Ep50: Busting 5 Workplace Culture Myths

Debunking 5 workplace culture myths that could hold your businesses back…

Welcome to a special summer edition of “Truth, Lies & Workplace Culture” – the podcast that simplifies the science of people for business owners and leaders who want to create enviable workplace cultures where people (and businesses!) thrive. 

In this laid-back episode, your hosts Leanne and Al Elliott take the reins for a light-hearted conversation perfect for easy summer listening. No expert guests this time, just the dynamic duo bringing you some refreshing insights into workplace culture.

Relax in the summer sun as Leanne, a seasoned Business Psychologist, and Al, the savvy business owner, tackle the five myths surrounding workplace culture. With their signature banter and easy-going style, they reveal the truth behind these common misconceptions, making sure you return to work armed with a fresh perspective and renewed enthusiasm for cultivating a thriving organisation.

So sit back, sip your favourite summer drink, and join Leanne and Al for a delightful exploration of workplace culture myths. It’s the perfect blend of insights and entertainment to keep you company during your well-deserved break. 

Resources

All the links mentioned in the show.

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The Transcript

⚠️ NOTE: This is an automated transcript, so it might not always be 100% accurate!

Al Elliott 0:00
So basically high pay means that you can kind of treat your guys like whatever you want like in suits or billions or all those sort of sort of dramas, thoughts. Lovely Lea.

Leanne Elliott 0:16
Hello, and welcome to the truth lives 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 Elliott 0:26
My name is Al I’m a business owner,

Leanne Elliott 0:29
we are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures.

Al Elliott 0:33
So this is week two of us being in Sicily, the temperatures dropped a bit he’s only about sort of say it’s only it’s only like 34 At the moment, which is a bit it was 4243 44 last week, pretty unbearable wasn’t really,

Leanne Elliott 0:44
it wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t but like you say it’s, it’s okay, now it’s a cool 35.

Al Elliott 0:50
So talking of summer and summer weather, then these are slightly lighter episodes of the next four weeks. Because if you’re anything like us, you probably going to be relaxing a bit probably taking a bit easy in August. As Leanne always talks and massively about downtime and how important that is, don’t you love?

Leanne Elliott 1:06
Yeah, and I think August typically is when people will take some downtime, especially with kids, you know, the kids are off, it’s time for holidays. I think even you know, just just because so many people are perhaps not in work in August, everyone just kind of feels to be on a bit of a slower, survive. So yeah, we didn’t want to bring anything too heavy. If you’re listening to this on your morning walk if you’re on the beach, if you by the pool, or wherever you holiday. We didn’t want to kind of lecture you in this time.

Al Elliott 1:38
Yeah. And if you are somewhere on holiday or even just you’re not on a staycation, then why don’t you send us a picture? We are on Instagram, Lee. Yeah, yeah, so truth lies work on Instagram. Or just go to LinkedIn and send us a message there. If you want to know you want to be weird to post a picture of someone on the holidays on LinkedIn. I think that might be I mean Instagrams a good show. Yeah, go Instagram. Okay, so today we’re going to tackle a number of lies about workplace culture, now are saying number because we’ll just see how long we’ve got, because we want to keep this around about 40 minutes. I think so. Um, so we might, we might not get through them all. But this is me putting Leanna testily and had a quick scan, please. But I’ve only just shown her the list and then whipped it away so that we could get her her natural reaction to this. So shall we start with line number one, and that is that creating a good workplace culture is either a fad or it’s for the woke thoughts?

Leanne Elliott 2:36
Well, in terms of FAD, I think it is having a moment workplace culture in the conversation is definitely louder and more frequent now than ever has been before a Thank goodness. When I started in this game 15 years ago, workplace culture wasn’t talked about very much. So is it a fad? I’m not sure it’s a fad. I think maybe awareness has been building. And now it is recognized as something that is important in organizational life and business performance. So I don’t think it’s a fad. But I think it’s definitely a trend at the moment that we’re hearing a lot about. So yeah, maybe what was your other one? Is it work? Well, a culture is a culture is a culture, you know, your your organizational culture might be work, your organizational culture may be very competitive. Your organizational culture might be somewhere in the middle, your organizational culture may be purpose LED. There are many different cultures. So some are work and some are not. So yeah. So is it work? Maybe, but you’ll probably have a better idea of that than I would

Al Elliott 3:41
think was interesting is that we are talking about the Gen Z, we talk we talk about generations weird because that’s another thing that we didn’t really, we didn’t really talk about generations, maybe 1520 years ago, there was no like, Oh, he’s a boomer. I think it must be maybe it’s Tiktok has brought out this whole Okay, Boomer thing, and then everyone else has jumped on it. But because we are talking about the new generation Gen Zed, and they have very different values to Boomers, Gen X and even millennials. And so perhaps is not question of its woke or is a fad is a question with something that’s quite new, because this generation is demanding, literally demanding a better workplace culture. Yeah.

