Episode 52 · 17 August 2023 · 52:05
What We Learned from 120+ Expert Guests: 12 Months of Leadership Lessons
What We Learned from 120+ Expert Guests: 12 Months of Leadership Lessons
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First birthday celebration: 52 episodes and 100k downloads
Why we started the podcast: origin story
Champagne toast (and the espresso cups)
Clip 1 — Dr. Candice Schaefer: empathy in layoffs
Clip 2 — Rob Kalawowski: the 'am I an asshole?' moment
Clip 3 — Sally: the burnout episode
Clip 4 — Male tears and the ocean of uncried emotion
Clip 5 — Dr. JJ Peterson: who's the hero of your story?
Clip 6 & 7 — Stella: first founder story and what you can do with a collection of people
Clip 8 — The 4-day workweek with Joe O'Connor
Clip 9 — Neurodiversity: the recurring theme
Clip 10 — Kevin Dahlstrom: the way you do anything is the way you do everything
Clip 11 — EDI 101 for Leaders: positive discrimination
Clip 12 — Oliver Yonchev: teams in smaller cohorts
Clip 13 — Dr. Ryan Sherman: entrepreneurs and disruption
Show notes
52. What We Learned from 120+ Expert Guests: 12 Months of Leadership Lessons
Truth, Lies & Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) are popping the champagne. It's their one-year anniversary, and they're celebrating 52 episodes, nearly 100,000 downloads, and a year of unforgettable conversations.
In this special birthday episode, Al and Leanne crack open a bottle of Moët (served in espresso cups, obviously), look back on the journey from episode one to now, and share hand-picked clips from their favourite guests — from the very first interview they ever secured to the founder stories and leadership deep-dives that shaped the show.
Expect behind-the-scenes stories about recording in Airbnbs, the 30–40 hours a week that goes into making the show, and a whole lot of gratitude for the listeners who made it all possible. Here's to year one. Cheers.
🥂 A Year in Review: The Clips That Shaped the Show
The One That Started It All
The very first guest Al and Leanne ever secured on the show — Dr. Candice Schaefer — set the tone for everything that followed. Her clip on expressing empathy to employees facing job losses remains a masterclass in humane leadership.
The "Am I an Asshole?" Moment
Rob Kalawowski delivered a screeching moment of self-awareness that stopped Leanne in her tracks. His work on self-awareness and the beliefs we hold about ourselves has become a cornerstone of how the show thinks about leadership — and he's since done a TED Talk on exactly this.
The Burnout Episode
Sally's two-part episode on burnout was a pivotal point in the podcast's history — and it produced one of the most quoted lines of the year: "There is an ocean of uncried male tears sitting out there because we are not supposed to do that."
The Hero of Your Own Story
Dr. JJ Peterson on why your staff are the heroes of their own narratives — and why leaders who forget that are setting themselves up to fail. (Plus, his hot takes on why Hillary lost and Trump won are well worth going back for.)
The Founder Stories
Stella was the show's first founder feature, and her reflections on what you can do with a collection of people have stayed with the hosts ever since. The Founder Series has since become a beloved fixture of the show.
The 4-Day Workweek
Joe O'Connor led the entire global study on the 4-day workweek — and his episode remains one of the most practical, evidence-based conversations the show has ever had about changing how we work.
The Recurring Theme
Neurodiversity kept coming up across the year — from the dedicated episode to conversations that circled back to it organically. As Al and Leanne reflect, it's clearly a topic the world is ready to talk about properly.
The Way You Do Anything
Kevin Dahlstrom's quote — "The way you do anything is the way you do everything" — has become a personal mantra for both hosts, and it's easy to see why.
EDI 101 for Leaders
The positive discrimination clip from episode 45 sparked real debate — and it's a conversation the hosts are clearly still thinking about.
The Science of Disruption
Dr. Ryan Sherman, Chief Science Officer at Hurricane Assessment Systems, returned across multiple episodes — and his clip on why entrepreneurs are so good at disruption (and what that means for the rest of us) is a fitting close to the anniversary special.
🎙️ Behind the Scenes: The Reality of Making the Show
Al and Leanne get honest about what it actually takes to produce Truth, Lies & Work every week:
- 30–40 hours a week of combined effort — recording, editing, and producing
- Recording in Airbnbs (hence the espresso cups for champagne)
- From 400 downloads by episode 6 to nearly 100,000 by the end of year one
- The HubSpot creator program that helped get the show off the ground
- The decision around Christmas to level up and take the show seriously
💬 What's Next?
The hosts tease what's coming in year two — including more from the Founder Series, some exciting guests on the horizon, and a promise that the news roundup will be back soon. They're also more active on TikTok and YouTube now. (And yes, there's a very specific message for Mark Zuckerberg in there.)
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 hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Leanne ElliottThere's a will and a want and a joy in standing up and trying. And when it starts to work like Perks does and actually help people, it feels amazing. Hello 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, I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of people, create amazing workplace cultures, and celebrate our very first birthday.
Al ElliottI've got one too. Mine don't work.
Leanne ElliottOh no, is it broken? Oh, Peanut's making an appearance there.
Al ElliottI'll have a go. So yes, we are 52 episodes.
Leanne ElliottOh, I got a balloon.
Al ElliottYou did, bless you.
Leanne ElliottI'll be honest, the balloon looked a little bit bigger in the packet than it did in real life.
Al ElliottWhy don't you hold it closer to the camera, then it looks bigger.
Leanne ElliottGood idea.
Al ElliottAnyway, so it's our first birthday, 52 episodes. It's been, it's been emotional, Leanne, hasn't it?
Leanne ElliottIt's been, it's been a ride.
