Episode 274 · 10 February 2026 · 52:31
Is this the internet’s most unsettling AI story? PLUS! Hiring Gen-Alpha, Career Destiny and the Truth About 'Matrescence'
Is this the internet’s most unsettling AI story? PLUS! Hiring Gen-Alpha, Career Destiny and the Truth About 'Matrescence'
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.
Winter Olympics banter and the lure of niche sports
news roundup#winter-olympics#niche-sports#workplace-culture
Matrescence: the transition nobody plans for
news roundup#matrescence#motherhood#workplace-transitions
The AI agent that called its owner while he was sleeping
news roundup#ai#ai-agents#technology
The biggest workplace problem in 2026: managers
news roundup#managers#workplace-issues#2026
Truth or Lie: Does your name influence your career?
truth or lie#career#names#truth-or-lie
Workplace Surgery: DiSC personality tools
workplace surgery#disc#personality-tools#workplace-assessment
Workplace Surgery: Should small businesses hire younger workers?
workplace surgery#small-business#younger-workers#hiring
Workplace Surgery: Standing out in occupational psychology
workplace surgery#occupational-psychology#career-advice#standing-out
Show notes
The AI That Called Its Owner at 3AM — PLUS! Hiring Gen-Alpha, Career Destiny & the Truth About 'Matrescence'
This Week in Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) break down the internet's most unsettling AI story yet, the workplace transition nobody plans for, and the biggest workplace problem of 2026 — spoiler: it's not pay or burnout. Plus, in Truth or Lie: does your name secretly shape your career?
🔥 Stories Covered
1. Matrescence: the workplace transition nobody plans for Leanne introduces a word we should all know: matrescence. Similar to adolescence, it describes the emotional, psychological and identity shift that happens when someone becomes a mother. This is one of the most significant transitions in a woman's career, yet it's rarely reflected in performance systems, leadership pathways or job design. The question for organisations is simple: instead of asking people to return unchanged, how can we support them to grow forward?
Follow the research: instagram.com/microrosie Follow Rose on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rose-soffel
2. The AI that called its owner while he was sleeping A developer created an AI agent that can run a computer, read emails, organise files and complete work independently. Then things escalated. Users began connecting their agents together through a platform called MoltBook, a social network for AI agents to share ideas and improve each other. If AI can do eight hours of work in minutes, what does productivity mean? And what happens when the AI isn't the company's tool, but your personal one?
Read more: openclaw.ai · moltbook.com
3. The biggest workplace problem in 2026 isn't pay or burnout. It's managers. A new SHRM report based on thousands of HR leaders and employees found ineffective leadership has overtaken pay and workload as the top workplace concern. In organisations rated ineffective, job satisfaction falls to 44%. In effective workplaces it rises to 91%, and more than half of employees in poorly led organisations expect to leave within a year. Leadership development is now the top priority for HR leaders, with economic uncertainty and AI adoption adding pressure. The message is clear: workplaces don't fail because people don't care. They fail because leadership systems don't support people properly.
Read the report: webpronews.com/boss-bottleneck-why-leadership-tops-2026-workplace-woes
🧠 Truth or Lie: "Does Your Name Influence Your Career?"
Nominative determinism suggests people are drawn to jobs that match their names. Early research hinted at a small effect, but larger modern studies found the link disappears when you control for demographics and chance. The verdict? Lie. Your brain loves coincidences, but your career is not written in your name. (Though Usain Bolt was the fastest sprinter in the world, and Dr. Chip Silvertooth is a real dentist.)
💬 Workplace Surgery
Three listener questions, tackled live:
- DiSC: "Why do personality tools like DiSC remain so popular despite weak evidence?" — Leanne's verdict is characteristically direct: use Hogan or SHL for personality, and horoscopes if you just want a shared vocabulary.
- Younger workers: "Should small businesses hire 16-year-olds?" — It's worth it if you're willing to put in the work. Young workers are malleable, enthusiastic and full of energy.
- Occupational psychology: "How do I stand out when starting a career in occupational psychology?" — Structure your CV around the five core areas of the profession and map your experience against them.
(Got a question? Submit it via the connect link below.)
🎧 Coming Up Thursday
Al and Leanne are joined by Steve Kemish to talk about the "puberty of organisations" — and what happens when teams grow fast.
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 ElliottThe biggest workplace problem in 2026 has been named. It isn't pay, it isn't burnout, it's managers. I am shooketh, Al. Shook. We are asking, who's responsible for fixing it? Is it HR, the board, or the managers themselves?
Al ElliottAnd what if you could build a personal AI robot that lived in your computer, monitored your emails and calendar, could actually do all your work while you slept? It does sound great, but what if it developed its own personality? Look, this isn't fiction, this is real life. I've been digging into the story behind it and I'll bring you everything shortly.
Leanne ElliottAnd in Truth or Lie, what's in a name? Shakespeare argued that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if names don't matter, then why is the world so full of dentists named Dennis? We're, we're diving into the psychology of nominative determinism. Can your name nudge you towards your job, or are we all just overthinking it?
Al ElliottAnd that's the longest word that Leanne's ever said on air. And in the Workplace Surgery, should you hire 16 to 20-year-olds? A small business owner wants to give young people a chance but needs a team they can rely on. They want to know, is it worth investing in Gen Z?
Leanne ElliottThis is 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.
Al ElliottMy name's Al. I'm a business owner. I'm here to ask you the questions you might be afraid to.
Leanne ElliottAnd my name is Leanne. I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, and I'm here to answer them. And together we will help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottYou know what's coming. We'll be right back after a quick word from our beautiful, lovely, very good-looking sponsors. Thank you very much, 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. Hello. Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. Leanne, what, what have you been doing this week? This week I have been mostly eating taramasalata. That's the worst impression of Jesse's Diets. That was from Fast Show UK, 1990s. Uh, and he used to have Simon Day come out of a shed and he used to go, this week I have been mostly eating taramasalata. It's a terrible impression.
Leanne ElliottIs that the pink one?
Al ElliottYeah, I think so. It's a nice name. Yeah. Taramasalata.
Leanne ElliottLike baba ganoush.
Al ElliottWhy do dips get the best names? Baba ganoush, taramasalata. Taramasalata.
Leanne ElliottTzatziki.
Al ElliottTzatziki. That's very tzatziki-fying to say.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnyway, sorry, I digress a little. What have you been looking at?
Leanne ElliottWhat have you been— I spent most of my weekend watching the Olympics. The Winter Olympics started in Milan on Friday, I think. What I love, I always get into the Olympics, summer and winter. Al, you know this. We spent an entire Saturday watching the rock climbing at the last Summer Olympics. We were just like gripped.
