Truth, Lies & Work

Episode 232 · 16 September 2025 · 56:41

CEO scandals, September resets and 1000 days of ChatGPT. PLUS! The rise of rage-baiting, with Vanessa Judelman

Featuring Vanessa Judelman

CEO scandals, September resets and 1000 days of ChatGPT. PLUS! The rise of rage-baiting, with Vanessa Judelman

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  1. CEO Scandals: Nestlé, Secrecy, and Workplace Relationships

    news roundup#ceo scandals#nestlé#workplace relationships#secrecy

  2. 1000 Days of ChatGPT: Transforming Work or a Cheat Tool?

    news roundup#chatgpt#ai#transforming work#cheat tool

  3. 19 Ways to Improve Your Life According to Science

    news roundup#life improvement#science#wellbeing#productivity

  4. Hot Take: Rage-Baiting at Work with Vanessa Judelman

    hot take#rage-baiting#workplace conflict#vanessa judelman#expert perspectives

  5. Workplace Surgery: Do Engagement Platforms Actually Work?

    workplace surgery#engagement platforms#workplace surgery#employee engagement#hr

  6. Workplace Surgery: Refused Unpaid Leave

    workplace surgery#unpaid leave#hr#workplace surgery#employee rights

  7. Workplace Surgery: Experience vs. Talent in Hiring

    workplace surgery#hiring#experience vs talent#workplace surgery#recruitment

  8. Wrap-Up and Takeaways

    news roundup#wrap-up#takeaways#podcast summary#workplace advice

Show notes

CEO Scandals, September Resets & 1,000 Days of ChatGPT — Plus: The Rise of Rage-Baiting, with Vanessa Judelman

Guest: Vanessa Judelman — executive coach, leadership development expert, and founder of Mosaic People Development.

Summer's over, and we're back with a jam-packed This Week in Work. Al and Leanne break down the Nestlé CEO scandal and what hidden relationships at the top really cost an organisation, mark 1,000 days of ChatGPT with an honest look at what AI has — and hasn't — changed about work, and revisit the science-backed September reset we all need.

Then, in our Hot Take, executive coach Vanessa Judelman joins us to unpack rage-baiting — the online provocation tactic that's quietly creeping into leadership styles. She explains why sarcasm and "poking the bear" might feel like sharp leadership, but actually silence teams, erode trust, and confuse strength with cruelty.

Plus, in the Workplace Surgery: do engagement platforms actually work or are they expensive tick-boxes? What do you do when you're refused unpaid leave but a colleague isn't? And are we too obsessed with experience — and missing out on raw talent?

🔥 Stories Covered

1. Nestlé CEO fired over a secret romance When the world's largest food company sacks its global CEO after 40 years, the issue isn't just the scandal — it's trust. We explore why hidden relationships at the top create ripples through entire organisations, eroding fairness and psychological safety. From BP's Bernard Looney to the Coldplay Kiss Cam chaos, why transparency matters more than the affair itself. Source →

2. 1,000 days of ChatGPT What has AI actually changed about work since its launch? We look at the real productivity gains, the jobs that have genuinely disappeared (hello, data entry), the jobs that have been upgraded, and whether we're truly in the middle of a white-collar industrial revolution — or just a very expensive way to write emails faster. Source →

3. 19 ways to improve your life, according to science Forget September stress — it's the real new year. We revisit evidence-based ways to reset, refresh, and make small, meaningful changes. From finding a garden (yes, an actual garden) to rediscovering simple pleasures, Leanne and Al pick their favourites — including one very unexpected Sudoku confession. Source →

🧠 Hot Take: Rage-Baiting at Work

We're used to rage-bait headlines online — but what happens when leaders use sarcasm and provocation in the office? Guest Vanessa Judelman argues it silences teams, destroys trust, and confuses sharpness for strength.

Vanessa shares:

  • How her 19-year-old son introduced her to the term — and why she immediately recognised it in leadership behaviour
  • The difference between provocative leadership and plain old provocation
  • Why every relationship has a "trust account" — and how rage-baiting makes constant withdrawals
  • How to spot if you're doing it without realising (hint: it's an emotional intelligence issue)
  • Why coaching — not criticism — is the most effective way to help leaders break the habit

💬 Workplace Surgery

Three listener questions, tackled live:

  1. Engagement platforms: "Do employee engagement platforms really work — or are they just tick-box exercises?"
  2. Unpaid leave: "I was refused unpaid leave for health reasons, but my colleague was granted it months later. What can I do?" — featuring Cat Coggins from The Curve Group
  3. Experience vs. talent: "Are we too focused on experience — and missing out on talent?"

(Got a question? Submit it via the connect link below.)

