Episode 86 · 2 April 2024 · 31:55

86: Google's 'new' hiring policy, drunken employees and the '2 jobs at once' trend - This Week In Work, 2nd April 2024

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Google's hiring evolution: skills vs. personality
news roundup#hiring #google #skills #personality
Service dogs: a new frontier in PTSD support
news roundup#service-dogs #ptsd #mental-health #stress-awareness
The ethical dilemma of being over-employed
news roundup#over-employment #ethics #work-life-balance #moonlighting
Recapping the Future of Work series
news roundup#future-of-work #recap #podcast-series
Workplace Surgery: dealing with a drunken employee
workplace surgery#workplace-issues #alcohol #employee-conduct #management
Workplace Surgery: pride in being busy and hustle culture
workplace surgery#hustle-culture #busyness #workplace-culture #productivity
Wrap-up and call to action
news roundup#podcast #wrap-up #call-to-action

Show notes

Google's 'New' Hiring Policy, Drunken Employees & the '2 Jobs at Once' Trend

This Week in Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) break down Google's undercover shift toward hiring for personality over skills, a groundbreaking study on dogs detecting human stress, and the rise of the "overemployed" trend. Plus, in the Workplace Surgery: drunken employees, jiggle juice, and whether you should try to fit in at work.

🔥 Stories Covered

1. Google's "undercover" hiring strategy: personality over skills? An Inc.com article claims Google has quietly shifted its hiring approach to prioritise personality over raw skills — but Leanne isn't convinced it's quite that simple. She breaks down why personality inventories in recruitment are fraught with issues (hello, faking), why diversity of thought and demographics still matter most, and why "job carving" might be a better answer than psychometric testing. Source →

2. Can dogs really detect human stress? It's National Stress Awareness Month in the UK, and a new study shows dogs can discriminate between stressed and non-stressed humans with 90% accuracy — just by sniffing our breath and sweat. Leanne digs into what the research actually found, and Al shares his own Rottweiler stories. Source →

3. The "overemployed" trend: two jobs at once YourTango reports on a worker fired for using a mouse jiggler to work two remote jobs simultaneously. Al and Leanne debate the ethics — from whether organisations bring it on themselves with poor workload management, to whether it's sustainable, to the manager's perspective when targets still get hit. Source →

💬 Workplace Surgery

Listener questions, tackled live:

Drunken employees: What do you do when someone turns up to work under the influence?
Jiggle juice: The story of a company that spiked its own punch at a work party — and the fallout.
Fitting in: Should you try to fit in at work, or just do your job and leave?

(Got a question? Submit it via the connect link below.)

📚 Also Mentioned

Isabel Berrick's upcoming book — pre-order now: amzn.eu/d/fLXwAoO
Catch up on the Future of Work series: Episodes 84 & 85

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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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 ElliottAnd that's the other thing. If you think she's good and her performance is good, then she's not good. She's freaking incredible because she's able to deliver this performance bond with the team, build morale on the team, please your customers whilst being pretty pissed off by something that you're currently doing as a leader in her life. Hello and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Work podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name's Leanne, I am a business psychologist.

Al ElliottMy name is Al, I am a business owner. We are here to help you simplify the science, the psychology of the If this is your first time hearing the words Truth, Lies and Work, not Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture, 10 seconds because you need to catch up. It's changed. We've dropped the culture because we're still talking about workplace culture, but we just want to expand the conversation a little bit so we can talk about all aspects of work, really. Hey, really, it's going to be around about culture because everything is. But what do you think, Leanne?

Leanne ElliottThat, and as you will have noticed, or perhaps not if you're new, we have 2 episodes a week. This is the Tuesday episode. It's a bit more free, it's a bit more informal, it's a bit more chatty, it's a bit more what's occurring in the world of work. World of work, and let's have some opinions, some chatter, some comment. Thursday, very different vibe, much more professional, much more structured. Incredible, incredible guests. We're talking people like Isabel Berrick from the Financial Times, John Amici, the legendary psychologist, Bruce Daisley, groundbreaking work on, on resilience. Just really cool, cool people. So yeah, if you want to be educated, tune in on a Thursday. If you want to be entertained, hopefully. Hi, Tuesday today.