Al ElliottI think by episode 6, we'd done about 400 downloads in total. And now are we on for 100,000 downloads in total?
Leanne ElliottBy the end of the month, yeah.
Al ElliottBy the end of the month. So Um, that's just in one short year. And thank you so much for listening. If you're watching this on YouTube, thank you for being one of the very first people to watch it on YouTube. As we've said all along, we are— what, we've only just started this 4 weeks ago, and we do get excited every time we get one new view. We get excited. So if that's you and you've watched it, then thank you very much. You'll be a source of excitement later on.
Leanne ElliottYes, you will. Do you think we should spend— I guess we should explain what we're going to do this episode, and then maybe should we start by kind of a little A little history of the podcast?
Al ElliottYeah, yeah. So the— this episode we decided we would just look back on the last 52 episodes and pick out some of our favorite quotes and clips from some of our guests. If you're watching on YouTube, we don't always have all of the videos of the guests because we only started the video YouTube. So we'll do our best to entertain you during those clips we don't have the, uh, the video for. But, um, it's been a tough job because there's so many clips that we just wanted to— we want to include everyone.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it was a really, really difficult choice to the point where I ended up going back a little bit further because I figured like recent, recent people, they'll know how much we love them. We would have picked them up recently. So I've kind of tried to dig back into the archives a little bit for mine.
Al ElliottSo instead of the news roundup, which, um, we will pause again for this week, but don't worry, it's back soon. I promise, I promise, I promise. Um, so should we just do the little history, potted history of the podcast, Lee?
Leanne ElliottYeah, I think so. One of the questions I often get asked the most is, why did you start the podcast? So why don't you answer that one, Al? Why did we?
Al ElliottBecause you wanted to.
Leanne ElliottNo, we— I don't think I did.
Al ElliottWe had a podcast, a travel podcast. We still have it, although it's a little bit on pause at the moment because this takes a lot of our time. But we had a travel podcast, got up to about 150 episodes, started to get some real traction, and we couldn't believe that people were actually reaching out and saying, hello, we listen to your podcast. And we got really comfortable with the medium. We've been doing it for about 3 years, so we got really comfortable with it. And so when Leanne and I were talking, we're like, okay, right, we're starting the business, the consultancy Oblong. And we're like, can we do— should we do blogging? Should we do advertising? Should we do YouTube videos? And we both said, hang on, we're really good at podcasting. Well, we think we're really good at podcasting. You be the judge. Um, and, um, and that's how it started, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottIt is how it started, yeah. So then, so this would have been I think we actually recorded maybe July last year but released in August. Um, and then October came. Well, actually before that, it was over the summer, so we probably had maybe 3 or 4 episodes down, and then you saw the HubSpot thing.
Al ElliottYeah, so HubSpot were offering, uh, basically they got this creator program where if you were a nascent— or not even necessarily nascent podcaster, just established podcaster— you could join, or you could apply to join, and they'll give you some investment In return for some advertising, which obviously if you've listened to any of the podcasts, you'll know that we do a little bit of advertising for HubSpot. And so I just one night didn't tell Leanne, one night just applied for it, filled in the application form, thought nothing's going to happen. And then, and then we got through to round 1, didn't we? Which you were a bit shocked about because you're like, what the hell is this?
Leanne ElliottI was, I didn't really understand. I remember we were in Split and you're kind of like, we've got this interview with HubSpot. tonight. And I was like, what's it for again? They're like, oh, someone's doing the podcast, like they might sponsor us or we can join the network or something, like we'll just talk to them. I said, okay, very chilled, didn't do any preparation. Marie, if you're listening, sorry. She's our community manager over at Thought Bubble. Didn't do any preparation, showed up like, hey, and then very quickly understood the scale of the opportunity. That we, uh, we had on the table. And at that point, it's almost like we were like, hey, and then all of a sudden you and me like— Polished.
Al ElliottJust moved our gin and tonic slightly out of, out of focus from the camera.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think it was maybe by Christmas that we realized if we were gonna make this work, we needed to maybe level up our effort levels a little bit. And so it just kind of feels like since Christmas, it's really been the focus of what we do.
Al ElliottIt really has. Probably takes us about combined about 30 to 40 hours a week to put these together because we're obviously interviewing, we're going through the transcripts, we're planning. Leanne tends to do most of the planning of the episodes because she reads through all the transcripts, pulls out clips, and then I do the editing, which is again about another 20 hours. So it is a fair amount of work, but the feedback we're getting is great. And if you're enjoying it, just let us know somehow. We're on Instagram, Truth, Lies, Work. We're on LinkedIn, all over that MF. There's email at the bottom of all the show notes. Just let us know. Let us know you're enjoying it because it's odd. We're recording now in a, in an apartment in Sicily and, and we're just, you know, it's a one-way medium. It's weird. I'm looking at the back of my iPhone camera. You're doing the same. We don't get any feedback. In fact, I've just seen a mosquito as well, just flying around. So we may, we may have to destroy that shortly. But Anyway, so before we get onto the clips, do you fancy a little bubbly?
Leanne ElliottI do. Did someone say bubbles?
Al ElliottSo we have this lovely bottle of champagne from our lovely friends, uh, Andrew and Fanny over at Carbon Poditive, um, which, uh, we were one of the very first people to sign up for. That means our podcast is completely carbon positive. Fantastic place. So if you do have a podcast or you know someone who's got a podcast, go to carbonpoditive.com and we'll put a link in the show notes.
Leanne ElliottSo yes, thank you to Andrew and Fanny. We love you guys. Thank you for supporting us so much over the past 12 months. Thank you for the champers. I'll lift that baby up a little bit so the good people can see it.
