196. Does your CEO have Big Toddler Energy? PLUS! Touching grass, accidental bullies and hiring mistakes, with Stuart Mace - This Week in Work, 13th May 2025
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Coming up this week in work. Could well-meaning managers be bullying their teams without even realising it? While new research suggests workplace bullying isn't just about difficult personalities, it's often the result of broken systems. From performance reviews to workload decisions, everyday processes may be causing more harm than we think.

And if your hiring process is slow, messy or makes people feel like a number, it matters. This week's Hot Take explores why recruitment is one of the clearest reflections of your company culture and how smart companies are getting it right. And in the workplace surgery, should freelancers ask clients to tell them when they're sick? One self-employed listener got ill on a job and wants to know where the boundaries should be when it comes to protecting your health.

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, of course. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. And my name is Al, and I'm a business owner. And together we help organizations build amazing workplace cultures. We'll be getting straight into today's episode right after a very quick word from our sponsors. ♪

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Welcome back. It's Leanne's favourite time of the week. It is. What time is it, Leanne? Time for the news roundup. Yeah, let's cue that jingle. Okay, love, what have you seen this week? I have a new word. Go on. It's two, actually. You ready? Yes, go. Touching grass. Oh, Christ.

Okay, touching grass. Do you know what? That seems to me like it's, you need to have a little bit of time to yourself. So you go out into nature, you sit and touch grass. By the way, I used to know a guy, I'm not going to give you any details just in case he's listening, but I used to know a guy who was, he was really hippie, but really cringy hippie. Like, yeah, so this weekend I just went out there and I just sat and put my hands in the soil for three hours just so I could ground myself again. Anyway, bit of a whammy.

Anyway, carry on, Leigh. Well, that may have been right. Really? Yeah, because this comes from an article in the National Geographic by Stacey Colino. And yeah, you're right. It literally means touching grass. It's in like the green stuff. Not like the... Not that stuff. No, not that one. Not that stuff.

That's a weird thing for someone at audio to understand. I won't go into it. Just watch the YouTube. You'll see what I mean. But yes, touching grass means disconnecting from the digital world and reconnecting with the physical one. So psychologist Holly Ann Passmore, who leads the nature meaning in life research lab at Concordia University. Yes, that is real. Says we often underestimate how much nature impacts our mental health.

And the evidence backs her up. So getting into green space has been shown to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, reduce the risk of conditions like diabetes, asthma, heart disease and stroke, and even lower overall mortality. It's also been linked with better memory, sharper attention and improved mood. Pretty impressive for just a little blade of green stuff.

The article even highlights that some doctors now prescribe time outdoors as part of a treatment plan because the benefits are so well documented. So Al, tell me, when did you last touch grass? Touch ass, did you say? Grass. Grass. Very different. Very different things. Especially in the workplace. Yes.

We dodged that one, didn't we, Lee? Oh, I don't know. Do you know what? We do spend a lot of time outside. We're lucky in that regular listeners will know we live in Herzegovina. It's part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a little country near Croatia. So it is beautiful for a lot of the day, a lot of the year. We do spend a lot of time outside. I don't think I've ever touched grass. The nearest I got was when I picked up some dog mess that some little ginger hound had done on our lawn. But no, see, I do get this as a concept.

I know that if I go out for a walk with the dogs and I go out into a wood, for example, like Leanne and I yesterday, we're going to talk more about this in a second, but Leanne and I have been on holiday. Yesterday, I took her for a little picnic into the woods. This is going to sound like it's going to get a bit weird, isn't it? Into the woods. And it was really lovely by a stream and it was just birds and you couldn't hear cars. And that was really nice. It felt like it was a lovely way to end our holiday. So yes, I'm 100% behind this. Not behind the word, but behind the word.

because I think that's a bit... But I'm 100% behind it. Yeah, I mean, it's very similar to forest bathing, I guess, isn't it? That's the worst word. Is that worse than touching grass? Well, it's the same, to quote Joey. Okay, getting into nature. Yeah, it's...

it's quite convincing isn't it it's quite convincing the research I think what was also really highlighted nicely by this article and I will leave a link in the show notes as always is that it kind of talked about how well-being through this lens can also be something that an employer can help with so

So kind of small businesses can actually have a big impact on wellbeing without needing too much of a budget. So it offered things, different ways you could do it. So one was take one-to-ones or catch-ups outdoors. Add real plants to your workspace. They've been shown to reduce stress and support focus.

create protected screen screen free breaks where staff are encouraged to step outside just for 10 minutes and if your team is remote give people permission to take walking meetings or start their day with some time outside of course you can't replace actual well-being and mental health support with potted plants but it is a reminder that these small moments in nature can actually have a measurable impact

Interesting. Like Leanne says, don't just go to Ikea and buy like five potted plants. It's not going to work. You need to have some intention behind that. But yeah, I kind of see that. Don't like the word, like the concept. What have you seen this week, Al? I saw a great post on Twitter by Peter Steinberg. He's Stipeet. Is his name? Yeah. And he's actually quite a cool guy. If you go and look at his profile, you'll see what he's doing. He's doing some really cool stuff. He's really into vibe coding at the moment. Now, this was an image of...

