Jerks at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Jerks at Work with Dr. Tessa West

Jerks are everywhere…

The micromanager. The drama queen. The sly saboteur. Toxic coworkers come in all forms—and they’re not just annoying, they’re disruptive. Ever wondered how to handle that gaslighter or micromanager in your office? Well, we’re exploring these challenging workplace dynamics with Dr. Tessa West, a psychology professor at NYU and author of "Jerks at Work."

In this episode, Dr. West shares her journey from the high-end retail world to academia, offering practical advice and engaging anecdotes that illuminate the complex nature of dealing with difficult colleagues. We unpack how to deal with jerks at work without sacrificing your sanity, success, or standards. You'll walk away with actionable strategies to not only survive but thrive in your professional environment.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Every jerk I've talked to, because I've been brought in by a lot of companies to do de-jerkifying coaching and most of these people are actually like lovely, and you're like I was expecting a monster and I'm just getting a sad person who is shocked.

Speaker 2: 0:15

The worst kind of thing.

Speaker 3: 0:28

Mel, what's going on? Hey, y'all have a heat wave.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Yeah, we have a heat wave. Yesterday we had an advisory for the air quality. Always a fun alert to get. Fantastic Remember when New York City, though, was in the wildfires last year, you know yeah, I happened to not be home during that time, but my husband sent me pictures. The sky was just completely orange over here, so it's just wild, ah fun with climate change.

Speaker 3: 0:55

Fun with climate change, yeah, good times, yeah. Well, speaking of New York City, we talked to someone from New York City, didn't we? We?

Speaker 2: 1:02

did, we did, we did. We spoke to Tessa West, who is a professor at NYU, and we wanted to get down on the topic of work, jerkery all the jerks at work.

Speaker 3: 1:18

Yeah, this is something that I'll tell you. One of the big themes coming out of a lot of our conversations and a lot of our work, especially on the pod, is how do I deal with these people at work that we will broadly categorize as jerks? The on the pod is how do I deal with these people at work that we will broadly categorize as jerks the gaslighters, the credit stealers, the micromanagers, all the jerks that we deal with. And so we called up Dr Tessa West. She is a professor of psychology at NYU. As Mel mentioned, she's also a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. Mel mentioned, she's also a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. She has written two books One she just dropped that's very cool called Job Therapy Finding Work that Works For you, and the other, mel. What is it? Jerks at Work, jerks at Work. Dr Tessa West has literally written the book about jerks at work, the type of jerks you meet. What do you do about them? What did you?

Speaker 2: 2:06

think about this episode, Mel. I really loved it because I think we've all been jerks at work. I don't think anyone's immune to being a jerk. I think it's on a spectrum, like we say, with a number of other things. But we've all been there. We've either been one or we've experienced it, or both. It's really insightful to think through what that looks like, how that shows up and how you can deal with it.

Speaker 3: 2:28

Loved everything that Tessa walked us through in terms of the types of jerks. What do you do about it? Stick around for the round Robin, because she absolutely gave the best one-liner for how you respond to someone being a jerk that I've ever heard in my life. I'm getting it embroidered on a pillow Awesome, yeah, it's awesome.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Well, with that, here's Tessa. Welcome, Tessa, to the your Work Friends podcast. Tell us your story. How did you get into what you do?

Speaker 1: 3:06

I'm a psychology professor at New York University and I study uncomfortable social interactions. So everything from feedback conversations with your boss to having an uncomfortable interaction in the doctor's office to working with an international group of people on a team and I've been doing this for 20 some odd years. I actually got started really studying this kind of topic of how we handle uncomfortable interactions and how they play out at work by working in retail myself and selling men's shoes at Nordstrom. I have an academic life but a non-academic path to get there, and I think if anyone's ever worked retail high-end retail in downtown Santa Barbara was where I worked. That is just the sort of perfect breeding ground for all difficult people jerks at work, status climbers, customer stealers, all that juicy stuff. I joined a lab at the same time at UC Santa Barbara. That did nothing but put people in these horrifically uncomfortable situations where you're interacting with someone who is giving you dirty looks while you give a speech on why you're a good friend. I was actually the person who gave the dirty looks.

Speaker 1: 4:15

That was my job, and so I learned academically how to study these things and study the physiology underlying people's stress they're under the skin responses while living it out in my own life working in retail, and eventually brought these worlds together to study these topics in the workplace. In the last maybe five to 10 years I've really focused on those really difficult moments we have at work, trying to figure out why we're stressed, why stress threads from one person to another and what we can do about it. And so now I have a good 30 some odd years experience uncovering all the difficult things people go through in the workplace.

Speaker 2: 4:51

One. Anyone who's been in retail myself included, also in shoes, I will add that is a very interesting experience. If you've been in any sort of customer service facing role, I'm sure you've had to have the most insane conversations. So I love that. I know, francesca, and I hear often from people am I a jerk at work one, and how do I deal with jerks at work? Which inspired us to reach out to you because we saw that you wrote a whole book on jerks at work and now job therapy. So in your study I love that you won. Your job was to give people dirty looks Interesting experience.

Speaker 3: 5:28

Sorry, but I'm thinking about. First of all, I know the exact Nordstrom you worked out is the one down in, like the city center of Santa Barbara. Really, yes, I can't imagine like that clientele selling shoes, selling men's shoes, especially when you're a pretty woman as well 18.

Speaker 1: 5:45

I didn't know what I was doing at all.

Speaker 3: 5:48

The dynamics there and the idea of. I love how this started, with this idea of like, awkward dynamics. I'm just wondering how much of that started with either you feeling awkward or you feeling like this person is awkward. Was it a mutual thing or is it more of like? Why do I feel awkward in this situation?

Speaker 1: 6:04

I think at first it was very much. Why do I feel awkward? I'm in my own head a lot and I think there's a lot to play around with there. One.

Speaker 1: 6:12

I grew up in Riverside, california, which is not a fancy place. My dad was a construction worker. I was not used to interacting with these rich Montecito men who would come in and say I need shoes for my gardener and buy like $600 shoes. So there were all there's a lot of status cues going on. So one thing I ended up studying later on was how we have cross status interactions with people who are richer or poor than us or more educated, and how we leak out our social class and all these subtle ways. So I think one of the reasons why I found those interactions so uncomfortable is because I grew up very blue collar and now I'm at UC Santa Barbara selling shoes to this like rich, white, older male population and I was asked to do all kinds of really weird things. I got down on the ground and pet someone's poodle and let it lick my face while I was putting shoes on and I just thought to myself I guess this is just what you do.

Speaker 3: 7:03

I'm okay. I'm okay, this is normal.

Speaker 1: 7:06

This isn't degrading at all. Totally fine. Totally fine, I'm going to make $60. It'll be totally worth it off the sale.

Speaker 1: 7:12

So I think a lot of that awkwardness lived in my head. It came from a lack of understanding norms, not getting the hidden curriculum of how one ought to behave in front of wealthy people. I didn't get that kind of training. And was I awkward? I'm sure I was, but I think most of us walk around with a lot of it living in our heads, more so than it actually becoming a dyadic or interpersonal phenomenon, and I definitely. For me, I try to turn lemons into lemonade and try to make a whole career out of all that really uncomfortable shoe sales experience I had. But yes, I think that the awkwardness is layered on with social cues and status issues and gender dynamics. I was the only woman in whole shoe sales, like in the men's shoes. They never let women sell men's shoes. They had a bro culture. I was brought in because I worked in the store in Riverside where I was also the only woman and convinced them that I could hack it with these bros.

Speaker 3: 8:09

So there's a lot going on, yeah, but what a great story, because I don't think you're obviously not alone in this and not alone in the awkwardness, not alone in the figuring out how to work with people and what those dynamics can do, especially in a work environment.

Speaker 2: 8:22

What was one of the most surprising things that you learned through all of your work.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Yeah, I think one finding that I kept seeing over and over again and I learned this by studying physiology and behavior at the same time is that when we're the most uncomfortable and we could see this in the lab because we measured people's blood pressure so you would get those readings live and measure their heart rate when you're the most uncomfortable, when you're the most stressed, you're the nicest readings live and measure their heart rate.

Speaker 1: 8:45

When you're the most uncomfortable, when you're the most stressed, you're the nicest, most over the top version of yourself, and my colleague, wendy Menez started calling this brittle smiles effect. So like you're so great, this kind of high pitched voice over the top smiling, and what's fascinating is because you're feeling stressed. At the same time, the anxiety still comes out, but in these kind of like weird creepy ways where you smile but not with your eyes right, so you don't have a douche and smile. We have a kind of lower half of you is smiling or you're fidgeting and avoiding eye contact, but saying the right thing and so if you're on the receiving end of one of these things.

Speaker 1: 9:17

It's like the words coming out of the person's mouth are nice, they're supportive, but it's all oozing out through these anxious cues. And what we started realizing is there's the controllable behaviors what we say and then the ones that are difficult to control how we say it and those two often misalign and that can lead to very difficult communication between people. And even talking to your jerk at work, you're probably really nice to that person if you were to go up to them. And we see this in all kinds of contexts and it's a pretty universal phenomenon, also cross-culturally. It's not just in America. I've seen it in Abu Dhabi with people from 50 countries. They do the same thing. I think that's one of our more consistent tried and true findings we found.

Speaker 3: 9:56

That's fascinating.

Speaker 2: 9:59

That's so interesting because I think one. I know I've done that when I've had to present somewhere like the over nicety to people in the room. Oh my God, but it's so interesting, Just the body language that people exude. You can't hide the body language.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Yeah, you can't control it. If you tell people okay, take a deep breath, don't look anxious, it makes it way worse. We tried that. We even tried telling people your partner's not anxious. They just had a ton of coffee today, so they're a little fidgety, they're like anxious coffee, oh my God. No, it actually makes it worse. And then they see even more anxiety than is actually there. It's really hard to get rid of this. It's a super sticky phenomenon.

Speaker 3: 10:37

It's very difficult to undo you just wrote Job Therapy, which we're super stoked about, and in the book you talk about some of the sources people have in terms of the frustration with work is actually due to some of those interpersonal relationships. When I think about people looking at a job pivot or they're unhappy in their career or they're thinking this isn't working for me anymore a lot of times people think it's because I'm not doing the right job or I'm not at the right company, not necessarily about the people you're surrounding yourself with.

Speaker 1: 11:30

I think relationships are everything at work, and I mean that in a lot of ways. So one of the main things that turns on or off our work happiness is our interpersonal relationships with people, and that doesn't just include your boss or the people on your team. That includes the people that you see day in and day out. I think that even if you're an individual contributor and I hear this a lot I'm an individual contributor. I don't need relationships. Of course you do, we all do. It doesn't matter what the nature of your work is. Those dynamics are at play and we know social networking is an important part of the work process, but we don't really understand how. So that's another component is, in addition to the one-on-one interactions you have, where you learn new information. You learn the hidden curriculum. You figure out whether your kiss-up kick-downer has a widespread problem or if it's just you.

Speaker 1: 12:11

All of those things, those kind of sticky interpersonal issues, can really turn our stress on and off. And when it comes to exploring new jobs, people often think about it very structurally I want something hybrid, or I want to work in this new city, or I need a better compensation package. They don't think about the relationship part so much, even though that's actually one of the biggest predictors of what leads us to actually drift apart psychologically from our jobs is the change in interpersonal dynamics at work. But we don't focus on that. We focus on how much we're getting paid or whether we can get promoted. But those things matter, but not as much as those interpersonal relationships, and those relationships are key to doing complex things like developing a new career identity.

Speaker 1: 12:52

Like you can't do that by reading websites or taking courses to improve this and that skill. You really have to sit down for 15 minutes and talk to a stranger and say tell me what your day-to-day looks like. That's really how you develop clarity around things, like a new identity at work, and so I really encourage people even shy people, even awkward people, even people who are individual contributors to really embrace the relational component at work in lots of different ways, and I don't mean you need to be best friends with anyone at work. You can think about relationships in different ways of serving these different purposes, but they're absolutely essential to feeling good at work and feeling good about yourself. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:31

I've absolutely felt that right, especially when I've been in organizations for an extended period of time. Where you feel like you have the relationships, where you feel like you have the network, it's so much easier to get things done and, quite honestly, a lot of times, work is just so much more enjoyable. Yeah, but the thing we talk about a lot too in terms of career development or even getting promoted, is you have to have sponsors, you have to have a board of directors. People need to quote unquote know who you are. That doesn't just happen and that isn't typically just based on your great work. It has to deal with do people want to vouch for you? Do they like you? Do you have the relationship to your point?

Speaker 1: 14:06

Are they willing to expend social capital to?

Speaker 1: 14:09

stand up for you. You know we often don't think about how getting promoted, you know and I don't just mean like literally getting a new job title, but having someone in the room vouch for you is costly for them. You know, even if it's, even if you're good and everyone agrees you're wonderful, if they are going to put their neck out for you and argue that you should get promoted, that means that they can't do it for the next person. In academia, it's like every time the chair goes to the dean and asks for money for a person, that's one less person that they can then ask for the next time, because we have a zero-sum amount of stuff that we're working with and we have to think about. Are we earning these relationships that are helping us in the moment but also helping us build our careers out? And every recruiter, internal and external, that I talked to for this book said that they love developing relationships with people in different stages of their careers, because they will place the same person five times. It's like a real estate agent.

Speaker 1: 15:05

They will sell you a house five times over your life and it is essential for them to get to know you and know if you're going to actually stay in a job. Do they want to place you? Because they don't get a bonus if you don't stay for six months, and so they're going to place the person they know will stay because they stayed in the last thing they placed them in. And those kind of lifelong relationships are also essential for us just in terms of our whole kind of life career trajectory, and we often don't really think about those lifey relationships outside of our specific job context.

Speaker 3: 15:34

Yeah, and then you meet these people that have these massive networks of people and they're so much better off typically than people that don't. I see this a lot too. This is such a small microcosm of this, but when you see people get laid off and then all of a sudden they're starting their LinkedIn profile, or all of a sudden they're starting to reconnect back, and it's like you should have been doing this all along, or nurturing these relationships all along to have that network to fall back on, it's a very small example, but something we see all the time.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Oh yeah, like you don't maintain those relationships and you only turn to them when you're laid off or you blast your whole network one message Like please help me. Like without those interpersonal connections. It just feels like relationship spam and I think no one likes to feel like they're being spammed in any context, especially with someone they know Not at all my parents used to say like relationships are, it's like a garden, it's a reciprocal thing.

Speaker 3: 16:24

Right, you have to tend to them, you have to nurture them and you have to give to get. You can't have it be only when I need you. So nurturing those very strong relationships obviously huge, and also giving your data something that really makes meaningful careers. And then I'm wondering on the other side of it too, where what happens when those relationships turn out to be with people that are just dicks and I've had that experience too, where you're like you're a dick, you're a jerk. And I am curious about how not even neutral relationships, but adversarial, jerky relationships impact people's careers and what they think about their careers.

Speaker 1: 17:06

I think when we have these failed relationships, losses loom larger than gains and we can perseverate on a turned relationship. For years and years I've talked to people that were like I had a best friend and then he became my boss and then I overheard him talking about me in the bathroom and it killed me. I said when did that happen? 1987. I'm still thinking about it and that's normal. When we feel like someone betrays us, we really hang on to that and to the point where we maybe have a bit of a spotlight effect, where we think it's going to damage us more than it actually does and we start to get a little conspiratorial and thinking about how they can damage our networks and things like that.

Speaker 1: 17:46

One of the people I talk about in Jerks at Work is a gaslighter and they're like the masters of trying to damage your network. Right, they don't just go after you, they go after your reputation and by doing that they hit everyone. That's a node in your network. Most jerks we deal with have less power than we think they do. Even if they tell us they're full of power and full of status, a lot of it is more bark than bite, so you need to actually do the work to figure out if there's a real concern there about that reputational damage and then be proactive about not trash talking the person but just information gathering.

Speaker 1: 18:19

We often have this instinct of they're going out there saying bad things about me.

Speaker 1: 18:22

I'm going to go out there and correct that by saying bad things about them.

Speaker 1: 18:26

But stop and take a breath and think, ok, I'm just going to information gather and get the lay of the land of my own reputation so then I can correct it and not make it about them at all, even if the person deserves that kind of negative reputation.

Speaker 1: 18:39

You have to just be super careful with gossip because you just never know how it's going to be used in the future. And we all gossip and it serves an important purpose. But the retribution piece, the piece that the it inside of you really wants to go crazy, is where you just have to focus more on controlling the narrative around your own reputation, figuring out how white for the problem is, and then I'd say these relationships fail fast. If you are getting red flagged that this person is saying negative things or credit stealing or whatever, disengage as quickly as you can from that. We all have stories I have some of when I first started going too far into a relationship with someone who is weirdly competitive or had some other tick that just didn't align with me and letting that relationship stay for too long.

Speaker 1: 19:20

And I think that's where we get a little messed up at work. We think people need to be our best friends and sometimes you figure out they're not and just disengage. I think is key. But yeah, it can hurt. I still have my stories from 20 years ago I still think about so I think it's pretty normal.

Speaker 3: 19:35

I have a reoccurring dream about somebody and it's just like why won't this go away? I see your face.

Speaker 1: 19:44

I understand. I understand it's like an ex-boyfriend they got a weird breakup with and there was no closure, none.

Speaker 3: 19:51

Yeah, and I still. There's certain things. I can't listen to. A certain song You're just like oh, I am burned. You're like I can't. Nope, nope, nope, yeah, but taking away that power to your point around when you're in it, disengaging like you don't need to keep working at it. Disengage number one and number two.

Speaker 1: 20:17

Focus on your own PR and not bad-mouthing them, right, ie Taylor Swift trash-chakes itself out at some point, hopefully, or just be very strategic about the nature of the bad-mouthing. I'd say if you do go to HR, you want to bad-mouth, don't focus on your feelings about the nature of the bad mouthing. I'd say if you do go to HR, you want a bad mouth, don't focus on your feelings about the person or your kind of description of their personality. Focus on exactly what they've done. When I have conversations with leaders about difficult people, I'll say something like okay, I'm going to tell you what happened, and if I start to editorialize this a little bit, just let me know, because I don't mean to. And then followed by we had this meeting and this is what was said, leaving my emotions aside and I don't use words like they're untrustworthy or they're disrespectful. Those are very eye of the beholder and not everyone's going to agree with you about what those things look like. So I just described the behaviors and then it makes me look like a more mature person.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Stick to the facts. But all goes back to the golden rule right Is like focus on yourself.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Don't worry about others. I'm curious, why do people show up like this? I'm a firm believer that most people who are jerks don't actually know it, because it harms them a lot to not have solid networks and good reputations. I'm dealing with a jerk right now at work and we just got some feedback about the people who report to her and it's all pretty terrible and she's been here for a long time and I asked her closest colleague what's going on. He goes oh, no one tells her. No one's ever told this person what's going on and I said why not? Because she gets a little scary and defensive.

Speaker 1: 21:41

So it's like one sign that this is going to involve some conflict or a little bit of social finesse to maneuver around and everyone's like, no, thank you, they're not getting rewarded for giving her this feedback. They don't win. She's powerful. So they could actually lose social capital. And I think most of us walk into those conversations thinking I could lose a lot if this goes poorly. And what am I gaining really by being honest with this person?

Speaker 1: 22:04

And most feedback is delivered pretty poorly and it takes the form of what I just mentioned. It's things like you're not trustworthy or you're disrespectful and no one really knows what. Some of them are out to draw blood, but I think most of them aren't. They just aren't very socially perceptive either. They don't pick up on cues that maybe, like other people, are unhappy with them. Every jerk I've talked to because I've been brought in by a lot of companies to do de-jerkifying coaching and most of these people are actually like lovely and you're like I was expecting a monster and I'm just getting a sad person who is shocked the worst kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Yeah, we talk about that all the time how the feedback just doesn't happen. Renee Brown's clear as kind is for a good reason and real time, and not just those big words, as you mentioned, but like actionable things that they can truly address, like clear feedback that's actionable, not just feelings. What's the worst kind of jerk that you've seen in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 23:16

The one that causes the most psychological damage, I would say, is the gaslighter.

Speaker 1: 23:21

And that is a word that like took on its own. It had its own moment. It's very much in the zeitgeist, but those are people who are lying with the intent to deceive on a pretty big scale and they socially isolate their victims. And so a lot of the people who've been gaslit. It's been going on for a very long time. They've been cut off from their social networks and also it's not always in the form of an insult, or you're not good enough or you're going to feel a lot of it's fiery feedback.

Speaker 1: 23:48

You're a special person. I'm only bringing in one member from the team to know about the super secret mission that we're on together. Before you know it, you've stolen company secrets and general counsel's at your door, but you had no idea. You thought you were a part of a super special secret mission. So I think people have a complicated emotional reaction to being gaslit, partly because there's a guilt that they have done some unethical things, that they felt silly, that they were talked into, and then they have no idea what other people actually think of them and who they can trust to to get an understanding of their reputation and they feel very lost and many of them, because of that, have so much trauma that they don't trust anyone ever again in any workplace. So for these folks this is really a traumatic experience. I think it's fairly rare to run into a true gaslighter. It's different than someone who lies, but that is a very damaging one.

Speaker 2: 24:40

Yeah, I've experienced that before, francesca, you have too, I think. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 24:45

Do you think a gaslighter is like pathological?

Speaker 1: 24:47

Yeah, I think it's like access to personality disorder stuff. I think it's a lot of these are contextually based.

Speaker 1: 24:56

Jerks can be bred at work, but I feel like you have to have a special combination of some dark triad traits or whatever to really thrive, because and a lot of these gaslighters are quite good at their job- and they're very powerful and they're well-connected and they know how to frame up themselves to be protected from whatever they've asked you to do in aiding and abetting, and they usually walk out with pretty clean reputations at the end of the day and that's very frustrating for people. There's not like a sense of procedural justice.

Speaker 3: 25:29

One thing I've been having a hard time, and I am someone that is there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women. That is my thing, and so it pains me to say this, because this is just my observation. What I have been trying to suss out, though, is most of the gaslighters I have met have been women, typically, I'd say 40 plus. I know there can be male gaslighters that are 18 years old like that, so that's fact right. What I've been trying to suss out, though, is how much of that type of behavior has been the world that they've grown up in and had to fight for and compete for in a male dominated world, yada, yada versus the pure pathology. And then where's the line where it's no, this is just who they are versus this is what they've been bred to?

Speaker 3: 26:10

do that's hard sometimes for me to suss out.

Speaker 1: 26:14

There's a lot of research on queen bee syndrome and things like that right, so you get these women in male dominated fields, and I'd also say that discrimination against women is there are no gender differences in who actually does it, and so people are like women shouldn't be discriminating against women. They do just as much as men do.

Speaker 1: 26:33

There are almost no documented kind of gender of the perceiver effects, meaning the person who does it. But when women do it, it stands out, it's much more salient and it also often takes more of a social aggression form, because the way women tend to be aggressive is much more sort of convoluted and social. And it starts when we're six years old and we learn these tactics of aggression through. Little boys hit each other, little girls gossip about each other, and there's a developmental trajectory of how we learn to be successfully aggressive that we can then take to work and the queen bees the women who've made it in these male-dominated fields. They have often suffered quite a lot. That they think earns them the right to then behave the same way. I have had a very similar experience where the people who I felt discriminated against me the most were more senior women who felt like they went through the gauntlet. It's now my turn and I need to just suck it up.

Speaker 1: 27:27

So there's a lot of kind of stereotypes about what one ought to do as a woman, when you're allowed to have babies, how you're supposed to behave and dress and no one's ever told me how to dress, except for other women showing up in job interviews. So I do think there's like a special dynamic that I think happens there with these women who have succeeded in these male dominated places.

Speaker 3: 27:47

Yeah, I like the term queen bee though, because I think that gives a nice frame for that, because it's hard Sometimes it's hard to assess. You talked about the gaslighter. In your book you write about other types of jerks at work and I'm wondering if you could give us a bit of this survey. What are the other types of jerks people meet at work?

Speaker 1: 28:05

My favorite is the kiss-up kick-downer, and this book is actually based on someone I worked with at Nordstrom's. This is why I love this person. They are very good at their job and they're super socially savvy, and so they're high on what we call status acuity. They can read the room. They can walk into a room and tell you who has status, who has respect and admiration and who doesn't. They can walk into a room and tell you who has status, who has respect and admiration and who doesn't. They can figure that out pretty quickly. So the boss tends to love them. They tend to be top performers, and if you are to complain that they are mistreating you so they kick down people at their level or beneath, you're going to get a lot of eye rolls and you're just jealous, and so they're very clever and savvy and Machiavellian and are able to get ahead through these kind of tricksy ways. They're very careful about who they gossip to and about, and they only do it in a very strategic way. And so if you have a workplace with a hierarchy which every workplace does these individuals tend to be very good at climbing up that hierarchy and then reading who has the status within that hierarchy. So that's my favorite.

Speaker 1: 29:04

I think some of the more straightforward ones are like the credit stealer who we are all probably pretty familiar with, and this person is also savvy. They tend to actually they don't just steal all their credit, they'll give you public credit for certain things so that when you then go complain it's much easier for them to say what am I talking about? I just gave them this whole speech publicly about all the hard work they've done. So credit stealers have a bulldozer type in my book as well. So this is a person who takes over meetings and agendas. They can usually work power structures behind the scenes, so you have a lot of things that end in an impasse and you're not quite sure why or what's happening, and these can all be team members.

Speaker 1: 29:43

And then I have two types of bosses. I have the micromanager, who I think most of us are familiar with, those insecure bosses that oversee all your work and they tend to do a lot but not get anything done. And then the neglectful boss, who, ironically, tends to also be a micromanager. So that's usually one person who oscillates between micromanagement and neglect. While they're micromanaging you, they're neglecting someone else, and so the neglect really gets operationalized as ignore, ignore, show up at the 11th hour, top-down control, change everything. Everyone freaks out, has a stress response and then they leave again for six months. So they go back and forth. So micromanager and neglectful boss are two people, but often one person.

Speaker 1: 30:27

And then the gaslighter who we just talked about.

Speaker 2: 30:37

I feel like I've encountered all of those in my career At the same time, sometimes all in one. I'm curious do you think every employee has been a jerk at work?

Speaker 1: 30:51

Yeah, if you've worked long enough, you are a jerk. We all have our own Achilles heel. We all have the worst version of ourselves that we can bring to work. And maybe that's a person who gets jealous and insecure and so it gets lashy outie. Or my son would say you're lashy outie. Or it's someone who feels like they need massive certainty and they're not getting it from their boss and so they hover over your Google page as you're working and they call you and you have to hide under your desk. I think we all have that version of us. When we get stressed and anxious, and some of us, that instinct is to try to overpower, to get that internal sense of control. Some of us disengage completely and become neglectful, and then some of us just have an inner instinct to be a little bit Machiavellian.

Speaker 1: 31:36

It's what we've seen, If you work in a law firm, anyone who's made partner probably is a little bit on that Machiavellian scale and thinks it's okay to kick down to climb ahead. And I think the key is just knowing what that ugliest version of you is on the inside so that you can then not make it go away but put steps in place structurally to prevent that person from coming out. But I do think we all have our inner jerk and that can be a different person at different stages of your career as well.

Speaker 1: 32:03

When you're more or less secure in a role versus completely overwhelmed, but plenty of security psychologically. But I'm a cynical person and I study the dark side of human nature and put people through really egregious social interactions to bring out the ugly version, because the nice version is not so interesting for me. But yes, I do think most of us have some inner jerk.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Yeah, I think it makes sense. Right, we're human beings, you show up that way. But I think, to your point, it's the self-awareness that's so critical, just knowing what that is what can come out. So how do you tame that, focusing on that? For employees, specifically, what are some of the ways that they can identify a jerk? Because, as you mentioned, there are covert jerks. They might not even realize that person's a jerk. And then there are some in your face jerks. One of my favorite things that you say is work jerkery, right, is this an environment full of work jerkery or not? Starting in the interview process, can they start to see that?

Speaker 1: 33:00

Yeah, I used to study first impressions. What can we get from the first 30 seconds? And actually thin slices of human behavior are actually pretty accurate predictors of the future. One thing is most work jerkery shows up a little bit ambiguous. In fact it is rare to say they're prejudiced. You don't you got to add up all these behavioral cues and then blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 33:27

Work jerks are a little bit like that, where you're going to have maybe a gut instinct that there's an ambiguous situation that could go either way. The first thing I tell people is do not just trust your instincts, that you can magically read what's going on in someone's mind simply by looking at their nonverbal behavior. I've done a lot of research on interpersonal accuracy and what it really takes to know what someone's thinking or feeling, and there is no magical thing. You simply have to ask, and in the case of work jerks or in an interview, you need to ask around. You need to ask networks of people. I think if you're interviewing for a job, you want to ask at stage two or three of the interview to not just talk to the hiring manager or your boss but to talk to their team members and to talk to people who've cycled out of their team at some point. You want to gather as much information as you can by people who have what's called non-overlapping social information, so they're not always in the same room at the same time with the person. They've known them at different time points in that person's career. They've known them at different jobs or on different teams and look for the signal and the noise there.

Speaker 1: 34:31

Don't trust your instinct based on what they say or their nonverbal behavior or whatever. Base it on data that you can collect. We aren't great at information gathering in an interview stage because we want to impress so badly that we just try to put our best foot forward and say the right things. But once you get far enough in the process, you should feel confident enough to ask for other connections of people and people who know those people to gain that kind of like reputational map of the individual.

Speaker 1: 34:53

What you're looking for is like cross situational consistency across these 15 different interactions, across these 15 people. When they're stressed, they do X, when they're relaxed, they do Y. And you need as much data as you can get because any one person could have a weird experience, and so you're just looking for some consistent patterns of behavior. But really don't trust your instinct. I think that's where most of us go wrong is oh, I saw them give me side eye, or they looked bored. I think they're a jerk. No, none of that stuff is actually predictive. Gather information from the networks of people in the interviews.

Speaker 2: 35:23

Okay.

Speaker 3: 35:25

Yeah, all of us with a resting bitch face appreciate that answer.

Speaker 1: 35:28

Thank you, I have an RBF. There's a science behind the RBF, folks. If your upper lip turns down when your elastic mind does, that gives you RBF. That's the magical ingredient, and so do we want to assume that everyone with a downturned upper lip is a bitch?

Speaker 2: 35:42

No, we do not. I was in a meeting once and I had a leader IME as I was presenting like fix your face.

Speaker 1: 35:49

I'm like what? That's not cool, that is bad behavior.

Speaker 2: 35:53

Yeah, I'm like I don't even know what's wrong with my face. I can't see it so cool, not helpful, yeah. Okay, I'm curious psychologically because you even mentioned something earlier. Some folks might not even ever recover from the damage that this does to them. Like, what are the long-term psychological impacts on the individual, but even teams and organizations? What happens when there's a culture of, like, jerk culture?

