202. Divorce, disruption and the death of the watercooler. PLUS! Are you a duck shuffler? With Kristyna Hawkett - This Week in Work, 3 rd June 2025
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Coming up this week in work. Are you a duck shuffler? A what? Duck with a D. Yep, carry on before I start. Are you a duck shuffler or do you have one in your team? You might not know what it means yet, but today we're looking at why it could make the difference between a team that just plods along and one that really performs. And what does the future of work really look like? Well, we kind of know. I've been going through the latest US job statistics.

and data, but it doesn't really match the doom and gloom headlines. So are we seeing quiet resilience or is this really warning signs that we need to be adhering to? And in the workplace surgery, how do you let a star employee go when they've crossed the line? One listener says they've done everything to support them, but after months of personal drama, medical leave, and even moonlighting for a competitor, the team has had enough. So what is the right move?

fire or force a resignation. This is Truth, Lies and Work. The award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.

My name is Al and I'm a business owner. And together we help organisations build amazing workplace cultures. We'll be diving in to all of that in today's episode after a very quick word from our sponsors. Oh, and we'll also tell you why we sound a bit more echoey and we've got a different background. ♪

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welcome back if you listened to what should have been thursday's episode and was actually monday's episode or even perhaps tuesday's i can't remember exactly when he went out he'll be dated thursday though there you'll find you you'll have heard why we are now in a rather echoey room with what is actually if you're on youtube let me check this out fancy huh

Did that show the background? Yeah, it just focused. Yeah. Yeah. That is Lake Cotto in Montenegro. We are here. Not really through choice. It was so hard done by. But no, we'll explain it all in the last episode. Go and have a look. Headline is...

Shit happens. It's not about the problem, it's about how you respond to it. So if you want to hear a story of real life resilience now, how Al and I had literally 48 hours to completely turn our world upside down and still make it work, then go and check it out.

Yeah. So it's definitely a good episode. It's a very good episode with quite a story. Anyway, it's now Leanne's favourite time of the week. It is time for the News Roundup, Leigh. It is. Key the jingle out. Okay, I'll see if I remember to bring the jingle with me. I'll have to make one up. Maybe there's a different one. Maybe there's a different one. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

Lee, stop. Tell us what you've seen this week. Duck shuffler. I was so close. See, now, regular listeners will know that that is just essentially a ball, open net. I just need to get my head on it and I've knocked it in. But we will, yeah, I'll not be rude. What is a duck shuffler, Lee? It's my new word. It's my word of the week.

So, you know how people like the saying, get your ducks in a row? Yep. Which means you're like, you're ready to kind of like go on like a task or a situation. Well, a duck shuffler is someone who will come in and mess them all up. Oh, just...

So, for example, you've got a team, they've spent ages perfecting a certain project plan or process, every detail's in place, everything looks great. And then someone comes in and goes, hang on, have you thought about this? And then points out the one thing that you haven't noticed. That, my friend, is a duck shuffler. So essentially, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs were the duck shufflers of our ducks because our ducks were in a row. We were like, great, we get residency any day soon. And they come in and said, ah, no.

Yeah, very similar. I mean, we were in fact missing a duck. Yeah, that's true. They pointed out, so they were more of a duck observer than a duck shuffler. Yeah, we probably didn't even have ducks, we had geese.

Yeah, so I think the thing is, this is being kind of talked about in a way that is quite negative, like that person, that annoying person always comes in like meh, a duck shuffler. I think in general, people don't come to work to just be disruptive for disruption's sake. I think people come to work because they're trying to do the very best that they can, or it's just a part of who they are operating in the way that they do. I don't believe the intention is always necessarily bad. So here's my take on being a duff.

Oh no, it's like Fuzzy Duck. Did you ever play that drinking game as a student? I played it once with you, Lee, and it was horrific. I was what, in my late 30s? You were all in your very early 20s. No, you weren't. There's not 20 years between us. No, I was in my early 30s. You were in your early 20s and we tried to play the... Anyway, if you know the game, it's basically you just get drunk very quickly if you are not verbally dexterous, which I am not.

Yes. So a duck shuffler. There's going to be so many outtakes in here. I know. So yes. So here's my take on a duck shuffler or duck shuffling, if you will. I don't believe it's already a bad thing. I believe that a duck shuffler is somebody who is conscientious. They're a perfectionist. They want to make sure that all the I's are dotted and all the T's are crossed. They can't help.

but want to have all those little details. They're type A. You know, to put it in an old school kind of pop culture psychology way, they're type A. Or perhaps they're a little bit neurotic. They're very risk adverse. Someone like myself, for example. So it's a wonder how so many of my ducks weren't in a row. But yeah, they can't help but seeing what goes wrong. So therefore, they're going to point out a problem if they see it.

Duck shuffling, I think that's the individual kind of why they might be doing it. I think from an organisation's perspective, duck shuffling could actually be really good because it stops against things like groupthink. I can't get the word out then. Groupthink, that's when we're so used to working with a team, the same people all the time, our thoughts start to kind of assimilate in a way that just isn't very helpful anymore, isn't very effective, certainly isn't innovative. So actually having somebody to come in and shake it up is actually pretty good

for organisational life and organisational performance. I also think that having a duck shuffler could be a reflection of your culture. So, for example, stop laughing. For example, a duck shuffler is only going to speak up and mess up the ducks if they've got the psychological safety to point out a glaringly obvious problem that nobody else has spotted.

How you respond to that as a leader might be reflective of how genuine you're trying to set up psychological safety to be. As a leader, you want people, you want duck shufflers to point out the problems and make things better. If you're finding that frustrating, then perhaps your psychological safety is maybe a bit more lip service than you're willing to admit.

