Episode 261 · 25 December 2025 · 53:48
This Year in Work 2025 (Part 2) - Our favourite guests of the year, your listeners’ choice, and the most-downloaded expert episode of 2025.
This Year in Work 2025 (Part 2) - Our favourite guests of the year, your listeners’ choice, and the most-downloaded expert episode of 2025.
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.
Christmas intro and episode overview
Al's pick: Steve Carse on why work should be fun
Leanne's pick: Andrew Palmer, senior editor at The Economist
Al's pick: James Hawkins on autonomous teams
Leanne's pick: Dr Marie-Hélène Pelletier on strategic resilience
other#resilience#psychology#wellbeing#marie-helene-pelletier
Quick break and return
Listeners' Choice Award: Elina Teboul
Most-downloaded expert episode: Dr Enya Doyle
Show notes
This Year in Work 2025 (Part 2) — Our Favourite Guests of the Year, Your Listeners' Choice & the Most-Downloaded Expert Episode
Merry Christmas from Al and Leanne! In the second half of their 2025 highlights special, they're celebrating the guest interviews that defined the year — from ice-pop empires to Economist editors, from resilience science to the workplace rules no one explains.
They share their personal picks for the best conversations of 2025, reveal the episode you voted for in the Listeners' Choice Award, and crown the most-downloaded expert episode of the year (spoiler: it's the one everyone quietly shared with their manager).
⭐ Our Favourite Guest Interviews of 2025
Steve Carse — Work Should Be Fun Al kicked things off with King of Pops founder Steve Carse, who turned a post-recession layoff into a $10M ice-pop empire built on one radical belief: work should be fun. To the skeptics, Al has a simple question: what's the harm in trying to make work more enjoyable for your employees?
Andrew Palmer — Fall in Love With the Problem Leanne's "pinch-me" moment came courtesy of Andrew Palmer, senior editor at The Economist and host of the Boss Class podcast. A lifelong podcast obsessive, Leanne reached out to one of her heroes — and he said yes. Highlights included Andrew's take on why we should stop glamorising toxic startup culture. "It's very 1998, Al."
James Hawkins — Chaos, Autonomy and Building Better Teams Al's pick was James Hawkins, co-founder of PostHog — the dev tools company that ditched managers and meetings in favour of tiny autonomous teams. The conversation explored what happens when you let teams figure things out for themselves, even when the feedback is "hey, this seems weird or dumb."
Dr Marie-Hélène — The Science of Strategic Resilience Leanne's second pick was Dr Marie-Hélène Pelletier (MH to her friends), a leadership resilience expert who reframed resilience as a state — not part of your personality. It moves, fluctuates, and can be strengthened through the four pillars: move, eat properly, sleep well, and spend time with people who lift you up. Add this one to your January listen list.
💬 Listeners' Choice Award 2025
Elina Teboul — Feminine Intelligence and the Future of Leadership
Your messages, comments and LinkedIn posts made this one clear. Elina Teboul, executive advisor, former Wall Street lawyer and author of Feminine Intelligence, challenged assumptions about power, masculinity, intuition, balance and the psychological patriarchy. Whether listeners agreed or disagreed wasn't the point — the episode sparked reflection everywhere, which is exactly what great conversations do.
🥇 Most Downloaded Expert Episode of 2025
Dr Enya Doyle — The Workplace Rules No One Explains
No surprises here. The episode you downloaded most — and shared most quietly — was with Dr Enya Doyle, the harassment and inclusion specialist known online as The Harassment Doctor.
This was a true masterclass in navigating messy, awkward and sometimes frightening management moments. From appearance standards to ageing workforces to tricky inclusion issues, Dr Enya cut through the nonsense with clarity, humour and absolute precision. A must-bookmark episode for every manager.
🎧 Episodes Mentioned Today
- Ep 181 — Work Should Be Fun with Steve Carse
- Ep 217 — Andrew Palmer on Better Bosses
- Ep 189 — James Hawkins: Autonomous Teams & Faster Delivery
- Ep 171 — The Science of Resilience with Dr Marie-Hélène
- Ep 197 — Feminine Intelligence with Elina Teboul
- Ep 175 — The Workplace Rules No One Explains with Dr Enya Doyle
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
Leanne ElliottMerry Christmas, everyone! Yeah, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Al!
Al ElliottHappy Christmas, Merry Christmas!
Leanne ElliottMerry Christmas, Merry Christmas, listeners! Maybe you are joining us on your morning dog walk, maybe you've snuck off for a nap and we're your Nodcast of choice. I don't mind that.
Al ElliottHow dare you!
Leanne ElliottOr maybe, um, it's well past Christmas Day and you are now on your daily commute and just want to see how our highlights turned out. Whatever the answer is, welcome!
Al ElliottWelcome, welcome. This is part 2 of our highlights episode. On Tuesday, we brought you our favourite moments from This Week in Work episode. That's the Tuesday episodes. And today we're sharing our favourite guest interviews and the most-downloaded expert interview of the year. That's our Thursdays. Are you keeping up?
Leanne ElliottI think, I think they're up to, up to it. Yeah. What a year it's been, Al, on Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Did you see what I did there?
Al ElliottThat was very smooth.
Leanne ElliottThank you. Um, if it's your first time, um, it's an odd place to start, but I like it. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd together we help organisations build amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottI think you know what's coming up next. We're going to be going into part 2 of the highlights after a very quick word from our sponsors. See you in just a second. 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, 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. Nice.
Al ElliottCheck out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Welcome back. So this is how it's gonna work. We've both picked 2 of our favourite interviews from this year. That's 2025, actually, technically not this— is it this year? Anyway.
Leanne ElliottIt's Christmas Day, Al.
Al ElliottYeah, it's Christmas Day. Not at all prerecorded. Not at all.
