Episode 316 · 7 July 2026 · 55:13
Botsitting, Microsoft's Xbox Layoffs and Finance Burnout. PLUS! Does Growth Mindset Really Work? With Rob Briner
Featuring Rob Briner
Botsitting, Microsoft's Xbox Layoffs and Finance Burnout. PLUS! Does Growth Mindset Really Work? With Rob Briner
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Intro and banter
Word of the Week: Botsitting and Botshitting
news roundup#ai#workplace-jargon#productivity
Finance burnout: Is money really the motivator?
news roundup#burnout#motivation#finance
Microsoft's Xbox layoffs: Who pays for lost focus?
news roundup#layoffs#tech-industry#microsoft
Truth or Lie: Does Growth Mindset really work? (with Rob Briner)
truth or lie#growth-mindset#psychology#evidence-based
Workplace Surgery: Where has all the energy gone?
workplace surgery#energy#workplace-culture#employee-engagement
Workplace Surgery: My best employee doesn't want a promotion
workplace surgery#career-development#employee-motivation#management
Workplace Surgery: Are exit interviews a waste of time?
workplace surgery#exit-interviews#hr#feedback
Show notes
Botsitting, Xbox Layoffs & Finance Burnout. PLUS: Does Growth Mindset Really Work? — with Rob Briner
This Week in Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) break down the hidden labour of making AI usable, whether 3,200 Xbox employees are paying for a strategy that "lost focus", and why money no longer seems to be the thing motivating top finance talent. Plus, in Truth or Lie, Professor Rob Briner joins Leanne to separate the science from the hype around Growth Mindset.
Is AI actually making us more productive — or are we all just spending our days babysitting it? Should employees pay the price when leadership gets strategy wrong? And is Growth Mindset really the performance booster it's so often claimed to be?
This week Leanne introduces a brand-new Word of the Week: botsitting — the hidden work of feeding AI context, checking its answers and correcting its mistakes. Drawing on new research from Glean's Work AI Index, we explore why AI might be creating a new form of invisible labour that's leaving employees exhausted rather than empowered. (Warning: there's also a second word, and it's ruder.)
We unpack Microsoft's decision to cut around 3,200 Xbox jobs after CEO Asha Sharma admitted the business had "lost focus" — asking where accountability should really lie when strategy fails. Plus, new UK research suggests many senior finance professionals are choosing better leadership, career opportunities and work-life balance over higher salaries, challenging long-held assumptions about what motivates top talent.
Then, in Truth or Lie, Leanne is joined by Professor Rob Briner — Professor of Organisational Psychology at Queen Mary University of London, Research Director at the Corporate Research Forum, and a bona fide LinkedIn legend — to test whether Growth Mindset really works. Together they explore what the evidence actually says, why fashionable workplace ideas so often outpace the science, and why organisations should focus less on chasing the next big trend and more on understanding the problem they're trying to solve.
And in Workplace Surgery, we answer your questions about rebuilding team energy, supporting brilliant employees who don't want the promotion, and whether exit interviews really reveal why people leave.
(Plus, a detour through Lincolnshire's finest place names. You're welcome — Source →)
🔥 Stories Covered
1. Word of the Week: botsitting — the hidden labour of AI New research from Glean's Work AI Index (6,000 knowledge workers across the US, UK and Australia) finds 87% now use AI at work and 75% say it makes them more productive — yet only 13% say their organisation is actually performing better because of it. The gap? Botsitting: workers spend an average of 6.4 hours a week feeding AI context, checking its answers and debugging its mistakes. Researchers even created an "exhaustion multiplier" — every 10% increase in time spent feeding AI context makes workers 25% more likely to say AI is wearing them out. And the frequent botsitters (40%+ of AI time spent supervising) are 73% more likely to be actively looking for another job. The report's conclusion: build the human infrastructure that makes AI worth using, not just the technology. Oh, and 69% of workers admit they've been a "botshitter" — pushing out AI-generated work without checking it. Source → Rebecca Hinds' LinkedIn post →
2. Finance burnout: is money really the motivator? Croft & Co's research into UK finance professionals earning £100k+ — Inside the Minds of Dealmakers 2026 — found more than a quarter would take a pay cut for a better opportunity, 95% are burnt out to some degree, and three-quarters have considered walking away from work because of it. Over 80% would move abroad for the right job, but more than half say it has to fit their lifestyle. As Leanne puts it: in high-performance cultures, "burnout has become a badge of honour — exhaustion is reframed as commitment while pushing through is mistaken for resilience." Alex Croft's verdict: the assumption that candidates simply follow the highest salary "no longer tells the full story." Source → Full Croft & Co report →
3. Microsoft's Xbox layoffs: who pays for "lost focus"? Microsoft is cutting around 3,200 Xbox jobs — roughly 20% of the gaming division's workforce — with 1,600 roles going immediately and another 1,600 expected to disappear over the next year. Four game studios are being closed and management layers removed. In an exclusive with Fortune, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma admitted the business had "lost focus" — citing rising hardware costs, too many studios, underinvestment in flagship games and over-reliance on external vendors. Leanne's take: the language matters — Fortune leads with Xbox, not Microsoft — and the announcement follows Microsoft's earlier voluntary retirement scheme, which skewed towards older, longer-tenured staff. Source →
🧠 Truth or Lie: Does Growth Mindset Really Work?
Leanne puts Growth Mindset — the belief that abilities and talents can be improved rather than fixed — to the test with Professor Rob Briner, one of the UK's leading experts in evidence-based management.
Growth Mindset traces back to Carol Dweck, but Rob's verdict on the evidence is blunt: the research is "quite mixed and quite low quality." Meta-analyses of studies linking growth mindset to attainment show small, inconsistent or non-existent effects — and the better the study, the smaller the effect. Even the intervention evidence is shaky: a recent 2025 meta-analysis found studies conducted by true believers in growth mindset tended to report more positive results, while almost all of the studies reviewed were low quality.
Rob's bigger point isn't just that growth mindset is overhyped — it's the opportunity cost. Millions of schoolchildren have been put through growth mindset programmes that "almost certainly" haven't improved attainment, while the fundamentals that actually drive performance — clear expectations, resources, support, training, and an environment people can perform in — get less attention than the next shiny idea. His advice for leaders: stop looking for the exotic fix and start with the problem you're actually trying to solve.
As for whether growth mindset is "a thing"? Rob's honest answer: "Give it fifteen years — I don't think anyone will be talking about it anymore."
More From Rob Briner
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rob-briner
- "Is That Really a Thing" LinkedIn posts (including one on Growth Mindset): tinyurl.com/2rzzzus3
- Corporate Research Forum's Work Psychology Network: tinyurl.com/4s4pmz9e
- Work Psychology Network report on behaviour change in organisations: tinyurl.com/3p3rwerb
💬 Workplace Surgery
Three listener questions, tackled live:
- Energy: "My team isn't unhappy, nobody's leaving, and the work still gets done — but a couple of years ago people bounced ideas around and seemed excited. Now everyone just does their job and heads home. Is this just what work looks like now?" Leanne's starting point: stop asking what's wrong with the individuals and look at what's changed in the environment — and then ask them. Al's take: the team that helps you build is rarely the team that helps you maintain.