Toddler versus CEO. And basically, you might have seen this on LinkedIn, but basically it's got like things that toddlers say and CEOs say that are the same thing. Now, we don't have kids, but we've got plenty of nieces and nephews. Thanks to my brother and my sister for producing those. So it kind of still resonates. Not together, we should have. Oh, God, yeah. No, no, no, no. Separately with different partners. The truth lies in work. Will we keep it in the family?

Thank you for that. That very, very important clarification there. So this kind of still does resonate, but hopefully this isn't you if you are a CEO. So I'll try a few out on you, Liam. So the first one is, a toddler and a CEO both blurt out random opinions that are treated as gold. Yep. Yep. I'll probably publish a book about it. Yeah, that's so true. They use special made-up words. Yeah.

Like touching grass. Touching grass. Oh my God. So cringy. God, if this resonates with you, then don't worry. I'm going to ask Leanne shortly why CEOs tend to have this behavior. So then they ask you to drop something, to do something, then change their mind completely five minutes later.

This one made me chuckle. Throws a tantrum if she doesn't get what she wants. So many CEOs. Maybe occasionally. I mean, Musk, Musk. Excuse me. Anyway, replies with answers that make no sense. Now, this is a big one. I think there's so many cartoons on Twitter or X or Twix or whatever we're calling these days. And then collects and quickly discards expensive toys.

The last one here I thought, which I thought was really good, was interrupts every conversation to share his own tangentially related thoughts. That's what kids do, isn't it? You're talking about cheese and they'll go, I like cake. It's like, well, dude, I know you're 18 months, two years, but I'm talking about you. I want to talk about cheese. Anyway, Lee, why do some CEOs act like this? Have they not got the prescience to understand that this is just not really a cool way to act?

Yeah. Is that it? No, I think if we, I mean, I don't know. It's the first time that I've kind of heard this, but what would my thoughts be on the psychology of it? Most entrepreneurs are extroverts. They tend to say a lot of their thoughts out loud before they, introverts process first and then speak, extroverts speak and sometimes process if they've got time. A lot of entrepreneurs are neurodiverse.

with ADHD, on the autism spectrum, communicate differently. Neurodiverse people, particularly with a sense of urgency and a need to get things out because they process faster. Their lightning speed in terms of analysis and processing, depending on what type of neurodiversity they might have. So it's just, they need to move at that pace. We're just the slow ones who can't keep up.

So yeah, that's probably the two obvious ones. And I think as well that typically these people are probably quite low on what we'd call agreeableness, which is one of the big five personality traits. And that's kind of like how compliant you are, basically. So I'm quite compliant. I quite like rules and a system. I like science. It's not really a shocker that I want to understand the rules of the game so I can play it. Whereas...

entrepreneurial mindsets and personalities tend to be lower on this they want to break the rules they want to make their own rules they want to do it again with that sense of urgency and excitement so yeah there's a few different things that would feed into why I'm sure a lot of these things that are kind of ringing true

Yeah, I suppose there's also an element of ego, of protecting your position, of, you know, if someone's not particularly confident, but they're a CEO, they need to make sure that everyone knows that they're the smartest person in the room, which, by the way, I think is the opposite. You should be as a CEO. I think you should be the most stupid person in the room.

but you're just very good at making a great room for intelligent people. Um, so maybe there's this element of them just looking to, looking to look intelligent. And so we've always said this and we teased this the other week and we still haven't, we still haven't talked about who I was talking about, but the person who uses long words when, when short words will, will do. Uh,

Yes, and they, in my opinion, are not particularly intelligent and they're using those words to appear intelligent. Narcissism is another personalised trait that entrepreneurs, this person incidentally, scored quite high on. You do know who I'm talking about. I know. Well, you told me after. Oh, did I tell you? I forgot I told you. Oh, I forgot I told you. So, yeah.

Lots of reasons, but yeah, it's a good post. I like that. If I was on the Twitter, I would follow said person, but I can't do anything that's associated with Elon Musk in any way. No, fair enough. And to be fair, it is on LinkedIn. Oh, then I'll follow him on LinkedIn. So the original one has got a little trademark stamp on it called The Co-op Review.