Speaker 1: 36:22

Yeah, I think people learn what it takes to get ahead, and the smart ones will do it, and so jerk cultures, beget jerk cultures. If a place is a place where jerks can thrive, then they will hire and they will stay there and they won't ever cycle out because nobody wants to recruit them outside of that place. And this happens with a lot of high performing jerks. There's a reason why snakes in suits is a phenomenon that we actually talk about that you get high up enough you become a little bit of a psychopath. That's not true for every organization, but it's really hard to correct an organizational cultural reputation. That can take years, and you can even wipe everyone out of the organization that was a jerk and hire a new, and it will still take forever.

Speaker 1: 37:05

We know from the science of social network and reputation spread that removing those people with a negative reputation actually does very little to change what people think of the network as a whole. And if you can think of organizations that have had Title IX issues or Me Too issues, simply getting rid of those people isn't sufficient. And it's because people know that firing is easy, but actually promoting from within and proving that you don't breed that is hard and that takes years and years. And a lot of organizations went through this with me too. They just fired all those executives that sent those nasty text messages or sexually harassed women or whatever.

Speaker 1: 37:49

That seems like too easy of a solution to most people. They think, well, why did that person get away with it for 20 years? I don't care that you're firing them now. And there's a bit of a moral licensing effect that happens. Okay, now you feel like you got rid of them. Now you're going to really go crazy because you checked off the box right, like you're feeling good about yourself, morality wise. So I think there is damage that can last years and decades. And to the individual, they're just going to be super sensitive for looking for anything that is similar to their past, jerk and even incidental similarities that have nothing to do with it or are going to cue them up. I've talked to people who go to the same hairdresser. I can't trust that person.

Speaker 1: 38:23

Or they're wearing a similar jacket or they went to the same university or are trained by the same manager 20 years ago. Incidental similarities loom large for us and we often see correlation and inferred causation from that, and so people will start to get a little bit too triggery with those things and it can really hold them back right. Or they develop lay theories about why that person treated them in a certain way that are not ever really tested or explored. But we just have our theories and then we believe them and they're idiosyncratic and we stick to them, and I think that can really lead us astray as well.

Speaker 3: 38:57

What do you do? What do you do if you have that person? Let's take my example. I have a reoccurring dream about this dumb person. I know what do I do you?

Speaker 1: 39:04

don't have any closure in that relationship. Did it just end one? I have this with like exes. It just ended one day and you never saw them. You never did the exit interview where you said all the things or it's really hard to let go of these. Like the social psychologists would call this a goal incompletion.

Speaker 3: 39:39

You didn't complete the goal of ending the relationship, and so it's this kind of subtle, incomplete goal that you have, like never jumping off a high dive, and so you're just going to perseverate on it, or it's going to like sneak into your subconscious every once in a while, and that's true for all things that we don't complete.

Speaker 3: 39:46

Should you call them up? Who is this? I don't even know who this is. No, it's super fair. Super fair, I think, even just knowing, look, it's going to pop in. That's it. Let's just know what's going to happen.

Speaker 1: 39:51

I still dream about, like people from sixth grade that I feel like I didn't have like closure on, and that's normal. It's actually totally normal. It doesn't mean that this person is still haunting you in any meaningful way. It just means that there was something incomplete that you are not able to fully move on from because you just didn't finish the goal of ending that relationship in some kind of formalized way. And that's how most relationship ends. I think that's like just how relationships are. We don't usually have some kind of light switch that goes off where it's done. It's just like a lot of ambivalence, a lot of feelings that go up and down, and then eventually we move on. But what does move on me? I don't. Yeah, it means you're still dreaming about the person, but you're functional, so it's nice.

Speaker 3: 40:34

A thousand percent. I'm glad I'm not the only one, though, so I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 40:37

Just write them a letter saying all the things you need to say and throw it into a fire and release it.

Speaker 1: 40:43

She's going to be dreaming about the fire and talk to the fire to get the letter back Will be a worse nightmare than it started as.

Speaker 2: 40:52

Okay, scratch that All right. So with say, you're in a new job, it's the first 90 days and you're like, oh shit, I thought I did my due diligence in the interview process. I talked to people but it is clear no one gave me the real story here. What can people do? What do you do to protect yourself if you start to identify work-jerkery happening?

Speaker 1: 41:19

I think, first off, a lot of people try to go at this alone. They think that the negative treatment happens in a vacuum. And I think I've done a lot of research on what it's like to be a newcomer at work and newcomer status and the newcomer hump, and knowing what that hump is will help you strategize of what to do next. The first thing is, when you're a newcomer and you experience this, you assume that everyone around you knows it's happening and they don't care. And so first you actually need to test that assumption. Probably people don't know what's happening because they're in their own world. There's not actually an awareness of what you're up to and how you're being treated by other people, even if it happens in a meeting. Most of us spend most of our time in meetings rehearsing what we want to say next, and we almost never pay attention to what other people are actually saying. So we can remember what we said and when we were interrupted. But if you were to say, hey, mel, did you interrupt your buddy Tom, or when was he interrupted? You'd be like I don't know. All I know is when I was interrupted. So I feel like we have these spotlight effects on ourselves, so you need to break that a little bit and actually break that assumption that everyone knows what's happening except for you.

Speaker 1: 42:26

There's also a lot about norms in the workplace and hidden norms and things like that you probably aren't aware of, and so the best thing to do to learn about norms of treatment of people at work is to take what's implicit and make it explicit and just explicitly ask about how people ought to be treated.

Speaker 1: 42:41

And that sounds silly and dumb, but there could be a culture of sarcasm here or a culture of treating each other a little roughly. That is just does not sit with you well and you need to know if you're being mistreated or if this is just a normative way people act around here. I remember in academia we make people go through this like terrible two day interview process and there's a job talk that's an hour long and in some microcultures you can interrupt every three seconds and that's a good sign. It shows engagement and others. If you interrupt every three seconds, that means you're done, that means they hated the talk, and so we often have these little microcultures at work that we assume are bigger and more industry-wide than they actually are, so people could be assuming that you understand a norm that you don't because it's weirder and more idiosyncratic than they even realize.

Speaker 1: 43:28

And this is even true for jargon at work. People assume everyone in an industry uses jargon. Jargon is team-based. The five people are using the same weird words. So you want to just test your assumptions around that If it is widespread and everyone agrees it's okay behavior and you don't like that, that's your red flag. You are not going to change the whole organization and get them to all behave differently. So those are like the two key pieces of this job is probably not going to work out for you.

Speaker 1: 43:53

Widespread and everyone's okay with it, not okay with it not widespread, then you have hope. Then you can proactively work with your network or your boss or whatever. But almost everyone assumes behavior is both more widespread and more acceptable than probably others realize and they're shocked when they hear about it and a little bit surprised. So test those assumptions before you jump ship and start something else. But it is pretty normal to think you're hired into one culture and show up and get something different. I'll say all that with one major exception being. A huge problem that came up during COVID and still happening is engagement issues. You thought this would be a really engaged workplace where everyone was on board and they were active and they were in, and then you show up and like literally no one is there. That is a really tough kind of cultural level of disengagement or neglect. That is hard to fix and I wouldn't try to take that particular issue on.

Speaker 2: 44:44

What if it's your boss in those first 90 days?

Speaker 1: 44:48

Yeah, you can talk to other team members to see how they're being treated. But my favorite lay of the land networking reality check tactic for bosses is you don't want to go to your boss's boss, you want to go up and over. You want to find people who know your boss, who are at the same level as them, and so they can give you insight into this treatment. No-transcript, I have all these kinds of like little tricksy rules based on marital therapy of how to do it. But before you're even there, you want to know oh, is this what all middle managers do, or is this just mine? Going two levels up is a little bit difficult, but up and over at their level in the network is useful to just get feedback from other bosses who have a similar role as yours.

Speaker 2: 46:00

I really like that because then you're comparing and you have data to compare it against, and it isn't just the assumption that your boss is the problem, so to speak. Not saying their behavior is great if it's common either.

Speaker 1: 46:13

But yeah, but you want to know. I think when people are like, how do I know if the jerk problem is too much, I, my first question is how widespread is it? How culturally normative is it? Are they hiding their behavior Cause they know it's bad, which is a good sign for you, because that means this organization doesn't actually like it. It's so scary to deal with, but that's a good sign that it's not just the whole well has been poisoned, it's just this one person. And is it OK to give any kind of feedback to bosses and some organizations? They have a very tight hierarchy and it's completely unacceptable to ever have a real conversation with your boss that is not just about your own career path and your own performance, but about theirs. So you want a place that actually does like bite-sized, normal conversation, organic feedback across all levels.

Speaker 2: 46:59

I know we're talking about like how leaders can manage this one-on-one with folks on their team. But what do they do if they see that the team is developing this culture of jerkery together? What can they do to address it without killing?

Speaker 1: 47:15

morale on the team or trust within the team. I think you know I teach this little program called the tricky situations, and it's just a bunch of these workplace dynamics and one of them is I actually give people an example of a situation like this where you think you know who the jerk is. Bob is constantly taking on the work of senior people. It seems like there's a free rider problem at work. Why is Bob doing everyone's work, even though he's the most junior person? How do you deal with this potential free ride problem? And half the people will come to me and say, oh, clearly these senior people are taking advantage of Bob and they're offloading work. And the other half will say, oh, I've had a lot of Bobs before. These are these go-getter junior people who steal the work of senior people in an effort to climb up, and they do this in a systematic way. And so we have our lay theories of who the actual jerk is in the situation. But we should probably test that out a little bit.

Speaker 1: 48:10

I don't love the idea of bringing people in one by one and interrogating them and asking them what's going on. I actually more like to keep track of the structure of things who's doing work and when Was this work you were assigned to do or not? Let's talk about the feedback interactions you're having and focus on the little behaviors and work together with everyone as a group. One-on-one meetings end up with conspiratorial thinking often, and sometimes you eventually have to get to that, especially if HR is involved. But you want to hear. You want your whole team to hear one message from you at the same time and not assuming that the jerk is the high status person or the low status person or you even know what's going on. So I'd say, like a lot of information gathering and put your stereotypes aside of what you think is happening before you do. But I do think that teams that there's a lot of structures and systems that we can put in place to prevent jerks and not allowing things like informal networking behind the scenes to pull levers of power good old boys club networking, things like that that used to work to get people's way and so far as we continue to reinforce that and we don't have real procedural justice around rules and decision making, I think we're in trouble.

Speaker 1: 49:15

And I'd also say for bosses and leaders, if you want to make a jerk free place and you want to prevent Machiavellianism and things like that on your teams. You need to lay out super clearly what the structure is for determining raises and promotions at your organization, down to things like certain bosses don't have the status and power to do it until they've been here for five years Really clear. And then I'd say the other thing is we need more failure pipeline data so that when we aren't promoted or when we're not succeeding, we're not bitter about it. We don't start to engage in kiss up, take down behavior to get ahead. We understand that it takes five times to get this promotion and we're only on time three or we know who our social comparison others are.

Speaker 1: 49:54

So there's procedural justice around decisions that don't often favor us, because what happens when people aren't getting ahead is that's when they turn to this jerk behavior to try to do whatever it takes. And transparency, I think, can move mountains with just explaining to people, even if they don't like the rules. If they understand them, they're less likely to turn to jerk behavior to get ahead, and that's usually where we see it actually to get their way to get ahead, to pull levers of power. That's where most people turn into jerks at work.

Speaker 2: 50:20

We can see that Francesca and I talk often about the power of transparency in the workplace, because you're removing the confusion for folks immediately and they don't have to fill in the blanks and suddenly they're in survival mode every single day because they don't know what the story is or they don't have clarity on the situation. So now it's just an unsafe environment. Do you think organizations are doing enough to address jerks at work?

Speaker 1: 50:45

No, they wait till the problem crops up and then they play whack-a-mole. There's not a lot of prevention. Think about this through the lens of healthcare. Right, we wait for the heart attack to happen and then it's time to lose weight. There's not a lot of prevention and early detection and conversations to see the early red flags, to see their warning signs, and I think that's just because most of us don't know, and often the early red flags are not what ends up being the problem later. Those early signs are not often perfectly aligned with what ends up getting you reported to HR. Anxiety and stress and feeling overwhelmed is often an early red flag of micromanagement. But that could be anything. So I don't think so. I think people talk about it a lot, but they don't do a lot to actually address the issue. One of the dark reasons why is because a lot of these jerks are high performers.

Speaker 3: 51:32

At the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 51:33

We are very much yoked to performance metrics and that if you have a board, they care about that. If you're publicly traded, that's what matters, Not nice people, not so-called soft skills. And so there's good reason for people to just say I don't care about all this stuff. I have to answer the board and if our numbers stay low, I don't care. That we have jerks, we can't afford this. Bring in the Machiavellian people who will bring our numbers back up. Sorry, that was a little bit dark.

Speaker 2: 52:00

We've seen it.

Speaker 3: 52:05

Yeah, I know, there's the whole Gary Veer chat. If your best-selling salesperson is a total asshole, go in and fire him tomorrow. No one's doing that, and you can absolutely do the long-term analysis of how much that is costing you by having someone be a jerk right Turnover and we know all the stats. But that's a long-term play and we live a quarter mile at a time in corporate America. Okay, all right, tessa, we do this with all our guests. It's called Rapid Round. They're quick, short answers. They're meant to be fun. Are you ready to play Tessa? Sure, okay, six questions, so no pressure. In your opinion, who's the biggest jerk of all time?

Speaker 1: 52:52

Donald Trump, is that basic?

Speaker 3: 52:56

Depends on who you talk to that guy. Oh, that guy.

Speaker 1: 53:02

Yeah, that guy. There's no redeeming qualities, there's just not.

Speaker 3: 53:07

I can't, I can't, I can't, can't, I can't, I can't believe I know, okay, yeah we're here again. We're here here we are here, we are, here, we are, and this is why I'm looking for eu citizenship. So, looking at property in italy, looking at property in spain, just in case shit hits the fan, there you go all right, I right, I have a Canadian husband.

Speaker 1: 53:27

I'm good, I'm covered.

Speaker 3: 53:30

Nice, excellent move, excellent. Toronto's looking really good these days. That's so funny.

Speaker 1: 53:38

What's the fastest way to identify a jerk in the workplace Ask around, just ask around. Don't trust your instincts. Gather data.

Speaker 3: 53:46

What's the best one-liner response to a jerk's rude comment?

Speaker 1: 53:50

When someone's rude to you and I wish I could go back and do this the last time someone did something awful to me that I just met I would say how many other people have you said that to?

Speaker 3: 53:59

Oh, I love that.

Speaker 1: 54:04

That's great. It's a good zinger and it really gives you the power back and makes it look like you're just judging them for the behavior. But you're not internalizing it. Oh, that is the shit.

Speaker 3: 54:16

How many people have you said that? To Just give me goosebumps. I'm like, oh, that's good.

Speaker 1: 54:19

That's very good I love that. I love that For more mean girl advice, come to me yeah.

Speaker 3: 54:26

So awesome. What's the best way to get subtle revenge on a workplace jerk without getting caught?

Speaker 2: 54:31

Does that just make you the jerk?

Speaker 1: 54:33

Yeah, this is an easy one, guys. You make friends with building maintenance and you either make sure their trash never gets taken out again or you make their office incredibly hot or incredibly cold. Attack the creature comforts. Those are actually what stresses us out the most at work, and the best way to get someone to quit a job is to move their office somewhere uncomfortable or take away their parking spot. Whoa, I know how to get people to retire. That won't retire. It's parking spot and inconvenience office and a faraway bathroom that's in a weird spot or an office next to the bathroom.

Speaker 1: 55:10

Either too close or too far.

Speaker 3: 55:14

It's so simple and so brilliant. Yeah, what's your biggest pet peeve when it comes to workplace behavior? What's the one thing you're just like? Come on.

Speaker 1: 55:22

Trash talking on social media Slack or email, but will hide from you in person. I hate it when people do that. If you're gonna do it, just own it. Just do it to my face it takes a special kind of spinelessness to do that read about me and then, yeah, not, but work right next to me as you're tweeting about me I know a place that will uh mail that person poo.

Speaker 3: 55:47

I will send you that address. Just trope load if you need that. Okay, if you could give just one piece of advice to someone dealing with a difficult coworker, what would it be?

Speaker 1: 55:57

You are not alone. You're probably the 500th victim of this particular person, so don't feel like you're being isolated. Most jerks actually isolate people and make them feel very alone and that there's something wrong with them. You're not. You are probably the 500th person on the receiving end of this jerk. The best thing you can do is ask around and figure out how many. But I think that sort of feeling stupid and alone is the shame that comes along with being victimized by jerks. That we often don't talk about, especially if you're new at work and you feel like you're being bullied.

Speaker 1: 56:29

It's like back in school. Why am I being bullied? It's not about you, it's about them.

Speaker 3: 56:34

Yeah, it's nice to frame it that way, because you can honestly almost get a little bit more objective about the situation and what you can do to get yourself into a healthier place, if you know that's what this person is like and it's not about you place. If you know that's what this person is like and it's not about you. It's been so lovely to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, this is so fun you guys are awesome.

Speaker 1: 57:00

I love the vibe of this. I feel like I need a drink of prosecco or something in my weird cubicle right now.

Speaker 2: 57:06

Delicious. Next time, next time, come back.

Speaker 3: 57:14

Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at friend@yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and, if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends and checkout yourworkfriends.com.

Speaker 2: 57:29

We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.

Play at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Play at Work with Brandon Wetzstein

At work, play means profit…

Ping-pong tables aren’t the point. Real play drives trust, energy, and bold thinking—and the companies that embrace it are winning big. Play isn’t a perk, it’s a strategy. In a world obsessed with productivity, could play be your team's secret weapon?

Brandon Wetzstein has helped transform teams at major organizations by tapping into the power of strategic play. In this episode, he breaks down why traditional "serious" approaches often lead to mediocre solutions, and how structured play can break through conventional thinking to unlock breakthrough ideas.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

And a lot of times we need more ideas to come up with better. If you ask people for ideas, the first like one to seven or eight ideas. Everyone just comes up with the same things. They're very similar because we have a very systematic mind. For the most part, it's when you start getting to idea nine, 10, 11, 12, 13. And yeah, sometimes we need to get a little bit weird to come up with that thing. That is the brilliant idea. And the more ideas, the more creativity we can have, the more imagination, the more we can get out of our own way.

Speaker 2: 0:36

What's going on, mel? Not much is going on. It's finally chilly here. Last week we had some 80-degree weather on November 1st, which was a little strange, but we went down to the beach to enjoy it, which was really nice. How about you? Very?

Speaker 3: 0:55

nice, very nice. I have a bone to pick with every single person that I grew up with. Tell me more, okay. So we're going back and re-watching these kid movies, mainly because I have a seven-year-old, and one of the movies we watched that I just saw for the first time was Karate Kid.

Speaker 2: 1:12

I can't get over that. You're just seeing Karate Kid. First of all, Listen. When I meet your parents, I need to ask why.

Speaker 3: 1:19

Because my dad felt that the Betamax was superior technology to the VHS and there was like one rental store that actually had Betamax no bloodluster for you. It was like we finally got it a VHS when it was too late.

Speaker 2: 1:34

DVDs are coming out, but you finally got the VHS.

Speaker 3: 1:37

Yes, 100% the switch. There was like three months. Like I just saw Goonies, I just saw most of the Star.

Speaker 2: 1:43

Wars. I mean, those are pretty big ones to miss in your childhood.

Speaker 3: 1:46

Going through high school and college with everybody quoting these movies etc. And the quotes from Karate Kid were always like wax on, wax off. Yeah, why is it that no one ever talked about the ending of that movie? Because, I swear to God, you go through two hours and then all of a sudden the movie just freaking ends. That is the most abrupt ending I've ever had in my life. You're like wait, what happened? What if that bit? I would like to know why no one talked about the dumb ending of that movie.

Speaker 2: 2:15

It's the 80s. Tell you, watching 80s movies is so funny.

Speaker 3: 2:19

The choices All right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:22

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Brandon Wettstein from AnyCreate. He's just so rad. He's talking to us about play in the workplace and you and I have talked about the importance of play at work, and we're not talking about forced team building events here at all. One of the things that really stands out to me is how the play part of being at work, having fun with what you do has been beaten out of org cultures. It seems we no longer relax and get to this point where you can shut off the noise and really connect as a team and get together and just think about what's possible. But there's so many stats that show how important play is for the success of teams and for organizations. It nurtures things like critical thinking, creativity, it powers innovation, it helps really make teams feel connected. Breakdown silos increases collaboration, communication. The list goes on and on. What do you think? The thing that I loved?

Speaker 3: 3:26

about our conversation with Brandon is, when you think about play at work, automatically a lot of people think ping pong tables, play-doh, etc. But there are many ways that we can play at work. For instance, organizing work, that could be an aspect of play. If you really get into that, like if you really love to plan events or organize events, that can be an aspect of play. And really understanding what play is to you is critical. So I loved this conversation because, to your point, I think we've lost play and we can get it back. You can choose to get it back and reincorporate it into your work, even if it's not coming from your organization 100%.

Speaker 2: 4:05

This is a goodie. We leave you guys with some really good pointers on how to start thinking about play within the org, especially if you're a leader, how to start nurturing that with your own teams and the work that you do. So with that, here's Brandon. All right, brandon, could you tell us about your journey and what inspired you to start in EatCreate?

Speaker 1: 4:38

Oh yes, it's one of those things where whenever you look backwards, it all makes sense Going forward. You're like what, how did this happen? I started my career in retail, working in stores selling electronics, actually when I was in college. When I date myself here, hgtv first came out as a giant, huge TVs and that led me moving into corporate environments, again in a very retail. Most of my career was in retail, both store side and corporate.

Speaker 1: 5:03

And then there was there's like that epiphany moment that happens and for me it was running a design thinking workshop within the operations group at Target, which is one of the companies that, and that moment crystallized my purpose. And what happened in that moment is there was a person who was on my team, a person who was a little bit shy, and this person came a lot in this design thinking workshop right. Their ideas came up. It's so much information, so much energy and I always hold that moment really close to my heart because I remember how great it felt to give that person an avenue, an arena to to share, whereas in the normal space of, especially in operations, teams like I was always in operations and operators make the fun zone right.

Speaker 1: 5:47

Yeah, it's the black and white right. There's no gray, and so SOP land yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:56

This was the challenging part is how do you get creative and innovative and have some fun, have some joy and get people to come up with some crazy ideas in operations when that's not like the way that they normally work and I shouldn't say they me too, that was an operator as well, and so I just I love that moment and that was really a crystallizing piece, and so I was introduced to Lego serious play not too far after that moment and my curiosity just got to me on this and I started pulling the thread and reading some books. I never could quite figure out how to do it on my own. I wanted to try it, but I just couldn't. So I finally got certified in 2019 and I fell in love. I was like this is amazing.

Speaker 1: 6:31

This is the secret to getting groups to communicate and understand and listen to each other in a fun and playful way, and so that's why I started at 8Create and again, it's been five years now, which is just amazing to me, and I still love it. Every session I do, every workshop, every team building, bringing these methods to various teams to help them connect, communicate and collaborate differently. It's just, it's so joyful because it's this unexpected. We're going to have fun and we're going to do work like that possible. No, that doesn't make any sense, but it is and it works and it's amazingly impactful and I can't wait to do it with more and more companies hopefully the rest of my days.

Speaker 2: 7:12

Yeah, pretty nice. I didn't even know you could get certified in play. That sounds like a really fun process to go through. How was that? What was that like?

Speaker 1: 7:21

I'm certified it's very specifically in a methodology that's called Lego serious play. I did not make this up. Lego back in the late nineties was really looking at who they were as a company. They stood for creativity and imagination they still do but that's not how they were developing their business internally. We have all this creativity and imagination that we're bringing to the world and to children everywhere, but how do we bring that into our boardroom? How can we bring creativity and imagination into strategy really was the question, and then they spent a few years building this, playing with it, tweaking with it, and then they sold it as a consulting service for better part of a decade. Now, as we know of Lego today, they're not a consulting company. This is not what they do, and they know that too, and they stepped away from it in about 2010. And they did release an open source document that anyone can go read. You can go on Lego's website I believe it's legocom slash serious play. There's all sorts of information on there. However, it's not enough to read and do on your own At least, for me, it wasn't and so part of the people that ran and developed this system at Lego were basically gifted some of the IP and they created more IP around it and they created these certifications.

Speaker 1: 8:29

There's about two or three different groups out there that are very well known for certifications and they all have different strengths and backgrounds histories, but it does help to understand and see how this comes to life from someone who knows what they're doing. And then, once you have that and the idea is it's like drinking from a fire hose Once you get done, you're like, oh my gosh, I could do anything with this. There's so many applications and ways that you can use it and people use it for a lot of different things. I use it for organizations and teams mostly, but there are some people that I was certified with that use it for play therapy. There's people that half the people that were in my certification class worked in schools, various high schools, colleges, trying to get students to think differently and get out of their own way. So it really is a communication methodology that allows you to get out of your own way and bring that creativity and imagination that Lego was striving to bring to really any type of situation.

Speaker 2: 9:18

I love that. I also love that your background is in operations, because when people think of play, they think of only the forced fun, team building activities that happen. We often hear like the I don't want forced fun, but that's not what you're saying, that's not what you're talking about here.

Speaker 1: 9:36

I was introduced to it when I was working at Target, but I know that companies like NASA, the Department of Defense, google, apple there's so many organizations that have used this because it's been scientifically proven. It's not even just the playful aspect of it, but there's so many other psychology like the communication pieces, the mentally offloading information and physical objects. All of these things have different types of benefits. When you combine them, they're just new and creative ways to get people out of their own way.

Speaker 2: 10:04

Yeah, can you explain how Innate Create helps organizations really embrace play and creativity in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 10:12

Absolutely, and so the most important part of at least the workshops and the team building sessions that we do is that it's not like you're going to do this and have fun. It's we're going to create, in essence, a sandbox. We're going to create the environment that allows you to figure out how you want to play in this space, if that makes sense. So with this Lego method, that is our primary methodology. There's a couple of keys to it. One people are building stories out of Lego bricks, and when I say building stories, we're basically using metaphor and generally don't introduce it that way, because a lot of people hold on metaphor. Let's back this up a little bit. No, we're just going to create stories and we start off with a very basic build just to get them back into playing with Legos, Because for a lot of people, they maybe haven't touched Lego in a long time or they put away their kids Legos. It's not necessarily a joyful thing for them at home.

Speaker 2: 11:05

Or they're like. I just stepped on a Lego last night.

Speaker 1: 11:09

I just bombed all out of my house Exactly, but one of the key aspects of this methodology is that the builder can't be wrong and I'm going to say that again because it's so impactful.

Speaker 1: 11:20

The builder can't be wrong. And so, when you think about this, we're not building airplanes, we're not building cars and trucks. We're not building things per se, because there's certain people that I'm sure are much more attuned to building things and coming up with creative Lego ideas. But when you build stories and you can't be wrong suddenly whatever you build is up to you, and so some people build these large, elaborate things. Some people do build cars and ships, and that's fine, but some people build really abstract things that you have no idea what they mean until they tell you. And so it gives this freedom to people to express themselves in whatever way they would like, and some people will just put two pieces together and that will be their answer to a question. And to give you an example of a question we might ask and one of my favorite ones is in our team building sessions. It's just, the main focus is getting people to know each other better. They ask people to build a model that tells a story about who they are outside of work. That's it. That's it. It's that simple and there's no. You can't be wrong and you can choose right. Okay, how do you build a model of oh my gosh, what a huge topic. Do I build my hobbies? Do I build my children, my family, the fact that I have a soup pot and the crock pot, whatever, right, there's no wrong answer. And what you get is this amazing amount of ideas and thoughts, of insights, and people share what they want. And so that's where I think it really is different from most other types of team buildings, because it gives people the freedom to express themselves and share whatever they might want to share.

Speaker 1: 12:46

And it's amazing, the things that come up in these sessions, too. You find out. I did a session in California once where we found out like half the group was growing citrus, like as a whole. You're like, oh, wow, we're all growing citrus, cool, okay. So they created a little group afterwards. Another group I did in DC. We had a group of five or six people that all had adopted a dog in the past like six months, and it was just this weird thing. We're like no one knew this. So it's amazing. There's so much depth and dimensions of who we are outside of work, but we don't necessarily show up and just talk about ourselves. It's not socially acceptable and this just gives us an avenue to share a little bit, but do so in a very psychologically safe way, do so in a very easy way and, again, each person decides how much and what they would like to share.

Speaker 2: 13:30

Yeah, I love that. What's one of the most rewarding projects you've worked on since you've been in this space? Because you came from OBS, so I always think of those being the most skeptical folks coming in on this stuff, right. So is there a skeptic whose mind you changed or someone you were really nervous about? That was really rewarding once you ran this year workshop.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Yeah, one of my favorites is a two and a half or three hour session with the senior leadership team of a very large nonprofit, and we were there to really dig into communication, which is shocking. It's one of the things I get brought in to talk about a lot because communication is one of those interesting things where it's very important to talk about, but it's very sharp right. It has a lot of edges, so you have to watch out how you're going to talk about it, and so I've got 12 participants in this group and it was amazing to watch A the variety. There's a little bit of skepticism in the room. There's a little bit of skepticism in the room. There's a little bit of excitement too, though there always is, because some people like to play with Legos. But then the question when you get that level of seniority is is this fluffy or is this a waste of time? Are we actually going to get something? And I think the reason why I love it so much is A. It was amazingly impactful.

Speaker 1: 14:39

We really looked at the communication journey from a standpoint of what does world-class communication look like in a senior leadership team, and we got to a point where everyone had a chance to express their thoughts and their ideas. Using the Lego models. We looked at the negative side of things. Think of the worst team you've ever worked for. Build a model that shows what horrible communication looks like. Let's take a look at a model of what amazing communication looks like. Let's take a look at what communication looks like from a psychological safety perspective or from a candor perspective. And we started putting a lot of these lenses to it and what ended up happening is, after about two and a half three hours, we were able to really pinpoint about three different, very important point of views on this leadership team, and that were there was a group of people that was extremely frustrated with the level of psychological safety. They wanted to feel like they were able to express their opinions and their thoughts in a safe way. There was another group of people that felt like there was a responsibility in everyone in the group, needed to have a certain level of candor with each other. And then there was another person in the group this was actually the CEO who really did not necessarily disagree with those, but felt like everyone had a responsibility to really put in the legwork and the effort before bringing up ideas, thoughts or opinions.

Speaker 1: 15:56

So you get these three aspects all rotating around one another right. We need to have candor and speak our mind and speak up. We need to be able to feel safe to speak up, but we also need to put in the due diligence If we're going to bring up an opinion or a thought or an idea that we've actually thought about it right, we're not just winging it and firing from the hip. And the thing is, when you look at all three of those, they're all doable. You just have to have these expectations with each other in that reflection point, and so to be able to get to that type of information in two and a half, three hours is amazing, and to do so in such a fun and playful way.