- Promotion: "One of my best employees has turned down a promotion for the second time. They're brilliant at what they do but have no interest in managing people. Should I keep encouraging them, or leave them be?" Leanne: they probably don't lack ambition — "they're just lacking your ambition for them." Ambition is subjective, managing people is a different skill set, and investing in their development is the way to find out what they actually want.
- Exit interviews: "Every time someone leaves, they tell us everything was great. Then a few weeks later we hear they'd been unhappy for months. Are exit interviews just box-ticking?" Leanne: when someone's already out of the building psychologically, they're not going to give you the honest version — a catch-up six months later is where the truth lives. And if someone's resignation genuinely surprises you, that's the real problem.
(Got a question? Submit it via the connect link below.)
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 ElliottAre 3,200 people paying the price for a bad strategy at Microsoft? Just today, Microsoft have announced huge layoffs at Xbox. Their CEO says Xbox lost focus and this will allow it to reset and return to growth. But is the workforce paying for leadership mistakes?
Al ElliottWhen we think of the top finance professionals in the city, we automatically think most of them are gonna be money motivated, like we think of the movies like Big Short or Wolf of Wall Street. for Wall Street. However, recent research from Croft Co have found that many of them are turning down well-paid jobs in 2026. Plenty of other surprises too. I'll tell you more about it in a second.
Leanne ElliottAnd in Truth or Lie, we are joined by a very special guest, Rob Briner. He is Professor of Organisational Psychology at Queen Mary University of London, Research Director at Corporate Research Forum, and a bona fide LinkedIn legend. He'll be helping us to explore growth mindset, the idea that your abilities and talents aren't fixed, they can be improved. Is that the case? Well, Rob has the verdict.
Al ElliottAnd in the Workplace Surgery, one listener asks, is it okay that my best employee doesn't want a promotion? One of their best people has turned down a promotion for the second time. Should they keep encouraging or accept that they're already where they want to be?
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. 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. We are the co-founders of people and culture consultancy Oblong, and together with the help of our very special guest, Rob Briner, we'll be helping you simplify the science of work and help build amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottWe'll be right back after a quick word from our lovely, delicious, beautiful, very good-looking 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.
Rob BrinerNice.
Al ElliottCheck out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Welcome back. Welcome back. Okay, Leigh, anything going on in your week?
Leanne ElliottNot really. I was told I couldn't really talk too much about the World Cup because people might not be interested.
Al ElliottI just— if you're listening and you're not into football at all, then I'd imagine you probably already skipped this bit.
Leanne ElliottCan I talk about it in a way that's about something separate?
Al ElliottOh, of course.
Leanne ElliottI feel like we saw karma in real time the last couple of days of the World Cup, and I won't go into it, but there was some controversy around the USA, there was some controversy around Portugal, both getting knocked out in their last games. I think, I think Croatia are pretty happy right now. Yeah, I think Belgium are pretty happy right now, and I think the collective football world feels a lot better right now.
Al ElliottYeah, yeah. And I think England are playing pretty well the last match. The previous 2, not so much. But apparently the— it's only the 2nd time Mexico have lost in that stadium or something. There was some stat like that.
Leanne ElliottYeah, well, first in a long time.
Al ElliottYeah, yeah. So, and playing at 7,000 feet.
Leanne ElliottYes, 7,000 metres would be challenging.
Al ElliottIs even Everest 7,000 metres?
Leanne ElliottI don't think so. I think we're in space, aren't we?
Rob BrinerI don't know.
Al Elliott7 kilometres, isn't it? Yeah, no, that's probably not right. So this Next week, I am going back to the UK to Lincolnshire to see my parents and my family for a couple of days. One of my— one of the funnest things I do, we get the train, I usually fly into Manchester and get the train across. One of the funnest things we do is go on the little train from Sheffield to Lincoln. And they've always got like really weird little sort of things like stops like Saxilby.
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottAnd Taintsborough.
Leanne ElliottYes. Littlebottom.
Al ElliottLittlebottom.
Leanne ElliottThat's not real, but it's like that.
Al ElliottTainsborough isn't real. Next stop, Tidsborough. So I'm looking forward to that because it always makes me chuckle and we go to these tiny little stations. But if you live in one of those, and I'm really sorry, I'm not taking the mickey, even though I probably am a little bit. I often look at those things and think, who came up with them? Like the Bishop Stortford down in Bristol. There's all kinds of bishops and Stortfords and stuff. It's a, I suppose for our non-English friends, I say English because I'm talking about England rather than British. For our non-English friends, it must seem quite archaic, our village names, that we've got some Chatterington and—
Leanne ElliottYeah, well, they're all, it's all mixed up in a funny little history, isn't it? Of various people invading us. We're British and known for colonisation, but we, to be fair, had our own kind of fair share of—
Al ElliottWe've got some brilliant names. We've got some brilliant names in the UK. Go and look them up.
Leanne ElliottI've got some here, actually.
Al ElliottHave you got some?
Leanne ElliottThis is on Lincolnshire Live. I'm literally doing this in real time.
Rob BrinerYeah.
Al ElliottThat's how we roll.
Leanne ElliottGo on. Okay, so these are actual, actual place names in Lincolnshire. Number 1, Glory Hole.
Al ElliottWhat have you been doing this week?
Leanne ElliottWe've got Wasp's Nest.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottBitchfield. Bitchfield.
Al ElliottThat's where you were yesterday.
Leanne ElliottHop Pole.
Al ElliottAnyone who's, who knows the British Isles, and I'm looking at you, Danny Wareham, because you're gonna be the guy. You're gonna be the guy who's gonna know all of these funny, funny places. So if you, if you can think of one, then jump on LinkedIn and tag us in. Anyway.
Leanne ElliottI just want to leave you with South and North Cockerington. Can you imagine? I'll leave a link to that in the show notes because you might not believe that it's real, but it is.
Al ElliottCan you imagine being on the phone like, can you give us the address? Yes, it's number 15 Perineum Square in North Cockeringham. Can you, uh, can you just spell that? No, no, it's exactly how you think.
Leanne ElliottTo be fair, I had a bit of that, um, with the street name that I grew up in. I can't— I don't actually— probably can't say it out loud because my, my parents still live there.
Al ElliottOh yes, and you can't say that.
Leanne ElliottSo I won't say it, but it sounds like a low-key swear word in Welsh. English swear word, the Welsh sounds like, you know what I mean? Anyway.
Al ElliottAnyway, Lee, anything else to add? What are you going to do when I'm away?
Leanne ElliottOh, just enjoy the peace. Honestly, I'm gonna walk the dogs. I'm probably gonna, gonna put conditioner in my hair and just sit with it on for 2 hours. I'm gonna read.