I'm not sure the people who made that domain really thought about it because it's got two O's and two R's. It's very difficult to read. The Cooper Review. I think that's what it actually looks like. Maybe it's the Cooper Review. Maybe it's not the Co-op Review. It's the Cooper Review. I apologize. Take it all back. Sorry, Cooper. Sorry, sorry. No, very good review. Very good domain. The original link is on there and in the show notes. Lee, I want to ask you about your third article, but just really quickly. The last week...

has been glorious. Yes. Being in Spain. Yes. We've lived in southern Spain for about four years, so we've lived in most of the major cities for about a month at least, if not longer.

So we were very comfortable in southern Spain, but northern Spain was very different. So, first of all, if you want to go to northern Spain, oh my God, go to Zaragoza. One of our favorite words to say, Zaragoza. Go to Zaragoza and get some croquettes. Then go to Logroño, which is just the most amazing place. It's like Disneyland for foodies. Yes, it is exactly that. And then also consider San Sebastian. And where did we not go to?

Bilbao. And we opted instead to spend a bit longer in Girona, which I'm very glad we did, actually. But the point of this was not necessarily to talk about food, even though, although Leanne, I've measured myself, I only put on three pounds in seven days. Nice! That's not bad, because we spent the entire time eating and drinking. But we said we're not going to talk about work, and when we took off in the plane, we're not going to talk about work. And I thought we'd last about 24 hours, but we didn't. We lasted like five hours.

like five days I think it was the first time we talked about it and then we got back about midnight last night to our house in Bosnia near Mostar and we sat there for two hours and it just almost like it ticked over to Tuesday as a work day and we were just so full of ideas and stuff we wanted to do so if you are thinking of taking a break ten past two I went

to bed. Really? Yeah. Oh my god. But if you're thinking, my point is I think, which is laboured by the way, there's a horse down here that I'm flogging. I don't think you can do that anymore. It's dead. The horse is dead. In the analogy, the horse is not alive. But is that if you go away, when you come back, you have the most amazing ideas, you have the most amazing energy to get back into it.

So if you are feeling burnt out and you have the opportunity and you're privileged enough to be able to take a few days away, take a few days away, but don't take business books with you. Don't go and chat about work. Don't answer emails. Don't even look at your YouTube analytics, which I didn't, Billy Ann did.

At the airport on the way home. Fair enough. Fair enough. But I have no self-discipline. I deleted my Gmail and my LinkedIn. And then you realised that you deleted your Gmail and all our hotel reservations were there. I did have to reinstall it, but I sent it to a different inbox. Anyway. Anyway, Leigh, what else have you seen this week? Well, sorry to dampen the mood after the holiday chat. Bullying. Oh, no.

I know. It was a really interesting study that basically asked, could well-meaning managers be bullying their teams without even realising it? So workplace bullying is usually framed as one person just being awful to another one, like personality clash or some kind of toxic behaviour. Well, this new study says that is not really the full story. It's just been published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. The job. The job. The job. Job. Job. Job.

And the researchers argue that's a serious topic, Al. Sorry, sorry, sorry. The researchers argue that bullying at work is often a structural problem, not a behavioral one. Bear with me. They looked at 5,500 pages of formal bullying complaints, so real world data. You like that. I love that. Then they also ran interviews and a field study and what they found was kind of huge. The way that people are managed...

the systems and processes themselves, not the people, can actually create the conditions for bullying. Yeah, so it's done in three parts. First, they analysed the bullying complaints. Then they looked at kind of where in the management process things were breaking down and then used that data to kind of create a checklist to measure what good and bad people management looked like. So what they found was that bullying isn't random. It tends to happen in very specific situations, right?

So things like performance reviews, workload allocation, underperformance processes, so scheduling like your rostering and even how managers handle relationships. And one of the biggest triggers was managing underperformance. In 42% of complaints, that was a central issue. And it wasn't always about being mean. It was more about vague feedback, sudden formal meetings or unrealistic targets.

They also found that even basic admin, like shift scheduling or how leave is handled, could cause problems if it's done without fairness, consistency or explanation. In the psychology world, this is what is called procedural justice, organisational justice. Other management practices that were likely to report being bullied was job demands or team climate change.

The good news is it also showed what helps. So teams with clear expectations, fair rostering, regular feedback and good communication had lower bullying exposure, even when working in high stress environments.

So the biggest takeaway is this, Al. If we want to prevent bullying, we need to stop thinking about it as a personality issue and actually look at how people are being managed or mismanaged. To put it in a short, snappy little sentence for you, if you want to reduce bullying, train your managers. Wow. Now, playing devil's avocado for a second, 42% of people of the bullying cases were people who were underperforming.