Speaker 1: 16:30

And that was that's why that was such a favorite for me because the play aspect. It really allows people to put aside some of the group dynamics that stops us from communicating effectively. You put eight, 10, 12 people in a room. You're going to have hierarchy differences, you're going to have ego differences, you're going to have extroversion, introversion, all of these things histories, backgrounds, all of this comes into play in every type of meeting and with this play aspect, especially with this Lego serious play method that gets reduced massively, if not even eliminated, because you're so people are so focused on the model that they're building. And how do I create the story around what? My thoughts are? That it allows for a much more open expression in a very safe way, but it also keeps the tangents very much out of the way. It keeps people very focused on the topic at hand. We're not allowing ourselves to go off in one direction or another, so we can get to the topic at hand, really understand where everyone's at.

Speaker 2: 17:28

Yeah, it really cuts through some of the dynamics that might be happening right.

Speaker 2: 17:31

It removes all of the minutiae that shows up in team dynamics and it seems really powerful to come to this joint agreement in just under two hours on how you're going to operate as a team in terms of communication and idea sharing, which is really fantastic.

Speaker 2: 17:47

Francesca and I have facilitated, like you, a ton of learning and sometimes, when you're working with teams, those dynamics especially when you're talking about how are we going to operate, how do we prefer to work Like, how do we come together with different working styles and show up as a team together To your good point some of those dynamics can take the conversation off the rails and you start to go down these routes that are not productive and not getting to know. But what can we do together? So I love the concept of how this offers a level of focus and safety for everyone to share their ideas, and it's pretty impactful to come to a joint leadership agreement on this is how we're going to operate in just share their ideas, and it's pretty impactful to come to a joint leadership agreement on this is how we're going to operate in just under two hours, and everyone feels positive about that outcome because they all contributed in a way that is really beautiful.

Speaker 1: 18:35

It does From a psychological perspective. There's a couple of key things that's really fun to see. So one and this is part of the facilitation as well is when people build their model. So let's say I have my model. Of course I've got a visual of AIDS, I've got a little duck in front of me, but let's say this is my idea of like world-class communication is speaking your mind? I don't know right. I could say that that's what this, uh, sure, we'll go with that. But what happens is, as I'm talking and usually someone does build a duck they build something weird and something it looks like something a five year old might make.

Speaker 1: 19:04

People are generally looking at the model and not the person, and so what happens is that displaces the attention onto whatever the thing is and not directly at you, and so it makes it easier to talk. One because the attention is on the model itself, but also, too, because this idea is out here now, and so now I'm not talking about this thing or this opinion that's in my head, but I'm talking about this weird little toy thing. That's a pile of Legos, which is not threatening, which is easy to, it's playful. Usually there's some fun metaphors going on in there you can see some physicality, no-transcript, say in the middle of sessions wow, I didn't really need to go that deep or I didn't mean to say that much or I didn't mean to go that far, but because it's so safe to talk, right, it's usually not a regretful thing, but it's more of a reflection.

Speaker 1: 20:06

Oh, I can't believe I just said that in this group of people that I never would have said this if we were just having a verbal discussion. But it's really. I think it's empowering too, where people are like oh yeah, you know what? I'm glad I said that right, because it is what people truly think. They put time into building this model and their thoughts and their opinions. And, yeah, they get to take that psychological safety and feel a little bit better about sharing whatever it is they might be doing.

Speaker 3: 20:44

I'm wondering about how play shows up when it's not facilitated. How play shows up potentially at work, or should could show up at work, and just the dailiness of work. Why is play essential for someone at work? And just the dailiness of work. Why is play essential for someone at work in general?

Speaker 1: 21:02

Oh, there's so many. There's so many good answers to this that if you think about play, you go back to childhood. Right, and here's the fun part If you want to research, play and go read books on play, like 90% of the books on play, if not 98%, are all about kids. Because kids, that's what kids do, right, it's natural Watch children. No one needs to be taught how to play. They just go, they do it, they play pretend, they try things out, and so play gives us so many different tools. So one it allows us to try things right. And we think about everything that's been written about embracing failure. Do kids think about failure when they try stuff while playing?

Speaker 1: 21:38

No they just do, and if it doesn't work out, fine, I learned, I go on to the next thing, I go on to the next thing, I go great. I think one is trying things, you're able to try things on, You're able to play, and it gives you a way to experience something in a very low risk type of scenario. No-transcript, little bit goofy, being a little bit silly, allows you to take all of these borders that we have in our mind right, all of these boundaries, all of these walls, all of these rules, and get rid of them and start thinking about things in different ways than you might have done before. One of my favorite exercises is an improv exercise. I do this with my audience. I have people pair up and I use an animal of some kind of. One person gets to be a llama and the other person gets to be a lion. Everyone choose and I'll set a timer for 45 seconds and have one person say lions are great because X and they have to list as many things as they can and they have to say lions are great because every time so. Lions are great because they have big teeth. Lions are great because they have giant veins. Lions are great because they're king of the jungle, and after about 45 seconds, the other person's counting.

Speaker 1: 23:11

We asked the audience how many did you get? Seven, eight, nine, 10, 15, whatever the number is. But then we asked what did people say? And they all said things that were true about lions right, that they are kings of the jungle, that they have, that they eat meat, whatever that might be Like. Did anyone say that lions are great at their taxes? Did anyone say that lions are great because they wear polka dots on Halloween? Did anyone say that lions are great because they make an amazing vegetarian chili?

Speaker 1: 23:33

And everyone's, yeah, they start laughing. You're like what, wait a minute, hold on. They're like there's no rules to this, you can make up whatever you want. And so then we flip it around and we have the llamas go and we do the same exact thing, but this time take off those limitations that you put on yourself. Right, with this rule that it has to actually be true about lions, and then we watch everyone do 1.5 to 2. Times more ideas. Right, instead of going, I'm just coming out with as many ideas as possible. I'm really trying to think of what is actually true, about why it's, and so that is just an interesting framework to think of.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Okay, so now, when we're trying to be creative or innovative at work, what type of rules are we putting in our own way? And this is where that playful mindset right. How do we use play to have more fun, come up with better ideas? And a lot of times we need more ideas to come up with better. If you ask people for ideas, the first like one to seven or eight ideas. Everyone just comes up with the same things. They're very similar because we have a very systematic mind Not 100%, but for the most part it's when you start getting to idea nine, 10, 11, 12, 13. And yeah, sometimes we need to get a little bit weird to come up with that thing. That is the brilliant idea. And the more ideas, the more creativity we can have, the more imagination, the more we can get out of our own way.

Speaker 3: 24:46

You said the mindset of play. So many times when I think about mindsets it comes down to a trigger question you can ask yourself so you get into the mindset? Is there a question you can ask yourself to say how do I get into play?

Speaker 1: 24:59

Yeah, I think there's a lot of different ways to do this. One of the things that I do on my own not shockingly, I use Legos because I have them, but I will actually build out my thoughts and ideas out of like on a table. I'll build it physically, I'll say this is what I'm doing for my business plan or my marketing plan or whatever, and I'll build it out of Lego and have some fun with it. Right, and then you can come up with some ideas. So that's one aspect to you could ask a question of and this is another exercise from design thinking is to give yourself different prompts of how might I solve this If I was Walt Disney? How might I solve this If I had no money? How might I solve this If had a trillion dollars? Or if I was, pick a name, right, if I was Harvey T Firestone, how would I solve this? Or pick anyone, and just give yourself a different frame and try to get out of your own way. And I think that's the hardest part is right, we know what we know and we're in our own minds all the time. Right, we're here, we're not going anywhere, but we have to recognize when we get in our own rut. This question could be very different for different people and it could be using a physical medium, it could be framing someone else, it could be utilizing music there's so many different triggers. But having something and trying something and literally playing with it is step one. Each person is probably going to be a little bit different, but the fact that you're trying is probably that first step into figuring out how each person can make that true for themselves.

Speaker 1: 26:33

The cool other part of play is it's fun, right, it can be fun. The cool other part of play is it's fun, right, it can be fun. And I think one of the other aspects is we think about stress, and especially now we're getting much smarter about how the brain reacts to stress and what cortisol does to our creativity. And yet when we get people in a playful state, their ideas are better, they're more creative, they work better together. And one of the other aspects of play that works with especially with children and adults, is when we play with people we actually connect. Think of when you play.

Speaker 1: 27:02

There's a wonderful book out there titled Aptly Play by Dr Stuart Brown, and he outlines eight attributes of play, and one of those attributes is a diminished consciousness of self. So when we think about how we think about ourselves, we're in a stressful board meeting with eight people or 10, and how are we going to fix this thing? Everyone's stressed right, and so we're not going to come up with our best ideas when we're stressed and we're feeling under pressure. But if we can deflate that a little bit and get a little play and start building off of each other's ideas and getting that consciousness of self, instead of sitting there wondering how am I being viewed? How I speak up? Should I not speak up? Will I be judged for this? When we're playing, we're just bringing our full self forward, and so we connect better, work better together. Everything just gets better. We have that play aspect attached to it just freaking refreshing too.

Speaker 3: 27:50

like I, I have a six-year-old and it's always amazing to watch him play and to your very good point, that he doesn't give a shit about how he looks, if he's feeling, if he's dirty, if it's the right thing to do or not, and your idea around to around that diminished sense of self, or even the fact that people don't care what other people think they're just creating or in that mode. We lose that so quickly. I think about adolescence and everything else. We lose it really quickly. And then to be able to come back to yourself and your work and come back to play in your work in these little ways is just so refreshing.

Speaker 1: 28:27

There's an important thing there, right, some of us lose play, yeah, and it's in those teenage years, and I've been thinking a lot about this because I have a couple of nieces that are in that age.

Speaker 1: 28:39

We're there, you know, I think one's 12 and the other's 15 right now, and it's been really interesting because I visit them often and to watch this sort of transition, and especially from a play mindset, because, as you said before, kids are like I'm going to go play, I'm going to go do goofy things, we're going gonna go nuts. And yet I watched as the oldest started having this little bit of a divide and I think if in the I started to think about this and reflect on my own life and I'm actually curious if this was true to you too but there becomes this point where you start wanting to be an adult and for some reason, we decide that play is not part of that. And I remember going to being at the breakfast table or whatever with my parents or aunts and sitting there and yeah, so we are going to have this little more conversation. I am an adult and I'm going to not be silly and playful. And then 10 minutes later you're off playing and you're being silly.

Speaker 1: 29:32

So you create this interesting divergent path where you still want to play as a kid but you also want to be adult because you see all this cool responsibility like I can stay up later, eat what I want all these freedoms that come with adulthood, and somehow you just see this divergence happen and I think a lot of folks don't necessarily find their way back to play right, because you're also in those teenage and those adolescent years. You're trying to figure out how you fit in at school with your peers. You figure out who you are, how you dress a face full of acne or whatever's going on. You're also worried about what people think of you, that you're a little bit more protected with who you are and you're not as free as you were with that five or six year old.

Speaker 1: 30:09

this is how we're gonna play right, let's just have a fun time. I don't care what anyone thinks. Now you care what everyone thinks a lot. And so that transition we just have to find our way back to play Again. It's fun, it's joy, it's creativity, it's learning. It's learning, it's trying things, it's growing.

Speaker 1: 30:25

If you ever want to connect with people or make friends in a very quick way, go find a way to play with them. Go play on a sports team. Go play board games With adults too. One of the cool aspects of this book play is they outline different archetypes as adults, because we play different as we get older. Some people want to play sports and games and things that are still considered very play like, but to other people, things like collecting things becomes play, or collecting experiences becomes a version of play. One of my favorites is there's the planner, or the director is one of the terms that Dr Brown uses for one of the archetypes, and this is the person who loves to like plan parties or plan vacations, and they want to put all this stuff together. I'm like that's not play for me, but for some people apparently that's really fun. They can't wait to do that and that's play for them. So it's interesting as we get older too, we can recognize what play means for and and it's going to be different from person to person.

Speaker 3: 31:21

Uh, like, running is running play. It depends why you're running, how. No, I know, yeah, but to your point, some there's I have a lot of friends that that is absolutely play like they, they live for it, live for it and I would just be like shoot me in the face.

Speaker 2: 31:33

Yes, I am totally the planner for fun. It's so funny because I'm like the travel planner. I am the friend people call to find they want to go to Italy for 20 days on this type of budget. What can we make happen? And I figure it out and it's like a puzzle. I think it's fun to figure it out.

Speaker 1: 31:54

I love it. No way, some people love it.

Speaker 3: 31:59

Yeah, exactly, this is just where my joy is versus.

Speaker 1: 32:02

That's the fun. Right, as we have unique, different ways. One of the recommendations of Dr Brown, in the book too, is, as an adult, if you're not finding play, is to think about what you liked as a kid. What did you like to play? And go back to some of that stuff. Right, and maybe there's play archetypes that you've not tried. It could be. The explorer is one of the play archetypes, the collector, the artist, where just creation is fun. I think I have a lot of friends I like to cook. You know for a lot of other friends that experimentation and creating dishes, that's play. That could be fun because you're creating something, and so there's so many things that can be played that we can open our definition.

Speaker 2: 32:44

We can the play that we can open our definition. We could broaden it a little bit into just playing, pretend or goofing off or being silly. Yeah, I love that that, that you're providing this like larger framework of what play can look like and it's not just what we traditionally think of as play. For sure, absolutely was anyone else guilty of doing like weird plays with your cousins, or creating musicals and then making your family watch them. Anyone I think that's just me, just me I used to love to play like hotel or restaurant.

Speaker 3: 33:05

I used to love to organize things, puzzles like mel it's interesting to think about. There's windows to the soul throughout life and play early on window can absolutely show up in your adult life as well.

Speaker 1: 33:18

With the technology tools. Now, you know my nieces and nephews. They make movies, they record and get scripts and all of these things. One of the things that always amazes me most is they don't sit down and think about it. Let's talk about how this is going to work and make a big plan, which is what adults do. They're like no, we're just going to do it, we're just going to jump in and figure it out. It goes back to that like just no hesitation to do, and there's something empowering about that, there's something so fantastic about that. Are you guys familiar with the marshmallow spaghetti exercise? This is like a corporate thing that's been done for years.

Speaker 3: 33:51

No, tell us more.

Speaker 1: 33:53

It's an interesting exercise. You basically break up a team into groups and you have three or four people and you give them, like there's three, I would say three things. You give them like a box of spaghetti noodles, marshmallow and like some tape and that's it. And the challenge is to be like who can build the highest tower out of these spaghetti noodles and marshmallow and to spoil what basically happens.

Speaker 1: 34:14

They've done this with MBA students and like high-powered lawyers and all these different types of groups that you'd think would be really successful, and the ones who are the most successful it's five-year-olds and they come up with the tallest tower. Because what happens is the adults as they sit, they think, they talk, they debate, they go back and forth on what we should we do, what could we do, what should we do? You have a whole box of spaghetti noodles and kids just go, they just start trying stuff and they fail, they try, they fail, they try, they fail, they try, they fail, and they get so much learning done in such a short period of time that they finally get a much, much better ending, and yet we adults just talk ourselves but you're over thinkers yeah, just go do it, just try it, see what happens at the team level, day-to-day, outside of planned events.

Speaker 2: 35:14

How can leaders really set the tone for an environment where, let's be honest, there's some real boring shit we got to do, but it's a day to day or a deal with. But how can leaders foster this environment of fun or thinking without our egos or removing the over thing to everyday work problem? What can they be doing?

Speaker 1: 35:41

problem. What can they be doing? Part of that is recognizing like who who on your team might have a talent at doing this. There's a new psychometric personality exercise out there called principles this new ray, dalio, adam grant, and but there's actually a level of humor and humor is one of their traits and what's interesting is this humor trait not shocking very high end that people they're more lighthearted, they tend to want to create and make fun environments, and so I think a lot of it might be. If you're a leader, maybe that isn't your bag. Find someone whose it is and maybe give them that responsibility or ask them to help maybe create a more fun environment or create maybe it is a happy hour or a lunch or get some ideas out there. And I think work with the team too right. I think there's a general. Some communication should happen before and because there might be a team that maybe as a whole team doesn't have a lot of humor and maybe they don't want a ton of fun.

Speaker 1: 36:31

I do think that every team should have some fun. There's a level, but find that person and empower them to do that I was, I think. One of the reasons why play has been so central to what I have done in all of my jobs, no matter what role I've been in, is very early on in my career, as I work for and with a lot of people who did like to use play a lot when I worked in retail stores in in college. I consistently work with leaders. We find ways to to have fun, and so I just think there needs to be an intent and then finding the person or people with the skill set that would like to be able to do that and give it a try.

Speaker 2: 37:06

What do you recommend to the leader who wants to introduce this to their skeptical team on how they can use play to innovate or build it into the workplace? I know, obviously find the person on your team who's good at play, but what do you recommend if they've never done this before? It might not be part of the larger culture, but it's a microculture a leader would like to set up to make their team highly engaged and productive, more collaborative, more communicative. What would you recommend?

Speaker 1: 37:40

I've yet to come across this. A team of skeptics is tough, don't get me wrong. There's probably one or two skeptics in many groups, especially if I'm doing a lot of larger, like 25 to 50 person group sessions, and there's a couple in that group.

Speaker 2: 37:53

Always.

Speaker 1: 37:53

You can't avoid it. But the fun part is, especially with the Lego sessions, is it goes away almost immediately. It's amazing. So one trust that the Lego method itself, actually it'll just work on its own. Two, I think it's just asking people to be open. Come in, give it a try. There's no wrong answer. Right, you can't do wrong. You're just going to have legos. Just be yourself, right? Yeah, engage however you want to engage. I think letting people know that the expectation is just letting them be themselves is maybe it takes a little bit of pressure off. And what I've found is that the cynics usually come around about 20 minutes into the session because they're like they're not sure, but they don't want to like be the person who's just not participating. Right, and they're like, okay, fine, I'll build. My first build is always build a tower, whatever you want to build yeah hours.

Speaker 1: 38:44

but something happens when people open that bag of legos and they start playing, like little smiles come to mouth, they start getting into it and they're not competing, they're not building a thing, they're just. They can do whatever they want. And again their colleagues are smiling, people are having fun and there's something about that. We'll say on the good side of like group think right, where you get these people together and suddenly, if every, if nine out of 10 people are laughing and having a good time, that 10th is eventually right. Even if they want to resist it a little bit, they'll get into it.

Speaker 1: 39:14

And it always happens because I'm just building stuff with Legos and you got little like minig figures and at some point you just can't take yourself too seriously in that type of situation.

Speaker 2: 39:24

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 39:25

Yeah, I like that. We just talked about leaders and then I think about employees, one of the things Mel and I talk about the future of work all the time. We know deeply human connections are going to be so key and things like innovation, creativity, empathy, capabilities that are truly differentiated from AI, especially around play, because play, to me, is one of those competencies that incorporate all of these other aspects like empathy, like creativity, like innovation, wrapped in one Employees being able to advocate for play or to be able to come to work with play or know how to incorporate play, is so key. Yet a lot of people are again working in ops or in accounting or in these very kind of honestly stodgy places. So I'm curious as to if you have an employee that is working in corporate America, usa, and they really want to bring play more into it, what are the first one or two steps? I know we talked about the mindset earlier, but I am curious about what's a safe way somebody can advocate for bringing play into their personal work more.

Speaker 1: 40:37

So there's two aspects of that right. There's the individual side. It could be even starting with a colleague or two and trying something right. Maybe finding a method online or again like design thinking is also a fantastic methodology that you can take bits and pieces from to create playful, innovative, unique ways of approaching things For a broader team. If you have a team, if you're a leader, again, it's taking those baby steps, it's starting and one anchoring play and creativity and imagination to hopefully some type of core value within the organization.

Speaker 3: 41:09

Because I think that matters too. If you're just a company and all you want to do is yeah, if your values are to make money, then I don't know that play is right for you.

Speaker 1: 41:17

But if you're in a purpose-driven type organization that truly wants to excel at customer experience, employee experience, making a difference in people's lives and whatever again, whatever product service that you're in and I think most companies have this right, I think most companies have this right, I think most companies I've talked to or worked with there's a level that we want to create a place where people like to work and they create good products and services for our customers and happy employees and engaged employees mean happy and engaged customers and all of that is connected. I think if you have those, then play isn't extremely hard to get. It's finding the right methods that people can apply to, and it could be like starting small. It could be just having a little bit of fun. It could be just talking about what play actually means to people in the room. Like, how did you play? What was your favorite game as a kid? You could start with something as little as that.

Speaker 2: 42:19

Brandon, we have what we call a rapid round. It's quick questions, it could be yes or no or the first thing you think of. It could be longer too if it's oh no. I have more to say about about this. Are you open to doing a rapid round with us? Yes, do it.

Speaker 3: 42:36

I feel like I'm on a game show.

Speaker 1: 42:37

You are a game show okay to have more creativity.

Speaker 2: 42:44

Is it a solo walking situation or brainstorming situation?

Speaker 1: 42:49

Oh, it's both. I think it's both. Yeah, I am a walker, I love walking, get out, it's a physical movement. Yeah, our bodies and minds are connected. Walking for sure. But a good brainstorm is fun too, because you can bring other people.

Speaker 2: 43:04

Yeah, get that outside perspective. I feel like, francesca, you and I are brainstorming every day we go through. Oh my God. I feel like, francesca, you and I are brainstorming every day we go through. Oh my God, we're like what about this?

Speaker 3: 43:14

The problem is we have too many ideas that we have to be like stick to the plan, yeah, stick to the plan, yeah, walking brainstorm, though we would just be on fire, yeah, that's true, walking brainstorm, I love that yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:27

That's a good combo.

Speaker 1: 43:33

Is a playful leader, a better leader. I'm biased. I'm gonna say yeah, I would, but that would be by preference, I think. Maybe not in general, but for me, yes, for me yeah, I think so good, okay, best work day, pick me up play activity oh, my gosh man.

Speaker 1: 43:51

I just just because it popped in my head, I I would love to go swing on some monkey bars. I feel like that would be. If that was a thing, I would just go do it. I think generally adults are not allowed on children's playgrounds most of the time, but if there was one at my work, go to this.

Speaker 2: 44:04

You may just start a new fad. Instead of all the ping pong tables. It's a build in jungle game. I would do that.

Speaker 3: 44:12

That would be fun. Have you all tried to be? I tried the other day because my son can do pull-ups. I have no upper body strength. I'm like what happened here. What?

Speaker 2: 44:18

happened here. The last time I was at a playground I really embarrassed myself because the little animals that are like on that weird bendy thing that you like, so I got on one and flung myself off because I went a little too hard. Can creativity thrive under deadlines? Please say yes.

Speaker 1: 44:38

No, I think so. I think so Because I think sometimes pressure can be a good lever. So I think back to in my last job. I remember planning a manager summit and this was like a global thing. We're already doing it in like Barcelona and Shanghai, and they gave me like six weeks to the first one at least. But the pressure summit and this was like a global thing, we were already doing it in like Barcelona and Shanghai, and they gave me like six weeks to the first one at least. But the pressure forced me to get really creative, to understand, because we didn't have objectives or anything like that, and so it was it did. It forced me to move and try things so we could figure out what worked quickly. No, I do think so. I think there's a level of reason within that If you're like, do this tonight by 5, that's probably going to kill creativity. But yeah, if there's a little bit of time in there, I think pressure can help.

Speaker 2: 45:18

Okay, Best creativity booster music or silence.

Speaker 1: 45:26

Can I say I want to say walking. I feel like I know we said that before, but I think walking and it could be with music or without, I think that's a very personal preference.

Speaker 2: 45:34

Okay, okay, morning meetings. Would you provide coffee or games?

Speaker 1: 45:41

Ooh both Okay, yeah, again, I think you've really got to tap into the personalities. I think there's some people that are like I'm a morning person, so let's go. I want coffee and games, but I know other people that might stare daggers at me If there was no coffee.

Speaker 2: 45:56

they're like no. Game is still noon, I'm not showing up. Very cool. I appreciate you answering this rapid round. It has been super pleasurable to have you as a guest and we're so excited to share with our listeners all that they can learn from you from play Brandon. How can folks get in touch with you?

Speaker 1: 46:17

You can get in touch with me via my website. It's innatecreatescom. You can also go to brandonthelegoguycom.

Speaker 2: 46:24

Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 1: 46:26

Thank you so much for having me Bless, all right, bye friend, that would be blessed.

Speaker 2: 46:29

All right, bye, friend. Hey friends, this episode of your Work Friends was hosted by Francesca Ranieri and myself, Mel Plett this episode was produced and edited by Mel Plett and myself, Francesca Ranieri.

Speaker 2: 46:42

Our theme music is by Pink Zebra and you can follow us over on all of our social media platforms Instagram, tiktok, youtube and, if you're so inclined, join us over on LinkedIn in our large and growing community, and you can email us at friend at your work, friendscom, or visit us on your work, friendscom. Also, folks, please like, subscribe and leave a review. If you enjoyed this episode, and if you really enjoyed it, please share with a work friend or two.

Crisis Communications

Your Work Friends Podcast: Crisis Communications with Anne Marie Squeo

Crisis doesn’t wait…

One wrong message can tank your reputation. One delayed response can cost you trust. When the pressure’s on and the spotlight’s burning, do you know what to say?

In this episode of Your Work Friends, we dive into the art and science of crisis communications with expert Anne-Marie Squeo. From understanding what qualifies as a crisis to mastering the first 24 hours, this conversation is packed with actionable insights for leaders, teams, and anyone navigating turbulent times. We’re giving you the playbook for crisis communications—so you don’t freeze when everything falls apart.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

But it wasn't three hours later, when I was getting my car to drive to work, that I got an urgent phone call that the blimp was about to crash and it was rush hour. It was Pennsylvania I-95 was in its path. I was like, oh, jesus Christ going on mel what's up?

Speaker 3: 0:32

what's up? Um, I have good news, you have good news, I like it. You know, I do starting uh, next week the sun sets at 5 pm oh.

Speaker 2: 0:43

Oh, my gosh, I'm telling you during the winter nuts, nuts, winter nuts. What, what is on my mind During the winter nuts? With my sweaty balls, during the winter months, I become a bear. I am just like oh, it's 7 o'clock, I'm going to get my jams. It is not good, listen same.

Speaker 3: 1:05

It has been getting dark at like around, like November-ish December. It starts getting dark at 3 pm. It's unacceptable. Is it 11? I have my slippers on, oh my gosh. Well, we were incredibly lucky to sit down with Anne-Marie Sgueo today, who is an expert in crisis communications. She is the CEO and founder of Proofpoint Communications. She's a strategic branding communications and crisis PR maven. She's also a Pulitzer winning business journalist, and two words to describe her battle proven. What did you take away from this conversation?

Speaker 2: 1:51

I love crisis communications. I think it's just a fascinating topic about how companies and how people respond to crisis, and there was a lot that Anne-Marie shared that looked really under the hood around how this all works within organizations, how decisions are made and, honestly, what good looks like. That I did not know and I think is really, really eye-opening for anybody listening. What did you think, mel?

Speaker 3: 2:18

Absolutely agree. If you're a leader in an organization, you're going to find this episode extremely useful and helpful. She gave some pretty clear tips on. This is how you show up and this is how you pull through and come together. So with that, here's Anne-Marie we are so excited to have you join us today on your Work Friends, and I'm going to jump right in with a headline that came out from Axios and I want to get your thoughts. They said CEOs are enjoying a hot speech. Winter, when we're speaking out in outrageous ways, carries no cost and we know recently we saw the UnitedHealthcare CEO not really dealing well with critical crisis and Mark Zuckerberg's comments on the Joe Rogan podcast on how that's impacting meta. What are your thoughts on that statement?

Speaker 1: 3:24

podcast on how that's impacting meta. What are your thoughts on that statement? There's always a cost. The question is how you're measuring it. We'll go back to United Healthcare.

Speaker 1: 3:36

I think Zuck's comments are, frankly, just bizarre and I keep wondering what his wife thinks. But a lot of my friends have gone off threads. They've gone off Instagram and closed their Facebook accounts. There's a critical piece to this in terms of has no cost, right.

Speaker 1: 3:51

One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is, you know, when Jeff Bezos pisses us all off and you know, we're like I'm not using Amazon anymore. I'm just I'm not, and I tried this. Actually I tried this for a couple of months last year and it's really hard. So if you're addicted to the product or service and you have been for the last five years then it's probably unlikely you're going to get unaddicted. But if it's more marginal in your existence, so the Washington Post subscription, that is like the eighth thing I read any day. I can live without that Right. So I mean, I think that it's going to be hard for CEOs to say there's no cost, because for some it might appear that way because their product or service is so essential to our lives that most of us can't imagine we'd be punishing ourselves if we cut it off. But if you don't fall in that category and most people don't then there are going to be repercussions for doing things that piss off 50% or more of your customers, subscribers, whatever.

Speaker 3: 5:03

Yeah, I think Francesca and I were talking about this before the session and one of the things we both agreed on was there's maybe five people, I think Francesca you said, who have a few money to be able to not have a cost to their statements.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Yeah, I mean again, most CEOs, I think, measure the cost financially. But bad reputations have bad financial implications and they might not happen immediately. But one thing that I think that is a mid-term kind of outcome of, say, meta's CEO's comments is you're already seeing blue sky and all these competitors come up and they're going to get better. Just like threads stepped in to pick up where Twitter X left off, someone's going to step in and pick up where both of those guys left off and run away with it. And the eyeballs and the advertising money Don't count too soon. I wouldn't count my chickens before they're hatched, because it might not be that the next three months are impacted, but the next 12 months may well be as alternatives come to bear.

Speaker 2: 6:12

It's so fun to watch. There's, I imagine, in your area, someone's always in crisis and, to your very good point, you started this by saying going through the Trump administration, every organization is going to be in crisis because of all the change that's going on. And I'm curious about how do you define either like a PR crisis or crisis communications? For those that don't know about this topic, what is it?

Speaker 1: 6:34

Oh, this is a great question because, you know, I've definitely worked places where the CEO or senior leaders thought everything was a crisis, you know.

Speaker 1: 6:45

So if we're not included in a story, it's a crisis, and if we are included in a negative story, it's a crisis, and you know, I think that all of us in the industry have to kind of set a barometer for what actually requires a crisis response, and that's an important conversation and level setting that needs to happen in every organization, because if you, the communications team, are not aligned or at least educating your leaders about what makes the cut for when we're going into crisis mode, you will spend your entire day and night and weekends fighting fires that are not important and you'll never get to the good stuff and the important stuff.

Speaker 1: 7:31

So I think, if it's a real crisis, francesca, I think it's got real reputational and financial implications for a company and business implications. So you are a railroad company and your railroad went off the tracks in Ohio and potentially poisoned an entire community with toxic things that came out of the cars. You've got a crisis and it's going to potentially result in regulatory repercussions, punitive government, punitive repercussions, lawsuits, environmental related issues. That is a legitimate crisis. I would say things that no one's going to be talking about in 24 or 48 hours, not a crisis. So I think, by definition, a crisis is going to be longer than 48 hours. You may feel like it's a crisis in the moment, but if it's going away and no one's going to remember it in a year, it wasn't a crisis.

