Episode 302 · 19 May 2026 · 57:50
How Do You Stop Being the Person Everything Falls On? PLUS! Bot bosses, poisoned chocolate and the dumbest Teams call mistake. With Cait Donovan
Featuring Cait Donovan
How Do You Stop Being the Person Everything Falls On? PLUS! Bot bosses, poisoned chocolate and the dumbest Teams call mistake. With Cait Donovan
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Intro — welcome Cait Donovan
Word of the Week — 'Circling Forward'
news roundup#word-of-the-week#circling-forward#language#workplace-culture
When candour hurts the business (and someone poisons the chocolate)
news roundup#candour#communication#workplace-conflict#toxic-workplace
Two brothers, one firing, and the ultimate Teams call blunder
news roundup#firing#teams-call#blunder#workplace-stories
Workplace Surgery — Q1: How do I stop being the person everything falls on?
workplace surgery#workplace-surgery#advice#boundaries#workload
Workplace Surgery — Q2: Hiding the wires as a senior leader
workplace surgery#senior-leader#leadership#vulnerability#authenticity
Workplace Surgery — Q3: Trapped in a culture of meeting overload
workplace surgery#meeting-overload#meetings#workplace-culture#burnout
Outro — where to find Cait
Show notes
Why Everything Falls on You — and How to Stop It — with Cait Donovan
Guest: Cait Donovan — culture and leadership keynote speaker, host of Fried: The Burnout Podcast, and author of an upcoming book out later this year.
Are you the person everything falls on? The one who says yes because saying no feels impossible? You're not alone — and it's not a character flaw. It's a pattern.
Cait joins Al and Leanne for a jam-packed episode covering everything from AI anxiety and "circling forward" to the Harvard Business School article suggesting managers inflate performance reviews out of fear of retaliation (yes, including the employee who poisoned a vat of melted chocolate). Plus, the wild true story of two brothers, one firing, and the single dumbest mistake a criminal can make on a Teams call.
Then, in a deep-dive Workplace Surgery, Cait helps three listeners protect their energy, stop hiding the wires as a senior leader, and survive a culture built on meeting overload.
🔥 Stories Covered
1. Word of the Week: "Circling Forward" Leanne introduces a phrase coined in an Esquire article by Kyle MacNeill exploring why so many workers feel pessimistic about the future of work. "Circling forward" is the idea that progress doesn't move in a straight line — and the phrase inspires immediate, visceral reactions from both Al and Cait. Source →
2. When Candour Hurts the Business (and Someone Poisons the Chocolate) Cait brings a highly controversial Harvard Business School article by Henrico Castro-Pires to the table. The research suggests that managers are giving overinflated performance reviews to mediocre employees because they are terrified of employee retaliation — ranging from workplace gossip to an extreme case where an employee dumped ethanol into a tank of melted chocolate. The proposed solutions? Sticks and carrots. Groundbreaking. Source →
3. Two Brothers, One Firing, and the Ultimate Teams Call Blunder Al shares a wild, real-life crime story from February 2025 involving two brothers, Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, who were fired from government contractor OPEXUS on a joint Microsoft Teams call. One brother got locked out. The other didn't. What happened next involves a deleted database, a Google search for "how to delete a database," and a court transcript they forgot they were still connected to. Source →
💬 Workplace Surgery with Cait Donovan
Three listener questions, tackled live:
1. "How do I stop being the person everything falls on?" A listener feels completely burnt out after taking on the responsibilities of four roles without a pay raise or promotion, fearing that pushing back will make them look like they can't cope.
Cait's take: You agreed by not saying no. You're expecting yourself to be a superhero, and you're protecting your reputation instead of your energy, time, and person. The conversation you're avoiding is the one that sets you free — but if you're truly burnt out, parts of your brain have changed. You might not be able to think up a new role for yourself right now. Get help first, then have the conversation.
2. "Hiding the wires as a senior leader." An executive leader admits they are burning out but feels it is unsafe to tell their team, their board, or their peers, wondering if leadership is just a sustained pretence that everything is fine.
Cait's take: Your team doesn't need you to be steady. They need you to be honest. There shouldn't be a version of this job that requires you to hide how hard it is. Find your people — the peers you can actually call — and start there.
3. "Trapped in a culture of meeting overload." A leader spends three-quarters of their day in meetings, leaving them cognitively empty when it's time for strategic thinking. They've tried blocking out calendar time, but the culture runs on meetings as a currency of power and information.
Cait's take: One person doesn't change the culture. Before you fight the system, ask yourself: what do I actually need to protect? Then get tactical — clap your hands, rub them together, and feel the energy shift. Small physical resets can help you show up differently, even when the system doesn't change overnight.
(Got a question? Submit it via the connect link below.)
More From Cait Donovan
- Website: caitdonovan.com
- BurnBold: burnbold.com
- Instagram: @caitdonovanspeaks
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/caitdonovan
- Fried: The Burnout Podcast — Leanne's guest appearance is out this week. Don't miss it.
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 ElliottWe keep imagining the future as completely new and technology-driven, but something keeps pulling us back. I'll tell you all about it in my word of the week.
Al ElliottAlso this week, 2 brothers, 1 firing, and the single dumbest mistake a criminal can make. I will tell you more shortly.
Leanne ElliottAnd no time for truth or lie this week because we are joined by culture and leadership advisor Cait Donovan. Cait is also the host of Fried: The Burnout Podcast, so she's perfectly placed to tackle this week's workplace surgery.
Al ElliottTalking of which, one listener asks, how do you stop being the person everything falls on and push back without it damaging your reputation?
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, 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, with help from the awesome Cait Donovan, we'll help you simplify the science of work and Amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottLet's get into it right 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.
Cait DonovanNice.
Al ElliottCheck out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Hello and welcome back. This week, we're very, very excited to have Cait Donovan with us. And you, you know who Cait Donovan is.
Leanne ElliottYou know Cait.
Al ElliottIn case it's the first time you've heard of Cait, Cait is a culture and leadership keynote speaker, host of Fried, the burnout podcast, joint best podcast in work in the world, and her second book is out later this year. Welcome, Cait. How the hell's it going?
Cait DonovanIt is going. I'm hot as heck today, but I'm just gonna sweat while we talk, so it's all good.
Leanne ElliottWe were chatting before we press record. Cait was explaining that her air conditioning on the top floor isn't working right now. Um, so yeah, if anyone's watching the, uh, the old clips and there's just a It's not that we're putting Cait under pressure. It's just—
Cait DonovanThe shine isn't makeup. That makeup is real sweat.
Leanne ElliottHow are you, love? How was your weekend?
Cait DonovanWeekend was lovely. I get into a little bit of a busy season now, sort of mid-May to mid-June. I'm back to back to back. So, that's my favorite. I have so much fun. And then, I have all my edits back, my first round of edits back from the book. So, I've got to sit down and I'm taking a workcation where I blocked my whole week, but we're going to be working out of an Airbnb just to get out of our houses and I've gotta do my edits. So almost getting through the book and enjoying things.
