Episode 48 · 20 July 2023 · 49:57
Bernard Brogan: How a Sports Star Became a Workplace Hero
Bernard Brogan: How a Sports Star Became a Workplace Hero
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Intro and Welcome to Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture
Word of the Week: Tribrid
Business Scandal: PwC Australia
interview#business-scandal#pwc#australia
TikTok Workplace Trends: Corp Talk Bingo
Bernard Brogan: The PepTalk Story and Stats
interview#peptalk#startup#sports-analytics
High Performance in Sport vs. Work
interview#high-performance#sports#teamwork
Leadership Lessons from the Pitch
The Psychology of Entrepreneurs
interview#entrepreneurship#psychology#mindset
Culture: You Have One Whether You Like It or Not
Credit, Glory, and the Team Dynamic
Trust, Risk, and Psychological Safety
interview#trust#risk#psychological-safety
EHS and Psychological Safety in High-Risk Industries
Don't Rely on Technology to Fix Everything
How Often Should You Measure Culture?
interview#culture-measurement#frequency#data
Bernard's Enthusiasm is Infectious
interview#enthusiasm#leadership#inspiration
Show notes
Bernard Brogan: How a Sports Star Became a Workplace Hero
Guest: Bernard Brogan — Co-Founder and COO of PepTalk, former Dublin GAA star with seven All-Ireland wins, and chartered accountant turned entrepreneur.
Bernard Brogan spent years at the top of one of the most demanding team environments in sport — Dublin GAA. Now he's bringing those lessons to the workplace as Co-Founder and COO of PepTalk, a platform built on a simple but radical idea: teams thrive when they're treated like teams.
Al and Leanne dig into Bernard's journey from the pitch to the boardroom — how a high-performing sports culture shaped his leadership philosophy, why he believes the manager (not the individual) is the real lever for change, and how PepTalk's "measure, insights, action" approach is helping organisations from construction sites to global banks build psychological safety.
Along the way, they unpack the psychology of entrepreneurs, the difference between team culture and star culture, and why trust isn't just a nice-to-have — it's a safety issue.
🏉 From the Pitch to the Boardroom
Bernard Brogan knows what high-performing teams look like from the inside. Seven All-Irelands with Dublin GAA means he's experienced the kind of culture most organisations can only dream of — and he's spent the last few years figuring out how to bottle it.
The key insight? It's not about the star players. It's about the manager.
PepTalk's real USP is focusing on the team and the manager rather than the individual — building shared experiences, understanding, and trust. The same way a GAA manager creates the conditions for players to thrive, workplace managers need to create the conditions for their teams to do their best work.
🧠 The Psychology of Entrepreneurs
Bernard's journey isn't just about sport — it's about the mindset that drives founders to take risks, spin multiple plates, and keep going when things get hard.
Al and Leanne explore what makes entrepreneurs tick, including:
- The willingness to take calculated risks
- The ability to hold multiple businesses and interests at once
- The resilience to keep going when things don't work out
- The self-awareness to know your strengths (and hire for your weaknesses)
And a reminder: just because you start running doesn't mean you'll be Usain Bolt within a year. Building anything takes time.
🔥 Culture Is Not Optional
Here's the thing about culture — you have one whether you want to or not. Whether you've designed it deliberately or let it happen by accident, every organisation has a culture.
Bernard's view? Build a culture that centres around the team rather than the individual. In the tech world, there are hero engineers and big-ego CEOs — but that star culture comes at a cost. When the team is the unit, everyone pulls in the same direction.
And as organisations scale past 100 people, you lose proximity. You can't see everything, you can't know everyone. That's when culture becomes your operating system — and trust becomes essential.
📊 Measure, Insights, Action
Leanne is fanatical about data, and Bernard shares that obsession. PepTalk's approach is built on three steps:
- Measure — get real data on how your people are feeling
- Insights — understand what the data is telling you
- Action — do something about it
The warning? Don't rely on technology to fix everything. The tools are only as good as what you do with them. And if you're measuring culture, don't just do it once a year — regular check-ins help you spot problems (like potential burnout) before they become crises.
💬 The "Corp Talk" Phenomenon
Before they get to Bernard, Al and Leanne have some fun with the passive-aggressive language of corporate email — inspired by TikTok creators exposing the real meaning behind common phrases:
- "As per my last email" — Why the hell haven't you done it already?
- "As you're aware" — You should be, I've told you three times
- "Sorry if I was unclear" — Sorry you're an idiot
- "Just a friendly reminder" — This is the ninth time I've told you
- "This outcome is not a surprise to me" — I knew this would go tits up
It's all fun and games until you realise you've sent one of these emails yourself. Corp Talk Bingo — if you get a full house, let us know.
🎯 Top 3 Takeaways
The manager is the unit of change. In sport and in work, the manager creates the conditions for the team to thrive. Invest in your managers as much as you invest in your people.
Culture is not optional. You have a culture whether you design one or not. Build one that centres on the team, not the individual star.
Measure, insights, action. Data without insights is useless. Insights without action is worse. Regular, meaningful measurement beats annual surveys every time.
More From This Episode
Connect with Bernard:
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bernardbrogan
- Instagram: instagram.com/bernardbrogan
- Twitter: twitter.com/bernardbrogan
- Website: peptalk.com
Watch the full video of this episode:
More Founder Stories from Truth, Lies & Workplace Culture:
- Oliver Yonchev, Co-Founder & CEO of FlightStory: truthliesandwork.com/truth-lies-work-podcast/oliver-yonchev_2269
- Stella Smith, Founder & CEO of pirkx: truthliesandwork.com/truth-lies-work-podcast/wellbeing-and-pirkx-with-stella-smith_1894
- Kevin Dahlstrom, Founder & CEO of Swell Money: truthliesandwork.com/truth-lies-work-podcast/leading-fearlessly-with-kevin-dahlstrom_2345
For more on psychological safety:
- Stephan Weidner interview: truthliesandwork.com/truth-lies-work-podcast/the-secret-to-building-great-teams-with-stephan-wiedner_1968
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 ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Bernard BroganSo you need to be a lot more intentional about how you create that culture, and it needs to be actions. Actual physical things need to— things need to happen rather than kind of saying, oh, this is what we need to do.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al, and I am a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottWelcome back. Welcome back.
