Episode 78 · 20 February 2024 · 48:21
How Resilience became toxic, with Bruce Daisley
Featuring Bruce Daisley
How Resilience became toxic, with Bruce Daisley
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Intro and Bruce Daisley's background
What's Bruce's beef with resilience?
interview#resilience#critique#workplace
Is resilience training a complete waste of time?
"In my day, we could cope"
interview#leadership#generational-differences#workplace-nostalgia
Resilience as scar tissue in sport
interview#resilience#sport#metaphor
Post-traumatic growth and the adversity myth
The collective nature of true resilience
The receptionist who changed a workplace
interview#workplace-culture#management#story
Why great management is the real answer
Where to find Bruce and wrap-up
Show notes
How Resilience Became Toxic — with Bruce Daisley
Guest: Bruce Daisley — former VP at Twitter and Google, bestselling author of Fortitude, and host of the Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast.
Resilience is having a moment. Every job advert wants it, every leader asks for it, and every employee is told to build it. But what if we're asking the wrong question?
Bruce Daisley joins Al and Leanne to challenge the cult of individual resilience. He argues that when organisations lean on resilience training, they're often doing something far more damaging: blaming the victim while ignoring the toxic systems creating the stress in the first place.
In this wide-ranging conversation, they explore why soldiers aren't actually more resilient, what sport's obsession with "scar tissue" gets wrong, how a receptionist's pantomime tradition transformed a workplace, and why the answer to burnout isn't more grit — it's better managers, stronger communities, and a little more laughter.
Top 3 Takeaways
Resilience training is often victim-blaming in disguise. When firms say "we need more resilient people," they're usually avoiding the harder question: what's broken about this culture? The stress isn't the employee's fault — and no amount of individual toughening up fixes a toxic system.
Resilience is collective, not individual. Soldiers aren't more resilient than civilians — and the research shows it. What actually protects people is community, connection, and feeling part of something bigger than themselves. We draw strength from groups, not from being lone heroes.
Laughter is a serious leadership tool. Bruce's story about a receptionist who started a pantomime tradition shows that small acts of joy and fun are some of the most powerful culture-builders there are. If you want a resilient team, give them reasons to laugh together.
More From Bruce Daisley
- Website: brucedaisley.com
- Book, Fortitude: findfortitude.net/the-book
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brucedaisley
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
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Bruce DaisleyThe issue around here isn't that we're not resilient enough. The issue is that we're in a toxic culture. And what you've attempted to do there, you've attempted to, I guess, to appropriate a term from dating, you've attempted to gaslight the people there. You've attempted to tell them that something that is right in front of their eyes isn't actually happening.
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. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottWe are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottWe are. We're also here to feel very sorry for ourselves. We, um, you might notice this pod is a little bit late. Um, it's because we both came down with something last week and we think it was COVID.
Leanne ElliottWe've been, what, We've been clean for 4 years.
Al ElliottWe've never had it.
Leanne ElliottWe've never had it.
Al ElliottUm, and, uh, and it finally caught up with us and it is a bastard, isn't it? It really is. I'm sure if you're listening to this, you probably have had it multiple times. You're going, shut up, Al and Leanne, get on with it. But no, it just knocked us on our collective arses. But like a decent pint of Guinness, all good things come to those who wait. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Today we have an amazing guest who's also a personal hero of both of ours.
Leanne ElliottYes, we have got the incredible, the amazing Bruce Daisley on the podcast. Very, very excited. Bruce— now, if you haven't heard of Bruce, Bruce is one of the UK's most influential voices on fixing work. He has been published in The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. His first book, The Joy of Work, was a Sunday Times number one bestseller and is now translated into 18 international editions. His second book, Fortitude, was described as the best business book of 2022 by the Financial Times. As impressively, previously Bruce spent over a decade running Twitter and YouTube for Europe, leaving Twitter as its most senior leader outside of the US.
Al ElliottYes, Leanne interviewed Bruce, um, a couple of weeks ago, and the original interview was almost an hour long. So it's been kind of tough to cut it down and fit it to this episode. But Leanne and Bruce talked about resilience and how, as a concept, we might be getting quite a bit of it wrong. Now, rather than the answer to wellbeing at work being resilience, Bruce and Leanne discuss how the emphasis on building individual resilience could be considered as gaslighting. They also talked about how the changes in the workplace have highlighted the importance of resilience, why we're happier when we're in teams, whether we should be laughing at work, and why a receptionist dressed as a Pringle tube saved a company's culture.
Leanne ElliottYes, we will. Yes, we will. Oh, that's not true. Yes, we did. And you'll also learn what the world's leading culture doctor does when she is called into companies like Uber to fix their workplace culture. Shall we go and meet our guests?
Bruce DaisleyHi, I'm Bruce Daisley. For a long time, I did technology jobs. I worked at companies like Google, Twitter, when it was Twitter, and I worked at a place like that. Along the way, I developed a fascination with how teams work and just how to have fun at work, how to create good cultures. And I started doing the podcasts on those things that has led to me publishing a couple of books that have become bestsellers. One called The Joy of Work and one called Fortitude. And so now I spend my time helping companies think about themes of workplace culture and how to make work more enjoyable.