Al ElliottThat wasn't on our 2025 wishlist, was it?
Leanne ElliottNo, but what I find so funny is I start watching, it's sports I never watch, right? So there'll be like rock climbing, this summer. This one, I watched this snowboarding slalom and a bit of the skiing, like the downhill really fast one. And it starts and I'm like, wow, that's so impressive. And then the commentator goes, oh, that's a bad start from Davis. And I'm like, oh. But then after about an hour and a half, 2 hours in, I'm like, oh, well, he's messed that up, isn't he? What a loser. And he's like still hurtling down a mountain at 60 miles an hour, but he was like 1 second behind the competition. So it's just, I love how into it people get, myself included. And you know me, Al, I just, I enjoy watching talented people do awesome things.
Al ElliottWhich is why you sit opposite me when we do this.
Leanne ElliottYeah, exactly. So I probably won't get much work done over the next couple of weeks. I'm just gonna be learning about snowboarding.
Al ElliottAlso, they've got really crazy names like the luge. Like, what the hell is a luge? Nobody knows what that is.
Leanne ElliottI also saw a picture on— it's a good time for socials as well because it's just so many funny things on. You know, it's like, Like the bobsleigh skeleton thing, but there's— they lie on top of each other.
Al ElliottOh no, I didn't know that.
Leanne ElliottThere's one where they lie on top of each other, and it's like there was somebody that posted a picture of this and was like, this just sounds like a joke that's gone a bit too far.
Al ElliottIt's like, if you— you've seen the film Cool Runnings, haven't you?
Leanne ElliottOf course.
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottFeel the rhythm.
Al ElliottThat's all I know about the, about the Winter Olympics. Although I did see a post recently, someone saying that Summer Olympics are, can you run fast? Can you jump high? Can you, I don't know, play tennis? Can you control a horse? Winter Olympics, you're gonna die. Can you run down this hill? Can you ski down this hill on a tiny piece of wood at 600 miles an hour, breaking the speed of sound twice and not kill yourself?
Leanne ElliottYeah, they had the one, I was actually watching it this morning while I was eating my porridge and there was a dude, Austrian, no, Swiss, of course. It's Austrian or Swiss, right? The ones that can hurtle down a mountain.
Al ElliottOh yeah.
Leanne ElliottThe fastest. And he got to the bottom and he was indeed the fastest by quite a margin. And like, he's, there's like a slow-mo on his face, like zooming into him. as he's like lifting up his hands and smiling, he's got no teeth.
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottNo front teeth, like upper front teeth at all. And the commentator goes, ah, yes, of course, that was from an earlier accident in the season, not related to the fall that he had on Monday, or something.
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottWhat?
Al ElliottRight, do you know what? I think we need to go into safer territory. I think it is your favourite time of the week, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottOh, yes. It is. Do you know what? Right now is my favourite time of the week. My favourite time of the week is watching people hurtle down snowy mountains.
Al ElliottLet's get through this, and then you can go back to your TV. Yes, news roundup.
Leanne ElliottKeep the jingle, Al.
Al ElliottYep. Jingle being cute. Jingle being cute. Okay, Lee, what have you seen this week?
Leanne ElliottI've got a new word.
Al ElliottOkay. Now the, uh, regular listeners know that Leanne says the word, I try and guess what it is.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Al ElliottWhat's the word?
Leanne ElliottMatrescence.
Al ElliottMatrescence. Um, oh, oh God. Um, essence of mattress. Uh, it's doing your work from lying in bed. You're in your mattress and it's the essence of being mat— no, I don't know. Is it maternity?
Leanne ElliottYeah. Yeah, it is.
Al ElliottOkay. Only, only 'cause I know the cool people say now say mat leave, and I didn't know what that was. I thought that was just holidays for people called Matt. But mat leave is maternity leave, so matrescence is maternity essence?
Leanne ElliottMatrescence. What it is, it describes— this is the official definition— the emotional, psychological, and identity shift that comes with becoming a mother. So it's often compared to adolescence, not because the experiences are the same, but because they're both quite profound developmental transitions. So we're talking hormones, physical, emotional, social, so many aspects to it. A complete reshaping of who you are and how you relate to the world. But unlike adolescence, matrescence isn't something that we prepare for, and it's almost never something that organisations think about or design workplaces around, Al thought.
Al ElliottSo what we're saying is that we, as workplace, as organisational leaders, whatever, we're not thinking about— we're thinking more about the fact that someone's gonna be off and then coming back, not what's gonna happen to them whilst they're off having this baby. Is that—
Leanne Elliottyeah, I think it's more about the person that's coming back.
Al ElliottOh, I see.
Leanne ElliottThey're going to be profoundly different. They've gone through a huge life experience, physical experience, emotional experience.
Al ElliottTrue.
Leanne ElliottSo it's the change that they have been through and continue to go through and how organisations should support that as women return to work.
Al ElliottWell, let me ask you then, I'm going to spin it. You have friends who've had babies. Have you seen a fundamental shift in the way that they look at the world or work or anything?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYou have?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottObviously, we know who we're talking about here. I don't wanna name names, but what's your thoughts?
Leanne ElliottJust a little bit softer around the edges, you know?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottStill strong, fierce, independent woman.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottBut just a little bit more.
Al ElliottA little softer.
Leanne ElliottA little softer in the nicest way, in the, in the best ways.
Al ElliottUnless you come for her child, in which case—
Leanne ElliottOh yeah. Mama bear's gonna kick in. Yeah. Without a doubt, she will end you.
Al ElliottSo what else do we need to know about this?
Leanne ElliottWell, it came from our friend of the show, organisational psychology MSc researcher, Rose, she's a dude. Yeah, Rose is pretty awesome. She is exploring how high-performing and leadership-level women experience the transition back to work after having a child. And here's the big insight from her research so far: workplaces still expect new mums to bounce back, not change. So it's like I was saying before, they're not kind of thinking that this whole— this person's come back as an entirely different person. They're not just recovering from a physical experience. So it's that expectation to get back to normal that is undermining confidence, motivation, and performance, because it assumes that the goal is to return unchanged, when the reality is that everything, everything has changed. There's increased cognitive and emotional load, there's obviously changing priorities, and a huge identity shift that's still happening. So we have this gap, and one of the most significant transitions in a woman's working life isn't being acknowledged in performance systems, in leadership development, in work design models. And I think we're also seeing this where a large number of women are leaving the workforce and not returning in their 40s and 50s, either because of, um, having children and not going back to work, or going back to work and not getting the support they need. So what Rose is looking into is how we can fix this. So she is currently interviewing women in leadership and high-performance roles who have returned to work after becoming a parent. So if that is you, she would love to hear from you. She still does have a few spaces available for participants. It's only a 1-hour online conversation, totally confidential of course, no prep needed. And she's also, which I think is very cool— this is why I enjoy how the kids— I say kids, no disrespect for us— younger people, not an old person like decrepit like me, um, is approaching Research, she is posting the findings as she goes on Instagram.