Al ElliottCan I ask you, Cait, if I was to write a book, if I ever wrote a book, then I think getting edits back would be like getting your homework back with a load of red marking on it. And I'd be really, really like, oh man, I hope that this was gonna be— how do you feel when you get edits back? Is it quite exciting?
Cait DonovanSo I was explaining this to my mother because she was asking me the same question, like, are you hurt by them?
Leanne ElliottKind of.
Cait DonovanAnd I was like, no, I'm not because I know that this book could be an absolute smash hit. Like, I know what I'm writing. I know how good it is. I know how important it is. I know how timely it is. I also know that I am not a professional writer. Yes, I have master's degrees. Yes, I've written plenty of like academic articles. Yeah, all of that. But this is not an academic book, and I have to write to a group of people that I actually want to read it. I'm not writing it just to write it. So, If there are people out there that know how to structure things in a way that is gonna get these words into the ears of other people, I wanna know.
Leanne ElliottI wanna know.
Cait DonovanAnd I also have a really big blind spot. I have been in my work doing the burnout work, it's been about 10 years, but before that I was doing one-on-one acupuncture treatment. So in healthcare for 15 before that. So I have 25 years of thinking about the body and stress. There are things that are so common knowledge to me that I forget that they need deeper explanation.
Al ElliottYeah.
Cait DonovanI forget that they need sourcing because to me it's like just common knowledge, but other people are gonna be like, what? So having, um, having someone come through and say, hey, not really sure what you're talking about here. Hey, you might wanna consider citing this. Or hey, if you go deeper into this and tell a story about it, people will connect with it more. I'm so grateful for.
Leanne ElliottYou are working with an incredible publisher as well, if I do say so.
Cait DonovanThe best.
Leanne ElliottMyself, Blue Goat Books, who are so knowledgeable and so brilliant, both as writers and as And his editors. And that has nothing to do with the fact that we are related to them at all. They are genuinely just, yeah, incredible, incredible people.
Al ElliottWell, I wanted to say that actually, that it wasn't that I connected you with my brother, who's the co-founder. Nothing to do with that. We only found out about that— we knew you, and we only found out that Andrew was involved after the fact. So all those nepo haters out there, it's nothing to do with that. No, he didn't do it.
Leanne ElliottNo, exactly. It's the same with my book.
Cait DonovanI'm not their nepo baby.
Leanne ElliottI am the nepo baby. I am the nepo baby. But yeah, we'll see how that goes. But when's the book out, Cait? Later this year?
Cait DonovanUh, sometime in August. We don't have an exact date yet, so we're still working on that. So I haven't been able to book any book launch places or anything because we're still, I don't, I can't even decide what the subtitle is. So, but October.
Al ElliottAre you allowed to say the title?
Cait DonovanWell, the match move is the beginning, but the second half I can't quite decide.
Al ElliottRight.
Cait DonovanSo, not sure yet. Something about leaders and teams coming together to eradicate burnout, to bust through chronic stress, to something about collaboration, middle out. I don't know.
Leanne ElliottLove it. It's funny, isn't it? We had, um, we had Dr. Jake Tuber on a couple of weeks ago and he's writing a book. His is out early next year. And the number of polls he did on LinkedIn about his subtitle.
Al ElliottReally?
Leanne ElliottYeah, he did like, he did about 4 or 5 and just like kept just tweaking them a little bit, or then would knock one out if it didn't do very well. And see, it's a big thing, the subtitle.
Cait DonovanYeah, and it has to describe the book real well because The Match Move doesn't mean anything to anyone. So, I have to tell people what it is, and it has to be really straightforward. I say this to speakers a lot. I train a lot of other speakers, and I always say, well, if an event planner is talking to me about whatever, they're just talking to me, thinking about speakers they need. No one's ever come to me and said, we are looking for a leadership and culture speaker who focuses on the, Like, they're not using flowery speech. They're saying, oh, these people have an accountability problem, but they don't wanna be blamed for anything. So who do we talk to? Oh, uh, oh, no blame. I'm your girl. Like, whenever you want, whenever there's a culture problem and you want people to not blame each other, I, that's literally my lane. That's what I do. But people are always like, what do you mean? And I'm like, you have to explain it in normal people language, what you do. Like the basics, normal people language. What do you do?
Al ElliottYeah.
Cait DonovanSo that people get it. And the subtitle has to do that work for this book.
Al ElliottI'm a huge fan of that because I'm obviously not the expert here. And so some of the books that I— that Leanne picks up, I'm like, I don't even understand the title, let alone not even opening it. And she's obviously sitting there, like, Post-it notes throughout the whole thing. Whereas I like books which is like, you are stupid, aren't you? Read this. And I'm like, cool, okay, I am stupid. I will definitely read that. Anyway, there's gonna be all the links in the show notes. We're definitely gonna link. And if you've got any kind of link to pre- Reserve it, pre-buy it, then obviously we'll make sure that goes in there. Well, we'll— I can't work out what your face says, so we'll find that out.
Leanne ElliottWhen we have it, we'll put it— we'll edit the show notes and put it in. But until then, we'll leave all the connections to you so people can follow along.
Al ElliottRight, it's over to Leanne to— well, it's obviously Leanne first of all, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottIt is me. It is me. It is you.
Al ElliottYeah, it's your favorite time of the week. It's the world famous— no, it's not the world famous week. God, it's been a while. It feels like we've— dear listeners, if anyone knows Leanne well, then they'll know that Eurovision Um, is a big thing in Leanne's life.
Leanne ElliottLove me a bit of Eurovision.
Al ElliottAnd so, for the last, like, 4 weeks, I've been covertly organizing a surprise for Leanne, for her, her best mates to come over from the UK. And it has been the most stressful 4 weeks of my entire life, 'cause I had to make sure, first of all, I didn't let the cat out of the bag. And secondly, Leanne normally organizes parties. So I'm having to think, like, I had to make things up going, well, someone's coming around, and suddenly she's like, Why? And I'm like, well, they are. We have to get food in for them and all this kind of stuff. Anyway, so I'm a bit frazzled and it's time now. Why are you talking now? Come on, let's just go for the news roundup, Leanne.
Cait DonovanBulgaria. Can we just say Bulgaria?
Leanne ElliottI know.
Al ElliottBangaranga.
Leanne ElliottBangaranga. Yeah, no, it's good.
Al ElliottIt's a tune as well.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it is a tune. But it was funny, Cait. I was accidentally a bit difficult on Saturday because what the story that Al told me is that these friends, we were going to jump on a Zoom call and do like a remote watch party. I didn't start until 9 PM, but maybe jump on at 8 for like, you know, a glass of wine before it started. So I'd, I'd got up, I'd walked the dogs, I'd been to the supermarket, I'd bathed one of the dogs, I'd cleaned the house, and then I was like, you gonna get in the shower? And I was like, give me a minute. Like, I've had a busy morning. I might just, just sit. And I was quite tired 'cause the dog got me up early. So I went for a nap and then I was just stressing.
Al ElliottWell, meanwhile, these guys are like 36 minutes away and Leanne's gone to bed and I'm like, oh my God.