Al ElliottMoët, very fancy. Much too fancy for us. I'd love to be able to pop this and make a really big noise, but Our dog is a bit frightened of noises, so I'm just gonna do a little bit of a— there we go. There we go. And because—
Leanne ElliottAn espresso cup?
Al ElliottBecause we're in Airbnb, we don't have champagne flutes, so we've— we thought let's be Sicilian and drink out of an espresso cup. So, uh, there you go, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottOh, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
Al ElliottWe're breaking the fourth wall here by, uh, by passing it to you. So now you can see exactly how our studio is set up. So our tiny little espresso cups of— oh, I've just spilt it.
Leanne ElliottOh no, don't waste it.
Al ElliottSo cheers, happy birthday.
Leanne ElliottCheers, happy birthday, Al. Thank you to everyone who has listened and downloaded this year.
Al ElliottThank you. You're such an idiot. I was expecting you to come back with little party hats. I thought that's what you— I tried.
Leanne ElliottI tried to find party hats and none— there were none to be had.
Al ElliottNo.
Leanne ElliottUm, I was, I was very pleased I managed to get this little one balloon.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottUm, which isn't very large.
Al ElliottUm, but it's good. It's good. Anyway, so should we get on to the clips then? So do you wanna kick things off with your— one of your first favourite clips? Yes.
Leanne ElliottMy first clip is from Uh, the very first guest that we secured on Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture. And this was back in November when we were doing our The Truth About Twitter episodes, and we managed to get Dr. Candice Schaefer, who is not only a board-certified clinical psychologist, she was the former— what was the employee title— head of employee well-being, I think, at Twitter. So I was very excited to get Candace on the show. I felt very relieved to have another psychology person explain everything that was going on. I think I actually mentioned that on the episode as well. And I think for me, the Twitter episode, I remember listening back to that, and it was actually the eve of my birthday. Do you remember?
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottThe 14th of November. And you'd been editing until maybe like half past 10. And then we sat outside, 'cause it was split in Croatia, so it's still warm in November. It's delightful. Then we sat outside on our terrace, And you played it back and I was like, wow, we've been podcasting for 4 years and this is the first time that I feel like a podcaster.
Al ElliottYep. Well, let's go and listen to Dr. Candice Schaefer.
Leanne ElliottYou express that empathy to your, your employees who may be suffering job losses. Just because you're letting them go doesn't mean you can't treat them like a human being. And I think that's the biggest thing that I have noticed from not just layoffs with Twitter, but with a lot of different companies over the past couple of years. is you're really taking the human dignity out of it by treating all of these people like they're a number or just, you know, a being that works for you rather than an actual person who has a family or doesn't, you know, have enough savings left in their bank account to make sure that they're going to get through to whatever the next step is. And so being considerate and being empathetic is really about giving your employees the benefit of the doubt that they will understand, but you also work with them to make sure that they have enough time so that they can put everything that they need to do, um, to get their life in order so that their world doesn't come crashing down completely. What I loved about Dr. DeCandice and the other guests as well that we had on that episode was really the headline was it's not about a business having to make the decision to make redundancies, but how that that decision is executed can be done in a more empathetic and human way. So yeah, I think it was just a nice— I think it was a nice episode to kind of show that we can get different from people from different backgrounds, different experiences to come together and bring their own perspectives to people and culture in still a very people-centred way.
Al ElliottAnd my first favourite clip is from Rob Kalawowski, who is incredible. He's got the Leadership Launchpad product. He's got the Leadership Launchpad podcast, and the episode he was in was How Not to Be an Asshole Boss. So in fact, because he's Canadian, it was asshole. So here's Rob talking about being an asshole boss. Actually, one time when I was the polo coach, I was putting the guys through really hard workout, and one of the guys on my team got up and got out of the pool during the swim set and went over to his bag. And I was walking down the pool deck and I was thinking of all the things I was going to yell at him for And then he pulled a diabetes needle out of his bag. He was gonna— he was diabetic and he needed an insulin shot.
Leanne ElliottAnd that was like a screeching moment for me going, you know what, I'm an asshole even though I'm not trying to be.
Al ElliottAnd those moments, we've all had them.
Leanne ElliottRight. But does that mean that I'm doomed to this Rob's an asshole forever and I cannot change and I cannot be? No, it just means that now I have to do the work on my mindset.
Al ElliottWhat are the beliefs about me?
Leanne ElliottHow do I show up as a leader?
Al ElliottTurn on the lights of self-awareness.
Leanne ElliottTurn on the lights of empathy and compassion. And now I can start to look at what behaviors do I make that are impacting other people in these negative ways.
Al ElliottSo there was Rob. Rob recently did a TED Talk based around exactly this, so we'll leave a link to that in the show notes. Leah, you're next.
Leanne ElliottSo my next clip is from another what I felt was a pivotal point in the history of the podcast. So this is going back to January of this year, January 2023, and it was our episodes on burnout. I could have picked clips, so many clips from these episodes, it was really, really hard to choose one. Kate, Will, and Sally were just phenomenal guests, and I felt this was the first time time that we started to maybe have a conversation that people were really, really engaging in, both in terms of our numbers on the podcast but also in terms of our socials as well. I have picked this clip from Sally because we have quoted it a number of times on the podcast. I think maybe even once last week. So yeah, here's Sally talking about burnout and the role that organizations have to play in its prevention. It's one that really sort of makes me a little bit incensed because I really find it quite cruel to some extent that there is this constant focus on the individual should be more resilient. We are offering the individual more meditation apps and yoga classes. And I say this as a qualified yoga and meditation teacher, that will not prevent burnout. I like to use the metaphor of if we have, for example, a toxic lake and this the fish are all getting sick. We don't look at each individual fish and try to make it better and heal it. We look at the water quality and we detoxify the water and we improve the quality of the lake so that the fish become healthy. And I think that's how we need to frame burnout as well, that if you have a healthy, high-functioning individual in a toxic environment, eventually that chronic workplace stress will will wear them down. And, and it doesn't matter how many things they put into place necessarily when they're in that environment. It's just, it really is often just a matter of time before burnout occurs.
