week for 5 days' pay. And at the end of the experiment, participants reported huge, huge benefits including improved sleep, reduced stress, better mental health, and even better There was no adverse impact on financial performance for any of the 31 companies. In fact, on average, revenue was up 35% compared to the same period the previous year. But as Joe says, it's all about how this is executed. It is a major organisational change.
Al ElliottIf you are interested in that, then check out that episode because there's a great guy on there called Ferry who's just crazier than a box of frogs, but he's actually implemented it and he is he's killing it in every single aspect. If you go on LinkedIn and look at any of his posts on LinkedIn, they're hilariously funny. He basically green screens himself in with, um, with the likes of Brad Pitt, and then he'll be green screening himself in on the, uh, on the Google conference and that kind of thing. Uh, just a really funny guy. But it's cool because he's obviously— his people enjoy work, he enjoys work, and they only work 4 days a week, and the company is doing really, really well.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's Us, by the way. Yeah.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of pop culture. It is.
Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Lunch wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in. Speaking of organizational change, there are— there is change on the cards. We cannot do anything about this. I worked out, I did a spreadsheet which took me about 3 days to work out the exact date where there will be more Gen Z and millennials in the workforce than there are Gen Xers like me and boomers like, well, most boomers have retired now. So, but I worked out the exact date and you know what? I can't remember what it was, but it was somewhere around about 2027, 2028 was when I worked it out.
Leanne ElliottI think it's in the next 4 to 5. I think it's before 2030.
Al ElliottIt's before 2030. But, um, and it's—
Leanne ElliottThat spreadsheet was a good use of time, wasn't it? 3 days and you can't remember.
Al ElliottWell, if I was a professional podcaster, I would've looked it up beforehand, but I'd forgot anyway. So they will actually form the majority of the workforce by about this date, definitely 2030 and probably slightly before. Generational differences remain a key consideration for business leaders, and we spoke to many experts on how we can better support our younger generations. But there's one expert that really does stand out. The amazing Isabel Berrick is a Financial Times journalist, host of the FT's Working It podcast— if you haven't subscribed, you should, it's amazing— and author of the weekly Working It newsletter. She's the editorial lead for the FT Women in Business Forum, She moderates and hosts FT and external events around the workplace. And in April this year, she released her first book, The Future-Proof Career: Strategies for Thriving at Every Stage. I got an advanced copy of that and it was fabulous. I felt really important because it got press written across it in top secret, so I felt very important. Anyway, Isabel has appeared on multiple episodes of Truth, Lies and Work, and she's a friend of the show at this point. But I'd like to draw your attention to our conversation on episode 85, where we talked about toxic masculinity and the role of social media and how generational differences may be driving us apart. Isabel thinks this us and them view is flawed, and she thinks that leaders should be working harder at understanding our emerging workforce. If we want to make work a happier and healthier workplace for everyone, we may need to be more Gen Z. 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 a workplace, we expected not to be heard. You know, it was sort of—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottDo your job and just be grateful for it. And actually, it's quite good that— I think it's great that Gen Z 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? You know, when you've got younger people going into what are 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 work-life balance. So they— I think they're going in with their eyes open, but I think surely it benefits all of us. You know, 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 70, 80-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.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al Elliottfrom working a little bit less. I think, I'm sure everything's going to 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 recalibration of workplaces that benefits everyone. But I suppose the bottom line is if they don't like it, they'll leave. leave. I think all the stats show that Gen Z are 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 on at the moment. I think it'll settle down. Empathy is so, so important in today's workplaces. We've all got a lot more in common than we might think. There's a lot, you know, the whole of the quiet quitting, lazy girl jobs, all of those trends started on TikTok, and that's not a surprise. I think when we were young, when all of us were young, we probably had shit jobs and shit managers. The difference now is that people can go on TikTok and vent about it. And why not, you know?
Leanne ElliottAnd some of them are really funny.
Al ElliottI 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 humorless 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.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYou 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.
Leanne ElliottBe more Gen Z. I might put that on a t-shirt or something.
Al ElliottYou are so cheesy.
Leanne ElliottSo we have seen how entrepreneurs can shape trends, we've seen how trends can become fads if they're not evidence-led, and we've seen how Gen Z and social media are quite simply the trendsetters. I'm all for using social media or other platforms such as podcasts to raise awareness on key issues that are related to, to work life, but the quality and the narrative does depend on quality of the speaker, or I guess in this case, influencers. A lot of our inspiration for starting the show did come from correcting some of the narratives that we were reading. Quiet quitting was one that, that really got to me. The Great Resignation. And the reason they bugged me is because they blame the individual, often without leaders or organizations taking any kind of responsibility for their part. And when blame enters a conversation or infiltrates a fad, it becomes toxic. The work of our final expert has shed light on one of the most prolific and toxic fads out there: resilience.
Al ElliottThis came as a massive surprise to me because I thought resilience was what everyone should be working towards.
Leanne ElliottIt's an interesting point of view that Bruce brings to the conversation. If you haven't heard of Bruce Daisley, he is one of the UK's most influential voices on fixing work. He has been published in The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. His first book, The Joy of Work, was a Sunday Times number one bestseller, and his second book, Fortitude, which explores resilience, has been described as the best business book of 2022 by the Financial Times. Bruce has also spent over a decade running Twitter and YouTube. He is not an academic, he is a practitioner, and he ran Twitter for Europe. He was their most senior leader outside the US when he left. We spoke to Bruce on episode 78, How Resilience Became Toxic. He explained his issues with the popular concept of resilience, and his tip to leaders is do your homework. It might seem intuitive that a solution will work, but look at the data. What is the ROI? Chances are you're doing harm and wasting your money.