So I think that actually, as long as the intention from this person is pure and productive, I think that actually having at least one duck shuffler in your team could be your greatest asset, Althor. Yeah, totally. I mean, I do agree. I think as I'm not, I'm definitely not type A, but

But I definitely am someone who likes to go, oh, yeah, I'll be fine. Let's do it. And then someone comes along and go, well, have you thought about this? And that bit isn't, you haven't even thought about it. It's like, yeah, come on, dude. I'll work that out as I go along. So it can be very frustrating, I think. But you're right. If you're the duck shuffler of this organization, that is probably a good thing because you will say to me,

Al, there's a bit you've not thought about here, I don't think. Just go and have a little think about it. Where it becomes, I think, really annoying is someone comes in a little bit like, oh, well, you haven't thought about that bit, have you? And then you go, come on, man, I'm trying to do something innovative here, trying to do something cool. And you're going, that's never going to work. So that's maybe a goose shuffler. Maybe that's your goose man or person or woman. Honker. Honker. So we've got duck shufflers, we've got honkers.

But Bill, Bill from Accounts, he's the biggest honker of them all. Yeah, he can honk right off, can't he? Yeah, I think that's a big add-on as well, isn't it? That if you are a duck shuffler, you probably want to be coming with some solutions or some helpful questions to work around and find that solution. You don't just want to be pointing at stuff going, ha ha, you didn't think of that, because that is just annoying and unproductive. Yeah, that's just Nelson from The Simpsons. Yeah, yeah. Also now I've got that song stuck in my head every day, I'm shuffling.

Anyway, what have you seen this week, Al? It was so cool. Okay, so this week I saw an infographic on X and it is showing the job sectors that are most new roles are being developed for in the US. Now, just sort of come to context, this is, I think, January to March 2025, only in the US.

But still, kind of an indicative. I think you can probably say that the US job market is very indicative of most of the Western world. Western, yeah. So there's a lot of doom and gloom going around, that the economy is in trouble, people are losing jobs, AI is coming for my job is the main thing you see on Twitter. But it just goes to show some industries are actually thriving. So, Lee, I want to play a game with you. I'm going to give you, I think there are 12 or 13 industries on this scale.

One of them is negative. The rest of them are positive, ranging from very slightly, like 2% positive to like 80% positive. If I tell you one of the middle categories, I want you to, I'm going to give you... Like higher or lower? This is exactly what I'm trying to say. I didn't explain that very well. So I'm going to give you a middle one and I'll say, right, is this higher or lower? Okay. Yes, so higher and lower. If you're British, you might have seen the show back in the 80s and 90s,

Bruce Forsyth, Hyra Lois, Game of Cards. I think you have something similar in the U.S. as well. Anyway, so we're going to start off with the first one, which is kind of mid-table. So we're going to say retail trade added 16,000 new jobs in that period of time. Did the U.S. government add more or less than 16,000? Less. No, actually more. 20,000 new jobs across the U.S. government.

Okay, so even though Elon Musk was turfing everybody out with Doge, there were other jobs somewhere else in government that were necessary, so they added another 20,000 to them. Yeah, I think that's it. Because, I mean, let's not forget the US would be Department of Motor Vehicles, it could be like local government. Yeah, Space Department, I imagine it quite well. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, so we've got US government, we've got 20,000. Would you say, now this is a bit difficult, would you say that construction is higher or lower?

They started building the wall again. Yeah. That's true. That's why they've got 30,000 new jobs created in construction. Now, of those 30,000 new jobs, would you say that they call it information, which is sectors that produce, process and distribute data such as publishing, broadcasting, telecom. We're in that. So would you say that was higher or lower than, what did we just say, construction, 30,000 new jobs? Lower. How much lower?

Significantly lower. It is the lowest of them all. Really? That sector lost 2,000 jobs in just that sector. It's just the smallest. The next biggest one is utilities and mining and logging, which produced 5,000 jobs overall. So let's talk about the number one here. It's healthcare and social assistance. Over just that period of time, three months, 193,000 jobs were created worldwide.

which is, I've just got a note down here, I think it was almost 50% of all jobs created were created in the healthcare and social assistance. Do we know any details on that? What springs to mind is aged care, boomers getting older, biggest generation after the millennials. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm guessing it is. It says because it's called health care and social assistance. It does also include vets. But I don't think that being that many more dogs born in January time. But yeah, so that's kind of interesting. The next one after that was transportation and warehousing, which you think, well, surely that's going to be that's where AI is going to be taken over for robotics. You ever seen an Amazon Amazon distribution center? It's all robots. Have you seen them?

Have you seen a video of it, Leigh? No. It's so cool. They've got robots on like, and they just drive. And so the packer stays where they are. And these robots come to the packer with all their bits and they just start putting them in boxes and stuff. Very cool. But no, that's on the rise. But that's mainly down to the fact that we're ordering more e-commerce. We're ordering more and more stuff every single month. We're ordering more and more stuff. And the third and fourth, which I'm going to combine, produced 70,000 jobs, was professional and business services and financial activity. Wow.

Now, you might go, oh, well, consultants aren't being replaced by AI. Or you might go, actually, that was a burst over a period of three months where professional services, most of those new jobs created were in agencies who were AI-ificating everything. And so, therefore, actually, we're going to see a massive drop down later on in the year. But...

I thought that was quite interesting. Yeah, yeah. Also, it just reminds us that if you're in those sort of sectors where there are more jobs and you're a job seeker, good news. If you're in one of those sectors where there are more jobs being created and you're an employer, bad news because there's more competition, you know, there's jobs being created. You're going to have to basically... I think the overall thing is what Leanne always says is...