More From Vanessa Judelman

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 ElliottComing up this week in work.
Leanne ElliottWould you sack your CEO over a secret office romance? Well, Nestlé just did, and it's not the affair that caused the backlash, it was the secrecy. So when does a relationship become a trust issue, and what can business leaders learn from the fallout?
Al ElliottAlso this week, it's been just over 1,000 days since ChatGPT was unleashed on the world. So is it killing jobs or transforming workplaces? Or quietly doing both while they're still debating how to use it.
Leanne ElliottAnd in the workplace surgery, are we overvaluing experience and ignoring skills? One hiring manager says the best candidates keep getting overlooked and wants to know how to challenge a process that favours CVs over capability.
Al ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work.
Leanne ElliottThe award-winning podcast where behavioural 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 Chartered Occupational Psychologist.
Al ElliottAnd my name is Al and I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd together we help organisations build amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottSo let's get right into this after a very quick word from our beautiful, lovely sponsors. The 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. Okay, welcome back, welcome back. It is Leanne's favourite time of week.
Leanne ElliottWhich we haven't done for ages. It's been a, it's been a minute.
Al ElliottIt's been a minute. Uh, yeah, so it's probably been about 6 weeks since we've done a proper This Week in Work. So without further ado, even though there has been much ado, so, uh, what do we do now?
Leanne ElliottCue the jingle.
Al ElliottThere we go, jingle being cued. Leanne, what have you seen on the interwebs this week?
Leanne ElliottWell, if there was one scandal from the summer that none of us avoided, it was the Coldplay Kiss Cam chaos. My goodness. Um, if you have been living under a rock and, and didn't hear about that, a tech CEO and his head of HR were caught mid-cuddle at a Coldplay concert, and then were swiftly out of a job and a couple of marriages, from what I hear. But while that story made headlines for the drama, what happened this week at Nestlé could have actually more serious implications for leadership and workplace culture in general. Al, have you heard about this, that Nestlé have just fired its global CEO?
Al ElliottNo, I haven't. And Nestlé are famously devoid of any kind of scandal whatsoever. They're a very clean For those of you who are under the age of 40, back in the '70s and '80s, there was a big scandal about Nestlé, but not about their CEO. So what happened?
Leanne ElliottSo I should have looked at how to pronounce this. Laurent Freixier. F-R-E-I-X-I-E-R. You're good at French.
Al ElliottLaurent Freixier.
Leanne ElliottFreixier?
Al ElliottI don't know. I'm just making that up.
Leanne ElliottLaurent.
Al ElliottLaurent.
Leanne ElliottWe're on first name basis. So yeah, he was sacked with immediate effect. Because of a relationship he 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, Laurent throughout has denied the relationship. First investigation found nothing going wrong, then they had a second investigation led by outside counsel, and they The complaints were upheld.
Al ElliottSo hold on, just understand this. So this Laurent was having a little bit of an affair or something with someone as a subordinate.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Somebody complained through the whistleblowing process. Right.
Al ElliottAnd then they were like internally, yeah, no worries. And then they got someone else to look at it externally and went, actually, yeah, no, there is a problem.
Leanne ElliottExactly. Exactly. But what confuses me when I was reading so many different reports about it, and what confuses me is that Laurent denies the relationship throughout.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottSo I don't know whether that's the type of relationship was, or I dunno, but he just denies it. It. Um, so yeah, he's been outed. Nestlé, no severance, no nothing. He has been in the top job for a year. Previous to that, he spent 40 years at Nestlé. Um, so apparently the employee involved wasn't on the executive board but reportedly, reportedly benefited professionally, first with a rapid promotion in Latin America and then with a move to the head office. Um, but apparently the official word from the board is it wasn't necessarily the relationship that they took issue with. It was a lack of disclosure.
Al ElliottI did not have sexual relations with that person.
Leanne ElliottYeah, indeed. And in that, and not surprising in the wake of Andy Burnham as well that we saw at Coldplay concert, shares did take a hit. So Nestlé 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 Burnham. We've seen it from BP's Bernard Looney stepping down after admitting he'd—
Al ElliottSorry, that's a great name. Bernard Looney.
Leanne ElliottYeah, after he hadn't been fully transparent about workplace relationships, plural. And then we also saw Steve Easterbrook at McDonald's fired, fined, and made to return his severance package after misleading the board about 3 internal relationships.
Al ElliottAnd I bet his defence was, well, they were loving it.
Vanessa JudelmanOh, sick.
Al ElliottThat's not gonna make it in, is it? Sorry, sorry. Yes, I'm actually trivialising something which is quite Right. But just before you go on, I'm, I'm sorry to interrupt you there with, with, um, obviously terrible, terrible stuff, but I'm watching The Morning Show. You, you, you suggested to me.
Leanne ElliottOh yeah. I love The Morning Show.
Al ElliottAnd so now I can't look at anything without looking through the lens of The Morning Show. If you've seen it, then it's very similar to what we're just talking about here. Um, and so now like everything seems The Morning Show. I'm just imagining Steve Carell playing it out. Sorry, you were in the middle of something.
Leanne ElliottSteve Carell. Such a good show.
Al ElliottYeah, but you said that as if As if he was also been involved in some of this. 'Cause you know, it's just a story, don't you? You know, it's TV, it's not real.
Leanne ElliottIt's not gonna happen. Allegedly. Allegedly.
Al ElliottWell, you heard it here first.
Leanne ElliottAnyway, Al, what do we think? As the man, as the man in the room, is this an issue? Is it, is it an imbalance of power that shouldn't be tolerated in organisations? Is it just around the secrecy? What does it say about leadership and how to hold leaders accountable in 2025?
Al ElliottLook, I, I don't know. I've never been the CEO of Nestlé. Um, 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 Nestlé. I don't know. I mean, uh, if you have a relationship, then you're supposed to go and disclose it to HR, aren't you? Is that not what you're supposed to do? And would that not be the most sensible thing to do?
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Al ElliottI 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 do go and disclose it, then HR go, no problem at all. The door shuts and they start typing on your record. I don't know. I dunno 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.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Al ElliottIt was me. George Washington. There's a whole story about George Washington. I think he said something like, father, I cannot lie. It was I who cut down the cherry tree. Now we are going back to that.