Leanne ElliottSo I managed, I managed to get ready to the point where I just had to get dressed, but they did arrive when I wasn't wearing a bra. So that was fun for me.
Cait DonovanI mean, it's your house though. My husband recently got Invisalign and he said after the first like couple of days when he would, you know, take it off to eat something, he was like, I think I finally understand what it is like for you to take off your bra at the end of the day. He's like, when I take this off, it's such a relief. He's like, I feel like I've never understood that until right now.
Leanne ElliottOh, there you go. There you go. It's a beautiful thing.
Al ElliottAnyway, news roundup, Lee.
Leanne ElliottLet's get around to that. Time for the news roundup. I'll keep that jingle, please.
Al ElliottPressing the button. Lee, what have you seen?
Leanne ElliottI've got a new word.
Al ElliottYou love a new word. So just in case anyone's not heard this before, I'm sure you have, but every week Leanne comes up with a new word and we have to guess what it is.
Leanne ElliottWell, I don't come up with it. Somebody else in the media comes up with it and we decide if we like it or not. And usually we don't, but let's see. My word of the week is circling forward.
Al ElliottI don't care for it. Cait, over to you.
Leanne ElliottWhat do we think it means? Any guesses?
Cait DonovanI already hate it.
Al ElliottYes, it's, it's bullshit. Oh, see, circling back makes me vomit in my mouth. And so circling forward, is that what you said?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottThat just makes me so angry. I want to go out and punch a cat in the face.
Leanne ElliottAny guesses?
Cait DonovanIt just makes me think like somebody is already forcing me to get back to something that I didn't want to do in the first place. Exactly.
Al ElliottExactly. So, Cait, do you want to try and have a guess what you think it might mean?
Cait DonovanThat's what I think it means. I think people— I think that it means that there's a topic That we're gonna address at a future— I don't wanna address now, but we're gonna come back to it and like, we're gonna, we're gonna do it in the future. We're not doing it now. I'm just letting you know it exists, but we're gonna do it later. No, I don't wanna do it now or later, sir.
Al ElliottI feel like the same person who says circling forward will also say, should we take this offline? I think that's the same kind of person. Yeah. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottOkay. Or double-click on it.
Al ElliottDouble-click. Yeah. No, Cait's face then. Oh, just thunderous.
Cait DonovanI just like to piggyback on that idea. Get off me, Susan. Get off me. That's awkward.
Al ElliottI can't think of a better definition because I think all I can think of now is Cait's definition, which is basically someone who's gonna say, we will return to this and you will not like it.
Cait DonovanKind of.
Leanne ElliottKind of, yeah. I mean, take that within the context I'm about to tell you. I think, I think you've got there. So this came from an article, and I love where we see workplace articles now. They're not just in journals or in blogs. This is in Esquire magazine.
Al ElliottWell, that's changed a bit. They used to, back in the day, that had some naughty pictures in there, didn't it?
Leanne ElliottWell, it's got—
Cait DonovanI think I have a new definition now. Well, just, yeah, I'm not sure.
Leanne ElliottJust, I mean, we're not a family show, but equally, Let's not double-click on that, Kait. Oh, this was written by Kyle McNeill, and it's looking at the future of work, AI, and basically why so many people feel quite pessimistic about where work is heading. So circling forward was a phrase used to basically frame the idea that the future doesn't move in a straight line. So we imagine the future as something very new, hopefully more efficient, of course technology-driven. But actually, every time work changes, humans seem to— forgive me— circle back to older needs. So meaning, judgement, creativity, human connection. I think this is what we're seeing in AI now as well. The conversation's going that way. The article did talk about something that we featured on This Week in Work ages ago, probably when we first started doing our Tuesday episodes. It was a 1969 BBC Tomorrow's World segment.
Cait DonovanOh, yes.
Leanne ElliottDo you remember when we shared that?
Cait DonovanYeah, yeah.
Leanne ElliottIt's like the office of the future. So it's basically a guy sitting at a very sleek desk with his robot assistant talking about having no distractions. It's just me and my work. And the writer basically points out that some of it, yes, came true. We do have AI assistants and digital tools and automation, but emotionally, the future turned out very differently from what people expected. So instead of the optimism, a lot of workers now feel quite anxious about where it's all going. The article actually did also cite some other statistics from YouGov. A YouGov survey this year showed that 73% of young British adults are anxious about their future careers. They did their own survey as well, and that put that figure even higher, 86%. Obviously, the piece goes on to talk about layoffs, rising youth unemployment that isn't unique to the UK. We're seeing that across different countries.
Cait DonovanYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd just the general feeling that we're all just a bit stuck in this state of instability and ambiguity. Um, so yeah, what do we think? Thoughts?
Al ElliottOkay, what do you think?
Cait DonovanBecause my background is in Chinese medicine, I've read a lot about alternative healing over the years, and this reminds me of a book. I was just trying to look it up and I can't find it, but a book that talked about spiral healing, which is basically like you're going up in a spiral and you're coming back to the same topics but from a different space. So you're, you're getting back to the same problem, but you are addressing that problem from a higher understanding of yourself and a higher understanding of what's around you. So you might have a better solution this time around. And it might feel like you're stuck in a circle, but it is a level up from where you were.
Leanne ElliottWhat I find unsettling about this is usually like technology advances hit older generations a bit harder because there's You know, a bit more resistance to change a little bit as we get older. There's a lot more risk aversion as we get older. This seems to be hitting across generations or across age groups. Do you remember when we were talking of— I think the word of the week a couple of weeks ago was FOBO, fear of becoming obsolete, that the Gen Zs are talking about on the old TikTok. So I think there's just this, yeah, where's it all going? Well, the article had some ideas on that, actually. It gave 5 predictions What do we think about these? The first one is that your boss could be a bot. So the futurists interviewed basically said that AI is no longer just a tool to automate tasks. It could actually become something that will manage humans for a fraction of the cost.
Al ElliottOkay, your face suggests that you've got a strong opinion on this.
Cait DonovanThat's disgusting.
Al ElliottDon't hold back.
Cait DonovanI, you know, I'm really shy. This is actually something that Leanne and I both commented on a post this week on LinkedIn, and my— it was about, you know, like managers just managing work and not people or something like that. And I was like, what the heck? No, you manage work and you support people. That's— you support people. We're not managing people. And are we still talking about managing people like they are tools? I don't know. That seems awkward to me. I don't like that word at all. So this whole idea of like, Using a bot to manage— well, maybe if we had a bot to manage the workloads and sort of keep everything organized like a project manager, and then we had a people leader to take care of the needs of the humans, I would be all for that. Leanne and I talked about recently how people leaders don't have the opportunity to really lead people because they're too busy doing work, which shouldn't be their work. Like, their work should be their people. So maybe it could work in that. Scenario? Question mark?