Leanne ElliottBruce and I spoke at length about resilience, a word we hear a lot, a lot about, especially in relation to workplace culture and wellbeing. In fact, maybe it's being used a little bit too frequently. So let's start at the beginning with a definition. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress.
Al ElliottWell, that all sounds a lot sciency to me. Um, can you tell me what you actually mean?
Leanne ElliottYes, in the words— and I'll put it in terms you'll understand really, really well, Al— Chumbawumba. Oh yeah, in the words of Chumbawumba, I get knocked down, But I go up again. You ain't ever gonna keep me down.
Al ElliottGive me a lager drink. Give me a whiskey drink. Give me a cider drink. There's gonna be a whole generation of, of, of people listening to this who go, I have no idea what you're talking about. What is a chumba wumba? Google it.
Leanne ElliottSounds rude, actually.
Bruce DaisleyIt does.
Al ElliottI gave her a chumba wumba.
Leanne ElliottNot sure you can do that in this day and age. She'll get cancelled. But yes, resilience, it's, it's our ability to bounce back when things go wrong. There's loads of research, psychological research that suggests that the resource and skills associated with resilience can be cultivated and practiced. Think back to episodes with Dr. Audrey and Sean Tolrum on managing stress. But the issue is, in terms of workplace psychology, resilience has firmly been deemed the responsibility of the individual. If work is tough, toughen up. The tougher you are, the more successful you are, right? Well, Bruce wasn't so sure, and his book Fortitude is all about dispelling the myths around resilience and revealing the truth about building inner strength.
Al ElliottAnd this is where the conversation started, because we asked Bruce, what's your beef with resilience?
Bruce DaisleyI've got huge issues with it. And, and for a number of reasons, really. Firstly, I think at its heart, the idea of resilience is superficially really appealing, but the expectation of it is actually something close to victim blaming. And so The expectation of resilience, and you witness this all the time. You witness my friend works in a hospital in North London. She said in the middle of the pandemic, overwhelming, we stood and cheered for these people and then denied them a pay increase. But these people were working relentless hours and someone pinned a notice on the notice board saying resilience webinar on Thursday. And she was like, The issue around here isn't that we're not resilient enough. The issue is that we're in a toxic culture. And what you've attempted to do there, you've attempted to, I guess, to appropriate a term from dating, you've attempted to gaslight the people there. You've attempted to tell them that something that is right in front of their eyes isn't actually happening.
Al ElliottYeah.
Bruce DaisleyAnd so, the concept of resilience is already a cautious one. So, when firms say, You know, when they say we need to introduce some resilience training, the first thing you might wonder is, why do you need resilience training? What have you overseen? Why is your culture so toxic that you've got people who need resilience training? Okay, question number one. Second thing is resilience is a bit like sort of anti-aging creams in the sense that the demand for anti-aging creams is limitless. And yet, there's no single cream that ever stops people aging.
Leanne ElliottRight.
Bruce DaisleyThere isn't one. There isn't a single cream where people don't look a year older or they don't look a little bit older. But there's no shortage of them. You find yourself wandering around beauticians or the parts of stores that sell these things. There's no shortage of them. And resilience is a bit like that. There's no shortage of people who will sell you resilience courses. And look, the fascinating thing about that is that, okay, let's see if they work. Because the biggest customer of resilience courses in the world is the US Army. It spent somewhere close to $1 billion training combat soldiers to be resilient. The great thing about something like that, when you've spent that amount of money, is that other people come along and say, oh, like, well, if you've done all the work and you've done all the sort of investment, let's implement that. Let's measure that. And they've come along and said, oh, that resilience course that the US military has spent a million— a billion dollars implementing has had zero impact.
Leanne ElliottWow.
Bruce DaisleySoldiers are not any more resilient. Right, okay. So you've got this interesting thing. The very idea of it is to some extent victim blaming. But look, it's desirable. The ability to bounce back, to reenergize is desirable. We all want to do it. But, you know, question the expectation of it.
Al ElliottSo what we're saying is that resilience training is just a complete waste of time?
Bruce DaisleyWe look for resilience in the wrong place. We've looked for resilience as this individual trait, this almost like this switch that some of us have or some of us don't have, a capacity that we've got to reenergize on demand. And in truth, when we witness resilience, it actually has the characteristics of something collective rather than individual.
Al ElliottYeah.
Bruce DaisleyI mentioned combat soldiers and these are real conundrums at the heart of the situation of combat soldiers in the sense that combat soldiers who are in service Often report feeling supported, emboldened, strengthened by the people around them. And actually, the thing that really decimates their well-being is the fact that they're separated from their tribe. Resilience is the strength we draw from each other. What you witness— combat soldiers are a perfect example of it. Combat soldiers often describe it's the moment where they don't have people who understand them. They don't have people who've gone through the same When they find themselves trying to relate to people who've never had to witness the things that they've witnessed, that's when their resilience suffers. So I think whether we witness situations like Ukraine, where people have demonstrated this incredible capacity to deal with just horrible hardship, resilience is the strength we draw from each other.