Leanne ElliottWelcome.
Al ElliottIf you're on YouTube, And you're watching on YouTube. This is our— hello. This is our 3rd video we're doing on YouTube. We're still learning loads, so we're not quite— we've not quite got all the color grading and all the fancy stuff that we watch YouTube videos on and don't really understand. Not got that quite right, but we're giving it a go, aren't we?
Leanne ElliottWe are giving it a go. And actually, we need to tap into our HubSpot network buddies. If you didn't know, HubSpot have recently just taken on their first cohort of YouTube creators. For their YouTube network, which is quite exciting. So we probably need to, uh, probably need to, yeah, get in touch with some of our new YouTube fam and get some tips out, right?
Al ElliottYeah, good thinking, good thinking. Talking of tips— I'm so bad at segues— talking of tips, we are, we are talking to an amazing guy today, Bernard Brogan. Bernard Brogan not only is possibly the most auditory and visually attractive man in the world because he's from Dublin, got an amazing accent, amazing voice, but also he is just an incredible incredible all-round guy. Now, the background to Bernard is he's an ex-GAA football player, which, as far as I can work out, that seems to be like the Premier League but for Gaelic football, I think. Does that sound about right?
Leanne ElliottYeah, yeah, sounds right.
Al ElliottAnd one thing I didn't understand though was that even though they are kind of professional— I'm putting that professional because they're not— they don't get paid. He was still an accountant at the time.
Leanne ElliottI mean, I'm, I'm not surprised that Bernard was the kind of guy that could spin more than one plate at once and be incredibly successful at at both aspects. So yeah, I'm, I'm surprised that it isn't paid. I'm not surprised that Bernard made it work.
Al ElliottFair enough. Fair enough. Now Bernard's got Pep Talk, which is a company which is growing, and we'll go into that in a second. But the focus of this episode is gonna be around sort of mainly psychological safety, how to build teams, and the crossover between sports teams and teams at work. Leah, we last spoke, I think it was episode 15, to Stefan Wiedner. That was the first time I'd heard the term. Psychological safety. I honestly had never heard it before. Now, obviously, I think I hear every single week because it's something which most guests bring up. For those people who've not heard of it, can you just give us like a 15, 20-second intro to what it is and maybe an example of why it's important?
Leanne ElliottYeah. Psychological safety is a shared belief amongst people in the workforce that they can express their ideas, their opinions, their views, their feedback without fear of any negative consequences, such as being embarrassed or threatened. Threatened or harassed, even mocked. So psychological safety is the term that describes the environment and the climate within that environment that's been created to help people feel safe in expressing themselves. Psychological safety is really, really important in organisations. It leads to typically high levels of creativity, innovation, ideation, which is kind of intuitive, I guess. But commercially, all of those things link to higher employee engagement. They link to higher productivity. faster speed to market. Typically, organisations that enjoy high levels of psychological safety will generate more revenue. They'll be more profitable. They'll have happy customers. It's a pretty— as things go, as stuffs go in the culture world, it's a fairly fundamental thing to get right.
Al ElliottFabulous. So if you're interested in that, then go back to episode 15, which is Stefan Widener. I will link to it in— well, I won't because Leanne does the show notes, but it'll be in the show notes. But it's definitely a good episode to learn more about psychological safety. Before we Before we go and meet the man with the smoothest voice in corporate wellbeing, it's our favourite time of the week. It's the Newsround.
Leanne ElliottCue the jingle.
Al ElliottSo what have you got today, Lian?
Leanne ElliottI have a word of the week.
Al ElliottWord of the week alert.
Leanne ElliottI, I just wanna say at this point as well, if you— I'm, I'm trying to look at you, but if I look there slightly, it's 'cause I'm looking at Al and I wanna see his reaction because sometimes it's funny in these bits. My word of the week, Al. Trybrid.
Al ElliottFucking hell.
Leanne ElliottTrybrid. Guesses?
Al ElliottYeah, I'm guessing it's come from hybrid, and it's probably how— I'm gonna guess that it is, you might try a hybrid working week at work, but it's just like a pilot you can roll back.
Leanne ElliottOh, that's a very good guess, but it's not the answer I'm looking for.
Al ElliottIs it not on the board?
Leanne ElliottI'm afraid it's not on the board. But a good, a good effort. Um, tribrid. So tribrid is a term that I came across just this week, given by RGA Research, to define people who split their working time between the office, home, and various co-working spaces or cafes. So basically what they're saying is workers like the connectivity and connection of in-person working. I would also say that there's no data, but my psychology brain would imagine that it's maybe There may be more extroverts that enjoy, uh, the co-working in spaces that aren't their office. Um, so basically they like the in-person working, but they don't necessarily want to travel all the way into the office or have the, um, interruptions from colleagues. So this gives them, yeah, basically what tribrid is. And of course as well, cost of living crisis, it may mean that we get well-lit, nicely heated, or indeed chilled spaces with reliable Wi-Fi. That is what tribrid is. People who work from home, the office, or various coworking spaces. Call me crazy, Al. I'm not sure this is a term that we needed.
Al ElliottNo, I don't think so. I remember though, having said that, when I used to work at home, I used to sometimes go to restaurants or bar— not restaurants, but bars or pubs to work because I felt like I needed the, the people around me. That said, that's changed since, since the pandemic. I'm much happier just sitting. In fact, I'm much happiest not meeting anyone apart from Leanne on a daily basis.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think that is your little extroversion. brain that maybe was, uh, kicking in there, wanting to be amidst the buzz.
Al ElliottSo I was a Tribid wanker?
Leanne ElliottWell, you didn't have— oh no, you did have an office. Yes, you were. Yeah.