Al ElliottSo that was Sally from episode 20 and 21. My, I'm continuing the theme with burnout because episode 22 was called The Untold Heartbreak of Male Leaders. It was with the incredible Jim Young. It was very first episode where it was just me. So Leanne introduced us and it was just a conversation between me and Jim and it was just amazing. And you'll hear the quote in a second that just for me is one of the quotes of 2023.
Leanne ElliottYeah, there is an ocean of uncried male tears sitting out there because we are not supposed to do that. And, you know, your original question, is there a difference between male and female burnout? Symptomatically, no, feels the same. How do we get into it? I think there are differences there. And that's one of them is, as men, we're taught to hold all those emotions inside. And that is too much to bear. That's— we just can't. We can't be healthy if we only have 2 emotions, happy and mad.
Al ElliottThere's an ocean of uncried male tears. What a quote. The whole episode was amazing. It was just such an honest conversation with someone who has burnt out. He talked about lying on the carpet sobbing, unable to stop. We just sometimes, us men, don't hear that enough. We hear the likes of Dr. Jordan Peterson, Grant Cardone, that weird guy over in, um, in Romania, I forget his name, um, who, who are just like, men, yeah, we do this, we don't do that. It's just, it's just nice to hear someone say, do you know what, sometimes you just Just inconsolably sad. That's put a bit of a down on it, but I don't mean it to, because you should definitely go back and listen to that episode, episode 23.
Leanne ElliottIt was a really awesome episode, and I think actually remains our only linear interview we've ever featured on the podcast. I think what was really important about that episode is it raised a lot of issues that often are very difficult for men to raise in a way that isn't confrontational, seen as anti-feminist, or distracting the conversation from something else that's very important. And I think we, you know, we came to the conclusion these things are not mutually exclusive. You know, mental health is a, is a human issue. And I think as well, you know, the way that Jim explains it and expresses himself and his experiences and that of other people he's worked with, it breeds empathy. And I think that is really the key to all of this. We followed up that episode a few weeks later with a sibling episode on Women's Health: A Guide for Male Leaders. I have picked a clip from Dr. Claire Ashley. All of the women on that episode were phenomenal. Hannah and Kelly, incredible. The reason that I've picked Dr. Claire is that I think she has a similar approach to Jim in that she's able to explain explain things from a point of knowledge and empathy and honesty and raise a really important point in, in terms of the ongoing inequity that women experience, which can sometimes be muted in the social media conversations that are currently happening. So here is Dr. Claire Ashley discussing the gender health gap. When it comes to medical education, we, you know, we're very biased towards the male perspective. I think traditionally, if you look at how scientific studies are conducted, Largely, I think off the top of my head, it's about 80% of scientific trials are conducted on men and male bodies. Women are really largely excluded from the scientific process. And of course, when it comes to practicing medicine, we have to be evidence-based. But if we're basing our practice off of, of, of, you know, trials that have been done purely on men and male bodies, then we're missing data to do with I hope for half, you know, half the population. We went on to discuss in that episode how some examples, and I think the one that stands out for me was around the, um, the crash test dummies in cars. Until very, very, very recently, like in the last 6 to 12 months, these tests have actually been done using crash dummies that are based on female anatomy. So I think it just goes to show that as much as it feels we've come so far, there are still inequities and gaps that we need to address. So thank you very much to Dr. Clare and of course our other panelists, Hannah and Dr. Kelly, for helping us do that.
Al ElliottSo switching gears slightly, my next clip is from Dr. JJ Peterson, who, if you've ever heard of a book called StoryBrand, well, he's the co-author, the co-host of the, of the associated podcast, and just such a cool, cool guy. He was in the middle of a seminar, teaching a seminar in Vegas, I think, took an hour out to talk to me over, over Zoom. And he's on the network as well. But I mean, they're super superstars. So he was just so nice to go, yeah, I don't know who you are. Yeah, you've probably only got a few hundred followers, which at that time we probably didn't have that many. But he still said, yep, I'll take the time out to talk to you. One of the things that I love about this is if you are a leader, it's so difficult, or a business owner, it's so difficult to not make the story for everyone about you and about the business. He talks about turning it on its head. And making them the hero of the story.
Leanne ElliottIf you're trying to communicate to your staff, they are the hero of their own story. You are not the hero of their story. So you don't need to tell your story to them. You actually need to tell their story to them. You need to invite them into the story that they get to be a hero. So you need to clearly communicate what it is that they want. You need to be able to articulate what problems they're experiencing, how you can help them overcome that, how you— what's the plan for them to do that? What are they supposed to do next? And then cast a vision for success and failure. That right there is a very high level of how you take— like, if I'm saying to anybody, hey, we need to hit our 4th quarter goals or we're not going to be a $100 million company this year. That's where a lot of leaders come in and say, like, all right, guys, we need to get going because we need to hit $100 million. We're going to be a $100 million company. How at all does that contribute to their survival and thriving? How, what, how does that overcome a problem for them? Have you given them a clear plan to do it? Have you cast a vision for what life is like if they do? Do they know what action they're supposed to take to get there? Or are you just going, rah-rah, everybody, we need to hit $100 million? We need to not position ourselves as the hero of our story. We need to position ourselves as the guide in the story. We are the guide and the people that we're speaking to are the hero. What does it look like to be the guide? A guide offers empathy to the hero's story. So offers empathy to say, I understand the problems you're experiencing, but also authority. I have the ability to help you overcome those problems. Okay, that's kind of how you position yourself as a guide. The only time you ever should talk about yourself is with empathy and authority.