Speaker 2: 8:31

I'm curious about that timing right, I mean within 48 hours. If no one's going to be talking about it, it's not a crisis. I'm curious on the other aspect of that because, especially with social media, the first 24 hours of a crisis, or that after something happens, the train derails and spills chemicals, the LA wildfires are happening, UnitedHealthcare CEO gets shot, the BP oil spill that first 24 hours seems like it's so critical. And then, especially with social media, the speed of which information gets put out into the ether. How important is the first 24 hours If you've identified that this is in fact a crisis? How important is that first 24 hours as an organization?

Speaker 1: 9:16

It's very important to establish trust and confidence in whatever comes next. I think the challenge of the first 24 hours in some of these situations is you don't really know a lot in that first 24 hours, right, whether it's an oil spill, a plane crash, a derailment, a cyber attack, I mean there's some stuff you know, but there's so very much that you do not know and you won't know for a while. But you have to establish the kind of connected tissue that you're going to need in this situation and whether you're going to be viewed as someone who's withholding information or going to be forthcoming when you can be information or going to be forthcoming when you can be. And the challenge, of course, in social media things tend to move much more quickly. You know, like years ago, right, like you know, we didn't know when there was a crisis until the news came out the next day. So I mean, you guys might be too young to remember that, but I mean now everything's like people might know about it on social media before even the company is aware that something happened. So it creates both benefits and detriments in any crisis situation because on the pro side, you can use social media to find out, so you can be listening all the time, and so if people start talking about something, you know about it before it becomes a wildfire and you can disseminate information more broadly more quickly because of it. But so can dis and misinformation get disseminated more quickly, and now you don't just have a crisis of the underlying event, you have a crisis that you're trying to contain information that's actually inaccurate about the underlying event, and so it has definitely made the job of a communications team, a crisis PR team and a leadership team exponentially harder, because you've got all these moving pieces and you can't afford to wait. And yet you can't afford to be too detailed either, because you might be issuing a detail in the first to make it up 10 hours turns out not to be true, and now you've got to go back and correct.

Speaker 1: 11:39

Now you've started to break trust right, and we started with first. We want to establish that we are going to be a trustworthy communicator in this situation. You know, the wildfires are sort of an interesting example where I've got a lot of friends who live in LA. Many have been evacuated. Luckily nobody's lost their home yet that I know of. But every single one of them said the communications have been God awful and you saw it in some of these press interviews that they were doing where fire chief was dissing the mayor and the mayor didn't know and she's smiling. Meanwhile, people's homes are burning down and I'm thinking I wouldn't trust this crowd at all, especially if my life and my family's life was in danger.

Speaker 1: 12:24

So that's really that first 24 hours. I think we all recognize you might not know enough, but you've got to establish that I'm going to be a trusted partner with you in this endeavor. That feeling is something that's either going to help long-term in managing this crisis or it's going to hurt you long-term in attempting to manage the crisis. So that getting the right spokesperson out there, having a transparent and trustworthy demeanor, not hiding facts that are easily known from multiple sources but you're not willing to confirm it there's so many little things that end up adding up to that. How do people feel about us right now? And I think that's one of the key thing in the first day of any major crisis.

Speaker 2: 13:15

So much of this comes out to planning you had mentioned too earlier on. One of the things you want to do is establish what is a crisis, which I think is super important. So you're not chasing down the fact that you didn't get into Fast Company this month, right, like that's not a crisis. Dora, flying out of a Boeing Max right, that's a crisis.

Speaker 1: 13:36

I'm not sure Apple, in which case it was like great sales point because the phone dropped miles and still was working. That's hilarious.

Speaker 2: 13:44

It's so funny. I live in Portland, Oregon. The door of the Boeing Max landed in one of my neighbor's yards over yonder, so it was like a big like oh, he found the door. I'm like that is not what you want as a company. I'd love to open up the hood a little bit on who's behind these organizations. What's the command center look like for crisis communications? Who is determining what's a crisis? Who is determining at these organizations how to even respond, or who's going to be the spokesperson? What does that typically look like?

Speaker 1: 14:15

And it varies, right, it varies depending on the crisis, the company and the people. So if you've got, let's say, you're a big company and you have a crisis, then you know you undoubtedly have a senior comms person, a chief communications officer, a VP of communications, who's going to be point in theory on that if you let them and they often want to put their voice and their reaction into the situation and it can make it much harder to get to where you might need to be if that's the case. But your command center it's going to change depending on what the crisis is. So the two constants that I have seen in every crisis is comms and legal. We're always there.

Speaker 1: 15:06

Now, if it's a product thing, right, like if it's an airplane crash, the head of the Boeing commercial airplanes business is going to be involved. Probably the engineering folks and manufacturing folks are going to be involved. Legal is definitely involved. Comms is involved, Leadership is involved, but comms and legal are almost in every single crisis. If it's an employee event somebody was killed in the workplace and it's because of whatever reason, you know, hr is going to be involved. Right, it's a cyber attack Then your information security and your technology officer are going to be involved. So it's going to change depending on the crisis, but always should have communications and legal at the table. Looking at that working in lockstep and it's wonderful when that happens.

Speaker 2: 16:00

Yeah, especially because your comms people. That is their craft, that is their skill, and especially when you're the CEO or even if you're head of product or head of engineering. I think sometimes there might be too much of an emotional bias on some of those things.

Speaker 1: 16:14

If you're coming in I don't know if you've seen that, or- not, because, well, let's face it, a crisis is only a crisis because something didn't work right, something went wrong, someone was killed, a railroad went off the tracks, we were breached in a cyber attack, or a customer was breached in a cyber attack, so something didn't work right. It's never a crisis when everything's going well, so that's just going to ratchet up everybody's emotions. From a communication standpoint, it's important to understand that, because we're not actually going to be able to appropriately address this crisis if we don't understand where everyone's coming from, so that we can get them where we need to go. And so it could take a little while and that's the challenge, of course is that in most crises, time is of the essence, and yet you've got to somehow get people on this path with you so you could do the right thing instead of doing nothing, which is often most people's default position, which is let's just say nothing, or let's just say the bare minimum and leave it at that right.

Speaker 1: 17:27

One of the things that I thought was interesting Boeing had two plane crashes within a year and a half or so, and their statements were overly lawyered and ice cold. I mean, everybody uniformly looked at those statements and were like really, 346 people are dead in these two plane crashes and you're like basically thoughts and prayers, and yet you know there's a lot. You don't know when you have to put that statement out, you know could it have been pilot error.

Speaker 1: 18:02

Maybe it's not the airplane's fault. You don't want to overdo it, but you can't come across as being almost uncaring when people's lives were ended and many families globally were impacted by those two events.

Speaker 2: 18:19

It's interesting when you can feel where it's overly lawyered or sometimes it's overly emotional. The one I always remember from grad school is during the BP oil spill and the CEO made it all about himself, like, well, no one's suffering as much as I am and everyone's like you need to go away. This is not about you, but it.

Speaker 1: 18:39

Didn't his weekend plans get ruined or something?

Speaker 2: 18:42

Yes, and you're like I'm sorry, the Gulf of Mexico is completely under crude oil right now, but it seems like comms really is that, for lack of a better term almost like the adult in the room that's helping you strike the right balance for whatever the situation calls for.

Speaker 1: 18:58

You have to be the truth sayer in the room Like you have got to be the one who walks in the room and just says it, and it doesn't always make you very popular to do that. When I was at Xerox and I was the chief brand and comms officer, the pandemic hit. And you know, the week before everyone was told to send their employees home we had already sent our employees in Italy home Because, remember, italy was a really hot spot I went to the CEO and said we need to send everybody home and he was like are you nuts? And I was like no, I mean, have you not paid attention to the news? So we had a whole meeting and nobody else agreed with me. And the next day I had to go back to him and I was like so can we talk about sending everybody home? And he's like I thought we had a meeting about it yesterday. And I'm like, well, we did, but we came to the wrong answer, so we're going to let's have that conversation again. And so he said, okay, you got five minutes to go.

Speaker 1: 19:53

And I did, and he sent everybody home and he told employees in an all employee phone call, like you guys have Ann Marie to thank for me actually getting ahead of this issue. And the way he got ahead of the issue was me saying, like here's the thing. We don't even know what the deal is with this thing. All we know is it's very transmissible from human to human. You are going to send everybody home. So the question is do you want to send them home today and get ahead of being ordered to send everybody home and be perceived as a good leader, or do you want to wait until the government tells you to send everybody home and just do it then? Either way, you're doing it, so you just have to decide when you want to do it and wanted to do it ahead of time. So we sent everybody home and then the order came 48, 72 hours later. He got a lot of credit from our employees.

Speaker 2: 20:38

That's goodwill.

Speaker 1: 20:45

That of credit from our employees. That's goodwill. That's goodwill man. This guy cares about his people. You should have just taken the credit. That's my job is to give you credit and he was like no people should know how that went down. So for communicators, it requires a level of courage for any leader, but especially for a communicator, because there's we're probably the only ones in the room with no direct relationship to the cause of the event. We are probably the most objective person in the room. In a crisis, we have to stand strong and ask the questions and be unemotional and super calm and not accusatory, and just try to get people moving in the right direction.

Speaker 3: 21:38

When you think of essential elements, that communications teams or even if you're a leader right, what's a playbook to have in place to help you contain the crisis, when stuff pops up?

Speaker 1: 21:53

What are the key elements you would include in that? Yeah, it's funny. Playbooks are a thing. There are whole firms that will come in and build you a crisis playbook. I always think that's a hilarious notion.

Speaker 3: 22:06

Seems like it would be situation to situation. Right, it depends.

Speaker 1: 22:10

Right. You can't possibly be prepared for every possible. I mean, now listen, if you run a rail company, you can be prepared for a derailment, right.

Speaker 3: 22:18

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:19

Yeah, you got that the same thing with an airplane crash but for the most part, there's going to be stuff that happens that you never thought you were going to be involved with. So I'm not a big believer in playbooks.

Speaker 1: 22:31

In fact, at one company I worked at, I arrived my first week somebody came over and handed me like this three quarters of an inch thick crisis playbook and I was like really, and I put it in the drawer and I never, ever looked at it, and this was a company that had many crises during my tenure there but we never once related to the book, and I'll tell you, no CEO has ever asked me what does the police playbook say about how to handle this crisis?

Speaker 3: 23:02

Let's go through our manual.

Speaker 1: 23:05

It says, if an employee dies. So I am just a big believer in all the pre-work that makes it possible to successfully manage a crisis, a crisis. So hire really good people with diverse experiences, who may have handled various crises in different companies or at agencies or whatnot, and then let them tackle the problems when they start happening. Establish authority and trust with the leadership team, because it actually doesn't matter if you're in charge and you have a playbook. If the CEO doesn't trust you, you are not going to be able to influence the outcome of this crisis. Define what a crisis is. Who needs to sign off on the actions related to that crisis.

Speaker 1: 23:58

I'm just a really big believer in hire people with good judgment, great experience, different experience, and make sure that everything that you're doing up to the point of the crisis ensures that you have the authority and the trust and the seat at the table to influence and drive that discussion and that outcome, because otherwise you're just you're. You're just going to take it along for the ride. Don't be a passenger on this bus. Drive this bus.

Speaker 1: 24:26

We're really the only ones, as I said, that are sort of objective in this situation and have that external sensibility to understand what's happening outside the business so that we can bring that to whatever solution and communication strategy we're developing.

Speaker 3: 24:44

I think you make the best point is that the communications team is probably the most neutral party in any room when they're dealing with something like this. You just bring a different point of view, that and it takes out the emotions completely from it, which is needed. How do you manage those emotions up front if you're a comms person?

Speaker 1: 25:01

Listen and empathize with that person, because often all that person really needs is to emote. They need to get all that they're feeling out there and they're probably going to get to the right place. But if they don't have the space to do that, you're going to be bouncing up against it when you're trying to get them someplace else. So I do think that despite the fact that we are communicators because we are, in theory, better at communicating I think this is one of those very important situations where it's better to just listen to people and let them go through it If it's 20 minutes an hour whatever because they're probably going to talk themselves to exactly where you need them to be, or close to it, and then understand that those emotions are real.

Speaker 1: 25:50

If you're a CEO and say, like you're in a precarious position. Your company's not financially performing that well. There have been, you know, major recalls or something on your product and other things, and now a crisis hits. You're scared. That's your number one response is, even if you're not articulating it, there's like a knot in your stomach Like is this the thing that's going to push me out the door? What you need is a comms person who understands that. That that's your starting point, but here's where we need to go and actually, if we manage this crisis really well, it will elevate your standing instead of being the nail in your coffin.

Speaker 3: 26:31

That makes sense. One of the things that we talk about often is transparency and how transparent you can be, because we're always up against general counsel and their feedback as well around what you can and can't say. How do you balance transparency with the legal constraints that come up during a crisis?

Speaker 1: 26:51

I mean. The thing is, you don't want to build trust between the comms and legal team in the middle of a crisis, right? Because if it's not there, trust me it's not coming that week. So that's a relationship that is so absolutely essential. That comms legal relationship. I have never had a general counsel. Well, actually, once, once I had a general counsel and it was painful not to have that trusted relationship. But in every other role we were like attached to the hip because we understood there was going to be so many touch points where we were going to have to come to mutually agreeable decisions that we had to be on the same wavelength. And who can build the relationships that are going to allow you to influence the solutions, move quickly and do it with trust, because you can't build it in the middle of a crisis.

Speaker 3: 27:50

So say someone's day one on a new job. They were the new comms leader. How do they quickly because you have to get that buy-in between multiple departments as soon as a crisis comes up how do they quickly gain that trust from business leadership, from those department leads? What's the best way for them to build trust quickly?

Speaker 1: 28:12

I guess not screw it up, but I actually had this happen to me. I did have this happen to me. It was my first week at Lockheed Martin and a major military program. So I was on like day two or three a major military program. The Pentagon had changed the acquisition strategy and thrown everything into flux and I remember standing in the middle of my office thinking, jesus, what are we doing now? And I just like gathered all the people who needed to be in the room on this.

Speaker 1: 28:44

Even though I was the new person, I was like, okay, we have a crisis, we need to come up with a media statement, a media plan, at least for 24 hours, then we can regroup tomorrow, cause this was at like four o'clock in the afternoon, I pulled everybody together, we figured it out, we moved out the statement and it worked fine. And then the next day we got to work as a larger group on a plan. If you're new, like you're going to need to pull in the people who are there and use your best judgment. This is where the judgment piece comes in, because judgment isn't something that like appears. You can't go to Walmart, pick it up off a store shelf.

Speaker 3: 29:18

Yeah, agreed, well, I think it's one kudos to you, because, holy cow, day three, that's a big, that's a big thing to do.

Speaker 1: 29:25

In fact my email. They had misspelled my email, so my actual email at the company still wasn't working. So I was having to call people and be like can you just come to my office Because I can't email you, and we just had to move quickly, email you and we just had to move quickly. I actually love those.

Speaker 3: 29:43

What do you think? They're fun. I can see you easily doing fine under pressure. What do you? What do you think was your secret sauce in that moment, though? How did you get everyone to go along with what you?

Speaker 1: 29:55

staying calm. You know I had I'd written about the defense industry as a reporter, I had worked at a different defense company, I understood the subject, I understood what we were dealing with and so I could move really quickly If I hadn't. I think, at the end of the day, most of us know what the right thing is to do in the moment, and the harder part, as we've been talking about, is getting other people there, and so in this case I guess I got more latitude than somebody who was totally green would have gotten, because I was a known entity and people trusted me Right. Otherwise that trust would have to be developed over time.

Speaker 3: 30:36

Yeah, Like so. Trust truly is the secret sauce for it to be effective.

Speaker 1: 30:40

I think it is. I think it is.

Speaker 2: 30:41

Yeah, I'm very curious about one of the most unexpected crisis scenarios that you managed through. You don't have to name names, but is there any that comes to mind where you're like that was unexpected.

Speaker 1: 30:53

Yeah, actually A blimp, a blimp.

Speaker 2: 31:02

Like the Goodyear blimp, like the Goodyear blip.

Speaker 1: 31:05

When I was at Lockheed we had this prototype airship it's called the Hail Deep and we all got up at 3.30 am to watch this massive, massive it was like, I think, five football fields long airship takeoff from a dock in akron, ohio. It was beautiful dawn, lovely, but it wasn't three hours later, when I was getting my car to drive to work, that I got an urgent phone call that the blimp was was about to crash and it was rush hour. It was pennsylvania i-95 was in its path. I was like, oh, jesus Christ, so that was definitely a crisis. I mean, again, we had a plan for what would happen if we had issues with it, but it really looked like it was going to be a flawless test and it did not. It was not a flawless test and it ended up coming down in a wooded area very close to a beaver dam in Pennsylvania. The good news was we immediately dispatched a communicator to the beaver dam to answer all the local news press questions. So we basically it wasn't like a national news story, but certainly in the Philadelphia, ohio, pennsylvania area you know it was a couple of days of coverage of this massive airship that went down and, you know, working again by the before.

Speaker 1: 32:31

It took 10 minutes to get to the office. By the time I got into the office, we had all the necessary people on the phone. I'm like where's the airship? Like it was just like drilling the questions. Like, okay, I've dispatched this person, let's get this information written up, get it into that person's hands. They need to be on site. Reporters are going to come to the location. Blah, blah, blah. Work with the local authorities. We were seamless. I had everybody on an open line in my office for three hours. I was like, just come back and talk on the squawk box, I'm leaving the line open and so that's you know.

Speaker 1: 33:06

I mean, this is the stuff that happens in the middle of a crisis, you just have to stop doing everything else and just do this.

Speaker 2: 33:14

Well, which begs the point of not having a playbook, because I don't know if you're working at Lockheed Martin, you probably don't think you're going to have to deal with the National Beaver Society because the blip crashed in their dam. Do you know what I'm saying Like? But now here you are.

Speaker 3: 33:27

The ASPCA has got you on a speed dial. Yeah, I can't imagine.

Speaker 1: 33:32

Right, Like you cannot plan for every possible crisis trying to hurt the beavers no no beaver was killed. No beaver was hurt in the testing of the singer ship.

Speaker 2: 33:45

What do you know? If a crisis response was successful, what do you measure?

Speaker 1: 33:52

Nowadays, with social media, there are all kinds of tools that you can listen to how people are talking. So there's the qualitative and then the quantitative. On the qualitative side, you know if people are pissed off. You mentioned UnitedHealthcare earlier and I actually would love to go back to that, but it was pretty remarkable that a man was murdered and people were talking about how hot the assassin was and how people are feeling about your company when they're cheering for the murderer instead of being completely outraged about what happened.

Speaker 1: 34:46

And I would just say one thing I actually think that UnitedHealthcare is doing a very good job with this. So you know, yesterday was their earnings and their CEO of the parent company, United Health, talked about what's wrong with the healthcare system, and he also had an editorial in the New York Times a week or two after the murder happened that addressed it. Now it does beg the question as the nation's largest insurance company, what are you doing to solve the problem? So great that you're now acknowledging that there is a problem, but what are you doing to solve it, which I hope is the next piece for that? But I've seen them lean into this in a manner that I think is better than some companies do in these situations.

Speaker 3: 35:38

I have a quick question follow up for that, because with UnitedHealthcare, what I found interesting, just as an observer and someone consuming, they're getting out at front about acknowledging their role but then their actions seem to not align with their acknowledgement. So, for example, like an article came out yesterday about how they're one of the few insurance companies who are increasing I think it was cancer medication by over 1000% compared to other insurers, making it more expensive for their customers. So when you see like you see the CEO coming out and they're acknowledging it, partly responsible for the state of the healthcare system, but they haven't taken it to what should be the next level, you know as the nation's largest insurer.

Speaker 1: 36:44

Here are the things we're going to do differently, right, boom, boom, boom, boom, right, and and hopefully, fingers crossed that's their next piece, because otherwise, in a couple of months, this yes, it's broken and we're really sorry and we have to all do better is not going to play well with the vast majority of the public, because they're going to be like yeah, we heard that from you for six months now and you haven't done anything different.

Speaker 3: 37:10

It's the new thoughts and prayers.

Speaker 1: 37:12

Right. So I do think that that is always the challenge right, Even if your crisis communications response is great. Boeing had the same issue. Their issue was the problem with the manufacturing of these planes. That has come out and now gotten a lot of media coverage and government intervention and other things right. I often would say it's comms' job to like prepare the garden, fertilize the soil, make sure that it's an environment in which things can grow, but if things don't grow here, that's not my fault, that's your fault.

Speaker 2: 37:47

Can you tell a lot about a company's culture by how they respond in a crisis? Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 37:54

Yeah, absolutely. I mean because that response isn't coming out of nowhere. And if it does come out of nowhere, then it probably won't be trusted. Think about the insurance industry right now and these fires, I mean.

Speaker 1: 38:09

It's not a good scene and they had already cut off people's insurance policies, and I lived in California. Insurance was extraordinarily expensive to get and that was when you could even get it. Now you can't even get it in many places, and I wasn't in a fire zone, but at this point you don't really know what a fire zone is. It could be anywhere. So I think that the way in which these companies have approached their business will make them inherently trustworthy in this situation because of everything that led up to it. Now maybe somebody will step out and do the right thing.

Speaker 1: 38:44

Do the right thing has multiple implications because at the end of the day, many of these are publicly traded companies and they're mining their portfolio for risk and they only want to have a risk exposure of make it up 30%, 40%. So that means we can't cover any of these folks unless they pay this much more money, and that makes it prohibitively expensive and most people can't afford that. And so again, we get down to sort of a situation where, okay, if you're part of the problem, you're also part of the solution. So are you going to lead on this and try to figure out how we might be able to at least address this? So I saw on the news last night. People are hanging signs with QR codes to their GoFundMe pages in the front of their burnt houses in Pacific Palisades so that people driving by can just get to their QR card and give them money. That's terrible In this country, with the kind of money this country has, that anyone should have to have a GoFundMe page, especially if they had insurance.

Speaker 2: 39:51

Agreed. You mentioned that almost every company is going to be in crisis this year. I feel like the insurance companies are like they're in the hot seat. Buckle up.

Speaker 1: 40:01

That kid is going on trial, that man is going on trial for shooting the UnitedHealthcare CEO, and so will the healthcare industry, insurance industry, be on trial, because that is going to be part of that entire trial. There's two trials right now and if they got combined, you know, or maybe even three, if they bring federal charges they'll get combined into one trial. But make no mistake, he will be on trial, and so will the healthcare insurance industry.

Speaker 3: 40:36

I'd love to talk about advice that you personally might give to folks who are in a crisis, dealing with crisis, just based on your own experience. What's your go-to stress reliever? What do you do when you're in an active crisis situation?

Speaker 1: 40:55

when you're in an active crisis situation. Well, after the work, I would definitely have a glass of red wine During it. I mean, I think it's really important to just try to stay calm and clear and whatever you need to do, that is important Exercise or meditate or whatever it is for you. Exercise or meditate or whatever it is for you like. Being very calm and almost impersonal about the situation is really important when everyone else is flipping out.

Speaker 3: 41:26

So that's from a communication standpoint. If you're a leader, in one word, what's the most important quality a leader needs?

Speaker 1: 41:34

Judgment no question Judgment.

Speaker 3: 41:37

What is the best piece of crisis management advice that you've ever been given? Don't be afraid to ask the hard questions.

Speaker 1: 41:44

Often what happens in a crisis is not only are people afraid to ask the hard question, they're afraid to ask the follow-up to the hard question. Up to the hard question. But if you don't know everything that you need to know, your crisis is going to mushroom right, and you could have gotten ahead of it if you had just kept going down that line of questioning to get what else do? I need to know that we're not doing right so I can respond, because there's going to be a reporter calling me about this in less than 36 hours. So tell me everything now so I can get ready for it. So I think, ask the hard questions and ask the hard follow-up questions.

Speaker 3: 42:24

Almost like an attorney. Like I don't want any surprises here.

Speaker 1: 42:28

Yeah, I mean, that's the worst thing that any business can have is a surprise.

Speaker 3: 42:33

Okay, what are some or what's one crisis communication myth that you would like to debunk?

Speaker 1: 42:41

You don't need a playbook. You need courage, commitment and clarity, but you do not need a playbook.

Speaker 2: 42:47

All right, anne-marie, we like to get to know our guests on a more personal level, so I'm going to ask you some rapid round questions that are just light and easy. We just want to get to know you. Are you down? Okay, let's do it. All right, it's 2030.

Speaker 1: 43:04

What do you think work is going to look like? Well, I'm really hoping that the AI is doing all the mundane things and that we're down to a three day work week.

Speaker 2: 43:12

Yeah, I like the world.

Speaker 3: 43:12

We're here for it.

Speaker 2: 43:13

Painting. Yes, yes. What music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 1: 43:21

You know, I listen to such a bizarre blend of music. What was playing in my car just today? I was listening to a little John Legend a little while ago, nice, nice.

Speaker 2: 43:34

All right, all right. Do you know he started as a management consultant? I read that Isn't that wild yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:39

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:41

Listen, bain, or I think Bain or BCG. Yeah, it was one of the.

Speaker 2: 43:45

It was one of the MBBs, I thought. I know, mel and I come from Deloitte and everyone's always trying to oh no, it was Deloitte. I'm like it was not Deloitte. We like to claim everything. What are you reading?

Speaker 1: 43:57

I am reading Mel Robbins' Let them Theory.

Speaker 3: 44:02

What do?

Speaker 2: 44:02

you think it is a great way to start the year. Nice, that's a tough one, like that whole idea.

Speaker 1: 44:12

I think that would be. It's tough, right, and I was actually having a little mini meltdown about something last week and I was complaining to my husband and he was like, well, honey, what about? Let them, let them. I was like, oh my God, yes, right, perfect. Was it free yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:28

Yeah, yeah. Who do you really admire? I?

Speaker 1: 44:33

really admire Michelle Obama. I think that she is authentic, I think she has demonstrated really good judgment and I think she lives her values. You know, she's not afraid to live them, and I think that's like one of the most important things we can do, especially as women, and stop trying to contort ourselves into what everyone wants us to be and be who we want to be.

Speaker 3: 44:57

I recently someone on social media said that they're going to RSVP as Michelle Obama going forward when they say no to things and she's not showing up to anything anymore.

Speaker 2: 45:06

There's been all these great memes of her just like no, no, thank you, yeah, no, and I also love the fact that I don't need to give you a reason.

Speaker 3: 45:16

No explanation needed.

Speaker 1: 45:18

That actually is something that I have been over the last couple of years, trying to break the habit of right. Like I always feel like well, what are you going to tell them about why you're not going? And I'm like why do I have to tell them anything? Why does anyone need to know why I'm not doing something?

Speaker 3: 45:33

No is a full explanation.

Speaker 1: 45:35

Yeah, Right, but I wasn't raised like that and for most of my life I always was like I can't do that because I have these other and I'm like you know, nobody cares, Nobody. I'm making a bigger deal out of this than anyone else. No, I can't do it, Sorry, Next time. So I think that it's just. It is something that we have to practice in order to get comfortable with it.

Speaker 2: 45:56

Yeah, and it's definitely a muscle. I'm always like worried about everybody else's feelings and it's like no one gives a shit. You can either come or you can't, it's fine.

Speaker 1: 46:02

And also, at the end of the day, like it doesn't make you nice or not nice to do that, right, it's just, it just is.

Speaker 2: 46:10

Yeah, last one, a piece of advice you'd want everyone to know a piece of advice you'd want everyone to know.

Speaker 1: 46:20

I think it's important to understand who you are and then be the best version of that person. We all spend so much time trying to fit in to different scenarios and situations that we sometimes get so lost and then we're not the best version of anything. So no, we're not perfect. Figure out like what's where do you get your joy, what, what makes you unhappy? And then try to be the best version of the person. That is that, and don't worry about what everyone else thinks. You know, frankly, they're going to talk about you anyway. So you know like there's just really no point worrying about it.

Speaker 2: 46:59

Yeah, let them yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:01

I mean, we all have to get inspiration from places. I'm hoping that you know, as I keep reading this book, that it is very inspiring to remind myself that I have no control over what other people think. I only have control over what I think.

Speaker 2: 47:17

Yeah, yeah. And how you live your life and how you take your energy, you know or channel your energy I think that's such sage advice is to figure out who you are and then just try to be the best version of that, and that's it.

Speaker 1: 47:28

No one's asking for any more than that. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 47:33

Love it, love it.

Speaker 3: 47:35

Thanks guys. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagram. So please, please, join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please like, rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going.

Speaker 2: 48:21

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 48:23

All right, Take care, friends. Bye friends, Bye friends.

Jobs, Politics & Policy at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Jobs, Politics & Policy at Work with Ryan Stygar & Harrison Newman

Elections shape work…

A second Trump administration could bring major changes to your workplace—whether you're an employee, a leader, or in HR. From labor rights and healthcare to immigration, DEI, and workplace safety—this episode dives into how political policy directly impacts your day-to-day work experience. No spin. Just straight talk on what’s potentially coming, and what to start paying attention to now.

Listen or watch the full episode here

---

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, I think we're live.

Speaker 2: 0:02

Yeah, yeah, Okay. Well, hey, we're here Welcome to your work friends and we're here to talk about jobs, politics and policy in the workplace and what you might expect with the new Trump administration coming in. I'm Mel Platt, I'm the co-host and co-founder of your work friends and owner of Cordelia Consulting, and with me is my partner in crime, Francesca Francesca.

Speaker 1: 0:28

Hey, I'm Francesca Ranieri, co-founder and co-host of your Work Friends pod with Mel, and I'm also the founder of Frank.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Yeah, yeah, and friends, we have been doing this work for a long, long ass time and what we want to do is connect you with the best experts.

Speaker 2: 0:47

With us tonight, we'll introduce those folks in a second to really break down all this work stuff to help you stay ahead, and that's our goal for tonight. With us is Ryan Steiger. He's an employment lawyer with Centurion trial attorneys in San Diego, California, but you also might know him as attorney Ryan on TikTok and Instagram, and he's also a former wildland firefighter, which he's incredibly proud of. We're incredibly proud of him too. And then with us is also Harrison Newman. He is the VP of HR benefits at Corporate Synergies in New York City. He's also the VP of communications for New York City SHRM and a budding harpist only for one night, from what we understand. So welcome to you both. Thank you both for being here and with us.

Speaker 2: 1:34

So here's the deal. We are going to be talking about five core topics around work policy, and those include labor and wage policies, healthcare and benefits, immigration, DEI and workplace safety all of the hot topics everyone's hearing about. We have about five minutes for those five topics each. We're also going to be making some bold predictions here along the way all speculative, of course, because we don't have crystal balls, but we're going to be ripping things from the headlines and making our best assumptions to help you think through things. Going to be ripping things from the headlines and making our best assumptions to help you think through things. If you are joining us live, please, please, please drop your questions in the chat. We will be monitoring them and we have some live Q&A at the end. But we're going to jump right in with a nice little question for you both.