Al ElliottI was a Tribid twat. Anyway, so what else you got, Leah?
Leanne ElliottI have another, um, business scandal for you. You may have heard, um, PwC Australia got themselves into a bit of a tricky situation. Did you hear about this?
Al ElliottNo, I didn't.
Leanne ElliottSo PwC Australia, PricewaterhouseCoopers as they were previously known, basically the headline is a number of senior partners at the firm used confidential government advice that they gained from various clients and contacts to drum up work from multinational companies to help them pay less tax.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottHmm, yeah, not the most ethical or even perhaps legal thing to do. So PwC were fined forced to issue a public apology and stand down 9 partners pending the results of its investigation. Since then, an anonymous— anonymous, that's a hard word to say—
Al ElliottAnonymously.
Leanne ElliottAn anonymous group of employees have formed their own committee. Um, it's got a catchy— catchy— it's called— you probably don't— tell me, do you know what America— do you know what that cuch means?
Al ElliottNo?
Leanne ElliottAnyway.
Bernard BroganWelsh.
Leanne ElliottCatchy. A catchy, um, name for that committee, the Committee to Restore Trust in PwC. through transparency and accountability.
Al ElliottThat's accountants for you, naming things, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottSo they have stepped up calls for radical reforms within the business and also raised doubts at the independence of the internal investigation. A good example here of a lack of psychological safety, with this group giving that feedback anonymously. So, you know, it sounds like there's been a bit, there's been a bit of scandal, and now even in the investigation there's a bit of potential scandal there. It will be interesting to see what happens, if there's any professional sanctions, criminal charges that do come. But, um, what is for sure is the PwC brand as a whole are not willing to take the hit, having already sold their Australian government advisory business, the source of the publicity problem, for $1 Australian to Allegro Funds.
Bernard BroganWow.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottWhat else you got, Leah?
Leanne ElliottMoving on from anonymous to infamous, TikTok is a goldmine when it comes to understanding the latest workplace trends of our dear, dear, and very much loved from me personally, uh, Gen Zers, um, my absolute favourite generation without a doubt. So this episode of Newsroundup Al, I thought I would add a little segment called TikTok Tales.
Al ElliottOh man, I love it. The alliteration is just, it's just getting me a little bit aroused. I don't know why I said that.
Leanne ElliottOkay, so I must admit this feature is inspired, uh, by the Tony and Ryan podcast, which is a very funny, also Australian podcast, um, that put a lot of stuff on YouTube Shorts and on TikTok. And also I came across a creator, um, called Kayla Avery, um, who is also making a bit of a name for herself for this type of thing on the tok. Basically it's all about corporate talk. So it's basically, you know, things like, we're gonna put a pin in it, circle back, run it up the flagpole, we'll whiteboard it ahead of the, the huddle on Friday.
Al ElliottJust reaching out.
Leanne ElliottJust reaching out.
Al ElliottCircling back.
Leanne ElliottCircling back. Um, but yeah, but these creators are basically exposing the passive-aggressive nature of some corporate talk that we all understand and we use to passively-aggressively maybe school our bosses our colleagues, or even our employees. So, Al, I'm gonna read you some corporate talk, and I would like you to see if you can translate it into real chat for me.
Al ElliottBear in mind, I've never worked in corporate, so, um, this is gonna be fun. Go on.
Leanne ElliottIf you've sent an email, you'll know. Okay, so corporate talk number 1: As per my last email.
Al ElliottWhy the fuck haven't you done it already?
Leanne ElliottThank you. Uh, number 2: As you're aware.
Al ElliottYou should be aware because I've told you at least 3 times.
Leanne ElliottI've attached another copy for your convenience.
Al ElliottYou're a fucking idiot because you've lost the last one.
Leanne ElliottYou are nailing these. Sorry if I was unclear.
Al ElliottSorry if you are an idiot and you misunderstood. I'm sorry you're an idiot. Basically, it covers that one, I think.
Leanne ElliottI'm sorry if you can't understand this very simple thing that I'm trying to explain to you. Just a friendly reminder.
Al ElliottThis is the 9th time I've told you, Kate, get your arse in gear.
Leanne ElliottOh, Kate, I recall that quite differently.
Al ElliottYou're lying.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm. To put it more simply—
Al ElliottI go back, I circle back to my previous one. You're an idiot, and you need something really simple to understand, which is why I'm making it more simple for you.
Leanne ElliottOh dear, and the last one, this outcome is not a surprise to me.
Al ElliottI knew this all along, and I told you this was gonna go tits up.
Leanne ElliottI told you this was gonna happen.
Al ElliottYeah, and now it does, I want no, nothing more to do with it.
Leanne ElliottI'm washing my hands of you. Um, yeah, isn't it amazing? Like you said, you've not really worked in— well, neither of us have worked in corporate, and, um, you've not really worked in an office environment, and yet we all understand corporate talk, office politics. It is, it is brilliant. Maybe again for you, feel free to take those, um, those little statements there, maybe Play a bit of CorpTalk bingo this week.
Al ElliottCorpTalk bingo?
Leanne ElliottYeah, if you get a full house, let us know, we'll get a prize.
Al ElliottAnd don't be trying to register that because we're going to register that as soon as we've come off this. We're going to register corpstalkbingo.com and we're going to have the trademark and everything. We're going to— it's going to be a great game. I love that. I loved that, Leah. That was one of my favorite bits of the news roundup. So shall we Go on to the main segment, or you got anything else?
Leanne ElliottNo, I'm done.
Al ElliottBrilliant, loved it. So Bernard Brogan, ex-GAA footballer, ex-accountant, uh, now co-founder of Pep Talk. Well, why am I introducing him? Let's get him introduce himself.
Bernard BroganMy name is Bernard Brogan, um, I am more known for my Gaelic football exploits, uh, for Dublin GAA. We won 7 Sam Maguires, or premierships, uh, as, as you might call them in the, in the UK. And I'm a co-founder of Pep Talk, which is an employee culture and employee engagement platform.