Al ElliottSee, I'm glad you added that last bit because I was about to— I was trying to work out how I was going to say I disagreed with you. But I'm so pleased that you just then went into the other because I think you're right. I think in terms of actually managing the work, there's an AI or an agent or something that's going to be far better than that. We spend a number of hours people probably spend on Asana, on Jira, on all these, all this bullshit of just updating a ticket. And then someone coming back going, but you didn't do it quite right. No, that seems perfect for an LLM. Seems perfect. And then it, then if that does happen, then it does, it frees up the managers just to sit next to someone and go, what's up? What's holding you back? What can I fix? Lee, thoughts?
Leanne ElliottYeah, it comes down to that. What motivates us, doesn't it? And just that simple transaction of getting work done and something saying done, complete, correct. Isn't the same as having somebody who inspires you to do work that is meaningful and contributing to the world in somehow. And it's, yeah, it's just completely missing the point, which then confused me with prediction number 2, which is basically that human skills are much more important in terms of communication, critical thinking, conflict resolution. Well, yes, because we shouldn't have bots managing people. The other ones were kind of a bit more tame, so that the office might become something that's obsolete. And in terms of getting ready to fill our free time, you'll like this one, Cait. So the 4th prediction explores that if AI does eventually reduce the amount of human labour needed, how wonderful it'll be to free up our time, Cait, to do lots of other things in the world, because technology famously is very good at lowering workloads.
Cait DonovanWell, and Oh, it's so wonderful to have so much time to do things that you can't afford because you're not earning money anymore.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Cait DonovanWe still live in a capitalistic society regardless, and whether I agree with that or not agree with it, a whole separate topic. But the fact of the matter is we need money to live. So sure, cool, let's explore new things. I'm not anti that. But then we need to have somebody that's funding the arts, because there's a lot of artists that if we could— if they're working entry-level jobs that could be taken over by AI and they could produce art Instead, I am 100% for that. But that means we have to actually respect artists and pay them for their work, which we are not real great at doing.
Leanne ElliottYeah, exactly. And funnily enough, that's what the 5th prediction went on to, that if AI performs most labor, then as a society, we're going to have to figure out a new system for distributing resources and wealth, which they're talking about. Is that the whole universal—
Al ElliottBasic income.
Leanne ElliottYeah, which is nonsense. It then makes us a welfare state, Which again, famously doesn't work very well. So yeah, I wasn't entirely convinced by the predictions, but I do think it is— I think everyone's feeling a little bit anxious right now and just kind of waiting to see how this all turns out.
Cait DonovanSo I'm 44 this year. That means when I was graduating, I graduated high school in Y2K.
Leanne ElliottYep. Yep.
Cait DonovanWe were years of like dying over Y2K and like, what is going to happen and how— we had so much anxiety over Y2K and some things broke. Then I graduated my master's degree, finished my master's degree in 2007. Oof. 2008, we had a recession. Everybody was anxious. I mean, we go through these, like, this is just like, maybe this is just normal. This is just the new thing that we're gonna be anxious about.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think, I think there is definitely an element to that. It's another cycle, isn't it? We had it with the internet, we had it with social media. I think my concern with this one is how quickly things have changed, how disposable people have come to a lot of the big technology companies. And how little conversation there is around the ethics of this. So less like, can we do this? Should we be doing this? So yeah, I just think as the technology gets more complex, but then maybe that's— yeah, again, it's the younger people being anxious where this feels a little bit, a little bit different.
Al ElliottAnd to be slightly more sort of capitalist for a second, which is going to annoy, I'm sure, both of you. But if you have a publicly traded company, then your fiduciary duty, I think— God, that's a fancy word, isn't it? A fiduciary duty, I believe. Cait's just looking going, how the hell do you know that word, Al? A fiduciary duty.
Cait DonovanTell us, but can you spell it?
Al ElliottCan I spell it? Yes, I will. Yes, if I can Google it first. But, but yeah, and you have a fiduciary duty to, to keep your costs as low as possible. So therefore it's almost like forcing your arm to replace people with AI if you're a publicly traded company. I don't know enough about the ins and outs of it, but I know Jack Dorsey He was apparently— seemed like a pretty decent guy, and he started a couple of decent companies. Obviously started Twitter as well, and then recently just got rid of a load of people, but in a very— I think in one of the best ways you could get rid of people. But still, it still happened, didn't it? Anyway, Cait, Cait, tell us, what have you been seeing? What have you seen this week?
Cait DonovanSo I was choosing this article, and I was thinking it's got to be something that annoys me or else we're not going to have any fun. So this article really annoyed me. The title of it alone, I mean, Henrico Castro-Piers, I think you're probably an amazing guy, but the title of this article is When Candor Hurts the Business: The Economics of Employee Retaliation. And basically he's saying that managers are giving like overinflated performance reviews to mediocre employees because they're afraid of what the employees are gonna do to retaliate against it.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Cait DonovanThey're gonna gossip, they're gonna work slower, they're gonna damage company products. There's a story in there about how somebody Dumped something into some— there was like a chocolate company, somebody dumped something into it and it had to— what was it? Oh yeah, a person dumped ethanol into a tank of melted chocolate in order to lash out.
Al ElliottOh wow.
Cait DonovanWow.
Al ElliottThat's not lashing out, that's killing people.
Cait DonovanLike, so they had to dump it, obviously. And listen, if you have a company culture where people feel like they have to retaliate to that degree, the problem isn't performance reviews, sir.
Al ElliottTotally agree.
Cait DonovanLike, this is— and so, they're talking about how awful performance reviews are, and I don't disagree. I don't know if you guys— have I had you— have I told you guys to have Mike Goldman on your podcast? Because if I hadn't, I meant to, because he does something that he calls talent density, and he wants to replace the performance review system completely. And he's got a way to do it that I think is actually quite useful. And so, yeah, are performance reviews outdated and broken? 1,000%. Should we stop doing them because we're afraid of ethanol in our chocolate? I'm not sure that's the response that we should be creating. That's like letting, letting the child run the parent-child relationship. Like, no, no, they're not in charge here.
Leanne ElliottIt does seem a bit of a, bit of a step up, doesn't it?
Al ElliottIt escalated quickly, as they say in Anchorman. Yeah, that really did. So let me just see if I understand this. So The argument is that if you tell someone that they're not performing great at work, then they're gonna go and put either ethanol or feces in your chocolate milk. Is that what we're saying?
Cait DonovanYes.
Al ElliottYes. So did they suggest—
Cait DonovanThat's precisely it.
Al ElliottAnd did they suggest what we should be doing?
Cait DonovanHe said, yeah, they can, managers can take 2 approaches. The first one he calls using sticks and carrots.
Al ElliottWell, that's a revolutionary idea.
Cait DonovanYeah, right. Tying pay to performance, rewarding with bonuses and penalizing with pay cuts. You think that people are going to retaliate over a poor performance review, but they're going to be fine when you dock their pay?
Al ElliottWow.
Cait DonovanWhat? That's not like— this helps companies measure effort more precisely. I'm not sure that that's how that's going to work out. Like, weaponizing pay is— I don't think weaponizing pay is a smart choice?
Leanne ElliottNo.