Al ElliottWhy can't you do those things when I'm here?
Leanne ElliottBecause in case you wanna then do something, I'm like, I don't wanna be that person. Like, I'm sorry, I can't. It's like, you know, I need to wait 2 hours for this conditioner to go off.
Al ElliottAnyone who knows me knows that I'm never gonna say, can we do something? Can we not do something? I was like, we're gonna go here today. I'm like, I don't wanna. I wanna stay at home anyway. Right, so onto, I think it's your favourite time of the week, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottSure is. It's time for the news roundup. How cute that jingle.
Al ElliottPressing the button. Lee, what have you seen?
Leanne ElliottI've got a new word. I feel like it's been a while since I've had a new word.
Al ElliottYeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like it's been at least a couple of weeks.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I have to, I have to thank Nicole Eisendorfer for sending this to me.
Al ElliottOh, she's a friend. We love her. Never actually met her. Never spoken to her.
Leanne ElliottI've met her. I had coffee chat with her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're, we're big pals on LinkedIn, aren't we?
Al ElliottYeah, yeah. She was big friends with Bill Yost.
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottYes, absolutely. So Nicole sent this to me. Thank you very much, Nicole. My new word is botsitting.
Al ElliottI'm gonna have a go at this and I'm gonna describe it as sitting elbows on your desk, resting your chin on your hand, pencil or pen in your other hand, and just staring at your screen. And I think botsitting is when you go on ChatGPT, go on Claude, Other LLMs are available, and you type in something and you wait for it to come back and tell you what you want it to hear. So you're sitting there, just sitting there looking at a bot.
Leanne ElliottExactly.
Al ElliottIs it?
Leanne Elliott10 points to Gryffindor. Yeah, no, exactly. Botsitting is the labour of making AI usable. So feeding it content, supervising its output, and debugging its mistakes and cleaning up after it. So yeah, exactly. It's babysitting ChatGPT, other LLMs are available. So over the last few weeks, this has appeared in Forbes Australia, Business Insider, the Los Angeles Times, MSN, The Register, CIO, ITPro, the AI Daily Brief, and even discussions on Reddit and Hacker News.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottSo the headlines are basically saying things like, workers are spending hours every week botsitting AI, the hidden cost of enterprise AI, et cetera, et cetera. So as I said, Nicole sent this to me, and the original post was from Rebecca Hines, PhD. She is a bestselling author and head of the Work AI Institute at Glean.
Al ElliottWhat's Glean? While you're talking, I will, we will Google what Glean is. Sorry about that. What was her name?
Leanne ElliottRebecca Hines.
Al ElliottRebecca Hines. Sorry about that, Rebecca. Oh, Glean is a coaching app that helps you lose weight and build healthier habits with a, with a plan that fits your lifestyle, apparently.
Leanne ElliottAre you sure that's the correct glean?
Al ElliottIt also, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is the, it's to gather grain or other produce left by reapers. Um, yeah, or it could be the work AI platform connected to all your company data. That sounds more like it.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I think that sounds a bit more, a bit more on brand for a very good—
Al ElliottA bit more on brand. So yes, there we go. Glean.
Leanne ElliottIt's a cutting-edge research, research centre that partners with leading academic and industry experts to understand how AI is transforming organisations.
Al ElliottAnyway, we're not sponsored by Glean. Why are we still talking about Glean?
Leanne ElliottWe're not, but if you are interested, Glean.
Al ElliottYeah, so yeah, you can send us a cheque.
Leanne ElliottHubSpot, if you're listening, not really.
Al ElliottNo, no, no, no.
Leanne ElliottJoking, joking.
Al ElliottOh, it's just a bit of fun.
Leanne ElliottIt's just a bit of— just a little. Anyway, so this research comes from, uh, the Work AI Index, which surveyed 6,000 full-time knowledge workers across the US, UK, and Australia to understand what people were actually doing with AI at work. 6,000, quite a big sample. Quite a big sample.
Al ElliottAlso, I noticed you said surveyed, and I What's the difference between that and surveyed? Is it just intonation?
Leanne ElliottI always hear surveyed as like building.
Al ElliottHe surveyed his wondrous work as he sat back with a beer. That's God on the 6th day.
Leanne ElliottBut then I also say our instead of our. So I don't know.
Al ElliottThat's your northern roots.
Leanne ElliottExactly. Exactly. Surveyed or surveyed? You let us know. Let us know in the comments.
Al ElliottIf you're listening on Spotify, there are actually comments. We do listen to them and we do respond to them. We don't get many, but—
Leanne ElliottOn Spotify.
Al ElliottOn Spotify, yeah.
Leanne ElliottYeah, yeah, of course. We have questions as well from time to time. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, the report found that 87% of people now use AI at work, and 75% say it makes them more productive, estimating it saves them around 11 hours every week. But then there's a catch. In the same survey, of course, only 19— sorry, only 13% say their organisation is actually performing better because of AI. So the researchers were kind of like, well, what's, what's going on? And basically their answer is botsitting. So when they mapped how people actually spend their AI time, they found 37% is spent botsitting.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne Elliott36% is spending, uh, is spent generally using AI to get the work done. And the remaining 27% is spent learning how to use the AI tool in the first place. That works out to 6.4 hours every week spent supervising AI. It's basically a day.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottBasically a day. The report went on to break it down even further. So on average, workers spend 2.3 hours every week feeding AI the right context, 2.2 hours checking its answers, and 1.7 hours debugging mistakes. And the researchers have even created what they call an exhaustion multiplier. So they found that for every 10% increase in the time people spent feeding AI context, They were 25% more likely to say AI was wearing them out. And that's when another new word comes in. I've got 2 words of the week. Are you ready? This is a swear. Anyone sensitive?
Al ElliottOkay.
Leanne ElliottReady?
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottBotshitting.
Al ElliottBotshitting and botshitting.
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottI love it.
Leanne ElliottGuesses?
Al ElliottBotshitting. Oh, I don't know. Is it, is it just where it comes, it comes out with a load of shit?
Leanne ElliottKind of, yeah. So if botsitting is kind of checking the AI, then botshitting is basically pushing out AI-generated work without checking it.
Al ElliottRight, like slop.
Leanne ElliottYeah. So according to reports, 69% of workers have admitted they are at times a botshitter.
Al ElliottReally?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottSo just so I'm clear, so botsitting will be sitting there looking at the, looking at the, what's being generated on the screen, then most people We'll go and check that and then send it. But actually, 7 out of 10 people have just gone Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, email, pub.
Leanne ElliottYes, exactly. Exactly. And perhaps the worrying statistic, obviously this from a productivity perspective, not great anyway, but from a people perspective, what I found particularly concerning is that the researchers found that frequent botsitters So people who spent 40% or more of their AI time supervising the systems, those employees were 73% more likely to be actively looking for another job.
Al ElliottOh.
Leanne ElliottI know.