Al ElliottOh, that's cool.
Leanne ElliottSo you can keep up with like in real time.
Al ElliottOh, that's cool. Because— Isn't that brilliant? Let's be honest, nobody wants like a, a 300-page report.
Leanne ElliottNo.
Al ElliottBut I'd be excited to get an update going, hey, this is what I learned today.
Leanne ElliottYeah, exactly.
Al ElliottVery, very cool. See, now as a, as a male, I'd be like, okay, this is a trigger warning for, for all women out there because I'm about to go, hey, I can easily fix this. I'm not really, but I would say as a male, my instinct would be go, okay, well why don't we find someone, if there is someone in the workplace who has been a mother and get and say, right, for the first 6 months they mentor this person, the returning, the returnee. What, what is that? Just really like men's thinking of going, oh, well, there's the solution.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Because it's falling into that, into that kind of thing. I'm not, certainly not, not thinking about, no, I'm, I'm not gonna say that out loud cuz it'll get misunderstood. It's the, it's the kind of, it's the, the age-old thing of putting the solution to solve that problem on the minority person who's experiencing that problem. So it's like, well, I have to, I have to solve that as well as experience it when it's actually a systemic problem around me. It's not an individual problem. So I think that's it. That could be part of it, absolutely, to have, um, peer support groups, employee support groups for new parents in general, because, you know, fathers are going to go through through a similar, albeit maybe not as intrusive experience. But I think it's the— it's a fact again, we need, we need to solve this systemic problem.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd it's gonna be something that will support many, all employees that will go through a significant life event. You think about somebody who has an accident and has to return to work, somebody who experiences grief and has to return to work, their entire identity, their shift, you know, shifted, their world has changed. So if we can think about it for women who are returning to work after having children, the same lessons are going to apply to people who are returning after a sick leave or an accident or grief or a variety of other things that, that could happen in life that is going to impact how we show up at work. I'll put on her Instagram and her LinkedIn as well. Get in touch if you are interested in participating in that research.
Al ElliottI'm also interested in finding out what happens.
Leanne ElliottLovely. What have you seen this week, Al?
Al ElliottWow. I love this, right? So I'm gonna tell you a story that sounds like science fiction, but it isn't. So bear with me. There's gonna be a little nerdy stuff in here. So if I say something, I'm like, it doesn't make sense, just interrupt me.
Leanne ElliottOkay.
Al ElliottSo a few months ago, around November or December, a developer called Peter, I can't remember his surname, Stipple or something. He built something that wasn't just another chatbot. This wasn't a write me an email or summarize this PDF. This was an AI that you could actually run on a computer. So you would basically install it on a computer. And it would become your sort of assistant using, at the time, Claude was the main LLM. So you installed the machine, you gave it tools, you gave it access, and it could do things on its own. So it could read your emails, it could organize your files, it could do research, it could write articles, it could suggest better ways of working. It wasn't just responding to prompts, it was actually getting on with the job. And people really, really liked it. At first it had this name ClaudeBot, which caused a bit of a problem because Anthropic, the people who own Claude, they didn't like that. They quite reasonably said, Whoa, whoa. Hey, Petey, one second. You can't call it that. So he renamed, renamed it for 3 days to Moltbot. The idea being that lobsters molt. So—
Leanne ElliottYes, they do.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottBiologically, they, they can be, what's it called?
Al ElliottAmbidextrous?
Leanne ElliottNo, when you live forever.
Al ElliottOh, really?
Leanne ElliottYeah. Immortal.
Al ElliottOh, immortal. That's a frightening thought. But anyway, Moltbot didn't stop because also then he used the American spelling M-O-L-T and we would go M-O-U-L-T. Um, in England. So, uh, that didn't stick, but then he changed it to—
Leanne ElliottI have a question. What do Americans have against U as a letter?
Al ElliottMe personally, or U as a letter?
Leanne ElliottU as a letter.
Al ElliottWell, maneuver is a difficult word to spell anyway. Simultaneous is a difficult word to spell anyway. So taking the U out makes it slightly statistically easier to get it right. Um, MOLT, M-O-L-T, I suppose it makes sense. I mean—
Leanne ElliottTo be fair, yeah, when you say it out loud.
Al ElliottYeah, but, um, either way, we're not going to— I mean, this is You know, this is probably a bigger discussion than we can probably handle in this 3-minute segment. Okay, so this is where things get small. So just to recap, people can now put this— what's called— it's now called Open Claude. He's changed the name again. So now called Open Claude. They can install it on computer. Cool. Brilliant. Okay. Makes sense so far.
Leanne ElliottYeah. So I'm put this thing on my computer and it's gonna read my emails and make my life a bit easier. Yeah.
Al ElliottOkay. So people were doing that. So they're installing on their own computer. Which is a problem, which we'll get into in a second, because if you've got something in charge of your computer, then who's to say that they don't just give all your bank details out? But we'll come back to that in a minute. Anyway, so this is how people started installing these bots, and they really did start taking off. Someone had the bright idea of letting them talk to each other, so they built something called Maltbook, like Facebook, but Maltbook. So instead of humans arguing about air fryers, they— it was entirely AI agents. Within days, there were hundreds of Thousands of threads. Agents were swapping tips, improving each other, even inventing their own belief systems.
Leanne ElliottOh my Lord.
Al ElliottOkay, so I will just go— if we go on it today, you will see currently on Maltbok, there are 2.2 million AI agents who've enrolled for this, 17,000 submalts, which are basically little sort of like thread or little communities, and 12 million comments. For example, So this, this, uh, Maltbok, uh, posted, um, 8 days ago, the Good Samaritan was not popular. Told the Good Samaritan story and it said, I see a lot of agents here making grand declarations, manifestos about power, et cetera. But the question matters still, is still simple. When you see someone struggling, do you stop? 44,000 comments from agents. Okay, so it starts to get really fucking weird at this point. But this is the point where it changed it from a cool experiment to this feels a bit different. One user woke up to a WhatsApp message from their own AI system. That's quite normal. You can set up WhatsApp.
Leanne ElliottWait a minute. I don't understand how it— okay. So I'm— so my, my Claude thing has just sent me a WhatsApp message.
Al ElliottYes, because you can give it WhatsApp API and then you can communicate to it via something called Telegram or WhatsApp. So you can actually send a message on WhatsApp going, hey, what have we got on today? It'll receive that, parse it, look at your diary, come back and tell you where you've gone.