Leanne ElliottNo, we're literally just waiting here. We just put the turkey in.
Al ElliottYeah, exactly. We've got nothing to do. We thought we'd just jump on and talk to you guys. So basically what we've done is we've gone back through all the emails and the messages to see which of our experts you seem to love most. We've Got all the feedback together, and we're ready to crown our listeners' choice of the year. That's very grand. I like it.
Leanne ElliottYes, it is. It is very exciting. As if that wasn't exciting enough, we'll also be crowning our most-downloaded expert guest episode of the year. So recorded this year, downloaded this year. We know Rory Sutherland continues to top that most-downloaded list of all time. I mean, and in terms of what was the most downloaded this year, it was certainly an episode that resonated, and I'd imagine got a lot of shares as well. So stay tuned to find out who gets crowned.
Al ElliottBut before that, we're gonna kick off with this absolute legend. He turned a post-recession layoff into what's now a $10 million ice pop empire and one of Atlanta's most beloved brands. Of course, I'm talking about King of Pops. And he's done all this holding onto one quite radical notion, that work should be fun. We agree.
Leanne ElliottWe do. He is now sharing his philosophy as a speaker and author of Work Is Fun: 7 Ways a Successful Ice Pop Company Makes Work Meaningful and How You Can Do It Too. Let's join Al interviewing Steve Koss about exactly this.
Al ElliottYeah, I think there's going to be a lot of people sitting there going, work is fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But how are you going to make it fun, but also keep people productive? Are they thinking the wrong way? Yeah, I think people think of work and fun, even like, just to put it more directly, oftentimes as opposites. And yeah, I think that's a big argument of the book is that if you just truly ask yourself, like, why can't this be fun? Or why can't this be more fun? Maybe it's not going to be your Warren Buffett. I think I already said tap dancing once. I love that I say it twice, but I think that's actually why that was in my mind. I think he has a, he talks about tap dancing to work each day and he's obviously wealthy and still loves to go to work. And we don't all have to be that. I mean, I think, I think I want to be in that bucket and feel like I am there right now, but I don't think that I'm under the illusion that everybody is going to find that. all of the time, but what is the harm in trying to make it 5% more fun?
Leanne ElliottI'd say that to the skeptics.
Al ElliottWhat is the harm in just thinking about and trying to make it more fun for your employees? What would be the downside of that? Obstacles. I've already said it on, on, on the, on the podcast, not that serious in the grand scheme of things. So yeah, brain surgeon, should they be Yeah. You know, being silly while they're doing surgery? Probably not, but there's, there's, that's probably a small percentage of their time and they're probably actually having fun when they get to that part. That's probably something they studied for and they're probably lit up. Their brain is probably ticking on all cylinders and I think they're probably enjoying that part. It's probably like the, whatever the cleanup is or the prep, the, some of the parts that they probably could enjoy, figure out ways to enjoy more if they weren't already having fun. They might be having fun already. Those guys are Great. I always think the measure of whether you are doing something right in life is whether you wake up in the morning thinking about the problem you're trying to solve at work.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottI think that people are saying that problems are bad, but actually good problems, some problems are really good to work on, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like the way you said that. And I think one thing when we're going through our meeting structure, sometimes I think this goes to like the point of tension or like the The naysayers. So I think if you ever just feel really frustrated, and this is another thing I borrowed from Zingerman's, but when furious, get curious. Like, if you're really mad about something, it's probably like, it's probably a pretty good issue and you probably need to kind of like check in on like, why are you mad about that? Like, it's a piece of the business that maybe you want to improve or a piece of your work that you want to improve. But if you're getting mad about it, It's, it's worth checking in on that emotion.
Leanne ElliottLike, why, why am I getting mad on that?
Al ElliottAnd it'll probably help you improve it or solve it. That was just a little taste of the awesome Steve cast. Go back to episode 181 for the full episode. A link to that and all the episodes we talk about are of course in the show notes.
Leanne ElliottNow, my first pick was a proper pinch-me moment. So Al and I have been obsessed with podcasts for years, like 12, 13 years. Yeah. Actually, I said, Al, were you there for the launch of Ricky Gervais when he basically invented podcasts? Was it back in '02?
Al ElliottI know, yeah.
Leanne ElliottBecause you introduced me to podcasts.
Al ElliottDid I?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottI didn't know that. Well, do you know what? A big shout out to my friend from school, Quentin James. He first told me about podcasts 20 years ago.
Leanne ElliottWow.
Al ElliottYeah, I know.
Leanne ElliottYeah, 2005, Ricky Gervais launched his show.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottI know. Like I said, we're huge fans. And we do like to keep an eye on the charts. Of course we do, to see how Truth, Lies and Work is faring against the greats. And over the summer, we started to get into a bit of a leapfrog competition with the The one and only Andrew Palmer from Economist's Boss Class.
Al ElliottYeah. Now, we could do one of two things. We could slag him off and say his podcast is rubbish and you shouldn't listen to it. Or you can do the sort of thing that I would do, which is basically drop a message, told him we were at war, and said he might as well come on the podcast so we can be friends instead. And to our surprise, he actually said yes.
Leanne ElliottTo my surprise, he did say yes. And it was such a fabulous interview. Picking a clip from it was actually really, really difficult. But I think when you hear Google and Apple in the same sentence, It seems like a pretty good place to start. So, let's go and join Al and Andrew.