Speaker 4: 2:18

How's that sound? Right on, let's do it.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Yeah, I actually want to do this for all of us, because I'm really curious. I know we all have a point of view on this. If you were to think about one word that would describe the workplace in 2025, what's your word? A single word, a single word, or what you're expecting?

Speaker 4: 2:37

what you're expecting. In a single word, I'm going to go with burnout.

Speaker 2: 2:41

Oh, that's a good one.

Speaker 4: 2:42

Yeah, I hope it's not tired at this point. It's been going around quite a bit, but the general consensus I get from all the employees I represent, the people I talk to is people are tired, things are more expensive than they've ever been, wages are going up but they're not keeping up. And that creates a bit of a conflict, because your employer is sitting there saying my costs of business are going up and I'm paying you more than ever. The employees are saying, yeah, you're paying me more than ever, but it's really not a big increase, boss, and meanwhile my rent has gone up like 50% over the past eight years. It's getting rough out there and now, with what many anticipate will be fewer worker protections, not more, that burnout could turn into apathy. I certainly hope it doesn't, but burnout is my word of 2025 so far.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Yeah, good one Harrison.

Speaker 3: 3:32

I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm going to use a word, but I'm going to give it a slightly different definition than typical. I'm going to use disruptive, but I'm not going to use disruptive in a bad way per se, because I don't know if disruptive is necessarily bad. I think you're going to see a lot of disruption in the workforce. I think you're going to see a lot of people wearing hats they've never worn before, because I think there's going to be a lot more responsibilities thrown on HR, thrown on executives navigating things in real time, because things might move very fast, because it might be one morning this is the cool thing and the next morning some other idea comes up and everything changes, and I think we're going to see a lot of disruption. Um, but I'm not going to use disruption as a negative term, because sometimes disruption leads to good things. Sometimes you need to burn something and I should not be using that word right now with everything going on but sometimes you need to burn something down to build something else new, and I think that disruption is really the word, but I'm going to tweak it a little bit and disruption which could be positive disruption, yeah all right, can I change my answer to seesaw because now that I'm thinking about it and it's pertinent to some of the things we're going to talk

Speaker 4: 4:38

about um anyone following nlrb guidance, eeoc guidance, dol guidance we're going to talk about that in detail. Everything that Biden just undid is going to be undid again because we're dealing with a Trump sandwich. The problem is, the Trump we're getting this time is a little different than the Trump we got last time. He has new people in his ear with new ideas, and a lot of those people are mortal enemies with conflicting ideas. So I think we are going to see disruption is a great term, but I think, seesaw, we'll see press conferences where he boldly declares one policy and then the next day something totally different comes out.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Ryan, my word was whiplash for the exact same reason.

Speaker 3: 5:21

Oh, there we go.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Yeah, Mel, before we, before we.

Speaker 2: 5:25

I actually was going to pull from our good friend, uh, Ashley Goodall and say blender. I feel like we're all going into the blender. It's just going to feel like we're in a constant blender. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:37

I uh, I had a lot of people say you know, francesca, get yourself centered, get yourself grounded, get your chakras out. This year You're going to need it. It's going to be a lot of change. We all know that. What that change will be, hey, you know, we're not sure, but one of the reasons why we're here is to think about what could happen and what we're already seeing. Let's get into it with our first topic, which is around like labor and wage policies, and, ryan, I'm going to take this over to you first. What are you thinking, again, when we think about labor policies, wage policies, things like overtime have been talked about, all this good jazz. What's 2025 going to look like?

Speaker 4: 6:15

Well, we're going to see a massive shakeup in the beginning, and that's not unusual for when we have a new administration come in. But I want to dispel any myths that Trump is at all a normal candidate. He is not a normal presidential candidate. We're going to see big changes. We're going to see him fast. So the agencies I'm looking at the most are the National Labor Relations Board, the EEOC, the DOL, of course, and OSHA. So the first thing we're going to see is a complete change in leadership. It's going to start with the National Labor Relations Board's general counsel, jennifer Abruzzo.

Speaker 4: 6:51

Now what we've seen in the past four years is the NLRB greatly expanding their interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act. We saw things like a ban on captive audience meetings. That's where the employer requires you to come into some kind of hallway and they explain their position on unionization. Thanks to the NLRB's most recent ruling on those captive audience meetings, employers can't do that anymore. They can have meetings about their views on unionization, but they can't track attendance. They can't punish you if you don't go. It has to be voluntary, but all the people advancing that expansion are going to be fired and we're going to see a new general counsel. We're probably going to see a Republican majority because on December 11th, the Congress did not extend the terms to 2026 like we had thought they would, so we're going to get a Republican majority in the NLRB. We're going to get a Republican majority in the EEOC.

Speaker 4: 7:53

And what's interesting about the EEOC, particularly and I know we don't have a lot of time so I'll wrap this up quick what we saw in 2020 was something really groundbreaking. What we saw in 2020 was something really groundbreaking. We saw LGBTQ status, gender expression, gender identity being protected. For the longest time. It was actually legal to fire someone because they identified as trans in some states, but the EEOC reinterpreted that. Well, not the EEOC, I'm sorry. The EEOC issued guidance after the Supreme Court's ruling in Bostock v Clayton County, georgia. The thing is the most likely person to chair the EEOC. Now she let me pull up her name again it's Andrea. Do you guys know who I'm talking about?

Speaker 1: 8:41

I do not.

Speaker 4: 8:43

I'm blanking on her name for a minute.

Speaker 1: 8:45

But that Andrea Andrea thing, that's always a, that's a tricky.

Speaker 4: 8:50

Yeah, well, anyway, here I'll pull up her name in a minute. I'm blanking on her name for no reason at all, but basically what's going to happen is she has expressed a serious dissent with the EEOC's interpretation of Bostock v Clayton County, georgia. So we are going to see a retraction, a restriction, a neutering of protections for LGBTQ employees. The reason we're going to see a retraction and not just a cessation on progress is because she has Andrea I can't remember her last name has expressed many times that she feels Clayton County, georgia that decision was a mistake. She feels that LGBTQ quote unquote special interests are an attack on women's rights and an attack on religious freedoms. We can debate whether we think that's true or not, but what's not up for debate is the EEOC is going to greatly restrict its expansion of those LGBTQ protections. We also may see some restrictions on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and how the EEOC interprets that.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Harrison, what would you add?

Speaker 3: 9:52

Just going back to the LGBTQ, I think you're going to see a lot in.

Speaker 3: 9:56

So MySpace obviously is in the benefits side, but I think you're really going to see a huge change or shift in DEI initiatives and we're going to talk about that a little bit later on probably, but we're going to see a major shift in and I hate the word wool culture, but I think a lot of the election was based on that.

Speaker 3: 10:11

I think that's really going to impact the workforce in general because I think people who feel a certain way might feel empowered by the results to act on that more. So I think it's going to be the role of businesses to balance that out and see so a little bit, because some of the C-suite who might've felt a certain way but acted differently because the culture and the trend was going one way, the results of the election, the way the election was run, might empower those same people to start shifting work environment and the culture inside of works. I think it's going to be important that the people inside of the businesses HR specifically, but everybody there to help navigate that culture and make sure there's still an inclusive culture inside of the workforce.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm wondering just to go back specifically, really quickly before we go on to our next topic around labor and wage we got a lot of questions around overtime and Mel and I did an episode on Project 2025, trying to interpret that largely thought of as the Republican platform right right around some of these things. Are you all seeing anything around overtime at all in terms of it retracting overtime or going to that like four-week look?

Speaker 4: 11:18

I think it's possible, though remotely like not really likely, remotely likely, leaning towards unlikely that we'll see a change to those overtime rules. If anything, we would see something like the Project 2025 80 hour rule rather than the 40 hour rule. There was some discussion about that, but I really don't think it's likely. I think it's right up there with no tax on overtime and no tax on tips. I think Mr Trump was just saying what he thinks his base wanted to hear. Most of his efforts it's this. It's, on one hand, look, no tax on overtime. I'm going to new rules at the DOL. He's going to throw out most of the inclusivity efforts at the EEOC. So really, what we're going to see is a major change of leadership and then the people in those leadership positions are going to make small changes over time. Something sweeping with the overtime. I really don't think is likely.

Speaker 3: 12:25

Yeah, I think we might see multiple changes in leadership. If this is anything like the first administration, the people in his ear right now might not be the same people in his ear six months from now. So I mean, once again, we talk about that whiplash, but if it's anything like the first time around the people in his ear, he sours on them very quickly and that can change. So what we see right now could be very different six months, one year, two years, for good or bad, but it could be very different as we go along.

Speaker 1: 12:50

Super fair, super fair Mel.

Speaker 2: 12:55

Yeah, we're going to talk about healthcare and benefits. So, harrison, I know like you love this topic very, very much. A lot of people stay in their jobs for healthcare and insurance. I can argue until the cows come home. Those things should not be tied together, but they are. Let's talk about what you're seeing here. How could employer provided healthcare change?

Speaker 3: 13:18

So we don't know what's going to happen. For the most part, there's a lot of talks around the ACA and how the ACA is going to go away. As you go, attack the ACA. I don't see that happening. With everything else, he might change the name of the ACA. I mean the fact that it's referred to as Obamacare I'm sure bothers him. If it was like the Gulf of Mexico, maybe we'll change the name. But besides for that, I don't see the ACA going away because in the first administration they removed all the parts of contention. For the most part, everything that people really didn't like is already gone and in some capacity, the ACA is working. Will we explore different ideas, as he said during one of the debates, if somebody comes up with a better idea, will that happen? Possibly, but I don't really see that.

Speaker 3: 14:01

Where I see the workforce really changing is going back to what we talked about before is from a culture standpoint and balancing that culture and the results of the election. The culture I see people looking at more broad based benefits and more flexible benefits because we don't know what's coming up next. His actions indirectly the repeal of Grovy Way and companies have to pivot to have travel benefits, because if you lived in one of the states where abortion was illegal, you had to pay for employees to travel and stay elsewhere. There was a Supreme Court I don't know the exact ruling if it went through regarding gender reassignment surgeries in certain states being illegal. I think Tennessee was one of those. So you might see an expansion of those benefits and travel benefits to start covering other aspects. But I think the biggest change I look at benefits and you would talk about benefits being the reason people stay at a job. I look at benefits as one of the easiest tools that a company has to create a culture. It's one of the things you can build on and manage completely and if you're offering a benefits, the benefits is a culture of the organization. It speaks for the values of the organization and I think you're going to see that more because the outside values might be very different. There might be attack on LGBTQ rights, there might be attack on abortion rights, women's rights, and I think you're going to see an expansion of benefits, whether it's through lifestyle accounts that have very broad uses, potentially, where you could use it for multiple different things, through HSA accounts and stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 15:29

I do think you're going to see companies look more towards their benefits package to build the culture that they want, because there are other regulations and other things coming down the pipe that might prevent them from doing that. So I don't think the ACA is going away a pipe that might prevent them from doing that. So I don't think the ACA is going away. I do think we will have an expansion on HSAs and these pre-tax benefits. Interestingly enough, I do think towards. One of the last things he did from the benefit standpoint was extend leave. So I do think we might see more leave management and paid leave, whether on a state level or federal level. But I think, overall, if you're looking for the global biggest change to the benefits, I think and it's been happening overall, but I think it's going to be more important now than before because of external sources it's going to be those broad benefits that help build a culture within the organization.

Speaker 2: 16:18

Yeah, Francesca and I were talking right before we started the live about that. It's like the employers who are going to be kind of winning in terms of the talent marketplace in a few years are those that create benefits packages that benefit their employees and really retain employees and attract new talent in their organization.

Speaker 4: 16:37

Yeah, that brings up some other interesting points too. I mean, as we discussed, my world is really more in the EEOC. By the way, our current share is Charlotte Burroughs, who's fantastic in my opinion, and, by the way, the person who I predict. This isn't certain. There's been no announcements. I predict it's Andrea Lucas is her last name. She's a Republican, she's the only Republican there right now and she'll probably be the new head of the EEOC, which could be problematic for anyone seeking things like gender-affirming care, protection from LGBTQ discrimination, the right to use a bathroom that they're comfortable with. Also, there's some other issues that come up.

Speaker 4: 17:16

Remember, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was passed in 2022. That instituted sweeping, pretty exciting guidance on how to protect pregnant women at work or women seeking fertility treatments. Those fertility treatments that were protected under EEOC guidance included things like fertility treatments and abortions. No way in hell is Andrea Lucas going to let that continue. She is going to either decline to enforce any actions under that guidance or issue new guidance is what I expect. So, unfortunately, what I think we're going to see is a patchwork.

Speaker 4: 17:54

They keep saying that they want to return all of these questions to the states, but I think anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows. The ultimate Republican agenda is a nationwide abortion ban, no exceptions, and we know that's where they're headed. So what we're going to see, at least in the short term, I think, is a patchwork where employees in California have more right to access things like IVF or an abortion, if you need it, than an employee in Florida. So we may see a tug of war with people wanting remote opportunities or relocation, but certainly we talk about access to employer-sponsored benefits, your employer's right to maybe deny certain benefits based on your fertility treatments. There may not be as much recourse as it as we'd hope to see. That's my current prediction. No, and it's going to be difficultourse as it as we'd hope to see. That's my current prediction.

Speaker 3: 18:43

No, and it's going to be difficult, as you mentioned, from the state level. You're going to have state by state and there are very few employers right now that are single state. Most of them have multiple states, so you're going to have different rules and regulations for each state. It's going to come on. It's going to add a lot more work to the HR departments and the finance departments, even because it's going to be state-by-state regulations. Having these culture benefits or these travel benefits. I mean we might get some good out of it. Look, we've got ICHRs, we've got the individual HRAs the first time around. He's shown a tendency to think outside the box when it comes to benefits. Maybe there'll be some changes in the prescription standpoint.

Speaker 3: 19:16

I'm optimistic. I don't know if I'm optimistic because there's a reason to be. I'm optimistic because you have to be optimistic, so there might be some good that comes out of it. But going back to my first word, I think it's going to be disruptive. I think you're going to have a lot more hats being worn by HR and finance having to navigate different rules on a state-by-state basis, because I don't think we'll have a federal ban. I don't think there's enough push for that right now. I don't think they want a federal ban 100%. They want the argument of a federal ban. I think they like having the conversation more than the actual doing of these things. But I do think, on a state by state basis, you're going to have states where these laws are going to be very. California and Texas are going to be very different when it comes to what's covered and not covered.

Speaker 4: 19:57

Forgive my ignorance.

Speaker 4: 19:59

Harrison and I did want to say Mel. When we talk about optimism, one thing to be optimistic about is Mr Trump has talked about concepts of a plan to repeal disastrous Obamacare. Let's not forget who he is. He is a performer first, and everything else second. He knows that his base hates Obama. Doesn't matter why they hate him, he just knows they hate Obama.

Speaker 4: 20:28

So if he says I'm going to destroy Obamacare and liberate all the poor people affected by Obamacare, most of those followers of his do not realize he's talking about the Affordable Care Act and a lot of those people have health benefits because of the Affordable Care Act and I would hope that any advisors advising Mr Trump would let him know hey, if you take away your voters' health care, that is going to be an immediate life change that they notice and it's going to be really hard to blame Democrats for that. So I think one of the things we can be optimistic about is ACA fundamentally is probably not going anywhere. It would be pretty self-destructive to attack it head-on. So many people's benefits may stay the same, although abortion and healthcare-related benefits may be harder to access. And I'm sorry about the jump. I have a dog who wants to go on a walk really bad and he's giving me little nips on my knee, and that's why I keep jumping around.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Turn the conversation.

Speaker 3: 21:24

What's that, mel? How do you ask a question, or yeah?

Speaker 2: 21:27

I guess I I wanted, I wanted to follow up on the abortion um ban because I'm curious when it comes and forgive my ignorance because I'm not very closely related, tied to this work. But, um, you know, I imagine, if there are regulations in place in a state-by-state basis, can employers be? Can employers be held accountable if someone receives an abortion? That's on their play role and what? What kind of legal implications might they face if they are providing access to resources for that service if it's like, illegal in their state?

Speaker 3: 21:59

So what's interesting is in Texas you have to offer benefits that cover. The employee has the right to choose whether their benefits cover or do not cover abortion. Now, whether you have abortion, whether abortion is so, I can opt out. If I feel abortions morally wrong, I can say I do not want abortion being covered under my policy. Where somebody else says I believe abortions right, I want abortion covered, it's the exact same benefits, except one covers, one doesn't. Even though in the state of Texas you can't get an abortion anyway. What that means is based on my policy, I can't go to a neighboring state where it is legal and do that.

Speaker 3: 22:35

So far and I'll leave the legal questions more to the attorney so far we haven't seen any litigation about allowing them to travel outside of the state. In theory, that would be against the Republican theory of state rules, because if a state wants to do it, you can't do that. Now, we all know people don't play nice in the sandbox and because something doesn't fit a narrative doesn't mean they won't go against it. I don't see them penalizing in that regards. But I do think that you're going to see an expansion of these travel benefits, which might cover more LGBTQ or what they call the woke benefits aspect and some of these things that might be banned in certain states and allowed in others. I think you might see very, very different benefits in different states across the board.

Speaker 2: 23:16

Ryan, what do you think?

Speaker 4: 23:18

Definitely. I was trying to find the Supreme Court case that sort of reaffirms this, but I'm just going to say it, you're going to take my word for it. We have a constitutional right to free interstate travel, ok, so one of the things we're finding is states really throwing up lots of restrictions around abortion for many reasons and some liability for the employer who offers a benefits package that theoretically covers some of those treatments and you take it out of state. That's an open question. I haven't seen any litigation on that, but we do see things like Texas's $10,000 abortion bounty hunter rule, which there actually was at least one successful prosecution under that law that we've seen so far. So what is going to happen?

Speaker 4: 24:06

Optimistically, I would say that a near total abortion ban and a total ban on employer benefits across state lines for fertility treatments may not happen, because we have a constitutional right to interstate travel and the whole point of that right is that Americans would, in theory, have the same fundamental rights in Tennessee as they do in Louisiana, as they do in Colorado. Now we know in practice, especially over the past 10 years, that's not really the case. Unfortunately, we have a pretty far right Supreme Court right now, and it's a Supreme Court that has demonstrated over and over again that they're not afraid to legislate from the bench. They're not afraid to take precedent and throw it out the window. They're not afraid to give a president criminal immunity. They're not afraid to overturn Roe v Wade. They don't really need a lot of justification to do it.

Speaker 4: 24:54

So why am I going on that rant? I think that what we will most likely see is attempts by the federal government, with their Republican majority almost everywhere, to do a total abortion ban. Any way they can do it, and they might first attack things like employer benefits, maybe trying to hold the employer accountable, deny them certain federal funding, deny them certain benefits or taxes, or fine them or sue them if they offer any kind of fertility treatment or anything like that. But that would immediately be challenged by the coalition of attorneys general in blue states that are trying to protect those rights. So I think the optimistic take is that it would be tied up until Mr Trump's term is over and then hopefully a new president could take a new DOJ and end all of that. But I do think that those reproductive rights are going to be the first thing under attack starting this year.

Speaker 2: 25:53

Okay, thank you both. On to the next topic.

Speaker 1: 25:56

All right. So we've talked about labor and wage. We've talked about health care. The next topic up we wanted to talk about was the latest of du jour between Elon Musk and the constituents on the right, where he told someone to F his face immigration. So I want to talk about immigration.

Speaker 1: 26:15

For those that may not know, especially as it relates to employment. There's two types of visas that typically people work under right when they come to this country. There's an H1A visa, which I believe is typically more seasonal work, agricultural work, and then there's the H1B visa, which is much like, seems to be much more skilled work. You're for longer periods of time, you're sponsored by a company and it could be like Silicon Valley basically mostly Silicon Valley, some professional. Silicon Valley, basically mostly Silicon Valley, some professional. Quote unquote the argument this week or last week I have no sense of time anymore is that they wanted to get. The Republican Party said we want to get rid of these H-1B visas. Elon Musk said hell, no, over my dead body. I want to know we're not even in week two of the year, so we're not even in week two of the year. What's going to happen with?

Speaker 4: 27:07

immigration this year. Harrison, I'm going to go you first. Yeah. Harrison please Give me the hard one.

Speaker 3: 27:12

No, I mean, who knows? Like I said, it goes back to who's in his ear at this day. Elon Musk is in his ear right now and I do think he has a lot of power and I don't know what he is politically, but he's not a Republican. He's for him, basically, but he's for innovation, he's for growth, he's for disruption and going back and might not be the positive way we were talking about earlier, but he's for these things. I don't see them taking those full aspects.

Speaker 3: 27:40

I think a lot of these things and I think Brian mentioned it earlier a lot of these things are campaign talk because they rile people up, but I don't know how practically speaking, these things are, because illegal immigrants are one thing and he's going to target and he's going to do that, but getting rid of these visas, these people use these employees, they need these employees and if they don't have these employees, their business is going to be expensive the money they're going to have to pay a lot more for somebody else who doesn't have these visas. And we already have a work shortage. I think there's, for every 100 jobs globally, there's 95 employees at this standpoint. So there's already a work shortage in that standpoint. So I do think, practically speaking, while it sounds great in a bumper sticker, the people in his ears right now must be one of those main voices who I do think does have his ear. I don't see major changes from the visa standpoint of getting them out of the workforce, because they're necessary for the workforce in many ways.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Yeah, I heard a stat I can't remember what, I'll put it in the show notes, though that for every H-1B visa holder it creates 1.86 jobs. So to your point, it's not only about the job shortage, but it's also about job growth, sometimes with the H-1Bs. But, ryan, you were trying to hop in there, sorry about that.

Speaker 4: 28:52

Well, there's an interesting sort of exponential effect Creating more jobs actually leads to creating more jobs. It's a funny thing, kind of like how you make more money when you put more money in a high-interest savings account. That's kind of the effect we see. So I believe you, francesca. That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 4: 29:07

Now, h-1b visa I don't think it's going anywhere. I actually don't. I'm not an immigration attorney. This is just based on my tangential knowledge in employment law. I don't think it's going anywhere and I don't think there's going to be many restrictions on it, for two main reasons. Number one national security. Trump is one of the first presidents in my lifetime to want a military parade and he wants to invade Greenland and he wants to invade Panama and he's going to need a big giant military to kick off World War III. If we are going to have any hope of national security during whatever he wants to do, we need the best and brightest engineers to make our F-22s and F-35s and battleships and stuff work, and the defense industry is heavily dependent on skilled labor like that. Boeing alone has thousands. And speaking of thousands this is the second consideration Trump's most important allies rely on H-1B visa labor for their companies. Musk alone has, I think, 2,000 that he's employed across his companies.

Speaker 4: 30:06

And Musk has Trump on a pretty tight leash. Musk has a lot of power. It's quiet power compared to Trump's, but it's a lot of power. And then we look at people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and all the big billionaires who are trying to curry favor with Trump. They rely on those engineers and mathematicians. And that kind of leads to a third point. If your goal is to eliminate or declaw, the Department of Education and the United States continues to slip in science, technology, engineering and maths compared to other industrialized peers, we really have no option except to get that talent elsewhere other industrialized peers we really have no option except to get that talent elsewhere. So if we want to remain an economic and military superpower, H-1B visa is an essential part of that.

Speaker 3: 30:49

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You can't get rid of it. You need the workers, and the people in his ear are not going to let him get rid of it, so not unless you don't want your missiles to launch when you hit the button.

Speaker 4: 31:01

I mean it's going to be a consideration.

Speaker 3: 31:03

unfortunately, it might be a good thing from our standpoint.

Speaker 4: 31:07

Yeah, you know that's something we can debate whether it's good or bad, but the point is I don't think H-1B is going anywhere. What I do think and this is a bit more concerning to me one thing that we see in OSHA anti-retaliation statutes and US Department of Labor anti-retaliation statutes is employers cannot take advantage of undocumented labor, also known as illegals, is what Trump supporters call them, but I call them undocumented. Undocumented labor and pay them less than a minimum wage or not pay them at all and threaten them with incarceration, them less than a minimum wage or not pay them at all and threaten them with incarceration, violence, reporting them to ICE, things like that. The reason those anti-retaliation rules exist is so that no employer can benefit from human trafficking or straight up kidnapping. That's actually a really big problem. Even here in California, I've been in cases where we have 20, 30 undocumented immigrants who don't want to work for the employer, but they have been threatened and intimidated into staying there for subminimum wages. Now why is that so important? Trump is borderline violently.

Speaker 4: 32:14

Anti-retaliation statutes against undocumented people are not enforced, or perhaps reduced or rescinded when, basically, if you say, hey, I'm undocumented, but I'm working in this warehouse and they're not giving us safety gear. They're paying us $4 an hour. Sometimes they don't pay us at all. Um, the new osha, the new dll under trump, is going to say hey, that's really interesting. By the way, you're under arrest. Uh, that that's what my biggest fear and concern is. That's worst case scenario for me yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 1: 32:57

I was reading an article the other day. It was a article, but it was about how do you handle workplace raids around immigration as a leader, and you know the fact that we're talking about that as something else that might be happening in the ether is just on a human level.

Speaker 4: 33:16

It's upsetting, that's why I opened by saying I want to dispel any notion that Donald Trump is a normal president. He is not George Bush, he is not Mitt Romney. He is an entirely different creature that operates on a completely different system than any US president I have seen. Because, whereas other presidents sure there was corruption, ineptitude, certain moral decisions that we might disagree with, certain moral decisions that we might disagree with, the sort of seesaw, whiplash, unpredictability and violent rhetoric Really it's the violence in the rhetoric that's so different about Trump.

Speaker 4: 33:51

What it creates a concern for employment rights advocates like me is listen, even if you're here illegally. Yes, you might have broke the law, maybe you were trafficked, I don't know. That's a separate issue. But but even so, I do not want a legal framework that makes it possible for employers to exploit your undocumented status to extract free labor from you. That is a serious human rights concern and, and one of my biggest predictions is that a lot of those protections may go away. Right now they're still intact. So if you are undocumented and your employer is taking advantage of that, you should report it or at least talk to an attorney about your options first.

Speaker 3: 34:29

I'll just add on one thing. You're talking about the civility, the incivility, and I agree 100%. It's a crazy world we're living in, but I'll be the optimistic and I'll keep my optimistic eyes and glasses on. I think, mel we were speaking about this when we first spoke is the one thing we didn't see was the massive incivility after the election that we expected from either side and once again, obviously one side won. But I think there's something to be optimistic about is the workforce is almost controlling itself.

Speaker 3: 34:57

We were prepared that whichever side won, we were going to see massive incivility and, truth be told, if the other side would have won, we probably would not, would have seen it and a couple of days ago, January 6th, might not have been exactly the same and there might have been other results that the other side would have won. But we're seeing the workforce really take that step and not showing up to work and reacting differently. We're seeing a much more mellow, civil reaction where, all right, we can do this and I think the workforce HR specifically is a really good job of building that culture with an organization where, whatever comes, we're going to help and we're going to control it and we got your back, and I think that's my optimism is hopefully that will offset some of the external craziness, and it's another role HR and the businesses are going to have to run is keeping civilian workforce. But optimistically, based on the election results, using that one snapshot, they might be getting the hang of it and doing a good job at that. Hopefully at least. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:06

I also like the idea of business potentially as a check and balance that unwritten check and balance, I guess on culture it might not be a bad thing for sure.

Speaker 3: 36:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:16

Mel, you want to go into our next topic? Let's go, let's dive, right in DEI.

Speaker 4: 36:23

Oh boy Cool, More good news.

Speaker 2: 36:25

More good news. Yeah, more hot topics we saw in 2024, DEI was certainly under attack in the corporate sector. We know SHRM even removed an element of DEI as well, which had a lot of interesting backlash, which had a lot of interesting backlash. Do you think this continues in 2025? And can there be? Do you expect there to be further rollbacks and challenges with DEI programs in workplaces under the administration's policies that might be coming?

Speaker 4: 36:57

I can go for this, but I feel like I tend to jump on these. Harrison, do you want to go, or shall I run? I went first last time. I'll give you the easy one. I got the hard one. Right now. Swing very far to the right, very quickly.

Speaker 4: 37:17

We're going to see a majority Republican commission and my prediction that I would bet money on is Andrea Lucas to actually chair the EEOC, and that is very much a case of the fox in the hen house. The EEOC arguably exists to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, and we will have the I guess we could call them the anti-woke people in there. The most serious immediate concerns I have is the EEOC rolling back protections, rolling back enforcement, but also the federal government punishing certain employers who have DEI initiatives, because the current chatter on the right-wing side of policymaking is DEI is inherently racist and anti-American. I know that sounds insane, but they've done many mental gymnastics to justify that position. So what they want to do is say that well, if you have a program that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion, what you're really doing is being racist, you're being anti-white, you're being anti-male, you're promoting people based on skin color, and that's not OK. So we will see.

Speaker 4: 38:34

I think federal guidelines that punish employers for having DEI initiatives. A great example would be anyone accepting federal money, anyone with a federal contract. They would be required to disband any DEI initiatives they have. But on the flip side of that we have companies like Costco which are basically coming out and saying no, having diverse viewpoints is actually part of the reason we're winning, it's part of the reason we're so successful, and that's not going anywhere.

Speaker 4: 39:03

So there is the sort of hard policy and soft policy tug of war we're going to see, and I think what we're going to see on hard policy is a lot of initiatives by the Republican majorities to punish DEI programs and discourage them. But soft policy will have companies that say well, what do our customers want, john Deere? Those companies very proudly disbanded their DEI initiatives because they know who their customers are. Costco also seems to know that their customer base tends to be middle upper class, young professionals, educated people who tend to lean more liberal, and that could have informed their decision to put their feet down and say no, dei is here to stay. I will say this regardless of the federal government's new direction on being anti-woke or anti-DEI, the Civil Rights Act is not going anywhere. Its enforcement might change, its interpretation of some details will change, but, straight up, discrimination is still going to be illegal, at least for the next couple of years.

Speaker 3: 40:07

I'm curious if you're looking from the legal standpoint, where I look at it is more from the practical employer standpoint of the mindset.

Speaker 3: 40:15

I look at the last election and one of the things I saw was I think it was definitely a statement of one side and I hate the word woke, but one side ran on an anti-woke culture, dei being one of those initiatives where they're running where it's, it's it's. We want everybody to be equal. I don't see color, which I know is one of the worst things you could possibly say, but that's what they're running on that standpoint, say, but that's what they're running on that standpoint. I'm curious to see the employers, the C-suites, the people higher up in the companies, what message they take out of the election results. Does that free them to do like there was a lot of pressure from a lot of these CEOs and executives to instill these DEI initiatives? Even from the legal standpoint? Just to me, that's the way the culture was going, that's the way society was going. Do they see this election results where Trump won most of these states and we could debate whether it was a landslide victory or a lot of small victories, but one significantly and one without a shadow of a doubt. Do they take it as a mandate to do what they want to do from the first part that these initiatives are wrong or do they take it as a mandate?