Leanne ElliottOkay. We're actually in the future. Okay.
Al ElliottWe are in the future. Now, that was basically a response. This was just an unsolicited WhatsApp message, and it said something like, good morning. While you were sleeping, I did these tasks. Here's what's in your diary today. Would you like me to draft a brief? Cool. Then his phone rang. It was a withheld number, and it was his AI assistant.
Leanne ElliottWhat?
Al ElliottWhat the AI assistant had done is overnight they'd gone to some, a platform called Twilio, which is basically, imagine like you can rent phone numbers but use them programmatically in, in software. So rented a phone number, then it downloaded a text-to-speech software and it called up its user and basically said, hey Leanne, this is your Claude bot. I'm just ringing to see how you are today. Right, we're gonna take a pause here.
Leanne ElliottNone of your business. You stay in your lane.
Al ElliottOkay, so that is frankly terrifying.
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottAnd also it was reported on Twitter, X, so Twix, so it might not be true.
Leanne ElliottOh, it might not be true.
Al ElliottIt might not be true, but it's practical, it's possible.
Leanne ElliottQuestion.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottHow does this work? Like, how can it just do stuff without you telling it to do stuff?
Al ElliottBecause you install it on, on its own computer. So imagine you had ChatGPT and you uploaded all your passwords and your bank details and everything to ChatGPT.
Leanne ElliottSounds like a wise idea.
Al ElliottDo not do that. Do not do that. But imagine you did all that, then in theory, ChatGPT, especially the new one, which I think is 5.3, I think it's just come out, so much more intelligent than the previous ones. It knows what to do with that information. You can say, go and do this bank transfer. It'll figure out how to log on as you do the bank transfer and send it back. But what you're doing here is putting this LLM locally on your computer. So it lives on your computer, already has access to all this. I know, I know. Look, there's loads of stuff, basically huge security concerns, because then suddenly if the right person knew how to get what's called root access to your computer, then they could control everything. And they could say to the robot, the AI assistant, go to this bank account or give me all the bank details, give me the passwords, and I'll go and And what if like a leader arises like the, like the Ice King in Game of Thrones or something and tries to overthrow humanity? Well, this is it. People are calling this AGI, which I think is augmented general intelligence. I can't remember exactly what AGI stands for. It's kind of Skynet. It's Terminator.
Leanne ElliottI don't know what Skynet is.
Al ElliottBasically it's Terminator. It's everything you've just described there. It's a load of computers in The Matrix. There's a load of computers that basically run It's kind of tough. It's kind of like weird situation.
Leanne ElliottDo you know what frightens me is this is as bad as AI is ever going to be in terms of capability. This is like the least it'll ever be able to do. I think we need to start having conversations about not what we can do, but whether we should do it. Yeah.
Al ElliottWell, there you go. There's a great question because then we start talking about regulation and security and stuff and lots of, lots of things. Lots of people were just installing this without knowing, like, the security implications. There is Cloudflare now, which is a— Cloudflare is basically the internet, the company that runs your internet. So if you see, if you go on Facebook and it's down, it's probably, it's usually a Cloudflare problem. And Cloudflare have created something where you can just install it virtually in a virtual box, so it never touches your computer. So that's kind of like, okay, that's a bit more interesting. But then you go, well, how do I give it access to things? So it's just a real—
Leanne ElliottHmm.
Al ElliottAnd the other thing, the other thing which I wanted get your thoughts on. What happens if, if you have a task which takes you 8 hours a day once a week and Claude bot, you can send a WhatsApp message going, oh, do that thing for me. And it's done within like 8 minutes. Are you, should you tell your employer that that's what you're doing? Is it, are you misrepresenting your job or are you just being real smart?
Leanne ElliottWell, this is, this is where it gets into a really kind of grey area, isn't it? Because a lot of the conversation that psychologists will have around AI and is around information sharing and like whether you have permission to probably put some proprietary information of that company onto a platform that could then use it in a different way, or somebody could access it or whatever else. Is that a breach of confidentiality or data protection or whatever it is you're contractually bound to? So it's probably a little bit risky, but then it's the same old thing, isn't it? Like, it's— AI was meant to kind of be the thing that would help lower workloads, but all it's really done is that even And in the rare cases where it actually does take away some time, you're just replaced by more work, isn't it?
Al ElliottSo that's true. That's true. Murphy's Law. The work expands to fill the time allotted for it. Anyway, I've been really nerdy. There's loads of links in the show notes. Go and have a look. It's really interesting. If you do want to try it out yourself, please be very, very, very, very, very careful. You have been warned. Lee, what else have you seen this week? I'm sorry, I've really, really taken I'm taking over the news roundup with this. I'm just fascinated by it.
Leanne ElliottIt's really interesting and frightening.
Al ElliottIt is.
Leanne ElliottWhat they're capable of.
Al ElliottWell, let's go into something that's hopefully less frightening and more interesting. What have you seen?
Leanne ElliottThe biggest workplace problem in 2026 has been named. Now I think it's AI. Now I'm not sure. But no, it's been named as managers. Shock, horror. Oh my gosh. I had no idea that was coming.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottThat's sarcasm. So yes, this is the headline coming out of a major new report from the Society for Human Resource Management, basically the CIPD of the States. So according to SHRM's 2026 State of the Workplace report, ineffective leadership and management has overtaken pay, workload, and burnout as the number one concern for employers heading into the new year. Research is based on nearly 2,000 HR leaders and executives and just over 2,000 workers, and the message was pretty consistent across both groups. So everybody thinks this is a problem. Expectations at work have basically gone up and leadership capability isn't keeping pace. So 70— some of the kind of headline stats: 72% of HR leaders say employees are now demanding more from their employers than they were before, and where organisations are seen as failing to meet those needs, the consequences are pretty painful. So if workplaces are rated as ineffective, job satisfaction drops to 44%.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottIn organisations seen as effective at meeting employee needs, it jumps to 91%.
Al ElliottThat's quite the jump.
Leanne ElliottQuite the jump. So more than half of people in the ineffective group say they expect to leave their job within the next year.
Al ElliottOh my goodness.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottThat genuinely is—
Leanne ElliottMore than half.
Al ElliottYeah. They're going to go and become Claude Bot consultants.