Leanne ElliottThere's something about the Irish accent, and maybe it's because I come from an Irish family, but it's just, it just feels like home, doesn't it?
Al ElliottIt's like a hug through the ears.
Leanne ElliottIt's a cúch.
Al ElliottSo Pep Talk is a pretty impressive company. These are just some really quick stats for you. So James and Bernard Brogan were the founders, the co-founders. They're both cousins. Um, I think it's probably difficult to live in Ireland and not be cousins somehow. Uh, started in 2017, uh, raised over €1.2 million in 2021. Uh, then they increased the team to about 25 more people and also won the contract with likes of PayPal. Impressive. Further $36 million USD in investment to expand to the US. Now, I believe they've got 4 offices in the US, um, all fancy fancy addresses on them. And then recently last year, they were Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 winner. They were number 33, I think they were, which is a pretty impressive prize. So the whole point of Pep Talk is it exists to improve safety, reduce risk, increase retention, and reduce absenteeism. So how does it do it? Very simply, it just measures, provides insights, and suggests actions. If you look at their website, those are the 3 key tenets of the actual company. And they do it via an app which uses a combination of surveys, check-ins, early warning systems, all based on psychological science. I asked Bernard to give us that higher-level version of what Pep Talk does.
Bernard BroganWell, basically, we surface back really simple, frictionless pulses that take 2 seconds because people— it's hard to get people to do anything, as you know, but we want to give them value straight away. So we're giving them relevant interventions for themselves and for their teams, and then helping people managers. You're a good salesperson, you become a sales manager. You're a good tech person, you become a tech manager. It doesn't mean you have the skills to be an effective leader. So we tool up your people managers to have the skill sets to have a hard conversation, feedback, a performance review, communication clarity of your role. These things are just hard to do as leaders. We just help those be a crutch for your teams at scale across an organization.
Leanne ElliottSo what Pep Talk are basically doing now, just to make sure I understand, it's like an employee insight survey, but pulse, meaning just maybe a couple of questions sent out much more frequently than an in-depth survey. And they use that to create general markers for managers on how people are thinking, feeling, performing. Is that about right?
Al ElliottI think you've pretty much nailed it.
Leanne ElliottCool.
Al ElliottThe reason why Leanne's outlining that, it will become clear a bit later on, because we do have an app that's fairly similar. We're not in competition with Bernard. And we'll explain a bit more about that later on.
Leanne ElliottIt's interesting that Bernard talks about how his experience as a high performer in sports has kind of shaped his vision for the company, and it's something we hear a lot about in psychology. We would have heard from last week's episode, Kate Goodyear from Langer Rourke, who worked with Team GB. I think we've had people in the past as well who have been athletes or trained athletes come And I think it is this understandable crossover that the psychology that is needed to engage people in very high-pressured environments to perform well is not going to be too different from the psychology we need to do the same for employees in equally high-pressured environments. So it is really interesting to hear how this has shaped his vision for the company. But what did Bernard see in sport that he knew could be applied to the workforce?
Bernard BroganIt was a story around the sense of team. And Pep Talks' real USP is about focusing on the team and the manager, the 2 conduits to culture, that why you want to stay, why you want to go through the wall for each other. I had it in sport where left and right of me, I had my colleagues, my friends, my teammates, that we'd go to war together and we would do whatever we could to help each other out and try and get over the line.
Al ElliottBernard credits his old manager, Pat McElroy, for his enthusiasm for not only sports, but also just for generally business and entrepreneurship and, and really just making your vision come alive. I asked him a bit more about this story about Pat.
Bernard BroganIn my sporting career, I had a great leader, Pat Gilroy, who asked a lot of hard questions of me. He was a great business person. He'd bought and sold a couple of businesses, and he knew how to deal with people. He put his arm around some and he kicked some in the ass, which I was one of them. And some people react, as you know, differently. to feedback and to motivation. And he just made me— gave me real clarity about effective leadership, about how to bring people on a journey. And he felt there was more in me as a sports person, and he pushed me and pushed me and pushed me for about 18 months. I ended up becoming Player of the Year in our sport in GAA. The following year, we turned a corner as a team. Not that it was down to me, but he did the same for, obviously, the whole group. But you felt it was just a sole focus on yourself? Um, I mean, that was during the start of our 7 All-Irelands, as they say, in 2011. He kind of really brought us together.
Leanne ElliottWe talk a lot about leadership on the podcast, and we have had some phenomenal guests in, in the past talk about leadership. I think what Bernard's just done there is really kind of made the point that leadership is not about hierarchy. Yes, there may be a bit of ass-kicking from time to time, but it's more about creating this shared belief, this shared vision, this shared sense of belonging, you know, to use Bernard's phrase, to go to war with each other. You know, that's hard loyalty. So, I think it really just shows that whatever industry or world you're talking about, leadership is really, really important. And that's which is why I think for any leader listening, it's so important for you to invest in your own development. as much as the development as your own team, because you are, you know, you are this figurehead that can, can really serve as a source of inspiration and performance, um, or you can be, you know, the point at which it, it never gets off the ground in the first place.
Al ElliottYeah, absolutely. And I think we, as you alluded to before, we've had at least 3 or 4 people on the podcast who have been in the sports world, have now gone into business, And they just, they almost all of them cite someone like this. I remember Kyle Denhoff in, I think, episode 23, was talking about a great manager, and that's what made him a great athlete. He's— this is Kyle from HubSpot— a great athlete. And then on to why he's such a great manager these days, although not his words, but I spoke to his colleagues and apparently he's fantastic.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think it is a really good kind of analogy to use or world to to look at and kind of, you know, draw similarities from. If we think about, you know, in the UK, football or soccer, you know, one of the greatest managers, football managers of all time, as much as it pains me to say it, was Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United. I think he was manager for what, 19, 20 years, maybe longer? Won them as many Premier League titles, FA Cups, League Cups, European Championships. They dominated. But you've got to think, you know, over that span of 20 years, Particularly in the world of sport where a career, if you're lucky, might last, what, 15 years? There would have been so much turnover within that team, whether naturally or otherwise, over time. The constant was Alex Ferguson and that philosophy and mentality and expectation and vision. You know, as a leader, you are the constant. Whether people are coming and going is kind of irrelevant because you're, you're the person setting the tone.