Is it possible that if someone's underperforming, then rather than actually...

get back to where they should be doing, what they should be doing, they might just go, oh, it's not fair. You know, you can't fire me. I'm getting bullied. And it's more of a sort of like a protection against getting fired. Do you know what I'm trying to say? Yeah, there is potentially a case for that. I think for, you know, to get to a formal complaint, arguably there was enough kind of even speculation

suggested evidence for that to be lodged potentially but yes and and the researcher did admit admit this that it was based on people's reported experience rather than verified legal outcomes um but either way the the pattern was very very clear um it wasn't just about the bad behavior it was about the broken system so people were were referencing um meetings performance meetings being um

um organized at last minute about getting vague feedback um about being um leave requests and how that was handled there was so much reference and and what psychologists do in transactional analysis is when we look at kind of um

qualitative data, which is words basically rather than numbers, is psychology will create a coding system so they can look for patterns within that data. And don't forget, this is over 5,000 pages of qualitative data. So they've gone into that and really found that this pattern is prolific and

And within those reports, what's being referred to is the system, not the behavior of how that system was executed. That makes sense. That makes sense. Great. Okay. So I'm guessing the link will be in the show notes as always, Leanne. It will. Yeah, superb. Okay. Thank you very much for that. I feel like I've learned something today. I like it. I like it.

So after this really, really short break, we're going to be joined by Stuart Mace, who spent 17 years as a recruiter before moving into workplace well-being and now believes that your recruitment process is a window into your company's soul. See you in 60 seconds.

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Welcome back. If you are a regular listener, you'll know that every week we bring on a workplace expert to share their hot take on the world of work. Today, we're talking about recruitment and specifically candidate experience. Yeah, our guest today has been on both sides of the table. Stuart Mace spent nearly two decades as a recruiter.

and then moved into workplace well-being. And most recently, he's now got back onto the job market himself. Which means he's seen the recruitment process from every angle. And let's just say he has noticed some serious red flags that most candidates have been conditioned to accept as normal.

Yeah, Stuart's now on a mission to call out all these bad habits on LinkedIn, the ones that sort of quietly repel these amazing candidates and spotlight what really great companies are doing right. Actually, Stuart reached out on LinkedIn after we talked about candidate experience in a previous episode. So we thought let's get him on and dig into the good, the bad and the downright weird of modern recruitment. Let's go meet Stuart Mace.

I'm Stuart Mace. I currently work in the workplace health and well-being space for about the last three to four years, having had a 17-year

career in recruitment. And prior to that, I was working in health and fitness. You're quite a spicy guy, but you've got something specific you want to talk, get you off your chest today. So what is your hot take? You mentioned potentially a pod on candidate experience. And having been on the other side of the table as a recruiter for

as I mentioned, too many years. I'm now looking for work and have been since I decided a career change. My hot take is that how you're treated throughout the recruitment experience

is a window into the soul of the recruiter and the organization. I can tell you a lot about an organization and how they treat their workforce. Have you been in a situation where you've gone, ooh, this is not good and therefore I don't want to pursue this? I was actually relieved once where I didn't get offered a job.

In fact, it's more than once, but one time springs to mind when I was in the same recruitment process, but was rejected three times for the same job in the same recruitment process. And when I did get to final stage and I was told I hadn't got the job, I was actually relieved. But I've also had other experiences where

I've gatecrashed somebody else's interview because the recruiter has given me the same link through Teams as the other candidate interviewing. And when I've joined the interview three minutes early, the previous candidate is still interviewing. This is pretty recent. I tried to get hold of a recruiter for 48 hours. They gave me 48 hours notice of an interview and to prepare a 20-minute presentation. And I had questions. I tried to get hold of the recruiter.

uh throughout that 48 hours uh by email and by phone i didn't hear i didn't hear from the recruiter until i was actually on the interview and the recruiter phoned me twice whilst i was interviewing with the time that they had set up and um i then were phoned the recruiter after the interview and i still haven't heard from that person four months on wow

But having said that, there have been some good experiences along the way. Well, tell us about those. So one of which has been fairly recent, which was an organization where, well, a process, should I say, where it just made you feel empowered that you wanted to work for them. And it really is something which I think is not too difficult to do. And I think there's...

you know, there's some sort of synergy here to dating, dare I say it. And I think your guest a couple of months ago you had on, is it John Turnoff, mentioned this when it comes to looking at sort of how you put your best foot forward and display and make that other person or make the candidate experience or the recruitment journey feel empowering and that you want to be with that organisation.

