Truth, Lies & Work

Episode 290 · 7 April 2026 · 1:08:54

Is money the best motivator? PLUS! Londonmaxxing, hustling after 40 and The Deliberate Manager, featuring Dr Jake Tuber

Featuring Jake Tuber

Is money the best motivator? PLUS! Londonmaxxing, hustling after 40 and The Deliberate Manager, featuring Dr Jake Tuber

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  1. Intro and welcome back Dr Jake Tuber

    intro#podcast-intro#guest-intro#content-warning

  2. Story 1 — Londonmaxxing: the secret to rapid growth?

    news roundup#londonmaxxing#growth-strategy#urban-development

  3. Story 2 — Is hustle culture just a young person's game?

    news roundup#hustle-culture#ageism#work-ethic

  4. Truth or Lie — Is money the best motivator?

    truth or lie#motivation#money#incentives

  5. Workplace Surgery — AI skills vs experience

    workplace surgery#ai#skills#experience#workplace-advice

  6. Workplace Surgery — disappearing EDI values

    workplace surgery#edi#diversity#inclusion#workplace-values

  7. Workplace Surgery — the accidental manager trap

    workplace surgery#accidental-manager#management#leadership

  8. Jake's special gift for listeners

    news roundup#gift#listener-gift#special-offer

Show notes

Is Money the Best Motivator? PLUS! Londonmaxxing, Hustling After 40 & The Deliberate Manager — with Dr Jake Tuber

Guest: Dr Jake Tuber — organisational psychologist, executive coach, founder of Ticon Advisory, and recently named one of the Leadership Center for Excellence's 40 Under 40.

Pay people more and they'll work harder, right? It's the logic behind bonuses, commission, and for many, the default answer to "how do I motivate my team?" But as Dr Jake Tuber joins Al and Leanne to unpack, the psychology of compensation is rarely that simple.

In this episode, Jake leads a deep dive into whether money is actually the best motivator — drawing on a meta-analysis of 108 independent studies and 71,438 employees. They explore why performance-based pay can drive results for simple tasks but backfire for knowledge work, and why money is best understood as a "hygiene factor": you need enough to mitigate dissatisfaction, but true flourishing comes from autonomy, meaning, and recognition.

Plus, Al and Leanne tackle "Londonmaxxing" — UK entrepreneurs moving back into the office to be in close physical proximity to other ambitious, high-growth businesses — and whether hustle culture is really just a young person's game. And in the Workplace Surgery, they take on three tough listener questions: AI skills vs experience, vanishing EDI commitments, and the "accidental manager" trap.

🔥 Stories Covered

1. Is "Londonmaxxing" the secret to rapid growth? Some UK entrepreneurs are moving back into the office — but not for the reason you think. "Londonmaxxing" is the practice of being in close physical proximity to other ambitious, high-growth businesses to accelerate your own success. We look at an office block in Southwark where 13 companies are collectively turning over £150 million simply by sharing a kitchen and a vibe.

2. Is hustle culture just a young person's game? We've all heard the "rise and grind" mantras, but research suggests that after 40, your "capacity" hasn't changed — your stakes have. Al and Leanne discuss why mid-life professionals often trade intensity for sustainability, and why "running out of juice" is actually just a sophisticated risk assessment by your brain.

🧠 Truth or Lie: Is Money the Best Motivator?

Dr Jake Tuber leads us through a deep dive into the psychology of compensation. While performance-based pay can drive results, it isn't always the "best" way to inspire your team.

The Pro: Money increases perceptions of fairness and works well for simple tasks with a clear line of sight.

The Con: For knowledge work and creative tasks, performance-based pay can actually lower motivation if it feels controlling or manipulative.

The Verdict: It's a "hygiene factor." You need enough to mitigate dissatisfaction, but true flourishing comes from autonomy, meaning, and recognition.

💬 Workplace Surgery

Three tough listener questions, tackled live by Al, Leanne, and Dr Jake:

  1. AI skills vs experience: Should you follow Reddit's lead and hire graduates because they are "AI-native," or is judgment still king?
  2. Disappearing values: What do you do when your company's EDI commitments quietly vanish from the website and the lead role isn't replaced?
  3. The "accidental manager" trap: Why do 82% of managers get promoted without any training, and how do you navigate performance issues and conflict when you've been left to figure it out alone?