Leanne ElliottNot the cherry tree.
Al ElliottFucking cherry tree. I mean, that cherry tree at that age, that would've been about 300 years old now. I think that cherry tree.
Vanessa JudelmanWow.
Al ElliottBut he, but no, old Georgie, he said, no, I'm gonna cut it down. I think that the whole point is that surely you should take, you should tell the truth. 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 and we talk maybe more about the psychology of this to disclose to our listeners that we are in a relationship in the workplace. So if you didn't, if you hadn't heard that before, listener, then I think it's important you should know that just in case there's a secondary external audit of our organisation, the Podcast Towers.
Leanne ElliottIndeed. Indeed. Yeah. To be fair, our relationship started before we went into business together though.
Al ElliottThat is true.
Leanne ElliottThat's different.
Al ElliottThat is true. But all of the employees here know about it.
Leanne ElliottYes, both of them do.
Al ElliottBoth of them do, which is us two. And even our dogs know about it and they're not really employed.
Vanessa JudelmanNo.
Al ElliottI see them as valued members of the team.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Obviously every organisation's gonna have its own policy. If you are a small business and you don't have a policy, I advise you to. We talked about this on the surgery actually before. I think somebody had some issues 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 you 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 just 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, it's a public company, isn't it? You've got shareholders and all sorts in terms of governance. And I just question why any CEO would put themselves into a point where they're in a relationship and having to disclose it. I just don't. And I'm quite romantic, but I just can't help but think there's a better way to go about it. Actually, this could be an absolute power struggle, and there's lots of ego in high-powered leadership positions. We know that in terms of personality, we know that in terms of behaviour, we know by the number of men who get caught out in high-powered positions because it goes to their head or somewhere else on their body. Um, so I just think that it's just so problematic because to everybody else it undermines the trust in the organisation in terms of how decisions are made. We call that, as psychologists, procedural 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 an environment that 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, being able to speak up. The fact that this was through a whistleblower in the first investigation, found nothing, and then the second one— oh, it's so problematic. I just think if you're a senior leader, unless this is head over heels, this is the love of my life, I'm going to be with them forever, just don't.
Al ElliottIf the heart wants what the heart wants, and if the heart really wants someone who will work there and you're the global CEO, then why doesn't one of you step down? Now, this is problematic.
Leanne ElliottWell, indeed, because who's stepping down?
Al ElliottWell, yes, exactly. The person who earns $20 million a year or the person who doesn't?
Leanne ElliottAnd if it is true love, then do it all above board. Go to HR, be very transparent about it, make sure that person doesn't report into you, or HR will handle it however it needs to be handled. And if it doesn't work out and you do break up, don't fall in love again with somebody else in the same company, because that's just going to undermine everything that you said Initially, you know?
Al ElliottYeah, exactly. And Nestlé do have like thousands and thousands of employees, but still there are plenty more fish in the sea. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Yeah. Plenty more Kit Kats in the break room.
Al ElliottIs that Nestlé?
Leanne ElliottVery good.
Al ElliottVery good.
Vanessa JudelmanThank you.
Al ElliottYeah. So the key message here is the CEO of Nestlé, just take a break. That's about what you need to do.
Leanne ElliottVery good.
Al ElliottAnyway, is it about time you asked me what I saw? Yeah.
Leanne ElliottWhat have you seen this week, Al?
Al ElliottSo as I said to you before, I alluded to before, it's been, it's been around about 1,000 days since the launch of ChatGPT. Now, this isn't just my nerdiness of actually having a big calendar and marking off the days. It just, it was an article in, let me have a look. It was in cityam.com, that very famous news publication, by a guy called Henrik Landgren. He sounds maybe Germanic. So I'm sorry, Henrik, if I got that wrong, but it's 1,000 days. So he basically looked at it and said, right, what's happened? Has it been the apocalypse that we thought it was? I mean, we all use ChatGPT for funny images. I know that we've done some, some really funny things. I tried to get ChatGPT. I was talking, who was I talking to? It might have been my brother, I think, on WhatsApp. And I was, because I've got an intolerance to eggs and I won't go into exactly how that intolerance manifests, but I asked ChatGPT, I sent a picture of me and I said, please put me eating a Spanish tortilla full of eggs on the toilet. And make it photorealistic. And ChatGPT said, no, I'm afraid I can't do that. It did say, I can make a cartoon version, which was actually a bit more accurate, I think, to be honest.
Leanne ElliottRight.
Al ElliottAnyway, so moving aside from that, that's a, that's a little overshare. What have you used ChatGPT for in the last 1,000 days, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottI use it to help me put the show notes together for the podcast. 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, oh, I just need like a 2-line explanation of the coaching programme I'm offering as a prize to listeners of another podcast. And I had like a 200-word, I just went, can you just give me this in 1 to 2 sentences? And it was done and I sent it off and it was lovely. So yeah, lots of things like that, administrative type copy, low-level copy. Writing kind of stuff.
Al ElliottYeah, absolutely. You know, we, we quite often use it for, I mean, I use it more than Googling these days, I think.
Leanne ElliottYou do?
Al ElliottNow 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 supposedly is yes or no, because first of all, it has made some work a lot easier. As Leanne alluded to before, we can do stuff in days or minutes that would take us weeks or a whole department to do. There are fancy people out there. We haven't done it yet, but there are fancy people out there Yeah. About there who create agents that hand over work to each other. So you can do things like build an entire virtual marketing department. I've seen people on Twitter, X, Twix, um, uh, who, who basically have created this scraping thing where they'll scrape an idea from YouTube, a trending idea from YouTube. They will then plumb it into something else, which will create a script, and they'll plumb it into, uh, I think it's called, uh, ElevenLabs, which will then create a voiceover, and then it will go into some stock image and create some backstock image and then just spit out TikTok. A TikTok ready to be uploaded and they're doing like one a minute.
Leanne ElliottCome on.
Al ElliottThey also, also, I didn't know this existed, but there, there are TikTok farms. Did you know about this?
Leanne ElliottTikTok farms?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottNo.