Speaker 3: 41:18

I'm curious if you're going to see those hiring standpoints and once again going back to the role of HR and I'm a benefits nerd I'll roll it back into employee benefits like I do everything else. I think it's going to be the role of the workforce to offset that. I think you're going to see going back to your CISO. I think you're going to see a CISO between some of the CISO level executives and the old school higher up executives who might have one view of the EI and the people on the ground in the workforce, and it might change state by state of business by business.

Speaker 3: 41:45

But I think the businesses are going to have to create a culture and employee benefits is one of those main aspects where you might start seeing more DEI initiative benefits inside the workforce. You might see more benefits focusing on the LGBTQ plus community. You might see more benefits that have mental health solutions, more ERGs, employee resource groups coming up outside so they can talk and have safe spaces and once again, another word I hate, but safe spaces discuss these issues and talk so, even besides the legal standpoint, I'm curious what the election results not even the Trump presidency, but the message that people take out of the results. I'm curious how that trickles down to the workforce of a DEI initiative, and that's really what scares me the most.

Speaker 4: 42:29

Yeah, I think whether employers interpret it as some sort of mandate is honestly going to depend on their biases. You know, I think a mistake we all make is we look at big corporations, big institutions and think that they're these sort of ultra-rational things and they really are not.

Speaker 3: 42:46

They think everyone's right.

Speaker 4: 42:48

Yeah, there's a lot of hubris, that's for sure, and they have their own biases. What is the Walt Disney Company going to do today? Well, let's find out what kind of mood Bob Iger is in. He's a person, he's not a machine. Uh, so here's what I think we're gonna see. I think, if you want to look at what the next few years will look like, look at the past few years, and it actually starts with believe it or not. I want to quickly talk about rings of power produced by amazon. Did you guys hear about that show or see that show?

Speaker 1: 43:16

rings of power rings of power.

Speaker 4: 43:19

It was an amazon adaptation of jr tolkien's the lord of the rings.

Speaker 1: 43:22

I knew this. I knew this was going here. I'm like he's gonna be talking about lord of the rings.

Speaker 4: 43:27

It supposedly covered events thousands of years before the original trilogy occurred. Now the quality of the show, in my personal opinion, is atrocious horrible writing. They spent a billion dollars. The sets look like my niece could have made them, like I don't know where all that money went. It's a very poorly produced show.

Speaker 4: 43:45

But that aside, one thing that really upset a lot of people was a black elf, a black female dwarf, a female lead who was accused of being a Mary Sue, and having watched nine episodes I agree she was a Mary Sue, very poorly written character. Many of the main characters from Tolkien's work who happened to be men were completely written out of the show. So what happened was? That show, I think, is a perfect specimen of the culture shift that we're going to see, and this is a sort of soft policy. This is not hard policy. It's a soft policy where people, because of pop culture productions like Rings of Power, rightly or wrongly believe that America has become too woke and has started doing diversity, equity, inclusion for its own sake and at the expense of better qualified men and white people. Whether you agree with that is one thing, but whether that's the prevailing wins right now.

Speaker 4: 44:40

I don't think is up for debate. I think it's very clear. That's where we're at. So what I think we're going to see is a very strong quote, unquote anti-woke culture in a lot of businesses, in a lot of media, especially with Trump at the helm, where we're probably going to see some. Really, we might see some rational discussions, really we might see some rational discussions.

Speaker 4: 45:00

Like Rings of Power should not have written out very important male characters to Tolkien's work just because they didn't want too many male characters dominating the scene. They should not have completely rewritten Galadriel's character to suit a political agenda. That was a mistake. So we'll see little changes like that. But we might see more aggressive things like joking about racial slurs is now okay. Don't be so woke, don't be so soft. You know women aren't the same as men. Everyone knows they're more flighty, irrational, emotional. Let the men handle this. Uh, perhaps that won't be seen as outrageous and rude as it ought to be. So I think what will happen is the pendulum will swing very far right. I think a lot of companies are going to go anti-woke for a while and it may trigger more instances of incivility, insensitivity, straight up, jaw-dropping instances of discrimination, and then that pendulum will left again, hopefully to a rational center, where it belongs.

Speaker 1: 45:59

Oh go ahead.

Speaker 2: 46:01

Oh, I was just going to say, Harrison, to your point about the election results. What I thought was so interesting is it wasn't a landslide. By any means, I have the final numbers up. Do you want to tell my?

Speaker 4: 46:11

dad that.

Speaker 2: 46:12

Yeah, because Kamala, you know she had 48.3% of the votes and Trump had 49.8. So when you look at those numbers, that is a very like almost 50-50 split in terms of what representation looks like and who people wanted as a candidate to represent them.

Speaker 3: 46:31

When you think of People see in statistics in general. People see in statistics what they want to fit their definition.

Speaker 2: 46:38

A hundred percent, I'm just. It's curious, though, when you think about the workplace, or like CEOs thinking about these policies and how they're going to react to their workforce and support their employees or the culture they're trying to build, like they need to almost look at the workforce as it could be this 50-50 split.

Speaker 3: 46:56

So that's where it's interesting and that's where I think the biggest challenge and I keep picking on HR, but it really is HR that's going to be the biggest challenge with HR, because you're going to have certain people, honestly, probably the billionaire owners or the higher up people in these corporations not to pick on the billionaires, but who see the results one way, who see the results that this was an electoral landslide and we're going to use that mandate of this is what the country wants, based on those results. And then you have the fact that, yes, it might have been an electoral college landslide but, as you said, the actual employees, the boots on the ground. If you did a straw poll of the employees who they're working with, it could be 50-50. It might even be a little bit more more in some states. It's probably a lot more new york, california, it's a lot more where they don't care. So it's going to be. Hr is going to be stuck in the middle there. So hr is going to have such an important role of balancing that and it's it's going to. It's going to be I hate to use the word fun because it's like fun which is disruptive, disruptive fun, but it's going to be fun to watch the HR role grow in 2025, because they're going to be balancing that out a lot more, because it's exactly what you said.

Speaker 3: 48:08

It's two statistics that are both. It's two truths. You won the election in the electoral landslide, but the actual vote count was so much smaller. So, from the CEO or the high-level executive standpoint, this was a mandate of anti-woke, but 50% of your population still feels that he was the wrong candidate and voted the other way. So HR is going to be an interesting pickle or conundrum, or whatever cool word you want to use to do that. But, brian, the one question is should I watch that show or not? You're saying it's horrible.

Speaker 4: 48:43

Watch a YouTube review of the show Listen. As a writer myself, I care very deeply about things like plot, structure and character development. Rings of Power is a masterclass in how to do the opposite of all of those things.

Speaker 3: 48:59

So not on my net, not on my not on potatoes one or it's.

Speaker 4: 49:03

It's just a badly written show. I I don't know who the chief writers were, but they need to try another profession.

Speaker 2: 49:10

I love it. Thank you both for for uh talking through that and we're going to move on to the next final topic kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but I do want to talk about safety and workplace safety.

Speaker 1: 49:22

Mel and I have talked a lot about like child labor laws. We've started seeing some of this eek out already in florida, for example, of some of these child labor laws, labor safety regulations getting loosened already under the biden administration. Um, what, what happens with, again, regulations, safety?

Speaker 4: 49:43

2025? We're speculating, of course. We don't have crystal balls. We don't know what is going to happen.

Speaker 1: 49:49

I have a magic eight ball if anybody wants it. Oh lovely.

Speaker 4: 49:53

And then I'm not going to pretend I don't have a strong anti-Trump bias I do. I think he's a grotesque human being, apart from his policies. So I tend to look at him with a strong lens of distrust. I don't trust the guy. I don't trust he's going to do the right thing. I don't trust he's going to act in people's best interest. So with those disclaimers out, let's take a look at the past.

Speaker 4: 50:12

In his first term, donald Trump greatly reduced OSHA protections. He reduced OSHA investigators to a historic low. I think there were only something like 600 and something OSHA investigators during his term, which sounds like a lot. Until you realize, I believe the statistic that they released later was it would take those 600 something investigators over 60 years to investigate every covered employer in their jurisdiction only once. So not enough investigators, a record low of actions taken to protect employees, and there is at least a correlation I don't want to say a causal effect, I don't think I'm qualified to say that but there is a correlation of higher instances of workplace injuries and workplace deaths when we have fewer OSHA actions, because the truth is most employees are too scared or they don't know their rights or they don't have the means to access private representation. So it really is up to OSHA to assert workplace safety.

Speaker 4: 51:11

The other thing that we're going to see much less activity from OSHA creating new protections for workers. A really unfortunate example is OSHA's heat safety rule. The United States is one of the few industrialized nations that does not have a unified heat safety standard. It's a patchwork across the states and some states, like Texas and Florida, have even banned heat safety protections. They said we don't have a heat safety protection rule Cities, cities and counties. If you make one, you're in big trouble. It's void. So that's pretty weird that the right-wing republican agenda seems to be not just not creating a heat safety standard but banning it.

Speaker 4: 51:50

So what I think is going to happen? The osha heat safety proposal is gone. Uh, anyone trying to enforce an osha action is more likely than not going to have to rely on the general duty provision, which is that employers have a general duty to create a workplace free from unreasonable hazards, not anywhere near as profound as we'd like to see. If an actual hey, if your employee is really hot, you should give them water, that would be nice. So we are going to see fewer investigators, we'll see fewer new rulemaking and we may see more lax interpretations of rules in Rocha's jurisdiction. I think that general duty statute, as loose as it is, is going to get a little looser.

Speaker 3: 52:29

Yeah, I mean, this is not my area by any stretch, but just based on basic logic. He's pro-business and anti-litigating business and letting them do what they want, and he's looking to cut money from the federal government and cut as much money as possible. Which is going to cut these people investigating situations. Put those two together and you're not looking for it's not looking at great results. Once again, I'm not being optimistic over here, but you're not. The optimism is that businesses will do the right things amongst themselves when not being asked Fingers crossed, who knows? But at the same point, from a federal standpoint, he's looking to cut as much as he can from the federal budget and cut as many jobs that he sees unfit, and he's going to let businesses do what they want. So I don't see outside of maybe state laws and maybe on a-state basis, they're implementing some rules and regulations. I don't see that being a good idea.

Speaker 4: 53:22

State-by-state. We'll see, Harrison. And the reason I brought up the Texas and Florida bans on heat safety proposals is, you know, depending on how zealous Republicans decide to get with their policymaking. Remember, I come from a far-right background. I was raised in a very conservative home and I worked for very conservative employers in a red dot in the blue sea that is California. So I'm pretty familiar with their interpretations of these things. They genuinely see departments like OSHA as unconstitutional.

Speaker 4: 54:01

In fact, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has even opined that if a challenge to the existence of OSHA comes before the Supreme Court, he would like to strike the agency down. He thinks the entire existence of OSHA is unconstitutional. Now, does he actually think that? Or does Harlan Crowe think that? And Harlan Crowe took him on a yacht trip? That's a totally different discussion. But the point is, the people with a position to eliminate OSHA or greatly restrict its rulemaking authority have already made their intentions clear and we're already seeing challenges in the Fifth Circuit. Harrison, I think I detected that you're in Canada. Our court system has federal circuits. The Fifth Circuit is in Texas, Louisiana. It's the Deep South and that's known as a Republican stronghold rule, saying that they're affected by the rule because they know the Fifth Circuit will go their way and now they're going to try to go up to the Supreme Court. So there is a risk that OSHA will have its authorities severely restricted or the agency even disbanded. That would be pretty extreme. But severely restricted, I think, is more likely.

Speaker 3: 55:15

Go ahead, Harrison. He's going to target the administrations that targeted him. He's going to go after first. I don't think there's been any OSHA attacks on him, so I think we might limit that a little bit. But yeah, he's not going to invest into it. I don't think it's going to go away per se, because I think there still is enough push from people and even though they do have a Republican majority, it's such a thin majority at this point.

Speaker 4: 55:35

I think he's going to hopefully pick his dad, I'm talking about the Supreme Court's majority, which is 63. The Supreme Court has the authority to say oh, this whole OSHA experiment, it was unconstitutional. The executive branch overstepped their authority by creating this horrible network of unelected bureaucrats I'm doing quotes for everyone listening Unelected bureaucrats, when really Congress needs to make these rules. Congress created OSHA and empowered it to enforce Congress as well, which is important because when Congress writes laws, they are intentionally broad and intentionally vague. There's been this narrative in the Trumpverse that, oh, congress is so bad at their jobs. Look how broad the legislation is. They do that intentionally because the lawmakers cannot foresee every possible hypothetical that may occur under that statute. So it makes a lot more sense to have an agency tasked with enforcing that statute, like how the EEOC enforces our Civil Rights Act, to help address those little what-ifs and hypotheticals and niche situations as they go, because, as we've seen, congress is really really, really bad at reaching a consensus on niche, specific issues.

Speaker 1: 56:48

Yeah, you know, the thing that I hold true to that is that just because some of these whole departments and or some of these regulations might get lowered or just gone away, go bye, bye. Basically, it doesn't mean that a company needs to lower its standards, right oh?

Speaker 4: 57:03

absolutely not. And I will say the more probable thing if anyone in Trump's camp is even remotely intelligent and I hope there's at least one smart person there if they want to affect their agenda with the minimal pushback, the smartest thing they can do is put certain people in charge of those agencies and they simply decline to enforce. That would be the more probable thing. I see where Andrea Lucas at the EEOC might see a very egregious gender pay discrepancy at a company and just say, oh, didn't see it, don't know anything about that. Because what better way to get your way without rocking the boat than to simply take charge of the agencies and have them do nothing? If they do nothing, it's like they don't exist at all. I think that's a possibility as well.

Speaker 2: 57:49

That's interesting.

Speaker 4: 57:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 57:52

Mel over to you.

Speaker 2: 57:53

Yeah, well, we have some listener Q&A and we just touched on OSHA, so I'm going to skip that question, but some of the stuff coming in. Someone said I'm a parent and I'm interested in what we might see to support families. Trump pushed a very family-centric policy with his messaging. Do you think things like on-site child care will be a greater priority in workplaces?

Speaker 3: 58:16

Yes, so on-site I don't know, but you definitely are going to see it. I say you're definitely going to see as definite as anything can be in a Trump administration, but I do think that they run on family values and a lot of this is family values. So a lot of it's going to be an enhancement of parental leave, child care support. You might see stuff like dependent care, fsas limits be enhanced significantly. I mean, obviously you're going to see tax incentives for families. You're going to see a lot of enhancements on the quote unquote family value benefits, a family value workforce. For some that's going to be very beneficial, as a parent is going to be very beneficial.

Speaker 3: 58:59

I do think you're going to see paid leave In New York. They instituted I'm going blank on the word, but not maternal leave, pregnancy leave, prenatal leave where you actually have hours where you can see doctor's appointments paid in New York. You might see stuff like that be expanded. It's a very Republican, very evangelical presidency right now. That's what we're seeing.

Speaker 3: 59:22

I do think stuff that all of the family value title really be enhanced and I do think that's where you're going to see a lot of the change, a lot of the growth which could benefit some people significantly. Once again might make it a little more complicated to administer on the employer's behalf, but I definitely do see that being a focus to appease his base and show that he's doing something positive for at least some people in that situation. Yeah, childcare is expensive man it is and pre-taxing that is definitely going to be a value. And paid leave is one thing. I think america I'm not going to pretend I know the numbers, but I do think the um attorney and paternity leave in america is one of the worst in the world and we don't take advantage of those as much.

Speaker 3: 1:00:02

So I do think it sucks, it totally sucks yeah, yeah, so enhancements that significantly, and he started doing that at the end of his last term.

Speaker 2: 1:00:13

Okay, there's been significant talk about raising the federal minimum wage. Absolutely not happening. We have a better shot.

Speaker 4: 1:00:23

We have a better shot at paid parental leave, and the reason for it's actually not crazy to say this. I know that Trump gets painted very negatively by people like me. There is actually a not zero percent shot at paid parental leave under the Trump administration. It's very slim for a number of reasons we could get into, but in 2019, he actually signed legislation to approve paid parental leave for some federal employees, which is shocking because, oh my God, you're spending money on people who have nothing to offer you. Mr Trump, that is not a character, but we welcome it, so it's possible that we could see more of that.

Speaker 3: 1:00:56

Yeah, but it doesn't affect him specifically. But you're seeing where he's going. Once again. He doesn't have views. He was pro-abortion before. He was anti-abortion. He has views based on the people around him and you're seeing the pro-family values really chip in. And I do think if you're looking to invest in benefits or buy stock in benefits that are going to do stuff, whatever that might be, in any capacity, it's going to be the pro-family values. It's going to be the parental leave. It's going to be, once again, we want you to have more kids. We want you to have these values. We want you to have the family. We don't want the abortions Stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 1:01:39

I definitely do think he is going to invest because, even though it doesn't help him specifically, I do think part of this term I'm hoping that he realizes this is his swan song. He's not running again. He at some point in this presidency. He is so egotistical and this is a good thing. In some ways he's going to look at his legacy and he's going to look at what he can do from his legacy standpoint and I think things like paid leave and family value issues will tie into that and I do believe strongly that at some point in this presidency he's going to look at his legacy and I do think that's going to be one of the ways he's going to try enhancing it universal health care in there.

Speaker 1: 1:02:10

Man just like wrapping up up yeah that he's not gonna do I definitely know on universal health care.

Speaker 4: 1:02:18

Uh, if, anything he'll try to create something to give uh private health insurances some kind of benefit or leg up on government sponsored health care. He wants to get as many people off government health care as he can yeah, I mean, and he's done some good stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 1:02:31

Once again, he's done in his first can, in his did the ICHRAS, which are the individual HRAs, which is surprising because he's pushing people towards the Obamacare marketplaces. But he allowed employers to create these health accounts to buy. Instead of having an employer paid policy. We're going to give you money to buy money off the exchanges. That was something we did in the first term to enhance stuff like that, the HSAs.

Speaker 3: 1:02:56

He's a tax man. He's going to look at the financial aspect. So when it comes to things that are tax benefits and things that will help the rich hide money in certain regards and his buddies and himself hide money he's going to do that. So let's take full advantage of those situations. So I do think, when it comes I don't think it's all doom and gloom when it comes to health care yes, certain things abortion rights, fertility, dei rights, 100% those are going to be under attack. But I do think stuff like parental once again I hate to say it, but the family values aspect of the benefits, things like ICHRAs going to the individual marketplace, benefits to help child care, paid leave and stuff like that I do think we might see a major growth, specifically towards the tail end of his presidency, where he is looking to build a lot of legacy.

Speaker 2: 1:03:40

I know we are over time, so I'd love to jump to our crystal ball. Well, it's all been a crystal ball, but our closing crystal ball predictions here, if that's okay with you both. It sounds like the theme of the night is workplaces really are going to have to take charge in terms of setting the tone for what the experience is, and Francesca and I talk about this often. Do your due diligence when you're choosing your employer because, guess what, you're choosing them as much as they're choosing you. So with that, in 60 seconds or less, share your boldest prediction for how jobs, politics and policy will evolve under this administration by 2028. Boldest your boldest. You're big and bold. We'll come. Well, I'm gonna rock the vote right now.

Speaker 4: 1:04:27

Unless he dies or is literally too sick to put up a fight, trump will not peacefully relinquish power in 2028, and I know that because he tried not to do that last time. I mean, that shouldn't even be bold. That's like beyond obvious to me that unless he is dead or too sick, he's going to cling to it. He's not going anywhere. But let's look at how that affects people at work.

Speaker 2: 1:04:52

If we will.

Speaker 4: 1:04:53

We are going to see tax cuts. Uh, they're going to probably favor corporations and the wealthy and what they choose to do with those tax cuts. Hopefully we see enough pushback on soft policy that the downwind effects that trickle down that we've been promised since the 80s that should come any day. Now I hope we actually will see some of those tax savings invested into the workforce. I hope, but that may not be likely because we will see a retraction of union power.

Speaker 4: 1:05:23

Donald Trump has said that he will veto the Protecting Workers' Rights Organized Act, the PRO Act. He is definitely going to scale back NLRB efforts. There are cases on the docket now which could dismantle or greatly gut the NLRB. So we are going to see much more diversity of protections, state by state ton of litigation of federal agencies under the Trump regime trying to curtail certain rights and protections and the coalition of democratic AGs trying to fight that. So we're going to see a lot of lawsuits, a lot less union power, probably some tax cuts and maybe, hopefully, as a result of those tax cuts, your employer offers some kind of enhanced medical or other programs for you. Those are my predictions currently.

Speaker 3: 1:06:18

Okay, you took the dark side.

Speaker 3: 1:06:19

I'll take the light side of things, please do. I think, my biggest prediction. Well, I think if we ran this podcast every six months, our answers will change every six months for the next four years. That's the boldest prediction. I think that's not even bold. I think that's obvious.

Speaker 3: 1:06:33

What I see and I think interesting is, I think the HR world and my focus is on HR and human resources and, as a benefits consultant, those are the ones I deal with on a daily basis I think the role of HR is going to skyrocket. They've wanted a seat at the table for years. They're slowly starting to get it. I think you're going to see, over the next four years, them really have a larger seat on the table for all the reasons we've spoken about. There's so much going on in the workforce where HR is going to be so necessary that they're going to need to have a seat at the table. So my bold prediction is we're going to see a significant growth in the human resource space, and there's going to be good, there's going to be bad, and there's going to be good, there's going to be bad.

Speaker 3: 1:07:16

Our hope and optimism is that the businesses are able to take the good and benefit from the good and will work around the bad. I think it's going to be a lot more pressure on the workforces. I think it's going to be a lot more reliability and it's going to be more important and this is really where HR comes in. Employers are going to be much more specific of picking where they work. I posted on my LinkedIn today the famous thing from Jerry Maguire show me the money and that's where you chose your job and that's where you chose you're going to work. That's not going to be in four years. The next four years. That's not going to be what employers are looking for. They're going to be looking for culture, because they're not getting it anywhere else. And the employers, hr, finance, the CEOs, the C-suites.

Speaker 3: 1:08:00

It is going to be so important to build a culture within your organization that you're going to help attract and retain, because there are going to be a lot of obstacles against you and their roles are going to be done significantly. And show me the money is not going to be the answer, it's show me the culture. At this point, I just made one catchphrase.

Speaker 2: 1:08:14

The culture we got gotta make some bumper stickers, harrison, I'm already making shirts.

Speaker 4: 1:08:17

I'm I'm stealing that and I will not be giving you credit.

Speaker 2: 1:08:20

Harrison, I'm sorry we're gonna work on that statement, harrison, we'll give you, we'll put your photo next to it. Uh, francesca, what about you?

Speaker 1: 1:08:33

you know I I will go out. I just to be very candid, I vote on like predominantly on social justice issues and after the select, I voted for kamala. I'm sure that's not. That's probably obvious. Um, I try to write an rfk, but after the election, the feeling I had was know, when you're dating someone and you're like I think they're cheating on me, but I'm not sure. And then you find out they're cheating on you and you're like well, now I know.

Speaker 1: 1:09:05

And there's a freedom in kind of knowing. This is what you're dealing with and what I think will be very interesting over 2028, and this is not an optimistic or negative I think what you're going to see, especially in organizations and Harrison to your very good point around culture is now it's going to be very clear, for whatever reason, what your company stands for or not, what kind of culture your company has or not, and you can opt in to whatever that is as an employee. And that's where I'm actually kind of like that meme eating the popcorn and just walking it, because everybody has the opportunity to choose their lane at this point. Yeah, I'm excited about it, the clarity that comes with knowing that someone's cheating on you.

Speaker 4: 1:09:54

I agree with and I do think that the big winners over the next few years, um, spoiler, big shock. Uh, women make up a large percentage of the workforce and they are incredibly talented. Uh, I am one of only two men in my organization. Uh, that's not for any discriminatory reason, just the most qualified candidates have happened to be women. So I think we are going to have a very strong trad culture that's pushing back that sort of oh, men are in the office, women are at home. But organizations that open up their culture, open up their doors to female professionals, are going to be the big winners, because if you make that kind of talent feel comfortable in your organization, you have a leg up on the people who make them uncomfortable.

Speaker 2: 1:10:37

Yeah, I would say the research out there shows also that women are better leaders. Sorry, I did a whole episode on this based on a recent report, but also we lead the buying power in this country, and so I think when corporations are making decisions about how they treat employees and how they show up in the world, they're going to have to really think about that. Women are more than 50% of this population and we have the power to impact their bottom lines for each.

Speaker 3: 1:11:06

Now we need to teach the voters they're better leaders, but that's it.

Speaker 1: 1:11:09

By the way, women buy on all sides too right by the way, women buy on all sides too, right.

Speaker 2: 1:11:19

So I guess my bold prediction was going to be that I think overtime is grossly going to get thrown out away completely. They're really trying to get rid of overtime and paying people overtime. I feel so passionate about this subject, but I agree with Harrison, I agree with all of you actually. I think culture is going to be at the center, and I don't think it just falls on HR. It falls on every leader within an organization to run culture. It's not HR's job to lead culture, and, in fact, organizations that lean too much on HR are going to lose, because it has to trickle down from the top, and so I think if you are paying attention to your employees and you're caring for them, through all of the whiplash, you will come out winning, no matter how things go.

Speaker 4: 1:12:00

That's a really good point, mel, and I think one thing employers should realize is just because the federal government says you can do something doesn't mean you should. There's a lot of things as an employer I could do to my employees if I wanted to, and they have no redress. But guess what? They're just going to leave. If you're going to be a bully and point to the rules and say, oh, the rules say I'm allowed to do this, it's like you're allowed to do it but it's not a good idea.

Speaker 3: 1:12:22

The other interesting thing is they might benefit from that. The fact that it's not mandated gives them an advantage, because not everybody's doing it. When it's mandated, everybody's doing it because you have to do it. If you're not mandating and you're doing it anyway, you're going to get a leg up on the good quality talent, because they're going to want to work for you guys. Yeah, 100%, that's the glass half full.

Speaker 4: 1:12:45

It's a positive, that's fantastic, Harrison, I agree, and not to gloat, but I have a really fun sort of rule at my firm that's different. We comply with overtime rules in California, of course, but we have a special overtime rule that is not required, but it's the rule here. If you're ever asked to do something that is outside your normal job duties, regardless of how many hours you've worked, we pay time and a half for that. If you are an office manager and I ask you to take on a role that maybe the intake specialist would normally do, are an office manager and I ask you to take on a role that maybe the intake specialist would normally do guess what Time and a half. The reason we do this is to help avoid things like people feeling scope creep and then they wake up one day with a million new job responsibilities they never agreed to and no raise.

Speaker 2: 1:13:26

Duties as assigned.

Speaker 4: 1:13:29

Exactly. I don't do that because I know firsthand the resentment that that can create. So I'm not trying to say, oh look at me, I'm the best employer in the world.

Speaker 4: 1:13:37

It's smart to say you're doing something outside your job duties time and a half. So employers who are always looking for a way to nickel and dime their own employees they're going to lose and you know what's going to happen is those employers are going to go to people like me and look for anything. Any violation they can to sue those guys over is going to go to people like me and look for anything, any violation they can, to sue those guys over.

Speaker 3: 1:13:56

Disruption creates success. Disruption does create success. Look at COVID, look at everything the people did really well during those times because they adapted. People are going to adapt to what's going on with Trump. There's going to be people who are going to be very successful and there's going to be people who are going to fail under the Trump administration. It might not be the people you think. It might be the complete opposite of people you think. It might be people who see differently than him, because they're adapting to what's going on and they're making themselves better because of it, and we're going to see a lot of success. We're going to see a lot of failure, like everybody, and we just hopefully all your listeners now have to listen to this.

Speaker 4: 1:14:34

They're going to be on the successful side. Yeah, I think the people who can be pragmatic despite any moral or personal outrage we see to what's going on will be the winners.

Speaker 2: 1:14:40

Absolutely Adaptability. Yeah, protect our peace too. All right, thank you both. So much, Francesca. I'm handing it over to you.

Speaker 1: 1:14:48

All right, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today. Please like and subscribe, and follow us on your work, friends, on the platform of your choice. Also, feel free to join us on any of our socials on Instagram, tiktok or LinkedIn as well. Harrison Ryan, thanks so much for joining us today. Appreciate you both.

Speaker 4: 1:15:05

Thanks so much for having us Always great talking to you, Harrison. You're a lot of fun too. I guess we'll hang out more.

Speaker 3: 1:15:10

Well, we'll definitely talk Ryan. More Well, we'll definitely talk Ryan. I'll follow you now and I feel bad. You're attorney, ryan. I should have been employee benefits Harrison but people don't forget what you do.

Belonging & Unhiding at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Belonging & Unhiding at Work with Dr. Beth Kaplan & Ruth Rathblott

At work, we tweak our tone, filter our stories, and sideline parts of ourselves to fit in—and it’s exhausting. In this live episode, we’re joined by Ruth Rathblott, TEDx speaker and bestselling author, and Dr. Beth Kaplan, researcher and author of Braving the Workplace, to talk about the hidden labor of self-editing and why it’s costing us more than we think.

We dig into the emotional toll of always managing perceptions, the difference between fitting in and belonging, and what it takes to create workplaces where people can show up without shrinking and hiding. Whether you’re leading teams or just trying to feel like yourself from 9 to 5, this conversation will hit home.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Most of us are hiding something about ourselves and it's exhausting and it's lonely and we come up with a narrative that we think we're the only ones.

Speaker 2: 0:23

Hello friends, I am Mel and this is your Work, friends, and with me is my co-host, francesca.

Speaker 3: 0:32

Hello.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Okay, great introduction. And today we are so lucky to have two amazing experts with us and we're talking about belonging and unhiding at work. We're going to dive into what belonging and unhiding mean, what they look like in action, why people hide, the true costs of hiding, how to incorporate strategies to nurture belonging and unhiding in the workplace, especially in this climate. And we're going to leave some room for some listener Q&A, and our experts are going to give us their bold predictions on the way out. So let me introduce these lovely folks. With us is Ruth Rothblatt. She is my mentor through the National Speakers Association, but she is also an esteemed TEDx speaker, executive coach, consultant, bestselling, author of three books Single-Handedly Learning to Unhide and Embrace Connection and Unhide and Seek Live your Best Life, do your Best Work. She also was published in Time everybody, so check that out. She's acknowledged for her expertise in unlocking individual and team potential and just all around rad human being.

Speaker 2: 1:42

And also with us is Dr Beth Kaplan. She is the author of Braving the Workplace, which officially launched today. Get this book, it's amazing. She has also been recognized as a must read by the Next Big Idea Club. She's a researcher, writer, thought leader. She's worked with organizations like Salesforce, the University of Pennsylvania, georgetown University and the Carnegie Foundation. She's also developing a groundbreaking belonging tool with the University of Pennsylvania, georgetown University and the Carnegie Foundation. She's also developing a groundbreaking belonging tool with the University of Pennsylvania which will measure belonging and propensity to thrive. Welcome to you both and thanks for joining us today. Thank you, great to be with you.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Yeah, thanks for having this. I'm excited for this conversation.