Al ElliottI've got huge issues with it, and, and for a number of reasons really. Firstly, I think at its heart, the idea of resilience is superficially really appealing, but the expectation of it is actually something close to victim blaming. And so the expectation of resilience, and you witness this all the time, you witness my friend works in a hospital in North London. And she said in the middle of the pandemic, overwhelming, we stood and cheered for these people and then denied them a pay increase. But the These people were working relentless hours and someone pinned a notice on the notice board saying resilience webinar on Thursday. And she was like, the issue around here isn't that we're not resilient enough. The issue is that we're in a toxic culture. And what you've attempted to do there, you've attempted to, I guess, to appropriate a term from dating, you've attempted to gaslight the the people there. You've attempted to tell them that something that is right in front of their eyes isn't actually happening. And so, you know, the concept of resilience is already a cautious one. So when firms say, you know, when they say, we need to introduce some resilience training, the first thing you might wonder is, why do you need resilience training? What have you overseen? Why is your culture so toxic that you've got people who need resilience training?
Leanne ElliottOkay.
Al ElliottQuestion number 1. Second thing is resilience is a bit like sort of anti-aging creams in the sense that the demand for anti-aging creams is limitless. And yet, there's no single cream that ever stops people aging. There isn't one. There isn't a single cream where people don't look a year older or they don't look a little bit older. So, there's— but there's no shortage of them. You know, you find yourself wandering around beauticians or Or, you know, the parts of stores that sell these things. There's no shortage of them. And resilience is a bit like that. There's no shortage of people who will sell you resilience courses. And look, the fascinating thing about that is that, okay, let's see if they work. Because, you know, the biggest customer of resilience courses in the world is the US Army. It spent somewhere close to $1 billion training combat soldiers to be resilient. The great thing about something like that, when you've spent that amount of money, is that other people come along and say, oh, right, well, If you've done all the work and you've done all the sort of investment, let's implement that. Let's measure that. And they've come along and said, oh, that resilience course that the US military has spent a million, a billion dollars implementing has had zero impact. Soldiers are not any more resilient. Right. Okay. So, you've got this interesting thing. The very idea of it is to some extent victim blaming.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottLook, it's desirable. The ability to bounce back, to reenergize is desirable. We all want to do it. But question the expectation of it. But then, when you try and train people in it, it doesn't work. Why? Because we look for resilience in the wrong place. We've looked for resilience as this individual trait, almost like this switch that some of us have or some of us don't have, a capacity that we've got to reenergize on demand.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd in truth, when we witness resilience, it actually has the characteristics of something collective rather than individual. So resilience is the strength— in a lot of instances, resilience is the strength we draw from each other.
Leanne ElliottEvidence-led practice is really what distinguishes organizational or business psychologists from a lot of other practitioners, and that's with no disrespect meant, but psychologists build in evaluation to their practice, which means that you as a business leader can see and track the ROI. If you're working with an expert that won't do this or doesn't do this, it might be time to move on.
Al ElliottSo there you have it. That's it, our first 5 tips for a happy workplace from 5 workplace experts. Just to recap who you heard, Dr. Ryan Sherman was first. Know yourself and how that entrepreneurial mind works.
Leanne ElliottOur second expert, Professor Nancy Doyle, she suggests that when done right, neurodiversity can be your competitive advantage.
Al ElliottThen thirdly, you heard from the amazing Joe O'Connor. The 4-day work week will work if you approach it as an organisational change.
Leanne ElliottAnd our fourth expert, Isabel Barrack. Be more Gen Z to create a happier workplace.
Al ElliottAnd finally, we rounded off with Bruce Daisley. Don't fall for the latest fad. Measure that ROI.
Leanne ElliottWe will be continuing our list next Thursday, bringing you 5 more tips for a happy workplace. place from leading psychologists and experts, including Professor Sir Kerry Cooper, Dr. Craig Knight, and Dr. Audrey Tang.
Al ElliottIf you've not subscribed, then you know what to do. Click that subscribe button. And we'll make sure that that episode along with next Tuesday's will fall straight into your inbox like a something that's well greased.
Leanne ElliottOkay.
Al ElliottI think on that note, we should probably say goodbye.
Leanne ElliottBye.
Al ElliottBye. Bye-bye.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are— we are—
Al ElliottIt's going well so far. At number 3, we should have been at number 4, The 4-Day Workweek. Um, if your approaches— we do that again.
Leanne ElliottI was hoping you'd rhyme that. I know it's a bit American, but we may need to be more Gen Z. But actually, maybe it's just cheesy.
Al ElliottI shan't be doing that. Thank you for asking though.
Leanne ElliottIt almost feels kind of good for you as well because it feels like it's—
Al ElliottEarthy.
Leanne ElliottYeah, like spices are like good for you. Anyway.
Al ElliottAnyway, back to the pod.
Leanne ElliottIf you'd like my recipe for, um, Chicken tikka, then just let me know.
Al ElliottSpeaking of organizational change, maybe do your bit here about how the Gen Z and millennials are growing up and be the majority workforce by sex.
Leanne ElliottThat was where I tagged you.