Al ElliottSo there are places which have got like 10,000 phones with robotic arms that are basically just swiping on TikToks. And what you can do is if you can pay to put your, to, to, to have them go onto your account and just swipe up and down and watch your videos over and over and over again.
Leanne ElliottInteresting. But it's not engagement, is it?
Al ElliottNo, of course it's not. It's cheating, which is again, which is where we're coming down to the ChatGPT because, um, you, yes, you can use it for all the stuff you were talking about there. And I'll talk about, um, NotebookLM, but some people are using it a little bit to cheat. They're trying to get their people to do, get ChatGPT or Claude or whatever to do their entire job, which is kind of going against the point, I think.
Leanne ElliottThe employee is trying to get ChatGPT to do their job.
Al ElliottYes. I'm sorry.
Leanne ElliottYes. Okay.
Al ElliottRight. I'm away from engagement farming now from TikTok farming. Right. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottAll over the place.
Al ElliottIt's as professional as you remember, listener. So the question is, is it eliminating jobs? And—
Leanne ElliottIs it?
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottRight.
Al ElliottAnd no.
Vanessa JudelmanOkay.
Al ElliottIt's eliminating those jobs, which are things like just data entry. It's eliminating those jobs where someone said, go and find me a quote that says this on the internet. It's eliminating jobs like, oh, I'm just gonna go and upload something to Excel. I need 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 ChatGPT, here, here's some unordered data, paste it in. Can you put, can you turn it into an Excel file for me? And then 10 seconds later they've got an Excel file.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Al ElliottSo they're not spending the hour putting everything into an Excel file. They're spending that time, they can step away and go and do something else. So, which is really, really cool. Lee, what are your thoughts so far on it? What do you think? Do you think No.
Leanne ElliottWhy? 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 to take over the majority of jobs? Yes.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottBut I think there's gonna be an element of organisations choosing to be human first. We're trying to be 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 ChatGPT entirely in terms of accuracy. I find mistakes, hallucinations are a big thing that's being talked about now where you ask it to fact-check its work and it's still wrong and it just makes things up.
Al ElliottAnd you're absolutely right.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think it— what?
Al ElliottThat's what it always says to you. You're absolutely right when you point out a mistake.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Even Claude today, I was like, you okay? Like, I've asked you to correct this very specific things and you're telling 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 was like, seriously, honey, you okay? So I don't know. I just don't trust it that much. I certainly wouldn't trust it with any data that I'm working with in terms of organisations, in terms of that collation. To be able to then check it is gonna take even longer. So current capability, no, I don't think so.
Al ElliottNo. And I think also what's really cool is because everyone's got AI, no one's got AI.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottSo it's democratised the way that we sort of, 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 it's, I mean, it's doing things like I've read, there's a London biotech that raised £2.8 million in funding with just 2 employees and the rest of it's 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 backlash on it. So I think basically what this article seems to be saying is, That yes, it's gonna change work. The, in fact, lemme 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 at taking on the grunt work, but it's even more important to be personal and even more important to be human because you'll stand out by being human.
Leanne ElliottAgreed.
Al ElliottAnyway, what else have you seen, my love?
Leanne ElliottChanging the tone slightly. 19 ways to improve your life according to science. I have actually talked about this article before on the podcast, but ages ago, probably like a year, maybe even 18 months ago. And I kind of thought it was a nice time to bring it back because September kind of feels like a little bit of a reset, doesn't it, for a lot of people? Kids back, autumn starting. Um, so yeah, so I thought it'd be a nice time to, to take some, take some look at some ways to maybe reinvent how we're feeling about our lives and reframe how we're thinking about our lives and and maybe things we can do to improve our lives over the next few months according to science. So I've got all 19, and I'm thinking you can just pick a number out and I'll tell you what it is.
Al ElliottNumber 8.
Leanne ElliottNumber 8.
Al ElliottYep.
Leanne ElliottFind a garden to benefit from.
Al ElliottA garden? A literal garden?
Leanne ElliottYes. So this comes from an eco-psychologist— bet you've not heard that before— Theodore Roszak believed that we each have an ecological unconsciousness embedded Within the core of our minds, and when exposed to the natural environment, we can harvest the benefits of health, sanity, and contentment. And the good news is you don't have to travel far to get the benefits, whether it's your local park or your own back garden.
Al ElliottBeautiful. What was that? What was this person's name?
Leanne ElliottTheodore Roszak.
Al ElliottHave you heard of post-nominal determination?
Leanne ElliottYes, Mr. Rose.
Al ElliottAnd his name's Mr. Rose, and he's an ecological psychologist.
Leanne ElliottAn eco-psychologist.
Al ElliottYeah. Yeah, he's just made that up. That doesn't exist.
Leanne ElliottWhat, an eco-psychologist? I think it does.
Al ElliottNo, does it?
Leanne ElliottI think it does. Yeah. Um, we've heard about this before, haven't we? Like forest bathing, touching grass, as the kids like to say.
Al ElliottWe got so much feedback. Didn't someone say she is horrendous when we put that clip on YouTube?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYeah. And you were just taking the mickey out of it, but they took it very seriously.
Leanne ElliottBut yeah. Anyway, people hate me on YouTube.
Al ElliottPeople hate me on YouTube. What? So choose another number. Can I choose another number?
Leanne ElliottCan I go for— Yeah, choose another one.
Al ElliottUh, number 14.
Leanne ElliottNumber 14, rediscover simple pleasures.
Al ElliottOh, like you, you're a simple pleasure.
Leanne ElliottI am, I am simple and I'm sometimes a pleasure.
Al ElliottNot always.
Leanne ElliottNo, it can often be the everyday things that bring us the most joy. By rediscovering the power of mindfulness, or discovering the power of mindfulness, we can reconnect with simple everyday pleasures. So Barney Dunn, who was on the PsychCrunch podcast, which is from the BPS, Um, talked about that a lot more in terms of mindfulness. We also have talked about mindfulness with the fabulous Dr. Audrey Tang. She talked about it— was it last Christmas or the Christmas before?
Vanessa JudelmanYeah.
Leanne ElliottIs it that long ago?
Al ElliottYes, I think so.
Leanne ElliottIt's almost 2 years ago.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottWow. So yes, anyway.
Al ElliottLive nostalgia there from Leanne in audio form.