Let's try and keep people rather than really annoy them, let them go, and then we have to replace them. So it's going to be cheaper to keep someone than it is to hire a new person. Any thoughts? Yeah, interesting stuff, isn't it? And I know it's a little game, but it's interesting actually how...

how you can follow it through given recent events, everything we've talked about on the show in terms of geopolitics, in terms of generations. Yeah, it's interesting. I think I'm surprised by government, but I guess it's such a machine, isn't it, US government? It's massive.

And I guess I'm slightly surprised you said by professional services, but I don't know, at the same day, people want to work with people. So that might be one that isn't perhaps as early as perhaps people predicted. Yeah, anything around healthcare, aged care, social services, I think is going to boom because that's the...

the sad state of the world we're in post-covid strong tensions aging generations it's funny isn't it how with technology growing humans seem to be breaking um but yeah it's an interesting thing and i think as always with um you know if jobs they evolve they change i think we shared something back from the 1917s on the bbc uh probably maybe last summer

about all these crazy predictions about how we'll do all of our shopping online and shops won't exist anymore. And yes, technically shops could no longer exist anymore, but we still like the experience of going into a physical shop from time to time. So I think that'll be true as well with AI. There's going to be some things that just happen to stick around because we like it.

Yeah, things just change. They always evolve. Like the internet changed the way we bank, the internet changed the way we do anything, where we shop, etc, etc. And look at that, e-commerce is like, you know, transport is booming at the moment. Anyway, Lee, what else have you seen this week, my love? Well, I saw a new bit of research. So you know how a lot of these return to office mandates are based on the fact that we need those water cooler moments, right?

And that's what we're missing. Just define what Waterfowl Moment is for us. So there's chants and counters when you're making a cup of tea with a colleague walks into the kitchen and you haven't seen AJ and you're like, Sandra, how are you? That reminds me. And you have a conversation that leads to an idea that leads to a breakthrough or it's just about building relationships or making friends. There are spontaneous chats.

that fuel all the creativity and ideas and relationships that a lot of business owners, particularly in the large tech world, feel that we're missing by not having these spontaneous water cooler moments. You know those moments? I do. And how that's one of the main arguments behind Artia return to office mandates. Yes, 100%. I'm on board. I understand it. I've got it. Yes, crack on. Well, a psychologist has called BS and it turns out science is on their side.

Well, you wouldn't have had the article if science wasn't on their side, would you? I absolutely would have. Yes, you would. Questioning my scientific integrity, of course I would. So what did they say? It just brings me more joy that it is on their side. So what was the BS?

I mean, it's a little just the water cooler moments that without that in-person spontaneity, we don't have the ideation and creativity that we had previously when we were all in the office. That doesn't seem to be true. It is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm not sure that was the actual intention of the study to disprove the water cooler argument behind RTO mandates, but it does give us something to talk about in kind of this context.

So to give you some more details, these spontaneous little interactions. Yes, we know they can bring real benefits. Of course they can. But this new study suggests that it might not be happening as often as we think.

So this comes from a brand new study from Nadav Klein, published this year in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. It's called The Small World Illusion. It's quite a nice title. And it basically says that we're overestimating how often we're actually running into our colleagues and what those moments really do for us.

This is how they figured it out. So they had people guess how often they bump into acquaintances and colleagues, what they call weak ties in our network. Then they had the same people track it over real time and log every time they actually saw these people. And then the researchers also wanted to see how much people thought they could rely on these acquaintances for help and support when they needed it.

Here's what they found. People thought they'd see these acquaintances about half the days they're in the office.

In reality, they saw him about a quarter of the days. And then here's a really interesting and sad-making bit. When asked how often they thought they could count on these people for help, it would be a quick favour, that type of thing, a bit of backup, people guessed it would be about 60% of the time that these people would help them. When researchers actually looked at the data, these acquaintances only stepped up to help around 13% of the time. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So not only are we seeing each other less than we think, but these connections we believe will offer support are far less likely to help when it counts. The researchers say that this is down to our small world illusion. Our brains just remember those random chats.

Just thinking about this, there's a story and I don't know, I can't remember the exact name now, but when Steve Jobs took over Pixar, I think he moved Pixar and Apple into the same building and then he moved the mailboxes so they were in the atrium for both businesses. Right.

The idea being that when they bump into people, spark off ideas, perhaps you get more integration. That would be your water cooler moment, wouldn't it? But what you're saying there is that actually it's probably half as effective as they expect it to be. Yeah, exactly. It comes down to the fact that we remember memorable moments and we don't really remember ones that aren't because why would we? It's what's called different biases, availability bias, recency bias, etc.

Well, yeah, as you said, you know, you decide you want to buy a red car, you start seeing red cars everywhere. Yeah.

So yeah, it's just not quite as strong a connection as we thought because it feels like it's such a strong connection in the moment. But the reality is it's just not quite as much, doesn't have quite as much impact on us and our working lives as maybe we're led to believe. So in terms of that and why I wanted to link it to the RTO mandates, it feels intuitive that we're seeing people a lot more frequently when we're in a similar physical proximity to them.

um and that's why your jamie diamonds of the world and your andy jassies are kind of using this as an argument for um return to office what the study actually suggests if we're relying on these water cooler moments alone to build trust and share ideas then we're probably giving them a lot more credit than they deserve so the key takeaway really is that if you're a business owner business leader real connection and collaboration doesn't happen just because we're in the same building what does it need al

It needs purpose and... Intention. Oh, God, there. Sorry, intention is our word. I was thinking about cheese. I'm sorry. I was listening to you. I was just also thinking about my lunch. All right, we need to build them intentionally, whether it's in the office remote or somewhere in between. So if you're more interested in that study than Al clearly was, I will leave a link in the show notes.