Al ElliottSo imagine it like a radio show. So we have virtual callers in the fact that I've got some stuff to read out. Leanne's the expert. I'm kind of like your, I'm like your local DJ who's a little bit of a doofus, who's going to be saying, so Leanne, you are an expert in workplace culture. How do you make a great workplace culture? That's the kind of vibe we're going for, I think. And we start off with our favourite time of the week. Leanne, what is it?

Leanne ElliottIt's time for the news roundup. Cue the jingle.

Al ElliottOkay, so I'm going to kick off, kick things off. So I was reading an article in Inc.com. Yes, I'm that fancy. I read Inc.com. Although to be fair, I don't think it's actually that fancy anymore. Um, and it was around about Google and how they've slightly changed the way that they hire. Now, apparently the person who wrote this, Kelly Main, and I'll link to the article in the, in the show notes. Kelly Main used to work for Google and I don't know what aspect she used to work for Google in, but I think she was something to do with the hiring. And she said that when she worked there, it was an amazing place to work because it was basically, you know, you got free food, you got, you could stay on campus. It was just like a big family, which is a, which is a red flag for Leanne, as you'll find out. But that's kind of slipped over the last few years. And also, to be honest, it's been emulated a lot, I think, by a lot of the other, they call them FANG, don't they? Facebook, Amazon, Google, A-N-G or something.

Leanne ElliottNetflix.

Al ElliottNetflix, maybe. I can't remember who the other one is. So it's kind of been emulated a little bit. So it's almost been done. So what they've started to do is they're experimenting for hiring for personality, not just for skills. Um, a quote from the article is, it's why you could be in a job you hate because you can't stand those you work around. Meanwhile, it's easy to love a job when you love your team. Now, Google has played around with other hiring hacks before we get back into this. One of them called the no-role recruitment hack, where basically they don't recruit for a role. They just ask lots of people, who are clever people and say, what, what you good at? And then create a role for them. So, Leah, I've got a couple of questions for you. First of all, if you are hiring more for personality than you are necessarily for skills, is that a good thing to do? Is that ethical? Is that the right route? What are your thoughts?

Leanne ElliottOh, I have many. Do you know, I read, I read this article and it struck me as an article that has a very bold headline and then says not much at all after it.

Al ElliottSorry, Kelly.

Leanne ElliottI'm sorry, love, but you know, it's right now. Personality. If you're a regular listener, you would have heard John Amici a few weeks ago when we were talking about personality inventories, and he said, let's be honest, the majority of personality inventories are bollocks. And that is the problem. So it's, it's the— and this is the thing that I think drives psychologists or, or recruitment professionals crazy, is that it's sweeping generalizations, and the devil is in the detail. Can personality assessment or exploration be a useful tool in the recruitment and development process? Yes. Should it be the primary tool? No. And why? Because, well, it's not very predictive of future job performance. It's not very predictive of an individual performance. And also, it's so subjective. The majority of personality inventories are self-report, so I'm basically telling myself how I see myself. That doesn't necessarily mean that's how other people see me. The other thing is, is that a lot of the tools aren't based on, on any decent science. You know, Myers-Briggs, one of the biggest personality inventories in the world— no psychologist has been near the development of that tool. None at all. DiSC, was it John was saying, was invented by the guy who wrote the Wonder Woman comics. These type-based personality tests are just, as John said, bollocks. And I think as well, reading this article, there's so many different things that are being weaved in here that are being talked about under the umbrella of personality, and I don't think it's correct. The article talks about having fun with your team. That screams to me of kind of a bias towards being the loudest, being the most extroverted. Um, personally, as an introvert, those people really piss me off. I don't find them fun people to be around, like the class clown kind of thing. Um, but I think what you're actually talking about is less about having fun and more about creating teams where civility rules. And actually, that's what the research shows. It's not about being best mates with your team. They'll help performance and well-being and everything else. is actually having a culture of civility, of respect, um, of social acceptable norms. Um, so I think having fun is, is yes, of course, but actually the, the focus of relationships is actually more on civility than, than funness. Um, I also think what you're actually talking about in terms of personality, you actually mean diversity.

Al ElliottYes.