Al ElliottYeah.
Bruce DaisleyYou don't see examples where some people in Ukraine say, I can't cope with this, and others say, oh yeah, I'm living my best life. Actually, it's the capacity for us to draw strength from the community around us that seems to be the defining aspect of resilience. And I think, you know, for me, that's the most intriguing enigma about the whole thing, that we— it's so heavily desired, but we often look for it in the wrong place.
Leanne ElliottThe key difference between the workplace in 2024 and the workplace, say, in 1984, is that we're much more likely to be connected to work outside of working hours. It is difficult to ignore an email from an important client outside of work hours when a notification pops up on your phone. Managers can and do abuse the always-on messaging platforms like Slack to get instant answers, whereas 20 years ago they'd have to wait until Monday. The opportunity to rest and recover from work is a really important factor in building resilience, and this might be one of the reasons why resilience is at an all-time low and burnout is at an all-time high. As Bruce explains, it's not as easy as saying, oh, the kids just can't cope these days.
Bruce DaisleyAnyone who can't recognise that the world of work has fundamentally changed in the last 20 years, then there's some really stark data to prove that. The average working day has gone up by more than 2 hours a day in the last 15 In fact, the evidence suggests that the availability we give to our job, the cognitive availability we give to our job, has gone up to around 65, 70 hours a week in most jobs, which just means that we're thinking about work. We're effectively in a work mindset for far more than we ever were before. It's no wonder then that, yes, if we compare, there didn't used to be resilience training courses. Well, of course, there didn't used to be the systematic Systematic burnout that we're witnessing now, that we're witnessing 3 out of every 4 people in the UK say they've experienced an episode of burnout in the last 12 months. Now, if we were to rewind the clock, maybe to the millennium or whenever this glory era of work was, almost certainly people didn't have the demands of work that we're witnessing now. So of course, no doubt, there's been a massive increase in the amount of resilience training and the amount of demand for these things, a massive increase in the amount of burnout that we're witnessing. But the world is fundamentally a different place now than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, I think.
Al ElliottA lot of senior leaders we're talking to seem to think that if we could only get back to how things were pre-pandemic, everything is going to be okay, which is probably the drive to bring people back to the office, to get things back to normality. But Bruce points out that this is not actually the case and it won't work.
Bruce DaisleySometimes that we find ourselves in a situation where people think, well, we need to get back to when work was functioning again. There was a survey that came out in October this year by KPMG that said that 2/3 of chief execs believe that by 2028, we'll be back at a 5-day office, that we'll be working in the office 5 days a week. 2/3 of chief execs believe that. Why? Because they believe in that version that the time before the pandemic was when work was working. Well, I guarantee if you and I were sitting down and having this discussion in 2019, we were talking about burnout. We were talking about how people were overloaded, how people couldn't cope with work. So, you know, the idea that we get— we rose-tint what 2019, 2018 looked like is an unfortunate consequence of where we're in right now, where people end up thinking about the good old days. And we all do it in all manner of our life. I think the most critical thing is that with those discussions of burnout, there's discussions about resilience. Why can't the kids cope?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Bruce DaisleyIn my day, we could cope, of course, comparing 2 different scenarios. Especially the moment of work we're in right now, we've got this interesting conundrum where you need to believe 2 things at once. You need to recognize that 90% of people believe that flexible working is a good thing and they don't want to go back to the way they were working before, and that 2/3 of chief execs believe that we should be back in the office.
Al ElliottRight, okay.
Bruce Daisley2 things at once. So you've got these bosses wanting people together and I guess to some extent, part of the finding of the book is that resilience and strength is collective. And so from that, you might say, well, okay, yeah, that's it. That's the mandate to get back to the office. But I think you need to bear in mind that desire to preserve the benefits of now. So I think the lesson from leaders is thinking, how do I create a sense of cohesion, a sense of strength that will be the basis of our team resilience? How do I create that?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Bruce Daisleyin a different way. And so, I've seen really lovely things from people saying the job of leaders right now is to be entrepreneurial about building connection, about trying to make a way for teams to feel connected to each other. And that's the job of a leader right now. And I think it's a really interesting challenge. And I think really at the heart of it, even though the book's about resilience, really it speaks to team dynamics and, and groups and making us all feel more connected.
Leanne ElliottAnd as Bruce alluded to earlier, in the NHS there's a massive problem with the label resilient. If the general public think of a group of people as resilient, it almost gives them permission to not have to be concerned about them. Kind of like that happy chirpy fella at work, you know, he takes everything in his stride, right? Nobody worries about that guy when he a week off. They'll assume he's resilient, he's cool, he's fine. They don't think to check up on him. But the stats show that this is exactly the kind of person we should be most worried about.