Cait DonovanAnd then there's a second approach that says, use only carrots. Managers can reward strong performance while overlooking weaker performance, knowing retaliation can occur. No.
Leanne ElliottSay that again. Say that again.
Cait DonovanManagers can reward strong performance while overlooking weaker performance, knowing that retaliation may occur.
Leanne ElliottWow.
Cait DonovanSo you're just gonna avoid the problem? We're just going into avoidant behaviors.
Leanne ElliottThis is a genuine article. Yes.
Cait DonovanThat's why I wanted to, when you were like, find an article, I was like, oh, I got one. This is in Harvard Business School.
Leanne ElliottSeriously?
Cait DonovanSo this is not, this is not like a psychologytoday.com or like Elephant Journal. This is Harvard Business School. And so now there's a section called Restoring Harmony at Work. So if we're not gonna use the sticks and carrots, and that's sort of the old method, he's saying, for managers, this is how you restore harmony. Let small issues slide. That is like a fast track to ruining everything. First. The next one is decouple pay from negative feedback. Well, yeah.
Leanne ElliottWhat?
Cait DonovanYes. And 3, clarify the reasons for a poor review. Okay.
Leanne ElliottThis is groundbreaking work from Harvard.
Cait DonovanThis poor kid, because he probably did— like, he probably really worked really hard on this. So I don't want to, like, despair— like, I don't want to disparage him completely. But it— this, this whole idea— I think the biggest issue that I have overall, regardless of any of the individual sentences, is the idea that we should be really worried about retaliation in that way. You should not be treating your employees poorly enough That retaliation is their first response to a problem. If retaliation is the main response to a problem, then you've got a bigger issue at play in general, and that should be dealt with. So, if you're seeing employee retaliation as a systematic problem in your research, and you keep coming up against different styles of retaliation, which could be as big as throwing ethanol in the chocolate, And as small as gossiping at work and like decreasing morale. But like, if you're seeing retaliation on a consistent basis because of how people are being treated, then treat people better. It sounds revolutionary. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottYeah. I mean, you're right. Let's be, let's be generous to this person who spent good time and effort on this. I, on one hand, I can see it, but social media is a big a big element of this, isn't it? Because we see like the rage quitting and all that type of thing, and, and people talking very, very candidly about their employee experience if it hasn't been very good, and that can damage brands. And you've got things like Glassdoor, haven't you, where people can leave reviews and stuff like that. So I understand the element of, of protection. But like you said, Kate, if we're starting to see retaliation at this level, And yeah, you know, it starts as, you know, a bit of incivility and then works its way up. Dealing with the retaliation isn't the solution to focus on. As you said, it's why are people getting to this point anyway where it's escalating to that level? And the whole pay thing. Yeah, of course, especially these days, cost of living crisis and costs going up every day. Financially, people are struggling. So, you know, how much we're paid is important. But we know it's a very small percentage actually in terms of what motivates us at work, particularly once that salary threshold has been met and we can have some form of relatively comfortable life. It's not as motivating. But how you treat people, that's motivating. How you give them something to believe in and work towards, create great relationships and, and help them figure out some type of segregation between work and life so they don't burn themselves out. That's what makes the big difference.
Cait DonovanYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd doesn't piss people off to the point they want to poison chocolate.
Cait DonovanYes, they're— this is absolutely solving the wrong problem. And I feel like also, if we're talking about like Glassdoor and, you know, rage quitting and writing things on LinkedIn about like how terribly you were treated, to be honest, I'm not sure how much that's hurting companies anymore unless it's happening like super consistently. It's like if you— we both have podcasts that are both fairly popular, right? So if you have only 5-star reviews, people don't trust your reviews. Because they're like, well, that— those were your friends. Congratulations, you have 183 friends who officially were— are willing to take the 3 minutes out of their day to give you a 5-star review and say, I love the host, or whatever, you know. But if you have, you know, 200 reviews and 6 of them are 1 stars, you look more legitimate. So I don't know that these— like, unless everybody in the company is writing all this crazy stuff about them, it makes the person look like the crazy person and the company just look like a regular old company where somebody just wasn't a good fit, you know, like it wasn't the right place for that person. You don't like my podcast, that's fine, but that doesn't mean it's total garbage, you know. And so I think that even that part of the retaliation, there should be a little bit less fear because nobody trusts anything that has only 5-star reviews anymore.
Al ElliottAnd also the 1-star reviews help you to Sometimes can make you more, more inclined to go like, say for example, you're going to a restaurant, right? And so it's a, it's a, it's a beautiful Thai restaurant and someone's given it 1 star. Go, they didn't have chips or fries in your case. Then you'd be like, well, this is the place for me because I don't want some of that. Yeah.
Cait DonovanOr they're like, I'm allergic to peanuts. And it's like, well, there's peanuts in almost every Thai dish. Like, I, I, why did you go to a Thai restaurant if you're allergic to peanuts? Like, why? No, this is, this is the onion. Have you heard about the onion soup theory? No, because this went viral. So this was funny. Somebody posted a recipe for onion soup and the number of comments underneath it saying, well, I don't like onions, what else can I replace them with? And people were like, just go look for a different recipe. Like, don't read a recipe for onion soup if you hate onions.
Leanne ElliottWhat?
Cait DonovanNo, I'm not gonna— what are you talking about? But people have gotten so particular. About like, because our feeds are, are, you know, adjusted to us, our algorithms are set on what we like and what we wanna see and what we— so we're so accustomed to having everything set to our own preferences that when something doesn't match up, we lose our minds over it. But I think that that's really obvious to people on the outside. So while of course you don't want ethanol in chocolate, like I'm pretty sure that it wasn't just a performance review that led this person to this result.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And we need some friction in our, in our teams, don't we? That's how we, that's how we ideate and create and improve. We want some friction there.
Cait DonovanYeah.
Al ElliottWow. What an article.
Cait DonovanThat's a fun one, right?
Leanne ElliottYeah. Well played.
Al ElliottYes. So the link will be in the show notes. Um, my— just funny, I, I did— I had no idea what you're going to say, Cait. Absolutely no idea. And you're going to see in a second how kind of so related this one is. So just set the scene, like if someone gets fired from a company these days, generally what happens is that they go to log in and they can't log in. And then they'll get a ping saying, we've got, we've, you know, we've got a call with HR in 20 minutes. And you're a bit like, oh shit. And I mean, yes, that's brutal. No, it's not humane. Is it smart? From the company's point of view, well, maybe it is because I wanna take you back to February the 18th, 2025. It was end of the working day and 2 brothers, Maneeb and Sohaib Akhtar, they get called into a Microsoft Teams meeting. They're fired and the call ends at 4:50. Now I'm just gonna double check what this—
Cait DonovanYeah.