Leanne ElliottDiversity of thought is important. Diversity of, of Demographics is important because we know that nurtures creativity and innovation and in turn performance and sense of inclusion and belonging. So again, I think talking about personality in terms of team dynamics is a bit— is not quite— it's not quite what you meant. I think you meant more around kind of diversity. Um, in terms of the no hire thing, I love how Google just put on a different spin. It's like it's a brand new recruitment hack from Google. That's the whole no role recruitment hack. That's job carving. That's been around for some time. And even if you do have a job description, it's actually about asking the person as part of their development, what do they want to do? How do they want to spend their time and where they're most productive and add value? So there's a lot, and I know I've just dumped a lot, but I think it's very confused. I think it's dangerous because it's massively oversimplifying an approach to recruitment that, let's be honest, a small business owner might see and go, oh, that's what I'm gonna do, because intuitively it makes sense that we'd recruit people like us who we like. Whereas actually all the research shows that the more diverse people we bring into the, into the organization, as long as the civility is there, then innovation, um, will thrive, as will everything else. So, um, Try Harder Inc., I think. And I just, you know what it is? It's the danger for me that this is going to be picked up as is and applied in an environment where you're not going to get the results that, that you expected to.

Al ElliottThat makes sense. That does make sense. So is there, just really to sum this up very quickly, is there, is there one piece of advice that perhaps everyday business owners who aren't quite Google can take out of this?

Leanne ElliottJob carving is a good one. The thing is, anything around, around testing, psychometric testing, requires a professional, an expert. Engage somebody. If you want to go down this route of personality, you need to speak to a psychologist. Or, well, no, you need to speak to a psychologist because even someone who works for a test publisher is just gonna promote their shit. Job carving is a good one, um, in terms of development, identifying where people are feeling their most productive and where they're adding the most value. That's going to support their engagement and their sense belonging, well-being, and diversity. Just think about even a simple thing: where do you advertise your roles currently? Choose some different places, different publications, websites, schools, universities, wherever it is, because the more diversity you get into your business, the more diversity of thought you're going to have. And that's where you're going to get teams that, that are really productive and thrive much more than assessing people.

Al ElliottLove it. Okay, love, what have you got?

Leanne ElliottWell, April is here. April is National Stress Awareness Month in the UK, so you will probably be seeing lots of mental health-related content out there over the next month or so. One caught my eye today, and I also thought it was quite heartwarming. Oh, so it is a groundbreaking study from a Canadian university, and it has discovered that our four-legged friends, our pooches, Which is, may hold the key to revolutionising the way we approach post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. So apparently research has shown that dogs may be able to sniff out the onset of a PTSD episode by smelling human breath.

Al ElliottInteresting. But if the, if the human's had peanut butter before, then that might push them off the scent a little bit. I know our dog likes a bit of peanut butter.

Leanne ElliottHe does. I'm not sure that was a variable in this study. But I will write to the researchers and suggest that as an area of exploration. You should do. But yeah, so it could, I mean, it's cool, isn't it? It could mean that service dogs, I mean, there's so many different types of service dogs, but it could mean that they can support people who have experienced trauma. So the research itself, there was 25 dogs. They were trained to discern the scent of stress from breath samples from 26 individuals, some of whom had been diagnosed with PTSD. So Ivy and Callie, They were able to identify stress with pretty impressive accuracy just from smelling the face masks that these people had been wearing.

Al ElliottHmm.

Leanne Elliott90% accuracy in terms of discriminating between a stressed person and a non-stressed person. What was also very interesting is that these dogs could also differentiate between subtle shifts in emotion. So Ivy was very good at identifying anxiety, Whereas Callie was really good at identifying self-reports of shame.

Al ElliottHmm.

Leanne ElliottI know. So obviously, you know, it's very— people are saying, you know, it's intriguing, hopeful research. Obviously pointing out the need for further research is a very small sample. We need to, we need to expand on that. But yeah, it could be an interesting development for supporting people with pathological mental health conditions such as PTSD. As I was saying, service dogs, long and proud history. Think about it, guide dogs for the blind, hearing dogs for the deaf, diabetic alert dogs, you get seizure response dogs, and more recently as well, we've seen autism support dogs become much more of a thing. In terms of mood, research has shown that interacting with dogs can increase our serotonin levels— that's our happy hormone. Other studies have shown close interactions with pets, and in particular dogs, can reduce stress, promote relaxation, and contribute to lower blood pressure and heart rate because of the changes in our brain chemistry that occur when we spend time Isn't it cool? So yeah, it's— it may not be outrageous as it seems initially to think that dogs can smell emotion and detect trauma. And perhaps, Al, the bond between humans and dogs is even more profound than we ever knew.