Al ElliottIf you want to hear Why he thinks that Hillary Clinton lost the election and that Donald Trump won it, go back to episode 39. Some fantastic stories in there.
Leanne ElliottIt really was an awesome episode, also featuring Orly, who brings a really interesting perspective on branding as well. Definitely check that out, along with the thousands of other people that have. That is actually our number 1 episode over the last 12 months.
Al ElliottYeah, so thank you so much.
Leanne ElliottSo from one inspiring leader to another, my next clip comes from our very first founder story with the formidable Stella Smith from Perks. The more I learn about Stella, both in the media and from her team, the conversations I've had with members of her team, she is just the type of entrepreneur, the type of leader that I want in my life. And I think my, my favourite thing about Stella is that she completely understands that we can be purpose-led, we can make the world a better place, we can prioritise the health and wellbeing of our employees, and we can still make money. Part of me in Perks has changed, I think, in the last 3 years, which is, you know, we get up in the morning and I'm looking at, you know, can I make this thing profitable so it's sustainable forever? You know, what's my gross How long are my sales cycle? All the good stuff that you would do as a leader in a business that's growing. But at the same time, I've got— I think I can put doctors into areas in South Africa that have no affordable healthcare for sub a pound this year. And I think I can make a difference on— and I think my team can make a difference to that statement. And it's very odd. as a character with my background that's kind of, you know, fought my way up to then find yourself in a position where you actually think you can do something that's, you know, in real life we have 13,000 customers that can access a doctor and a counsellor today, right now, this second, because Perks exists. And that's a different driver. And I've never, you know, I've always hopefully done the right thing by people, but I've never had that. It would be remiss for us not to move forward with it. That's how I feel about it now. And I think that's a—
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottThat's an interesting place to sit as a human being.
Al ElliottSo my next clip is Stella again. She had so much to say. She was such an interesting lady, and she was just so down to earth and no ego about her. Um, and I think what I love about this clip is she's— she seems genuinely wondrous at the world and at people, um, and how, how cool people are. And actually Well, if you listen to the happiness episode from last week, then you'll know that actually the way that— because she makes other people happy, she's happy herself. So here's Stella again.
Leanne ElliottThe biggest thing is, isn't it amazing what you can do with a collection of people? And I say this to my team. I was like, we created a noun. It's a noun. And you know what? It was 7 people sitting on some laptops in their spare rooms or home offices for those that were lucky enough to have them. And Dan is part of that story. You know, how lucky are we to have— you know, I had Ash in my team who's in charge of our SEO sit down with the ex-MD of Google UK and Ireland to get SEO tips. We've got a beautiful blend of people who know nothing but have the right attitude, willing to roll their sleeves up, and some amazing experienced intellect characters that surround Perks. And You know, the more people that can attach themselves to our mission, there is, even if it's just saying Perks is cool, have a look at it so that somebody knows it's there. That's enough.
Al ElliottI don't know.
Leanne ElliottI'm every day bewildered and humbled by what's happened on our story. And I think if I could gift that little bit of magical feeling that we feel every morning to every little business that's standing there trying in a backdrop of economic uncertainty and difficulty and strife and troubles and omnicrisis, um, I would give that little bit of magic, which is there's a, there's a will and a want and a joy in standing up and trying. And when it starts to work like Perks does and you actually help people, it feels amazing. I love that so much. There are not enough business leaders out there that prioritize being nice, that prioritize kindness. I also love as well the lessons we learned from Stella in terms of engaging Gen Z, which seems to be the, the elusive generation Allegedly. We've talked a lot about generations on the podcast, which brings me nicely to my next clip, which was our generation panel episode. Again, there are so many great clips here. I really— there's a big part of me that really wanted to showcase our Gen Z representative there, Izzy, who is just a phenomenal young person and a psychology superstar in the making. She is gonna make me— she's just gonna— Yeah. I'll be privileged to even like have had a conversation with her in 10 years' time. Like, I won't be on her radar. It's not true, actually I will because she's lovely. But I really wanted to include Izzy. But at the same time, I think my biggest, I guess, learning point and reflection point from the episode was baby boomers and how perhaps they are misunderstood, how they are underappreciated, underrepresented, and really that we can still continue to learn a lot from this pioneering generation, as our guest Carrie Cardinale explains. Boomers have kind of become a generational scapegoat for everything that's going wrong on the planet. And, and that's not necessarily the case. You know, they, they were the largest generation in the United States, but they've now been eclipsed by millennials. But nonetheless, I do believe it was a huge generation that emerged after World War II that broke a lot of molds as they went through each generation. So the boomers were in many ways pioneers that they took an era of great predictability coming out of the 1950s and the post-war when everyone just wanted things to be quiet and predictable and simple. So you saw the rise of suburban households and moms being at home and cookies after school, and there was this need for things to be consistent. And yet this generation of the boomers were— became the hippies and the rock and rollers and playing with drugs and jumping out of those predictable career paths. And all along the way, finding a desire to do things different in a different way. And not everything was reckless that, you know, the boomers are known for, you know, making traveling interesting and passing seatbelt laws at the same time. They were really the generation that pioneered activism. It took sort of the activism of the 1920s, the women's right to vote, and took it to another level of activism, and as well as volunteerism, the creation of the Peace Corps. So it was a generation that continues to this day to be highly innovative. There's more entrepreneurs, which I can speak a bit more about later when it comes to business, and, and some of the highest philanthropic giving coming from this generation. So I do think they're a bit misunderstood. And, and, you know, as you had said, Claire, There was sort of a flattening of the generations, but then there was also this, okay, boomer, okay, millennial. There's still these levels of, of not fully understanding the different generations. And, you know, my rule of thumb is that anyone who's 15 years older than you feels old. So, you know, we, we just generationally struggle sometimes to fully embrace someone who is 15 years younger or older than we are. And yet there's so much richness to learn. I think of all the episodes we're gonna mention today, that is definitely one to check out if you haven't listened. Again, it's very different from other formats that we've done. We actually had Ashley and Carrie and Claire on the same call together, and then we inserted Izzy afterwards. Time differences, we'll explain on the episode. So it is more of a, a live discussion, which was really interesting in all All 4 of them had incredible viewpoints. So yeah, definitely worth checking that out.