Speaker 2: 2:23

Yes, Very awesome. I'd love to jump in right away and just learning more about your personal stories, how you got started in this work, what inspired you to start this work. So tell me a little bit more about you guys. Beth, I'll start with you.

Speaker 4: 2:38

Sure so excited to be with all of you today. And, yes, it is launch day, so how exciting is that? Thank you so much for cheering me on. So, believe it or not, I didn't set out to study belonging. However, like most researchers who studied their own trauma, I set out to understand why so many people, myself included, felt like they had to prove their worth just to exist in certain spaces, and the more I researched, the clearer it became belonging. It's always about belonging, and belonging is so complex and everyone has their own definition. So, for me, my exciting gift to the world was redefining and being able to give new tools and a language to something that's a little bit more complex than most of us understand. So, to me, I look at belonging as the innate desire to be part of something larger than ourselves, without sacrificing who we are.

Speaker 2: 3:30

I like it. I like the. Let's not sacrifice ourselves for the greater good? Oh, absolutely. How about you, Ruth?

Speaker 1: 3:36

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in terms of what Beth was just saying that resonates so deeply. I also did not start out to talk about unhiding in my life. I probably was the furthest from wanting to do that, as someone who hid for 25 years a big part of myself. I actually started in the nonprofit space. I was a nonprofit leader and CEO who was focused on young people and helping them express themselves, helping them think about college access and college success, mentoring and education, and it wasn't until I was in a conversation about actually DEI that I started to realize I had been hiding a huge part of myself and I had not shared that with the world. I hadn't shared it with myself, so I had been.

Speaker 1: 4:26

I was born with a disability. I hadn't shared it with myself, so I had been. I was born with a disability. I was born with a limb difference and for your listeners that means I was born missing my left hand, part of my left hand, and when I was 13, I started tucking it in my pocket. When you go off to a new high school, I think some of us have those flashes of what high school can feel like, where it's oh, I have to fit in. Do I make friends? Am I going to get along with people? Who am I going to sit with at lunch? Like all those feelings of high school. And I started hiding at that time and didn't realize the impact it was having on how I was showing up, how I was connecting with people, and didn't even know there was a tool or a conversation or word that could help unhide.

Speaker 1: 5:10

And so that's where I've spent the last few years really delving into that research, delving into what was the process of unhiding and then finding out honestly, beth and Mel and Francesca, that most of us are hiding something about ourselves, and it's exhausting and it's lonely and we come up with a narrative that we think we're the only ones.

Speaker 2: 5:31

Yeah, I don't think we are. I think that's, ruth I, why I love what you're doing so much, because you can't have belonging without unhiding yourself too. So I'm so excited to talk about how these things align together. And yeah, I think we've all can relate to that feeling of not belonging through high school for sure, but some I used to joke often that corporate environments can often feel like high school, where there are certainly cliques or in groups and out groups and navigating political landmines and then, for various reasons, to fit into those groups, you change yourself. I tried to hide my New England accent, but someone called out the R that I add on idea, just little things like that. I think we all do things to try to hide who we are. But today is the purpose of today is like how do we get people comfortable with thinking about belonging differently and what that could look like and how to unhide themselves? So I appreciate it. I'm going to hand it over to Francesca. She's going to dive into how we define it. So thanks.

Speaker 3: 6:30

I think both of these topics are so important in and of themselves, and I know, beth, you started by talking about how belonging is this innate desire to be something or to be part of something bigger than ourselves, without sacrificing ourselves, yes, which I think is your contribution there is there without sacrificing ourselves, which is critical, right. And then I think the unhiding piece, too, I'm curious about just to ground ourselves on how both of these things show up at work, the belonging piece and the unhiding piece. And, beth, I guess we're taking your definition. Is there anything in addition to your core definition about how this shows up at work?

Speaker 4: 7:09

Yeah, there's a lot to say here, and what's really most interesting and probably most confusing to people is they think the opposite of belonging is exclusion. That's one of the biggest misconceptions in the workplace, when in reality, the opposite of belonging is fitting in. Misconceptions in the workplace when in reality the opposite of belonging is fitting in. And why I believe that with so much passion is because fitting in means giving up a part of yourself to be part of something else. Where belonging doesn't require you to give up who you are, it means being who you are right.

Speaker 4: 7:40

A lot of us in the workplace in particular will hide. A lot of us in the workplace in particular will hide, as we know, different parts. They may mask or they may cover or flat out just hide, and we think it's going to make us feel like we belong harder, and that's just not true. It never ends well. I think Ruth's story is so brilliant and so powerful because, a it's real, b all of us can relate to something. And C we understand it right. So I'm sure, ruth, for you all of this is advanced common sense, because you've been living with it forever. And for listeners out there, there's probably something that you feel that you're hiding as well, or you're trying so hard to fit in that you're sacrificing what makes you, and that's going to take a toll. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 8:30

Ruth, are you seeing that too, as you're looking at like on hiding at work too? How are you seeing this come to fruition for people?

Speaker 1: 8:36

Yeah, I think it's what and, beth, you started it so perfectly in terms of that sacrificing yourself part, because that's where it shows up. And I think the other piece that, francesca, you were intimating also is that need to be in corporate. And how is it, how are you fitting in? Because that's a piece that we're told often like we want you to be a good culture fit, we want you to fit in. So that means sometimes sacrificing a piece of yourself, right, or downplaying a piece of yourself or covering a piece of yourself, and for some it actually means to what you said, beth. It means hiding part of yourself, and that comes from we all have a need to want to be accepted right. There's the acceptance piece to this, and I think about it in terms of why I look at.

Speaker 1: 9:22

What's the underlying piece of that? It comes from a fear of rejection, a fear of judgment, a fear of Really. I had a friend recently who said to me I haven't shared part of my health diagnosis out loud because I'm afraid of being pitied. So there's that fear there too. A lot of this is wrapped up in shame, this idea of if I share this part of myself, someone will reject me, someone will judge me. Someone won't give me a promotion because of it. I won't be seen as a leader. I've had women even in 2025, who don't share that they have kids at work because they're afraid of someone saying they're into their motherhood, they care more about their kids. They're not really on track for promotion. So I'm not going to share that part. And that's sacrificing yourself. That is absolutely sacrificing yourself to fit in, to go home. So I do. I think about it, how it shows up.

Speaker 1: 10:18

I think the other piece I would add on is in the workplace. Many of us were taught a very old school mentality around leadership and a framework around leadership. We were taught that you're not supposed to share things about yourself. You're supposed to keep people at arm's length. You're supposed to be, not be vulnerable and not share challenges. You're supposed to be strong, and the definition of strong was the idea of a mask of armor around yourself. And so that plays in, because then that's how our employees see us. So then they can't make mistakes, either because they're afraid oh, I'm going to be, I'm going to upset them or I'm not going to. I need to be perfect. There's a full affection piece to unhiding yeah, oh go ahead, beth, sorry, no, I was just thinking about you.

Speaker 4: 11:03

made me think, ruth, about duck syndrome. Right, that's when you start to see certain things evolve like duck syndrome, where people make it look so effortless and then they're peddling their little feet so hard to keep up in the name of resilience at times or fitting in or all the things, and we're all hardwired for deep human connection, but there's something about us that makes us feel unworthy of it. That seems to feel like the universal work experience these days.

Speaker 3: 11:30

Which is totally nuts, because I think about the archetype of leadership, ruth, that you were talking about, and what it takes to get there, beth, in terms of the duck syndrome, and it feels like we've all grown up in this archetype of the sports leader, the coach or the war hero. Right, you have to be Shackleton or you have to be the freaking coach from Miracle on Ice. It's one of these two.

Speaker 3: 11:52

And when you unpack any of those things. Yes, they demonstrated these certain behaviors, but then, behind the scenes, they were masking shit too, and so this is all built on a farce from Get.

Speaker 4: 12:04

Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is you said something that caught my attention. We would like to mirror these performance coaches, but here's the thing Performance coaches are invested in their athletes' health and their well-being. Where they'll stop you if you're overdoing it or you're going to burn yourself out. Workplace rewards it. The more sweat and tears you put into it, you're getting promoted, girl. And the thing is it makes us want to work harder and we also think that our sacrifice will make us belong harder, and that's why sacrificial belonging makes sense to most people. It's giving up a part of yourself, consciously or subconsciously, for the greater good and, spoiler alert, it never works. Never. It doesn't make you feel any better.

Speaker 1: 12:48

No. And to add on to that too, I think there's a piece around. A symptom of it is also overachieving right or overcompensating. This need to keep the duck feet going, or sometimes even to loud yourself with in terms of this is how much I'm doing Like this is how much I'm constantly overachieving or overcompensating so that I get ahead, so that nobody will look at that other part of myself that I'm hiding in some ways, and also then I don't have to share it with anyone, I can overcompensate for it and it's exhausting when you think about psychological safety and its role in nurturing belonging or creating spaces where people can unhide.

Speaker 2: 13:43

What does that? What does good psychological safety look like in the workplace?

Speaker 4: 13:47

to support it it's a good question. I think psychological safety is the feeling of being safe, no matter what environment you are to be able to speak up to speak your truth, to speak truth to power, and I think it's all the things. The interesting thing is, in order to have a strong sense of belonging, psychological safety needs to be table stakes. It doesn't mean you'll necessarily have that sense of belonging or maybe this aspirational sense of belonging that you may be searching for, but you really can't go through the workplace feeling that belonging uncertainty, for example which is the silent killer and feel safe at the same time. Those thoughts don't exist together and most psychological safety is based on a positive. So when you're starting with a negative and you're trying to combat it with negative forces, like sacrifice or any thwarted feelings in general, it's going to end badly, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:44

It's funny when I speak, I often ask people, the organizer, I say what does success look like? When I finish the speech, what will?

Speaker 4: 14:53

it look like.

Speaker 1: 14:53

They say oh, there's an awareness raised that people will feel like they're digging into themselves but also their coworkers. And then one organizer said to me it would be great if everyone could unhide something. And I said absolutely not. And she said what do you mean? I said I'm not trying to create a Jerry Springer viral moment here with people. That's not the goal. I want people to feel safe. I said the only way that I will even consider doing this is if the leader, the CEO, goes first. And the organizer said that's never going to happen.

Speaker 1: 15:31

I said I know, so why would we expect others to unhide if it's not safe? Because I really spend a lot of time in my space thinking about how was I as a leader, when did I create that psychological safety for others? When did I model it myself in terms of creating that space? Because it is about leaders going first in terms of creating psychological safety, being vulnerable, creating that safe place. And I think the thing that I sorry I would just add on to this is the idea of sometimes we hide and it keeps people feeling comfortable and safe. Also, there is a payoff to hiding in terms of creating safety and psychological safety for others, sometimes because maybe it's too much, and so I think about it on both ends. Why do we hide? And then, how are those around us? How are we creating that safe, comfortable space for them?

Speaker 4: 16:25

Absolutely. I'm going to chime in because we do those things on purpose, because the hiding sometimes feels better than facing something head on that may feel really uncomfortable. I talk about this a lot in the book about the different disorders that are related to the workplace, and one of them happens to be avoidance disorder, and I would raise my hand and tell you that I'm amongst the worst, in fact, in a way that makes every leader that I've ever had feel better about me. There's sometimes when I've had leaders in the past I haven't maybe talked to them for a month or so and a one-on-one will come up and I'm like there's just too much to say and they're so busy. So I'll go to them and I'll cancel and I'll be like I don't have that much and you're busy, they love it. It's almost like it's addictive. The last leader I had that I said that and I did that with said to me you, just you're the best.

Speaker 4: 17:14

I can't understand how I got so lucky and, truthfully, what I had to force myself to the next time was to let her know that I was avoiding her and it was incredibly uncomfortable because she did nothing to warrant it. I need to also make that very clear it was on me. It was a story I was telling myself that she was too busy, that I wasn't as important, that she had bigger fish to fry. I could keep going and going, but the reality of the situation is that I was not comfortable communicating with her because so much time kept passing. So I'm sure there's other people out there that are listening. That may get that very well and, like I said, it's often rewarded because you're giving time back in someone's mind.

Speaker 2: 18:00

I think we've all been there, right when we're like, I just don't want to bother them, so I'm not going to ask. I'll suffer in silence over here it's fine, but death by a million, it's fine where the hell am I going with this Is where is the line Like?

Speaker 3: 18:26

if it's psychological safety, like a bell curve right when you want to create as much safety for people to feel like they're comfortable, but not too much safety where they're too comfortable. Does this make sense?

Speaker 4: 18:36

Yes, it does, because there's comfort, and then there's also self-awareness. A lot of times people ask me that all the time, is it safe to bring your authentic self to work? Yes, but you should not be in spots that you shouldn't be loyal, in spots that your brain can't get you out of. And it's the same thing with psychological safety. Knowing and being self-aware has to accompany it. It really does. There's things that are just not appropriate, and those are typically not necessarily related to your identity.

Speaker 2: 19:07

Or necessarily right for the workplace. That's right, yeah, when you think about a professional environment versus a personal environment.

Speaker 3: 19:15

Ruth, do you feel like you could bring your authentic self to work?

Speaker 1: 19:18

No, and I you know what. I don't even actually always advise it quite yet, because I think that we're not totally set up for it. I think that sometimes in the workplace we don't have the coaches and the supports and the leaders who are willing to go first and the support that it requires, because what it may mean to bring my authentic self to work if I'm someone and maybe it's one of your listeners as well is bringing my depression forward right.

Speaker 1: 19:44

That authentic self. It may mean the caretaking responsibilities that I have at home, that I'm afraid to tell somebody that because somebody is going to say, oh, you know what, you're more interested in taking care of your child or your parent or your child or somebody in your life, and so I'm not totally convinced that we're there yet. I would love that to be the North Star, where we could bring our best selves to work, because that's what I'm invested in is how do we bring our best selves to work? I will say, even with that though there's a caveat to me in terms of my work that I talk about strategic hiding that sometimes feels okay to hide part of yourself because it's not advantageous to whether you're in a lawsuit or you're in a negotiation or you're in something that bringing your authentic self would damage or hurt you in terms of that space. So I think about it as strategic hiding. How do we allow for ourselves to discern when we unhide, when we create that space for ourselves? Is it a safe environment?

Speaker 1: 20:48

I was at a speed dating thing recently and I was thinking about my hand and did it feel safe to share it with people in a seven minute cycle where you're going around and checking in. Did it feel safe in that moment? It's about having agency, about when do we choose to unhide, when do we choose to hide. So I get the choice of when do I share that out? And I think that's the same with any aspect, whether it's we hide parts of our past, whether it's we hide parts of our present, or even I've had people share that they hide parts of their dreams and aspirations. So it's that when do we share it so that we can feel supported? That's when I think about spreading, and how is it holding us back? What are some of?

Speaker 2: 21:30

the like signals that someone can look for or kind of pay attention for to or for in order to make those split decision thing, split decisions around whether it's safe to unhide, or what does that look like for both of you?

Speaker 4: 21:50

That's a really great question. So I, through the conversation, I was thinking about one of the types of belonging which is called dissimulated belonging, and it's confusing to people. Truthfully, dissimulated belonging is when you do feel a sense of belonging, but maybe not in the context you're in. Let's just say that Ruth is a phenomenal employee, but she's just not the corporate cheerleader and, by the way, she doesn't want to be and she's happy. But we all know the workplace wants corporate cheerleaders. We want everyone rolling out the drink cart for happy hour and we want everyone to be able to go after work. After you've just spent nine hours with your nearest and dearest and spend another five hours with them, and there's some people that get their purpose outside of work, which sounds blasphemous to some of us. So dissimulated belonging is a great example of people that are very happy with their sense of belonging, right, and they may just need to get out of there because why not? But it's never acceptable to say that right.

Speaker 4: 22:45

I hear time and time again there was a work event and I need to go work out after work, but I lied and I said I have to get home because my commute is too long and I'm going to pick up work when I get home and then everyone's like oh, that makes sense.

Speaker 4: 22:58

And why should we have to hide the fact that we don't necessarily want to be a workhorse, because that's what gets us promoted, or to be seen better in people's eyes. It's really sad when the state of the world is that that is a factor in promotion. I know you both know this very well. I think what we used to say in the early 2000s which makes me cringe every time is we would be at the promotion table with I don't know, it might've been like a 50 bucks. Then now it's two bucks or four bucks and we'd be like can you get a drink with him? Guys, remember that one or dissimulated belongers. They have a sense of belonging. It's just not in your workplace and, by the way, they don't feel bad about it. It's usually everyone around them and that's yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:46

I've also had the. They're accused of not really being in it. If they don't go to the happy hour, or it's like this. It's a, and then it becomes a culture fit issue. Oh, they don't really want it.

Speaker 4: 23:55

Some people also don't want to hang with their boss after work. Yeah, boss is not. It's never the most comfortable situation and it doesn't matter how close you are, because sometimes that's even harder in that right. So I think that's one great example of hiding that takes place. That's appropriate, because we're not all built the same and we all get different motivations, and most of us don't like to share when it's not work that it's their motivating factor.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Yeah, sometimes bosses don't want to go to the happy hour. Oh yeah, so I totally understand that, and sometimes they do, and then they're like nobody wants me here. But, I think the other piece to some of this is, as leaders and managers, we focus a lot on performance.

Speaker 1: 24:40

We focus on productivity and sometimes we forget about people Right, and we make a lot of assumptions about behavior rather than checking in, and so I'm a big proponent of what do those pause check-ins look like, right, when you first sit down with someone with your full agenda, how do you create space to find out how they are, how you can support them? How do you slow it down a little bit? Because I think again, I sometimes I own my leadership style for years. How do we slow it down a little bit so that we can have the conversation about how are you doing? How can I support you? What's going on?

Speaker 1: 25:16

I'm noticing some things in your work, just so people have a space, a safe space, to be able to talk about it, and that it's consistent, because there's definitely research out there. That's talking about consistency, and there's also research about I think I guess the first piece to all of this Francesca and Mel and Beth is naming it right. So we have to be able to name that. Hiding is universal. Most of us are doing it at some point.

Speaker 1: 25:39

What does it look like? How is it holding you back? Deloitte did a study 60% of people are hiding. Randstadt, the HR survey, did a survey recently that said that 68% of Gen Z the ones that have all the apps and all the social media that we think oh, they're out there all the time they talk about 68% of them are hiding and they don't trust their leaders to unhide too, so they just keep their noses down in their work and they're like I'll get through it. That is not existence, that is not freedom, that is not joy, that is not belonging.

Speaker 2: 26:10

It's got to be really bad for business too, when you think about it, right, because what are you missing out on by not nurturing these types of environments? I'm going to hand it over to Francesca to talk about that, because I'd love to hear about the cost.

Speaker 3: 26:24

Yeah, I'm going to start, I'm going to try to say I want to separate these two because I'm curious if there is a difference in the cost. And I'm going to start, ruth, with you, without a hiding piece of it what is the cost of hiding at work? And you can take that from the employee, from the org, from the manager. What's the cost?

Speaker 1: 26:39

Yeah, I think there's a personal cost and I think there's a professional cost. I like to split them. The personal cost is it's exhausting. It takes a toll on our mental and our physical health. That is a big piece of it. It is lonely in terms of you think you're the only one, so you sit there and you're like, oh, nobody's going to understand this. So there's this loneliness, isolation piece to it. And then there's also feeling disconnected. That's that belonging piece that I think Beth talks about and I want to even hear more and dig into that piece. So there's that personal piece.

Speaker 1: 27:10

And then from a professional piece, when we're hiding, we don't feel as engaged right Our company, even as leaders, we're not as engaged. We don't feel the same sense of loyalty to the company that we're working for. The retention suffers. That's a big piece of when you're hiding.

Speaker 1: 27:26

And then the last piece, which I think is probably one of the most critical pieces in terms of the bottom line of any business, is innovation. Innovation suffers when you are so sitting there worried about how much if somebody finds out this thing about me, or wow, I didn't go to the right school, or my education's not high enough, or my finances aren't what they're supposed to be, or my relationship status. It is preoccupying your mind that you don't get a chance to be as innovative and as creative as you need to be, and I can tell you, as someone who was born with a difference, I spent my life being creative, but when I hid that, that got taken away because I was so spent so much time in that other space of hiding, and so that retention, that engagement and that innovation are lacking, and even our leadership then lacks because we don't feel connected to our teams.

Speaker 3: 28:20

Yeah, and those are big costs and all things that are absolutely needed, right, yeah?

Speaker 4: 28:26

So I can tell you that employee engagement costs the US anywhere between $450 and $550 billion annually. That's pretty sad and crazy. And if we want to dive a little deeper, when it's loneliness driven or stress related in particular, it costs $154 billion annually are stress-related in particular, it costs $154 billion annually. That's just unbelievable. It feels like the things we're putting in place are really killing a fly with a hammer. There's nothing more to that, and a lot of the times these things could be fixed with just simple care. That's what's scary.

Speaker 4: 29:00

Employees that feel excluded are 50% more likely to leave than those who feel a strong sense of belonging. Okay, so we think about this. We think of belonging uncertainty, which I always call the silent killer, which leads to presenteeism, where employees are physically present, they're all mentally checked out, and there's so many varieties of disengagement when care costs us very little and I always say to people that feel like unhiding or belonging is a bit hokier because it has anything to do with emotions Then if you don't want to, if you want to look at it in a bottom lines numbers kind of game, then look at the disengagement and look how much it's costing you. We used to say something like it costs one to two times a person's salary and now they're estimating it's four times. Oh wow, because it goes beyond the onboarding and the retention, the recruiting and the different efforts. It cycles back to the top level vision and problems the company's face.

Speaker 3: 29:56

All those like the 2x, the 3x, the 4x numbers. I think what's interesting about those is one is that scales right. It scales from individual contributor up to exact right and I believe me, I've met disengaged C-level folks. This isn't just a manager or a frontline person, this is all the way to the top, which is massive. The other thing I'm curious about, too, is especially when you have a leader who's disengaged, a leader that doesn't feel like they belong, like that's got to cast a shadow in an organization. I just I can't. I cannot believe that you could have a disengaged leader or someone that doesn't feel like they belong or someone that feels like they're hiding, yet they're creating an organization that has that.

Speaker 4: 30:38

Do you see that? Yeah, it's in the research that I've done. What happens to the leader, and I will say this. So psychological safety does focus around the fact that the leader needs to build that safety, but what happens when the leader needs to build it for themselves?

Speaker 4: 30:52

I often feel like the workplace demands so much of leaders, and what about their safety? That being said, I know that the leaders are mostly causing the harm, so I'm not naive in that sense. But when leaders themselves don't feel a sense of belonging, it permeates in so many different ways, including a lot of armchair therapy. That happens with your subordinates who don't know what they're doing. And since people look to their leaders in times of change, yes, it's killing the innovation that Ruth talked about but it's also can be really soul crushing because, unfortunately, people think their leaders are better than them. They look to their leaders to know more than them, and that's just not always the case.

Speaker 4: 31:31

That's why, in truthfulness, we talked about leadership training. But I'll tell you, I'm one of those people that never received leadership training until I was like 10 to 15 years. In. Leaders are typically made, not born, that way, and so most of us were promoted because we were just really good at our jobs. So there's this unfair standard, and now, especially, most workplaces expect their leaders to have an element of psychology that we've never been trained for.

Speaker 3: 31:59

Yeah, nor do we have time for right. It's Mel and I are pulling the longitudinal data on, like the amount of direct reports managers have right now has almost doubled Like you have more to do. You have more resources or more direct reports, more on your plate, and now, all of a sudden, you need to be a therapist and maybe you went through manager training and you're not getting leadership training until you're a VP or an SVP or an EVP, so everyone in between is like fighting for themselves, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 32:29

And the workforce is changing too.

Speaker 1: 32:32

In terms of newer to the workforce, there is a level of transparency that they're demanding from leadership in a very interesting and intense way, really political correct here. That's a piece of it. And then also, you have, for the first time, one of the blessings of what came out of COVID is the opportunity to talk about mental health for the first time, especially as leaders, and honestly even owning it for themselves, right, and being able to talk about it. And yet how? To your point, leaders are required to do a lot right now and employees are demanding, and yet we have this old, this way that we were trained, if we did get training, or even if we just watched leaders ahead of us. In terms of that osmosis, training of this is the way leaders are supposed to be, and it hasn't caught up in terms of how and that's why, where I spend my time, even like you, beth, thinking about graduate schools, right, or even where that college is thinking about what do leaders need and what are they going to need in terms of this work?

Speaker 3: 33:33

And organizationally, how do we set up systems that they can actually operate within too? It's like the two different components of it for sure, right.

Speaker 4: 33:40

Think about all the return to work, all the things that leaders have to deal with. If you're a leader who works from home and then you have because you're in a remote office, then you have to enforce other people Right After. You've just talked about the fact of how great it is to have no commute or the things that you can get done or how you're supplementing that time with things that are healthy for you, and then you have to take that away from others.

Speaker 2: 34:03

It's pretty taxing things that are healthy for you and then you have to take that away from others.

Speaker 2: 34:07

It's pretty taxing. It's funny when we were coming out of COVID we had a friend share a story with us like the catalyst, as we started to talk about building this podcast, which the first episode idea officially was something like Gucci sweaters and lake house dreams, because I think our friend mentioned they were in an all handshands meeting about returning to office while the leader was in their second lake house talking about being at their lake house wearing a very expensive Gucci sweater and just not thinking about the impact on folks with what that does for their team. Love to hear what you can do as an individual, if, if you're a leader, or really what orgs should be doing. So we talked a little bit about individual right and what it means to bring your authentic self and how you can evaluate that. But what other advice would you give to individuals here who are struggling with hiding or struggling with belonging? What advice would you give or strategies to those individuals? Ruth, you want to go first.

Speaker 1: 35:29

No, you can go first. I definitely have a framework, so I'm ready for that.

Speaker 4: 35:33

So if we're talking about individuals, I like to say that you control the narrative. So everyone wants one-on-one time with their leaders. Build the agenda, make sure that you're taking control of that. I often say the exact same thing to leaders is that's your employees' time with you. So, while you may come into the meeting with at least like 15 checklist items you need to do because you need to report to someone else that's their time with you. Your job in that meeting is to meet them where they're at.

Speaker 4: 36:04

The number one thing that our employees want from leaders is care. Right, it's not, I wish. Every single time I hear this, people are like oh trust, oh respect, and it's always care. And care has a really large spectrum thoughtfulness, candor, advocacy. There's so many components to it. And when you tell, when you as an individual go to your manager and you're able to have a conversation with them about what it means to be successful in role, it also is a wake-up call for them to say what is successful as a leader, right, how are people going to want to follow me?

Speaker 4: 36:40

So I always say to individuals is to build the agenda and to make sure that your leaders are sticking with it. At the same time, leaders, when you're opening up your calls with people, the first thing on your mouth should be what can I do for you? What interference can I remove? And as you walk through that agenda with them, start to also remember what's important to that person. You need to get to know them outside of this little Zoom box here and you need to be able to know what's important. And that may be. You may be thinking to yourself I don't know what they do on the weekends and I don't know what's important to them, but that's not what I mean. What values do they have? What do they like about their jobs? And make sure at all costs that you do something that helps light them up.

Speaker 3: 37:23

Really huge.

Speaker 4: 37:24

You want to always make sure that you're doing things that show them that you know who they are, and that's really one of the biggest things that helps change our sense of longing in the workplace.

Speaker 1: 37:36

Ruth, yeah, and I think where Beth and I definitely overlap is that it's a choice, right. It's a powerful choice that you get to make, and I think that holds true with unhiding as well. And for me there's a four-step framework that I created in whether it's an individual, or I was just meeting with someone who inherited a really toxic quote, unquote team and I said try this framework. And so the first step is acknowledging it, right Only, like creating a space of awareness, like whether it's again as an individual or whether it's a leader or whether it's managing a team. It's the idea of acknowledge what's happening, like create awareness, and I, you can do that through journaling, you can do that through therapy, through meditation, through just taking a silent moment to be a little bit what I call self-centered, right, like centering on yourself and think about that space. The second piece to it is inviting someone in, and I imagine when I say that second step, somebody immediately comes to your mind, right, somebody, whether it's an HR leader, whether it's your manager, whether it's a coworker, whether it's a friend, to say, hey, here's what's happening. When that person came to me with a toxic work environment, I said what's beautiful about what you're doing is you're inviting each person in one-on-one, not making this a group, collective thing, but starting to talk about individual behavior, talking about inviting them in. Here's what I'm seeing, same with hiding how am I showing up? What am I holding back? How is hiding, holding me back and inviting that one person in that you can share that with? I imagine the people I think about as the cheat sheet is somebody who shows empathy, somebody who asks questions with kindness and curiosity, someone who's willing to reveal a little bit about themselves and share their own journey with you, someone who asks questions. That's the person I'd be looking for in that second step.

Speaker 1: 39:34

The third step, after you've acknowledged it and you've invited someone in, is about how do you then build community? And we've all seen those employee resource groups or business resource groups. They actually can If you step back. They have a lot of power because there's a shared experience in terms of people who have gone through them. There you can find meetups and community organizations, finding spaces where you don't feel so alone in this. These steps are small, but they're powerful.

Speaker 1: 40:04

And then the fourth step is scaring out your own journey so that somebody else can see themselves in you and they can start on their own journey of unhiding. They can start on their own journey. That same leader who said I have this toxic work environment, start on their own journey. That same leader who said I have this toxic work environment. I said, once you've gotten through a lot of it and gotten your team to the place they need to be, I can imagine and I would probably bet money on this, and I don't bet money easily but that there is another team within the organization that could use what you just did to their benefit in terms of creating their team and improving their team. So, sharing out that story so that somebody else can learn and start their own journey, and mapping it out, that's where I think about unhiding.

Speaker 2: 40:46

I think that's really powerful. And what you were just sharing actually made me think of Beth One identifying the one person to share it with. So I love Ruth like that. How do you identify that person? What are the markers? But then, beth, it made me think of your story with your boss. What, just bringing it back to that personal story, what gave you the courage to finally share, what made it safe for you the avoidance.

Speaker 4: 41:11

For me, what made it safe was probably less to do about her and more to do about me. I was just going, I was going out of my mind. I I'm so tired of being so nervous before every one-on-one, and I did wind up telling her that and she was like me. I'm the one who makes you nervous, and we had a great conversation around it. I'm like you make everyone nervous. She's like you've got thick skin and at the same time, maybe I didn't.