Al ElliottIs there anything else that, like, that any other conversations you've had which have just, like, blown you away or you've gone like, oh, that's such a great point, never thought of it this way? So, I think probably one that sticks in the mind is a recent one with Liz Reid, who's the head of search at Google, who was talking about how that company thinks about innovation and in particular, talking through their process for developing AI. So we all now see these AI overviews when we do a Google search sort of at the top of the screen. So that was a super interesting conversation just in terms of how they think about things. The one line that stuck was this line, which was, fall in love with the problem, not the solution, which was advice that she had been given as a young product engineer and now sort of recites to her teams and is meant to kind of encourage a problem-solving mindset within the company, which allows for people to sort of pivot, change direction, recognize when something has not worked and you might park it and change course. I just think it's a really nice little aphorism to to latch onto, whether you're trying to innovate or just trying to solve a different kind of problem entirely. The first answer, the one that occurs to you, may not be the right one. So again, sort of have the open-mindedness to change course if it turns out that you are wrong. I mean, I think it's not like, it's not fall in love with any problem, it's fall in love with the problem as opposed to the solution. So it's important that you define a problem that matters. So lots of user research, Common sense will tell you, is there an issue with how this product is working or is there a need that isn't met? But once you identify the problem, approach that with an open mind rather than, okay, and this is the way we're going to solve it. Because you will often have meeting one, someone with a large salary and a loud voice will say, this is the way I think we should solve it. And potentially that's the end of the End of the discussion. So ways to sort of avoid that problem are important. And I just like that phrase as a way of thinking about it. You say loud voice, which immediately when someone thinks of a boss, they tend to think loud booming voice. Some of the people who have had the, not necessarily volume-wise, but the loudest voices have been the likes of Jobs, have been the likes of Musk. But by all accounts, they're not amazing managers and not great leaders. So does that mean that we can say, if you are loud, you are not a great leader, if you are quiet, you are a great leader? It's not as simple as that, is it? It totally isn't. So, but by loud, I really mean the one that kind of silences debate before it's happened. Yeah, I think that Steve Jobs is a sort of problem. Because he sort of gets wielded as this ace card in any kind of story or debate. And he was both a kind of one-of-a-kind genius and apparently a bit of a jerk. And so neither of those things are particularly helpful in a normal workplace. Most people are not going to invent the iPhone. Their range of achievement is going to be slightly less less high. And most workplaces could— I mean, maybe we should talk about jerks because I think actually you can get— zero tolerance of jerks is not good. But that's definitely not code for you should behave badly. So Jobs got away with it because of what he'd done. And I'm not sure that's a useful lesson for anyone. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. This is such good advice. Such good advice. And it applies all across your business, including people, obviously. Of course. Yeah, no, it's such a Cool guy.
Leanne ElliottAnd as we've chatted about for a while, I did enjoy how he said that Steve Jobs was a problematic leader.
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottIt might be time to move on from glamorising that kind of toxic startup culture. It's very 1998, Al, and not in a good way.
Al ElliottNo. So go back, going talking and going back, go back to episode 217 for the full interview with Andrew. Right, my turn. Back in April, I interviewed a guy called James Hawkins. Now, you may not have heard of him unless you like salty people on Twitter/X, because That's why he basically just puts loads of stuff on there which get people really angry, and it's quite funny. He's the co-founder and co-CEO of PostHog, which is a company you almost certainly will have heard of. He's grown a $10 million dev tools company by ditching managers and ditching meetings. Instead, PostHog runs lots of tiny little autonomous teams where engineers ship first and ask questions later, and nobody gets special treatment just because they have a fancy title. Clearly my kind of guy. One of the ways to not get hired at Postdoc is to say, I want to manage loads of people, for example. We'll hire people that are just very passionate about building stuff in general. And that's kind of what motivates them. It's not really money. It's not kind of empire building. Because I think this corresponds with the— or this correlates with engineers who will want to keep building even when stuff's harder, because they just love the underlying work. And some of them are a little bit curious. So, I think it's almost like a development point for some people. We might wind up saying, hey, you're getting kind of effectively more senior, like, because you've been leading the team that's influencing this now, but it won't guarantee any kind of correlation kind of thing. So, I think people often can end up as stronger individual engineers if they have managed a few people, because they kind of get the— they might have a slightly broader picture of the business, for example, they have a slightly better understanding of what the company cares about, which is kind of nuanced. Or I think people who've been managers are easier to— they require less work to manage, I think, often as well, because they can empathize with what it's like when you have to deal with a bunch of people. So yeah, there's like some interesting stuff, but yeah, we absolutely will get pushback and we've had people refuse before to do this. And we've also had managers swap with one of their direct reports and the manager has proposed it going, hey, I think Joe Bloggs, who reports to me, Mary, should actually be my boss and I should report to them. I think both of us would be happier. And then we'll just make, and then often we'll just end up making that change. You've just explained that the managers, they get out of the way. They're there to make things easier. But we've still got the problem of meetings and the problem of all these Slack messages or emails or whatever. Have you got a different way of coping with those? Yeah. So we have kind of a communication hierarchy that we've published in, I think it's in our handbook as well, but it's basically like, our preferred method of communication is a pull request, as in like, Here is the code. So it'd be something like, uh, so yeah, communication could be like, do you think I should build this thing or whatever? But we prefer that an engineer is just like, I've built this thing. Um, let's test. Um, as opposed to like, okay, I'm going to spend a month thinking about it. It's like, no, I've just spent a week building it in practice. Let's find out. One of the other learnings I think we've had is one of the things that's been quite different in our experience compared to what it looked like it would be on the internet when we were learning about how to do everything, um, as a startup was I think if you read a lot of product management stuff online, it's all kind of thou shalt validate your ideas up— thine ideas? I don't know. You should validate your ideas upfront before you waste time. But I don't think this is really— I think that's a cultural thing from really risk-averse, extremely large companies that might spend $20 billion on some new thing, and they need to be ultra risk-averse. Whereas with a startup, you're screwed by default. You're going to fail. You're on a dying path as soon as you start hiring people or spending money. And so you need to, like, you shouldn't be working in a risk-averse way. You should be really embracing stuff. And I think when we've tried to validate stuff upfront, like, we've just had clearer lessons still when we've just built something, put our energy into building it in a way where we're happy to throw it away if it doesn't work and getting it into people's hands. And so, yeah, so our preferred method of communication from an engineer is not to spend ages like super validating your product, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just build something real, ship it.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYou'll get feedback from the team afterwards being like, hey, why did you build this? It seems weird or dumb. Most of the time it won't though. And they're like, cool, let's just— we can actually just learn clearly if it was dumb because we'll see if anyone used it or not. So we'd rather have some risk-taking over what gets built in an extremely low consensus environment is our preferred way of building stuff.