Bruce DaisleyMy partner's Lebanese, and they, um, I adore Lebanon, I adore the Lebanese people, really lovely people. And, uh, but you know, the one thing that's often directed at them is that they have a lot of bad luck. lot of misfortune. And, you know, I was in Beirut where there was this almighty explosion, biggest explosion in peacetime in any city in the world. If anyone sort of— if you ever put it into YouTube, Beirut, I think the first thing that comes up as autocorrect is explosion. And it's mamma mia, it's like a sight to behold. The whole city's enveloped in this sort of fast-expanding mushroom cloud. It's terrifying to look at. And But when we were there, all the news coverage when the explosion happened was, well, the Lebanese people will be all right because they're really resilient. Well, if we know anything, Lebanese people are resilient. Let me tell you, on the ground, they weren't thinking that. They were seeing resilient as this label that other people were giving them kind of so they didn't have to help. It was a bit like, well, you're resilient. You'll pick yourself up. I'll see you later. Good luck with that. I saw a tweet and someone said resilience, the word resilience is a demand for silence, right? That's really interesting, right? Because what you're saying is be resilient. Like, it's a bit like, there, there, there, you'll be all right. And effectively, you're telling someone to demonstrate that they can bounce back from something rather than reaching out and offering them support, you know, rather than sort of trying to share their discomfort from them. So I found it really interesting. More than anything, you know, these sort of what you might consider then a distraction of the criticism of the word. I felt it was a bit overused. We were using it for everything. You know, if you put on the morning radio, if you listen to news radio, you'll hear resilience 4 times every hour. And so I was just intrigued because I was like, okay, so you've got all these people doing resilience courses. Schools around the world do. Resilience programs. And the really interesting thing about that is it's based really on the same psychology as the Army stuff. And when people have said, oh, these resilience programs we're putting kids through, are they working? No, they have no impact whatsoever. So we've got this really interesting thing. We're spending loads of time trying to train this really desirable trait, this really desirable property. It's not working. I was like, okay, well, let's go back to first principles. Is there anything that we can do that really tries to understand our capacity to bounce back? And is there any way that we can achieve that?
Leanne ElliottListen to any commentator speaking on any sport and you'll likely hear the word resilience every 10 minutes. And the temptation is to think of this resilience as a kind of muscle that we've trained.
Bruce DaisleyBut Bruce's research uncovered that this is more likely to be a scar tissue When there are big resilience stories, we often reach for sports stars or famous people because they're just the people whose story, the people whose biography we get to hear. And sports stars, their stories are replete with examples of people who overcome adversity, and it often goes to serve resilience narratives. So, you know, Mo Farah might spring to mind right now, you know, won the double-double, He won 2 gold medals at 2 successive Olympic Games. And, you know, what you might say is, oh wow, look at Mo Farah's story. He actually was a refugee. In fact, you know what we discovered? That Mo Farah was actually a victim of human trafficking. So his story has this trauma at the heart of it. And I became fixated with that because what you discover is that actually it's a characteristic a lot of Olympians have got. A history of trauma. And what you discover is that it serves sort of via destroying their own identity, really. The way that we experience trauma is we experience it as shame quite often, which is heartbreaking because something bad has happened to you. And the way that we internalize it is we often feel like it's about us. It's about We've got a sort of damaged identity from it. It's heartbreaking, but that's the way that broadly trauma is experienced. Anyway, one of the things that I was really interested to discover is that not only is there a high incidence of trauma amongst athletes, and what you often discover is they effectively— trauma is normally correlated with addiction and with self-adapted behavior. So it's more likely to be associated with drinking. It's more likely to be associated with drug taking. You know, you're 4 times more likely to have alcohol and addiction problems if you've experienced high levels of trauma. Almost without exception, addiction has an episode of trauma that has spawned it. But what I was really struck by was the— I chatted to someone who looked at performance-enhancing drugs. So people who took performance-enhancing drugs, and he said to me, people who take performance-enhancing drugs have got— if they've got about a 9 times higher likelihood to take performance-enhancing drugs if they've been— if they've had episode of sexual abuse, and if they've had physical abuse, it's about— It's about 8 times higher. But those are multiplicative, meaning that if you've had both, then multiply that likelihood. Anyway, so you end up with these situations where I think sometimes we can find ourselves when we hear the story of a shamed athlete thinking, why would anyone take performance-enhancing drugs? And what you often discover is right at the heart of it is an episode of someone destroying their sense of identity, someone—
Al ElliottYeah.
Bruce DaisleySomeone who is broken and their sporting performance is their redemption arc. So look, you know, I've called you out for taking me on there, but I was really blown away by that. The guy who told me that, I was like, wow, for the first time you could understand that when you see these people who've done these episodes of cheating, they've done it from a perspective that they have a really so Low self-worth. They're broken people, really. And for the first time, you actually can empathize. Lance Armstrong, famous cyclist, had episodes of abuse in his childhood. I think episodes of shame. There was also another Tour de France cyclist who was abused as a child. There's lots of these Biographies that it's only in hindsight you can see, wow, this is why they did these things.