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

More From Dr Jake Tuber

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 ElliottThis episode contains some strong language. Listener discretion is advised.
Al ElliottComing up on This Week in Work.
Leanne ElliottIs there finally a good reason to return to the office? Well, some UK-based entrepreneurs think so. I'll be telling you all about it in my new Word of the Week.
Al ElliottAnd also this week, is hustle culture just a young person's game? Um, as someone who's knocking on the door of 50, I was interested in this, and an Entrepreneur article And in Truth or Lie, money is the best motivator.
Leanne ElliottPay people more and they'll work harder, right? It's the logic behind bonuses, commission, and for many, the definition of success. But does the research actually back that up? We have got a very special guest psychologist leading us through it.
Al ElliottAnd in the Workplace Surgery, should you prioritise AI skills over experience when hiring? Reddit's CEO says they're going heavy on graduates because they're more AI native. But if AI capability is becoming more important, what does that mean for how we should be building teams?
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 is Al, I'm a business owner, and I'm here to ask 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 help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottWe'll be right back after a quick word from our 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.
Jake TuberNice.
Al ElliottCheck out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Hello, hello, welcome back, welcome back. Um, Lee, special guest today.
Leanne ElliottSpecial guest today, I know, I'm very excited. If anyone came to our 50 Things to Banish silly little LinkedIn Live, you'll recognise our guest today. And if you didn't, you are in for such a treat.
Al ElliottYeah, our guest is Dr. Jake Tuber. He is an organisational psycholo— I said Tuber in a very American way. Dr. Jake Tuber, I would say, being English. Organisational psychologist, executive coach, and recently named one of the Leadership Centres for Excellence 40 Under 40. And the claim he's brought is a big one. We'll come to that in a second.
Leanne ElliottYes, we will. But first, let's do a very brief news roundup, shall we, Al?
Al ElliottYes. Okay. It's a brief news roundup. What have you seen?
Leanne ElliottBut still cue the jingle though.
Al ElliottOh, of course. Cue that jingle. Leanne, what else have you seen? No, not what else. What have you seen?
Leanne ElliottI've got a new word.
Al ElliottOkay. What's your new word?
Leanne ElliottLondonmaxxing.
Al ElliottNew type of trainer or sneaker, is it?
Leanne ElliottIs that what you're going with?
Al ElliottThat's what I'm gonna go with. Yes. What are you wearing on your feet? I'm Londonmaxxing. I'm, I'm, I'm Londonmaxxes. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Yeah. No.
Al ElliottNo, it's not at all.
Leanne ElliottNo, it's not about that. It's, it's not even about necessarily being in London, right? Although it is, yeah, but it's not just that. Apparently it's being used to describe being in close proximity to other ambitious growing businesses and letting that environment accelerate what you're doing. So some, some companies are choosing, choosing to start Londonmaxxing.
Al ElliottI mean, that makes sense, kind of citymaxxing. Or you and I have worked in— we've worked— we live in the country right now, and it is kind of difficult to To get your head round sort of being like, oh yeah, woof, sales, entrepreneurship. But when we were, when we lived in the, in the Far East, in the likes of Cambodia and Thailand, we did go to coworking places. We're not gonna talk about Bali because the coworking places in Bali are not good.
Leanne ElliottDon't go to Bali.
Al ElliottDon't go to Bali. But, but Thailand and stuff, and you did feel like you're around people and it gave you a little bit of certain energy, I think.
Leanne ElliottYeah, yeah, definitely. I feel the same as well whenever we're in a city, like when I'm back in Manchester or if we're in Split or when we're in Prague. Prague was really kind of Yeah, bustly, hustly bustly.
Al ElliottHustly bustly.
Leanne ElliottYes, I thought this was quite interesting. It was in The Times, and it's built around a slightly weird office block in Southwark.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottFun side note, I know we don't have time, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Southwark, if you're, if you're not from the UK, is spelled S-O-U-T-H-W-A-R-K. We have a Bosnian friend who visited the UK and tried to ask somebody at the train station which was the right platform for Southwark, and everyone was like, there is no train to Southwark, what are you talking about? And she was funny because she's like, why is it— why, why, why?
Al ElliottGood job they weren't trying to go to Loughborough.
Leanne ElliottOh yeah.
Al ElliottOr Leicestershire.
Leanne ElliottLol. Anyway, so this, uh, office block isn't particularly glamorous. Depends on how you define glamour though. It's a red brick building from the 19— 1980s. Yeah, fair enough. And it was actually meant to be demolished. So not the kind of new shining place you'd expect to find high-growth businesses. But inside it, you've got 13 companies that are all scaling quickly, and collectively they're turning over more than £150 million a year.
Al ElliottThat's a fair amount. That's some change.
Leanne ElliottIt is. And some of them are even expanding into the US and other international markets. So one of the founders looked around at what was happening and said, this is Londonmaxxing.
Al ElliottOnly a Londoner could come up with something like that.
Leanne ElliottYes, you imagine Manchester maxing, man maxing, something very different.
Al ElliottChest maxing. Anyway, so Londonmaxxing.
Leanne ElliottWhat the article thought was quite interesting about this is it's nothing formal. It isn't like it's a programme, isn't a membership. They're not all backed by the same funders or peer or anything like that. It's just businesses that have ended up in the same building, and over time something naturally has started to build. In terms of some of the brands, in case you've heard of them— I must admit I hadn't, but they are, they are new and, you know, up and coming— brands like Sori, uh, they are heading towards £50 million in revenue. Surreal is growing in the cereal space, and Tenzing is an energy drink backed by Heineken. Oh yeah, so they're not competing directly, but they're dealing with very similar challenges in terms of their growth journey. And one of the founders talks about how small the kitchen is, and it means you're constantly bumping into each other. And it's those moments where you're just having a chat while the kettle boils is when you're having proper conversations around things like hiring or distribution or retail deals, what's working, what isn't, all that informal, unplanned, lovely stuff. And another founder made the point that when you're surrounded by businesses that are doing well, it changes your sense of what's possible, especially when you're hearing kind of all these negative things about the UK economy, global economy, and all that stuff. Inside the building, it doesn't feel like things are slowing down. It feels like things are growing fast. There's also an example in the article about how this is going just beyond conversation, like peer-to-peer support. One brand had a meeting with Sainsbury's— that's a large supermarket in the UK— and they invited the others in the building to contribute products So instead of one company pitching, suddenly they have multiple, had multiple brands getting exposure to the same buyer. So when they talk about Londonmaxxing, what they're really talking about is the environment and how working physically close to people who are also in this growth stage might just speed everything else up.
Al ElliottThoughts? There's quite a famous, I think it was Jobs who bought, Steve Jobs who bought Pixar and something else and They, he put the atrium in the middle, but all the mailboxes, the kitchen, everything right in the middle. And so one wing was Pixar, one wing was something else. I forget. I don't think it was Apple, but I think it was a time when he was banished from Apple. And he said that amazing things happened because people would come in from the different companies, have a cup of tea and say, what you working on? You know, all that kind of stuff. And so this is like a mini version of that, it feels like. And I think, I think it's genius. I think it's absolutely genius because let's be honest, if, if you've got a meeting with Sainsbury's, Yeah. Then it will make you look even better if you go, by the way, there's a few other products here I think you might be interested in. And if someone says, do you wanna bring your product along to, to this meeting with sales? Be like, yes, shit, yes, yes, I do definitely wanna do that. So I like it. I really like it.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I like it too. I think it's that you talk about this, the, you're the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time around.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottWho was it that said that?
Al ElliottYes. Um, I, I think it was Jim Rohn who talks about it, but I think it originally goes back to some kind of general in the In the army in the '40s or something, I think, but I, I don't know.
Leanne ElliottYeah, no, we are influenced by people around us. I think we covered a lot of this research in the— do you attract your— your vibe attracts your tribe.
Al ElliottWe did, yeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd ultimately it does, but in both, you know, positive and negative ways. We tend to attract people that have similar values and thoughts and ambitions to us, and equally we start to, to kind of absorb the, the values and thoughts and ambitions of people around us. So it totally makes sense to me. What I'm curious about, and if there's anybody listening who knows of anything out there that is already doing something like this or any research that's looked into it, is whether this can be manufactured. I'm sure there are, like, and I think there are kind of like, because Manchester had a couple, didn't they? They'd have like creative office blocks where they encourage only like creative agencies to join them.
Jake TuberYeah.
Leanne ElliottBut I'm curious if there's any research into whether it's actually worked when it's been manufactured or whether this has to be kind of a very organic, informal process. What do you think as an entrepreneur? Would you go for like something that's set up to be that way?