Al ElliottYeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. So I asked Bernard a little bit more about the psychology behind both athletes and entrepreneurs.
Bernard BroganI think probably high-performance sport gives you— you obviously have to be driven. You have to— why I became a high-performance individual in my sport was because I wanted it more than other people. I trained harder. I did the extras on my own in the backfield, kicking points. I was a free taker. I was a striker. So I practiced and practiced and practiced. I wasn't as naturally skilled as other people, so I worked harder at it. And That's a similar thing for maybe for entrepreneurs or for people, as you're saying, coming from sport into business. They just have a mentality maybe to just work harder at things or to be ambitious or to not ask. A trait of high-performance people, I feel, is curiosity and pushing yourself. It's not being happy in your comfort zone, always pushing ourselves out there. Sometimes I tell myself, why don't you just stay in your comfort zone? It's a lot easier. But I think that's what we all need, and that's what we serve— we search for in sport. And some people get there, some people don't. But I think that's an attribute that an entrepreneurism, or people in business that have came from sport, will do well because they have that go-get-it attitude and will work hard at it and won't accept, um, mediocrity, I suppose.
Leanne ElliottYeah, the psychology of entrepreneurs is really interesting, and particularly in terms of innovation, risk-taking, pushing yourself, being very comfortable outside of your comfort zone. It's all things that definitely we'll see in the personality profiles of entrepreneurs and in high-performance athletes as well. My word of caution would be, and I think Bernard has mentioned it there as well, is that, you know, it's practice, practice, practice. I wasn't naturally as skilled as other people, and I think that's the case for any entrepreneur that is in a growing business that has perhaps now got this brand new people element that they've not had previously and may not quite have the same innate strengths to deal with. As we've mentioned before, you know, people don't necessarily want a lot of change and disruption once an organisation gets to a certain size. Your CFO certainly doesn't want you taking lots of risks all the time, or, you know, keep going in the pursuit of growth alone. And that's what we saw with tech recently and all the layoffs. You know, pursuing that high-growth model can have its It's dangerous. So I think there is an element there of the practice, practice, practice may also be around kind of the more leadership behaviours and competencies you need to nurture as an entrepreneur in a growing business.
Al ElliottYeah, absolutely. And just because you start running, you're not gonna be Usain Bolt within a year. Just be, don't be so hard on yourself. The fact that you've now grown your team from 5 to 25, you are still learning as well about how to manage a team. Now, one thing that has come out through over and over and again in almost every single one of these episodes is that just because you, like, read a book about culture doesn't mean that then you're going to have a culture. Culture needs to be intentional. There's a saying you always say, Leigh, and I, I've always misquoted it because I can't remember exactly what it is, but it's something about culture is— do you remember it?
Leanne ElliottYeah. The, the fact is you have a, you have a culture whether you want to or whether you know what it is or not. You have a cult— if you have people within your organization, you have a culture. Culture, which is why it makes me smile perhaps when people will say, oh, you know, we're doing, um, you know, a big culture project that's gonna, you know, transform our culture, yet they don't quite have a clear understanding of exactly where their culture is now, which is why, you know, tools like Pep Talk and others are so important at understanding your starting point so you can then go down that, that route of transformation. But yeah, whether you like it or not, you have a culture. Yeah.
Al ElliottAnd I think what's really important is that your culture will probably change as you scale. The culture has almost certainly changed. Your culture certainly changed with the pandemic, with working from home, with hybrid work. So I think what's really cool is that Bernard is saying, regardless of what's happening in the external world, you still need to be intentional about your culture.
Bernard BroganI suppose the world of work has changed. People are a bit dispersed. There's a bit of hybrids, a bit of flexibility. So you need to be a lot more intentional. about how you create that culture. And it needs to be actions, actual physical things need to happen rather than kind of saying, oh, this is what we need to do. So we're helping teams with those tips and tricks and actions and habit change over a period with organizations. I learned a lot of this through my own experience and working with the team and the psychologists and the experts about how do we actually take some of these lessons and give them through organizations and through through team culture. You want to create a culture where you look left and right, your colleagues, you want friendships, you want that team experience. And I've just a story about that, as I was a free-taker, I took the penalties, I took the scores, and probably got a lot of the glory, even though I didn't do probably a lot of the hard work on the pitch. And it was about that selflessness, about obviously commerciality of, we're an amateur sport, you don't get paid.
Leanne ElliottIt's interesting how Bernard mentions that he often got a lot of the credit and the glory for his role, but it was very much a team effort. And I think there are things that, of course, in the public eye, there will be specific people that are celebrating. That's true in the sports world and the business world. It's why we all know names like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. But I think what's really interesting is what Bernard said, is that he didn't necessarily see that as his individual success. It was that team success. And it is, again, comes back to you know, that mission, whatever that, that mission you need to deliver, whether it's, it's winning a, um, a football game or securing a new client, there is going to be that one person that might be the one that gets it over the line. But the collective effort that has taken place to get to that point has to be recognized and internalized as a team and by every member of the team to feel that their contribution counts. The key thing I think as well, that why we see these superstars in sports that do really well is something around the superstar effect, which we talked about back in episode 30, 31, I think, which is why you shouldn't always hire superstars necessarily. So the superstar effect basically means that, and this was coined from research in the sports arena, so Tiger Woods for a long time dominated as the best golf player in the world. And what psychologists observed is that when Tiger Woods was playing in a competition, rather than raising the game and performance of everybody else playing, it actually dragged down their performance below their usual average or usual level of performance for various reasons, where they felt intimidated, what's the point? And this can carry through as well in business teams. And the difference between a superstar that will be effective in your team and a superstar that won't be effective is the ability of that superstar to be coached. And as we know, there is no successful sports person out there who isn't able to be coached. Did you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not going to say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode. 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.