Leanne ElliottWhat I'm enjoying about listening back to these interviews that you and I probably haven't heard for a couple of months either is we're starting to hear those themes that we've been talking about with psychologists more recently as well. So with James, I'm seeing there a bit of Danny Wareham's constellation leadership. Yep. Yep.
Al ElliottAnd the learning environments we heard about from Andrew Palmer. Psychological safety from basically everyone, everybody. I mean, as a business owner, I do like a bit of chaos because it keeps things exciting. But when you're running a company the size of PostHog, you need to get the balance just right. And PostHog really have, I think. And so does James. They're innovative. They like to experiment and they like to make sure the right person is sat in that manager role.
Leanne ElliottYeah, really good stuff. The full conversation with James is in episode 189. Definitely worth a listen. And do you know what else is worth a listen now?
Al ElliottI think I do because I've got a note down in front of me, but tell everyone.
Leanne ElliottIt's episode 171, The Science of Resilience with Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier. And this one takes us all the way back to February 2025. Oh, the hope that we had for the world in February.
Al ElliottOh, we were younger and less, I was less grey.
Leanne ElliottYes, I was almost a full year younger. So yes, Dr. Marie-Hélène, or MH as she likes to be called, is a leadership psychologist, executive coach, author, and 2-time TEDx speaker who specialises in strategic resilience. 2 words you've probably never heard together before.
Al ElliottNo, not until now. Now, in this clip, MH explains— we need to get MH and MFD on the pod. Yeah, me too. MH explains that resilience isn't just about surviving the tough moments, it's about growing from them. And we're going to hear about the 4 most important things that contribute to resilience.
Leanne ElliottIf we step back on definition of even mental health from the World Health Organization, our ability to cope with stresses of life, realize our abilities, learn, you know, learn well, work well, and Contribute, right, to our community. If we look at the definition of resilience, and there are many in the academic literature, but one that most researchers and practitioners use, and the one I use as well, is our ability to go through adversity and come out even stronger. So there is this element of the stressors of life, basically both acute and chronic, but, and then the resilience aspect adds this component of growth, of learning, And so, if we're going to want to bring our best, both professionally and even personally in our personal lives, because it's all connected, right? We don't— there isn't a lane specific for work and a lane specific for personal. We will want to invest proactively in our resilience. It's going to help with everything. And why is it so important today in the world of work we're operating in, in 2025? I would say always been important. We're talking more about it, and I love that. And we're also talking more about it, I think, because on one hand, it's become a word we're used to. On the other hand, we're still not fabulous at it, right? So, we need to talk about it more. The other thing is that we are facing even more challenges. Even looking at recent statistics from World Economic Forum, talking about businesses noticing that 44% and more of workers will see their skills disrupted by 2027. And even if we just think about AI and all the changes it brings in general, personal and professional life, that in itself will be probably both an acute and a chronic demand that we'll have to deal with. And there are many others, right? So, that's normal. That's fine. We almost want to turn these challenges into the way life is.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd at the same time, recognizing that for us humans, these demands are taxing, right? They're requiring some of our resources. And now we'll dive into how our workplace is a system. It's not all in us as individuals, and that's a very, very important aspect of this overall picture. And even in that system, we do have an impact, an opportunity to impact our resilience. The key aspect being Or one of the key ones is that it is not a personality trait. Sometimes we'll tend to think that it is because we've been so resilient in so many ways so far, recently. That's great. And so, well, that must be who I am. And no, it isn't. It's a state. So that means it will fluctuate, and it also means we can influence it. We have agency, and we want to use that. So, if resilience fluctuates, how do we know when we might be in need of building our resilience and doing something proactive to build that back up? Always. It's similar to if in, it's not exactly that, but if we said, well, you know, hydration is important, how often should we drink? Well, all day, every day. And it's not because we did it yesterday that we don't need to do it today. No, always. And if we know there's gonna be a demand, say a phase where we can't drink much water, then yes, we want to front-load and we want to replenish as soon as we can shortly after. It functions the same way in a number of ways. And so how will we know if it's particularly suffering, right? We will start to see things like our, maybe our concentration not being as good. For a lot of people, they will see themselves being more impatient than they usually are. If you're always impatient, maybe that's Not a sign, but if, you know, some, even an impatient person sometimes will reach even higher levels, right? Sometimes it will impact your sleep. It will impact your eating habits, your consumption of alcohol, for example. Often an easy way to think about it is you're just not being your usual self. So, when we recognize that in ourselves, if we have that awareness, or maybe it's the feedback we get from others, I might've been told that before from Al perhaps, that I'm having less patience than I normally would. If I recognize that, what can I do? What practical things can I do to start to better manage the stress and build my resilience? So, during the pandemic, especially, everyone, we've all heard the things, the key things that would likely help us build our resilience. And they are solidly research-based. We're not talking about a few studies. We're talking about body of research. Meta-analysis, systematic reviews, like very established. So, 4 key variables we would want in that equation. The problem is not so much knowing those variables, it's in implementing, which is why I'm arguing we need to be actually strategic about it. But just so we're all on the same page, those 4 variables. First one is, yeah, movement or exercise. 