I was interested. I was. It's just, you know, we talk about a lot of this stuff already. And so, you know, I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know some of this, but anyway, you weren't, you, you, you're a, you're a duck squatter or whatever it is. It's called. Right. So after this very short break, we'll be back with our hot take, which today is a good one. We've never had anyone say anything like this before. And of course we've got our world famous week of workplace surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne. Don't go anywhere. See you in a few seconds.

Listen to Billion Dollar Moves wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back. It is time for our hot take, those perspectives that push us to think differently about the workplace. And today we are talking about something that affects far more people than we realize. And given how today's episode is going, it may be affecting Al sometime soon as well. Divorce.

God, is it really that bad? Well, to be fair, we don't normally think of divorce as a workplace issue, but of course it's happening in every team, in every office around the world, because statistically, what is, what do we say, one in four marriages end in divorce?

I think it's higher than that. I think it's like one in two, one in three. So statistically, it's happening or going to happen or has happened to someone in your office. And of course, ignoring it isn't going to make it go away. Yes. So Christina Hackett knows this firsthand. She's the founder of MinusOne.club, a consultancy that helps employers support people going through family changes like separation and divorce. Christina believes if businesses handle it well, these moments of

personal crisis can actually reveal some of the strongest, most resilient people in the workplace. Today, she's here to explain why supporting employees through divorce isn't just a nice thing to do. It's a smart choice for any organization that wants to build loyalty, trust, and a culture that truly works for everybody. Let's go meet Christina and find out her hot take. Hi.

I am Christina. I'm the founder of Miners One Club and I'm here to break the social stigma about divorces and

make employers realize that people going through divorce within their businesses are actually possibly one of the most resilient people they will ever find. One in four people go through separation or divorce. I like to call it family changes. Ultimately, really is the same thing. What that means is that somebody is

in your business right now, one of your colleagues, one of the staff is going through a divorce. Do you know who that person is? And do you know how to support that person? I seem to remember saying, you were saying before that

If you were given a choice as an employer, you would rather have someone who's divorced than not. Am I being too simplistic about that? A little bit, but I think that's a good thing. The social stigma about somebody going through divorce or just being divorced is that the person is all over the place. The reality is, yes, their world would have exploded otherwise.

Yes, if they are going through divorce right now, they are in a bad place. But all of these people have got to find the strength to get to the other side. There is no other choice. So anybody that goes through family change will come out stronger, will come out more resilient. And if you as an employer support them correctly, will come out as a very loyal person.

part of your team. Let's start off with just the big question here. Is it any of the manager's business what's going on in someone who's on their team's life? Should we be asking, are you going through a divorce? It doesn't feel right to me. It depends on the person. I would say majority of the people do not want these questions. So it's a case of how do you as a business owner or HR department prep for when such thing

is happening in one of your team's lives, you shouldn't ask. You should be prepared and you should have a quiet and respectful and empathetic email sent out to your teams.

pointing you in the right direction where you can get support. And trust me, when somebody suddenly finds themselves in the middle of a divorce or at the beginning of it, they will go and dig in the deleted emails because it's such an uncomfortable subject. It will stick in the back of your mind and you will dig and look for that email. And you really will hope that the link you were given will work. And when that does, it can make

all the difference. I think there's some people out there who are managers who might push back on this, Christina, and say, look, I've got enough going on at work. I'm overworked, underpaid. I've got to manage all my team of 20 people. Is this just another thing that I need to take on? You can either pretend these things aren't happening or you can

retain a good member of your staff and at the end of

whoever this team member is at the end of their journey or the family change when even when they come through the other side you can either have somebody that will leave your business and then you can start all over again look for new employees train them invest more money in that or you will have somebody that will really appreciate the support you've given them and you will have somebody that will be not only loyal but really resilient somebody that is

We'll look at new challenges in life that include your business, day manager, and we'll look for solutions out of the obvious. They will think outside of the box because they had to learn how to be resilient, go with changes in their life and not get very stressed about it because, you know, in the end,

really any corporate issues compared to what they've just been through, really won't stress them out that much. Ultimately, it's all about the choices you make as the manager. You do have the option to have somebody that

It will be stressed out going through family changes. You can't fix it, but you can support it in a way that's beneficial not only to your member of staff, but to you as a business as well. You can either have somebody that will call in sick, will be late for work, or you will understand that

this member of staff will need a little time off in terms of there will be legal proceedings this person will have to go to very likely suddenly there is a single parent and there are days when they can't rely on the ex-spouse to look after the children at home but if you've got procedures in place to allow this person to go through whatever they have to go through as strongly as possible

and as supported as possible. They're nothing, it's win-win for both. Because this person will either not be at work because they were calling sick or this person will not be at work because they are allowed a little time out just to go and attend a court hearing, for example. But then they will make up for it because they will appreciate you giving them

the the afternoon off they don't have to take us annually they will come home and very likely finish the work so it's the choice you have to make as a business owner or as a as a manager are there any signs that a manager should be looking out for that might suggest that someone is going through a divorce that's a tough question um

Because anybody going through any major changes in their life, you will have the sick days. You will have the person that just seems a little bit all over the place. And you mentioned that earlier. It is really tough for anybody at work or any manager, any business owner to come in and say, you don't seem right. Are you sick or are you going through divorce? So you can't...