Al ElliottSo this brings back the age-old question: without adversity, do we see greatness? Most super entrepreneurs have had traumatic childhoods. Most super musicians have had horrible experiences. And as Bruce discovered, most high-performing sports people have built their resilience because they had trauma.
Leanne ElliottAnd there is a psychological principle called post-traumatic growth. It was researched by a psychologist called ritual, Tedeschi. The basic premise is that negative experiences can spur positive change, including personal strengths, improved relationships, or a greater appreciation for life. It is a cliché anecdote, but you know, it's true that we hear people who have experienced a near-death experience or even a job loss will often cite this trauma as the turning point of a transformation in their lives. The trouble is this view can romanticize trauma, especially when we start to view trauma through the lens of these super performers or super elite athletes. This isn't the norm. This super performance, these super athletes are outliers. And by only acknowledging post-traumatic growth, we're not acknowledging the adverse effects of trauma that even these people can experience. It can include things like enormous, enormous personal sacrifices to live that life and to, to have that success, an almost pathological need to win and huge challenges with their identity on retirement. We've spoken before about the significant mental health challenges that people in the sports industry can experience when their sporting career ends. This narrow and hugely simplified viewpoint also excludes the experiences of the majority. Trauma is much more likely to result in maladaptive coping mechanisms. There is a mountain of research that links traumatic experience in childhood with addictive behaviors in adulthood. As Bruce explains in his book, trauma and setback are not simple triggers for achievement. Now, Al, I know what your next question is going to be. What's the differentiating factor? What turns trauma into success rather than addiction? Well, the answer isn't simple. I'm sorry, I know it's that psychologist answer, but it really does depend. It depends on the nature and prevalence of the trauma. It depends on the age at which the person was when they experienced that trauma. It can depend on personality, how optimistic or pessimistic we are. It can depend on our perceived locus of, of control— that's how much we believe that we have control over our lives compared to external forces or events. And as Bruce explains, it can also depend on the relationships we have in our lives. It can depend on the communities we belong to.
Bruce DaisleyThe, the notion that we draw strength from groups is You know, even though it's really well known, we don't really explore it. And, you know, in the medical community, for example, if you're hospitalized for anything from depression to heart illness to whatever it is, the best predictor of how you will be in 2 years and 5 years is how many social groups you report feeling part of. Why on earth is that relevant? Well, from doctors' and physicians' point of view, it's kind of not. So they don't ask about it. They don't say, are you part of a social group? Do you do any group activities? Do you have any activities you feel part of? They don't ask it. And yet it's far more predictive of how you'll be than if you drink, if you exercise, if you smoke. In fact, if you have friends that you see every day, it on average increases your lifespan by 15 years. It's like this remarkable Extraordinary impact on longevity. And so, I guess, you know, at the heart of it, we kind of overlook these things. And they really go to the heart of strong organizations as well. You know, normally, I heard this brilliant thing. I attended a session where different companies talked about culture and a big retail store that, you know, probably one of the most famous retail stores in the UK. And somebody who worked there, she said, we did some analyses. And we found an interesting correlation. The stores that used all of their staff entertaining budgets had much better culture than the ones who didn't. I mean, it's like such a silly, self-evident thing, but the ones who arranged staff baseball, softball in the park, or the ones who arranged a sort of a staff quiz night, or the ones who The ones who did those things had much better culture than the ones who didn't. And what you broadly discover is that good culture generally has socialization. It generally has social connection at the heart of it. Now, the interesting lesson for all of us right now is that the world has changed a bit. A lot of people since COVID have got much longer commutes. They've moved out. Going to the pub after work, actually, typically only half of the office have ever enjoyed that. And they kind of didn't go, but we didn't notice them. Everyone else who was having so much fun there didn't notice that the ones with care responsibilities weren't there, the ones with long commutes, the ones who didn't drink weren't there. So, I guess the challenge increasingly for leaders is recognizing socialization plays a big part of stronger culture. Stronger culture generally translates into better results, better performance. But We maybe don't want to do all of those things outside of work hours. And so, the interesting challenge for leaders is, okay, how do we create social connection inside work hours? Now, that might be team lunches. It might be team bake sales where everyone brings something in, costs zero money. People bring things in. You'll sit and eat something together. Or I've seen companies that do team food, world food events. And everyone from different countries Brings the food their grandmother used to make them, or everyone brings, you know, the food that they, they most love cooking at home. And so you've got like this Polish food, you've got this Indian food, you've got these, these like Nigerian dishes, like, and you've just got this incredible collection of, of people doing things.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast We actually have a lot in common.
Al ElliottWe both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Seamless.
Bruce DaisleySeamless.
Al ElliottTell us about your latest episode, Phil. We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about 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. So come back.
Leanne ElliottI'll cut that out.
Al ElliottDoes this mean you have to spend all your time with your colleagues, or does it mean that face-to-face in-office working with— is the secret to resilience? Well, of course not. In fact, Bruce has found there's a specific percentage of time with colleagues that is actually the sweet spot.