3, Categories, subcategories in there. One is cardio, one is strength training, and another one is meditative type activity. Yoga, meditation, tai chi, all of these. Okay, so that's variable number one. And they're actually number one in the me listing them right now. They're not in order of priority necessarily. Another one is nutrition. A lot of research is focusing on the Mediterranean type diet, fish, leafy vegetables, that kind of thing. Huge impact on our resilience. We do it for physical health. It's huge for mental health. Sleep, 7 to 8 hours a night, and no, the phone is not something to do in your bed or your laptop. No, not doing that either. And 4th category is our relationships, spending time with people who we enjoy spending time with. And I'm seeing most leaders and professionals let that one go. They'll prioritize exercise. They'll prioritize Specifically cardio, maybe strength training. They'll say meditation's not for them, even more of a reason to do it. They'll sometimes compromise on nutrition, often compromise on sleep, and very often cancel any social plan to work. And yet these 4 variables would have the most impact on our resilience. So you say to approach it strategically, what would that look at, look like? How can I assess where I am on those 4 variables. I know this, I think is truly the game changer here. And here's the way even I got to realizing this is the missing piece. I was working with leaders, business owners, that kind of thing. And some of them were saying, well, you know, what's my problem? Why am I just not implementing those things that I know I should? I believe in them. I believe in research, like, Crystal clear. I've done this before and felt better. Everything is there. I'm still not doing it. Then I, at some point I said, well, it's similar to in business when you have a great idea about a new thing to launch, new service, new product. Would you just have this great idea and say, great, let's do it? Or would you have this great idea and say, okay, who else is offering it? How much are they charging for it? Who is buying it? What forces in the near or far future Might impact the demand for it. You would do all this. This is evaluating the context. This leads to a strategy, so a higher-level direction on how you're going to launch the thing, huh? So, same thing here for us with our resilience. So, we have this great idea, we know some of the things we think that we should do, and what I'm saying is, let's be strategic, which means your plan, Leanne, and mine will be different. My plan will be different from my plan in 3 months from now. Because my context is changing. And I'm saying 3 main ways to get to designing a plan that's yours, that's uniquely aligned with your context. We're focusing on your values. We're focusing on a realistic assessment of your sources of supply and your sources of demand. We're assessing your context using the same framework as the SWOT analysis in business, looking at your Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats so that you can create a plan that is actually doable. And that's what then changes everything, 'cause now it happens, it builds self-efficacy, that sense of, yes, I can impact my resilience, and now we're actually on our way. I love MH's approach 'cause it's just, it's practical, it's relatable, and it's all still backed by science. And I think the big takeaway for me, again, re-listening to that interview, is remembering that resilience is a state. It's not fixed. It's not part of our personality. It moves. It fluctuates. But we can also influence it as well.
Al ElliottYeah. And remember those 4 pillars: move, eat properly, sleep well, and spend time with people who lift you up. That's what I do every day. Yeah. Yeah. I spend time with you who lift me up. I think, to be honest, a lot of us do sort of push those aside when work gets busy, which is why MH says we need a plan that fits real life, not just some perfect And when you do that, you're gonna find your resilience will genuinely grow.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's, it's such a great one. Add it to your January listen list when we're all just running a little low on energy, aren't we? That's episode 171. And I wanted to mention as well, MH has a brand new TEDx talk out, literally out in, at time of recording, very recently. Time of listening, maybe a couple of weeks ago. But yes, a brand new TEDx talk called Crossing the River: Resilience in the Age of AI. As you'd imagine, it's brilliant. And it does use, um, crossing the river as a really brilliant analogy for dealing with all this disruption and building resilience in a strategic and sustainable way. So, I'll leave a link to that as well in the show notes.
Al ElliottOkay, we're gonna go to a very quick break. Those are our favourites. And coming up now, we're gonna be talking about your favourites, the ones that got you talking. Is that right, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottYes, we've got listeners' choice and most downloaded guest of 2025. You have to come back.
Al ElliottYou have to come back, otherwise we'll come and find you. See you in a second.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number 1 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 going to say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the 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 behavioural 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?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottOh yeah. 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. Keep that in.
Leanne ElliottDid you come back?
Al ElliottDid you come back? Good. Well done. Well done. Now is the time to share the guest who got our audience talking. This was by far one of the most shared episodes of the year. People were posting on LinkedIn, they were messaging us and obviously the guests to say how much the episode really made them think, and they were buying their book immediately, Which is great as a podcaster. Not so great if we don't get any kind of a kickback on it, but, um, we never get a kickback, don't worry. Of course, we are talking about the incredible Elena Taboul.
Leanne ElliottYes, Elena was on the show back in May. She's an executive advisor, former Wall Street lawyer, and author of Feminine Intelligence. Um, Elena really does challenge assumptions about power and leadership and success and offered us a very radical reframe, uh, that might just define the future of work. So I'll dive right in here because I think this is really important is we throw around this idea of the patriarchy a lot. And there's political patriarchy, which is about the oppression of women, and that's one thing. But then there's psychological patriarchy. And I think a lot of men have really suffered under psychological patriarchy because they have been conditioned from a very young age To believe that showing emotion, showing vulnerability, tapping into their intuition, even their creativity is somehow not masculine, and that is for women. And as a psychologist and as someone who has worked with extremely successful business leaders who have been actually predominantly men, equally men and women, I would say, but many, many very successful men, I find that they're often missing a part of themselves. They're often not able to tap into their emotional side, and that impacts their relationships very heavily. That also impacts their business leadership. That impacts their ability to tap into joy and awe and authenticity. And so when I say for men to tap into their feminine intelligence, it is by no means saying Anything around being like effeminate, or I guess people used to use like weird terms back in the day, like metrosexual. I don't think I've heard that one for a while, but it's none of those things. It has nothing to do with an outward perception of kind of femininity that I can completely understand why many men would not want to be associated with. And that's, and that's totally fine. And what, and you can be outwardly masculine in the traditional definition, and yet be able to tap into these energies, which is really fantastic for, for inspiring others, for having good relationships, and for, for finding wholeness. So men in the room, please join us.