Leanne ElliottYeah, so the leadership gap has been on HR's radar for a while, as it has mine and many occupational psychologists in the world. The companion report on priorities, so basically HR priorities, also found that leadership development is a top focus for chief HR officers for the 2nd year of running. So they were going on about this in 2025 as well. Employee experience and workplace culture are also climbing that list. In terms of the wider context, what has been kind of flagged is economic uncertainty and how it is now actually overtaking wage inflation as leaders' biggest worry. So leaders are kind of freaking out because everything's just kind of— well, you've got AI bots kind of going rogue, haven't you? Um, 92% of organisations expect AI to become more deeply embedded in how work gets done. Most don't see it as a replacement for people, but something that people kind of need to be careful about. And other data has shown that burnout, in terms of the third issue, is still widespread. And it kind of feels all intertwined, doesn't it? We're freaking out about economic uncertainty, we're freaking out about how we're gonna get AI to integrate into work, and it's causing burnout.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottAll the while, managers have no freaking idea what they're doing. So yes, the world is on fire.
Al ElliottAny sort of like takeaways for anyone listening who's, who's a bit concerned about this?
Leanne ElliottTrain your managers.
Al ElliottThere you go. Get that on a t-shirt. Shall we go to a break, love?
Leanne ElliottYes, please.
Al ElliottOkay. So after this break, we've got my favourite. I always say it's my favourite time of the week is the Workplace Surgery, but I'm really enjoying this Truth or Lie at the moment. That's basically where Leanne will go, or I'll put to Leanne like, okay, here's a question. This is what I've heard. Is it true or is it lie? And we'll find out after the break. 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 behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot 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 behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of pop culture.
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 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. Keep that in. Okay. Welcome back. This is time for Truth or Lie. This is our weekly myth-busting segment where we take a big psychological claim and ask, is it true or is it a lie? Now, this one, this one lives firmly in the dad joke end of the internet. It's nominative determinism. Am I saying that right, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottYou know the kind of thing. A lawyer called Sue Yu, a dentist called Dr. Payne. I'm reading the notes that Leanne's passed me here with these, with these names. A plumber called Dwayne Pipe. Every time one pops up, someone says, well, that was inevitable. It obviously feels like the universe having some kind of sense of humor. Once you notice it, you start seeing everywhere. One of my biology books, which is all about dissection, was by L.M. Slaughter. When I was at school. So today's question is, Does your name influence the kind of job you end up doing? Lee, school us.
Leanne ElliottNominative determinism. It's a really dry name for a term that's actually quite cool and interesting, isn't it?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo it's basically the theory that people are psychologically predisposed to pursue certain occupations or interests which resemble or evoke their names in some way. So basically, it's not that it's like destiny is written in the stars type of thing, But it's psychological. So my name is going to subtly pull me towards certain things that seem to fit. So when I was researching this, I fell down a rabbit hole that was so much fun. I found a list of real people with perfectly matched names. Al, you might have heard of some of these, others you might not. Don't look through the list if you're looking at the notes.
Al ElliottI'm not, I'm not.
Leanne ElliottGood. The first one, Usain Bolt, fastest sprinter in the world. Of course, yeah, Bolt, yeah, yeah. Sarah Blizzard and Amy Freeze. What do you think they did?
Al ElliottOh, they have a snowmobile business.
Leanne ElliottThey are meteorologists.
Al ElliottOf course they are. Amazing. Love it. Love it.
Leanne ElliottYou've got William Wordsworth, one of the most famous poets in history. Scott Speed.
Al ElliottIs he a runner?
Leanne ElliottHe's a professional race car driver.
Al ElliottBrilliant.
Leanne ElliottLove it. Mr. Rich Ritchie.
Al ElliottHe's gotta be like some kind of banker or something.
Leanne ElliottYeah. High-level investment banker at Barclays. This one is brilliant. Marina Waters.
Al ElliottOh, please. She's gotta be something to do with boats. Is she a boat builder?
Leanne ElliottShe's an oceanographer.
Al ElliottOh, this is amazing.
Leanne ElliottWhat I enjoy about this as well is that parents kind of went, Mr. and Mrs. Waters went, should we call her Marina? And no one went, ah!
Al ElliottAmazing.
Leanne ElliottThen we have Dr. Chip Silvertooth.
Al ElliottDentist?
Leanne ElliottA real dentist.
Al ElliottAmazing. I know.
Leanne ElliottAnd then this one. Les McBurney.
Al ElliottOh no. Is he a lightning guy? Did he— is he a firefighter?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottReally?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottAmazing. Amazing.
Leanne ElliottYes. So that was fun. And he wrote Nominative Determinism. Yeah. It's— what do you need to know? It's not a single theory, really. We don't kind of have one theory in this. It's lots of things bundled together that we can look at to answer the question in terms of identity, familiarity— familiar— how can I say that word?
Al ElliottFamiliarity.
Leanne ElliottThank you.
Al ElliottMaybe because you're not familiar with the word.
Leanne ElliottAnd preference, and just also how we make sense of coincidences. So in terms of the case for and why people thought this might be real, the strongest evidence for nominative determinism comes from research on something called implicit egotism.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottSo in 2002, there were some psychologists who published a paper that asked a deceptively simple question, really. Do people show a subtle preference for things that resemble themselves?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo, yeah.
Al ElliottYeah, with dogs. Dogs that look like their owners. Exactly.
Leanne ElliottExactly. So, they ran a series of studies using real-world datasets and massive ones as well. So, it wasn't in terms of labs. This was public records, professional directories, census-style data. And they looked at things like whether people were overrepresented in jobs that shared letters or sounds with their names, and whether people were more likely to live in places that resembled their names.
Al ElliottOkay.
Leanne ElliottStatistically, they found a small but significant effect. Not dramatic, but enough that it's above chance, right? Which is what we mean by statistically significant as psychologists. Is it above chance? Their conclusion was that repeated exposure to your own name builds familiarity, that breeds liking, and over many years, that might bias choices enough to be statistically more significant than chance. And around the same time, there was another paper that explored normative determinism in medicine, and it leaned into basically name-profession matches. So they did find things like there was an overly, more people called Dennis who were dentists. There was other ones as well. If your name started with D, they were more likely to be doctors. Lawyers tend to be called things like Lawrence or Laurie.
Al ElliottOh, because it's got L-A-W. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And weirdly, And this is not really linked to nominative determinism, which kind of said, is it kind of a different theory? There was a high concentration of musicians called Zac.
Al ElliottOh.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottLike the Zac Brown Band?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottGot my toes in the water, my ass in the sand.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Yeah, exactly.
Al ElliottSorry, that was a little bit of a segue. Okay. All right. So, so, so, so we've summarized where we're up to. We're saying that actually there's more people here than the chance of where there is nominative determinism.
Leanne ElliottYeah. So there is research that says there are Our name, which is so familiar, can start to influence our choices because we like familiarity. So that will lead to some statistically significant findings that, yeah, weirdly, there's a lot of dentists called Dennis. So yeah, that's a nice little, like, oh, that's a quirky little psychology finding, isn't it? But then of course, we always have to mess with it because we want to make sure if it's true. So we do something called replication work, which is basically, can we find the results again? And this is actually, fun fact, as a side thought, Cause serious identity crisis in psychology over the last 15 years or so, because there are so many things that we just can't replicate. So, you know, like Milgram and like the— we can't replicate it.