That's a hard question. I think it would be looking out for signs of somebody just not being okay. But again, any forward-thinking HR department or any forward-thinking business will have that email in place that would have been sent to this employee in advance. So that...

they do have the support and are less likely to call in sick and are less likely to be stressed and withdrawn from work. So you went through a divorce when your girl was nine, I think. Have I got that right? That's correct. If we think back to that time, how should the conversation have gone with your manager at the time? If I didn't have to go and see the manager to tell them this is what I'm going through, because anybody going through family changes is

doesn't really want to go directly to the HR or to their manager, very likely for the fear of being looked down upon, feeling like a failure, missing out on a promotion, being the office gossip. So I would have loved to see

be searching in my deleted emails, looking for the link that will point me to a place like Minus One Club, where there are people that really get where I'm at, that really would help me focus on or break my journey into manageable steps and just work with me to then allow me to use work as

really focused time because I could almost offload anything else with the support that I needed. Um,

So rather than having to go to a manager and ask for help, once again, any forward-thinking business will have this in plan already. So the conversation doesn't have to happen when your member of staff is at their most fragile state, really. Nobody prepares for a divorce. There is nothing for people or any...

pot of days they can use up going through family changes because it isn't there. But if you give a specific amount of days for people going through divorce that they can use up without taking any leave, they

will have no need to abuse it. They will know they have five days for the next year to use for everything they need to do. Like they're called hearing, like meeting up with mediator or anything they might need to do. And they will work with it because they will appreciate that. And so, you know, the employee isn't taking a Mickey, um,

And the employee really will work around it because they will think, wow, thank God I've got this support. That was Christina Hackett bringing a really interesting perspective to divorce and that impact of that on the workplace. Al, what did you take from that conversation? The honesty is one of the hottest takes we've had. It's the hottest of the hot takes.

I think the first thing was that it was important that we need to be sort of proactively supporting, not reactively supporting. So, you know, the thing she was really clear about is you don't go and ask, like, are you going through a divorce? What you do is you provide lots of

resources a lot you give them people lots of support available when they ask for it and she kept going back to this idea of deleted emails and I think the idea is that if you send an email out and someone does go through divorce they go oh I do remember seeing an email a year or so ago about this they're going to go back through their inbox find find it and see what resources available to them so it's

kind of, even though the temptations of a manager, a caring manager, will be to sit down with them and go, what's going wrong? Are you going through a separation? I mean, not a good manager wouldn't do that. But what's going on? Just allowing them to sort of, the person to go and get that advice as and when they need it. And,

Let's be honest, most people won't talk about divorce in the workplace. They won't go to HR. Yeah, it's a tough subject. I think any tough subject that is behind these life transitions, these life changes require empathy and that empathy is going to turn into retention. We talked about this a lot when we talked about grief in the workplace and how to manage that. It's a very similar process. It's a loss. It's a loss of a relationship. It's a major life transition. The more we can support people through that and

And the more supportive that person feels and the more loyalty they're going to show to the organization, the more resilience they're going to have to bounce back and be where we need them to be work-wise. And potentially as well, some really fresh problem-solving skills. As you would have heard on Thursday, these can be built up over time. And sometimes when something happens very shocking and very suddenly,

It's about having that experience to lean on and go, right, this is what we do. We can do this. We've got through this before. We'll get through it again. So yeah, empathy is fundamental. Yeah. And then the third thing is really to create this culture of, Liang talks about psychological safety. I've got written down here, quiet safety. It's probably not a term. I just might have made that up. But the whole idea is that you don't have gossip because, you know, in an unkind workplace,

Then you might have some of this water cooler moment. We go, have you heard that Leanne and Anne split up? God, you know, I could see it coming a mile off. Do you remember that time when Leanne did, you know, it's just not cool. The second thing is just allowing people to have this sort of special leave. So like, I think Christina talked about moving day. A lot of people now are saying you can have a moving day. So if you're moving house, you can have a full day off paid, paid.

And it's not part of your annual leave or anything. It's just like, yeah, if you want to move, there you go. Go and take a day off. Same thing. If you need some, you know, with a divorce, it's not a divorce day, but if it's like, you know, if you're going through a divorce, then they know that quietly you can say to a manager going, look, I need to go to court today to do X or to go into my mediation or my solicitor or lawyer or whatever. So I think all of that is really, really important. And I think it's just, well, that's really going to help people to manage their own crisis personally.

without feeling like their manager's involved in it, but also feeling that the manager is definitely supporting them and the coach is there to support them. Yeah, and when it comes to that gossip, as we learned from Rebecca a few weeks ago in her hot take, gossip is what makes the workplace turn around. So there is going to be that gossip about what is happening. I think if you are, whoever you are, whether you're a leader, you're a colleague, you're the coach,

cleaner in the building when this conversation is being had I think it's bringing empathy to those moments so if somebody says oh my gosh did you hear about Al Leanne's just left him go oh my gosh that must be such a difficult period for Al at the moment um we should check in on him has anyone spoke to him and just twist it you know turn it into a more positive conversation when actually that empathy and that that support it's not about shutting down the gossip so people won't talk about it

It's about redirecting that energy to actually be empathic and supportive rather than just...

Just, yeah, mean. Yeah, absolutely. So if you want to find a bit more about Christina, then go to minus one, that's O-N-E rather than the letter, the number one, minus one dot club. And also go and check her out on LinkedIn. She posts a lot of really good stuff. If you spell her name right, which I haven't already, she's from the Czech Republic originally. So it's Christina, but with a Y. So it's K-R-I-S-T-Y.

YNA. If you type that in, Christina Hawkins, she's the only one who comes up with a photo. In fact, she's the only one on LinkedIn with that name. So it's dead easy to find her. So that is our hot take for this week, but now it's time for Al's favourite channel of the week.

What time is it? It's time for the world famous work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work,

I have a co-worker who's going through menopause and a lot of personal stress. I've been trying to give her some grace, but recently she's become really passive aggressive and even a bit hostile towards me and a colleague. I tried to talk to her and I felt like we had a good chat. She explained some of the things that were bothering her. I explained, you know, what the, that some of the, some of the behavior wasn't really acceptable, but she's back to being cold and distant again. So I'm stuck.