Bruce DaisleyThe one thing we know is that there's huge communities that never meet each other online, whether they are music fandoms or, you know, fandoms of TV shows or huge communities that never meet each other, or they might meet each other once every 2 years at a gig or a comic conference. And so, we don't need to be with each other every day to forge connection. I think the thing that we might think though is we might think, how do we sustain those things? People who've looked into this have said, in terms of the office, Spending between 25% and 50% of our time together seems to have an impact on making culture more cohesive. So, you know, any more than that, it doesn't necessarily have a huge impact. The other thing that's of interest as well is that what you often find is that people get really frustrated if they've made a journey in. I was with one organization a couple of months ago, and they said, The average commute in our team is two hours each way. People have moved to Southampton, they've moved to York, they've moved to you know they're commuting into London and they'll do it one day a week happily, two days a week fine. But you know it's a long commute; they don't want to be doing that every day. Now you can force them in, but if they come all the way in and they spend the day on Zoom calls, they will not forgive you. If they come in and they spend all day on Teams. With people who are at home, they'll think, what was the point of that? You know, like, I'm being— I was chatting to someone yesterday and he said a member of his team, 23-year-old, his average commute when he comes in is £75, and his peak time commute is £75. His off-peak commute is £22 or something. So he's like, I love coming in, I love being in the office. If there's any chance I can do it off-peak, it makes my life just so much less impoverished. You know, like, if I'm getting a £75 train, I've got to feel like that extra hour in the office was worth it. And, you know, actually, if you're getting in and people are just chatting, having a coffee, it's like, please don't punish me for being late when it's got a £50 difference to me. And I think, you know, understanding those things are really critical for where we are in work right now.
Al ElliottAnd the second part of work socialization is to have fun. Bruce has a great story about a receptionist who had enough of the culture and did something about it.
Bruce DaisleyI've always been relatively fortunate that most of the jobs I had, I enjoyed. And so, you know, I would always say to myself, it had been a good day if I'd laughed 10 times that day. And, you know, it'd been a— and so that's it. If I went home that day and I was like, man, that was a funny day, that was the defining thing. If I was getting on the public transport home, saying to myself, that was a funny day today, that was all that mattered to me. It's really interesting. And I was like, does that correlate with good culture though? He's like, to some extent. I had someone once tell me, don't be seen laughing around here. We weren't doing very well as a business. If the big boss walks past, don't be seen laughing. It's like, oh, really?
Leanne ElliottOh, really?
Bruce DaisleyYou know how to laugh when things are bad. It's interesting because if you chat to people who do really bad jobs like firefighters or soldiers, they laugh all the time. But, you know, I was like, okay, so it's really interesting that people will help diagnose what good culture looks like. Anyway, I was just really intrigued with that. What does good culture look like? If people laugh more, is that better for culture? Will we get better results if people laugh more? Or is my own instinct a bad one? Yeah.
Al Elliottone.
Bruce DaisleyAnd I just became obsessed with that. And, you know, actually, I'll tell you, I don't know the sort of jobs you've done, but I've done a lot of bar jobs and restaurant jobs. And there's something when you start a new shift at a bar and you get a bit of a vibe when you turn up and you ask if they've got any jobs, and then you find out, then you start there. When you start a new shift at a job, you know within the first shift whether this is going to be a horrible place to work or whether this— and you're still looking.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Bruce DaisleyYou get Karen Locking, or whether this might be a good place. Okay, you go home at the end of the first shift. That was good, actually. I like those people. Really intriguing. Well, obviously, that has got to have an impact on customer service. If everyone in a place hates each other or hates the boss, of course, you know, it's gonna have an impact on whether you're good to customers. And so, you know, for me, I was just like really interested in those dynamics. Interested in the dynamics of whether, how those things work together. So yeah, I've always just had a, as a participant in teams, I've just always had a curiosity of how we can make teams better. I spoke to one organization. They said, the receptionist changed the culture here. I was like, okay, I'm intrigued. Tell me more. They said the receptionist was one of those actors who sort of worked for a bit, then came back and then did some acting, then came back, did a stage show.
Al ElliottYeah.
Bruce DaisleySeason of pantomime came back. And she said, this is the worst place I've ever worked. I guess you can say that when you're the temp. And she said, no one talks to each other. There's no connection. No one even seems to like each other really. Anyway, she took it into her own hands. She went out, she bought some bags of kettle chips and Pringles. She laid them all out on paper plates. And she said, back to the point I made before, she said, ladies and gentlemen, it's the best time of the week, 4:30 on Thursday. It's crisps Thursday. And, you know, people came up and they had like a little stack of Pringles and they stood around going, what's this? Next week she did it again. Next week she did it again. She was dressed up. On the third week, she was dressed up as a Pringles tube. And anyway, it became like a little ritual. People would say, let's not have a meeting. Are you going to be at Crisp Thursday? I've just got 2 things to ask you. You know, oh, occasionally someone turned up with cake. Someone turned up with Prosecco. Anyway, it became the in-work moment where they all stopped doing stuff for 15 minutes to connect, or for half an hour to connect with each other. And I guess the spirit of that, the spirit of that Crisp Thursday is how leaders need to be a bit more entrepreneurial with connection. It's realizing that generally, we're engaged with our job when we've got a friend at work. And it's one of the fundamental details about work culture that we often forget. So, The more that we can make, build connections, we make people feel like we're all in it together, that, you know, we can draw strength from each other. All of these things seem to be in service of better culture, really.