Al ElliottIt's difficult, isn't it? If it's set up by a fellow, someone else who is entrepreneurial, then I think that's got more chance of working than be set up by a council or setting up by, you know, by a landlord. So for example, there's a big one in Manchester called Brentwood. And if they were like, right, we're gonna do this and look at all the things we're gonna be doing and It's like, oh, it just feels like you're just trying to get me to move in, as opposed to someone in the building going, should we just do this?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYeah, it'd feel a bit manufactured, like you said.
Leanne ElliottYeah, bit icky.
Al ElliottBit icky.
Leanne ElliottYeah, but I thought, I thought it was quite nice. I'm not sure why we need to call it Londonmaxxing. I don't know why we need to make it location-specific, but isn't that just London?
Jake TuberYes.
Leanne ElliottBecause nothing exists outside of London.
Al ElliottExactly.
Leanne ElliottIf you want to really irritate a British person, by the way, go, oh, I've been to the UK, and then they'll go, oh cool, where have you been? And if the only place you say is London, You've not really been to the UK. You've been to London.
Al ElliottTo be fair, there's probably about sort of 20 million people who go, oh yes, you've been to the best part of the UK who live around London. And then the remaining people who live in the UK will go, no, you've not even seen the best bit.
Leanne ElliottThe majority, 40+ million.
Al ElliottExactly. It's like saying, I've been to America. Where'd you go? New York. Well, America's very different to New York.
Leanne ElliottIndeed.
Al ElliottOkay, onto—
Leanne ElliottWe should have asked Jake about this.
Al ElliottWe should have done. We should have done.
Leanne ElliottAnyway, what have you seen, Al?
Al ElliottOkay. Uh, onto something I read about hustle culture. Uh, you probably all know what hustle culture is. It's the idea that you sort of get up at 5:00 AM and then you go to bed at 3:00 AM and then you have Gary Vee screaming at you in your headphones in the morning. And to be fair, for a lot of us, myself included, um, in your 20s and 30s, that does sort of work, or it feels like it works anyway. Um, when you hit 40 though, and this is what the article's saying, when you hit 40, suddenly you just don't have it anymore. The article said the late nights hurt more, the recovery takes longer, and somewhere around your 42nd birthday you find yourself thinking, is this it? The question he was asking— I know, no, it's not quite as, as, you know.
Leanne ElliottMy, my 42nd birthday is in November. Oh, what's coming?
Al ElliottYou'll see. You'll see. You'll see. Uh, now it's not a question of just like running out of juice, so to speak, cuz I originally thought that when, when I hit 40, I was the same. I was like, right, I just don't have the energy to do this anymore. In my 20s, actually, I think people know this, my 20s, I built a beer delivery company that made me bankrupt. But still, I moved into a warehouse, into the warehouse that we actually had all our drinks in. I moved in, I made a little bedroom, moved in there. I lived in there for about 8 months. Um, and I literally, I was doing like 20-hour days. I was, um, I'd sleep sort of like maybe for about 20 minutes and then get up and do 4 hours work, then sleep for 20 minutes, go up and do 4 hours work. Um, and as I say, that, that didn't end up well. But the fact is that Um, subsequent businesses, I learned so much from that. Subsequent businesses did do well. But here's the thing, I survived that and I cracked on and I built the second business at 27. And that's the one that probably brought most of our wealth, I would've said, Leanne. Um, if I tried to do that now, well, I have. I've tried to get up at 6 and I've tried to get up, tried to do, you know, more work by 10 than most people do in a day. It just kills me. I just want lunchtime. I wanna go to bed. Now, the article from Entrepreneur suggests it's actually nothing to do with energy at all. It's what changes after 40 isn't your capacity, it's your stakes, it says. So the whole point of this, Leanne, is that instead of saying at 40, I haven't got the energy to do this, your body's going, if I do this and I put all my energy into this and it goes wrong, I know that other things are gonna suffer. I could potentially lose money that I'm never gonna not be able to make back.
Jake TuberMy family.
Al ElliottYou know, you, if, if I, if I did the same thing as when I did when I built Gimme Some Beer and I only saw you for 1 hour a week, We wouldn't be together, obviously. So I think when you get to 40 upwards, you start thinking there are more important things than work. And there's a good example of this, actually. I was thinking about this. Good example. Now, I hate to bring up Musk because I know he's not a big fan, but whatever you think of him—
Leanne ElliottHe's not a big fan of us.
Al ElliottYou know, I don't think he is. I don't think he is. Uh, I think the feeling is mutual. Uh, but whatever you think of him, in his 30s, he was quite famously sleeping on the factory floor at Tesla. Now he's, I think he's just turned 50 or maybe he's slightly mid-50. He took on, like, he's got Twitter, he's got Tesla, he's got SpaceX and all that kind of stuff. He took on, is it Doge? Is that what it was called?
Leanne ElliottD-O-G-E?
Al ElliottYeah. Took on Doge. How long did that last? Not as long as he'd hoped.
Leanne ElliottI don't think that was down to his age. I think that was down to 2 very big egos expecting they could work together effectively.
Al ElliottWell, I see. My argument is that he probably looked and went, I'm not bothered. I can't bother doing this. Whereas if he'd been in his 20s or 30s, He might have pushed through with that. I don't know. To be fair, that was just an example I thought of. It's probably not the greatest example. Leanne, thoughts? Hustle culture, young person's game only?
Leanne ElliottUh, I don't know. Didn't Elon also have allegedly a very heavy ketamine addiction? Allegedly.
Al ElliottI don't know about that.
Leanne ElliottKept him awake. Or not. I don't know. Which one does that do anyway? Um, I think Yes, I think absolutely the stakes are higher, aren't they? Because you've got less recovery time as you get older.
Jake TuberMm.
Leanne ElliottI think also there's an element of however you spend your early career. I've just entered my 40s, and I'll be honest, at this point I'm kind of like, where did my 30s go? Like, I feel like a whole decade just went whoosh. And I think it's that perception of time that we're exposed to as we get older also causes a little bit of anxiety in terms of, well, I need to make the most of this because I'm gonna close my eyes and wake up and I'll be in my mid-50s, my mid-60s. So I think there's a few different things going on. I think 40 is a little young to be like, I'm not gonna engage in, in work, ambitious work. But I wonder if the difference is for the majority of people, they get to 40, they have this perception shift in terms of their own Mortality and start to focus on meaningful work rather than just money, and money being the definition of success, which we talk about more with. We'll talk about more with Jake, I'm sure, as we go into money being a motivator and such things. So I wonder if it this is a slight oversimplification that's a little bit unfair to people over forty, and it's more that yes, priorities change, and we know that we do get more risk averse as we get older. That's one of the few ways our personality does change as we age. But I wonder if it's less, I dunno, maybe I'm just taking this a bit personally. I still have ambitions and things that I wanna, wanna achieve over the next 10 years and, and beyond. But maybe that's because a lot of mine is wrapped up in meaningful work. I dunno.
Al ElliottIt's funny because you took from that ambitious work, and that's not what the article nor I meant. We were talking, we were talking about hustle culture where you do 20 hours a day or 16, 18 hours a day work, which is different from being ambitious and wanting to work. And I think there's, there's a couple of things, just something you said there was recovery time. So I think that in your 40s, you've got less recovery time or whatever the word is to get, you're, you know, you, you, it takes you longer to recover and you've got less time to recover because if you do make a massive mistake—
Leanne ElliottThat's what I meant.
Al ElliottRight. Yeah. And yeah. And if you make a massive mistake and you lose it all, you haven't got enough, you haven't got those 20 years to build them back up again. Um, so, but, but either way, I did, it was meant more as a positive, like, well, it's interesting because this is why at 40 you don't feel like doing 20-hour working days or you can't do 20-hour working days where you potentially could in your 20s. So if anyone's like 39 out there, I hope I haven't just put you off there. I'm not saying that your life is going to end by any stretch of imagination. I think it's just It's more of a managed expectation. It's like you might be able to to run a marathon in your in your twenties after having a few having a curry and a few beers the night before, and then in your forties oh my goodness no you need to be pure pure water and and and carbohydrates before you run it. Anyway right after that little downer let's go for an upper. So we're gonna go for a quick break and after we come back we've got the truth or lie which is the time where we take a popular workplace idea. And find out if the research actually backs it up. I'm looking at the green room now, and I can see a cheeky little face poking, looking back at me, which is Dr. Jake Tuber. So Tuber. So we will see Dr. Jake after the break. By the way, there is no green room. I can just see him on Zoom. That's all. 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? We actually have a.
Al ElliottWe 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. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.
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 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 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?
Jake TuberIt 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.