Al ElliottYeah, it's— we remember we had one dog, um, who was a Rottweiler. Uh, we've had a few Rottweilers, and he was the last Rottweiler we had. Um, and his, his IQ was single digits. Poor fella, he was not a clever dog. But his EQ is huge, 'cause I know that there was one time when you were really sad and he just went and sat with you all day and just sat at your feet. And it was the same with, I think with your mum. Your mum was sad one time and one of our rotties went and sat with them. So yep, it just goes to show that dog is a person's best friend and they should always be.

Leanne ElliottAgreed. What else have you got, Al?

Al ElliottThe last one is just one, something I saw on, it's a website called YourTango. I don't think it's the same as Oh, Tony! You know the advert from the, um, from the '80s, from the '90s? Only British people of a certain age will understand that. You know when you've been Tango'd. Uh, and so is yourtango.com. And they were talking about this overemployed as a new trend. So basically, overemployed means that you take on more than one job. And because you're working— a lot of people now working from home or able to work from home, they're able to take on multiple jobs, which sounds kind of a bit weird, but there's a whole subreddit Reddit on Reddit, which is which is called overemployed. And one of the one of the posts was about this guy who used a mouse jiggler to fake being at work. And basically, mouse jiggler you got two different types. You've got an actual physical one, which will which is like a robot arm that sits on your mouse and just moves it around. So it proves that you're moving around. The other one is a software-based one, and the software-based one the IT department of that particular company discovered it, and then they fired him. And So it's obviously like, I can see what he was trying to do, but my bigger question is around this. Is it possible and ethical to have 2 different jobs? If you can take a job that pays £60,000 a year, take another job that pays £60,000 a year, but you can do both of them well, hit your goals, and do them within a, say, a 40 or 50-hour working week, is that outrageous? Is that acceptable?

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Al ElliottIs it ethical? What are your thoughts?

Leanne ElliottI have very little sympathy for the actual organization because— and I hate these— it blows my mind that there are organizations out there that have these softwares in place in the first place. Can you imagine being tracked? And also, it's encouraging a level of activity that is completely dysfunctional. You need to take breaks, you need to reflect, you need to have thinking time, and that doesn't always necessarily necessarily mean go, go, go, go, go. It's like training for a marathon. Like, yes, you're gonna run, but there's lots of other things you're going to do at the same time to achieve that goal. So that, that bugs me anyway. So if you can screw over people like that who fundamentally do not trust their workforce, then do it. However, I think there is also something around the, the individual and actually the realistically How well can you do 2 full-time jobs, either in terms of the quality of work you deliver or the toll that's going to take on you in terms of your energy levels, in terms of your mental health? I'm not entirely sure it's something I would ever condone or promote or encourage. Same time, people, you know, cost of living crisis, people got hustle, they've got to pay their bills. There's lots of pressure on everybody, so I can see where— why overemployment has become a trend, but I think it is probably that. And I think actually the number of people that are doing it sustainably and successfully are probably quite few and will probably get fewer and fewer. If you are doing it, I don't know, my thought would be if you've got this superpower to actually look at processes and improve them to a rate where you basically eradicate, you know, 50% of the time taken to do that task, that sounds like an awesome business, my friend, or a great value proposition in terms of going into a leadership role, I'd be more inclined as an individual to encourage them to, to jump on that and the value that that adds to organisational life. Um, but then I don't know, the entrepreneur in the room might have a different opinion.

Al ElliottWell, I can see it from the manager's point of view. If everything gets done, if the targets get hit, then as far as I'm concerned, if someone works for us and everything gets done and they can do it in 5 hours a week and we've allocated 20 hours a week to do it, fine. paying for the 20 because you're paying for the outcome. So I can see that. Um, I'm not sure I'm necessarily with you because I'm probably from a different generation, so I'm not really thinking about, oh, you're taking a job off someone else, because you could also apply that argument to someone who can reduce a job by— job time by 50% if they go out and they potentially taking the work off other people. I think just think about the stuff that the world you can control in your own, in your own world. If, like Leanne used the analogy of a, of a marathon, you might not train the same way every day. than you would train for the 6 months before a marathon. You'd be much more intensive and it would take a lot much more toll on you. But it's a 6-month project to run a marathon. It might be the same with this. It might be saying, right, well, I'm going to do this for a year. I'm going to get 2— so I'm going to earn twice as much as I can for a year because I'm saving for a house, or because I've got some debts, or because I want to start a business, or because I've got this holiday I want to go for. So I can see it being— if you can do it for a short period of time, great, because you've got something you are aware of the toll it's gonna take on you or the toll it's gonna take on you. However, as a long-term strategy, I agree, it's not a good idea, I think, because unless of course you are like 180 IQ and you can just do something in half the time, in which case you probably wanna be looking at a different type of job.