Al ElliottSo I think that a lot of people would think, all right, it's as straightforward as masculine energy is logic, and feminine energy is emotions. Now, I am being deliberately generalistic here. So I'm not saying that I necessarily believe that. But I think that's Seems to be a perception. What are people getting wrong? What are the nuances?
Leanne ElliottYeah. And again, this is because it's not about gender, then we can say that there are certain strengths and values and principles associated with the feminine archetype. And those are things around intuition, about creativity, really this right-brain intelligence that taps into the present moment that's very relational, Relational is a key element of this. It's not individualistic the way that the left brain, the way that the masculine is. And it also, for me, a lot about connection to nature. So I think that we have kind of perverted our relationship with nature where we think we are somehow above it, we're supposed to control it. But the feminine is certainly deeply associated with the archetype of nature consciousness, of climate consciousness. And the masculine is, again, this is the archetype of the masculine, and it is associated with linear, rational, logical thought, with the left brain, with more individualistic as opposed to relational, with a more kind of dominant— and if you think about the yin and yang, the yang energy, which is more about action and orientation, and the yin energy is more about receptivity and actually, and darkness and reflection. And so yes, these are stereotypes, but actually these stereotypes have been in our collective consciousness for generations, and there's nothing wrong with them. They're actually quite helpful. And instead of saying that some of these are weak and soft and we don't need them, I think the, the point here is to recognize that we can't just bifurcate our humanity into, you know, 2 separate parts and say that somehow they're related to our gender. We can say that the feminine is softer, and we can say that it's more intuitive, and it's more creative, and it's relational. And those are all great qualities, and it doesn't matter about what our gender is. It's really the balance of both. And society and culture, and we have predominantly over-indexed on the masculine, which creates deep disconnection for us on an individual level, but also a lot of societal problems. And so bringing in these feminine intelligence qualities is really about naming them, yes. And also understanding that there's nothing wrong with them. We don't have to say that somehow we're going to be soft and weak if we tap into them.
Al ElliottThere seems to be a resurgence quite recently of these tech bros in Silicon Valley, the ones who are on jet skis holding beers and the American flag and all that kind of stuff. That seems an odd thing to have happened because traditionally Silicon Valley always felt more like it was more the nerds like me, the coders, the introverts. Is this, is this something to do with the feminine energy? Are they trying to rebel against it? What's going on there?
Leanne ElliottI think it's true that, you know, the pendulum always swings one way and then overindexes and swings the other way. What's happened, I think, in the last decade or more is there has been a lot of emphasis on women and on women's progress and making sure that women are included in the conversation, that women have a seat at the table. And I think what's happened is that we've forgotten about the men in some ways, about the young boys especially. I recently heard Professor Scott Galloway say something very interesting in this regard. He acknowledged his privilege as a white male. And he said that he's now in his 50s, and so he very much grew up with that privilege, and he understands a lot of his success today is based on that. But what's really unfair is that 15, 16, 17, 18-year-old boys today are the ones who are paying for that privilege. And so this resurgence of, you know, the tech bros and really leaning into this masculinity, I think this is saying, We've been forgotten, and there's been so much emphasis on other cultural groups, on other genders, and what about us? And so this is them trying to take back their power, which is, I think, fully understood. You know, I have 2 children. I have a daughter, she's 9, and I have a son, he's 11. And I remember when Annabelle, my daughter, and I, we went to go see the new Barbie movie.
Al ElliottOh, yeah.
Leanne ElliottI don't know if you saw it, if you remember it. It was probably about 2 years ago now. And we had a lovely time and we laughed about girl power and, and, you know, it was nice. But the whole time I was thinking, I really hope my son never sees this movie because it villainized men so much. It doesn't have to be that women's power and women's progress is at the expense of men. And that's why I always say that feminine intelligence is not about feminism. It's about bringing everyone together and about understanding that if we're creative enough, we're brave enough, we're open enough, then we can grow a bigger pie and make sure that everyone is included and that certain groups are not forgotten. Because what happens when certain groups are forgotten is then, then the pendulum swings aggressively in the other direction, and then we end up in the situation that we're in. Today, where the narratives around masculinity are really shifting and you have people like Andrew Tate who's becoming really popular. And I understand why he's popular. He's popular because he's speaking to an audience that has been forgotten and that has been villainized. And instead of telling them that they're responsible for other people's pain, if we bring them into the conversation and we, you know, we, we help them to be the best versions of themselves, then they don't have to turn violent. And they don't have to turn aggressive. And I think this is the idea for me of feminine intelligence is always approach with compassion and curiosity. And it's very easy to villainize someone. It's much harder to say, wait a minute, where is this coming from? Can I understand this? Can I unpack this? Can I approach with love the underlying root cause of this situation so that it actually doesn't happen? That's how you take the power away from someone like an Andrew Tate, is you approach those boys with love and compassion and opportunity instead of saying that they're responsible for the demise of women and other groups. And so I'm not surprised by what I'm seeing in the political climate because again, it's not just about leveling the playing field and giving women the rights that they fully deserve, but it's also about including everyone in the conversation. Yeah.
Al ElliottLeanne and I covered quite a lot in this interview, including psychedelics. Didn't think that was gonna come up. But if you wanna listen to the entire thing, then go back, episode 197.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's really interesting. You know, whether you agree with all of it or not isn't the point. It is just a really interesting concept and way of reframing leadership away from gender, away from us and them, and looking for a balance that, that works for everyone. So yeah, go and check it out and let us know what you think.