Jake TuberDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. Welcome back to Truth or Lie. That's the time of the week where we take a popular workplace idea and ask if the research actually backs it up. Normally, I'm asking Leanne these questions, but this week we've got a week off. Leanne's got a week off. This week we've got a special guest leading us through it, Dr. Jake Tuber. He's an organisational psychologist and executive coach, and I've got a note down here that he was recently named one of the Leadership Centres for Excellence 40 Under And honestly, and he's just a really funny, funny guy as well, as you're gonna find out. And he's nice. And well, he seems nice. We don't know that he's nice. There's a lot— there's, there's been some recent stuff on the BBC about people who seemed nice and perhaps weren't. So let's just move away from that. So the claim he's bringing us is a big one. Money is the best motivator. Now this, we wanna find out, get to the bottom of this, find out, is this truth or is this a lie? To be fair, I think money and motivation are so tightly entwined that most organizations are designed completely around this. So you pay people more and they work harder. That's what most leaders think. And there is logic behind it because, you know, bonuses, commissions, everyone wants a pay rise, et cetera, et cetera. But is it that simple?
Leanne ElliottAnd as we know, it's rarely that simple in the psychology research. So we are asking, does more money actually lead to better performance, more engagement, more commitment, or are we overestimating its impact and missing what really drives people at work? So is it true? Is it Is money the biggest motivator? Dr. Jake, welcome. Over to you.
Jake TuberThank you. It's great to see you both again. And Leanne, can I— do we, do we just start out by saying it depends, or do we have to build up to that and pretend it doesn't depend? Can we just, can we just get to the cut to the chase? It depends. It depends. But I'm gonna give you the case for and against. And yes, a bit of a spoiler, it depends, but it's a bit more nuanced than you might think. And I think There's some really interesting implications for individuals thinking about their job and how to value it, as well as HR leaders, organizational leaders thinking about compensation structure, motivation writ large, and how to get the most productivity and result for their organization. So I wanna actually come back to Al, your opening point there, because I think it's dead on. It is so face valid to use the psychological term that money is a phenomenal, if not the best motivator. And this has probably been the case since long before we started measuring any sort of commerce. I'm talking thousands of years when, you know, people were trading in markets and that was the extent of exchanges. There was a very direct relationship between the effort one put in and the end result. And when that's the case, you can imagine that if that end result is to acquire some sort of compensation, however that might've actually played out, More effort, more compensation, more benefit. It, it's very intrinsic to the way we've structured and thought about work. And certainly over the last 150 years or so, if you look post-Industrial Revolution in the US, then through Europe and abroad, as organizations have condensed people first into factories and then moving into the suburbs, et cetera, there was a very tight relationship between what work was And what output looked like. So there was what I would call a very direct line of sight between what you did and what the end result was. If you're on the factory floor making widgets and you work a little harder, you're gonna make a few more widgets, and that's gonna make a few more products, and that's gonna net results. So you can see the tie-in. It's been studied for quite a long time, and let me give you the case for why money might be the best motivator. It's a very strong case. There has been a lot of study around this, and I'm gonna start with some more recent— Al, I know you're gonna love these— meta-analyses that have been done in the last 20 years or so.
Leanne ElliottWhat's a meta-analysis, Al? You got this.
Al ElliottOkay. Meta-analysis is when you take multiple studies and you analyze the results of multiple studies. Dr. Jake, did I get that right? Do I get a biscuit?
Jake TuberYou do get a biscuit. You get a doctorate as far as I'm concerned. That's really all I had to, to learn to get through graduate school. I don't know. I've never done a meta-analysis, but I can tell you That sounds great. You can do it with Claude, I think, uh, ChatGPT, maybe Gemini, but yes, that's right. So a great, great initial starting point for us was a meta-analysis done in 2008. Conley and a team of researchers looked at 45 different incentive studies and found that there was an average of 22% performance gain from incentive-based programs, and in particular, cash rewards. were the most important incentive-based rewards. So big study looking at a lot of other studies found that yes, incentives, particularly cash incentives, drove performance. Fast forward a few years, 2014, Garbers, Konrad, an even larger meta-analysis, 146 studies totaling 31,861 participants, which is a huge Huge sample, actually far more than you need for statistical relevance. And they found that yes, in fact, individual and team-based financial incentives did drive performance. And an interesting one here is that team-based financial incentives were much more useful, or at least I, I should say fairly more useful in driving performance than individual incentives. So not just was money a driver of performance and motivated people, to execute and perform. But if you paid out teams, they helped those teams execute. And in a knowledge work environment where people are working in teams, it's good to hear that. That makes sense. Most recent one I'll share with you in the pro money is the strongest performer was yet another meta-analysis.
Al ElliottMeta-analysis.
Jake Tuber108 meta-analysis, our good old friend, 108 independent studies, 71,438 employees in this paper from Chen et al. in 2023. Found that pay for performance was positively related to job performance overall. Interesting caveats to this one though. Uh, they figured out why. So incentives, particularly monetary incentives, could increase motivation a little bit to drive action. And one thing that I think is underrated about using money to pay for performance is if it's done well, it can increase the perception of fairness in the workplace. In other words, if you believe that your efforts are being compensated in a fair way relative to other efforts, that will give you a stronger sense of belief in the fairness, the justice, the righteousness of the organization and the enterprise you're involved in. And fairness and the pursuit of it is a very core human driver. That drive for equitability, uh, it certainly in the compensation space leads back to the motivational theorists. Um, Stacy Adams, uh, particularly known for theories that I believe the 1960s around equity theory and human beings looking to have their inputs and outputs relatively matched by the systems around them. So they found that interesting inverse though, and a bit of a segue, money can also increase the amount of pressure that people feel to perform in the workplace, which can have a detriment in certain situations to motivation. So the for case is pretty strong. A lot of different meta-analyses for the past 20 years consistently find that yes, Monetary rewards, particularly cash and team-based rewards, drive performance. It drives output. It can increase perceptions of fairness, can also add to a little bit of pressure. What's your reaction to hearing those large-scale, highly valid meta-analysis studies though? I'm curious.
Leanne ElliottI'm convinced. Can we not just wrap it up here?
Al ElliottThat's, that's what I was thinking. Like, you know, you feel it in your, in, in your soul. Like, yeah, of course it makes sense. If you ever have employed anyone, you know it makes sense. ever worked in a, in a commission-based environment, it makes sense. I feel like you're going to really struggle to put a— put an against case forward.
Jake TuberSo I want to suggest one thing as well. What we're talking about here is motivation for job performance. That's the nature of the podcast. That's what we're talking about. If I said to you, Al, you're a friend of mine, can you make an introduction for me? I'll give you $200. That might be encouraging, but it might be demotivating in a different way because of the nature of our relationship. It's not work. In other words, the fact that we're going into the workplace with an expectation at baseline of, hey, I'm doing this to get paid, that underlying very valid mindset, I do think shapes a lot of whether or not money is a motivator in context where you're not expecting a financial exchange. I think the research is a bit different. So I do wanna put the caveat that all of this discussion, at least in my view, is around money as a motivator in the workplace, not as a general motivator of all things that humans might be motivated to go and do. So with that caveat aside, I do wanna suggest that there's a lot of compelling evidence to suggest that money, while maybe a decent motivator, is not the best. So there was a 3-wave study conducted just a few years ago in 2020, uh, looked about over 300 employees across various European countries. So take that with a grain of salt, you know, Europe. And, uh, that was a shot at the 2 of you. Yes, very much so. Um, and I just, little, I wanted to lean into your opening comments, Al, about Jake seeming nice. You know, I had to come across as the token American, uh, on the show in this case. Uh, so there were, uh, is an interesting study here. They found that performance-based pay was actually linked to lower motivation, in particular when the pay structure felt like it was trying to control or manipulate employee behavior. So in other words, while employees weren't opposed to being motivated by the tangible carrot, the reward of pay, the idea of being, hey, you're gonna do this, you're gonna get this extra chit, and you do this and you get this extra chit, it can feel controlling in this particular environment that it was studied. There's a handful of other studies, uh, recent ones as well, that looked at this. So in particular, in knowledge work environments where creativity is often prized, there can be a real challenge to using money as a motivator. A study in 2020 looking at over 238 employees In 64 new product development teams, they found that financial rewards were linked to lower underlying intrinsic task motivation. And as you might guess, recognition and the social rewards had a higher impact on intrinsic task motivation and better creative outcomes. So it wasn't just, yes, I feel more motivated or not, but it led to better results when you were motivating people through social rewards, through recognition. than a very tangible, sticky feeling of getting money for doing something creative. We also know that interestingly enough, creativity tends to be a weak point for money as a motivator. So if trying to be innovative, trying to be creative, which is, you know, maybe one of the only areas left to humans perhaps in the knowledge work environment these days, they're gonna be a little bit challenged to use money as a motivator. So an experiment on creative task done by Eckert et al. in 2012, incentives had a very small effect. And in fact, the real drivers of performance at the end of the day had much more to do with the actual skills of the employees than whatever financial rewards were dangled in front of them. So interesting findings so far, but I wanna suggest something perhaps even a little bit more stark. Very large incentives, particularly financial incentives, can also backfire. So fairly well-known researcher Dan O'Reilly and their colleagues found that very high rewards sometimes reduced performance rather than improving it. There was a study that found higher incentives can impair performance by making feedback much more emotionally charged and actually increasing the amount of errors. That was, I think, Eschger et al. in 2015. So some interesting notations here about money and actually getting in the way. Creativity.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Jake TuberAnd money don't seem to mix particularly well when it comes to money making others feel like they're very controlled and they're being manipulated, marionetted in a system of control. It tends to lower motivation and very large incentive systems can actually backfire, leading people to make errors, sort of ramp up the pressure on them and their judgment, leading to making poor decisions. What, what is your vibe now? You, you've heard the pro, you've heard the con. Give me your current thinking.