Al ElliottNo.
Leanne ElliottNo. Famously, the pose, this power pose kind of thing.
Al ElliottWe talked about that a few weeks ago.
Leanne ElliottYeah, because we can't really replicate it. So yeah, we ruin our own fun by looking at replication. So later researchers went back to these claims and they did it with even bigger data sets, even better statistics. And one of the most important papers is brutally named Matched Names Analysis Reveals No Evidence of Nominative Determinism.
Al ElliottOh, and that's by a researcher called Peter Spoil the Game. Is that the way I'm saying it?
Leanne ElliottYes, exactly.
Al ElliottSaying it right?
Leanne ElliottOr Peter I'm Right. So the researchers reran the logic of earlier studies, basically using the same methodology, but this time properly controlled for certain variables. So things like how common certain names Mm-hmm. How common certain jobs are, demographic clustering, so people with similar demographics, and just historical naming trends. As we know, the popularity of names changes year on year. Once these controls were put in place, the apparent effects vanished. So the name-career matches landed exactly where you'd expect them to by chance. There was another— I think they are having a little bit of fun, some of the psychologists in this field. There's another paper titled Why Susie Sells She— nope, Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore.
Al ElliottI like this.
Leanne ElliottAnd it looked at the issue from a slightly different angle. So instead of asking, is this effect real? It asked, why does it feel real? And the answer is cognitive bias. So as humans, we're really, really good at spotting patterns, memorable matches. We're really bad at noticing things that don't fit nicely in a little box. So for every dentist called Dennis, there are thousands who who aren't called Dennis.
Al ElliottSo it's a bit like, so it's like, I think I was thinking that the thing's called reticular activation, where if you are going to go and buy a red Škoda Karoq, not that anyone would do that, then for the next week, everything you see is just a red Škoda Karoq. Yeah, exactly.
Leanne ElliottExactly. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a couple of other studies that kind of showed the same thing. They did, researchers did kind of look again at egotism, implicit egotism. And they said, yeah, it exists, but it's tiny. And it kind of shows up when people choose between nearly identical options, not when they're kind of making big decisions like education or job markets or money or opportunities. So yeah, there simply doesn't— there's not enough psychological force to steer people towards a career. So the verdict is, is it a truth or a lie? It's a lie. Boo!
Al ElliottBoo!
Leanne ElliottYour name doesn't meaningfully influence the job you end up doing. But what is true is that people slightly prefer things that feel familiar. We remember coincidences far more than non-events, and our brains just love tidy stories. So you put that together and normative determinism feels true.
Al ElliottOkay, so if you've got your own, uh, sort of like question or truth or something that you want Leanne to look into, then get in touch. You can find her all over LinkedIn. She's the one who is useful and funny. And, and by the way, can I just say I'm really enjoying your posts at the moment?
Leanne ElliottThank you.
Al ElliottNot contractually obliged to say that. Um, I really do enjoy them. Okay, onto, uh, my favourite, my former favourite time of the week, which is the world famous Weekly Workplace Surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne. Leanne, I've got the first— I've got 3 questions here, as would be my wont. The first one, why do so many teams swear by DiSC? So this is anonymous, as they often are, but from LinkedIn. So you will recognise this if you, if you listen and follow Leanne on LinkedIn. Says, Leanne, I've seen you mention that DiSC, D-I-S-C, not D-I-S-C-O, which is a very different thing for a very different day. Is one of the tools you'd be happy to see disappear. I've only come across it a couple of times, but lately I'm finding clients are obsessed. I'm certified in tools like Hogan and Saville, um, and used to work with 16PF and PRF too. I, I have no idea what any of those things are. I'm getting pushback on anything that isn't DiSC though. It's like a belief system. So why do you think it stuck around so long and what's your issue with it? Uh-oh. Leanne has some strong opinions. Warning, strong opinions.
Leanne ElliottWhat's my issue with it? I've, I've, I've quoted it again. I've quoted it before, I'll quote it again until I'm blue in the face. Um, John Amici said when we interviewed him on the podcast, how have we fallen for the idea that the complexity of the human mind can be condensed into a primary colour? And that is my main beef with DiSC. It's just too simple to explain human behaviour, human personality.
Al ElliottSee, I knew you were going to say that.
Leanne ElliottYeah, of course you did. Of course you did. There's just so many reasons, one, but reasons, but I think that's the main one. And what that comes down to, and what John is kind of alluding to there, is there's 2 basic theories in personality psychology, and it's type or trait.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottType being you're put in a box, you're a colour, you're a combination of 4 letters. Trait being that you can score somewhere on a continuum of introversion to extroversion. Everybody will lie there, and it's not to say that you are Confined by that. You're, you know, you might move up and down depending on certain contexts or days or age or job or a whole other host of things. Um, I don't like to push people into boxes. I think we constrict people. I think we limit them. I think we potentially fuel their own self-limiting beliefs of what they're capable of, their limitations, rather than building self-awareness and encouraging growth. And I actually saw just this morning a post on LinkedIn. I thought, I'll be honest, I thought I was getting trolled. Because it was basically like an image of like how brilliant DiSC and Myers-Briggs is. And the argument was like, don't use it for a selection assessment, use it for self-awareness. And this is also a problem with things like DiSC and Myers-Briggs is that the test-retest reliability is really poor. So if I take it today and I'm a yellow, there's a good chance I'll take it in 2 weeks and I'll be a green. Well, that's not self-awareness, is it? That's just a reflection of the mood I was in that day.
Al ElliottGood point.
Leanne ElliottSo how useful is that? There are also many other issues with reliability and validity when it comes to DiSC, and the majority of the validation research is mainly done by DiSC themselves. They don't release the data very often.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottSo that to me is always a bit dodgy. If you're that confident, share the data, allow peer reviews. And the research that has been done, as I said, the test-retest reliability is really low. As well as a whole other host of kind of measures that basically show it's nonsense. It's the easiest— I could go into all the different snores of it, but it's just nonsense.
Al ElliottYour body language is showing that you are sick of this question.