Leanne Elliott 4:21
And I think it’s kind of like, you know, I guess it’s like people saying, Oh, well, why do we have vaccines? We didn’t have vaccines in the 17th century is like, well, we live until we were about 50 in the 17th century. And it’s a similar thing. Now, you know, workplace culture may not have been much of a thing in the in the 70s and 80s. But you think about the context of that at the time. There were still massive, you know, baby boomers, I think it was carried cardinality on our Gen Gen episode says something like baby boomers were the pioneers of purpose. They were the people that campaigned for workplace rights for equal rights for women in the workplace with people of color. The Mental Health Act first came Out of the 1980s that would have been campaigned by people in the police in the late 60s and 70s. You know, you think about the 60s I don’t know Sex, drugs and rock and roll 60s and 70s. They were outrageous, the boomers and their time. That’s just what youth culture is they invented youth culture. And I think it’s no different. Now, I think the only difference perhaps is that we are planning to work much longer because we are staying healthier, for longer, therefore, we will be working more than likely into our 70s and potentially even our 80s. So that kind of work fast and hard, retire at 55 to 65. And then enjoy retirement. So what is it the retirement age in the UK is now 67, something like that. That’s public sector. That’d be the earliest that you can retire to get your your state pension. So I think it really is a case of, regardless of you know what, whatever place they’re coming from, I guess my arguments would be one. It’s a continuous evolution of the evolution of work we’ve seen since the 1970s, where these major legislation started to come in pretty sure that the parents of the 20 year olds in the 1970s when workplace rights for women were coming in were considered very woke, if that awkward boy didn’t exist, but very color groovy. Was that the word out? You know, you were there.

Al Elliott 6:24
I was there for three years in the 70s. And two of those I was crapping myself, I think, because I was a baby, not because I have

Leanne Elliott 6:31
problems. Yeah. So yeah, I think it’s an evolution. I think I think the Gen Zeds are just picking up what the boomers started probably, let’s be honest before them, I think when we talked about our health and safety, that was kind of the early 1900, wasn’t it that there was low start to come in. So really, it’s just a continuous evolution of the workplace you’ve seen over the last 100 years, and perhaps also a little sprinkle of economic uncertainty that the millennials and Gen Z have experience much more than the boomer generation did. The lack of security in jobs is a big issue as well. And the fact that we’re going to be working longer, so we can’t afford to burn out. We need to be keeping ourselves happy and healthy physically and mentally in our jobs, to continue to have a living wage. So yeah, I think it’s just working, working smarter.

Al Elliott 7:21
And that will make sense because let’s be honest, the majority if you talk about a generational gap of two or three generations, then it’s there’s always been the older generation ago and the younger generation don’t know they’re born and our grandparents I remember my grandparents saying, Oh, you got it so easy. Now you’ve got this and you’ve got that. But actually, I’m sure that their grandparents thing is so easy. Now you’ve got electricity in your home, you’ve got running water in your home, so there’s always gonna be that generational thing. I saw something dramatic you laugh the other day, and it was an article on how Gen Zed? I don’t understand the memes of Gen Alpha. Because you’re now for now sharing memes obviously.

Leanne Elliott 7:57
Oh, that brings me so much joy.

Al Elliott 7:59
I know I thought you’d like that it made me made me laugh because I’m just thinking ha ha There we go. The gents says that I say the names ago I don’t have a freaking clue what the names of the elf currently there’s something to do with a talking toilet and they take their business toilet and you can superimpose maybe it’s a Snapchat filter maybe there’s a new Snapchat that the Gen alphas are using that we don’t know anything about and and what you can do apparently as you can sort of like I think you film yourself and then you superimpose on top of a toilet and then you the toilet basically speaks and the general Yeah, the gens Ed’s are going What the hell are you talking about? I just don’t get it. And I thought that is sweet. Poetic Justice.

Leanne Elliott 8:39
Absolutely. I mean, you might not remember people talking about generations. I made it because your your what do they what do they call you are the the the last generation of quiet generation Gen Xers although I have seen more tiktoks popping up on that as well actually. They’re really funny. They’re basically like, like, the reason that you don’t fuck with a Gen X is because we will fuck you up. Like it’s really aggressive and quite satisfying. It’s kind of like, we had to do our homework with a pen and paper kind of thing on the bus on the bus. Yeah, we only had one phone.

Al Elliott 9:11
And you and you had to get off the phone. If so, if you want to go on the internet, yeah, pick up the phone

Leanne Elliott 9:15
during the drawing.

Al Elliott 9:19
Anyway, and it’s about TCP. Handshake. Did you have a point or?

Leanne Elliott 9:24
Oh no, he did. I did Saturdays I found it. So you might not remember about generation but I remember people lose their shit about millennials being entitled and privilege and who the hell do you think you are? Just because we we’ve kind of, you know, wanted something we want to be treated without being sexually harassed. And it was like who do you think you are? So well? It’s an adult in a workplace that okay. So yeah, anyway,

Al Elliott 9:48
so when I was putting this episode together, I was just Googling like, what do people not really believe about workplace culture. So these are less about lies more about myths, but to stay on brand with truth lies, I’ve called them lies. Okay, until I Number two, which is nobody cares about a rough workplace if you get good money. So basically, high pay means that you can kind of treat your guys like whatever you want, like in suits or billions or all those sort of sort of dramas, thoughts. Lovely Lea,

Leanne Elliott 10:19
I think there’s two things here. I think there are many people who have would happily work in a very toxic or competitive environment for a short period of time for high levels of pay. And that’s where we see jobs that would have a very high turnover, but people might enjoy them for a certain period of time recruitment, sales springs to mind oil rigs, perhaps Yeah, oil rigs is very well compensated that’s more because of the health and safety issues. You give that a chance that you will actually die

Al Elliott 10:52
in terms of workplace culture being swept out as see it’s kind of high up there in the in the sort of like, things you don’t really want your workplace culture to be known for.