Leanne ElliottI have a question, actually. I wondered if, when you were looking through all the studies, whether you saw anything that kind of suggested that there's a limit to how motivating money can be. So, what I'm thinking is that if I'm already fairly financially secure, then is money going to be that less of a motivator for me than somebody who is maybe less There's a particular study I saw that touched on this, uh, not necessarily global financial security, but whether or not more money has limited returns.
Jake TuberSo a study by Kuvasz in 2006 found that base pay mattered much more than bonus pay when it came to motivation and knowledge work. So base-level pay was positively related to sort of self-reported work performance and commitment levels.
Al ElliottHmm.
Jake TuberBut bonus level was not. In other words, once you satisfy the basics, those additional pieces were not necessarily that motivating. I think that this is very intuitive. So some of your listeners will probably be familiar with some studies that have been cited about how once you as a human reach a certain baseline level of income, extra income doesn't have a huge impact on your happiness and wellbeing. There was a famous study years ago, something like $70,000 US, which you know, thanks to inflation, is now probably about $7 or $8 million US, is what you need to be happy. And above that level, generally speaking, it doesn't make a huge difference in your overall happiness over time. That's been challenged a bit. There are famous studies about lottery winners not being happier. By the way, I think those have all been debunked. I'm pretty sure everyone who wins, you know, $20 million in the lottery 10 years later is slightly happier and more content with their life because you can, You can obliterate a lot of the banality and misery that we all have to deal with if you can, you know, have everybody taking care of all those little things, whether it's, you know, filing taxes or doing laundry. So I do think there's some questioning that does need to go on with some of those large-scale findings. But the underlying premise of it's about enough of a baseline to make sure that you are secure, and then does it make a difference, I think is huge. And Leanne, you'll know this. This to me is one of the core takeaways. And if I had to give you Yeah. a sort of clean set of takeaways, it would be this: money is a motivator. It is not reliably the best motivator. It works best when you can use money to motivate people to excel, when a task has a very clear line of sight between your input and the output you're gonna get for it. So the belief, the efficacy that my effort will land in certain results in these simple, non-complex tasks, Money can motivate. In other words, if I said to you, go out in the street and hand out flyers to everyone you see, and I'll give you a dollar for every flyer. Yeah, you're probably gonna go hand out more flyers. That makes sense. But in general, when the work is really complex, certainly when it's creative and in a lot of knowledge work environments where you're not just putting in more hours and making more widgets for more money, it's going to be harder to have money as a core motivator. Once you reach a baseline. And for me, this really gets at my single favorite piece of research around compensation and motivation, which, like the research that I personally love, is not a small study conducted just last week in a published journal that none of us have read yet. It's one of the most famous studies and pieces of research ever written on this. And it's our old friend Frederick Herzberg who published first in 1959 and then his famous article In 1968, his theory, his motivator hygiene theory of what actually drives people to act. Herzberg's theory, I think, still sticks. What Herzberg found is that you can separate motivators into 2 categories, things he called hygiene factors and things he called motivators. Hygiene factors were things like perks, benefits, Compensation. And these were things which Herzberg found did not increase satisfaction on the job, but could merely mitigate dissatisfaction on the job. So in other words, giving people a little bit more money, giving people perks, they could take a job that was really dissatisfying and maybe make it up to baseline. But additional money, additional perks couldn't take you from baseline to flourishing. It couldn't get you to the next level of performance, of commitment, of satisfaction. And I'm bundling those together a little bit. They're slightly different constructs, but what he did find was things like autonomy, finding meaning in work, being recognized and being part of a vision and commitment with others, good job design. Those were the things that really took something and went from 0% satisfaction to up the satisfaction scale. And I think the more recent research really continues in very subtle but meaningful ways To bear out what Herzberg found, which is, yes, you certainly need a baseline of compensation and money. And certainly when the task is very simple, a little extra money can get a little extra work. Maybe a lot more money can lead to a lot more work. But most of the time you need to be taken care of sufficiently. And beyond that, you might drive some behaviors, but you're not going to get real motivation.
Al ElliottI just have a quick question, and I'm not expecting you to pull some research out here, but just your gut instinct, if I may. Do you think that it's— if we compare creativity or creative careers and caring careers with the likes of Wall Street, Billions, you know, all the TV programs about that, do you think it skews that actually money is a motivator for Harvey Specter, but not necessarily for someone in ER?
Jake TuberWhat a powerful question. I do want to suggest that what motivates people is not uniform. So, some people will be motivated by money more than others. Some people will be motivated by security more than others. People motivated by recognition, people motivated by performance, Et cetera. I do think that a lot of times we tend to assume that— take those financial sectors where the bonuses are huge and it's all about moving money to make money. I do think there's an assumption that what is driving people in those moments is money, but I think money is probably best thought of as a very useful, tangible scoreboard for what they're actually after, which is mastery, which is exceptional performance at their craft in the moment. And the nice thing about those careers, and a wonderful thing about money, is it provides the clearest metric. And so to me, this also explains why people who have a tremendous amount of money tend to still be extremely greedy and want more. It's not necessarily because they're inherently greedy. It's because they've constructed their entire self-concept and identity around their performance in their field, around how they stack up against their peers. It's a very socialized way of viewing oneself going through the world, which I think has, you know, psychological limitations and can be hard on people in a lot of ways. But it makes sense that if, you know, you are, you know, on the Forbes billionaire list at 162 and your good friend just went from 163 to 144, you're gonna want to get down to 143 because it's not that the extra dollars get you something tangible that you don't have, but it's the clearest sign that you're still performing what you consider your craft really well. So I think that in a variety of these cases, I tend to look at money, yes, as Certainly people who are not earning very much need it to cover basic needs and even basic comforts or even some luxury items. But once you're talking about stratospheric wealth, to me, that's a great example of how money is just an unbelievably useful scoreboard. And the reality is people then wind up getting so warped by that scoreboard that they pursue it in place of what the scoreboard is meant to serve for them to begin with, which is their life satisfaction, their contentment, their sense of mastery, their sense of autonomy. And trying to get the most out of our consciousness while we're here alive on this planet.
Leanne ElliottFor business leaders listening who are like, okay, so there might worth— it might be worth me looking into some kind of bonus incentive structure, knowing everything you've just said. Is there a danger that if there isn't a task in terms of that can have maybe more variables that the individual can't control, could drive unethical behavior to achieve that, that outcome to get paid?