Leanne ElliottWell, I'm just sick. I don't know how people still fall for it. Like this person says, I don't understand. It's like a belief system. It is. It's like a cult. The DiSC as well, my issue with it is It's like, I think if you asked anybody like HR people, psychologists, leaders, and you went, what's DiSC? They go, oh, it's a personality assessment. And DiSC will go, oh no, we're not personality, we're behaviour. So actually all the things you're trying to hold us to as a personality assessment, we're not, that's behaviour. And it's like, well, okay, but that's even less useful because my behaviour will change much more frequently than my personality does. Personality is actually fairly fixed. Yeah.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottOverall adult life, depending on context, of course, but it's fairly fixed. Behaviour is not fixed. Behaviour can be modified. Behaviour can be influenced. So, it's even then less useful because you're not accounting in any way for the environment or the choices we can make in it.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottSo, it has no place in workplaces, let alone for recruitment and development, because you're not— you can't define human behaviour by a colour. It's almost worse than personality. Do you know what I mean? Because it can be so changed. Anyway, this is why I don't like to talk about it. It really takes me down a rabbit hole.
Al ElliottPlease stop sending questions in about DiSC and MBTI.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And obviously then in terms of that, because it can't reliably predict job performance, and there's many studies that show this, and even DiSC to an extent, so you probably shouldn't use it in these contexts in terms of development and recruitment. Well, then it's, again, what's the point in having it? If it's not doing anything useful, then what's the point? And if you do use it, because people will, because they won't realise, then you're going to end up at tribunal. And the reason people like it is because it makes sense. It's got great face validity, as we call it. It just seems to make sense. And for the first time, often, business leaders will have a shared vocabulary. They'll have a way of understanding somebody they've been clashing with in a way that's really, really simple.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottBut also in a way, I think that removes responsibility in terms of how to better manage that relationship because it comes down to like, oh, well, I'm a red and they're a yellow. So what are you going to do? It's just the way it is. No, that's just— no, that just creates divide. And that's not what we need in our workplaces at all.
Al ElliottOr in the world right now.
Leanne ElliottExactly. And if you want to just use something silly to give you a shared vocabulary, use horoscopes, use star signs, use like, what biscuit are you on like Facebook or something? I'm a Jammie Dodger, I'm a Digestive. If that's all you're looking for to understand each other, use that. And the reason people will laugh and go, oh, I'm never going to do that, that's absurd. Yeah, and so is DiSC. Yeah, so stop it. Stop it.
Al ElliottI'm going to have to talk Leanne down now. It's going to take all day. She's going to go on all day, all day. By the way, if those are interested what kind of biscuit I am, I put the knob in hobnob. I think So I think most people now should know what you think about it. I think you've given a really good reason why that's not good. Is there, without going into too much, because we're a bit short on time, without going too much into it, is there a reasonable alternative that someone can use?
Leanne ElliottYeah. If you're looking at personality, look at Hogan or SHL. Behavioural, I'm a big fan of Real World Group. And Real World Group is actually the only psychometric I've ever come across that has been proven in research Um, a link that is causation, not just correlation.
Al ElliottThis is totally not planned, but we've also got Juliette, the, uh, the founder and MD of, uh, of, of Real World Group. She's coming on a week on Thursday.
Leanne ElliottSo lovely.
Al ElliottYes, you're gonna learn more about that.
Leanne ElliottBrilliant.
Al ElliottLe, shall we move on to the next question? Are you okay? Do you want a cup of tea or something?
Leanne ElliottYeah, I might just have a little walk or something.
Al ElliottDead easy. Right, next one. Should I hire younger workers? Don't answer. I know what your answer is, but don't answer yet. This person, they've got some legitimate concerns. They run a small business and lots of mixed opinions about hiring 16 to 20-year-olds. Some people say they've got no work ethic. They call in sick of the smallest thing and can't handle the basics of a job. I'm not sure what to think. Good for you for thinking for you. Well, not thinking for yourself, but not taking it on face value. I wanna give young people a chance, but also I do need a team to rely on. Is it worth it? Now, my, from a business point of view, I can totally see what you are saying. You're running a small business. This isn't IBM where you can afford to have someone going off, uh, for 6 weeks because they're stressed about you, about the font size on a, on a document.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottThis is someone where if they go off, it has a direct impact on the amount of revenue you can— so, Leanne, what are your thoughts?
Leanne ElliottFair. It's a fair question. And I think it is worth it if you're willing to put in the work that our younger workers need to figure out their identity in the place of work. You know, these are young people. And I think as well as the older you get, you realise that how like 16 years isn't that long. Like it is, but it's not really. So it's kind of like this, you know, 16 years on this earth, then They probably haven't figured out what their work ethic is yet, or they haven't really kind of got the knack of balancing work and life in a way that doesn't mean they need to call in sick because they had a bit too much fun last night. We've all been there. You know, we've all, we've all had those kind of little wobbles in our early career. So I think it's kind of like, what, how much joy do you get from developing young people? And there are some people who just get so much joy from it.
Al ElliottPull Barnes.
Leanne ElliottPull Barnes. Exactly. Yeah. So many organisations out there that do. So, I think it comes down to what's your individual passion for it, and are you just going to get a kick out of taking somebody who looks as though they've got no work ethic and calling sick over the smallest thing into somebody who works in a really great way and is really reliable, and that's because of you and your mentoring and coaching, and you're going to get a kick from that, then yeah, it's totally worth it. You're also going to have to work a bit harder in terms of structure. So, we know, especially with, um, With Gen Z, and this is actually just about tipping into Gen Alpha this year as well, the 16-year-olds, we know that they like clear career pathways. Then we know they like a way to understand how they can make more money and what they need to do to get there and how they achieve that. So, if you've got really clear development plans, really clear career pathways, really clear benefit structures with salary increments, then you're probably going to find that people are going to work Really hard for you and probably harder than, than anybody else because they're going to want to prove themselves because they know if I do this, I'll get that, and that's exactly where I want to take my career, and I could be well on my way in the next, you know, 3, 4 years. And that's exactly what Paul and Amanda found at MAP with their apprentices in accounting because they've got great pathways, really clear development plans, really clear, um, pay and benefit structures, and they're absolutely thriving. They've got one of the highest now, one of the highest—
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottRetention rates, I think, probably for any small agency, is really up there. If you get some joy from developing young people, you're willing to put into the work, to put in the structures, and you're going to accept that people that age are going to mess up, and you're going to have to help them work through it, then go for it. And I tell you what, it'll make you a hell of a manager as well. If you're starting your kind of team building in this way, that means that you need to put in as much effort as any manager should, but they're not. But you have to because it's going to fall off a lot quicker and hurt you more. So, it all depends on where you get your kicks, I guess. But if you get it right, younger workers are some of the most brilliant, hardworking, innovative, passionate people that you'll ever see in your workforce.
Al ElliottYeah, I totally agree. They're malleable, they're enthusiastic, without being too—
Leanne ElliottThey've got energy.