Al ElliottThat's so— why are they looking for other jobs? Is it just because it's boring to sit there and botsit?
Leanne ElliottYeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's all just a bit dumb.
Al ElliottAt the moment, I don't see any other way around it. Because we— it doesn't know our work well enough. I think it'll be in a year's time. It will. It'll, you'll, you'll, it'll know you well enough so you can just set it off and go to do its own thing. In another thing, right? So I've been using ChatGPT to create 3D renderings of our house. And it started putting an extra wing on our house in the 3D render. And I must have spent 25 minutes going back and forth trying to get rid of this, this render, this extra, extra wing on my render. And then I got really annoyed with it. And I was like, well, screw it. Screw you then.
Leanne ElliottIt's funny how quickly that happens, isn't it? How like one week you're blown away and the next you're losing your rag because it's like, just be better. Just be better, chat.
Al ElliottDo magic better. Anyway, so, uh, so any, any solutions to this? Any conclusions?
Leanne ElliottWell, the report did say— it is a really good report. I will leave a link to it in, in the show notes. It did, um, it finishes executive summary by saying there's plenty we still don't know about how AI will transform work. But this much is clear: organisations must build the human infrastructure, not just the technology infrastructure, that makes AI worth using, or they'll keep paying the bill in botsitting, in botshitting, and in the excess of people who get fed up cleaning up after the bots. I've seen this week.
Al ElliottWell, there, I've got a question for you. Well, for you, but probably for our listeners. If someone offered you a better paying job, then would you take it? And I think most people go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, I'd do that. Well, according to a new survey out today from Croft Co, just in case you don't know Croft Co, Croft Co, they're an executive search firm based in the UK. It might not be quite as simple as that anymore, at least not if you're a top finance professional in the City. So this research is called Inside the Minds of Dealmakers 2026, and it surveys UK finance professionals earning at least £100,000 a year. And they work across investment banking, private equity, M&A, Corporate finance, corporate development, all that kind of stuff. Now, what is found is controversially, uh, high earners are turning down bigger salaries in favor of better opportunities and more meaningful work and perhaps a life outside the office. So let me tell you what the report found. It found 5 main things. First of all, turns out money doesn't talk quite as loudly as it used to because more than a quarter of these professionals say they'd take a pay cut for a better opportunity.
Leanne ElliottOoh.
Al ElliottNumber 2 is that they are struggling because 95% of them say they are burnt out to some degree, and 3 quarters have actually thought about walking away from work because of it. Number 3, it's not just about the money side either. A quarter turned down jobs that just didn't feel like a real step forward regardless of the money. And fourthly, get this, over 80% of people would move abroad for the right job. But then more than half say it has to fit their lifestyle. So it's not just they will go abroad.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottSo even ambition, it seems, comes with conditions these days. They asked one workplace psychologist what they thought of it, and they said they weren't surprised. What— I'm going to read exactly. What makes this particularly difficult in high-performance culture is that burnout has become a badge of honor. Exhaustion is reframed as commitment while pushing through is mistaken for resilience. Interesting.
Leanne ElliottInteresting.
Al ElliottNow let me just check my notes. This is a chartered occupational psychologist, workplace consultant, and co-host of the Truth, Lies and Work podcast. This is Leanne Elliott.
Leanne ElliottThis is you.
Al ElliottThis is you. You're famous. You're famous. Uh, this is not nepotism. This is genuine. It was a, it was a great report. And, uh, Leanne was involved a little bit in, uh, in, in some of the summary. Uh, so thank you, Ellie, for that. Uh, just want to tell you, finally finish up with what Alex Croft who's the founding partner at Croft Co, said the traditional assumption that candidates will simply follow the highest salary no longer tells the full story. Many firms are competing for talent using assumptions that are increasingly out of date because candidates want to understand where a business is going, what opportunities they'll gain access to, and whether the culture will support long-term success. Lay, I know you know a lot about this report. Tell me, what have I missed?
Leanne ElliottWhat's the Yeah, it was a really interesting trend they've picked up on there that we're seeing across industries, that money only motivates to some extent. We know that from the science. If you listened a few weeks back, we had Dr. Jake Tuber talking about it in our Truth or Lie segment. It's not that much of a motivator past a certain point. Certainly, people who have reached that senior level, candidates are looking for something else. It's not that they're getting less ambitious, and I don't like to see narratives kind of shaping it up that way. I think it's more they're becoming a lot more deliberate about the environments they're prepared to work in. People want more, particularly when work-life balance isn't possible, is it? Maybe integration, maybe some kind of harmony, maybe just some kind of setup that, that means we can, we can make it sustainable. So yeah, I thought it was really interesting, particularly for this, this industry, this group of people who are typically known for being very money motivated. Yeah.
Al ElliottLee, what else have you seen this week?
Leanne ElliottLayoffs. Sadly, layoffs at Xbox, which are of course part of Microsoft. They are laying off 3,200 people. That's roughly 20% of Xbox's workforce.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottYeah, they said that 1,600 roles are going immediately, with another 1,600 expected to disappear over the next year. Um, so this was in Fortune, where their tech correspondent Sebastian Herrera sat down with the Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. That's hard to say. Asha Sharma. And yeah, apparently there's 4 game studios are going, layers of management are being removed, and Xbox is fundamentally changing how, how it works. So according to Sharma, Xbox lost focus. So she told Fortune, in order to grow We made a bunch of bets, and as we did that, we inherently didn't focus on the core business. The number one measure of your strategy is what you put your resources behind, and we simply spread ourselves too thin. So apparently the plan now is to get back to basics, whatever that means. Xbox will focus more heavily on its console business, which still accounts for around 80% of revenue. That's amazing, isn't it, that actually hardware accounts for that percentage of revenue?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottThey're also going to invest in franchises like Minecraft, centralise decision-making, remove management layers, and introduce— introduce at this point— a chief operating officer responsible for financial performance of the whole gaming division. Do you know, do you remember a few weeks ago when we talked about Microsoft introducing this voluntary retirement thing?
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd our sceptical little minds had this conversation about how maybe it was a precursor to redundancy. Because they're kind of hoping people will select themselves out. I kind of feel like that came true.
Al ElliottYeah, no, I do. I do. And also, it was— we found out that the criteria for it skewed towards sort of people more my age than—
Leanne ElliottYeah, 70+, wasn't it, in terms of experience, tenure, age. So yeah, the article goes on. Sharma believes that rising hardware costs, as you alluded to, Al, too many studios, underinvestment in flagship games, and relying too heavily on external vendors all contributed to where Xbox is today. And she summed it up by saying a healthy Xbox could weather the shock of the hardware crisis. With an unhealthy Xbox, it becomes really challenging. I mean, apparently they've had a 7% decline in revenue, um, and they've invested, I think, $20 billion, and their revenue has dropped by $500 million.
Al ElliottOof.