Leanne Elliott 10:59
That’d be an interesting, but actually, the majority of gas and oil companies actually have a very good workplace cultures because that will psychological savings be so high, so that these mistakes and near misses are reported it is about matter of life and death. That’d be an interesting case study. Actually,

Al Elliott 11:13
I know someone called Campbell who does recruitment for an HR for oil rigs in Aberdeen. Oh, curl gonna get in touch him and see if I can get someone on the on the pod. Yeah. If you’re listening Campbell can touch been a while.

Leanne Elliott 11:25
So yeah, short term? I think so. And I think there is an element of people, particularly younger people who want a who want that money for a short term financial goal, like saving up for a deposit to get your first house, there is an argument that’s how you could structure your business, you can pay very well expect to have a high turnover, and plan for that and manage that knowing that you’ve got this continuous churn of young ambitious, hungry talent, who want to who are willing to make these sacrifices to get that financial reward. So short term, yeah, long term. I think maybe there’s a difference between a toxic culture and a competitive culture. I think even the most no competitive Wolf of Wallstreet cultures, you look at that, you know, that movie, there’s actually a huge sense of belonging in that organization, a huge sense of camaraderie and relationships and, and resources in terms of, of people know exactly what their role was exactly what target they had to achieve, and exactly what means they had to do it. So actually, it can, it can look at quite, from the outside quite an aggressive culture, competitive culture, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the people within it are well suited to that environment, and actually supporting all the ways that they need to be. You know, even looking at your main boss guy, how many times has he like kissing people and hugging people, and they did a good job and getting lots of recognition and huge rewards. So I think there’s a difference between toxicity and competitiveness in a culture. So in that scenario, and if the person is well suited, I think the fact is, what was your original lie, that coach doesn’t matter, as long as people are being well paid? My argument would be that actually that having that competitive type culture, that winning type culture is actually a very effective culture, if you’re recruiting the right people with the right mentality into it. I think from a psychology perspective, the problem with toxic workplace coaches, even if they are very highly compensated, is that without meaning, without purpose, without a sense of belonging, we feel hugely lacking in terms of our own well being and our own sense of fulfillment. And that can sound fluffy. But what that basically means that if we’re missing that, it’s like we’re missing food, or missing water, we can survive. But we’re not performing optimally, we’re not our best, we can all get by in you know, a couple of days on a few hours sleep. But we do that for for too long. And you know, our cognitive functioning starts to be affected and our performance and our behavior starts to be affected our mood does, how we nurture our relationships, how we engage with other things outside of work. And that’s the same thing in a toxic work environment over time, is going to really deplete every other resource that we have to live a rounded and balanced life. And I think in that point, that’s when you get to two periods of burnout, and how many even anecdotally, have you heard of people who’ve had these incredibly successful, high flying roles in huge corporate companies where they’re doing very, very well for themselves, and burnout at 40 and usually end up writing a book, maybe going into some kind of mental health or well being professional keynote speaker, because it’s just not sustainable? So yeah, so I think it’s not necessarily a lie. I think you need to be careful on how you’re defining culture, whether it is actually a toxic culture or a winning culture. Those two things are very different. I think really, we’re just talking about longevity in terms of sustainability in terms of resilience, how long people can Last,

Al Elliott 15:00
I like hearing I like hear when you say things like this because even in like outside of work, you have a very balanced idea of things and you very rarely will say, x is really bad and y is really good, you’ll go, I can see the pros, I can see the cons, I can see, you know, you look at you’re very good at that. And this is great, because if someone does have a very competitive, we have a good friend who’s in recruitment. And and she almost thrives for that competitive environment. But then you take someone in the city who’s who’s like, you know, the same person, but they’ve got the same place, but there’s people stealing deals from underneath you, or there’s always the risk that if you don’t get this, don’t hit your targets, you’d be fired by Friday. You know, that’s a different thing that’s competitive, and there’s just no beds. I think we that’s, that’s basically what we’re trying to avoid, I think is on the knob edge of competitive scale. Yes, it’s fine to be competitive, as long as as long as everyone really enjoys it, and everyone enjoys the competitiveness.

Leanne Elliott 15:57
Yeah, I think this is why, you know, often when we talk about culture, we talk about teams and businesses will often draw on analogies from sports, there is nothing more competitive than than elite sports. Name a sport. It’s so competitive, whether it’s individual, whether it is teaming are people fiercely, fiercely competitive, yet there are rules, and there’s transparency, and there is regulation. And there are standards that need to be upheld. Those standards and regulation don’t exist in workplace culture in businesses if they did, and you know, there are there are some, but if it did, to that extent, we wouldn’t see toxic places, we probably wouldn’t see much burnout, and we probably see a much healthier and happier workforce in society. So that is where I think sports is a really good analogy to draw. And I think often maybe one that might be misunderstood from business owners perhaps in that will, you know, if they can maintain that level of performance, why can’t you in a business? It’s a bit more nuanced than that, isn’t it? Um, CF psychology call it balanced. It’s just that it depends. As a psychologist, it depends.