Leanne ElliottYeah, so what's your simple pleasure, Al?
Al ElliottUm, I like making things. I've, I bought myself a few tools, electric tools over the summer when we were building this podcast studio. I bought myself a little electric saw and a few things. I like that. I can, I want it. I always think a simple pleasure is where you look up and you go, oh my God, it's tea time or something. And you're doing what you, something, you know, not, not like playing computer games necessarily. Well, there's nothing wrong with that, but yeah. So my simple pleasure is that. I also, I also really like just sitting there and staring out into the garden. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottYou do do that sometimes.
Al ElliottIt's bringing the two together, you see, number 8 and number 16 or whatever.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottI like sitting and just looking in the garden.
Leanne ElliottI like that. You do.
Al ElliottWhat's your simple pleasure?
Leanne ElliottMy most recent simple pleasure is Sudoku.
Al ElliottYes. You've been proper boomer, haven't you, on your right now?
Leanne ElliottYeah, I really got into that over summer.
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottBecause I think it's a really good way to, if your mind's, because I think it's because we had quite a stressful summer with lots going on.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottI find it quite a nice way to kind of keep my mind busy and keep it quiet. Without just watching rubbish on your phone. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
Al ElliottDoom scrolling. Yeah, totally agree. I love it. So, so listeners, if you can imagine Leanne with little, little half-moon glasses perched on the edge of her, edge of her nose, her hair up in a bun doing Sudoku on her iPad. That's what Leanne's gonna look like in 30 years' time.
Leanne ElliottThat's what I look like now.
Al ElliottLeesh, should we go to a break?
Leanne ElliottDo one more.
Al ElliottOkay, let's go for number 1.
Leanne ElliottNumber 1. Don't stress about not feeling happy. This is a good one. So it says, we're often bombarded with surveys that announce where the happiest place to live is 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 of work suggesting that the pursuit of happiness can ironically Undermine well-being. Letting go of the must-do-better-at-being-happy goal may actually improve feelings after all. Yeah, I think happiness can be, can be a problematic metric anyway, can't it? You know, happiness is a state, it comes and goes. Contentment, satisfaction, fulfillment, meaning— perhaps better things to, to pursue.
Al ElliottYeah, totally agree. That's lovely, that's lovely. So if people want to hear all 19, how do they, uh—
Leanne ElliottYeah, I'll leave a link in the show notes and you can read it. It's an article from, uh, the BPS. Which is very, very good.
Al ElliottExcellent. 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 had one of those for 20 years. Hot Take. And then we've got my favourite time of the week, which is the world-famous Weekly Workplace Surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne. Did I get it right, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottYou did.
Al ElliottLovely. See you in a second.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast, that's us, by the way, and 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 behavioral 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 going to say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals. Seamless.
Al ElliottSeamless. 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 politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It'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?
Vanessa JudelmanIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out.
Vanessa JudelmanKeep that in.
Leanne ElliottWelcome back. It is time for our Hot Take, those honest expert perspectives that maybe make us rethink what we know about the world of work. Today, we've got a new word.
Al ElliottGo on, what's the new word?
Leanne ElliottRage-baiting.
Al ElliottRage-baiting.
Leanne ElliottRage-baiting.
Al ElliottOkay. 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 to start like a conversation, but to get a reaction.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's poking the bear.
Al ElliottPoking the bear. There you go. That's a much better way of saying it. Well, no, sorry. Sorry, Vanessa.
Leanne ElliottI don't think Vanessa coined the term rage-baiting.
Al ElliottNo, but she, but she is here to talk about it.
Leanne ElliottShe is. Yeah. You, you know what? You've probably heard of rage-baiting cuz it's talked about a lot, particularly in terms of, of 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 want to poke someone's eye out. Um, but it's also happening in offices too, in meetings, in messages, and in day-to-day conversations. And it's not just annoying, it's corrosive, because when someone uses language to provoke or belittle, 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. Um, and that's what today's guest, Vanessa Judelman, wants to challenge. She has worked with thousands of leaders, helping them move from reactive 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.
Vanessa JudelmanSo my hot take is rage-baiting. So my 19-year-old son taught me this term, and what rage-baiting means is when you do or say something that will intentionally provoke somebody. And I'm seeing way too much rage-baiting in the workplace. So let me give you a very quick example. So my son, 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 eggs and avocados for breakfast. Okay, so that's my rage bait. I mean, I know he hates it. I'm intentionally provoking him. His eyeballs flew across his face, up into 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 that was an obvious rage-bait. But when he taught 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 executives, she had said, somebody said to her, you know, you're new to the organization. I'd love to get a fresh perspective from you. Tell us some 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 without really understanding the context. So immediately that was a rage bait. So immediately she felt shut down. She felt unsafe to contribute, and she stayed silent for the rest of the meeting. So what happens when you're rage baited 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 organizational culture. And I see it a lot. And I see it a lot on executive teams, which people might find surprising, but I think when people, and I often wonder why, and it could be, sometimes it's control. Sometimes you just see very dominant people sitting on an executive team. 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 belittle 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 and respect, who's a really smart guy, was making some very sarcastic comments to his senior team, and I had to give him feedback, and I said, it's not good. Because to your point, it doesn't provide psychological safety and it shuts people down. He had no idea. He thought he 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.
Leanne ElliottAnd once that trust starts to erode, it's so difficult to get back, isn't it?