How would you handle someone when someone's personal struggles start bleeding into work and causing tension for everyone else on the team? Lee, any thoughts?

Oh, it sounds like you've approached this in a really positive way so far. So well done to you for recognising the challenges that this would bring up for that individual, how that's going to impact their ability to function and turn up at work, how it's going to impact their relationships and to actually sit down and have that conversation once it started to feel a bit tense. You've done everything right up to this moment. So good for you.

I'm sure for you to reference menopause, you'll already know or have done some light research into what it means. And there's so many symptoms that I don't think the general public population would know about, regardless of gender. If you're not approaching that age of perimenopause or menopause, I only educated myself for the last couple of years. It is going to be things like brain fog. It is irritability. It is mood swings, right?

And then when we feel this sense of threat state, this stress, we push away from people. We disconnect from our relationships. We become resentful. We become cynical. That sounds like maybe the passive aggressive behavior that you're seeing because essentially this person is experiencing symptoms of burnout as well. Maintaining all of this and they've had family problems and they're still trying to turn up to work.

is a lot and it's not your responsibility as a colleague to support them through that. You're their colleague, you're not their therapist and you've done really well to support them through to this point. In this scenario, I think you've done what you can. I think you set your boundaries, you continue to do what you're doing, you continue to empathize, you continue to have conversations when you feel that things have gone a step too far and

At this point, I would be inclined to talk to somebody in a more senior position, either your manager or someone in HR, not from a perspective of this person's being awful, this person's really struggling.

just in a kind of a very general conversation of there's a colleague that I'm having some challenges with. There's absolutely understandable circumstances to why that is. I'm trying to support them and set my own boundaries. I just want to share it with you in terms of what's happened so far. Should this escalate?

Because what can happen in these situations when someone is under immense stress and pressure, and this is going to impact them significantly psychologically as well, that can turn into delusional thinking. It can turn into a very toxic way of thinking that can start to point fingers at the people who have maybe tried to interfere or that they want to blame. Even by putting yourself out there as somebody to empathize and support,

that could put you in that position of vulnerability if this person continues to deteriorate. Hopefully that won't be the case. It is more rare, but it can happen. So by telling a colleague about this gives you a bit of reassurance that it's already kind of on somebody else's radar, particularly if it's your manager and you trust them to speak about it. I would continue to document any conversations that you have with them, any behaviours that you feel are unreasonable, because this could also tip into bullying or harassment in the workplace. It doesn't give somebody a free pass to be toxic enough

just because they're going through a hard time. That doesn't, you know, those two things doesn't counsel each other out. So yeah, start writing some stuff down as well when you have these conversations. And I think finally one thing to do would be to focus on the work that needs to be done. And if you're having an issue with that, escalate it sooner rather than later. So if you rely on this person for tasks to be completed and it's not being done, have that conversation with them, escalate it if it doesn't improve. Because ultimately the most important

The most dangerous thing for you at the moment is if this person disrupts your work and your performance. And that's the hard boundary you need to set. Yes, I'm going to be empathetic. I'll put up with you being a bit mean to me because I understand the context. That said, there's a boundary there in terms of where that line in the sand is. But when it comes to professionally, when it comes to my performance, that's non-negotiable. I'm not going to let that be impacted. So that would be my advice. But a really tricky situation, one that

It sounds like you've handled really brilliantly. So kind of more of the same, protect yourself and have a conversation with a colleague or a manager just to kind of feed, you know, feed them into the whole situation as well. Yeah, sounds, that sounds like great advice and also sounds like this person is possibly a future manager.

because the way they've dealt with this. So that's really, really interesting. If you are male like me, then you probably would be like, oh, I don't know what to do. If you're male and of my age, like approaching 50, you're probably going to go, oh God, should I even be involved in this conversation? Lee, what would you say to that if the manager was male

50, perhaps feeling a bit uncomfortable getting into a conversation like that. I mean, what would the advice be? First of all, educate yourself. Educate yourself on what menopause is and how it can show in terms of symptoms and the actual physical and psychological experience that person is going through. It is significant. It's significant.

is going back to the divorce situation as a happily married woman I might not I might feel a bit uncomfortable talking to somebody about their divorce in the workplace but that doesn't mean that difficult conversation isn't worth having to make sure they have my support and empathy

So, yeah, just because a conversation is awkward or uncomfortable doesn't mean it shouldn't be had. So educate yourself, prepare for that uncomfortable conversation, knowing that if you show up and support people in those moments, whether it's menopause, whether it's grief, whether it's divorce, that is going to be well worth it.

your time in terms of being a decent human, in terms of being a great manager, in terms of protecting the performance of your organization. Just a quick note for men who are males who are perhaps thinking of doing this, if you do read up,

then your temptation might be to go, oh, I've read about this. You must be feeling this. And if you're not careful, you move into mansplaining territory. So, you know, just if you do read up, don't feel like you have to demonstrate that you know anything about this. You know, just be a decent human being and sit down and listen.

Okay, question number two, Lee. How do you turn a good team into a truly engaged one? This is an interesting one, this. I like this. Hi, Alan Leanne. Oh, this person's listened a couple of weeks ago and someone else said that. We love when people say hello. I'm hoping for a bit of guidance on this. I manage a small team and things are generally fine. Everyone gets a long way along and there is no major drama, but honestly, it just feels a bit flat. Hmm.

We've tried some of the usual things like team building socials, shout outs in meeting, and they're not really making much of a difference. Have you got any thoughts on what might work to move the team from just getting by to actually feeling engaged and energized? What a great question. Brilliant question. These are great. Do you know what? I'm loving the question at the moment. Yeah, we're getting some really good ones in.