Al Elliott 17:04
I love it. I love it. So number three. Now, this one is a bit of a contentious one, because I genuinely don’t know whether it is a lie, or whether there’s some truth within it. So let’s ask you, Lee, if you recruit the right people, then culture will take care of itself.

Leanne Elliott 17:21
Oh, if you recruit the right people, then coach will take care of itself. Let’s

Al Elliott 17:27
just put it in some kind of scientific box, we’ll say you do nothing else. Apart from you get really good at recruiting the right people.

Leanne Elliott 17:36
I think there is an element of truth to this. Because my beef, which I’ve talked about before on this podcast, and other podcasts as well, it’s often businesses that will invest so little, in a robust science lead recruitment process. Because if we get that right, it can solve a lot of problems from even even happening. So I think there is definitely an element of truth. I think the only thing would be is to recruit the right people, how do you know you’re recruiting the right people?

Al Elliott 18:05
I don’t know. And the reason I’m pausing is that this was one of the things that I saw on quite a few forums going, if I recruit the right people will, will culture take care of itself. And so people, there’s lots of different answers to it. So I’m going to assume that they are this, these fictitious person in my example, is good at recruiting. They’re recruiting people, and they’re trying their best to find the people who are best suited for the job. But once they’re recruited, they don’t run engagement surveys. They’re not that fussed about psychological say, you know, they don’t like try and put things in place for psychological safety very much as your your left to do your own thing. But if you get the right people, and you’re matching it to the way that you want to run the culture of your company, the culture ready, have you talked about culture match, sometimes culture fit, I think is a term of yours, then if you recruit for that, is that is that does that solve the problem?

Leanne Elliott 18:56
I think it’s like a chicken and egg argument. Because to know who you want to recruit, you have to either know the culture that you have or the culture that you want. Because culture is behaviors, culture, the behaviors that we want to see within our business behaviors are linked to how we treat each other. It’s linked to how we performance is linked to everything, everything is behavior, that’s, you know, action equals outcome. So I think is that chicken egg? Where if you know the person you want to recruit, and why, and why in terms of their competence for the job, and the ad that they bring to your culture and honestly looking for people exactly like because we need diversity of thought. But culture add, would that take care of itself? Probably largely Yeah, because it’s intentional. The fact is that you’re you’re approaching your recruitment process in a way that is intentional in terms of what your your culture is, or at the very least, the desired behaviors that you want to see in your organization. And as we know, my favorite definition of culture is culture is defined by the worst behaviors tolerated. So I think if we look at it like that, yeah, probably logically it would be, but it’s intentional and it’s continuous. Is it going to eliminate all problems? No. Is it a good first step in kind of creating that foundation? And that culture? Yeah, probably. And there’s also probably as well, where we see a much smaller organizations, you know, people don’t really start to be an issue until I start ticking on 1213, maybe 15, certainly when I hit that tipping point of 20, but we start to see those issues at the point where people start to those groups start to separate is no longer one group. It’s, it’s, it’s, there’s too many people. So therefore, people have to be two groups, or somebody myomas Simon Sinek, who said something like a team is too big if you can’t share one pizza or something.

Al Elliott 20:41
Yeah, Simon Sinek. Or it might have been enlightening Jeff Bezos it was someone. Yeah, yeah. So let me just let me just talk about that for a second. Because this is really, really interesting. I like it, when you’ve got kind of a little bit of a rule of something to say, if you’ve got 10 people, if you’ve got seven, the seventh person you’re going to recruit, is you’re going to start seeing problems. That’s where I kind of like, okay, I like the sort of rules. So, if you if there’s six slices of pizza, and I know I’m being a little bit nerdy about the six slices of pizza, then are we saying that, when you get sort of seven or eight, that’s when you start might seeing some problems? When you get to 12? You’re almost certainly gonna see some problems when you get 20. There’s gonna be problems is that is it? I mean, I know you can’t say, for every company, but is that generally the trend? Do you think?

Speaker 2 21:25
Yeah, I think I might have miscarried, maybe it was two pizzas, because I think it is 12 seems to be that number of consensus that there, we start to see that kind of tension building, quite simply because you know, 12 is a is quite a big number. And you can, if, again, if we think about a very simple definition of culture, it’s a worst behavior is tolerated. If you suddenly have 11 people that you need to ever see, you’re not going to be as involved with him every day, to see firsthand their behaviors, you’re gonna have to trust other people to police those behaviors, whether that be on a peer to peer basis, or a manager to an employee basis. So I think, yeah, 12 is where or start to start to get tension. And I think that, you know, the, if you’re a business that doesn’t really have much intention of kind of scaling indefinitely, then keep it small. Really keep it small, you know, if you can keep your team to kind of five or six people, you probably won’t ever have to really invest in, in culture, because it will be much more organic, and it’ll be much more

Leanne Elliott 22:26
owned collectively. That’s where I think recruitment is gonna be much more important. And it will be about recruiting the right people into the team for coaches to take care of itself. So yeah, I think I think there is actually an element of truth in that.