Bernard BroganAnd we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business, but you'll also by hear about how to grow your 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?
Bernard BroganI am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in.
Leanne ElliottSo the other side of this, as Bernard suggests, is that you build a culture that centers around the team rather than the individual.
Bernard BroganWe all know in the tech world there's hero engineers, there's obviously this big ego CEOs, etc. So there's a lot to some of that that maybe take, take the credit or take the limelight. A lot in the last while, it's been a tough time for tech, the tech world. So culture is a big thing to get around your people. Fundamentally, culture is about the values that you learn over time and As I said, the team camaraderie, the friendships you have, communication, and the legacy of the sport you play. So all these things all culminate in high performance, and we're trying to just pepper that through organisations and doing a lot more in the UK now.
Al ElliottOne of the things that Bernard talked about a lot there was trust. And like, when you've got a sports team, of course that makes sense, everyone needs to trust each other. But also, it's got a really big impact in teams, in organisations.
Leanne ElliottIt really does. And I think even more so now that we are seeing this this hybrid working or tribrid working is that, you know, we haven't got that same— we haven't got eyes on our employees. We have to trust that they're, they're doing their work. And I think this is where a lot of the tension between employers and employees is coming from, is that employees feel they can be productive working at home, and employers or leaders in particular feel that they're losing control. Um, so I think trust is, is probably more relevant now post-pandemic than it ever has been.
Al ElliottBernard also believes that trust is essential to lower risk of accidents, to increase psychological safety, and just generally to make a team work.
Bernard BroganIf you have trust from a manager and an organ— and a team, that will reduce accidents. You'll be able to come forward with challenge. You're not going to try and bury problems. That is what high performance is, and we try and layer that upstream piece of— and the word Cultural safety, psychological safety are the words that are coming out that we're trying to get after.
Leanne ElliottSo, yeah, the psychological safety that we feel to then be able to trust our managers or trust that we can provide feedback without any fear of negative consequences can be down to our own wellbeing, it can be down to the performance, it can also potentially come down to life and death situations. I remember when we was talking to Stefan and he talked about the work of Amy Edmondson, who's a pioneer in psychological safety, and they used the example of research done in hospitals with nurses and how the health outcomes or the patient outcomes were much higher in hospitals, healthcare organisations with high levels of psychological safety. Because as a nurse, if I think there's a mistake that's been made in terms of the medication that's been given to a patient, if I don't have that psychological safety to share that with my boss, which might be more than likely the consultant, the medical doctor, then I might not say anything and that could seriously impact implicate the health of a person. It's the same when it comes to workplace health and safety. So yeah, I think it is true, and especially as we've said, people that are working in more isolated environments.
Bernard BroganWe do a lot of work in the EHS and the psychological safety and looking after your teams. Those kind of deskless environments where people are out on sites or they're in a lab as a pharmaceutical organisation, they don't maybe sometimes get the the HR supports or the tools the HQ or the desk environment will get. So we really feel we can add a value there. And that's what we're really focused on in the US as well, around that EHS. Psychological safety is the upstream. Incidents, accidents, and near misses is the metric and the KPIs that organizations use. Making sure that you have good relationships, that there's a sense of trust, that it's not, as you said, if it was this culture of fear, which is sometimes construction, like as you say, healthcare, these industries where you're just told to do something, off you go and do it. That doesn't give you autonomy as an individual. So that doesn't give you psychological safety. You're always in fear. You're afraid to give your opinion. You're afraid to ask questions. Psychological safety is an environment where I can ask questions, be them simple or be them really intelligent. But you're in an environment where you are, that the group and the team and the organization is going to grow because people are asking good questions. They're curious. They want to learn. They're motivated. They're showing up. and they're energised, and that's fundamentally what you want from a high-performing culture.
Leanne ElliottConstruction is a really interesting industry, I think, to look at psychological safety, both in terms of the impact potentially on our physical safety and on our mental health. You know, we spoke to Kate Goodyear last week, who is a chartered psychologist with Laing O'Rourke, and she talked a lot about, you know, the kind of the, you know, the macho culture that can come about in a male-dominated work environment. Particularly on site. For example, you may have times where perhaps your colleagues are maybe messing around at a point that they shouldn't, or you notice that somebody is skipping a step in a safety check, but you don't want to say anything. And it's not just the fear of repercussion against your manager, it can be the fear of repercussion amongst your colleagues as well. So, that's how we can see these ripple effects in terms of our physical safety. And I think in terms of construction as well, As Kate was saying, the suicide rate amongst the construction industry is really high, it's disproportionately high, and that's often because of these male-dominated environments, very different social and psychological challenges that men face and don't feel as able to talk about them. Having this psychological safety with your manager, with your colleagues, can help you go, do you know what, I'm not doing great at the moment. This is going on at home, this is what I'm experiencing psychologically, it's what I'm finding difficult. Um, and if we can have those conversations earlier, and as managers and as leaders, if we know what's going on earlier, we can, we can, you know, nip it in, in the bud, or we can just put steps in place to stop it from, from escalating. I'm not sure there's anything worse as a manager to have, I guess, one, felt that your your member of staff wasn't able to come and talk to you, but also that it's now escalated to a point that it's really difficult for you to, to manage, you know, manage that situation effectively, whether it be in terms of somebody's mental health or even in terms of kind of a performance management conversation, if these things have been continuously, you know, overlooked, um, from, from a compliance perspective, an ethical perspective, whatever it is. So yeah, psychological safety may as a term seem a bit fluffy and nice to have. When you start to break it down and start to look at practical examples of how this plays out in the workforce, it really is a significant thing that we need to think about, we need to focus on, not only for the performance of our business, but the literal, you know, health and safety of our employees.
Al ElliottIf you've heard Leanne talk before, you'll know that she talks about data. She's fanatical about data. The idea is that you shouldn't be taking any kind of decision or doing any kind of intervention unless you have got the data which backs it up.