Jake TuberIt's a wonderful question, and I'll give you, uh, I'll give you the short answer, which is absolutely. There's a classic case of the individual incentives that you give someone having downstream results that you want. A classic paper, I believe, I wanna say it was from 1995 by a gentleman named Steve Kerr. I'm gonna miss— I always get the ordering of the title wrong, but it was something like On the Folly of Rewarding A While Hoping for B. And it sort of walks through all of these, uh, sort of examples where the individual incentives given to particular people in a system were ultimately going to produce behaviors contrary to what the system was going to achieve. And he walks through examples sort of in the corporate space, but everything as big as— one famous example he cited was Americans' involvement in the Vietnam War. Excuse me, Vietnam conflict. I know America has not formally declared war since 1940, whatever. The Vietnam conflict, which of course we can't be seen as ever losing a war, can we now? Uh, what he found was in prior wars, the soldiers were sent abroad and their mission was essentially, you get to come home when you win the war. And so they were incentivized to go win the war. In Vietnam, soldiers were sent in, you are here and you come back after X amount of months. Their only goal is to stay alive for X amount of months until they were rotated back. And so what they did downstream was gonna be very different. Organizations suffer this fate all the time. The classic example in a lot of modern knowledge work environments is take an individual seller, a sales executive whose job is to find new clients. They go and they promise clients the world. They sign a new client because they're incentivized to do that, but exactly what they sign them up to do is not necessarily exactly what the product team can go and deliver. And so then they hand it back to the organization and the product team is furious with them. Those people don't get along internally. They're demotivated. The product team feels like they've gotten handed work. That's not why they did this job, et cetera. And then you probably have, you know, the executives at the organization compensating the product team in some way based on overall net sales performance. So I say this to the listeners in your organization, the business leaders who are out there, is think of compensation and performance as one gear in the grandfather clock of the organization that you run. And you are thinking, how do I get that clock, the output to be perfect? How do I—
Al ElliottYeah.
Jake TuberHit my target, tell the time correctly. You can go and shift that one gear of compensation, but at the end of the day, it's going to have all of these downstream effects because that gear exists in a very interactive, interchangeable system. So what you need is to come in with a larger vision of how do I want to tell the time to begin with? Compensation has to line up with the skills of the employees, has to line up with management practices, has to line up with the climate that managers are creating. That has to be downstream. of how leaders are thinking about the changing mission and strategy of their organization, which is going to shape culture, which is going to shape how you recruit and what you promote for, and a lot of the corporate policies. It's also gonna have to shape the technological systems that you utilize. So all of these are different gears in this clock, and when you turn one, depending on the size of that gear and where it's positioned, it's going to have downstream impacts and you're gonna get caught up. So I would absolutely Encourage business leaders to take a good hard look at whether compensation is leading people towards unethical or undesirable behavior, for sure. But I would also encourage them not to say, aha, I listened to this great episode. Money isn't the motivator we think it was. I know 2 places I can go make these tweaks. Absolutely worth looking at. But if you don't consider the larger set of constructs and systems at the same time, you're going to wind up with a clock that tells the wrong time because you tweaked the wrong gear without accounting for everything happening downstream.
Leanne ElliottCan I dare to say the verdict then from what you'd said would be True, but with huge caveats. And if you only do that, uh, it probably won't turn out very well.
Jake TuberYeah, I think that's a pretty good takeaway. It is true, money is a very strong motivator and an important one, but you cannot infer from that conclusion, I'm gonna go change compensation and get the behaviors I want without considering a variety of other factors about your organization simultaneously.
Leanne ElliottBrilliant. Another reason why organizations need to hire Organizational psychologists to help them do this stuff in the right way, right?
Jake TuberAnd this is, this is in many ways why we've seen, at least in the US, the rise of organizational psychology as a profession, because so many organizations continue to step in it while they're trying to make these changes and realizing that it's not easy. And by the way, hiring an org psych team to go and fix this isn't a magic fix either. This is really hard, messy stuff that takes time and is challenging. So don't expect that a, uh, very complex problem can somehow have a very simple solution.
Al ElliottFabulous. I loved that. But do you know what I love as much? You've got to— can't have favorite children. It is the time for the world famous weekly— what famous weekly surgery? See, I'm all— I'm all— I'm all—
Leanne Elliotttry again. Take a breath and try again. You've got this, Al. Me and Jake believe in you.
Al ElliottIt is time for the world famous weekly workplace surgery where I put your questions to Leanne normally, but now I'm putting them to Jake, Dr. Jake, and Leanne as well. So we've got question number 1, which is around prioritizing AI skills over experience when hiring. So this reads, I recently read that Reddit's CEO plans to go heavy on hiring graduates because they're more AI native than experienced workers. I can see the logic, but it's made me question my own approach. I've always hired for experience and judgment. I always think that things that take time to build are important. Am I about to get this horribly wrong? And if AI capability is becoming more important, What does that mean for how we should be building teams now? What an interesting question and very timely as well. Thanks to Oracle today. And mind you, that's just timestamped the episode, the recording, isn't it? But yeah, pretty tough stuff. So, Dr. Jake, do you have some thoughts on that?
Jake TuberIt depends what the job is. If you're working at Reddit and you just wrote that in, yeah, I'd probably focus on AI skills if you're a Reddit employee and just read that your CEO is doing that. If you're hiring airline pilots, Probably doesn't matter as much, right? So I think that I'm being a bit obvious here and, and perhaps not doing the question justice, but it really depends on the job. The very classical org psych answer is you wanna analyze what that job actually needs and really wanna devote how you hire and what you hire for to the particulars of that job. Now, let me try to answer this in a way that I think will resonate with many of your listeners. Take an average knowledge work job. So if we imagine a continuum where I'm working at Reddit. Reddit is a website, an app. Most of the things they're doing are meant to live online. I can absolutely see how AI skill is the most important skill. If I'm hiring airline pilots, their job is to fly a plane, et cetera. They're not really interacting with AI all that much. At least I hope not. Not yet. Probably don't need to focus on that skill. But let's talk about the middle of this bell curve. Let's talk about most of us here. What I would really encourage is not to think of AI skills as some completely new and different category. Think of it just like any other skill that you would look at when you're trying to figure out what's gonna drive job performance. Think of it maybe as a bigger, more important skill, like somebody with general computer skills in the 1980s or 1990s, but like anything else, just a skill. And then you have to look at both what the industry is that you're in, where you're strategically positioned and moving, the actual team and what they're working on. And of course, perhaps most importantly, the specifics of the role you're hiring for. If that is a role where historically access to a lot of in-depth knowledge really mattered a lot, AI is making that less relevant. AI is making it so that a decent amount of quality knowledge is at the fingertips of most employees. So in some ways, I would say you need to have sufficient AI skill to get that knowledge, but deep AI expertise, you need to be a machine learning expert, you need to understand the ins and outs of how the neural nets and LLMs work? No, probably not. But you need to have that baseline so you can utilize the wealth of knowledge that AI can bring anyone at their fingertips, and then focus on some of the other skills that your job analysis has shown to be a driver of performance. If you're thinking about a job where frankly it's the human pieces and the experience and current and seemingly near-term future AI won't get at, Then focus on those things. But I think the answer, to oversimplify, is it really depends on the job. And I would encourage you not to think of AI skills as somehow anything completely new and different, but just a very valuable, important current skill. Does it matter for this job and this organization? That's going to be your guiding heuristic, not that there is one set of skills that matters across the board.
Al ElliottFabulous. Leanne, have you got any thoughts on that?
Leanne ElliottJake talked about job analysis.
Al ElliottHe did.
Leanne ElliottMakes my heart very happy. I agree with all of that. Absolutely agree with all of that. The thing I would add is, yes, AI native is a term we use to describe Gen Z because they hit kind of a point of their education and it's usually kind of around like the teenage years, isn't it, that the native thing applies to many? Yeah. So, it's kind of like they've grown up with AI. That's all it means. It's like millennials were kind of internet native or digital natives, they called the younger millennials. So, I think it's, yes, because they are AI native, there is a likelihood that younger people are likely to be more comfortable and competent in AI, but it's not a certainty. So, you can't discriminate on age and just assume that no older people to have skills in AI, because they absolutely do. So, going back to what Jake said in terms of the job analysis, if you identify that some type of understanding of AI is required, cool. But you can't then say, oh, well, only anyone under the age of 24 is going to have that, because that's not true. So, just be careful. Yeah, graduates are cool. Lots of great things graduates can do, but it's not always just about graduates. It could be somebody who's—