Leanne ElliottThe year business hasn't been going well. My thought with this, first of all, it was kind of linking it to that, that kind of retirement thing, which we felt was a bit dodgy, a bit kind of ageism in plain sight. But also just the language around this. First of all, Fortune haven't mentioned Microsoft in the headline of this article. They're saying Xbox. So for the, you know, for some people, they might not associate Xbox with Microsoft, whereas we've heard much, you know, lots from Microsoft over the past few years in terms of the continued layoffs they make, but also some of the language in terms of, we simply spread ourselves too thin. It's like, well, those people then have probably been working their little booties off for the past however long to try and make all of these things work without, you know, with a lack of resources. And because it hasn't, because you made decisions at a strategic level that were just too too much of a stretch, they're now paying the price. And in terms of the big tech layoffs, it might not sound very much, 1,300 people, but that's a lot of people. That's a lot, a lot of people. And when it's 20% of the workforce, that's gonna have significant impact on the people that, that remain. I just, I just feels like we've all become a little bit too comfortable talking about restructuring and the mass layoffs that are just Part of that and not really thinking enough about the human impact.
Al ElliottYeah, yeah, yeah.
Leanne ElliottI will leave a link to that in the show notes, but let us, let us know what you think on that one. It feels a bit icky to me, that just how it was presented by Fortune as well. Um, but of course we haven't heard anything in terms of how these layoffs are going to be made, what wraparound support and care is going to be given, other opportunities potentially across Microsoft that will be offered. So we will reserve Too much judgment, but I will leave a link in the show notes. Have a read. Let me know what you think.
Al ElliottYeah, absolutely right. So we're gonna go for a quick break, and then when we come back, we have got that truth or lie segment that everybody loves and a special guest. We'll see you in a second.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better.
Leanne ElliottAt work, and 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.
Rob BrinerUh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is, it's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing, but there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
Rob BrinerDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out.
Rob BrinerKeep that in.
Al ElliottWelcome back to Truth or Lie. It's that time of the week where we take a popular workplace idea and ask if the research actually backs it up. This week we have a special guest joining us, Rob Briner. So Rob is Leanne's special LinkedIn friend. You've been chatting on LinkedIn. He's also Professor of Organisational Psychology at Queen Mary University of London and Research Director at Corporate Research Forum. He's got more jobs than we've got. For almost 3 decades, Rob has been promoting evidence-based practice in management, HRM, and work psychology. No wonder Leanne likes him, not least through his LinkedIn series called Is That Really a Thing? Very, very good. I like this. He explores various popular ideas about behaviour at work, such as learning styles, psychological safety, and the happy, productive worker.
Leanne ElliottYeah, so you can see why he is absolutely perfect for Truth or Lie. Again, as I said to Rob, I'm not sure which came first. We'll just agree it's a brilliant idea and we both had it around the same time. I sat down with Rob last week and asked him about growth Mindset. So that's the belief that your abilities and talents can be improved rather than being fixed. And it is, it is everywhere. And I think everyone has heard of growth mindset. It's in leadership training, it's on social media, it's in schools, it's in performance reviews, it's probably on a motivational tea towel at this point now. But does believing in growth mindset actually change how well people perform? Well, that is what we are digging into today. Rob, over to you.
Rob BrinerSo growth mindset is a lovely idea. It's all warm and fuzzy and nice and lovely, and it's to be contrasted with a fixed mindset. So the idea of a growth mindset is that if people have certain beliefs, or indeed a set of beliefs, they are more likely to believe that, for example, you can improve your intelligence, you can change the way you are as a person, you can develop and be different in various ways. And a fixed mindset Is the idea that you are less likely to be able to do that. Now, from the get-go, I'd say you know this is about truths and lies. Now, part of the truths and lies, as you say, is of course what is the claim that's being made, but also crucially how are you defining the thing you're talking about? I find the definition of this, like a lot of other psychological constructs you've mentioned, such as learning styles, such as what all. organizational culture means, this first kind of stumbling block is like, what on earth does this mean? So I think we have this a bit with growth mindset. It's very appealing, it's intuitive. And of course, as you know, if something's intuitive, it's also very dangerous because it means you've understood it in 2 seconds unconsciously, which probably means there's a whole set of biases kicking in. But the basic idea that some people believe they can grow and change and some people don't, some people in the middle, It's kind of appealing, and that's sort of what it is. I think linked to that is also how, like with lots of psychological constructs, you have to measure them as well. And of course, there's quite a few measures of growth mindset, and this is one. For example, one of the items is you can learn new things, but you can't really change how intelligent you are. The idea being that if you tend to agree with that, then you have more of a fixed mindset. And again, it's kind of curious because even that statement itself, you can learn new things, but you can't really change. Well, isn't it enough to think you can learn new things? What's intelligence kind of got to do with it? So both from the starting point of what do we mean by growth mindset and fixed mindset, we already run into the problem of how do you measure it and assess it? And I've given you an example of one item from a commonly used scale, which I think is quite sort of confused, not least because, you know, abilities like intelligence are things that just actually are technically harder to change very much. Skills, absolutely, you can learn. Um, so that's kind of what it is and kind of how you measure it.
Leanne ElliottSo there already seems a bit of confusion there, because I'm imagining listeners having questions like, well, can I improve my intelligence, or is that fairly fixed? And how can then I learn new skills? Is that not linked to intelligence? Already feels like we're getting a bit muddy.
Rob BrinerI think it is getting muddy because it seems quite reasonable to believe, for example, that you can't do much to increase your intelligence. But at the same time, you might believe you can learn lots of new things. And it seems to me, given it's supposed to be about your development and advancement and being able to learn new things, actually that belief, that self-efficacy, you can, you can learn new things, might be more important than how much you believe intelligence is fixed or not. So it seems like slightly different things. So If listeners are confused, yes, you should be confused. It is confusing. Don't worry about it. But it is, it is nonetheless, uh, an important and popular concept that has really spread around lots of places in the world in the educational context. So those of you listening who have kids in school or had kids in school, you may be aware that actually this is taught to kids in school.
Leanne ElliottThis is Serious shit.
Rob BrinerThis is taken incredibly seriously. Teachers are told about it, children are told about it, and again, it's spread, I guess, from there a bit into the workplace as well.
Leanne ElliottWhere does it come from? Where— what is it, a person? Is it a movement? Is it a psychological thing?
Rob BrinerYeah, I mean, the person that first kind of encapsulated it in terms of growth mindset, fixed mindset was Carol Dweck. But of course, ideas around what people believe, things like self-efficacy, whether they can learn or not, whether they can do it, have been around forever. But she really encapsulated and tried to develop various measures of it and got started with a lot of the kind of most significant early studies of growth mindset. And typically they address sort of— well, you hinted at one already. They address a couple of questions. One is, is there a link between growth mindset— and I just hate the word mindset, but let's say Growth mindset, how much people believe you can change, is there a link between that and how much people actually achieve and how much they do? So that's the first question you need to kind of establish. The second kind of claim linked to that, I suppose, is that if that is true, then the second question is, can you intervene to improve people's growth mindset? Can you give them, help them change their beliefs so they're more willing to believe, for example, like that item, I can improve my intelligence. So they're the 2 key things. Is it something that's linked anyway to achievements and outcomes? And if it is, or even if it isn't, can you intervene? And in turn, does that intervention increase your level of growth mindset? And does that in turn affect your achievement? So it's a classic kind of chain of things. It might be the same, same might be true for something like emotional intelligence is again, whatever the hell that means. Is there a link between people's levels of emotional intelligence and how successful they are, say, as a manager or whatever it is? There might be a link, there might not be. And then secondly, can you intervene to increase emotional intelligence, which has practical effects in how good people are in terms of, say, being a line manager? So it's those 2 kind of classic questions.