Al Elliott 22:40
This is strange, because I call it these magic numbers have like three is the magic number and all that 12. There are, you know, on a clock, there’s 12 numbers in a year, there’s 12 months, 12 disciples, I mean, are we talking about

Leanne Elliott 22:57
where he started, or problems he recruited that 12 societies

Al Elliott 23:03
was the travel was the 13 and was 13, including him. And so the 13 would be Judas. So that’s basically, this is interesting how we got to the workplace culture of the disciples. That’s that thing that feels like a very niche blog article we can create. But I think, but this is so interesting, I think this is so cool that anyone listening and go, right, all I need to know, all I need to worry about is 12. If I want to keep if I want to keep a small team, I don’t know you don’t want to bring in Leann to do culture, I don’t want to have to deal with any issues. I’ll just stick to around about 12. Once I get my 13 by 1415. That’s where I’m going to start seeing problems because the teams will separate out one or two or people want to manage you will need managers is that is about right.

Leanne Elliott 23:45
Yeah, I think typically that is true. And particularly if you’re not losing staff, you know, if you’re if you’re struggling to catch up to 12, because people are leaving, then you’ve got a problem somewhere. Yeah, exactly as you if you’re if you’re keeping older people and you’re building your team nicely up to eight 910 11 people, you probably don’t work with a really good recruiter work with a really good kind of HR consultant for that, that more kind of transactional legal aspect of people still be really important that you need to manage. But yeah, in terms of people called you probably not really

Al Elliott 24:16
elevate, elevate, there’s a great book called the company of won by I think is Paul Jarvis. And it is so interesting, because he talks all about the idea that most people who start a business go I in fact, it’s weird whenever you don’t think it happens anymore, because I’ve met anyone for about 10 years because I’ve lived abroad and the hermit but when you used to go to a networking event, they will go Alright, so what do you do and how many people work for you? And that was a second question you always get and you and I always felt really embarrassed like three because I hated recruiting I was no good at it. And this is before obviously you know when met Leanne and and so I never really wanted more and I always felt like I was I was losing out like I was never going to make it because I didn’t want more than three or four people. If you’re listening to this and you feel the same. Go and get company of one by Paul Jarvis. It might not be Paul Jarvis, but certainly search for company one on on Kindle, download it, you will love it. It’s such a relaxed laid back book. And it basically gives you permission just to keep a company very small of just one person if you want or up to 12. But you don’t have to be big to be boss me. And that’s that’s a t shirt for you right there, isn’t it? Anything else? Or should we move on to our myth? No, or line number three? So line number three is that workplace culture doesn’t work. If you’re fully remote, or a hybrid? That’s bullshit. Right? Okay. Number four. QUESTION Well tell us then, because I think a lot of people worry. And we’ve had clients who go, I want everyone back in the office, because I want to develop my work or workplace culture, I want to develop our culture. So what you’re saying if I’ve understood this is that it doesn’t matter where they work, you could possibly never have met them in person. Or they could be in the office two days a week, or the office five days a week. But culture is the same football, you still do the same things. What talk me through?

Leanne Elliott 26:03
I think there’s maybe three, three arguments I can think of maybe that that might explain why I think this is bullshit, I suppose is maybe kind of the precedent set. It’s not the right word. precedent, precedent, precedent,

Al Elliott 26:19
question Trump, as you’re using it, right? The precedent set

Speaker 2 26:23
by large organizations, the rise of digital intimacy that we’ve seen, generally across generations over the past, I know, 15 years onesy. Internet, how long have the internet been in probably 20 years. And the third one is leadership. So big organizations. Now this, this is what confuses me, right? Because what you’re saying is a as a an organization, large organization, bringing your teams back into the office, because you can’t create culture or nurture culture without doing that. If you’re talking about teams of 1000s of people, what are your leaders or managers doing on a daily basis to engage even in person to person with those 10s of hundreds of 1000s of people, like that’s not just how that just doesn’t work like that. It’s like having managers and we’ve had it for decades, managers in area management roles, national management roles, couldn’t treat management roles. They don’t see have eyes on their staff all the time, that’s dependent on the relationships they have with with their direct reports, those direct reports have with their teams there, those teams and and so on. That’s why we have this hierarchy. Because we need that structure. Or until arguably, we needed that structure, to build the relationships that we need to engage people and get them working and performing to the level that we need them to. So not having eyes on people, I think is bullshit for larger organizations, especially because you’ve not had eyes on your people for a long, long time. So the steam of Amazon, you know, sitting in their in their rooms and deciding together over whatsoever multiple occasions or the article, we were quoted on the news roundup museum on multiple occasions to say that that’s not how you create culture, those senior leaders have no intention of going face to face on boots on the ground and meeting or 10,000 of the employees in the organization bullshit, which is why I have beef with that. Smaller organizations, I think it’s just a lack of control. I think it’s um, this is where it kind of comes into leadership. What we’re finding it’s really interesting with the the massive increase of research we saw during and post pandemic about leadership in hybrid remote environments. What all the research has shown us so far is effective leadership is defined by the same constructs the same behaviors. In every context, whether it’s on site in the office remote hybrid, there is no difference. The only difference is the intention to which those behaviors are enacted, the frequency that those behaviors are enacted, and I guess the capability of the lead in acting those behaviors. So basically, COVID, and remote work, completely exposed bad leaders, and lazy leaders, great leaders didn’t have a fucking problem during COVID. They were fine. They were great. And we’re finding that as well, as the research goes on, as I said that, actually great leadership is great leadership, is it a bit more time intensive shore? should actually that has been the case for the past number of decades anyway, that there is a proportionate chunk of chunky proportion of your time as a leader and manager carved out for managing and leading your people. Sure, that’s in the job title. So I think really, it’s just it’s just refocused what our managers and leaders should be doing, and how they should be behaving to motivate and engage and inspire their teams. So yeah, and I think where we’re seeing it with smaller organizations, they’re perhaps particularly on a lead. If they haven’t come from a leadership background. They haven’t come from a team management background. They haven’t come from a people and cultural HR background. They maybe haven’t developed these competencies to the level that they need them to be Those that are working on that leadership development, I think having a much easier time with it. So then yes, we’ve got that leadership thing. We’re looking at the bigger organizations. So we’re panicking and we’re pulling people everyone back in, because if mattering, Google and Amazon are doing it, then surely that’s the right thing to do. A lot of psychologists are starting to lose faith in the best practice of these big tech companies, because it’s just not best practice anymore. So there are two I say, the bigger companies, the leadership, and the final one, the rise of digital intimacy, how many times have you heard about your friends meeting online, falling in love, and building these amazing connections, or having bat friends? You know, the younger generations have been gaming for the past 15 years, we’ve got circle of friends online, there are so many ways for us to connect without being in person. And I think we’ve all experienced, to some extent, that, that sense of connection, especially during COVID, we all had a time where, yes, we were craving that face to face. But imagine if we didn’t have the technology that we had, during the pandemic, imagine, imagine how hard that would have been and how much that would have affected our mental health and our well being, because it didn’t, to that extent, because the vast, vast majority of us are able to engage in digital intimacy, and build these relationships. Personally, as well. In my experience, I have recruited and managed a remote team that spanned three, four continents, and we had a great workplace culture. They all said that we had a great workplace culture that that nurtured well being. And you never met.