Leanne ElliottExactly.

Al ElliottThere you go.

Leanne ElliottExactly. If you have this superpower, it doesn't sound like it's sustainable, but if it's a short-term thing to meet a specific financial goal, crack on. If it's actually just because this is your superpower, there are much better ways that you can use that skill, my friend.

Al ElliottAbsolutely. Okay, so looking at the last couple of episodes, which are the Thursday's ones, which if you've missed them, they've been great. We've basically done this Future of Work 2-part series. The first part had the Vice Chair of Ogilvy Mather, the incredible Rory, and eloquent and loquacious Rory Sutherland. So really quickly, it's just a recap of what Rory had to say in episode 83. I'm now the vice chairman of an advertising agency. If I'd been the vice chairman of an advertising agency of the size of Ogilvy in 1988, I would have had an office like Mussolini. Okay. I probably would have had a chauffeur. I'm not making this up. All right. I probably would have had my own sommelier and a walk-in humidor, you know, and a sort of, you know, a huge desk and, you know, button-back leather chairs and shit. It was actually worth getting to the top. In 1988, there were kind of material rewards that made it worthwhile. Now I'm the vice chairman of the company, and I leave a home where I have Nespresso machines, fridges, SodaStreams. I'm watching you here on a 55-inch 4K monitor. Okay, I have really reliable broadband. I have £400 worth of microphone equipment bought with my own money.

Leanne ElliottOkay.

Al ElliottAnd when I go into the office, you know, they say, here's a chair and here's a plug. Now, sorry, that's not fucking doing it for me, right?

Leanne ElliottAnd the second part of that series, episode 85, was with the fabulous Isabel Berrick, who talked about the future-proof career. Her book is, is out now, out in a few days.

Al ElliottI think it's April the 11th, I think so.

Leanne ElliottA couple Very, very soon, April 11th. You can pre-order, we'll leave a link in the show notes, and it is specifically designed to help you make work work for you in this post-pandemic funny, funny old world that we live in. Uh, one of the interesting things that Isabelle and Al, um, talked about is the fact that they are from the same generation, yet unlike Al, Isabelle does spend quite a lot of time on the TikTok and amongst the Gen Z population. She thinks that employers and leaders can learn more about their employees and what they want from social media more than perhaps they might think.

Al ElliottThe whole—

Leanne Elliottthe quiet quitting, lazy girl jobs, all of those trends started on TikTok, and that's not a surprise. I think when we were young, when all of us were young, we probably had shit jobs and shit managers. The difference now is that people can go on TikTok and vent about it, and why not, you know? And some of them are really funny. I find it really funny, and I think What I like about TikTok is that it brings a kind of humor that I think has been lacking. I mean, much as I love LinkedIn, it can be quite a humorless place. TikTok is, you know, work is part of our lives. And I guess this is part of what I was trying to do in the book. You know, work is so, so baked into our lives, and yet sometimes it's over here at a distance. You know, we don't count it as our real life. And TikTok is, I think, integrating real life, into our sense of humor, into who we are as people. And even if we're Gen X, as I am too, we can look at that and think, yes, that's absolutely— that's really funny.

Al ElliottOkay, after the break, we've got your second favorite time, which is the surgery with the amazing Dr. Professor Leanne Elliott, MBE.

Leanne ElliottThat's not true. None of that is true.

Al ElliottSee you after the break.

Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast, that's Us, by the way.

Al ElliottYeah, yeah.

Leanne ElliottAnd the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.

Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.

Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.

Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—

Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot The audio destination for business professionals.

Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell 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 behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of pop culture. It is.

Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?

Al ElliottIt can.

Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?

Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Lunch wherever you get your podcasts.

Leanne ElliottBut come back.

Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in. Okay, so in this last part, we're doing the workplace surgery. In, in essence, I'm going to ask Leanne questions that we've been asked or we've seen online, and Leanne's going to answer them.

Leanne ElliottI haven't looked at them this week.

Al ElliottHave you not? Interesting. No.