Leanne ElliottSo what do we know from, from the evidence to answer that, the first question, whether a growth mindset that is related to performance?
Rob BrinerSo my understanding, there's been so many studies, again, mostly done in a school context, an educational context with students, universities. My understanding of looking at meta-analyses is that broadly speaking, the evidence is quite mixed and it's quite low quality. So for example, to really understand the effects of growth mindset on say attainment, you'd have to not You'd have to measure it at a certain point in time, and then measure it, measure attainment at this point, and measure it in another point to see if growth mindset was the same or not, and see if attainment had increased depending on your baseline level of attainment. Sorry, baseline of attainment and baseline level of growth mindset. So it's a little bit hard to test, but the studies that have been done, apart from being you know not great quality, tend to show quite mixed effects. So some studies show bits of effect. None of it's very large. Some studies show no effect, a few studies show a sort of negative effect. So I would say generally what that says to me is there isn't much doing, there isn't much going on there. So of all the things in the world that might predict and determine and affect your attainment, your ability to, yeah, to attain, to have positive outcomes, growth mindset just on its own doesn't seem to do much.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Rob BrinerSo the second question is, can you intervene to increase it? And if you do, does it increase? And does that increase lead to increases in attainment? That is even harder to study. You need kind of experiments, you need really longitudinal stuff, you need to find interventions that might work. And the problem is, if growth mindset isn't linked that strongly to attainment anyway, why would increasing it actually improve attainment?
Al ElliottYeah.
Rob BrinerSo you've also got kind of both a logical and a kind of empirical evidence problem to begin with. It doesn't seem to be linked. But again, the studies that have been done, a lot of them seem to be quite low quality. In a recent 2025 meta-analysis, we can share the links afterwards, it suggested that the studies where there were kind of vested interests, as in the people conducting the research were big believers in growth mindset, they tended to find— Yeah. More positive results in terms of intervening to actually increase growth mindset. They also, in this meta-analysis, suggested that almost all the studies they looked at were quite low quality, so it's very hard to draw conclusions from it. But in the relatively few that did, they found kind of some improved growth mindset a little bit, some didn't, and yeah, and most, my memory is, had no effect at all. So maybe has a slight effect. And in terms of that other question, does it then leads to subsequent increases in attainment. Again, it wasn't clear particularly that it did. So you can intervene, you maybe can change it a little bit, but even if you do change it a little bit, it doesn't seem to have these practically important effects on outcomes.
Leanne ElliottI feel as well, is there underlying things here? Growth mindset doesn't really sound like it's a thing, but there might be something else happening.
Rob BrinerI think the problem is if you take something— it's like talking about performance at work or attainment at work, lots of things We think are great and positive and lovely. The problem is they're typically caused by quite a large number of things, or at least quite, you know, at least like whatever, 5, 6, 7, 10 things. What we tend to do, both as psychologists in terms of researchers and practitioners, we tend to find, look for the thing that's most important. Like, oh, is it growth mindset? Or is it self-efficacy? Or is it something else? Yeah. From the positive psychology Bible? Is there something else in there that might be— we can look at it. The chances are it just isn't one thing that's particularly important. Chances are it's a combination. And the chances are those things come together in combination in different contexts and different settings and depend on a whole load of other moderating factors. So although— and again, in my LinkedIn post around is Is this even really a thing? The conclusion of it always is, rather than look to something like growth mindset as an answer and try and use that as a solution to your problem, work out what the issue is first. So what are you actually trying to do? So let's go back to say school or university or the workplace. If you're trying to help children's or employees' attainment and performance, there's a whole load of things that are going to be hugely more important. Before you get to variables and phenomena like growth mindset. Do people have the conditions and the environment in which they can perform well? Are they given the resources? Do they understand what they're required to do? Are they given the support to do it? Are they given specific training and skills to help them do those things? All those things are gonna predict a huge amount of the outcomes we're talking about.
Al ElliottSure.
Rob BrinerIf you've got all those completely right, Whatever that means. Maybe growth mindset might add a little tiny, weeny, weeny bit on top of that, but it seems pretty unlikely to me. Possibly in some circumstances, but it's almost like we're looking around for these kind of quite exciting, exotic things, whatever psychological safety or growth mindset or, you know, learning. We're looking for something that we think will help, really help us fix this problem. Without understanding what the problem is. And generally speaking, there are some quite fundamental things that, you know, uh, you know, as, as a work psychologist, that we know are quite important. So even if these other things matter, they probably don't matter very much on the whole.
Leanne ElliottI'm, I'm gonna have to bring us back to growth mindset.
Rob BrinerPlease.
Leanne ElliottSo there are people listening who'll be kind of thinking, is it, is it a thing?
Rob BrinerIs it a thing? Well, it's a thing. In the sense you people think you can measure it, I've already described some of the problems with the measures, and there are you know there is other views. Again, we can share some links about how you measure this thing. I think is it a thing in that it's easy to define? If indeed isn't it, I'd say not so much. You know, I would guess give it fifteen years. I don't think anyone would be talking about it anymore. I may be wrong, maybe totally wrong, but that's true of lots of psychological. Constructs—they come and they go, they come and they go. So there might be something in it, but I don't think going back to those claims that it's really important for attainment and you can intervene to increase it, and if you do, that will increase people's attainment. I don't think the current evidence really supports that. And even if you've got much better studies, indeed some of the meta-analyses say the better studies show even smaller effects. So probably, yeah, it's a thing in that people like it. It makes sense. It may be not a thing logically or scientifically or psychologically, I'd say. So it's a thing in some senses for sure. And just to say, you know, in terms of the perhaps what it might be felt to be slightly negative tone about in this case growth mindset, the other side of it is that let's go back to. To me, if it is the case that my understanding of the evidence is broadly correct, that a growth mindset isn't particularly important for attainment, and secondly, it's hard to intervene to change it much, and changing it doesn't— just think of the possibly hundreds of thousands and millions of schoolchildren who have been put through this process, and this has been used.
Al ElliottYeah.