Leanne Elliott 31:36
I met one of them. I met one of them when we’re in Sydney. That was it. But just once for about half an hour, I went for a coffee.

Al Elliott 31:44
I love this. And I think I think what’s funny is that you’re quite right digital intimacy, technology, the advantage of technology. I mean, we’re this time last year there was there was I’m sure chat GPT existed, but it certainly wasn’t out for the general public. We can now we’ve got now artificial intelligence machines, yet. We still probably it’s just me the exes and the millennials. Whenever you get a zoom call, the first thing you always say is, can you hear me? We’ve moved on so far. But that’s the first thing we still say. So hopefully, we’ll move move away from that. Okay, that was really good. I liked that. I liked that a lot. There’s also a term which I think I’ve heard you use which is servant leadership or servitude leadership, servant leadership, servant leadership. And that’s that basically summed up I think, a lot of what you were saying, whereas, you know, those people who want to be the boss, because they sit in the corner office, and everyone looks at them, and they, and they storm out, go Nigel, get Tokyo on the phone for me, as opposed to the bosses, who actually just want their employees to have the world’s best day by providing all the resources that they need, and giving them all the space they need to create.

Speaker 2 32:48
Yeah, I think it’s well, if we look at the, you know, the personality of people that are likely to be entrepreneurs, or, or own a business, they’re probably much more likely to be extroverted, which means they’re probably much more likely to gain their energy from being in a room full of people thinking this is how we build camaraderie. And this is how we get the energy going, and the creative juices flowing. Whereas, you know, there’s probably six or seven people in that room that actually introverts go, and this is how I’m much more creative when I’m on my own or have quiet time to think. So just because it’s your preference doesn’t mean it’s going to be everyone else’s preference, or indeed, that that preference is going to help people to perform better. And also, you know, you mentioned servant leadership that’s basically based on empathic concern, which is what can I do to make your life easier, and if what you can do as a leader, to make my life easier, and my job more manageable, is to enable me to work from home for X number of days a week, for various reasons than that is seven lead leadership equally, it might be better for me because of what’s going on at home or my setup at home that is better for me to come into an office or a co working space. So yeah, I think that’s the thing, isn’t it that for any leader out there, if you have defined your hybrid policy, you’ve probably done it wrong. Because you probably need to ask people what they want and create that policy. In collaboration with your team. Again, I think the word now the vast majority of of businesses has been exposed exposes because they haven’t thought about workplace culture or employee wellbeing or performance or productivity in a measurable way before sounds no idea if people are more productive at home because they’ve not been measuring it. They have no idea if people are happy and healthy working from home because they’ve not been measuring it. So I think it’s the same thing. I think that’s understandably why employees have got beef and going well, why are you dragging me back into the office? I think I work really effectively at home while he’s gone. Well, I don’t think you do, as I will prove it. You know, the organizations that if you know if you’re if you as a leader, have put in, you know, yeah, we have a complete flexible policy. You can work at home, your office, whatever you want, totally up to you. No rules here. And you are measuring employee engagement, and measuring using a predictive model, which means that you can measure how happy and healthy people are. You can measure how much discretionary effort has been put into their roles, how much they’re going above them. Beyond, you’re measuring how creative and innovative people are, your speed to market, how happy your customers are, if all of these things are being measured under an umbrella of a predictive model of engagement. And after six months of having that remote policy, you’ve got unhappy customers, you’ve got unhealthiest staff, your productivity down is down, your performance is down your revenue down, then you have a business case to bring people back into the office that black and white that’s just for business reasons we need to bring you back into the office. So yeah, I think that’s that’s the problem is that employees are quite where are they going? And why and business leaders are going because I’m that’s just not the adult to adult conversation that there we need to create these environments that are going to be effective for anyone.