Leanne ElliottCold. There'll probably be big silences because I am introverted. When Al asks me, what do you think, I will literally sit here for a minute and a half and think. But let's see how it goes on an audio-only medium.

Al ElliottLuckily, I can edit this. It is strange living with an introvert. I don't know whether any of your listeners have got— are slightly more extroverted than your partner, because even after 17 years, I still will ask— I'll say something and Leanne will go quiet and I'll think, oh, she doesn't like that. She's like, no, no, I'm just thinking about it. Anyway, so on to the first thing that we've seen. So this is a message that I saw on Twitter, and it's subsequently been deleted, quite rightly too. Um, so I won't name this person, but this person wrote, I have a great employee who everyone loves, and her clients love her too. She's been with me for about 5 years, but recently she's been acting strangely out of work hours. She'll often get drunk and then start calling me or other leaders and telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Leanne ElliottOh, sorry, go what?

Al ElliottGo fuck ourselves. So I know it's just a great story. I was like watching all the replies on this. It was, it was like, like, you know, that popcorn meme. I was like that. So we stopped taking the calls hoping this would discourage her. I love the entrepreneurial spirit. We stopped taking the calls, hoping to discourage her, but she just started sending the same thing by text. Now, I really don't want to let her go, but this just seems unacceptable behaviour. So, all seriousness, Leanne, what should this person do?

Leanne ElliottI'm sorry, they posted about this on Twitter?

Al ElliottThey did.

Leanne ElliottUnder an anonymous account?

Al ElliottNo, no, under their name.

Leanne ElliottWell, that seems pretty unacceptable to me as well. You should probably let yourself go while you're at it. Um, it's quite funny actually, but also it's, it's Oh, you've got to wonder what this poor, this poor woman is going through, you know. If she's drinking a lot, we've said before, you know, it's, it's a maladaptive coping mechanism, but it is a coping mechanism. And, um, you've got to wonder what's going on. It could be that there is something outside of, of work, something in her personal life. Um, clearly it's, it's— well, it's not impacting her work. You said that she's great, her performance is great, clients love her, team love her. It's clearly impacting her relationship with her superiors at work. It sounds more likely to me in this scenario, actually, that there's something not being said by this employee to their managers. She's perhaps feeling unappreciated, undervalued, underpaid, mistreated, perhaps, you know, is feeling discriminated against, bullied. Who, who knows? And I think the fact is you don't know. A great manager is rarely going to be surprised by this kind of outburst, whether it happens in work or outside of work. You see the signs coming, you have those conversations leading up to it. You should know, you should sense, either sense or know, because you're having these regular interactions and conversations with members of your team, if there are elements that they're unhappy with or dissatisfied with. Um, I think this is more a case to me of, of, of the, uh, the jungle juice. Is that what they called it? I don't know.

Al ElliottNo, jungle juice.

Leanne ElliottJiggle juice, that's what I meant. Jungle juice. I think it's more likely that the jiggle juice is just, it's just lowering her, her, um, her walls that she's put up, and she's just being a bit more honest, a bit more vulnerable, probably in the hope that you're going to call her in and go, is everything all right? What's going on? And I think you're naturally, as a manager, you're taking offense, and it's not cool to get a drunken phone call at whatever time over the weekend and basically tell you you're shit and to go fuck yourself. But at the same time, if you can just remove your ego from the situation and just think that this clearly, this employees is hurting in some way. And that's the other thing— if you think she's good and her performance is good, then she's not good. She's freaking incredible because she's able to deliver this performance, bond with the team, build morale on the team, please your customers whilst being pretty pissed off by something that you're currently doing as a leader in her life. She is clearly an exceptional person. That's worth a conversation. It's worth sitting down and it's worth figuring out because I would I would not hesitate to bet a good chunk of money that if you figured this out, solve the situation, and remove those issues for her, she would go from being good to being an exceptional member of your team.

Al ElliottI love it. I love it. Uh, someone wrote underneath that drunk words are sober thoughts, which I never heard that phrase before. I absolutely love it. Well, there you go. So that was the first one. The second one is this question. It says, the problem at my organisation is that people take pride in being busy. busy. Working for 20 hours a day is not something to be proud of. Rather, it leaves no time for other things, and job satisfaction can be low. But in this particular organization, the trend is such that if you pick up your bag to leave at normal time after 8 hours, you're frowned upon. It's as if you've got no work to do and essentially just idling away your time. So I suppose the quandary here is, should I overwork myself so I can fit in, or should I just go, no, screw you, I get my job done and I get it done in 8 hours and I'm going home.