Al ElliottTalking of us and them and being just generally decent people, this is the moment you have been waiting for, I'm sure. And if you haven't, then please just join my excitement. The most downloaded guest of 2025. It's not really a surprise that this episode and the guest went down extremely well, albeit maybe on the quiet.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it was also one of our most shared episodes of the year. And again, I think that makes sense when we consider the subject matter. But enough of the suspense, Al. Al, can you give me a drum roll? Is that possible? The winner of Most Downloaded Guest 2025 is—
Al ElliottOpen the envelope.
Leanne ElliottThe harassment doctor herself, Dr. Enya Doyle, from episode 175, The Workplace Rules No One Explains.
Al ElliottYes, I mean, this episode is a pure masterclass. In handling those awkward or messy or terrifying situations that managers can find ourselves in. And clearly, it's a masterclass that is needed, even if it was very quietly needed.
Leanne ElliottQuietly needed, yeah, quietly shared by a lot of people, I think. If this is the first time you've heard of Dr. Enya, aka the Harassment Doctor, she's a specialist in harassment, inclusion, and workplace culture. Al interviewed her in February and asked her— it's a very different format that went down well— asked her the top 10 questions we'd seen around harassment, inclusion, and sexual assault in the workplace. So basically, he asked the questions that most managers are afraid to, and as you'll hear, Dr. Enya handled them all like an absolute pro and with a little bit of salt, which is what makes her so brilliant.
Al ElliottSo the question I've got here is, I want to insist older employees use our messaging system instead of face-to-face conversations in the office, but would this be an inclusion issue seeing as the majority of them prefer to walk over to a desk and have a chat rather than jump on Slack?
Leanne ElliottYou've really got something against older people, Al. Are you aging badly?
Al ElliottYou can tell me. That'd be great to have you on tape being really offensive to me. Yeah, that'll be good.
Leanne ElliottYeah, yeah, yeah. Please just put that out as the sidebar. That'll be nice. Amazing. Okay, I think the main things that I would say are, yes, it's probably not great if you're assuming that they don't want to do it. Rather than they just haven't been trained. Taking the kind of reasonable adjustments approach to this, the assumption that junior members of staff will just know how to use Slack or will figure it out doesn't apply to older members of staff who have never had to use it. And say they've been working in your company for 25 years and they've got away with the kind of, you've never said to them, I need you to be on Teams, or I need you to be on Slack, or I need you to whatever. Whatever part of it it is, if you've never held them accountable as that's been changing, then you don't suddenly get to mandate these things without saying, can I help you? Do you need me to guide you through it? Would you like some additional time to get on the clock, paid time, not in your own time at 10:00 PM when all of your 19-year-old colleagues are learning how to use all of these fun social whatevers? But on the clock, we'll pay for you to go on a course, or we'll sit you with a colleague in your team who does know this really, really well. IT will help you with whatever you need. And being patient with the fact that the world has changed rapidly and is changing rapidly for colleagues of all ages, but thinking about the kind of grace that you give to them. In learning new stuff. And if it is complicated, which a lot of it is, like replying to all in emails was a massive thing, still is. People still reply all to emails when it's abundantly clear that that's not a reply all situation. And for some people that's like, oh, I usually use Outlook and now I'm on Gmail because I've just started a new job and I don't know where the don't reply all button is. And that happens to people of all ages. But I would say you need to take the barriers down for people before you start mandating things for them. And also, there are pros and cons as we talk about the mandate to the return to office and flexible working, et cetera. You've got to find a hybrid model, but you've also got to train your colleagues, and you've got to provide them with the tools in order to mandate those sorts of models. You can't just insist things and then be like, oh, it's because they're old. But I know it's because you're a bad manager.
Al ElliottI want to stick with the inclusion idea, but I don't know whether this actually comes under inclusion. So let me tell you, and you can tell me where I've got this right or wrong. So an employee's appearance has become unprofessional, wrinkled clothes, messy hair. How do I address this without it being a harassment or, and I've added, or inclusion issue? And again, you can see where I'm wondering. I don't know whether it is inclusion, whether it's just a potentially a personal situation. What are your thoughts?
Leanne ElliottI think there are probably actually very few workplaces in which the way that you dress is actually unprofessional. And this is something, this is probably a kind of like Enya gets canceled perspective. But I think unless you're like kind of cabin crew is the obvious ones. If we think of like they are the people that if their uniform looks a certain way, you're like, oh, well, I flew with this company and their uniform was impeccable, and so was their service. It's an indication of the sort of, we take care in the little details kind of vibes. But most people that work in offices that work from home or wherever are like, it really doesn't matter what I'm wearing. But if you're considering me unprofessional because of the way my hair looks or whatever else, then we're probably into an issue where you have a problem with me, Rather than a problem with my clothes. Or if you have a problem with my output, then that's actually nothing to do with the clothes that I'm wearing or how frequently I wash my hair. Let's focus on the fact that I'm not doing my key performance objectives. I'm not keeping up with what you want me to do in the workplace. You don't have to make that about my clothes or what I wear. We learned that lesson really well during COVID when everyone was wearing their jammies. on the bottom half and then had the shirts and the blazers on. And there's really funny pictures online of people being like, come into work wearing what you wore during COVID And part of that is tongue-in-cheek of like, you would never possibly do that now. But I'm like, okay, but were you happy with their outputs during that period of time? Did it make any difference to how the client perceived them? Did it make any difference negatively to the way that they were seen. And the kind of other side of that is if you're not happy with their work, then you need to tell them that. You can't just be like, I think you're dressing unprofessionally, and that's my problem with you. Because most workplaces don't actually have a consistently applied code of conduct when it comes to the clothes that you wear. So, when you start bringing that one out, it's almost like a Are you not able to tell me that you don't like my work, so you're going to try and take me down personally? That's often how it plays out. The final thing related to the inclusion point is that the people that tend to be called out for this more often are Black women. And so, it definitely has an additional inclusion strain to it, which is that very often it is people who have additional barriers to success in the workplace systemically.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliottthat end up being put on performance reviews for this sort of stuff.