Al ElliottSo that was episode 35, the generational panel. On to episode 36, which is all about the 4-day workweek. So we had Joe O'Connor along with a couple of other amazing guests talking about the 4-day workweek. Joe is such an interesting guy because he's done it. He's kind of like a mixture between academic and entrepreneur in that He's very entrepreneurial thinking, but also he knows how to manage data, etc., etc. So let's go and hear from Joe.
Leanne ElliottSo it is a challenge, and it does mean that if you're a law firm or a marketing agency or an accounting practice that bills by the hour, that is an additional complication that you need to deal with in order to make this work. But you can make it work. And businesses in those sectors who, you know, bill by the hour have made it work. And the way that they've done it For the most part is either number one, they have found enough efficiencies in their non-billable time or in their non-billable overheads that they've been able to maintain the level of billable hours and the level of client time that they have at in and around the same level, or they have changed the way they bill. So they've either partly or wholly moved to fixed fee, value-based, or project-based billing. And which has obviously meant that they're effectively decoupling the direct relationship between time and, and revenue. And often the solution might lie somewhere in between. We've seen law firms and we've seen marketing agencies who have achieved this through some combination of those 2 things.
Al ElliottWhat I really loved was the whole lesson from Joe was even though he is— he and everyone else, Banks and Ferry on that podcast, were really fanatical about the 4-day workweek, Joe was saying, look, Don't try— don't assume that you've got a bad workplace, change to the 4-day workweek, and everything's gonna be fine. That's so refreshing to hear that.
Leanne ElliottIt really is. If you haven't heard of Joe O'Connor, he actually was the person who led the entire global study pilot into the 4-day workweek. He truly is the thought leader in this space. What I really liked about it as well is it's kind of like a 4-day workweek will be a fad if we just go, let's try it, and that's the only change we make. What Joe is saying there is it's a full-fledged transformation. Organizational operational transformation that is required to make the 4-day workweek work. And I think that's true for so many other people and culture interventions as well. Without that, that being embraced by the organization and within, embedded within its ways of working, it will just be a fad.
Al ElliottBrilliant.
Leanne ElliottSo on Truth and Lies, from very early on, Al and I always said we wanted to talk about things that were trending, things that were popular in the media, and debunk some of the truth and lies, or lies and truth. We We even prove it behind each one of these trends. I think quiet quitting was maybe our very first one, and that was actually the episode that got the attention of HubSpot. Thank you very much, quiet quitting. Thank you, Gen Zed, once again. Honestly, you're gonna keep me in a job. I love you guys. So yeah, another trend that we saw quite a lot of media attention over the past few months has been neurodiversity, and specifically the increase in ADHD diagnoses. We brought you our Neurodiversity 101 episode just a few weeks ago, ago. My guests that I have picked out from that panel, and again, all 3 were incredible and brought very different perspectives. If you are a parent, I'm sure you really valued what Jan had to say on that. And if you are an adult with ADHD, I'm sure Kristen was your, and is now your new hero. For me, the hero was Dr. Nancy Doyle. I have followed Nancy's work for a number of years and Her work, the work of Genius Within, it is game-changing. And I'm so pleased to see both Nancy and the organization really starting to hit mainstream conversations now. What I love most about Nancy is she explains things so simply, so beautifully, and a way that we can all understand. We have this concept in neurodiversity of the spiky profile. So if you think about people's abilities, most people have an IQ of 100. And most people— an IQ isn't one thing. It's made up of verbal skills, visual skills, how quickly you process information, how well your memory works and your attention. And so you've got these kind of different areas. And most people, when you plot their abilities on a, on a graph, um, all of the areas will be more or less 100. They'll be somewhere between 85 and 115. And 67% of the human population will score between 85 and 115 for all areas of IQ. And then you've got your neurodivergence. And what we will do is have some of our scores at 140, but then another thing will be sort of down at 75. So we've got these big spikes between our strengths and weaknesses. And what we've got into is the autistic spike, which is the people that are really, really good at fine detail processing. And we've kind of maxed out on that. But my neurodiversity strength, uh, the one that I have the highest IQ point, is visual spatial reasoning. It's abstract reasoning, which makes me a good problem solver. I see gaps, I see risks, I see problems, and I see gaps. Way before anybody else does. And this is even true in my company. You know, I'm going, oh, I suppose it's a bit problematic. I'm a bit worried about that number there. I think that's gonna be an issue. And then 3 months later, it turns into an issue and everyone goes, oh, why didn't we listen to Nancy 3 months ago?
Al ElliottSo that was episode 41, Neurodiversity. So, so many great guests on that. It's, it's funny when you look back at these, you go, oh yeah, we had this person. Oh yeah, they said this. And yeah, it is, it, there's Phenomenal amount. We have like at least 50 hours of content now, Leanne, of like audio content. That's, that's insane, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottI know. We need to look into some kind of like, I don't know, group or something, because like you say, we have so much content that hasn't even been published on the podcast from our guests. So, so yeah, maybe some bonus, bonus things coming your way soon. Did you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— yeah, yeah, and the UK's number marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work, and we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode. And 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 Seamless, seamless.