Leanne ElliottAs per my previous podcast episode, I have mentioned the importance of data before.
Al ElliottYes, absolutely. So you know what Leanne thinks about data. Some organisations think, oh well, that's great, we'll run a survey, we'll stick it in a really fancy, um, like PowerPoint presentation, send it to the board, or stand up in front of the board, and bosh, job done. Of course, that is not Collecting data is the first part of this. Then you've got to look and see what else you do with it. So Pep Talk have 3 sort of fundamentals, which is measure, insights, actions. And the idea is that you measure— great, of course, yes, you might have some surveys and some apps in place, but are they producing insights that you can act on? And are you actually taking actions on those? Bernard explains it's not just a tick box exercise.
Bernard BroganI just think there's so much that the world of work can get from those high-performing cultures and the values and layers that we brought in over time. And you'll all know, I see on some of the stands here today, if this is a box-ticking wellbeing tool, this isn't the stand for you. I thought it was lovely, one of the stands beside us. And there's loads of box-ticking stuff you can do for culture and wellbeing, and they'll live there at the side. Or you can try and actually enact change management and try and actually make a difference. And that's what Pep Talk are trying to do It's not easy because you have to engage your people managers, you have to engage your teams, you have to do things, you have to have a team talk once a month, you have to do these things that create trust. You can't just like, there's no silver bullet to this, you know what I mean? And good organizations have leaders who naturally do that because they're just natural born leaders or they want to build a culture. The key for what we do is there's an action to it. Like there's loads of survey tools out there to tell you what you already know. You'll know yourself, there's a world of them, but very few of them provide the action, the relevant action to actually solve something. And that's what's really given us energy in our clients. And we have to work at it, and it's hard, and we're building. Um, but that's really our USP, and that's where we're getting our joy.
Leanne ElliottI love that so much— measure, insights, action. And I think it's so important because yes, we can, we can, we can— anyone can run a survey and pull up the results. Insights, and often why we need experts like Bernard and his team, or me, or the psychologists, is that you need to turn that data into insights. What does that actually mean? How is it all interconnected? And then the third point, action. If you don't intend to act on the feedback that your employees have given you, you're probably better doing nothing at all, because any trust or morale that you've built in asking people their opinion, and people have put themselves in their vulnerable situation, assuming they have this psychological safety, if you're not then using that data to make any change within the business, then that's just, you know, what's the point? That's a, that's a real, a real drain on our morale and our feeling of psychological safety. As I mentioned earlier, we have our own, uh, you know, culture tool called the RX7, and it is this hybrid of culture and engagement, um, and well-being, much like Pep Talk. But we're not a direct competitor. We work with much smaller organizations, uh, typically under 100 people. And one of the things that, that we'll always make sure that we do is, is kind of pull out these equations for clients. So, you know, if you've scored really, you know, if you scored low on resources, which means probably typically people will have high workloads and not necessarily the skills or training to do their roles, they're scoring low on resilience, they're feeling a bit low on energy, on positivity and optimism, and then you're scoring very high on extra role effort. So people are going above and beyond and putting in the extra hours. that low resources plus low resilience plus high extra effort is more than likely gonna result in burnout, because you've got people who don't have the resources or the psychological capital to keep going, but they're still working above and beyond. So that's what we mean by we can take the data, so how we scored on resources, how we scored on resilience, how we scored on extra effort, they're the data points. The insight is that those 3 things combined are predictive of a potential burnout problem later down the line.
Al ElliottAbsolutely. And as Leanne says, the RX7 is perfect for you for like 3, but roughly 30 to 300 employees. That's sort of our sweet spot. I asked Bernard what the sweet spot for Pep Talk was.
Bernard BroganYeah, well, the sweet spot is anywhere from over 100 or 200 up to a couple of thousand. We work with it with, uh, with AIB Bank in Ireland, there are 12,000 people. We work with PayPal, which is another 15,000 people across Asia, US, and Europe.
Leanne ElliottSo regardless of, of who you use or what tool you use, please don't just rely on the technology to fix everything. We're talking about people here. You know, a piece of software or artificial intelligence is never going to be able to replace these honest, authentic conversations, especially when you are scaling your teams.
Bernard BroganBut as you scale and you lose proximity of the people, once you go over 100 people, you start not being able to see everyone or knowing everyone's name. And now flexibility and hybrid has made it even worse again. So there's the need for, not just a need for tech, obviously technology allows us to do a lot more at scale, but just that nudging towards the behaviors that are traditional in nature, that are having a conversation more about you as an individual. What are you into? How can I help you get after your goals? How can we as a team have better communication? how can we support each other more? Like, they're just human conversations, and that's what's been left out. It's like, how's the weather? Did you do end weekend? Okay, now on to, on to KPIs and OKRs and, and, and sales numbers. So I mean, that's, that's the superficial what's happening, um, and we need to go that level deeper, and that's what we're trying to unpick in, in organizations.
Leanne ElliottOne of the questions I get asked a lot from business owners is how, how frequently do I need to do this? How much is too much? If I do a survey every 12 months, maybe a pulse check every now and again, does that mean that I'm cool? I know how my people think and feel, I've got the data points, I can crack on. Or is it actually better to not do any of that and just have conversations? Because my organisation is small enough that I can have a conversation with every member of my staff regularly. Should I just do that? And the answer is always, it depends, and probably both. What we're talking about here from a science perspective is we're talking about quantitative data, so the numbers that we can, you know, push through fancy, fancy tools and statistics, and we're talking about qualitative data. Again, there's statistical analysis in that, but it's a much richer data point. And I think the point is to have a real holistic view of your organisation and understanding of how your people are thinking, feeling, and behaving at work. You need both. My advice would always be a comprehensive employee engagement culture check survey every 12 months Pulse checks at least every 6 months, but as we've heard from Pep Talk, we can do it much more frequently as long as we're just asking a few questions at a time. And in terms of the face-to-face conversations or the, you know, the person-to-person conversation, even person-to-team conversations, they need to happen as well. Even if you're using Pep Talk and you're getting this, you know, consistent monthly insights, that doesn't replace the importance of you having conversations with members of your team, because it is that human-to-human interaction and connection that's going to help us build trust, help us build psychological safety. And ultimately, we need that psychological safety so our people will answer these surveys honestly to give us that feedback we need to know where to make the changes. So it's almost like this chicken and egg continuous loop of a situation. We need to To be person to person, human to human, to build the relationships that foster psychological safety for us to then get the authentic data and insights we need in our surveys and our quantitative data to drive change.