Al ElliottWhy would it be Black women? I've not spent time in an office for a very, very long time. So, it's a genuine question, innocent. Why would it be more likely to be Black women?
Leanne ElliottIt's about the politicization of Black women's hair in particular. There's a lot of stuff around how Black people have their hair in the workplace and it being perceived to be unprofessional. We see it a lot in schools as well. With the kind of, it's called the Halo Code. There's a really amazing project doing amazing work on this of who's more likely to be written up for detentions based on their appearance. And we see the same in the workplace. It's most likely to be people who it's like, for some reason, I just don't like the way you look. Is it because of the color of my skin? No. Is it because of my sex?
Al ElliottSo, let's just stay with this because I've got a follow-up question. You mentioned something before, which is a really great example. You said that cabin crew, then cabin crew, you look at, I like, I flew Jet2 recently and the service was great and they looked immaculate. And I just really enjoyed the experience compared to some of the other, I'm sorry, I know you're Irish, but some of the other, some of the other airlines that may, may come from your home country. However, I made a judgment, I think, initially when I sat down.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottOn how everyone was presented. They looked very clean, tidy, whatever. And so I thought, well, this is probably going to be good. It's the same. You walk past a cafe, the windows are dirty. You go, well, I'm not going in there. So could the same be applied if a manager looks at someone who doesn't take any care in their appearance, looks scruffy, doesn't care what they wear, hair's all over the place, you know, missed a bit when they're shaving? Does that then suggest perhaps that they might be missing stuff in their work?
Leanne ElliottYeah. Yeah, there's the kind of bias that we just kind of allow to run riot in there. But the thing that I often say in that context is, who do you think designed all of the tech that we use now? It's the tech bros in Silicon Valley who are in their shorts and their t-shirts that have got stains the whole way down them. Not exclusively, but there are lots of people who are doing amazing work. I think of my time in academia, And I spent most of my time writing my PhD, which everyone is like, objectively, that's really amazing. 2% of the population have a PhD. I'm like, I wrote most of that in a hoodie. I remember most of it in the same hoodie. We can be impressive in ways that we don't expect, but it comes from a kind of, I think the protection element of it and the curiosity about it is some people do want to dress really well for work and some people Kind of goes back again to the school uniform situation of if we were told that we were on non-uniform day, it was like, we're going rioting. This is amazing. And not in the Northern Irish rioting way, but in the, we're having the best day. This is a fun day at school. This isn't a learning day at school. And for some people, it's like, I have to be in my uniform. I have to be really immaculately dressed. I have to do my tie. I have to wear a blazer in order to be in that kind of headspace to concentrate well. And if that is you, that is a bias that you hold about how other people do work really well and what they need in order to concentrate. And we see the same in bullpens and whether people would prefer to be in their own space. And you then get into neuroinclusivity and all of that sort of thing too. But I would say that a lot of it is personal preference. And as long as you're setting good objectives for your team and they are fulfilling them, Unless there's a business need for them to be dressed immaculately, you're probably just being picky.
Al ElliottNow, I obviously got schooled in that entire episode, and if you want to hear me basically being told that I'm completely wrong, then go back and listen.
Leanne ElliottMultiple times.
Al ElliottMultiple times. However, what was really important— Leanne talked about this, Leanne and I talked about this quite at some length, and it was really important that I did it being a middle-aged, middle-class white male who wasn't an expert. And so I could ask her on your behalf, I could ask her these difficult questions. And I learned that I probably shouldn't be stalking female employees on Instagram. I don't really, I don't really.
Leanne ElliottNo, you don't. Well, but you don't have Instagram for a start, so.
Al ElliottThat's true, I don't.
Leanne ElliottThat's okay.
Al ElliottI'm such an old man.
Leanne ElliottAnd I'm the only female employee, so if you were stalking me, that's still not okay. But, you know.
Al ElliottI'll just do it in real life. I'll just follow you around the kitchen.
Leanne ElliottOh dear. No, it was a brilliant one. Dr. Enya has such a, Such a unique and brilliant approach to this stuff. She makes it fun somehow.
Al ElliottYeah, sexual assault, make it fun.
Leanne ElliottBut you know what I mean? Yes, I know what you mean. In terms of learning about it, being educated about it, makes it so accessible. So yes, go and have a listen to the full episode with Dr. Enya. There's more questions in there. I think we featured 2 in that clip. So there's more around compliments, around grief, around swearing. It covers them all. So head back to episode 175. The link to that and all the episodes we featured today are in the show notes.
Al ElliottNot that you guys ever read them. Well, that's the end of our highlight episode. A big thank you to Steve Kass, Andrew Palmer, James Hawkins, MH, Alina Tabool, and Dr. Enya Doyle. And a huge, huge thank you too to all of the guests who've come on the show in 2025. Genuinely, you've brought great insights to our listeners, and we literally couldn't make the show without you.
Leanne ElliottYeah, truly, thank you. And to all of our lovely listeners as well, thank you so much for staying with us, for getting in touch, telling us what you're loving, what you're sometimes not loving so much, um, and downloading the show throughout the year. It does mean everything to us, um, when we know we're putting stuff out there that is valuable and maybe enjoyable as well. Um, so thank you all. Merry Christmas to all those listening who celebrate it. We will be back on Tuesday with part 1 of our predictions episode. Um, until then, me and Al are going to be on the Baileys and mince pie.
Al ElliottWe absolutely are. See you soon. Bye-bye.