Jake TuberWhat are the One of the interesting things about AI too, and the way that we interact with it through the form of learning, excuse me, large language models, is that you can become sufficiently AI native with this technology in a way that's very different than other technologies, because all you're doing is talking to it in your particular native language, and it's getting better and better at figuring out what to do on the computer side of things as you speak to it. So, I would definitely encourage those of you who are listening who feel like I've missed the AI boat. It's not for me. I'm not AI native. I'm not a computer native. If you're feeling like I didn't just grow up with this, it's too late. It's left me behind. Quite the opposite. AI tools are getting better and better at taking the average person who just knows how to get work done. You can talk to that AI tool. When I sit here at my computer using AI tools, I am usually actually speaking out loud. Great shock to you listeners to know that I like talking. I'm usually sitting there speaking to it out loud in my microphone and having a discourse, asking it to research things, get things done, et cetera. So consider yourselves, listeners, AI natives, so long as you can speak any current human language.
Al ElliottAnd I just wanna add one small thing from that, from the old bastard in the corner, is that when I was at school, we, we were given calculators and they were like, okay, well, what's the point in actually learning how to multiply now? Because we've got a calculator to do it. And our teacher said to us, Because you need to know roughly what the answer should be. Because a calculator, you put the wrong thing in, you could get 25,000. And so therefore, that's what you think the answer is. I think this is where this is gonna be really relevant here because yes, someone, someone younger might be better at putting the prompts in, might be better at talking, getting the output out, but it takes someone experienced to go, that is completely wrong. That is just not even in the realms of being right. And they know that because they've got the experience. So I think that talking to this person who's talking, who's looking at hiring, yes, it's great to have someone in who knows how to use AI, but also you need someone in the, in the corner smoking a pipe with their slippers on going, well, that just is not correct at all.
Leanne ElliottI think your teacher's better than mine because mine was like, well, you're not always gonna have a calculator in your pocket, are you? I was like, well, actually, Mrs. Jones.
Al ElliottAnyway, we could talk, or genuinely talk about this all day, but I have too many More questions for you. So the second question is, what do you do when company values quietly disappear? So this person writes, my company used to talk a lot about its EDI commitments, but recently that's gone very quiet. The strategy's gone from the website, the lead role hasn't been replaced, and when I asked about it, I was told the business is focusing on other priorities. That's for your rabbit ears. As a person of color, it's made me question whether the culture I thought I was joining ever really existed. So both of you, how do you respond when a company's stated values start to feel more like words on a wall than actual reality? Thoughts? Who wants to go first?
Leanne ElliottLet Jake go first. No, let Jake go first.
Al ElliottJake.
Jake TuberI have often asked people to consider whether or not their company's values are just wall art. In other words, are they just the things that are in the wall on the sort of marble placard as you walk into the building, or are they actually lived? In the study of company values, there's a nice distinction often made between espoused values and enacted values. So espoused values are the things that you say you're about, and enacted values are what you're actually about. And what the research generally finds is that organizations tend to perform better over time when those 2 overlap. In other words, when what you say you do actually matches what you do do in practice, people tend to be more engaged, more motivated, et cetera. There's more alignment in the organization. So many organizations have this drift in general. So it's always healthy for this listener and others to say, is how we are actually asked to do the job in line with what our company puts on the wall in the corporate office or puts on the company intranet site? And in this particular case, it's one that hits home certainly here in the States. So many organizations since the reelection of President Trump, have been somewhat quietly taking their DEI statements off of their websites. Something like, I think, more than half of the Fortune 100— I might be totally getting that wrong, so fact-check me on this— have been pulling these away. Sometimes they are popping up in other subtle language, which are basically the companies saying, we still care about this, but we don't want to get under the ire of the current executive branch. So rest assured they're there. Others are just coming off entirely. And especially if those populated in recent years in response to social progressive movements for them, It is absolutely valid, and I think probably correct, to feel that if your organization suddenly 10 years ago said they cared about these things and are that quick to pull the rug away, then yeah, it's probably reasonable to think that those were not real values. But I think that this particular challenge is very, very discouraging for this individual in this situation. If they're saying, this organization used to care about these things, do they not care about them anymore? I think certainly they don't care about them as much. I mean, say what you will about whether or not that is the ultimate end-all be-all of whether or not we have these values as to whether or not they're on the website and the wall. If you're willing to take them away, they're certainly not the biggest priority. They certainly take a backseat to any concerns about financial performance or the downstream consequences of having them out there. So if they were trumpeting them as the most important values and now they're off, yeah. It was BS. It was bullshit to begin with. If they're just maybe taking a pause, I would pay more attention to what's actually happening in the environment. Are you feeling like hiring is really changing? Are you feeling like the voices that are being considered are no longer the same? Are you feeling like leadership in particular is sending signals like, yeah, I'm so glad we don't have to put up with this EDI or DEI BS anymore, and now we can actually you know, care about what we really care about, time to look elsewhere. But if you feel like they're just really feeling the heat of the current social pressures and are doing whatever they can, I think it's okay to be a bit charitable. But, you know, use your actual real experience, the enacted nature of how the organization goes to work every day. That is what you care about. So whenever an organization comes to me and tells me what they care about, I say, you want to tell me what you care about? Show me your P&L. Like, I will tell you what you care about if you show me what you spend money on. Show me what you take any discretionary choices that you can make and put it towards, and that is really what you care about. Not what you put on the wall, not what you put under your sort of applications about what you're about as a company. Show me where you spend your money and your time, those things you have choice over, and I will tell you what you care about. So to this listener, I would say, where's the organization spending its money and its time? That is the indication of whether or not those values have just disappeared from the website, but still live there, or they were in fact never really there to begin with.
Leanne ElliottWow. Fabulous.
Jake TuberYeah.
Leanne ElliottYeah. I feel like I'm just behind Dr. Jake going, yeah, bully. Yeah.
Al ElliottAnything to add?
Leanne ElliottBrilliant. Not really. Not really. The only thing that I might say to the listener is, if you do feel that then the values aren't what you signed up for, and you're seeing very different behaviors in the workplace that are having an impact on your Experience of work, be aware that the longer you're somewhere that's values are different to yours, that dissonance over time is going to feel really uncomfortable. I am equally very aware of the economic climate we're in and the job market that we're in, so moving on might not be as easy. But just be mindful that that is more than likely that dissonance, that strain, that tension is going to cause pressure on you and stress. And over time, Could result in symptoms of burnout, you know, well-being will dip, mental health, etc. So, look at other ways to look after yourself as well. If there is a reason you have to stay in that business for a longer period of time, is there volunteering you can do? Is there things in your community that, you know, values that you can plug into and get your kind of meaningful work from that to try and kind of keep energy up while you're Until you're in a position where you can move on.
Al ElliottYou can't see Dr. Jake, but he's cheering what you're saying. Definitely.
Jake TuberI'm tearing up, Leanne. I'm just, you know, it's creating such— you're hitting with my values, Leanne. Let me just put it that way. You're hitting my values. You're both espousing and enacting my value set here. So cheers.
Leanne ElliottRight back at you.
Al ElliottBeautiful. Okay, let's see if we can break that loveliness in the last question and see if we can get people to argue. Let's get you two to argue about this one. So the, um, this one's about when companies promote managers, but then just leave them to figure it all out.
Leanne ElliottWhat? I know. I am shook. That happens?
Al ElliottWell, unfortunately it did happen in this case. This person says, I was promoted because I was good at my job, but no one ever trained me to manage people. I was just given a team and expected to get on with it. Now I'm dealing with performance issues, team conflict, and trying to navigate employment law without really knowing what I'm doing. I bet you are. If I'm honest, I'm worried about getting it wrong. I bet you are too. Now, the general question is, why do organizations keep promoting strong ICs? But I think really the question is, why did they promote me and then just leave me in the mire to figure it out myself? Do we want to go to Lee first and then we'll go to Dr. Jake?
Leanne ElliottNo, I think Jake is nailed it.
Al ElliottOkay, go on, Dr. Jake.
Jake TuberWell, my advice to you is to just hang on tight until early 2027 when my new book, The Deliberate Manager, is available in stores everywhere. Let me just leave you with that. So just hang on tight and I'll have all your answers in due time. I'm still editing the manuscript, so let me figure out the answers. Uh, the, uh, thank you, by the way, for teeing up such an egregious plug of a book that is nowhere near finished, by the way. Uh, so thank you for that. I don't know if I teed it up, Dr.