Al ElliottSo the company this, they're working for, um, is called, uh, OPEXUS, and they do— and this is probably the most important thing— they do a lot of stuff with, um, the government. So they deal with government contracts, et cetera, et cetera. So these 2 brothers, call ends at 4:50. So he— so Haib tries to log back in, can't do it. Tries VPN, can't do it. Everything's terminated. Maneeb— oh no, someone forgot about Maneeb. So at 4:56, 6 minutes after being fired, Maneeb is inside a US government building. Oh my God. government database, and he's issuing— first of all, issues a command to lock everyone else out. And then secondly, secondly, he writes these 4 words, drop database D— or 3 words, drop database DHS prod, which basically, if you don't know SQL, Cait knows what it means. It just deletes the entire Department of Homeland Security database. It deletes the whole thing.
Leanne ElliottWow.
Al ElliottNow, this is where it kind of gets a little bit weird. Or comedic, I suppose, because then Maneeb stops to Google— well, I can't remember this work. I can't remember. He said the ChatGPT or Google it. How do I clear system logs from SQL servers after deleting databases? But did it on his work computer. Where are you tracking the history and all the queries?
Leanne ElliottSo close. No, it went on.
Al ElliottAnd this— and the article, honestly, if this, if this makes you chuckle or makes you, makes you a little bit sweaty, you should definitely because they did all kinds of things, including discussing about whether they should actually have extorted some money out of it. And Maneeb shuts that down by saying, no, you do not do that. That's proof of guilt, man. It's like, yeah, because everything else they're doing is absolutely fine. And then they ended up going, they're probably going to raid the place. And of course they did. 3 weeks later, they were jailed. They were raided. Then a year later, they were jailed.
Leanne ElliottThe brothers were jailed.
Al ElliottThe brothers were jailed. Sorry. Yes, you're right. The brothers were jailed. One of them was executed. One of them is now saying, oh, well, it was, it was just, it was a mistake. I didn't quite mean it.
Leanne ElliottSo just so I understand this timeline, they're in some kind of virtual Zoom call.
Al ElliottYep.
Leanne ElliottThey get sacked. They're in Teams call. Another conversation.
Cait DonovanEven worse.
Leanne ElliottYeah, even worse. They get sacked.
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottAnd then automatically logged out of all of their systems.
Cait DonovanOne of them gets automatically logged out and the other one doesn't.
Leanne ElliottThe other one doesn't. And the one that doesn't then goes back in and basically Basically tries to delete the entire system and sabotage.
Al ElliottYes. Sabotage the whole thing. But what's kind of funny is that they, they stayed logged into the Teams call with HR. HR left the call. They stayed logged in. And that's how we know what they said because they had the entire conversation on the Teams call.
Leanne ElliottThe brothers did.
Cait DonovanThe brothers.
Al ElliottThey just stayed on the call. So the transcript obviously was brought up in court and they were like, We know exactly what you said because we've got the full transcript from our Teams call. So anyway, as funny as that is, my thought was to ask the two of you, because you're probably the best people to ask about this. Where's the balance of protecting the business but also treating people humanely when you do get rid of them?
Cait DonovanMy initial reaction is like, people need to grow up and get over the fact that they were locked out. And then of course you're getting fired. Like, figure it out, move on. You're an adult. I don't know. Come on. Is this inhumane or are you just—
Leanne Elliottcome on.
Cait DonovanSo, I think a little bit of that. And then also, I think the difficulty in this is that we expect, because we're so used to everything being automated, we're expecting to be able to do all these things simultaneously. And that requires, first of all, a certain number of people to be involved in it. And who knows globally where people are that do different functions? What if you are firing somebody at the end of the day on a Friday and the people that closed down the computers and your access are in Bangalore and like, they're not working anymore. You know, like, I don't— I think that there's, um, something to be said for doing it when you can get it done so that it's done. Is that jarring to someone? Yes. Is life not jar— like, life is jarring. Kind of deal with it.
Al ElliottInteresting.
Cait DonovanThat's not gentle of me really, but I don't know. I think, I mean, You— and you didn't know you were gonna get fired? You didn't read the signs? I don't know.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I mean, they didn't build much of a case for themselves and potential unfair dismissal, did they?
Al ElliottNo.
Leanne ElliottIn terms of their reaction to that, I think I'm kind of okay.
Cait DonovanThe fact that they were fired on the same Teams call as brothers.
Leanne ElliottTrue.
Cait DonovanOh, that's weird.
Leanne ElliottThat is a bit weird.
Al ElliottIt's a bit weird. Yeah.
Cait DonovanCan you imagine getting called into a Teams call with sibling? Because you work at the same company? Are you doing the same job? Like, why are we in the same Teams call? This is awkward.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd you hear of companies, don't you, kind of doing like mass, mass firings with, you know, a few people at once. But it's— that's, that's not the best practice. It's better to do it, do it one-to-one. But that is weird.
Cait DonovanOn a more general— like, in a more general way, what do you think about the idea of locking people out before you fire them?
Leanne ElliottI'm with you, isn't it? It's a chicken and egg situation, isn't it? Where you want to— if it is particularly, if it's a concern of, of this type of retaliation, to go back to what you were talking about, Cait, there is a, there is an element of protecting the company, isn't there? And, and that is, that is a business decision. Um, it's the, it's the human aspect of how that firing is then dealt with that I'd be more, more interested in. And I'm presuming there wasn't a very long lag between people being locked And then finding out. So we famously with Twitter, didn't we? We talked about this when you first came on the show, Cait, was how, you know, lots of people on Twitter got locked out of their systems and then hours later found out that they'd been laid off. That's not great. You want to have it coordinated in a way that doesn't cause distress to the individual. Again, that kind of sense of ambiguity and then that gossiping within, with amongst, amongst kind of team members, albeit not on the company system.
Cait DonovanYeah.
Leanne ElliottUm, so I think there needs to be a clear plan for these things, but it's like any kind of essentially change, isn't it? It's a change in the structure of the organization, whether it be 1 person being fired or 10,000 people being laid off. Change isn't often planned at that meticulous level of detail that it goes flawlessly. Um, but I'm not, I'm not mad about them being locked out.
Cait DonovanLike, yeah, like, how would you do that flawlessly? Like, say you're firing 4,000 people next week and you're not gonna do Like a mass email. How do you time— oh yeah, how do you— so how do you organize that? I can't even get people to show up to a party at the same time.
Leanne ElliottBut I think that's the thing, isn't it, where you have this— you might have this, this kind of group scenario where people will get told it at the same time and then told that individually managers are going to follow up with them, talk through Very much like Jack Dorsey did with Block, didn't he? Announced it, but then runway that I think they did— they have 3 to 6 months of pay and then at least another month in the job for handovers and things like that, wraparound care. So I think it's just, it's, it's being swift in that if you have to do it on scale, and then being detailed enough to have those individual conversations via managers to make sure people are supported. And I think it goes back to—
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliottwhat we're saying about the retaliation aspect. If you're treating people well through what is a very difficult process, you're gonna be less likely to experience retaliation. You know, particularly an organisation that treats its people well in general. But yeah.
Al ElliottStripe did a really good job of that, I think, about a year ago. Right. The link will be in the show notes. And you definitely need to go and read that story because I don't think I did it justice. We're gonna go and take a very, very quick break. But after that, we've got the world-famous week of Workplace Surgery where I put your questions to Cait and Leanne. We'll see you in a second.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, 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 It is.
Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Listen it.
Cait DonovanIt's a great show.
Al Elliottto 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.
Cait DonovanSo come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. Okay. Welcome back. Welcome back. We— it is time for the world-famous Weekly Workplace Surgery where I put your questions to Cait Donovan and Leanne. By the way, quick shout out to Jeremy Klein, friend of mine and also great listener. Well, he's a great listener. He's a great guy, but he's also a listener. And he said— I asked him for feedback on a couple of weeks ago when we had Jake on. And he said, I really like it. I like the idea of getting someone else in to answer some of the surgery questions. I get different, a different perspective. Okay. So question number 1, how do you stop being the person everything falls on? So this person writes, over the last year, I've taken on the responsibilities of at least 3 roles, none of which were agreed. It just landed on my desk because we were understaffed and I was the person who wouldn't say no. I haven't had a pay rise or a promotion. I have had a thank you in a team meeting, but that's it. I feel completely burnt out and I don't even know how to push back at this point without looking like I can't cope. Cait, thoughts?
Cait DonovanWell, the first thing I'll say is that I didn't agree to— yeah, you did, because you didn't say no.
Al ElliottOh, interesting.
Cait DonovanYou did agree by not saying no. You agreed. So that's number one. Number 2, you are expecting yourself to be able to cope With 4 full-time jobs. Why? You are more worried about them thinking that you can't cope. Meanwhile, no one can do 4 full-time jobs, Susan. I don't know what your name is, but no one can do 4 full-time jobs. So this is actually a perfect question for me because my, um, this, my whole work is burnout related, right? And resentment is my number one tool for figuring out what's wrong. You are resentful right now.
Al ElliottYeah.
Cait DonovanThings are not okay. You need to step up and have a conversation like a big grown adult.
Al ElliottWell, this didn't go— yeah, I totally agree with all that, but that was, um, that was some tough love there. I'm curious, Cait, what some of the things they've said in this letter— the letter, how old am I? Some of these people said in this email is, um, I was the person who wouldn't say no. I don't want to blow up my reputation. I don't know how to push back at this point without looking like I can't cope. That feels like 4 very significant words.
Cait DonovanWell, and the, all of those things are, I was protecting my reputation instead of my energy, time, and person. I was protecting my reputation over my health. I was protecting my reputation and what people think of me over my ca— my capacity. I was protecting everything over my energy and my time. So you're willing to protect your reputation over everything else. Well, this is the kind of situation you find yourself in. And yes, it is tough love.
Al ElliottAnd also.
Cait DonovanI think that we get stuck in these situations often because we are not willing to have those conversations. And so right now you have to grow up and have that conversation. You have to say, I cannot cope. You don't avoid looking like you can't cope. You actually cannot cope. So you have to just say that. I have taken on 4 roles. I can't cope with this. I managed to do it short-term.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Cait DonovanI'm really nervous about disappointing people. I'm really scared about that, but I honestly can't continue doing 4 roles. And here's the thing, the next piece, how they respond and what they do next, is your data that you need to gather. So if they say, oh my gosh, we understand, you must be so frustrated, pat on the head, and then do nothing, it is your time to look for a new job. They officially do not respect your capacity at all because you have not taught them to.
Al ElliottInteresting.
Cait DonovanThat is a really difficult thing to change once it's embedded in a system. They have made you out and you have agreed to be the person that takes everything on. You are gonna probably need to leave this job, go somewhere else, and create a new persona for yourself from the get-go where you are not the person that always says yes and always takes everything on. This is your inner work that needs doing.
Al ElliottI love that. I love that. Leanne, any thoughts?
Leanne ElliottI agree entirely.
Al ElliottShe's on her feet, by the way, applauding me. She's standing on a chair.
Leanne ElliottI agree entirely. And I, I guess words of reassurance I'd give you, this is very common. Lots of people find themselves in this situation because they either, yeah, find it difficult to say no or see this as a short-term thing where they can help out in an organization they feel very engaged in. This happens. I'd be interested to know if they're still understaffed. There is some unpicking to do here, and as Cait said, it's going to be really hard because you now have the perception of you as a worker is that you are the person that takes these things on. This could be an opportunity to— and it depends on the organisation, as Cait said, how they're going to respond to it. This could be an opportunity for you to engage in what's called job crafting, where you've got 3 or 4 roles at the minute, and it's kind of starting with, well, what do I want to do? If I could design my perfect job here in terms of taking aspects of these 3 roles to potentially to create a new role that I, you know, hugely fulfilling for, for me and fits my ambitions and my strengths and all that type of stuff. And then that could be a really good starting place for you. But also having that conversation, if it is awkward, saying, you know, I've done some of the work here to figure out what the role should look like. I don't want to be the person who's doing everything averagely. I want to be the person that's doing specific things brilliantly. This is what I think they are. Um, and have the conversation from, from there. And if you are going to have this conversation, as I always say to people, practice it. Practice it out loud with your partner or a friend or, or a colleague that you trust. Um, get the words right, the tone right that feels comfortable, because it's going to be awkward and you're going to feel really squirmy and icky in this, in this meeting because you are the person that said yes.
Cait DonovanAnd if you are truly burnt out, that means that There are parts of your brain that have changed and you don't, might not have the capacity to job craft at the moment. Job crafting might feel like a, and sound like a good idea, but your brain might literally not be able to do it. You might just be thinking to yourself, I just can't do any of it right now. So if you've been brought to that far of a place, it's also okay to not have the capacity.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Cait DonovanTo now think up a new role for yourself, right? Like your brain might not be able to do it. And if you find yourself in a place where your brain can't do it, please know that that's a normal part of burnout.
Leanne ElliottYeah, absolutely.
Al ElliottExcellent, excellent answer. Okay, so question number 2 is kind of simply, it touches on a lot of things you've just been saying there. So question number 2, it says, I'm a senior leader and I'm burning out, but I genuinely don't know who I'm allowed to tell. My team needs me to be steady and my board expects me to perform. The higher up you go, the less safe it feels to admit you're actually struggling. I've started to wonder if leadership at this level just includes— involves a kind of sustained pretense that everything is fine. Wow, Cait, is that the reality?
Cait DonovanNo. And the first, there's a lot of assumptions in here. My team needs me to be steady. No, your team needs you to be human. Because they can't be human unless you are human. So, by being the person who is overloaded but still functioning, what you are modeling for them is that they should also be overloaded but still functioning. That's number one. Number 2, burnout is actually contagious on a biological level. So, if your stress hormones are through the roof all the time, guess what you're doing to your team? You are not being steady for them. You are creating burnout for them too. So, you do need to talk to your team. You don't have to sit down and cry and say, oh, I'm so burnt out, my life is a mess. You can say, hey, you guys, you know what? I really try to be really steady for you guys. I'm actually finding that I'm really struggling, and I'd like to figure out if there's some ways we can adjust how we're all working so we can take some of the pressure off. Maybe we prioritize things differently. You guys are doing the work all the time. Is there something that we've been prioritizing that you actually think is not that important? When we have a senior leader that's burnt out, the first thing we do is called pruning. And we go through their list of tasks in their calendar and we cut off 10 to 20% of the stuff that they're doing on a regular basis that literally doesn't need to be done. They could stop doing tomorrow and no one would notice and/or people would be relieved. So, oftentimes when you get to that state, you think you have to be busy all the time in order to earn your money and prove your value. When you, grew up a certain way, you get to a certain pay level, you're like, oh my God, I have to perform for life now. No, no, no. You deserve your pay. You're doing a good job, but you might have added stuff just to keep your schedule full. So, we've gotta figure out what that stuff is and we've gotta eliminate it. We've got to talk to people and figure out what things can be dropped outside of the things that you're thinking of, because your team definitely knows. And you need to create some psychological safety by being open and vulnerable with your team to a certain degree.