So the application process was fairly simple. And I think that's something we need to sort of look at because it can be, you know, very laborious and time consuming for sometimes for no reward. But this process was literally a three minute process where you could obviously update, upload your CV, but it gave you an opportunity to give a two minute video of yourself.

and why they should hire you or they wanted to learn a little bit about you as an individual, which I quite enjoyed and thought that was quite different. So I looked at doing that. Response was really swift. Within 19 minutes, I was selected by the recruiter to have a call with the recruiter, which I did. Very professional, very

documents that came across to tell me about the organisation. The recruiter was very professional from a point of view of making me feel relaxed, quite at ease. We had some small talk but they asked pertinent questions with regards to what I could do for the organisation as opposed to what I have done in the past which I thought was a good take. It did involve then looking at doing some psychometric testing, verbal reasoning and numerical reasoning which again there are things that I do like and understand some people don't

enjoy those and obviously reasonable adjustments can be made but I do find them quite intriguing. I got the results directly so I knew what score I had so there was nothing hidden. I don't know if there was a pass mark or not but I was told that I sailed through and that I'd smashed it and that I could then have that interview with the hiring manager and all this was done within eight days of me applying for the job.

And again, the hiring manager, his first question to me was, tell me about yourself, which was, again, something I enjoy because it's not necessarily a competency-based interview. Tell me about what you've done in a working environment that they're more interested in and who I was and what my motivations and passions were.

So there are some, yeah, there are some good experiences, but I generally find them more bad than good. So as someone who's been on both ends of this, you said at the beginning, why do bad experiences exist? If you know how to do a good job, why are people not doing a good job? I think there's an element there of culture, not being held accountable. Yeah.

And I, you know, as I said, I've been through the process from the other side of the table and I can see where mistakes are being made by recruiters. And I wonder if it's training or is it just competence? Well, they just don't care. A lot of recruiting is now automated and it's like it's sifted out with, you know, and a lot of AI is doing the work. And then the recruiter is literally someone who's dotting I's and crossing T's.

It's so easy to just think recruitment is the process, isn't it? It's like you put in the job advert, you run some interviews, you pick somebody. But Stuart makes a really important point that it is as much about this candidate experience. It's one of the most telling parts about your culture. If it's, you know, how you treat people in that process should be reflective of how you treat people when they work for you. So if it's not good, you're not setting off on the right foot.

Yeah, totally. And we always talk about this sort of balance of the job market. Everyone's like, oh, who's got the power? Is it the employers? Is it employers market or employees market? It doesn't really matter because if your process is messy or cold or just a bit weird, the best people will take one look and think, nope, this is not for me. Yeah.

and it's the actions isn't it that people it's that is it Maya Angelou quote people won't remember the things that you said or did they're going to remember how you made them feel and it's just it's so true that is what stays with us is how people treat us and how that

how we react to that emotionally. You know, you can have the lovely about us page, tell him about all your values, but really the only way people are going to know for sure if those values are true is if they see it in every interaction they have with you. Absolutely. So just quickly then, the top three things we're taking away from Stuart's story. Lee, what are they? Number one, just talk to people. Communicate. If someone's putting the time and effort into applying for a role, the bare

minimum is acknowledging that you know if you can give them feedback candidates know that you are entitled legally in the UK under the Freedom of Information Act to request any information gathered on you during an interview process so if people are refusing to give you feedback you do have a chance to get it

Employers, answer their questions. Show them that you're actually interested in them joining the organization. And two, just make the process human. I know I use that word a lot recently, but, you know, that company who asked for a two-minute video instead of some epic application form, you know, at least they're doing something different. They're looking to actually meet the person behind the form. You know, show us who you are and don't just make us jump through all the hoops.

Yeah. And they got back to him within 19 minutes. And that's, that's not normal. And I don't understand why it shouldn't be normal because that's, if you've got a sales lead for someone, we're talking about hiring someone who's 60,000, 70,000 pounds a year. It's a big investment. It's imagine if a customer came to you and said, I want to give you 60 grand. And then you, you, you took four weeks to go back to them and say, are you still interested in that? Just wouldn't happen. Yeah. Um, and I think finally it's look at

potential not just past experience and this is a big theme in Adam's Grant's book Hidden Potential which is brilliant so rather than kind of the generic tell me about yourself questions you want to be looking at either competency based questions or situational based questions which is basically when you say tell me about a time when you did

So it does open the door to somebody who's not just kind of repeating the same experience you're looking for, but it's got the potential to really excel in that job. So remember, if you are job hunting right now, Stuart says how a company treats you during the process is exactly how they'll treat you once you're inside. Yeah, and if they ghost you, mess you around or give you the it,

for lack of a better word. It's probably not a one-off. It's probably the culture. Believe it. Move on. So if you're hiring, take a good hard look at your processes from the candidate's point of view. Like Stuart said, it's a window into your soul, which was quite beautiful. I think it was Anita originally said that about the eyes, but we'll give Stuart a break on this one. You can find Stuart on LinkedIn. Just search for Stuart Mace. He's the one with the green heart emoji. And if you're building a health and wellbeing team, maybe think about having a chat with him. He seems to know what he's doing. Decent guy.