Leanne ElliottNo. And yes. And leave.

Al ElliottThere you go. So what you're saying is that no, you shouldn't try and fit in. Yes, you should just do your work, um, in, in the hours that you're allowed. And if that's not good enough, then just go and find somewhere else.

Leanne ElliottYeah. I mean, the thing is, clearly this, this person is, is motivated by a work-life balance, by having strong job satisfaction, but also having a life outside of work. That clearly seems part of the values and the structure they want their working life to take. So being in an organization where the culture is the, the exact opposite of that, and hustle culture is real, you're never going to get on with it. And even if you can, you know, brush it off for a little while and go, well, I'm leaving at 5 o'clock, that's going to start to take its toll. It gives you an icky feeling, doesn't it? You know, and that's just not sustainable. Then you'll start to resent it, you'll start to disengage, etc., etc. So I think fundamentally it sounds like the culture of the organization doesn't suit you. I mean, hustle culture is one of those things, isn't it? Like, I've seen people talk about how, like, you know, where when you're young— I think, what's your man who owns ChatGPT?

Al ElliottOh, what, Sam Altman?

Leanne ElliottYeah, yeah, he was chatting to someone recently about how, like, hustle culture in your 20s isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're setting foundations for your later career. And I kind of agree with that. And I think we both kind of hustled a lot more in our 20s than we than we have done in our 30s and 40s, perhaps. So I can see that if there is a reason for you to be in this, in this job, whether it be a financial goal, whether it be, you know, gaining specific types of experience, whatever it is that you took this job for in terms of getting out of it, achieve that, get that, and then leave. Because it's not going to be sustainable when we're in environments that fundamentally misalign with our values that leads to something called moral burnout, which is essentially burnout. So your mental health ain't gonna do so well. I think it's just about timing, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't bend over backwards to, to engage in the hustle culture if that's just not, not your vibe. And similarly, I'd look at getting out because you can't change them, that's for sure.

Al ElliottSounds like really good advice. Okay, so that is the end of the episode for Tuesday. Um, can we You and me, listener. In fact, Leanne and I and you, listener, can we make a pact? Can we? We'll— we're going to continue to try and make this the very best podcast around the science of work. But in return, if you did enjoy this, please subscribe and more importantly, leave a review. We've got nothing to sell you. So this is the only thing we're asking of you. And as we've said before, we put so many hours into these episodes to make them as good as they possibly can be. So don't feel— don't get the violin out just yet. But, but really, if you do enjoy this, this is the only thing we ask, is that you just go to the homepage of the app you're on and just rate us and click and leave a review. And just say a couple of words like, oh no, I love the, love the honesty, or they've got great guests, or Al's my favourite. So do you think that you could agree to do that? I'm talking to you, listener. And the other thing is, it's lovely to wake up to nice comments, which we do occasionally, don't we? We wake up to a lovely review and Leanne's like, oh, look at that. Oh, it's lovely.

Leanne ElliottYeah, no, he's nice, he's nice, he's nice.

Al ElliottAnything to add?

Leanne ElliottNot really, just that if you have a question for the surgery or indeed anything else you want us to talk about, debate, some article or piece of research that's caught your eye and you've thought, love to get Al and Leanne's take on that— hot take, I think the kids call it— then send it in. Drop us an email, all the contact details are in the show notes. Let us know, this is your, this is your episode too, friend. So, um, so yeah, let us, let us know what's what's occurring out there in your world of work. And of course, tune back in on Thursday. We will be joined by the awesome Dave Klein. He is a founder of MGMT Accelerator, or Management Accelerator. Uh, yeah, ex-corporate, turned consultant, all-around great guy, is on the pod this Thursday.

Al ElliottHe's also one of LinkedIn's top voices, uh, got about a quarter of a million people who follow him on social media. He's kind of a big So definitely tune in for that. So if you're not subscribed, click that subscribe button and consider leaving a review if you thought we were good. If you didn't think we were good, don't leave us a review. We don't want to hear that.

Leanne ElliottIf you have constructive criticism, I'll accept that in email form, not on the review page under the podcast. You know what I mean?

Al ElliottOkay guys, we'll see you next week.

Leanne ElliottBye-bye.