My first thought is how do you know your team's not very engaged and if they're feeling flat? Are you feeling flat? Sometimes we can project that onto our teams if we're just feeling a bit flat and disconnected from our work. So first of all, I'd question why you think things are a bit flat. And as always, if you can collect some data around that, that's always really useful. I understand if you're in a smaller team within an organisation, you might not have either the resources or resources

financial means of doing that yourself there's lots of things out there that can be really useful that we've mentioned before the HSE management standards survey it's only 30 questions and that gives you an idea of kind of the kind of the climate within within the team at the minute you could do that as a collective you could do that as individuals but worth looking at

And while that's also worth looking at, is that going to show you the things that actually help a team feel engaged? And it's not the things that you think is. It's not the socials. It's not the shout outs and meetings. It's a bit deeper than that. It is having a clear reason in your work. How is your team connecting with the overall mission delivery of the organization? Do they believe in that? Do they know how they're contributing to that?

And then a step on from that, once they understand that mission, how is their individual role contributing to that?

and sometimes these things need a bit of interpretation a bit translation within within a team or a bit of personalization a bit of localization so for example when I worked in welfare to work our kind of overall mission was to end worklessness it's like well that's pretty that's a lofty mission I'm not sure you know our little team of six is going to solve that entire problem sat in an office in in the northwest but we talked about what that meant for us we talked about how

How we do that, what behaviours do we want to see? We treat, another great value of the company was around, we treat everybody like customers, everybody like a human. It's like, well, what does that mean? It means that if someone comes in and they don't have an appointment that day, but they want a cup of tea, they can get a cup of tea. It means that if someone doesn't have an appointment, they have an emergency question, then we'll do what we can for any member of staff to help them in that moment and then book them in at a time that kind of works for everybody. So it's little things of like, how do we deal with these situations? How do we show up?

That really kind of feeds into the values of the team you're working in. And that value alignment in terms of my personal values and the values of my team is so effective in terms of engagement, in terms of satisfaction, in terms of individual well-being, in terms of performance. That's probably one of the biggest things that you could do. So that's where I'd start. I kind of go, we're all feeling a bit flat. How do we get excited?

And the most effective way to get excited that's going to support engagement performance is to think about, well, what's the mission of the organization? What are we here to do? And how can we get excited about that and our role in pushing this forward?

Once you've figured out that, then things like your shout outs and meetings can have much more of an impact because you're going to go, John, it's not even your job to do that. But when that customer came in and needed help, I saw you were there in a flash and you helped them and it was incredible. And that saved me loads of time. And that recognition is going to go so much further because it's specific. It's within a context that we've all agreed great looks like. And it's responding quickly as well in the moment shortly after it's happened. Right.

So I think that's where you're probably on step three with your recognition and you probably need to go to one, step one and two for your reason and role. So that would be where I'd start. If your team's a bit flat, how can you get them excited? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's, you can train people to do specific tasks and they'll go, okay, well, if X happens, do Y. But the fact is, if you know that overall our aim is for every single customer to walk out of our shop, for example, absolutely delighted. And you've got it like Marriott gives every single employee, I think $500 a month they can spend on fixing any problem they want to make a customer delighted. Once you understand that you don't need training because most people have got common sense. They'll go, Oh,

oh yeah, look, that person's walking out the door and they're chuntering, chuntering, such a Northwest word. And they're like muttering to themselves at the, you know, and you go over and go, was everything all right today? You look like you're not happy. Can you imagine a customer walking out and then someone, you know, a cleaner. So I'm not saying like necessarily in terms of like hierarchy, but just someone whose job is clearly not clean.

coming over to you and going do you know what i just noticed you're walking away from the till there and you just didn't seem 100 happy was something gone wrong and they go yeah she was really quite rude to me or no they said they hadn't got you know what i mean and that sort of thing because everyone's aligned on the role this is the janitor in the and the putting a man on the moon sir everyone's aligned on what the company is doing you don't need so much training you just let people use their initiatives yeah couldn't yeah 100 and and it's that big

bigger picture that is really going to connect us to our work. And we talk about it, you know, flippantly, but that's what meaningful work is.

That's what purpose-led work is. It's when our values are aligned, our personal and professional values are aligned. And if we can be in a team and all of our values are aligned, oh, that's when the magic really does, really does happen. So yeah, have a think about how to get them excited, how you can create this meaningful work, these values reflect on. And yeah, have a really open-hearted conversation with them.

with your team and hopefully they'll be excited to have those conversations too. Fabulous answer as always, my love. Okay, so question number three, how do you let a star employee go when they've crossed the line? Oh no. I'm looking for some advice on what's turned into a really tricky situation.

We've got an employee who's been a star performer for years, but honestly, one of the best we've ever had. But over the last six months, things have seemed to have unraveled a bit. It began with medical issues and family problems, and we've done everything we can to be supportive and accommodating. But then we discovered she'd been working a second job

naughty for a competitor double naughty claiming she was working from home for us at the same time we're a small team and this has created a massive workload for everyone else we're at this crossroads do we fire her outright or try to encourage her to resign

We're obviously worried about potential fallout like unemployment claims, possible legal headaches, that sort of thing. And also a second question is how do you balance what's fair for the team without turning this into a bigger problem? This is a fabulous question, terrible situation, but it's great for us. Yeah. And I think particularly if you're a small business owner, I'm sure this superstar has played a major role in your growth and the loyalty you have to them is going to be, is going to be really strong. So it's going to be a hard situation. And imagine you find this situation really, really hard and really quite, quite upsetting.