Al ElliottTell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages 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 fascinating topic. It's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. So my next choice is Kevin Dahlstrom. He was such an interesting guy. Um, it's another founder story. He founded a company called Swell, which is a fintech. I think I've read that he's now sold it. He'd only run it for about sort of 9, 12 months and already sold it or merged it or something. He's done something with it which is quite significant. One of the things I met him on Twitter. Well, I didn't meet him as much as you meet people on Twitter. I saw him on Twitter, connected with him, and said, look, you've gotta get you on the, on the podcast around a story which I won't spoil. It's in episode 44 if you wanna go and listen. But the one thing that I loved about what he said was this.
Leanne ElliottThat the way you do anything is the way you do everything is the famous quote from an American poet that I really like named Annie Dillard.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd, you know, I— there's lots of ways you can go with that quote. Sorry to kind of go on a tangent here, but, but, you know, even when it comes to hiring, when I interview people, I will often ask more questions about their personal life than their work history because of this idea that the way you do anything is the way you do everything. It's often more telling to understand how someone thinks about their personal life because we're not, you know, We don't become one person in our personal life and then a completely different person at work. It all works together. We are who we are. And so, I think there's a lot of ways— that's a great pearl of wisdom. There's a lot of ways to apply it in business.
Al ElliottSo, like he says, the way you do something is the way you do anything. I have been saying this for quite a while. What never clicked though was this idea that if you go and look at someone's interests on this, they send their resume or CV in, you look at their interests. and find out how they treat their interests and how committed they are to their interests, that tells you a bit more about how might— how they might be committed to work, which I thought was a really smart way of thinking.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I've really enjoyed our Founder Series, and we have some really cool people coming up as well, so look out for those. We have mentioned our 4-Day Workweek 101. We have mentioned our Neurodiversity 101. We had another 101 episode, and that was Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. What a topic. We touched on it very lightly, and I'm sure you'll dive in again. 2 incredible guests. Sonia Thompson, you know, one of our most favorite people in the world and on the network. Brilliant show, Inclusion and Marketing. I haven't chosen Sonia just because we, we love Sonia. We're always, we're always bigging up Sonia. I'm sure you listen to Sonia's show as well. I wanted to share a clip from Catherine Garrard, our incredible expert. and the author of Conscious Inclusion. Again, I think Katherine just has a way of explaining things that make it so accessible, particularly for owner-led businesses. So, there's a really important distinction here between positive discrimination and positive action. So, positive discrimination is illegal. Don't do it. So, you can't hire somebody purely for a diversity characteristic, right? It's, it's unfair. It's not right. The person doesn't want that job anyway. You're not going to be setting them up for success. People are going to say horrible things about you only got hired because you're diverse and all the rest of it. So, so don't do that. What positive action is, is saying, I recognize in my team or my department, we've got lots of people from this group. So we've got a high degree of overrepresentation. Actually, over the next kind of, you know, 6 to 12 months of hiring, we want to do more to attract more people from this demographic group.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo it's all about before the recruitment process. So what that might look like is building relationships with local community groups or having a partnership with somebody who has a more diverse pool of people in their network than you do, you know, because that is something deliberate and intentional that they have built. And engaging with people from those populations to share more about your organisations and the kind of jobs that you have so that they look at your organisation as somewhere that they would consider working, because Perhaps they haven't done before, because perhaps what they've seen or heard or the perception that they have has been, I wouldn't be welcome in your organisation. So positive action is everything beforehand that says, we recognise we would like to build more inclusive teams. We don't have much talent with these demographics, but we absolutely want to do better. Can we come and spend time getting to know you and telling you about our organisation and, you know, sharing what we do and see if it's something you would be interested in? Yeah. At the point when you then advertise the role, the role needs to be open to everybody. If you've done the positive action bit right, you're going to get much greater mix of applicants applying through your usual routes and through these new routes that you've been really deliberate about creating. And then everybody goes through the process of working out who, who may get the job or not. And where I've seen that work really well, it works It works really well. So positive action is okay, right? But it's not about, I'm only going to interview women, or I'm only going to interview Black people, or I'm only going to interview people with disabilities. It's about everything before that that makes your organization and the jobs that you have more attractive to the people that you haven't previously been reaching.
Al ElliottSo that was episode 45, EDI 101 for Leaders.
Leanne ElliottSo I picked that clip on positive discrimination because Al and I, believe it or not, we do actually do some research into what people want to hear. And one of the questions that we actually had was around EDI and exactly this: where is the line between affirmative action and positive discrimination? So that's why I wanted to include that. If you do have questions as a listener, if there is a topic you want us to cover, get in touch. We will.
Al ElliottSo my last clip is from Oliver Yonchev, episode 38. 38, I think. Yep, episode 38. Um, if you've not heard of Oliver, then you've definitely heard of his business partner, which is Stephen Bartlett, who's got a web— who's got a podcast called Diary of a CEO. He also co-runs the agency Flight Story with Oliver. And Oliver was just so generous with his time, his thoughts, um, his stories. What I loved in this clip was he telling the story about Amazon.