And now, Al, I believe it's time for your favourite time of the week. It is. It's time for our world-famous weekly workplace surgery. I almost said it. I've had a holiday. I've had a holiday. It's time for our world-famous weekly workplace surgery where I put your questions to Leanne. We've got three really good ones today. Just in case it's your first time and you haven't worked it out, Leanne is a workplace psychologist. She's a business psychologist, organisational psychologist, you call it in America, I think. Basically, she's a genius in my mind and she knows everything about everything about work.

So we're going to put these questions to her there. Question number one, should freelancers...

ask clients to tell them when they're sick. Now, this one actually comes from an audience comment from one of the amazing Dr. Audrey Tang's Mental Health Matters show. Audrey shared it on LinkedIn looking for insights, which is what's cool about Audrey. She doesn't say, I know all the answers. She's like, what do you guys think? So as self-employed people ourselves, we thought we'd have a little crack at it. So the original comment question was this. I'm self-employed and my work is in other people's houses, plumbing.

I was off sick for three weeks after catching the virus when I went into a house to do work and the owners were both off sick but they didn't tell me. Audrey added, being self-employed myself, I know how important it is to stay healthy. When you're ill, it's not just the symptoms, it's rescheduling work, losing income and there's no sick pay cushion. Personally, I really resent it when my health is compromised and I always tell my team, please don't power through.

Audrey then asks this key question. Should freelancers be more upfront about asking clients, colleagues, or even friends and families to let them know if they're unwell? Or is it just common courtesy to stay at home and take precautions when you're sick? So I think what we're summarizing here is that this plumber

inadvertently went to a house where people were ill and then he got ill and subsequently he took three weeks, had to take three weeks off work, unpaid, obviously. So should the clients have told this plumber that they were ill and potentially they could have given him something or her something? Yeah, that's it.

So what do you think, Alan? You've been self-employed for a long time. This is a specific situation. I think since COVID, pre-COVID, everyone was like, no, what are you talking about? Well, I'm not going to do that. Now, post-COVID, it's not a stupid thing to say, to text someone on the day and just go, right, coming over to your house to do some plumbing, just want to check that you're not ill or anything. Maybe you say, I was ill with COVID and now I pick up things quickly. Or perhaps you say, I've got children at home. Or maybe you just find another reason our policy is not to come.

Um, and then just see, you know, you're relying on, on the client being honest there though, because the client's toilet is blocked and, and they're ill and they're going to probably go, no, no, we're fine. The other thing is maybe just to you, what, what can you manage? Can you wear masks when you go into a, into a house? I know it seems a bit weird, but,

You know, do you wash your hands as much as you can? Don't shake hands with the client. Try to stay, you know, all the sensible stuff we used to do during the pandemic might be worth doing. I fully appreciate how frustrating that is. And I would have been fuming if that was the case. And then I was, you know, ill for months.

for that long and ultimately that's what we used to I used to say the same as Audrey did to my team like don't come in what are you doing because now it's gonna ripple through the rest of the team I'm not gonna have a full team for the next eight weeks waiting for everyone to go over it go home rest up come back when you're better or not contagious at the very least um I think it's a bit of both here isn't it which is always a typical psychologist's answer I guess but I think it's a case of

if you're absolutely right Al what can you do within your control to minimize your exposure risk to different viruses making sure you wash your hands wearing masks not shaking hands or everything that you set out really good advice other ways you can boost your immune system we just heard that touching grass can be good for building the immune system what in terms of your diet could help you build your immune system any vitamins or supplements that might might help I'm not a doctor so go and consult one and then I think

finally is that piece around what boundaries can you set I like what you said Al in terms of that it's just part of your contract you know just so you know in in terms of health and safety and and protection of of all of the team um we won't go to house calls where people are unwell

um and if we turn up on the day then we won't do the job and you will lose your deposit um i think i'm hearing that much more often as well there's lots of nail techs now or eyebrow techs they will take a deposit and if you cancel you've lost it because it's income usually on a self-employed basis that they're trying to protect so i think it's well worth it i'd have a look you know maybe there's a

Essentially like a little risk assessment you could put together for people, which might also just be good for you as well to understand if there's any animals in the house, any kids, any spaces that might be hard to get to with the nature of work that you do. And then build into that kind of a disclosure, disclaimer, whatever you call it.

advisory thing um but yeah for the for the health and safety of the whole team if somebody in in the house isn't well we won't be making a house call you get free free um you know rebook for another day if we turn up and somebody's ill you lose your deposit and i think once you get into the swing of that because also from what i believe plumbers in the uk are very hard to come by especially a good one um i think i think you'll be all right i think you can probably afford to set some some firmer boundaries on this

Yeah, and as we always like to say, playing devil's avocado, do you know that you actually got ill from this person's house? You walked into a house, they were all ill, you were ill, you know. What does it say? What scientists always say, coercion is not the same as correlation or causation is not correlation. Correlation is not the same as causation, yeah. Did I use that right in that situation?