Al ElliottJake. I'm not sure I acted in any way, but carry on.
Jake TuberListen, for those listeners who are doubting what's going on, the whole negotiation that took place in the background was Al said, Jake, will you please come on? We'll let you promote the book. We'll make it seem organic. You can slip it in there. You know, we don't do paper, we don't do pay as you play kind of thing here, but you know, go ahead and mention it. So I'll create a fake question that you can answer just to tee up your book that comes out next year. So you're getting, you're getting a, a look at how this sausage is made here, by the way.
Leanne ElliottUm, no.
Jake TuberIt's an unbelievable question. Can we say sausage on the podcast?
Leanne ElliottCan we?
Jake TuberCan we? I don't know. This is an adult podcast. We can say sausage, right?
Al ElliottNo, it's not anymore.
Leanne ElliottWait, a poor listener wants an answer to their question.
Jake TuberWhy do organizations keep on throwing management at people and not training them? There are so many good answers to this question. And the answer that I have to give you, in all seriousness, is I have no fucking idea why they keep thinking this is a good way to go about about running an organization, because all of the research you guys have talked about, do people leave their managers or do people leave organizations? Are the drivers, the tip of the spear in culture is people managers. The job is different as an individual contributor. Every leader at every organization would agree 100% at those. And then you ask them to go and spend some money and some time on developing managers and they don't do it. It's Classic root cause. Is it a matter of that they don't have the skill to go and develop it or don't have the understanding of who to go and develop it? I don't know. Do they not have the will to go and do it? Do they think it just takes too much time and energy and managers are just born, not made? So we're gonna throw you in there and see if it works out. I don't know. Is there just not money for that? And it truly is the last thing off the chopping block. And therefore, yes, unfortunately we can't spend any time and money to train you. We would if we could. But we're down to our last dollar. I sincerely doubt that. I don't have a great answer for you, but I can tell you this. You are A, not alone. B, there are tons of great resources out there for you. And C, you can absolutely connect with other managers. Think about the people who are exceptional managers. They may not have had training either. More than half of organizations provide no manager training whatsoever before promoting people into management roles. And I know that figure varies. I've seen it as high as 70, 72. I've seen it in the low end in the 50s. Leanne, I don't know if you have more data about that, but it is astonishing. So you are not alone. Go read about it. Go mentor. Honestly, AI probably has pretty decent suggestions about how to have one-on-one conversations, et cetera. But yes, you are not alone if you have to figure it out for yourself. And if you can figure out why so many companies keep making this very expensive, costly mistake, let me know. Wow.
Leanne ElliottIf you could copy me in on that email as well, that would be Useful. I did, you know, I did see another data point on this just the other day from the Institute of Chartered Management, and it was 82% of newly promoted managers have received no form of training or support.
Jake TuberUnbelievable.
Leanne ElliottSo, you're not alone.
Jake TuberWell, I should actually say highly believable, actually, given my own experience. Not unbelievable, it's highly believable. It is a classic mistake. And you know what I think? I don't know if you would agree with this, Leanne, but I actually think just a very little bit of training can go a long way. This isn't needing to take people out of their job for 3 weeks at an intense institute off in the woods somewhere. This is some basics. I recently just ran a large manager coaching cohort for a global, uh, PR organization. We had people from across the globe, I think 15 different time zones, checking in on 6 different topics. Once a month for 6 months, we had groups of 12 or less. It was an instructor-led group coaching conversation on these topics, and the results were outstanding in terms of people saying, I feel like a manager now. I feel like I understand the job differently. I'm thinking about my priorities differently. I feel empowered. It's nice to finally get an opportunity to talk to other people in a position similar to mine. So that's 6 hours over 6 months. Not too much time, not too much money. Just something like that can make a huge difference in supporting employees. So, I think it's a shock that this doesn't happen more.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it is shocking. And I don't, like you say, I have no idea either. I think the other, I guess, a bit of practical advice I'd give to this person, I don't think it should be expected that you're navigating employment law. That's why we have HR colleagues in the business to help us. And if your business doesn't have an internal capability, They will absolutely have an outsourced capability that you should be able to have access to, or escalate to somebody above you if they need to take that to their HR representative. Employment law, as a newly promoted manager, any manager really, isn't really your area of expertise. You should be partnered with it by an HR professional in those types of scenarios. So, anything like that, be very careful. You don't want to break any rules that are really, really going to—
Jake TuberYeah.
Leanne Elliottmess things up for you. Go to your senior leader, go to your HR person for anything around that. Um, yeah, performance issues and team conflict's really difficult, isn't it? I agree with Jake. If there's any other managers in the business that you really admire, look for maybe some informal mentorship. Um, if you have any budget yourself, a really simple thing to do, I think a coaching course can be really effective because it helps you learn these kind of pro-social skills like listening and empathy and And they're gonna serve you in this role and in general anyway. If you do have a bit of budget, um, there's also so many great resources now online. I'm thinking of Vince Sanderson, who's on TikTok and YouTube, that does like 5 to 10 minute videos of like how to have a difficult conversation. I'm thinking of Kate Waterfall Hill, who does Linda the Bad Manager. So she'll make a skit about, about Linda being an awful manager and then follow it up with like a 1 to 2 minute on what Linda should have done, which is really good. So, there's loads of free stuff out there. Just have a little look at who it is that's delivering that. Look for somebody where, you know, you can check out their credibility, cross-check with LinkedIn or something, see who they've worked for, what roles they've done. There's lots of things out there. So, you're not alone. You might feel alone, but you're not. And there are absolutely things that if your organisation isn't willing to help you with, and that's a conversation to have, to ask, is there any budget for management training?
Jake TuberYeah.
Leanne ElliottBut if they're not, there are resources out there that are gonna, are gonna help for sure.
Al ElliottYeah.
Jake TuberAnd for only, for only $29.99, my book coming out in early 2027, The Deliberate Manager, can be your go-to resource for all your management needs. Sorry, I'm cracking myself up.
Al ElliottAnd you know what? And you know what? I can exclusively reveal that if you were to email Dr. Jake and use the code Truth, Lies and Work, then you'll either get some money off or you can join an exclusive mastermind with him. Or he'll just send you a cheque and reimburse you the entire amount. We're not quite sure what. It's all jeopardy. Dr. Jake, Leanne, it has been genuinely an absolute pleasure. It's been a blast. We need to do this more often, to the point where I'm thinking, let's do it every single fricking week. Uh, absolutely loved it. If you have your own question you'd like me to put to Leanne, and hopefully Dr. Jake, if you'll come back, uh, then please check out the show notes and, uh, there's a way to get in touch. Uh, coming up Thursday, absolutely no fricking idea.
Leanne ElliottBefore that though. Oh. Uh, Dr. Jake has a very special, lovely gift for our listeners.
Al ElliottDo you?
Leanne ElliottYeah. It's not his book.
Jake TuberYeah.
Leanne ElliottJake, uh—
Jake TuberNo, it's not. No. In fact, if, if some of you could help me finish that, that would be great. Um, but, uh, in the interim, I would be delighted if you would love to, uh, follow along, join the conversation that I'm having on my Substack, which is called Workwise. You can join the over 3,500 subscribers to that. And as a special for those of you who are listeners and fans of the show, we will give you 6 months of access to Workwise. For free. We'll post maybe a link in the show notes or elsewhere, particular link that if you use, it's got a very strange code. I wish I could say it was just like workwise.substack.com/truth. It doesn't work that way. They give you some strange code. I can't create a coupon, but there's a link to it. Would love to have you. And frankly, if at any point you are a viewer of the Substack, which typically updates just a couple of times a week here or there with different segments, and it's something that you can't afford, just shoot me a note. And I'm happy to get you a free subscription to that.
Al ElliottVery, very kind. I'm a subscriber. I'm enjoying— I enjoy it.
Leanne ElliottMe too. I actually almost, I actually almost fell for the April Fools one. Yes. Yeah. I opened it after April Fools though, in my defense, but I got about probably about 2/3 of the way through. And it was when, like, it was when Jake recommended Myers-Briggs. I was like, bullshit. April Fools.
Jake TuberYou know what's gonna catch Leanne? You could literally put Leanne through the wringer on anything. And as soon as you mentioned the validity of Myers-Briggs, she's like, hang on a second, is this a reality show? That's how you get her.
Al ElliottYeah, well, I would like— I was like, Leanne, there's a camera over there, there's a camera up there. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you again for joining us, Dr. Jake Tuber. Thank you, Leanne, for being awesome. Thank you, audience, for being there and listening. And, um, uh, yeah, we will see you very soon. We love you all. Bye-bye.
Leanne ElliottSay bye, Jake.
Al ElliottSay bye.
Jake TuberBye, Jake.
Al ElliottBye.
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