Vanessa JudelmanIt 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 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, trust in your, in your, uh, deposit in your trust account. When, for example, you are accountable to another person, Deposit in your trust account. But when you rage-bait, when you say something that another person feels demeaned by, what you're doing is you're making withdrawal from your trust account. So some people will say, oh, Vanessa, this person, you know, we have a good relationship. And so I'm sarcastic with them. They're sarcastic with me. And I say, listen, if your trust account with that person has a lot of deposits, right? And it's full and you make one sarcastic comment because you have a good relationship, Listen, it's gonna be withdrawal, but the relationship's not gonna crumble. But what you have to be very careful of is if you make too many withdrawals, then when you, on top of that, rage bait, it's another withdrawal. That's when the relationship starts to really crumble.
Leanne ElliottAs you say, there's, there's, I'm sure lots of, of leaders that don't realize that they are rage baiting in, in this way and need it, need it showing to them.
Vanessa JudelmanAnd 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 were made from the organization, 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.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo we've got the people that are self-aware, the people that are very angry. Is there a group of people who just wanna be jerks?
Vanessa JudelmanYou know, I do feel like that's a small percentage of people. I do. Uh, you know, I've been an executive coach for 20 years and I've probably come across 2 people who just are 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, many of us have left jobs because we had a terrible leader. So You have a big responsibility as a 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, like this leader, I gave feedback to her, I 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 what? You're right.
Leanne ElliottAnd coaching is such an effective way, isn't it, of, of helping somebody with this self-reflection and building that That self-awareness. If people are wanting to engage a coach, as a coach, how do you recommend they go about that process?
Vanessa JudelmanSo I think when you engage a 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, Vanessa, I'm interested in coaching with you, I always book a 30-minute meeting with them first. And I say, listen, before you invest a penny, Let's talk. I wanna tell you about my approach. Every coach 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 psych— 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 30 minutes with them. Ask them, what's your approach? What's your background? What's your education? I would really recommend you work with someone who's a certified coach. It took me over a year to get my certification, and coaching is something that I've been a coach for over 15 years, but there's a lot of people who call themselves coaches now, and I've made the 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 a coach. And you have to like the person too. Like, feel like you have a good connection with them.
Leanne ElliottThat was Vanessa Judelman. I loved 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, Al, what stood out for you?
Al ElliottI think the instinct is when someone says something inflammatory to you or does this rage-baiting, I know my first instinct is to go, what? How dare you? What are you talking about? And get, you know, like sort of defend my point. That's my instinctive sort of mechanism is to get defensive or possibly on some of those bad days, maybe shut people down. But that, I think, is, as Vanessa points out, is a bad thing to do because that's gonna shape the culture. It doesn't mean then that someone might be rage-baiting you and you shut them down, but then some of that reduces this whole psychological safety you're talking about.
Vanessa JudelmanMm-hmm.
Al ElliottOf people saying, well, I can't really go and tell Al 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 careful how you handle it because it, what, how you do something is how you do everything.
Leanne ElliottAnd with that, I think if you are a leader who feels that you do have rage-baiting in your organization, as Vanessa said, turn that, turn that mirror back at you in case it is you're setting that tone and role modeling that behavior. Um, because yeah, it's, it's very easy to unintentionally rage-bait if we're stressed, if there's lots going on. It might come through as sarcasm, it could be a cutting comment. It could just be shutting down somebody's ideas. The great, you know, not great, horrific example that Vanessa gave. But yeah, if you want openness and accountability, then you have to lead the tone of that.
Al ElliottAbsolutely. And don't forget, like Vanessa said, sarcasm 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 bastards, but the majority of times, is there someone who's like, says it sarcastically because they haven't got the confidence to come out and say it non-sarcastically. So it's definitely worth taking that on board. Yeah, so thank you, Vanessa. Vanessa, you've also been very patient because we recorded that like 3 months ago, I think.
Leanne ElliottIt was, it was just before our summer, our summer schedule changed. So, um, I did explain that to Vanessa. She knew September, it was, it was a-coming. Um, do check out the show notes, you'll find ways to get in touch with Vanessa, um, and I'm sure she'd love to hear from you.
Al ElliottIt's time for the world-famous Weekly Workplace Surgery, where I put your questions to the lovely Leanne. You know by now, if you— that Leanne is a Do you know what? I'm not gonna say it. I say it every week. She's, she's ace. She's a psychologist. Just— You heard at the top of the show, she told you exactly who she was. If you're not listening, that's not my problem. Okay. Question number 1 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. 2, 3 years ago, everyone's like, well, we all did an engagement survey, but now everyone's like, Oh, I've got one. It's automatic and it's AI-driven. Hi, Al and Leanne.
Vanessa JudelmanI—
Al ElliottHi.
Leanne ElliottWe really need to stop drinking before we record these, Al.
Al ElliottLiterally only had water. Hi, Al and Leanne. 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-up, 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 to make HR feel like they're doing something? Leigh, what are your thoughts?
Leanne ElliottWhat an excellent question. And to answer it succinctly, has anyone actually seen these tools make a difference? Yes. Are they just expensive ways of making HR feel like they're doing something? If it's the wrong tool, yes. This all comes down to, not all employee engagement tools are made equal. They are all very different. They all have different levels of worth and value and scientific foundation. So, yeah, and sadly, the popular ones out there are pretty. They're just not very robust. So, I think if you are looking for insights, and this comes down as well, have you lost the why? If you run a small business and you're running an engagement an 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 within 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 your managers to have conversations with the staff, 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 organisation that are gonna 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, There's a very famous organisation who talks very openly about employee engagement, even, you know, produces many reports on employee engagement. Can I find the model that sits behind their employee engagement survey? Can I heck? Can I heck? It just doesn't exist. Whereas something like the Real World Group, for example, has now built more of a culture survey than employee engagement, but speaks very openly about the science and model. If you use the RX7, our employee engagement survey, we talk very openly.