Al Elliott 35:44
Okay, Lee, for the last one. For number five, do you want to pick a number between one and 15?

Leanne Elliott 35:49
Ooh, I’m gonna get 15. Because that’s the one on the 15.

Al Elliott 35:52
If you create values, and you stick them on the wall, then you’ve got a great culture. Go. Why? Why? Because I just don’t why? Because what I like doing is getting a stick and just poking you and just going God God, do it get angry, get angry?

Leanne Elliott 36:10
What is the value? What can you you’re your marketing person, what is value? loose definition?

Al Elliott 36:17
loose definition of value is something which you believe in? Perhaps it’s, I’ll give you an example of what I believe, like a company corporate value might be. We are always looking for creative solutions that will help our customer

Leanne Elliott 36:37
creative solutions that will help our customer how’d you know if a solution is creative?

Al Elliott 36:42
Oh, good question. Because it’s not been done before. Because it’s interesting, because you go, Whoa, that’s clever.

Leanne Elliott 36:50
Okay, so if you go, ooh, that’s clever, what you reacting to

Al Elliott 36:53
reacting to, perhaps the idea, the way it’s implemented,

Speaker 2 36:59
that maybe somebody has given you or you’ve had as part of that discussion, or you’ve had an environment where you felt comfortable as a team to ideate to suggest new things to explore. To do some blue sky thinking is our cup talk is like, what is that their behaviors? Values are words values are empty and meaningless, unless they are brought to life through action and behavior and outputs. So values on a wall is like having is like saying, Well, I’m a vegetarian, because I’ve got a pumpkin in the fridge.

Leanne Elliott 37:39
We’ve got a pumpkin in the fridge. So the euphemism

Al Elliott 37:41
don’t know No pumpkin. I’ve got a pumpkin in the fridge. I think it means that you’ve just fallen pregnant.

Leanne Elliott 37:48
Now. It’s like having a gym membership and never going, isn’t it? Just because you’ve got one doesn’t mean you’re a fitness freak. Just because you’ve got value doesn’t mean that you have a good culture. So yeah, it’s values values. Isn’t that a culture make behaviors make a culture? The other thing that makes me laugh about values is how many people seem to have that we’ve got 10 core values. And it’s like, cool. I have well, I’ve worked for a company favorite company I worked for I think they had 12, I could remember three, so I just rolled with them. Three is a good number.

Al Elliott 38:17
It is a good number. And I think that it’s also like, priority. What are your priorities right now? Well, from what I understand is that semantically you can’t have more than one priority. You can have a priority, and then a what’s the word when you have like a cascading of priorities? You’d

Leanne Elliott 38:34
be one of those one because when you’ve actually worked in business, I believe we can’t have multiple parties. And when if your manager was like quarantine, we’re gonna give it 110% He like I believe that’s mathematically impossible.

Al Elliott 38:47
Except I’d say in really nerdy voice excuse me, I think you can’t have more than 100% So I want to read you just a company mission statement. And and I want to see if you can guess which company is and then we’ll just start ripping it apart a little bit. Okay, you ready? Yeah. Our worldwide operations are are lined around a global strategy called the plan to win which center on an exceptional customer experience. People products place price and promotion,

Leanne Elliott 39:18
exceptional customer experience like that’s all you needed. That was a bit

Al Elliott 39:24
I have a feeling that Reginald in in strategy came up and went Oh, yeah, we’ve got this a look at look Arnold. We’ve got this is just exceptional customer service, and he’s gone. We’ve got space for 11 words here. Go back and go but come on, come up with another six. Because he’s bullshitting. Any idea which company it is is a massive one? No, it’s not. Oh, I don’t know who that is McDonald’s.

Leanne Elliott 39:52
Sure. My McDonald’s with exceptional customer experience. So why he goes to McDonald’s. She don’t like you know what I really find Want to go into Mac is because you just can’t get better service anywhere else?

Al Elliott 40:03
No it’s just the way they put it down on that plastic tray and give it to you it stitches feels like is yeah he’s just you just you know you’ve made it when you can afford a Big Mac meal. Absolutely well just to give them a little bit of defense they started their cut their mission statement by saying McDonald’s is brand mission is to be our favorite customers favorite place and way to eat and drink. I didn’t get rid of the drink. But I think pretty favorite place to eat pasta Humphries. Yes, it

Leanne Elliott 40:31
turned into a bit of a masterclass in copywriting, isn’t it? It’s Reno’s with your marketing and my executive branding. We like getting all the words wrong, this is

Al Elliott 40:39
wrong. So we Don’s if you’re listening, and you want to hire us, then yeah, for 100,000 pounds, we will rewrite your mission statement anyway. The point I think we’re, I feel like I’ve taken us off point here. And my point, I think was that people think they sit down and they write five, they go to the Goddess go on this proverbial mountaintop, for a weekend, write out their five core values, they’ll come back, they will pay 600 pounds to get them stuck on the wall. And then they think great, we have now nails corporate culture. We’ve now nailed our workplace culture. And then there were they surprised when nobody either knows what they’re talking about. And nobody can recite even one.

Leanne Elliott 41:15
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think there is if you can’t, if you can’t remember it. If you is the business leader can’t remember off the top of your head. It’s probably too long. And certainly your people aren’t gonna remember that.