Al ElliottYeah.
Cait DonovanAnd also, you might need some time off and some, some support from your board and from your leadership. So, they need to know so that you can hire somebody like me. You don't have to hire me because I'm, I'm pretty straightforward and you might not be able to do that, but you would hire someone that does the kind of work that I do to help you work through burnout while you're still working. Because this is all doable, but it's not doable if the assumptions that you have written into this question stay.
Al ElliottExcellent. Leanne, there is a little PS I didn't read out. It said something like, is there a version of this job that doesn't require you to hide how hard it is? I mean, that's quite telling, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottThere shouldn't be a version of this job that does require you to hide how hard it is. And I think that was Cait's point. You don't, you know, you're human. You're not operating in a vacuum. You're gonna experience stress from lots of different sources. Directions being a senior leader, but you need to know the people you can talk to. And that screams to me that you don't have the psychological safety, or that's not being role modelled for you in terms of the board or the senior leaders, for you to be able to have these conversations. And there isn't that investment in leadership development either, because usually the first thing that, that will happen in leadership development is you'll get— you'll have a conversation around coaching and how you have these conversations Where, you know, it is a way of almost emotional regulation. So, you're not taking out stress on, on your team, either directly, or as Cait said, indirectly, because emotions are contagious. I had a brilliant manager who, who called it hiding the wires, and it was only as I kind of got more experience that I realized he was talking to me about emotional regulation. But he was like, I'm your, I'm your person. If you're stressed, if you need to vent, if you've got a problem that you need to work through, I'm the person.
Cait DonovanYeah.
Leanne Elliottthat you call, and go and find a couple of other peers that, that are also the person that you can call. And yes, there will be times where you can have these conversations with your, your team, but it'll come from a more objective place in terms of, of how we prioritise, and, and if, if we're all individually struggling, struggling and didn't realise, because you've taken that time to, to initially kind of have that explosion with somebody that you can trust, an environment that's safe.
Al ElliottFabulous.
Leanne ElliottFabulous.
Al ElliottThank you so much. Okay, final question here. And this person, he says, I've got no time to actually think. It said, I spend 3 quarters of my day in meetings. By the time I get to actual thinking work, I'm cognitively empty. I know this is making me a worse leader. I've tried protecting time, declining meetings, and pushing back on the calendar. It doesn't stick. That's what you were talking about before, Cait, wasn't it?
Cait DonovanYeah.
Al ElliottThe organization runs on meetings, and if you opt out, you lose influence. So, how do you fix a culture of meeting overload when the meetings are how power and information flow? There's a lot in here, Cait. What are your thoughts?
Cait DonovanWell, the first thing is one person doesn't change the culture. So, my initial series of questions for this person would be, is this a culture that supports your best work? And if not, then how do we get you to a place where you can work within a culture that supports your best work? Then my next series of questions would be, if you're a leader, then most of your work is, should be on people. So, what is the, I would love to know, and we're not gonna get this information right now, obviously, but I would love to know, what is the thinking that you need to do that can't be done? I think that's really important. And then, On top of that, when you have short periods of time in order to enter thinking, there are things that you can use to get into that space. So my background is in Chinese medicine and acupuncture. There's something called a qigong face wash. So this is, this is a silly thing that basically in order to settle your energy in your body and clear your mind.
Leanne ElliottHmm.
Cait DonovanYou clap your hands right in front of your face loud, so you make a noise, rub your hands together until they're warm. Place your hands over your eyeballs until you can feel the warmth from your palms in your eyes and go over your head, just like kind of sweeping, sweep your hands over your head. And you do that 3 times to clear out the meeting that you were just in or the thinking that you were just doing or whatever was just happening. And it actually helps to reset your brain and put you in the here and now. If you do that and then set yourself up with, there are certain types of music that help people focus and enter flow state. For some people, it's going to be binaural beats. For some people, it's going to be Baroque classical music. You've got to find your EMDR that's without lyrics or whatever your thing happens to be. You've got to find the thing that allows you to enter that space as quickly as you can so you can utilize the time that you do have. You should be able, with practice, to enter a space like this Within a couple of minutes.
Leanne ElliottCait's absolutely right. You can't change the culture. If you're not being able to do stuff that you need to be doing because of meetings, your performance is gonna, is gonna slip. So, it doesn't really matter how much power and influence you've got if you're not performing very well, you'd hope. Um, so, it sounds like there's definitely things you can do to, as Cait said, find that flow time and, and give yourself that, that opportunity. And I think as well, it's, it's doing what Cait said before about pruning, you know, try and be a bit more disciplined about that. In terms of pushing back on certain meetings. But this fundamentally does also sound like the culture is not a great— it doesn't sound like a great culture, but also maybe isn't a great fit for you in terms of how they do work. So, it's also having a little think about whether the organisation is the right environment for you.
Al ElliottBeautiful. Thank you so much for joining us. If people want to find out more about you, including your Fried podcast, including your first book and potentially your second book, where's the best place for them to go?
Cait DonovanCaitDonovan.com, but Cait is C-A-I-T.
Al ElliottThank you so much. We are back on Thursday with Richard Clarke, who's been talking about happiness at work, a true founder story, but also how he works with businesses now to help people be more happy. And also one of the most patient people because we've been in contact with him for quite a while. We recorded this interview a few months ago and he's been like, no, it's all right, guys, calm down, put it out whenever you've got the time. So it's coming out this Thursday. We're gonna absolutely love it. Definitely go and check out Fried, the podcast. And also go and check out Cait Donovan. And thank you so much for your time, Cait.
Leanne ElliottThank you so much, Cait.
Cait DonovanThank you for having me.
Leanne ElliottShould also mention that it's a great week to check out Fried: The Burnout Podcast if you haven't already, because I'm on it.
Cait DonovanLovely.
Leanne ElliottI know, my conversation with Cait goes out this week. So what an opportunity, what time to go and check out Cait's incredible podcast. And she's got a back catalogue. Was it— you were just saying it's episode 350? Coming up soon.
Cait DonovanI have to record episode 350 next week. Yep.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottSo you've got, you've got so much binge-worthy content there. Go look, enjoy.
Al ElliottBrilliant. Thank you so much.
Cait DonovanBye-bye.
Leanne ElliottBye.