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliottabout the science behind it 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 or platform is bobbins is what it's chucking out. So, 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 discretionary effort they're giving, how likely they are to advocate for your business, It's not very helpful because they're the outcomes of employee engagement. So, it's kind of like saying, well, I did a customer satisfaction survey and I know my customers aren't happy, but I don't know why. You might not, as, what, you know, what are you going to do with that? You want to know why, you want to know what's driving job satisfaction or job dissatisfaction within your organisation, so you can actually do something about that. So, the best employee engagement surveys out there are going to tell you exactly how much purpose somebody is feeling in their role, meaning how how clear 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 managers, how resilient they're feeling, how the organisation 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 relationships with their managers, it's fairly easy, and sure is, you don't need a psychologist to tell you, If you improve the relationships with your managers, chances are people are going to be more satisfied in the job. If you do work with psychologists, we will tell you exactly those relationships and what you'd expect to see and remeasure again in 6 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 want to use the information for, and then just talk to a third party, somebody, anybody, a psychologist, somebody in HR who can do the research. Yeah. To actually find a science-backed model that's going to help you do it. And if you do want to have a little look at what a predictive model of engagement looks like, very roughly speaking, head over to the HSE website, look at, just Google management standards HSE, and that'll talk you through what we call the psychosocial factors at work that can impact employee engagement and wellbeing. And it'll start to give you an understanding of what actually you want to be measuring in your employee engagement survey.
Al ElliottFair, fair, fair. Brilliant. Okay. If you want more details on the RX-7, then check out the show notes. There's an email there. You can talk to Leanne or I about it. I'm very happy to talk to you about that. Other engagement platforms are available, but not as good. Okay.
Leanne ElliottNot many good ones.
Al ElliottHi, Bob. So, question number 2. I was refused unpaid leave, but then they approved it for someone else. What can I do? Oh, this doesn't sound so good. Last year I asked for 3 months unpaid leave to travel, partly to manage my mental health after being diagnosed with ADHD. HR told me it wasn't possible and even said I was running away from my problems. Well done, HR. Yeah, you sound like a really good group of people there. Fast forward a few months and my colleague, the same department, similar role, was granted a 3-month break, 1 month paid to unpaid. I feel completely dismissed, like I wasn't taken seriously. I've checked the handbook and Unpaid leave is allowed. I don't want to cause drama, but it doesn't feel right. Leah, what can I do?
Leanne ElliottWell, I do have some thoughts, but as this starts as a very HR-rooted question, I thought we'd bring in the advice of our friends over at The Curve Group. Um, regular listeners would have heard them before. The Curve Group is a fabulous organisation that helps all sorts of businesses with their people, HR, and culture requirements. So let's go and hear from Kat Normally, leave such as sabbatical leave are at the company's discretion to approve, dependent 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 employer should have a process for dealing fairly with these types of requests, 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.
Al ElliottSo, that was Kat Coggins from The Curve Group, not Kat Goggins, as I accidentally put on one of our LinkedIn posts. Sorry about that, Kat. Leanne, you said you had thoughts.
Leanne ElliottI do. I think Kat gave a beautiful explanation in terms of the kind of the HR, and that 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 in a similar role, the same department, but there's months between that request. You don't know the reason for that request and everything goes with it. The situation the business is currently in, the team that's currently in, as Kat said, you know, there's lots that could be going on there. Of course, um, Yeah, she went on to check the policy. You could raise a grievance. All great advice. What I would say for any business owner who is listening 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.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottBut if you want to have an engaged culture, if you want to have an organisation where your people feel valued and they want to contribute and go above and beyond, this is a key aspect that's often overlooked. And I think we talked about it before, I think we might have even talked about it today, procedural justice.
Al ElliottWe did.
Leanne ElliottSimply 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, um, unfairness within an organization because 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've worked with leaders who've come from a really good place by not wanting to worry, um, their staff, particularly during COVID There's a lot of organizations that withheld information because they didn't want to worry their teams with, with the, um, chaos that was happening. But that led to distrust and everything else. So, what I'd say, yeah, Kat's perfect advice for the person who wrote 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 organisation. It might be time to start being more transparent about how these decisions are made.
Al ElliottIf you've ever dealt with kids, you've got them, you've got nieces and nephews, speaking as a former child myself, I can say if you, if you've ever gone with 2 children to an ice cream van and bought one of them an ice cream and not the other, that's the simplest version of procedural justice, I think. Is that the right word? Procedural justice?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYeah, that's the simplest version. So you've basically just done that to this person. So no wonder they're a little bit narked. Okay, so question number 3, Leigh. 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 unfulfilled. The longer it drags on, the more convinced I am we're clinging to old hiring habits that don't serve us anymore. Oh, I see. So the team here have overlooked these candidates in favor of people with more experience. Okay. I think I understand that. Is that what you got from that?
Leanne ElliottYep.
Al ElliottSo experience is easy to justify, but doesn't always mean someone will bring fresh ideas or fit the pace of a scaling company. I agree. I want to build a team that's sharp, adaptable, and 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?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottGreat. Okay. So thank you very much for listening. To be fair though, I mean, I think when I did paraphrase that in a slightly, uh, in a slightly Clearer way. When you say it like that, it's obvious, but why might someone fall back into old habits of going, well, we just need to make sure that they can't, that they have done this before?