Leanne ElliottThey say that laughter is the best medicine. Bruce has experienced firsthand that laughing, joking, and banter in the workplace is good for culture, so long as you're not laughing at somebody else's expense.
Bruce DaisleyIf the sort of gags you are making are at the expense of someone's identity, I suspect it was never as funny as you thought it was in the first place. You know, If you need to challenge who someone is and what they're about to get a laugh, I don't think that was probably ever as funny as you think it was. And aside from that, I think there's a billion things that we can laugh about and joke about. So, you know, to my mind, if someone's gender or ethnicity or sexuality is the thing that you thought was banter, Yeah. You know, probably time has moved on for that. But apart from that, still a billion things you can laugh about. The great thing is there's a wonderful book I'd recommend by 2 women who teach at Stanford, a book called Humor Seriously. And one of the things they wrote was, look, you know, we much prefer managers who laugh. We much prefer being in an environment which is filled with laughter. And here's how you laugh more. You try and laugh more. You find moments in meetings where there's 5 minutes at the end of a meeting where you share funny things that have happened this week. You share funny things that have happened and you just set yourself up for opportunities to laugh more. In fact, the only thing I'll say is that my only strength in life is that I'm quite generous with my laughter. I love laughing at stuff. And what you find is that when you laugh at stuff, other people also enjoy laughing. Generally, we only laugh with people we like, which is an interesting element of psychology. So I wouldn't say that— I wouldn't say if you're open-hearted, I wouldn't say that there's any reason to believe that there's less opportunity for laughter. What I will say is that we do laugh less on Zoom. And so we've got to rebuild the times that we are around each other.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Bruce DaisleyRebuild those relationships, make sure we spend our face-to-face time laughing.
Al ElliottSo we've covered so much more than resilience here. We've talked about how resilience can often be a way to move blame from bad management, how groups of people are more resilient than individuals, how the changing workplace is massively affecting resilience.
Leanne ElliottYeah, we've talked about how socialisation at work is a good thing and how creating connections and having fun is one of the fundamental But I asked Bruce, if there was just one thing that companies should be doing, what might it be? He describes a woman called Frances, who's a person companies call when they have a culture problem, and what she does when she first walks through the door.
Bruce DaisleyAnd she goes into those companies when you hear like Uber's got a culture problem, or WeWork's got a culture problem, or, um, there's another one called Riot Games that had a really bad sort of sexism and bullying, and she was— she's the person they called. So I was like, man, what, what'd you do? You walk in, they've called you, you know, wouldn't like the fear be running through you? It's like, oh my God, what am I gonna do? Because they're gonna— they want answers here. They— I can't not do anything. And so I've chatted to her twice, and I'm always like, what do you do? What's the first thing you do? Number one thing she does, train managers. That's what she does. She trains managers. That's really interesting. Like, you know, of course, these quick fixes, you know, change that policy, we change that. That's maybe not well-advised. Then she trains managers. Wow.
Leanne ElliottOkay.
Bruce DaisleyThat's so interesting.
Leanne ElliottIf you do one thing, I know I've said it before, but how cool is it to hear somebody who's probably got a lot more credibility than me say it? It's good, isn't it?
Al ElliottYeah. Sorry, you're talking to me. Yeah, I thought you were talking to the audience.
Leanne ElliottI'm talking to them too.
Al ElliottYes, it is.
Leanne ElliottYeah. I mean, honestly, when this penny drops, Al, we're going to be millionaires. Our manager training sales are going to go through the roof. Through the roof.
Al ElliottI'm clearly not— I'm not prepared for this back and forth. I've got a mouthful of water. Yes, we will be millionaires. Yes, you are right. You're always right. All hail, all hail great Leanne.
Bruce DaisleyCarry on.
Leanne ElliottNo, all joking aside, it is, it is really important. Great management links to every aspect of organisational life, including resilience. Bruce's book shows that resilience, or rather fortitude, is built by feeling in close synchrony to those around us. The sense of community is extraordinarily influential for how well we can recover from challenges and setbacks. And who has the biggest impact on this sense of community in the workplace? The manager. You know, um, you know My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the dad goes, give me a word, any word, and I will show you the origin of that word is Greek? Well, give me an organizational problem, any, any organizational problem, and I will show you that the origin of that problem is the manager.
Al ElliottYep, I believe that. I do believe that.
Leanne ElliottIt's quite simple. Train your managers, grow your business, save the world.