Rob BrinerTo try and help them attain more. And it almost certainly, almost certainly has not done that. On the one hand, yeah, don't rain on my growth mindset parade because I love it. Fine. On the other hand, what about the harm this is doing? So I think a lot of these beliefs, a lot of these things, as you put it, that people might want to latch onto, yes, it is sometimes the case they're not particularly well supported by evidence and they're probably not very useful. At the same time, What about all the waste? What about all the people we could be helping? What about all the things, the opportunity cost of the good things we could be doing while we're playing about with these things we think are cool? You know, I think that's a really important part of this as well. So it's not negative. I would say what drives me around this is actually really wanting to help. And a lot of these things, not all of them, aren't really very useful. So to me, it's a question of saying, can we clear the decks? Of all these distracting, probably faddy, you know, not very important ideas and focus on what really matters. And to me, that's really what, what motivates me.
Al ElliottThat was the awesome Rob Briner. Go and follow him immediately on LinkedIn. He is direct, he's sassy, and of course evidence-based. So I know you're gonna love him. And of course, we'll leave all the links for you to find out more about Rob in his, and his work in the show notes, just if you are going LinkedIn. It's pronounced Briner, but spelled B-R-I-N-E-R.
Leanne ElliottOkay, Al, I think it's now time for your favourite time of the week.
Al ElliottIt is. It's time for the World Famous Weekly Episode where we wrap up your questions to Leanne. Yes, this is where we take some questions and we put them to Leanne and she answers them effortlessly. Apart from, I think there's one time in what we've probably done about 700 questions now. There's one time I think where you were like, oh, I don't know the answer to this. Which one was that? I don't know.
Leanne ElliottI did struggle with the what should I buy my CEO for Christmas? Yeah. I don't know. Oh, not personal shopper friend.
Al ElliottIt was quite a strange one, but I was kind of interested just to throw it in there because you might have some ideas. Okay, so question number 1, and this, this email is titled, Where Has All the Energy Gone? So this person writes, my team isn't unhappy, nobody's leaving, and the work still gets done, but something's changed. A couple of years ago, people bounced ideas around, they helped each other out, they seemed excited about what we were building. Now everyone just does their job and heads home. It feels like we've lost something. I can't quite put my finger on what. Is this just what work looks like now? Should I be doing something different? Over to you, Layli.
Leanne ElliottWhen we see a change in individual behaviour, we tend to question what's wrong with the individual, when really we should probably be thinking about the environment and what's changed in that. And there's a few little clues in this, Al, isn't there? You know, we used to bounce ideas around, helped each other out a lot. They were excited about what we were building. That sounds to me like a bit of a startup culture, or a new product, or a new innovation, or a time of creativity, and where that teamwork and collaboration is needed. It could be that that time has now passed, and you're in a much more stable stage of your business, where it is a bit more business as usual, and there isn't as much ideation and innovation happening, just because of of what is happening operationally. It could be that your people are exhausted because they've gone through this period of rapid growth. It could be that people have become disillusioned because what you were growing has turned into something else that maybe wasn't promised in the way that it was. Maybe some of the values have kind of ebbed away. There could be a whole host of reasons, and I think the only thing you can do is ask them.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAsk them what is happening. But I, I would suspect it's going to come down to a few, a few areas. I would be surprised if they're not having an issue with something around their reason for being there, their meaningful work, that they're not anymore seeing where the organisation is going or heading and they're excited about it. That could be because you've, you've made it and you've not decided where you're going to next.
Rob BrinerYeah.
Leanne ElliottOr it could be that you know, but you've not communicated that. It could also be that if you have gone through a period of growth, that roles have changed and people are no longer stretched, they're no longer excited. It is just business as usual, and because they've gone through a really busy time, they're happy to, to kind of take a load off for a bit and, and turn up on time and do their job and go home. There is nothing wrong with that, by the way. The final thing could be something around, around resources. So, what I mean by resources is, If you're assuming that you've grown, or you've grown customers, and you've got new products, or it's now in place, are people stretched? Are people thin? Are people doing lots of things that they didn't do previously? And are they getting to the point where that is really starting to take a toll on their energy levels, and their health, and their mental health, and their ability to engage in discretionary effort, to go the extra mile for you? Yeah. If they don't have the energy because they don't have the resources to do that, whether in terms of people, systems, or time, or indeed training, then people will start to set their own boundaries. So, that could be what's going on as well. So, I think really you're going to have to ask them. You can do that either by working with a workplace psychologist such as myself, or you just have one-to-ones with some people who have been in the business for a while, who have been through this period of building, whatever that was. And ask them what's occurring, how they're thinking, how they're feeling. This is what you've observed. What can you be doing better to bring that energy back and get an idea? So to use your words, you can put your finger on it.
Al ElliottYeah, yeah, absolutely. I think there's one thing which, and it's the nuance of English language. It's funny when we're learning a different language, we learn how the nuance of English language, but this reads, and they seemed excited about what we were building. Now that could be construed as We're no longer building that, we're maintaining. And as Leanne said many, many times, uh, often the team you have that help you in your startup, that help you build, are not going to be the same team that help you maintain. Because it's oftentimes it's different sort of outlooks on work. Those people are excited about creating something out of nothing. And then those people who just want, who are just maintaining it, often aren't the same people. So, um, if you're in a startup, then quite often sort of year 2, 3, or 4 is the time when you're starting to lose some of your early people.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd we're having to let them go because it's no longer the environment that they joined. It's now a proper grown-up teenage sort of, um, or early 20s company. Yeah, very good. Very good. Okay, so thank you for that, Leanne. Okay, on to question number 2, and it's about, um, this person who's got a best employee but they don't want a promotion. So this person says, um, my— one of my best employees has turned down a promotion for the second time. They are brilliant at what they do, but they've No interest in managing people. Part of me thinks they're lacking ambition. The other part wonders whether I've got it wrong and not everybody wants to climb the ladder. They're asking, Leanne, should I keep encouraging them to move up and take this, take this promotion, or should I just leave them be and let them go about their life?
Leanne ElliottI think, I think the answer could be both and neither. The assumption that you're making is that a great individual contributor, a technical employee, who is brilliant at their job is going to be great managing the people that do said job. And that's not the case. Managing people takes a very different skill set, a very different approach. And this person either knows that they have no interest in managing people and want to remain an amazing individual contributor. They aren't convinced they've got the skills or, or need help to develop the skills to be able to step into that.
Rob BrinerMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottOr they're just more than happy doing what they're doing. So, I think the first question is understanding why they don't want that promotion, rather than just assume that they're not ambitious and don't want to progress in whatever that looks like. You can progress at the same level, but just expand your, your, your knowledge and your experience, or you can progress in IC roles. That is possible. So, I think the first thing is to understand why they don't want this promotion.