Leanne ElliottThey fundamentally believe that teams work better in smaller cohorts. where you have influence. So they have the pizza box rule where teams should be able to share 2 pizzas, right? Once a team gets bigger than that, it becomes ineffective. So structurally, that changes how you think about hiring and depth of team and how companies interoperate and how teams work together when you have that kind of philosophy. The other is they ban PowerPoints. So they reverse engineer a report. So what do we want the outcome to be? Let's reverse engineer what the post-project report, and that's the business case you submit to get funding. So there's like philosophies that exist in an organization like Amazon that started very early, were very intentional, and that's now shaped how and undoubtedly fueled a lot of their success. So I won't say they're a shining example of what we a typical example of great culture, but they're certainly very intentional and, and set systems around what they believe to be a high-performing culture.
Al ElliottSo that's from episode 38, uh, definitely well worth listening to. Such an engaging guy, such a great guest. Leah, what's your final choice?
Leanne ElliottMy final choice is Dr. Ryan Sherman, Chief Science Officer at Hurrican Assessment Systems. I I couldn't quite believe, my teeny tiny little psychology mind was blown when not only did Hogan Assessments engage on one of our LinkedIn posts, because we did an episode with Sandy McKenzie way back when around how not to be a psychopath as a leader, also a really great episode. I just didn't wanna give Elon Musk any more airtime, to be honest. But yeah, blew my mind that Hogan commented on our post. I remember texting Sandy completely freaking out about it. Could not then believe that Ryan agreed to be on the podcast. Blown away again when I think we were on— I think we were on a call for about 2 hours, and he has since featured in maybe 3 or 4 episodes on Truth and Lies. He is so knowledgeable, so kind, so focused on building awesome workplace cultures that are fair, free of discrimination, yet are continuing to evolve with the demands of the workplace today. Ryan, I consider you a friend of the show. One day I hope you'll be a friend of mine. I am sharing this clip because for me, I think it was one of the things that I enjoyed listening to the most. I especially enjoyed watching Al's face when he listened back. Yeah, so we have data on hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs. Gosh, we're probably getting into thousands now of entrepreneurs who have taken our assessments at Hogan. There is actually a really clear profile that we see with entrepreneurs. It's just quite amazing. Like, every time we collect a new entrepreneur sample, like, I can just plot out what that profile is going to look like because they just all— it just always comes back the same. And a few things that we see. One is that they tend to score really high on a scale that we call excitable, and excitable is about sort of volatility, being really feeling emotionally attached to lots of things and being willing to change and flex and And having a lot of energy towards projects. That's what we see with a lot of entrepreneurs. Makes a lot of sense. They're really flexible about change. What they want to do is go, no, this isn't working.
Al ElliottGet rid of it. Stop. Do something else. Change something new.
Leanne ElliottSo entrepreneurs are really good at disruption. Part of it's because of excitable. They're also very high imaginative. They tend to be creative. They tend to think in new ways. They tend to score pretty high on ambition. They tend to score pretty high on what we call inquisitive, which again is about Yeah. About creativity. So basically what we see with entrepreneurs is they see problems, right? They see a lot of problems. They want to fix those problems, right? And they're really committed to doing whatever it takes to fix those. And they are happy to break down current systems, to blow everything up, to restart, to fix that particular problem. And that's what makes them so great at what they do is that they can say, okay, this is bad. Let's get rid of that. Let's change it. They can disrupt whatever's going on. The problem is when you start running a really successful business, right? If you're an entrepreneur, you started this business, it starts to grow, it starts to become successful because you did solve some problem that was really critical that people needed solved. All you're looking for is more problems to solve. And many times that's not what your business needs. Your business doesn't need more change. What it needs now is stability. It needs someone to sort of steady the ship, right? You've done all the disrupting and you've done all the changing, and now it needs someone who can really fine-tune and get it on that long-term progression.
Al ElliottSo Ryan first appeared in episode 26, Personality and Family Business, um, and then, as like Leanne says, he's popped up in multiple episodes just because he's always got something cool to say and something good and clever to say. Uh, if you are interested in Ryan, then go and check out his podcast, The Science of Personality. Um, he's just such a genuine— like, we've said this about all our guests, but he's so genuine Generous with his time and knowledge and is well worth a listen.
Leanne ElliottHe is. I think they just released an episode called The Psychology of Patience this week.
Al ElliottInteresting.
Leanne ElliottYeah, very interesting.
Al ElliottPatience as in hospital people or as in—
Leanne ElliottNo, the practice of patience. One being patient.
Al ElliottGot it.
Leanne ElliottYes. Oh, it's just such good memories, Al, isn't it? It's— there are so many people that I, I wanted to feature. I guess special mentions would definitely go to, uh, Rita and Bonnie and Paula from our Toxic Workplace episode. Possibly Possibly our longest and most comprehensive episode ever. Also one of our highest performing. And I think as well, just a big thank you to our friends from HubSpot and the people we've had on the show from across the network, especially Ashley and Sarah. There are so many people, and Sonia, of course. Thank you so much. Yeah, we love being in your company.
Al ElliottOkay, so we hope you've enjoyed that as much as we have. I hope that it's gonna bring back a few memories if you've listened to it. But more importantly, if you if you do like what you hear, then check the show notes out because we will mention every clip. We'll number them. Well, I won't. Leanne will number them, and we'll also link to the relevant episodes so you can listen to the whole thing. Always looking for feedback. So if you've got any thoughts, anyone who was your particular favorite, then let us know on LinkedIn or Instagram or TikTok. We on TikTok?
Leanne ElliottWe are on the TikTok. Yeah, we're actually a bit more active on the TikTok now as well. We've got a YouTube podcast, so, um, go and check it out. Yeah, you know what, we're actually getting quite a bit of traction on the Tok.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottMore so than Instagram. Just saying, Mark.
Al ElliottYeah, come on, Zuck, get your ass in gear. Right, we'll see you next week.
Leanne ElliottBye.
Al ElliottBye-bye.