Al ElliottOh, fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. I love that. So if you want to find out a bit more about Bruce, here's where you can go.
Bruce DaisleyI've got a website, brucedaisley.com, or eatsleepworkrepeat.com. It's got a lot of the stuff for the podcast on it, and you can take a look. My newsletter and everything is on there.
Al ElliottSo Bruce has well and truly schooled us on the idea of resilience. It's not some fluffy buzzword, and neither is it just a half-day course on the training calendar.
Leanne ElliottExactly. Bruce explained that leaders fall in the trap sometimes of thinking resilience is down to the individual and therefore they are the ones to blame. But in actual fact, by creating meaningful work, allowing for flexible working, and encouraging collaboration and socialisation will enable you to build the foundations of an organisation where resilience levels are increasing.
Al ElliottAnd like Leanne always says, when people have a very clear reason for why they're doing their job, a clear idea of what their exact role is, in the organization and the resources they need to do it, you're most of the way there. When you add on some great relationships like Bruce has been talking about and frequent recognition of your efforts, you've absolutely nailed it. Incidentally, and there's a reason why I put the emphasis on all those, all those words beginning with R, this is the main part of our proprietary model called the RX7, which is the 7 foundations of an amazing workplace culture. And they all start with the letter R, hence. R times 7, RX7. Do you get it? Maybe not.
Leanne ElliottI get it.
Al ElliottYou can find out more about the RX7 in the show notes. As we've said a few times, it is currently in private for private clients only, but if you qualify, then we'd be very happy to talk to you about using it. So before we do say goodbye, let's just find out a bit more about Bruce's amazing podcast, Eat Sleep Work Repeat, and why you should be adding it to your queue today.
Bruce DaisleyThe podcast was formed by my own desire to make work better. I mentioned I worked at Twitter and tech firm culture isn't always the best. And there was certainly a time we'd been forced to do a round of job cuts. I think we'd done another round of job cuts and the culture, which had been this magical thing, it really sort of had been adored by the people there. People said, this is the best place I've ever worked. And then the culture just didn't bounce back. And so I was like, okay, well, what can I do to fix this? And just, I started doing a podcast, which was kind of my own self-education. It was like, I'd see a fascinating article, I'd contact the person who wrote it, I'd interview them about 6 years ago now. So like sort of pre any sort of boom in podcasts. Along the way, it became number one business podcast. So it way exceeded my expectations. And as a result of that, It sort of allowed me to go on and do a couple of books, and I do a newsletter about workplace culture that came from it. Yeah, so it's really for anyone who is ignited with the question of, how do I make work better? And that might be for their team, it might be for their whole organization, it might be just for their department, whatever it is, someone who's thinking, How can I use the research that's out there to make the, the job of me and my team better?
Leanne ElliottThank you to Bruce for being an incredible guest. It really was one of my most favorite conversations. Definitely pick up his book Fortitude. We will leave a link in the show notes. I actually listened to the audiobook version because I love Bruce's voice and his podcast, um, and it's brilliant. So yeah, if you're, if you're looking for another medium to, to consume your content, highly recommend Um, the audiobook of Fortitude. It's very, very good.
Al ElliottYep, all the links are in the show notes. Definitely go and, go and tell Bruce that you enjoyed listening to him on our pod because I think it'll make his day. He's such a down-to-earth and really, really nice guy. Um, so look out for the next couple of weeks. We've got— well, we've got amazing guests for the rest of the year and the rest of time, obviously.
Leanne ElliottThe rest of time.
Al ElliottWe have got some amazing people coming up. I think last week I mucked up because I said it was gonna be Uh, Dr. Clare Hughes from Mind this week, when in actual fact it was Bruce. So it's gonna be Dr. Clare Hughes from Mind next week. And then I think we have, uh, John Amici, Rory Sutherland, we've got Isabel Berrick, uh, we've got, uh, the Angry Professor. He's gonna be amazing.
Leanne ElliottThe Anger Professor.
Al ElliottAnger Professor.
Leanne ElliottVery slight difference, very different meaning.
Al ElliottDifferent people with a very different outlook on life and work. And so many other guests coming up for you. So if you haven't clicked that subscribe button, then smash that subscribe button. That's what they say, don't they? All these kids online, smash this— no, I don't know what they say.
Leanne ElliottRing that bell.
Al ElliottWe're gonna go now. Bye-bye.
Leanne ElliottIf you do one thing, if you do one thing, if you do one thing, At this point, I'm like, I know. I asked my mother, what would I be? Was it that one then?
Al ElliottWill I be resilient? This is what Bruce said to me.
Leanne ElliottOkay, you have a beautiful voice. That's not what you said in the previous. I think you called him musically challenged. The last time you heard me singing.
Al ElliottTo be fair, you have a very unique tone.
Leanne ElliottJust rewind that bit.
Bruce DaisleyGet it?
Leanne ElliottWill kids get that joke?
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottRewind?
Al ElliottProbably not.
Leanne ElliottI'm so redundant.