Rob BrinerYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd if it is a lack of confidence around managing people or an awareness that they— it's a different skill set, invest in their development first. Give them some training around, around what it is to manage people or to coach people. See if they love it, see if they like it, see if it could then open it up as a possibility for them. I think more than likely, this will come from the view that managing people ain't worth it. Because we're seeing so much in the news and on socials. We're seeing layoffs, and it's that middle managers that tend to get laid off. We're seeing what a 20% increase in salary for probably an 80% increase in work and responsibility, so that might not be worth it. And we're also just seeing where there's a lot of bad, bad things being said about managers. Very few people like their managers because we don't train our managers to be effective. They maybe don't want to be that person that people people vilify, and and and yeah, don't don't want to be that that member of the. So, there could be a whole host of reasons, but I would be very careful in thinking they lack ambition because, one, they probably don't. They're just lacking your ambition for them. And two, ambition is subjective. What ambitious looks like to you is very different to what success looks like to somebody else. And if they're just brilliant at what they do, then—
Rob BrinerYeah.
Leanne ElliottHow wonderful for you to have that person in your business doing brilliant things.
Al ElliottYeah, absolutely. And I think also, look, if you've got other managers in the, in the business, go and have a look and see what, what's going on there. Because it could be that if you have set up the other managers to fail a little bit inadvertently, you've set them up, then it could be they're looking at other managers and going, well, I don't want to have a life like that. So what is your management template? What do other managers look like? Are they happy? Are they stressed? Are they overworked? Um, and, uh, It does sound like you need— it sounds like I'm shilling our own product here, but it does sound like you need some kind of management training somewhere in your organisation. Um, because as, as Leanne says, like, what is it, 70% of managers have never been trained or something, is it?
Leanne ElliottYeah, I think it goes as high as like 90% for first-time managers or something like that. I was talking to Kate Donovan about this on her podcast, Fried, the burnout podcast, and we were kind of talking about how, what an amazing, amazing approach it would be If organisations started training people in coaching skills or prosocial skills like listening and empathy and critical thinking from day one, regardless of whether they thought they could be a people manager or that somebody had decided they want to be a people manager yet, just develop their skills. So, when you get to a situation like this, you're going to probably have the employee go, no, it's not for me. I know we've been kind of doing all that, but I find it really hard. I don't have an interest. Technical is, is kind of my area. Or they're going to go, yeah, I feel confident. I feel ready. Let's do it.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo yeah, what a world if we just trained managers, everybody to be managers from day one.
Al ElliottIf you are interested in, in our own programme Cornerstone, then just let us know. Just get in touch. We're launching that later on this year. Okay, so last question here. Are exit interviews a waste of time? This person says, every time someone leaves, we do an exit interview. Every time they tell us everything was great. And then a few weeks later, I hear they've actually been unhappy for months. So are exit interviews just box-ticking exercises? Leanne, is there a better way then?
Leanne ElliottYes, there is. Well, yes, there's lots of different things. I still think exit interviews serve a purpose. I think it's difficult when the manager leads the exit interview because that's just an awkward situation if you have been unhappy and you're leaving because of the person you're currently sat in front of. So I do do exit interviews for some clients to try and understand what's going on and then feed it back as part of broader employee insights that we give rather than necessarily identifying the specific beef. I think the problem is, from the individual's perspective at this point, if they've been unhappy in their job for a long time, the relief they're feeling at this moment to be leaving your organisation, they probably are genuinely saying, you know, everything's been fine, it's been fine, because they're kind of psychologically already, they're already out of the building.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottThey've already moved on. So, to reflect back on that isn't something that's interesting to them or appealing to them at that point. So, they're going to stay in, very much in their present and focused on their future. Yes, after a few months, they might be more in a position to reflect back on that time and go, yeah, I was really unhappy and these are the reasons why. Because again, they've almost got that safety to do it. There's not going to be psychological safety, isn't it? There's not going to be any negative consequences of giving negative feedback at a point where it could still potentially have an impact.
Rob BrinerYeah.
Leanne ElliottYou don't know what happens if, if there's a manager, you are, you are an awful person, and then phone ahead of the employee they've gone to and gone, actually, I need to, I need to change their reference, or something has come up as we've been digging through our records, or there's still potential impact, isn't there?
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottSo, I think people are always very, very careful about what they say in exit interviews. I think we actually covered a story, didn't we, of someone who does exit interviews with their staff 6 months after and takes them for lunch?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd get some more kind of genuine feedback then. My main thing though would be that as a business owner or leader, you should never be that surprised when somebody leaves your organisation. You should see it coming. You should understand why either the job can't meet their needs and ambitions, or the organisation can't meet their needs or ambitions. It should rarely, really rarely come as a shock when somebody hands in their notice. So, That if that is the case and you're doing your job properly, you're having these regular check-ins, you're not going to need an exit interview. You're going to know fine well why they're leaving, and you're going to be totally understanding of, of that reason. So I think it's more a case of working on these regular check-ins as a manager, having these conversations, understanding their personal goals, their professional goals, their life goals, understanding how this job fits into that. Is it a timeline? Can your organisation provide that progression route for them? Is their future ambitions in a completely different industry? Yeah, I think exit interviews are, are ticking a box. They can help you tick an important box in certain, certain ways. But really, if you're having these conversations along the way, you shouldn't really need an exit interview in the first place.
Al ElliottYeah, good point. Good point. And if you do want to do an exit interview, then yes, 6 months later is a really, really smart idea. The other good thing about doing it 6 months later Is that this person will potentially have had 6 months in a different organization and will probably go, actually, do you know what? It wasn't quite as bad as I thought because we still do the same things here in the new place. So that could be quite interesting. And also, wouldn't it be nice just to, just to catch up with someone after 6 months, assuming you've had a good relationship, catch up with them, and then you can go, look, you know, if you ever want to jump back and just let us know.
Rob BrinerMm-hmm.
Al ElliottBecause that's one of the biggest things I think when people leave, they go, Well, obviously they're gonna be really angry with me and I've never got a chance to go back there. If you've been a great employee, um, or you've had a really good relationship with your manager, that could be the perfect way to say, no, look, there is a— it is open. It is open.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm. Absolutely.
Al ElliottLovely. If you have your own question to put to Leanne, then check the show notes. You can get in touch with us there or just email hello@truthliesandwork.com. This Thursday we're joined by an expert in happiness, a guy called Richard Clarke, but he's not just some fellow who's decided he'll become a consultant. Sorry, looking at some of you people on LinkedIn. He's actually walked the walk. when he built his company, and he ended up with some of the happiest employees on the earth. So Rich is going to talk us through the secret to being happy at work and how he got it wrong in his company. And also, because he sold his company, whether exiting a company for a very nice payday makes you happy or not. That is coming up this Thursday.
Leanne ElliottYeah, a really good one. In the meantime, come along to follow us on LinkedIn. That's where the conversation continues. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok as well. We've been posting more clips recently. Yeah, we have. Well, I haven't, Claude has, and it seems to be going quite well. So yeah, all of that. Click, subscribe, follow. Review.
Al ElliottIf you've got a word of the week, then email Leanne or find Leanne on LinkedIn. And if you want to do a truth or lie, if you're an expert on something, you want to do a truth or lie, yeah, maybe we might, we might think about it.
Leanne ElliottWe'd very much think about it.
Al ElliottSee you next week. Bye. Bye-bye.