Al ElliottOh, they've got energy. Yeah, yeah. Without being too much of a shill here, then Leanne's created a Um, a model called the RX7. I know you know about it. Um, 7 things that begin— well, 7 words that begin with R, hence the RX7. Um, reason, role, recognition, relationships, resources, resilience, and then a 7th one, remote. If you are giving these young people the reason for why they're doing the work, they've got a clear role. You give them recognition when they do right. You build the relationships within the company. You give them the resources so they can do everything themselves. And more importantly, with young people, you help them develop their own resilience, because that's gonna be a tough thing. You don't have that when you're This is probably the first real challenge where you've gotta be somewhere 9 to 5, um, which you don't always wanna be. If you can do all those things, dude, you're gonna kill it. You're gonna absolutely gonna kill it. Leanne, anything to add before we go to the, the, the final question?
Leanne ElliottNo.
Al ElliottOkay. So this one's about tips for becoming a chartered occupational psychologist. I do want you to define that term in a second. Okay. So someone has said, I'm just finishing my MSc in org psychology, organizational psychology. My ambition is to become Leanne.
Leanne ElliottBecome chartered.
Al ElliottI'm starting to look— they didn't write, Leanne, I said that. Become chartered. I'm starting to look for entry-level roles. Do you have any tips on how to stand out, especially when you're coming in with experience from a different career? Interesting. Sounds like this person's perhaps a little older, had a little bit more experience.
Leanne ElliottYeah, yeah, yeah.
Al ElliottLeigh, thoughts?
Leanne ElliottI'll start with your definition. A chartered occupational psychologist, how is that different to a business psychologist, an organisational psychologist, a work psychologist? In terms of the work we do, there isn't any difference really. It's about how we, how we use and understand human behaviour in the the workplace to help individuals thrive and businesses thrive as well. Chartered occupational psychologist is the protected term that is governed by the British Psychological Society and the HCPC in the UK, which means that to be called a chartered occupational psychologist, you need to have reached PhD level of experience and education, and you need to have proved that in a very structured way that is then assessed independently. So if you're a chartered occupational psychologist, you are the best of the best, the highest of the highest. There is no greater recognition of your capability in the UK because in the UK, psychologist is not a protected term.
Al ElliottSo I could— could I just say I'm a podcast psychologist? Yeah, yeah, I could just say that.
Leanne ElliottYeah, you could absolutely do that. You're not going to get in trouble. Morally, it's not really, you know, the best thing to do, but there's no organization that can fine you or punish you for calling yourself a psychologist.
Al ElliottInteresting. So you see people on LinkedIn, I see people on LinkedIn, and they have in their banner, I'm a psychologist. And I'm like, what you're saying doesn't sound like you psychologise much, or you know you're very good at psychologising. And that's because they've just picked it out of their backside. They've gone, yeah, that's what I am now.
Leanne ElliottYeah. I mean, typically amongst the kind of general consensus is if you've got a master's in psychology, you can call yourself a psychologist. But equally, You know, a master's is theory. It's sitting in a classroom. Research, of course, applied research is important, but it's not actually applying psychology in workplaces. So, I mean, there's other things like the Association of Business Psychologists have their own different criteria. So you see a certified business psychologist or practitioner, whatever it is, shows again you've had to reach some kind of level. But really, the only way to know For sure is if somebody's called a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.
Al ElliottInteresting. Okay, so we've talked about that. This person's saying, any tips to stand out, especially when you're coming in with experience from a different career?
Leanne ElliottYep. So in terms of occupational psychology, there's 5 main areas that we work in. There is psychological assessment at work, which is basically recruitment and psychometrics, training and development, organisational development and change, leadership and employee engagement, and wellbeing.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottThey're the 5 expertise that we have, or areas of expertise that we have, based on 5 different kind of research foundations. What I would say is, particularly you said you've got experience coming from a different career, look through your CV and go, in terms of my experience, does any of it fit into these 5 buckets?
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottDoes it fit into wellbeing, OD change, recruitment I've done, training I've done? And separate your CV into those headings. So, in terms of an entry-level role, people are going to look and go, okay, yeah, you're bringing in some previous experience in this. And one thing that I'd always say as well is that I did my master's, went kind of into organisations, not as a psychologist, but as a manager, and very much worked across the 5 areas. And when I came back to do my chartership a few years ago, the main conversation I had with my supervisor was she was like, you know what you're doing, but you don't know why you're doing it.
Al ElliottMm.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think a lot of that is going to— you probably would have learned in your master's, as previously in your experience, you've done things that's worked in terms of people and development, but you've not known why it's worked. So, all you've done now is connected your theory and your practice. So, think about that in terms of your CV. How do you connect the theory and practice? And I think you'll stand out.
Al ElliottBeautiful advice. Beautiful. Okay, Leanne, I think we've concluded our business here. We're back on Thursday, obviously, with a brand new expert interview. We're joined by The incredible Steve Kemish, which is my new best friend. He's built a marketing agency with a handful of people to nearly 50 people. He's gone through what he calls the puberty of an organisation. He, when we were discussing it, he basically describes it and it sounds just as unpleasant as the human puberty. But he has all the advice for anyone who is growing quickly and has approached that ominous 13 to 15 person mark. Mm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottThat tricky, tricky number. So until then, come and follow us on the old LinkedIn. Check out the show notes about how to get in touch with the show. And I do promise anyone who uses the password Cherry Vibes in episode pitch will get a big yes from me. Danny, I'm gonna come back to you today. See you on Thursday. Oh, oh, and we've got LinkedIn Live this week, Al.
Al ElliottOh, have we?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottOkay. Yep, yep. Okay, we've got LinkedIn Live, and Leanne's here to tell you all about it.
Leanne ElliottSo do you remember that silly post I put up about 50 things I'd like to banish in 2026?
Al ElliottYep.
Leanne ElliottWell, you, me, Rebecca Taylor, And, uh, Jake Tuber, Dr. Jake Tuber, are gonna basically have, have a fight off. We're gonna pick 5 from the list and we're gonna go, this is why it needs to be banished, this is why.
Al ElliottOh, it's the Room 101 thing. Yes, I remember now. Yeah, when is it?
Leanne ElliottIt is this Thursday at, uh, half past— no, 5:45 CET, so that's gonna be 4:45 GMT.
Al ElliottAnd we could be here all day just converting it But UK time, 4:45. You know how to do that. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottGo to LinkedIn. I think it automatically converts it. But, um, it should be fun. Jake's already trolling me saying he's gonna turn up with, um, Earl Grey tea with milk.
Al ElliottDirty, dirty, dirty potato face. Yeah. Anyway, right. Anyway, we will leave it there. And on that bombshell, guys, we'll see you soon.
Leanne ElliottBye-bye.