Al Elliott 41:27
Yeah, absolutely. Google started off and they don’t use it anymore. But do no evil, I think was there was one of their their like, kind of core values. In fact, I think it was their core value do no evil, I’m sure or not be don’t be evil. There was something like that. Now, obviously, they very quietly got rid of that around about 10 years ago,

Leanne Elliott 41:44
when they started to do evil.

Al Elliott 41:47
Track the shift. Are they ever loving share? Whatever you do.

Leanne Elliott 41:52
You have a loving share.

Al Elliott 41:56
But yeah, so so yeah. Don’t be evil is a really cool mission statement.

Leanne Elliott 42:02
Yeah. I’ve actually done the opposite. And I’ve I’ve Googled, like some good short, short, succinct mission statements for me. Would you like to hear some? Yes. Have you heard of Wix?

Al Elliott 42:14
Wix? Yeah, like WAC? Oh, wi X ows. Yes,

Leanne Elliott 42:19
create your own professional web presence exactly the way you want.

Al Elliott 42:23
And to be fair, Wix does do that. They are pretty much the Walmart of website builders. They’re not very good, and they’re quite expensive. And but the thing is, you’re right, Wix won over. What was that author really badly named one with the there was an advert in the UK TV with this German woman was called an IOU on s of something. But there’s lots of similar ones like this. And weeks of one weeks of one they I think the biggest GoDaddy might be slightly bigger or go Got any my fault Wix. But yeah, so you can see why they’ve expired. They’ve excelled and grown, because they’re just gone. Right?

Leanne Elliott 43:02
Create your own professional web presence exactly the way you want. Yeah, I’ve got some others. I’ve got some others. Nice, succinct ones. Google’s changed, as you said, to organize the world’s information and make it universally universally accessible and useful.

Al Elliott 43:15
So I don’t think you necessarily need to have the last page just organize the world’s information. That’s it. Amazon Oh,

Leanne Elliott 43:23
yeah. Oh, this is a good one. Ted spread ideas.

Al Elliott 43:27
Oh, this is Ted Talks, isn’t it? Yeah. Ted. Yeah. Obviously, just amazing. Absolutely amazing. Ted, whatever they do, they are amazing spread ideas. And And what’s interesting at the most, they could have gone mango. Oh, no, we only want to spread good ideas. No good is subjective. Good. What makes a good idea and bad idea. In 1939, a certain Austrian guy had what everyone thought was some very good ideas turned out not brilliant at all. So it’s a very subjective what what good is so that’s interesting. Anyway, moving on. I’m not quite sure. I didn’t know we were gonna go down that road. And we started this podcast.

Leanne Elliott 44:00
Yeah. One here from Starbucks, to inspire and nurture the human spirit, one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. I have no, I have no real opinion that gets is a bit. I think, again, you could stop after to inspire and nurture the human spirit are produced to inspire the human spirit. But I think what’s interesting about Starbucks and I think this is where people have beef on against mission and values if there is this incongruence and particularly if you’re Martin comms team has been pushing this for a number of years to inspire and nurture the human spirit. Yet that human spirit is being mandated back into the office, that human spirit is being paid less because they live in a place where that is socially acceptable for them to do so. It’s this incongruence then that completely, just makes over uncomfortable. very hypocritical. Doubts of integrity in terms of leadership, and that whole Yeah, one person one cup, one neighborhood at a time. Apparently, it depends on the person depends on the neighbor, doesn’t it Starbucks? Hmm,

Al Elliott 45:01
definitely. Yes. So congregants Integrity, Authenticity. So that makes perfect sense. Is there anything we’ve not covered Lee?

Leanne Elliott 45:10
No, I’m just getting lost now people’s mission statements. Well, that’s our afternoon. Oh, Casper well join Casper mattress. Okay. Yeah. to awake in the potential of a well rested world.

Al Elliott 45:23
Are you seeing that it’s nice and everything. But what I’m worried is that then starts what? someone’s gone. This is clever, isn’t it all we like that everyone goes we like that one. That’s brilliant because we’ve got to let them euphemisms in there. And they both relate to sleep. Oh, yes, we’ve got it. Anyway. So

Leanne Elliott 45:41
I think we’re starting to tip more into maybe marketing and sales now and product than necessarily culture for anything interesting. So you go, that’s something to ponder why you only sunbed? How many values do you have? And how long is your mission statement? Because if you have more than three, and it’s more than kind of what what are we saying? Six words? Yeah, if it’s a sentence with more than one clause in it, it’s probably too long. Yeah, no comma is that’s what we’re saying.

Al Elliott 46:08
No. Values, not commerce. Like it. Right. So let’s leave it there, Aly. Yeah. Okay. So I’ll be having a fantastic August. And we’ll be back with you next week. On the YouTube at the you tube. If you’ve seen Gavin his days, you know, although that was really bad impression. So we’re on YouTube. Where are we on LinkedIn? And obviously you will be coming into your ears. on Spotify

Leanne Elliott 46:37
or American listeners like our talking about, you’re not seeing any British sitcoms, then. I was trying to be funny. He’s not trying to be what’s the word?

Al Elliott 46:48
creepy. Creepy. Yes. This last bit hasn’t gone that well. So I’ll leave you there. Say goodbye Lee finally. Bye bye