No. Anyway, the point is it might not necessarily be them. Anyway, so I hope that was useful. And I'd be interested on Audrey's thoughts on that as well. And we'll maybe link. Can we link to what was said on those? Yeah, absolutely. I'll link to the actual LinkedIn post and also Audrey's show. I believe she's going to share some of the answers on one of her upcoming shows. But I think to summarize all that,

As a self-employed person, you're the only person that's got your back. So if you want to set your own boundaries, if you want to create an environment that protects you, your business, your income and your health, you are well within your rights to do that. Brilliant. Okay. So the second question I've got here is...

How do you survive a toxic workplace when you can't afford to leave? So this person writes, I'm 29 and I've been working in the same corporate job for five years. The culture is toxic, constant pressure, no real support and a general sense that no one actually cares about the people behind the work. I'm exhausted. The problem is I can't walk away right now.

Because I'm fully supporting my younger sister while she finishes school. And financially, I need to stay put for at least another couple of years. I've got long-term goals. I'd love to build something of my own one day, something that actually makes a difference. But in the meantime, I just need to get through this without burning out. Have you been through anything similar? Oh, interesting. No one's ever asked that.

How did you stay mentally strong and set boundaries? I have been through something similar. It's my first job out of my post-grad. So I will share with some of the things that I did. But I think what the first thing I'm hearing is a very what seems like absolute thinking here. I can't leave my job because I have to support my sister and I need to stay another two years. What you're saying is you can't leave your job

and not have another one lined up you could absolutely be looking around for other jobs with the same salary if not higher if you've been there five years this could be a really great time to think about moving on and how you can consolidate all that experience and and show it off in your in your cv to to land an even higher paying role in an organization that is better suited for you

So I think that as an assumption is fundamentally wrong. And I think we need to maybe accept that as scary as it is, you could potentially move on, depending obviously what role you have, industry, etc. And how easy that would be. But you could move on. You're not stuck. You're not chained to it. The second thing I'd say, and I always say to people in this situation, is take some time to take some self-reflection and understand exactly what it is about that environment you're finding toxic.

Is it the relationships? Is it the values of the company? Is it the job itself? Is it the work you're doing? Is it your team? Is it how your current setup is in terms of remote or hybrid or in the office? Because unless you understand exactly why that environment is toxic to you,

you could well move on to a different organization that is equally as toxic because you've not taken that time to understand. So for example, you might work in a job that the job's all right and it's given you good experience and the people are kind of cool. But fundamentally, your values just misalign with the organization. It's just not taking those purpose led by the sound of it values that you have. You can find that somewhere else.

in the interim to refill your energy that you need. To go back to have I been through it, my first job, it was more that the work wasn't challenging enough after about

18 months it was all getting very samey it was a global financial crisis there wasn't lots of money in in HR and people and culture um but previous to that I'd started volunteering for the Samaritans as regular listeners will know so during that time I just got more involved I got on the committee I started to help people with the the fundraising um did lots of stuff with Al um there's weekends we used to just repaint the outside and scrub off the graffiti and stuff like that

And that really helped me in terms of my sense of self and my values because I was spending more time with people whose values align with mine. I was doing work that felt that it was contributing to something bigger. And we also know that actually volunteering is one of the few things that have been proven time and time again to actually have a direct and positive impact on our mental health and well-being. So look at volunteering and how you can get that

those other bits and pieces. If it is a fundamentally toxic environment, if you're being bullied, if you're being mistreated, if you're experiencing discrimination, that's a very different, different thing. From what

the intonation of your question, I'm not sure that is the case. I think there's just something there that isn't quite clicking. I would take some time, look at things like we've talked about the vitals model before. We've talked about the wheel of life before. Just, you know, Google the Ikigai. Ikigai, yeah. Yeah, questions.

from John Tarnoff's episode, go back and revisit them. Take some time to understand why you don't like your job. Because it might also be that if there's elements that you do enjoy, if you focus on those and appreciate those and be mindful of those, it can sometimes make everything a little bit easier. It's very trendy now to call everything toxic. And I think that, you know, thanks to TikTok and Instagram and God knows what else is coming down the line. Everyone's like, oh, this is toxic. I'm in a toxic relationship. I'm in a toxic work environment.