Al ElliottAs you can probably tell from the way Bernard talks, the enthusiasm he's got for this project is kind of infectious. So I said, what is next for Pep Talk?
Bernard BroganIt is, it's all-consuming and it's about, again, team. And we have a co-founder, James, my cousin. family, we're on to each other all the time, and it's just that journey. And all of the rest of our colleagues, um, it's just trying to achieve something that hasn't been done before, and we're doing it a bit differently, and it's hard. Um, but the rewards, uh, self-fulfilling rewards— obviously it'd be great in time if we, if we ever got the, the financial rewards, but the self, the self-fulfillment of being able to build something, to do a good job, to grow a business, to provide employment, all the type of stuff. Um, is really, really what turns me on, as you say.
Al ElliottSo let me take the pressure off you for a second and let's just sum up where we're up to today. We've heard a lot of things, but we think we can sum up into really 3 sort of key areas that you need to take action in. So the first one is you need to do some kind of audit to get that data, to measure it, whether you use Pep Talk, whether you use RX-7, whether you use HiBob, whether whatever Whatever you use, just ensure that what you're using actually will measure the right thing and also will return the insights you want. It's using a Google Form or something, or a Google Form to do some kind of engagement survey is next to useless because all it's gonna do is give you a load of numbers. You really need someone who's gonna be able— or an app, or someone who's gonna be able to tell you what those numbers mean. So number 1, do an audit.
Leanne ElliottCouldn't agree more. Our data Without the insights is completely useless. And of course, we hope that you, if you are an organisation over 100, you do use Pep Talk. We hope that if you're an organisation under 100, you do use us and the RX7. But the point is, and I know Bernard agrees on this, just use somebody, you know, just engage somebody to help you with this stuff because it is really important. And what that's going to help you to do is work towards psychological safety, or even understand the level of psychological safety you already have within the organisation. And I think it's being mindful as well that that could change over time with growth, with new employees joining, with, you know, older employees leaving, an acquisition, a significant change within the business in terms of an influx of customers. It could be anything. These levels of psychological safety can shift, so you need to work on it consistently. You should always actively encourage your teams to speak up, to share their ideas, to give you feedback, to tell you where the roadblocks are and where the risks are. Um, and I think as a leader, you know, extending this idea in terms of psychological safety, I think, you know, an audit like this is one element. As we've said, those one-to-one conversations or human-to-human conversations are another element. And I think the third element as well, if you're really taking this seriously, to foster this sense of psychological safety and work on your own development as a leader, 360 feedback tools are phenomenal. So that's when, as a leader, I will ask my staff to assess my performance. I'll ask my customers. I'll ask my peers. I'll ask my manager. I'm getting all of these different points to really understand how you're performing, how I'm performing. As a leader. So I think if you really wanna take it to the next step, um, I'd, yeah, look at 360 tools.
Al ElliottSo number 1 is doing an audit. Number 2 is working towards a culture of psychological safety. Number 3 is simply turn your managers into coaches. We are not in the '80s anymore. Managers don't need braces and cups of tea and shouting at people. It's not like that anymore. The whole point is that once you've measured it, once you've got your insights, you need to take action and Generally, in most organisations, it can't be just one person. It needs to filter down to the line managers, and those are the people who need to have human-to-human conversations. They need to understand that their job is to help their employees achieve their goals, because if the employees get what they want, the managers will get what they want.
Leanne ElliottMic drop moment there, Al. That was fabulous.
Al ElliottI'm not dropping these mics. They're about £300.
Leanne ElliottWell, not this one.
Al ElliottOkay, so that is everything, I think. Is there anything that we've missed out, Leanne, that perhaps we should have talked about?
Leanne ElliottNo, I don't think so. I think we've covered all the main points there, highlighted Bernard's work and the amazing tool that Pep Talk is. I mean, come on, the names of people that are using it, you know, this is a high-quality tool. We'll leave all of the links in the show notes, both to Pep Talk, uh, to Bernard, And to us as well and the RX-7 if you are interested in learning more about that. If you're under 100 people, I know you said up to 300, Al, but I know at that point I think Pep Talk might be a bit better. But that's why I'm not the salesperson.
Al ElliottThat's it. I'm just the sales and marketing guy. And so I'm always just like, oh, let's just, let's just expand our total addressable market just by sort of maybe about 200%. But RX-7 is currently in invite-only So if you are interested, then you just look at the show notes. You can send email, send an email to Leanne or myself, and we will assess your application and just see if it's suitable for you. Goodness, Leanne, that has been fantastic. And you know what? I absolutely love the news roundup. I want more of these where we have to try and guess, or I have to try and guess what the things mean.
Leanne ElliottOh, do you like the corp talk?
Al ElliottThe corp talk.
Leanne ElliottDo you know what? I didn't— I knew what— obviously I knew we were doing Bernard this week, but I usually just kind of look through my little, my little collection of things for, for the news roundup and just pick out the ones I feel like talking about. But I feel actually I've accidentally aligned them really quite well this week.
Al ElliottAbsolutely perfectly. Yeah, brilliant.
Leanne ElliottI didn't— I've only just now got the pep talk, Corp Talk connection.
Al ElliottWell, I think let's, let's pretend that this was all planned out. It was whiteboarded, and we—
Leanne ElliottBut then we stuck a pin in it and we circled back to it a couple of weeks later.
Al ElliottThat's enough. Say Goodbye, Liane.
Leanne ElliottGoodbye, Liane.
Al ElliottBye. See you next week.