How you handle it is how you'd handle the situation with any other employee, any other...

misconduct that happens in your organization there is no difference because that is bias and we can't we can't do that particularly in these situations the first thing is going to be to look at your employment contract and see if there's actually something in there that says that this person isn't allowed to hold another full-time job with a competitor because if there isn't anything that explicitly says that in there it might be difficult you can now work that back in and it might be a lesson learned in terms of

a future contract or redrafting everyone's contracts, but unless it says it specifically. And why would it? Because this isn't a problem that, you know, has been around very long. It's a very recent problem that some employers are faced with, this over-employment or moonlighting, whatever you want to call it. So first of all, you're going to have to check your contract and see if that's actually valid.

there already and then follow the process you're going to have a disciplinary process in your organization you need to buy a law phone ACAS if you're in the UK a similar organization they'll have them in in the US to see what the process is what your legal rights are it's going to be about collecting evidence you collecting evidence them collecting evidence as a defense and making sure that

everything is done above board it sounds like you're going to come to the come to the conclusion that there is a case for gross misconduct here and you yeah you you fire this person which is very sad in terms of forcing a resignation legally you're not allowed to do that even though we know it happens a lot we're not allowed to do that really um it has to be voluntary um

So, yeah, very careful. Again, I'm not a HR professional and there'll be ways that you could potentially, I guess, encourage this outcome. But really, that's not on the right side of the law. So I wouldn't recommend that. I think the thing to remember in terms of this impact on the broader team, and that's a great question to ask, and this is more my wheelhouse and the kind of disciplinary process itself,

For every toxic superstar you have, and this is what this person has become, they're probably not even as good as a toxic superstar at this point because they're just toxic. They're a former superstar who is toxic. That has such an impact on your team. You need to probably hire like three or four more absolute superstars just to make up for the detrimental impact this person is having on your team's morale, performance, productivity. There is no coming back from it. There is no shielding your team from it. The fact that their workloads have gone up

That's one of the biggest, biggest impacts on disengagement. If somebody has a high workload, it's one of the biggest, has one of the biggest impacts on well-being and stress. You're putting your team under immense amount of pressure, a huge risk to yourself because you could start to see these people leave.

So it's very important that you deal with this quickly. It's not tolerated. And if this person will remain in your organization for whatever reason, it's limiting the impact they can have on the rest of the team. Very clear boundaries, very clear understandings of how they are allowed to remain in the organization and what the performance expectations are and follow it to the book and make sure this is communicated very transparently with the person involved.

involved but I think for me it would be get through this process as quickly as effectively as compliantly as possible hope that it's done in a couple of months and minimize the impact on the team in the interim if you do have the resources if there's any way you can bring in some additional support to pick up some of that actual workload that would be a really positive and immediate action you could take to support the team but yeah tricky one and as I imagine it's emotional as

as well as it is kind of a process-led question. But I think, yeah, it comes down to you deal with this as you would anyone else in your organisation who is going through some form of misconduct investigation. Yeah, absolutely. And like Leanne said, it probably will be personal.

because, you know, this person is, the way you write about them is that they're, you know, they're very special and you admire them. So try and put that to one side. Just a quick, again, Leanne's more of an expert in HR than I am. And she admits it's not her wheelhouse, but just a thought that there may not be something in there saying you can't work another job.

Or you can't work for our competitors. But there probably will be something in there around IP, secrets, all that kind of stuff. Hours worked. Hours worked. That's probably the leverage. And in fact, the secrets thing and the IP stuff, that's probably the paragraph you want to leverage here to get a nice clean break because it's almost indefensible, I would imagine. I would imagine.

Lee, that was fantastic. Thank you so much. We're back next week, unless we kicked out of Montenegro. We're back next week with another workplace surgery. We're also going to be back with, obviously, all the other stuff you heard today. It's the News Roundup. We're coming back with the Hot Take. We're coming back with the clever and witty banter that happens just naturally between the two of us. And also in this slightly echoey room with what we think is a pretty decent view, but it's not our view of our own backyard. But anyway, what can you do?

Lee, anything else to add before we let these lovely people go? Only to say, join us again on Thursday. We will have some kind of interview for you. As you know, our life has been very significantly disrupted. So we will have an episode. What it looks like, we're not entirely sure. But hopefully it will be an incredible interview with an incredible guest or maybe just some more insights into what actually working as a couple in business looks like and how you handle that from time to time. But we will be back on Thursday and again next Tuesday. Yeah.

Yeah, quick shout out to Joel, Vanessa, Gary, Tim, Steve, Roat, Richard, and particularly Jeff, who we unfortunately last Thursday had to cancel everything for the week. It's just gone. And they were so lovely about it and going, that's okay. These things happen. So thank you very much to all those people. Thank you for listening. And if you want to, you know, if you haven't listened to the previous episode, what's episode 201? Full story there. Lots of juicy goss. Yeah.

See you next week. Love you, bye. This is Truth, Lies and Work, where behavioral science makes workplace... The award winning. And we are doing something that I can't remember. Sorry, yes, yes. I was looking at how pretty you were in this camera. I'm just pointing at you. Carry on. Al, you're here for my mind. You have to cut that out. You can't say things like that these days. Those weak ties. How much those people would actually...

Dunning-Kruger effect, is it? When you remember something like you're looking for a red car. No, Dunning-Kruger is when you think you know more. If you're listening and you know what I'm talking about, there's something where if you're going to go and buy a red car, a red Skoda Karoq, then for the next two weeks you see red Skoda Karoqs all around. Don't know what it's called. Barden-Barden syndrome, we'll call it for now. Talking of cheese, no, of brakes, we are going to go to a very quick...

Let's go and meet Christina and find out her top take. Do I need to do that last bit again? Yeah. Yeah, well, I honestly did say when Christina gave us a hot take, she...