Leanne ElliottIt's a very common problem within recruitment that we have convinced ourselves that past experience, past behaviour is most, um, you know, important predictor of future performance and behaviour. And that's not entirely wrong, but it's not the most predictive. Adam Grant's 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 organisations. And a key one that he pulls out is around experience, because experience doesn't really mean much if we don't dig down into what that experience is. You could say Um, say, take, take one of us, Al. I'm looking for somebody who will have 5 years experience in building a podcast. I have 5 years experience in building a podcast. You have 5 years experience in building a podcast. Our experience is very different because I have 5 years experience guest scouting, researching topics, bringing in the science, doing a bit of the promotion, putting the kind of the shareables 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?
Al ElliottI feel like you're trivializing my role a bit.
Leanne ElliottNo, it's really, it's much more important than what I do.
Al ElliottI know what you mean. Well, 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've gone, Al, did you ever go back to the person? And I'm like, no, I didn't. No. So, so yeah, I totally get what you're saying.
Leanne ElliottSo my point is, if you're not specific about the exact type of experience you want and understanding how that experience, which is 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 it's surprising really because so many other areas will do that type of analysis. Like marketers will do loads of market research before launching a campaign. Why would you not do the same level of introspection to understand exactly what campaign person is going to work within your business to deliver the outcomes you want it to? It's the same processes, but for some reason we're not using it for the most expensive thing we're ever going to spend money on in our business. Do you know what I mean? Really sorry, it really bugs me. So, I think 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 it's going to mean in our business. You've also got a problem here in terms of that you're identifying people with the right skills, attitudes, and potential, but your hiring team isn't. This process should be very standardised. You shouldn't have As a CEO looking at this recruitment process 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 shows there's some kind of bias and discrimination. You should absolutely seamlessly come to the same conclusion because there's a standardised scoring process throughout that will give you an objective. This is a person that should get the first offer. So, there's lots of issues here. You're not clinging to old habits, you're clinging to bad habits.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd this requires an entire overhaul of how you recruit, because as you can see, as you've said, it is leaving you with a long time to fill positions, and that is expensive and annoying. So, yeah, time for a rethink.
Al ElliottWe are considering doing some kind of masterclass. I've just— when we say we're considering, I thought about it for 3 minutes. I told Leanne over lunch, and now potentially, yeah, broadcasting it to the world. Uh, but, um, I think it'd be really interesting to do a little mini masterclass on hiring because I think I certainly had no idea of what I was doing when I was hiring before I met you. You've shown me it is, it is literally a tick box, but a good, a good tick box. It's a matrix. Leanne 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 10%. This is the end. Everyone else is, you know, it's just a really scientific way of doing it. Yeah. So if you're interested in that kind of thing, Then find us on LinkedIn or check out the show notes or send us an email or something and tell us. And if we get, if we get more than 20 people emailing us, we'll do that.
Leanne ElliottYes. Job analysis. Look it up. Have a read. Educate yourself.
Al ElliottOkay, so that's it for this week. Thank you so much for the letters. Thank you for listening this far. Thank you for putting up with all our rambling.
Leanne ElliottYeah, we were a bit rambly and ranty today.
Al ElliottWe were, but then it's been a while. We've had a lot of pent-up week in work.
Leanne ElliottIndeed, indeed. A lot of summer frustration.
Al ElliottYeah, I know, I know. So if you're wondering why we're a little bit grumpy, or we were a bit grumpy over summer, then go back to about episode, I want to say 222 or something.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd it tells you why we had to leave our home for 3 months, which, yeah, it's a different story. And I don't want to bring it up. Don't want to bring it up. Okay. So, Leanne, have we got anything else to say before we go?
Leanne ElliottOnly to join us on Thursday, we are joined by an awesome guest, Amy Boak, who is the Chief People Officer of Kelly Services, a huge organisation. We're calling the episode, can I give the spoiler of the episode title? Yes, you can. The First HR Leader Not to Carry a Gun.
Al ElliottAnd it's true.
Leanne ElliottIt's all true. True story.
Al ElliottIt's all true. It's part 2, kind of an unofficial part 2 of our, um, of our HR series that we've done. We're only doing 2 at the moment. We've got someone different for next week. Uh, the first one, if you haven't listened to it, was When HR Goes Rogue. Was that, was that what we called it?
Leanne ElliottYes, it was, with Tony Cook from Adidas. Former Adidas.
Al ElliottFormer Adidas, also author, also Scouser. 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 love it. 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 should these lovely people be doing?
Leanne ElliottCome and join us on LinkedIn. That's where the conversation continues. If you want to throw me some hate, YouTube seems to be the place to To do that, or you can drop me an email. I usually leave my email address in the bottom. So, uh, yeah, multiple ways to adore me or to hate me.
Al ElliottUh, just, um, just, just before we go, I do want to say that Leanne has been doing a Friday thing called LinkedIn AF that I am enjoying very much. And even if I wasn't married to her or in business with her, I'd still enjoy it. Um, go and subscribe to Leanne. No, you don't subscribe on LinkedIn. What do you do?
Leanne ElliottYou follow? It's a newsletter. It's a newsletter.
Al ElliottNewsletter, right. Go and subscribe to the newsletter. Comes out every Friday. Hello, Leanne. Comes out every month. Does it come out every month?
Leanne ElliottYou sure you watch?
Al ElliottYou used to, right? You used to do a— now, now, now, you used to do every Friday and then you moved it to a monthly newsletter. Is that right?
Leanne ElliottNo, I still post every Friday and have continued to post every Friday 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, 'cause there's a character limit on LinkedIn. So often I have more than I'm able to post each week. So once a month you'll get the whole bundle. But thanks so much for following so closely, Al. It really means so much to me.
Al ElliottWe will. Right, so I'm gonna go and have a frank conversation with my business partner. She's gonna call me into her office to have a chat. I hope that your day's gonna go better than mine. And thank you for listening and subscribe. Love you.
Vanessa JudelmanBye.
Leanne ElliottBye.
Al ElliottBye.
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