That's, yeah, that's not necessarily true. You might just be in a job you don't like. You might have a manager you don't like. It's not necessarily toxic. So just be careful. Like Leanne said, you are thinking in absolutes. It might be a little bit more nuanced than that. And of course, the issue is that what you describe as toxic could actually be normal for the industry. For example, if you were investment banking,

then I think a lot of people look at that environment and go, that's toxic. But to people who are working in it, like, no, that's just normal. So by changing from one place to another in the same investment banking sector, you'll find that nothing really changes. But I hope that wasn't too negative. It was a little bit of straight talk from Leanne there, but with love, as it always is. And you know that you've got Leanne's email address in the show notes, so you can always drop her a line if you want to have a chat with her. Yeah, and as always, if you've got the means available,

consider engaging a coach to lead you through this period of reflection. Probably just two or three sessions would do it. And I think you'd probably get a lot of value from it. Okay, question number three. I'm scared to manage people. Would a course help me get over that? So this listener writes, I've been offered a chance to step up and lead a small team. And I want to say yes. But if I'm honest, the idea of managing people freaks me out. I've never done it before and I don't want to fail. Okay, red flag number one.

I've looked at a few business management courses, but I'm not sure if that's the kind of thing that's actually going to build confidence or if I just need to jump in and learn by doing. Leanne, is there a course or resource that made a difference or will help me teach me what a classroom never could? Excellent question. We always say train your managers. We don't often talk about what in. Yes. Good point. Good point.

Question. I don't think it is a red flag that you said that you're afraid of failing. And I think it's actually a green flag that you're scared because it shows you're taking it seriously. I think it shows that you're considering the impact you could have on people or potentially negative impact. And then that's going to, you know, impact your career prospects and development.

I think, I mean, from the research we've learned today, there is definite value in learning about transactional elements of management. So things like how to run a performance management session, how to have difficult conversations is definitely value in that. The tricky thing is, is that every organization can have a slightly different nuanced process and procedure and expectations around that.

My thought would be, and all the research kind of tells us this as well, is that the most valuable skill you can have as a leader, as a manager, is the psychosocial skills that create a psychologically safe work environment. And that's things like self-awareness, emotional intelligence, communication skills, being able to listen, being

All of these things are going to serve you so well in a management role in any organization and also just in life in general. My advice would be to look at a coaching course.

look at a coaching course because what coaching courses will do a good one is will train you in all of these things it'll look at emotional intelligence and ways you can improve it you can improve your emotional intelligence look at your levels of self-awareness what your strengths are what your weaknesses are what your triggers are so many different things there's lots of introspection in coaching courses as well as how to listen how to have difficult conversations how to ask good questions

I think something like that is going to really help you in this early start of your management career to really get to grips with the fundamental skills that are going to make you an exceptional, exceptional, exceptional, I can't get that word out, exceptional, been on holiday, exceptional manager.

And then when you're in the organization, look for a mentor, look for somebody in HR, another manager who you respect and you like the way they work and talk to them about the more transactional things. Talk to them about how, you know, I've noticed a shift in behavior from a member of my team and I think it might be a performance issue and how should I approach this? Or, you know, someone's done this and it's not really acceptable from what I understand in the company handbook. What's my obligations here?

but you're gonna have these these incredible skills underpinning all this and very specific situations and policies and everything else that would be my advice specifically I would look at an organization called ride the wave it happened on the show way back when probably two years ago um

Have a look at them. I'll leave a link to their website in the show notes. They do a really great leader coach training course. But yeah, that would be where I'd start. Yeah, 100%. And I think the 80-20 of this, as in what's the 20% that can make the 80% difference, is...

The listening is the people. So for example, if you look at great salespeople, rarely are they trained in technical, well not technical, but in the actual sort of how you sell, what you say. What they are amazing at is building rapport, listening,

and properly listening and then trying to help someone come to a solution. If you go, if you've ever bought something from an amazing salesperson, you won't have felt like you've been sold to. I think it's the same with a great leader. If you, if you come across a great leader and they help you solve a problem, you're like, that person is incredible. It doesn't matter if they know specifically how to solve the problem, but if they can help you to do that. So the reason, and I want to go back to this red flag thing, because

I don't want to be rude. And I liked that Leanne called me out on that. But the red flag I thought was, I don't want to fail. I could see you seeing that from two angles. Leanne saw it from a very kind angle of going, oh, they really care about doing it right. I saw it from an angle of going, uh-oh, has this person got to be right?

Because if you're going to manage anyone, just like if you can do any kind of sales, marketing, anything to do with people and psychology and behavior, you can't be right. Because most people won't do what you want them to do.

over time so that was my red flag is that if you're thinking I cannot fail at this because I'm always right that's a problem but if you're thinking I don't want to fail because you know I want to do a really good job then fair enough so anyway I just wanted to clear that up good point well made thank you very much

Okay, so I think that's the end of our segment there. The world famous weekly workplace surgery. Got it right. Got it right. Yes. If you have a question yourself, then check out show notes. You can send it in and we'll usually anonymous. But if you don't want to be anonymous, we could do that if you wanted.

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