Speaker 4: 41:39

When it comes to her, and what she had told me which was really wonderful and showed me care, maybe not in the direction she was meaning it was that she sees me as a person that she wants to build thicker, even thicker skin with. So every single time I go to hide, she's going to stop me. So every single time I go to hide, she's going to stop me. And it's not because she wants to control me. It's because she really wants me to be a better version of myself, because I told her I need to be a better version. So she's not controlling me or making me be something I'm not. She's, in fact, bringing out a better part of me and let's be honest, isn't that why we all got into leadership?

Speaker 4: 42:15

Because you want to coach and grow people? I did for the money, yeah, because you love filling out a million forms. That's right. It just does it for you, but that's it, and I think what was really fascinating is that changed our entire dynamic. It really did. I think that most people weren't very honest with her and they were just yesing her and I think, out of everyone I've ever met, she's the last person you do that with and most of our leaders don't want to be. Yes, they really do want honesty from people, but her entire conversation that's just not always easy to do. Yeah, Scary.

Speaker 3: 42:51

The one thing I have always thought about as a leader is it's really those one-on-ones are so important and when you start moving them or canceling them, or if somebody starts canceling them with me, that's like a non-negotiable Like we are. This is your time, this is sacred time, Because I think that in and of itself shows care just to keep those consistent and keep those on the calendar. So it's meaningful to you as the leader as well.

Speaker 4: 43:20

Oh yeah, consistency is care. That's absolutely true. Honestly, one of my best and brightest I've ever had the fortune of leading said that to me. He said you give me such anxiety because you move meetings. And I know that you have valid reasons and I thought to myself oh my goodness, an excuse, no matter how many, how valid, is a bad book. And I've never moved that person's one-on-one, and it's been years and years and, by the way, we still talk about it. He still can't believe what the impact had and as a leader, I had no idea. So, leaders, if you're out there listening, don't change your one-on-one times as much as you can keep them consistent.

Speaker 1: 44:06

It means the world to people, yeah, and if you put your hand up to say I just need five minutes, go find the person after the five minutes so that they can know that you do want to see them and care about find them. Yeah, because I think we also. I think what you're also touching on, beth, is especially in the example you gave is sometimes we have that unreliable narrator in our head right that tells us that this person is this or I'm this to them, or like we don't, and we don't pause to check it out. We don't stop and get the actual this is a tough one actual, accurate information. Yes, I didn't add another A on there, but that's a piece of it is this unreliable narrator who is giving us false information, sometimes trying to keep us safe because, oh, maybe that boss was super scary at times or maybe you know what you weren't ready for a meeting, but it's the idea of yeah, how do we check out that unreliable narrator?

Speaker 2: 44:56

I always ask my coaching clients to ask themselves what evidence do I have to show this is true? What evidence do you have? And often when they pause to think about that, they're like you know what? I really don't have evidence to prove that. So it's such a just even that one question can help with that. I'd love to move to like organization-wide, because leaders will wait for the the last because they get dumped on everything. So, from an org standpoint because I do think it starts at the org level, they set the tone right. When you think about how organizations can implement either strategies or policy, workplace policies around, how we work around here, what are some things that they can do to better foster environments where people have greater belonging or can feel safe to unhide. What does that look like? Or what have you seen? That's good.

Speaker 4: 45:48

I would take a look at taking all the unwritten rules and writing them down. It's one of the first things I say. It's the easiest low-hanging fruit Things like PTO. It's the easiest low-hanging fruit Things like PTO, which is meant to de-stress people, stresses them out terribly. Oh, my goodness, I had three weeks before, but the second I take more than one week. Someone jumps all over me. There's so many things that just need a bit of clarification, because clear is kind. So all the unwritten rules and all the social contracts start breaking them and writing them down.

Speaker 1: 46:20

And I think I would add on to it unwritten rules and all the social contracts, start breaking them and writing them down, and I think I would add on to it, I guess, the thing that as you're talking about like organizations, though, are people right. So it's like leader. I do look at leaders and I do think about leadership, and I think it's a two-way street. If leaders are willing, if we're asking leaders to be vulnerable and do all these things, employees have to meet us also halfway, right, like it has to be. It's a two way street, and I do. I think that there's a space around training.

Speaker 1: 46:48

I do think that there's a space, like it's the dirty little secret that even most CEOs I know have executive coaches. Right, there's a reason for it, and yet they don't talk about it, because it's like the idea that, oh, you're weak if you have that, or you don't know what you're doing, and yet why is it such a dirty little secret? Why are people hiding it? Like it's that space of this is. Actually it's like people who go to therapy being like, oh, I don't want to talk about going to therapy, it actually makes you stronger. So we can start to normalize leadership, executive coaching and training and what those pieces and starting with people. That's why going back to colleges and education around leadership is so important, because that's that informs the organization, because an organization is just as a typically just a spreadsheet or a what do you call it A hierarchy and or building. It's actually who's in there and are they thinking about these topics that we're bringing up today?

Speaker 2: 47:42

Because they're critical. They really are. I agree with you. I think recently I think it was Culture Amp they put out an article, that famous quote oh, people don't leave organizations, they leave their direct managers. They did further research on that and found that even if you had the worst manager or the best manager in the world, you're more likely to leave if senior leadership doesn't model the behavior that supports leaders. So, like, when I think of like organization wide, I think of that like C-suite senior leadership team, that really it starts with them from the top. And I couldn't agree with you more, Ruth, about I wish coaching just started from the day you join through the day you leave as an alumni, Like it's just like therapy, like it just supports you to be better and to be better with other people.

Speaker 1: 48:27

And then sometimes isn't seen as it shouldn't be seen as a punishment, like you're not punished because you actually see an executive coach, or we recommend that. It's the idea of yeah, and I'm even I don't know if I'm totally even convinced that it's always about senior leadership. Sometimes it is. It's the training about how do we value the space. Yeah, I think there's a lot here to unpack.

Speaker 3: 48:49

I actually feel like, given what is going on in the world right now, I would arm every C-level executive with a coach, with a therapist, if they were ready for it and if they wanted it. But I do not understand how you can go through and lead an organization in these times and not need both of those services at least every three to six months. I really don't. Yeah, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Speaker 2: 49:25

Okay, we have a few listener Q&As and we have about nine minutes left. We'll get to that and then we'll close off on some bold predictions. How does that sound? Love it.

Speaker 3: 49:30

All right, francesca, I am great. We have four questions that came in. I will do my best to read them and then whoever would like to answer them. Fantastic, here we go. I've been told to bring my full self to work, but when I speak up or show more personality, I sometimes feel like it backfires. I worry about being judged or seen as unprofessional. How can I balance authenticity with workplace expectations?

Speaker 1: 49:52

I can try this one.

Speaker 1: 49:54

This is where I spend time. I do. I think it's about finding a culture fit in terms of your authentic self. Where will they value that space of you? And if they're not valuing it, I'm not saying you have to leave every job, but are there spaces within that organization that you can be your best self? Because I don't even know if it's.

Speaker 1: 50:12

Again, authentic is the right word. I think it's how do you bring your best self where you get the support you need? And if you're not getting it from a manager or your coworkers, are there other opportunities to find it? And have you asked? Have you gone through the process of asking?

Speaker 1: 50:26

And again, it's not trying to make it a viral moment, it's about trying to think about taking those small steps. So how can you get the support you need around that best self or where you need support? So it's I think about it as small steps and thinking about where are those safe environments where you can be vulnerable or where others are modeling that? And then leaning into those employee resource groups, leaning into the spaces or coworkers where you can and, if all else fails, find a new job. And I'm not saying that lightly, I am serious when I say it is find a culture fit where they do appreciate the different perspectives and different experiences that you bring, because that's the work. The North Star here is how do we create workplaces where they do value different experiences and different perspectives?

Speaker 3: 51:15

I also love that you said about asking too, because I think a lot of times people think it's just going to show up or arrive or be obvious, and so much of the time you have to do a little digging before you start looking. Potentially too, beth, anything to add to that?

Speaker 4: 51:30

I always say that if you're worried about the way you're coming across or the way you're showing up, ask advice or ask someone, one person that you trust, whether that's your leader or it's a trusted friend how am I showing up? Because I'm getting a little anxious when I say X, y or Z, do a little gut check, never hurts, yeah.

Speaker 3: 51:47

Yeah, love it. These are small, very doable things that can really have a very big impact. I love that. All right, I'm going to pull this over to you, beth, for the first one, because we're talking about belonging. My company talks a lot about belonging, but in practice it feels like only certain types of people truly fit in. I'm not sure if I'm being too sensitive or if there's a real issue. How can employees tell if a workplace genuinely supports authenticity, and what should they do if they don't feel safe being themselves? I'll start with you, beth.

Speaker 4: 52:16

Been there, done that. So I always like to say, when I talk about it a lot in the book, what does alignment look like, or misalignment? If a company is telling you that their biggest values are trust, respect and the color purple right, there's so many different things Are they wearing purple? Do they trust one another and they're respecting? So when it becomes lip service, that's when we all have that deep disconnect. So you have to really determine whether or not you feel that pull or you feel aligned to it.

Speaker 4: 52:47

If you're not feeling it there, then you really have some things to think about. Whether you're, you know, like when you become in an impasse, our first instinct is to quit. Right, but livelihood is tied to our jobs. That's not realistic for everyone and here's the problem If we don't resolve it within the last place we left, it's going to come with us to every other job.

Speaker 4: 53:08

Okay, so I talk a lot about some nasty bosses I've had in the past and I've talked about the fact that one still follows me. They do, he does, and I can't help it, and I've even made strides to reach out to him and it feels like I was kind to someone that punched me in the face, if that makes sense. So there's ways to do it that you feel that you are going with your gut and you're trusting yourself, but quitting is not one of them, unfortunately. In this situation, I would do a little bit more of a deeper analysis around what the fit looks like against your values and then, if it's not a fit, then I would slowly start to look, because if it's eroding your sense of self or your worth or your identity or your sense of mattering, those are all triggers that it is time to leave. You just need to do it in a time and a space that's going to make your life easier.

Speaker 3: 53:59

All right, I'm going to do one last question just for the sake of time here. Sure, let's get into politics. Just kidding, okay. With the current political climate and companies pulling back on DEI efforts which we know, sometimes belonging and hiding is lumped in there with DEI sometimes I've noticed a shift in how belonging and inclusion are talked about, or not talked about, at work. How should employees and leaders navigate these changes while still advocating for workplaces where everyone feels valued?

Speaker 4: 54:28

So my first bet is to stop shifting to belonging and I know that's really funny from a belonging researcher. But when we impose belonging, there's a whole lot of performance belonging that starts to happen. Right, and, by the way, corporations are not that creative. But when we impose belonging, there's a whole lot of performance belonging that starts to happen. Right, and, by the way, corporations are not that creative. If I hear one more you belong here slogan as the theme of 2025, because the thing is, it's not that easy and belonging is not something that others decide for you. That's inclusion.

Speaker 4: 54:54

So if you want to make it a more inclusive environment, I welcome it. If you want to tell people they belong, I caution you, because that is a beautiful sentiment, but it's not always the case. And then employees feel really bad or like it's just them or something's wrong with them and that's not the outcome we want for them, right? I don't think companies set out to ruin people's lives I don't but at the same time, those are the outcomes. So I personally think and I do have research that really pulls them apart from one another Diversity, equity, inclusion, equality they're all so important. Don't lump them together and don't call them belonging just because you want to really substitute for something that is being unfortunately torn away from people.

Speaker 3: 55:37

Yeah, that's a brilliant point, ruth. What would you add there?

Speaker 1: 55:41

Yeah, I would recognize that this is happening. I think that's a so I'm glad you asked the question because if it hadn't come up, I think that it impacts both the work that Beth and I do and also the work that you are doing, mel and Francesca. In terms of DEI specifically and I think that's it's funny I was on a panel a year ago and it was before a lot of this real serious backlash. There was beginning backlash that we've been feeling and people feeling excluded in some ways. What DEI didn't do well is it had some people feeling excluded from the conversation and there was a really powerful speaker that I was on the panel with and he said you know what?

Speaker 1: 56:17

I'm going to start calling it a humanity practice, because nobody can start to argue with that, and I thought that was really beautiful because we are all about humanity. We're about different. How do we start to again value those different perspectives and those different experiences from employees and to leaders and to the organization? How do we start to really create space for that? Because that is going to drive business, that is going to be the impact on innovation and creativity, that impacts retention and engagement. Those differences that we bring are actually the gifts that we have. So I know that DEI, quote, unquote is going away and this kind of falls into the last my bold prediction. But I'm going to these bold predictions.

Speaker 2: 57:22

I have some targeted questions first. So, ruth, I don't know if we'll get to it right away, but I want to save it, so we have to make time for that. Five years from now, guys are workplaces getting this right. What do you think?

Speaker 1: 57:39

Think about 2020 to 2025, right. What do you think? Think about 2020 to 2025, right, that's a five-year segment, right. What did we get right and what did we not? Based on a huge pandemic. So I think about culture that way too.

Speaker 4: 57:51

What are we going?

Speaker 1: 57:51

to oh, that's a tough one. I don't know. I don't. I think if you had asked me yeah, if you had asked us a month ago, maybe six weeks ago.

Speaker 1: 58:06

I'd be different. Maybe I don't. I think that there's going to be a. I think we are going to get it right, because I yeah, I'm going to be positive on this one, I'm going to own it, because I think there are enough of us that are upset and seeing what's happening and we've had a taste of what it can look like to value difference and what it can be like to feel like we are included. And I'm scared to say, beth, but we have a taste of it, right, so we can't go back. When you see something, you can't unsee it, and so we've seen a taste of what it is. And I think that there are enough of us that keep pushing the envelope and don't get scared, because that fear is real, even not wanting to sign up for a website and putting a fake address. I've been doing that lately because I'm scared of that, but I'm like, no, that's not the way we push forward. So I'm going to say, yes, we're on the road to getting it right.

Speaker 2: 58:57

I'm going to contact you in five years. No, what do you think?

Speaker 4: 59:02

Seth, I think it's going to require a lot of bravery, and I think bravery in the workplace is being yourself every day in a world that tells you to be someone else or something different. So I am one of the most positive people you're going to meet. It hurts me deeply to say that. I think it might get a little worse before it gets better, and what I hope that happens to Ruth's point is we all kick our own asses a little bit out there to make sure that we are the change. I'm not really a cliche person. It's all coming out in cliches, but the thing is. In order for us to really achieve that bravery, we have to stand in our own truth and we have to be able to pull together, because the thing is, we need to also acknowledge that we're in it together.

Speaker 4: 59:42

Yeah that's it. It does not win whether, when you, until you stop sacrificing who you are and you help the other people around you, do just the same thing.

Speaker 1: 59:51

Yeah, and that's really the goal of unhiding right Is standing in truth. That is truly it, because you can't really. We say we want to get to know people and accept them, but unless you fully know me, you can't accept me. That's part of the journey.

Speaker 2: 1:00:05

There's this sign in Key West. I saw it everywhere. It was like one humankind or something like that. But going back to your humanity point, ruth, it's yes. At the end of the day, we're all human beings, so how do we can just support each other at that level as like human beings? Okay, this is my second bold prediction question for you both. What's one radical change If you could wave a magic wand tomorrow? What's one radical change that you would have companies make? No small tweaks, only a bold move. What would that one thing be?

Speaker 4: 1:00:38

I'm going to say valuing diversity of thought.

Speaker 1: 1:00:42

Okay, I'm going to say having an unhiding manifesto that every organization, just like we did with other lenses of diversity, that we put up manifestos, that this one actually believes in the idea of valuing difference and allowing for that space and naming it, because, again, we can say all the things we want, unless we name it, it doesn't happen.

Speaker 2: 1:01:04

Okay, I want to now get back to Ruth. What's your bold prediction that you wanted to share?

Speaker 1: 1:01:12

I absolutely believe, given return to office, given the backlash with DEI, given where we are in terms of this conversation around belonging and inclusion and we have a workforce that's coming in demanding transparency I absolutely believe there is a new model of leadership that is right there, that we can grab onto and that we are building, because I don't think the leadership of yesterday works anymore and the one for the future is almost too far for us. What do we need right now? And to me, that's unhidden leadership. That is a new model of leadership and it's different than authentic leadership. It's different than bold leadership and all of the terms. It's the idea of how do you create space for others to be themselves, to be their best selves.

Speaker 2: 1:02:00

I like it.

Speaker 4: 1:02:01

Beth, what about you? What's your final bold? I wrote down, I wrote human-centric leadership.

Speaker 2: 1:02:04

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:02:05

We're on the same wavelength and I think it's because here's the thing. I do believe we are in a trauma-informed workplace. That's what the state of the workplace looks like, and for so long it's been so taboo. And talking about the trauma that people feel is just not enough. They feel like their trauma is less than, and that's just not the truth. And is it appropriate always to discuss all the trauma? No, not at all. But human centric leadership that is able to balance productivity with human need is really. Where is the prediction I think we're going to get to?

Speaker 2: 1:02:46

I hope we all start to just demand it more. So let's get there together. I appreciate you both so much. Thank you for joining us today. This was super helpful. We're going to sign off, but listen, I'm going to share our socials. You can find us on yourworkfriendscom. Also on this YouTube channel if you subscribe. We have a LinkedIn community If you're over on the professional side and you want to join the conversation over there. But you can also find us on Instagram and TikTok. You should definitely check out Ruth's books and you should definitely check out Dr Beth Kaplan's new book. They are awesome. You can follow them on LinkedIn and also on Instagram. We're tagging them and everything. So please go find them and follow them for more great advice in this area. And just thank you for joining us tonight and with that, francesca. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Speaker 3: 1:03:33

Just Beth and Ruth had a big publishing week. Beth, your book went out. Ruth, you went into time this week. This is big. We will post both of these, as Mel said, in our show notes. Read them. Required reading.

Speaker 4: 1:03:47

Thank you. Thank you both so much, and Ruth, you're brilliant, so thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:03:51

We're on the same page. I can't wait. We're in it together.

Speaker 4: 1:03:54

That's right.

Managerial Sabotage

Your Work Friends Podcast: Managerial Sabotage with Davide Rice, People Managing People

Today’s managers are feeling the squeeze from above, below, and all sides. In this episode, David Rice, Executive Editor at People Managing People, joins us to share what it really feels like to be a modern day manager. From the lack of formal training to the growing expectations from executives and teams, we talk about why the role is harder than ever and what can actually help.

Whether you're deep in the middle or just stepping into the manager role, you’ll find practical ways to build connection, navigate pressure, and move forward with more clarity and confidence in a rapidly changing world.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

The thing that disturbs me and keeps me up at night is the fact that, essentially, at this point, ascending into management ranks is an experience akin to being sabotaged. It's almost a betrayal in some ways.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Welcome to your Work Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel. We're breaking down work, so you get ahead, Mel. You and I talk a lot about the state of the workplace. Actually, every single day we're talking about what's happening with work, what's happening with jobs, and one of the things that we just keep coming back to is what the hell is going on with the manager and the manager role.

Speaker 3: 0:51

We've covered it several times in New Week New Headlines First of all. Managers are in the sandwich, the classic corporate sandwich between executive leadership and then their employees, and they're getting dumped on every which way. We covered an article several months back talking about this is the crisis year of the manager, because we see orgs ripping them out, which we both have expressed as a dumb move for many reasons. And the other piece there is the younger people don't want the gig because it's a thinkless job right now being a manager.

Speaker 2: 1:28

It's hard, right, it's hard and to your very good point, that's getting attacked from all sides and we wanted to bring in somebody that hears about what the hell is really going on Real street conversation with the manager. So we brought in David Rice. David is the executive editor of People Managing People, where he's looking at the stories that are happening in the workplace specifically around management, and he's really trying to get at, with people managing people, the heart of the issues that are faced not only by HR professionals but by employees too. So we thought, because he's getting this great overview of what's going on in the ether, he can be a very good person to get the very real street, very raw, very honest perspective on what's going on with managers.

Speaker 3: 2:12

Yeah, a lot of insightful conversation. I also, side note, love all of his videos, so if you're not following David on LinkedIn, you should be and check out his weekly videos.

Speaker 2: 2:23

David is very dry, he is very no bullshit, but he's spot on, so we hope you enjoy this conversation with that. Here's David.

Speaker 3: 2:44

David, it's so good to see you. All right, David.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Again, thanks so much for joining us today. We're super stoked to talk about the state of managers In our part of the world. Mel and I are hearing from managers. We're reading the news about managers. They're getting it from all sides. We're flattening, we're taking managers out. Apparently, ai is now coming for your job all this good jazz. Like it's a. It's a crazy time to be a manager, and especially in your role as the executive editor at People Managing People. What are you hearing? What are you seeing? What is the world of the manager looking like right now? And I'm curious what's keeping you up at night?

Speaker 1: 3:20

as it relates to managers these days, I think the thing that, like disturbs me and keeps me up at night is the fact that, like, essentially at this point, ascending into management ranks is an experience akin to being sabotaged, right, like it's almost a betrayal in some ways, like if you think about the fact that 82% of managers received no formal training. So it's just here, go do this really difficult thing. I'm not going to help you do it. And even the whole way that you were successful, you got into this because you were, in theory, good at something. So is this how we're going to reward success and high performance? Is here's this new challenge that I'm just not going to help you with. And I don't care. I guess I don't care if you're good at it or not.

Speaker 1: 4:09

As somebody who spends a lot of time talking about leadership and how to create success and how to innovate and inspire people to do new things, how can we do that to managers? It's just disturbing, right? It would be like trying to train your pets to go to the bathroom outside but never open the door. What do you want them to do? I don't understand. So what are we doing? There's a lot in this world that I'm like what are we doing? But when I think about business, that's the thing that I just. It blows my mind and makes me want to pull my hair out.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Yeah I mean to your point is we're not setting them up for success at all. If there's a development piece, 82% of people aren't even getting trained. Mel and I absolutely know that to be true. Very few organizations are doing that and even if they are, it's not necessarily that they're developing them the right way, because managing is a very different skill than individual contributor. It's a completely different turn. We know it's one of the hardest roles to step into. If you ask most people in their career ladder, that flip up into manager was way harder than that flip up into executive.

Speaker 1: 5:19

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:19

Because it's just so different and I love your analogy. So we're basically saying, yeah, this is what you need to do, but we're not allowing you to do it or we're not setting you up for success to do it, ie opening the door. Is there anything that gives you hope? Because we absolutely agree on that reality. But is there anything where you're like? But this is interesting.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Yeah, I think the thing that gives me hope is there's a lot of people coming together around common experiences right now, common goals, desires. I think 2025, when we look back on it in a couple of years will be like a pivotal year for community building. That's my hope, that's one of the things that I really wanted to see from this year and for changing the way we think about traditional dynamics. So, whether that's how we use something like LinkedIn or how we approach going to a conference or interacting with each other online which obviously I think could use an overhaul but I'm seeing a lot of people agree on what they see Like we all agree that this is happening to managers, right, and we know what we want to change.

Speaker 1: 6:16

I think there's not as much difference in philosophy or the spectrum of thought around this. There is about a bunch of other issues, right. So I think it's a little different in that we want to build thought around this. There is about a bunch of other issues, right. So I think it's a little different in that we want to build community around this, and that's a skill that we need to learn in and of itself, and so I think it's going to be good for us to come together on that stuff and identify the things that we want. We've all been sold a lot of well, I'll say this bullshit narratives about either management or what it means to be a leader. There's a lot of this like alpha talk and I have no time for it, but it's one of those things that like pervades the leadership space. I just think it's going to be short-lived and we're all going to come together and identify some things. The need for managers maybe we'll get into this as we go, but I don't think that the need for managers is going to disappear.

Speaker 2: 7:10

I want to talk about that community piece real quick. Community Are you seeing community inside organizations or are you seeing people actually going outside organizations to find that community because it's the only place they're getting it?

Speaker 1: 7:24

I think both. I think it's cool to see community within organizations because people are. We talk about, we always talk about like peer-to-peer learning, but I think more and more people are realizing like I can go to this person and get some kind of value, especially around AI, right, I think that people are seeing the things that their coworkers are doing with it and they're going whoa, I didn't know you could do that. Teach me how to do that. So they're learning a lot of things from each other and that, in and of itself, is building internal community.

Speaker 1: 7:51

But I also think, with all these layoffs and the things that you see, trust is low. In some ways there's loyalty, but in other ways people are like whoa, they ain't going to be loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to them? They ain't going to be loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to them? And they want to go out and build their communities outside of it. So they're going to the thing they're trying to build their networks. They're going to people that they have common visions with and engaging more.

Speaker 1: 8:13

We're seeing that activity that even you see in slack communities, right, there's more and more of that popping up and there's a lot more groups out there identifying that and going, hey, I think we can create this community. The facilitation of that is increasing as well, so there's more options and there's more desire to take advantage of it. It just gets infused into sort of the culture and the way that we all think I've got to be part of one of these things so that I can continue to grow, because the organization's not going to help me do it necessarily. I think that is a thing that's coming out now, but I ultimately think that it's a good thing. It's something that we all need to do anyways.

Speaker 2: 8:51

There's this overall sentiment for managers right now that, like I'm on my own and so I gotta figure this out, either through community or internally or externally, because my faith that my company is gonna be doing it for me or my leader is going to be doing it for me is nil. Am I reading that right? Is that what you're hearing and feeling?

Speaker 1: 9:25

who's above you to help you. It's generally like either director, like VPs or executives who have no time or desire to help you figure out your challenges and problems right. They're just not going to step in and help you. And so who are you going to turn? Yeah, you have to go to other people that are having a common experience and build some sort of rapport or understanding. You have to find out what tools are you using to understand these problems better. Where are you getting your advice from that kind of thing? And that's one of the things that we see, partially because we seek to be the thing that you would go to. Naturally, when we are successful, we find that people are gaining value from what we're doing. That is part of what's driving. It is like amongst managers. And then you see, like the flattening of organizations right, they're firing managers left and right, so it's. I don't even think they care if I succeed or not.

Speaker 2: 10:11

If I don't, they'll just use it as a reason to cut my salary from the books and, I guess, get ai to do it yeah, yeah, which is funny the deloitte human capital trends just came out, which a lot of times is thought of as one of the key indicators for where human performance, human capital consulting, is going right in all these organizations. And they just were like psych should be on, you shouldn't be taking this manager layer and I'm like no shit Sherlock.

Speaker 1: 10:40

Let's not, yeah, so it's figure.

Speaker 2: 10:42

Yeah, having 67 direct reports as a VP didn't work. I'm shocked.

Speaker 1: 10:48

I'm sure.

Speaker 3: 10:49

Yeah, it's painful, we just covered a few weeks back that, like Gen Z, has no interest in even moving into the management role, and there's obviously a much better way that people can be preparing people to be in this role. Ideally, from the time you step in the door as a junior level employee, you're gaining this training before you. From the time you step in the door as a junior level employee, you're gaining this training before you even make it to that step. Right, so it isn't this big surprise or big shift. You cover so many different organizations, so you see excellent use cases and really bad use cases. What do you see being done really well?

Speaker 1: 11:17

It's tough to say, because I'd probably say so-and-so is doing it right now, and then two weeks from now they flatten half the thing. So-and-so is doing it right now, and then two weeks from now, they flattened half the.

Speaker 3: 11:26

Thing.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Yeah, it's tough to say who's getting it right and who's getting it wrong. If you're looking at it like okay, no-transcript, and you're actually giving them tools to do that, then you're doing it right. One thing I've always said is, from the pandemic time, nobody ever adjusted. Nobody ever adjusted what they were doing to manage differently. Right, we went to remote. They didn't know how to do that. That's part of the reasons why there's a lot of reasons why they want to force people back into offices that are not great, but one of them is they never learned how to do this any other way, still doing things by the idea of butts in seats. And then you realize, oh, the increase in things like employee monitoring software. We talk about that all the time because it's one of the things we do reviews on our website but you see the increase in that and you're like, is that healthy? Is that any better than just looking at butts in seats? No, it's not a gauge of productivity. They got these like mouse jigglers and all these weird gadgets you can buy to fake productivity, if that's how you're going to measure productivity.

Speaker 1: 12:29

And so the ones that are doing it right, I think, are like look, you got to shift to like measuring output reasonably, measuring outcomes responsibly. Those are like two of the key things. Don't get lost on a goal. You can create this really big inflated expectation and think that's reasonable or responsible. It's not. It's about figuring out. Okay, what does productivity actually look like? Meaningful productivity, not just like completing tasks or creating a huge volume of work, because you can create a huge volume of work. But if it all sucks, what's the difference? It's not going to move the needle. We've got all these traditional quotas and traditional ways of thinking about things like productivity, things like business impact. We've got to get away from it being so role-specific, it being quota specific. I would say in a lot of cases, a lot of it is like volume of what people are doing rather than the velocity or the value of what they're doing. So the ones that are thinking ahead and trying to change that are doing it right.

Speaker 3: 13:35

Yeah, thinking about more meaningful impact than just like checking the box. And we hear it all the time, francesca and I get people reaching out to us. They're feeling the squeeze at the top from the executives that they're reporting up to, or they're a manager, their senior manager, who's getting it from the executive right.

Speaker 3: 13:53

And then they're also dealing with the emotions of their own team and the things that they're experiencing in the day to day. So they're just what's that song Stuck in the Middle with you? They're just really all stuck in this kind of hellish landscape of the middle being pulled in a million directions but also not feeling cared for in either way. If someone's in that space right now, what advice do you have for them if they're in the squeeze?

Speaker 1: 14:19

Yeah, it's tough right, because we're in this period where executive demands are just so out of touch with the experience and the reality of the lives people are living. They could use this moment to gain trust and instead they've used it to put in RTO orders and talk about 60-hour work weeks. A lot of what we're seeing, especially when they start yapping in the media, just erodes people's image of what leadership is right. So if you're in that space, I think the thing that you got to do is basically do whatever you can to increase transparency about what's going on in the org, what's going on with roles and I know transparency is one of those words that gets overused to the point that it means something different to everybody but just try to be real with people about what's happening. Respect them as adults. Okay, what's going on with their roles? What skills do they need? Just be human about it. Be real.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Everybody's terrified that a layoff is coming all the time. Now they're responding to what they see out in the world and what they want to see is you being a human being with them. They can't trust you more than the AI. If you feel like some soulless corporate suit, right, they might as well just listen to the all-knowing robot overlord that's going to own their future. That's why Gen Z wants to go to the AI instead of their manager. So you've got to find a way to establish good faith. You've got an find a way to establish like good faith. You've got an employee population right now that has no faith in leadership, and then you end up, if you don't do this right, you end up looking like a shill for people who are out there saying all these things in the media, or people who are just maybe not understanding the basics of their existence essentially, and it damages your ability to establish a relationship or trust with them.

Speaker 2: 16:08

Why do you think people don't do this? Mel and I, in our research, we talk a lot about the boss-employee-boss relationship, because it is a relationship I'm curious about. Why don't you think managers show up as a human? What's going on there?

Speaker 1: 16:22

I think there's a couple of reasons. One is the manager is expected to deliver certain things from the business, certain outcomes, and so it gets a little bit like it's not like they have any shortage of meetings and work to do themselves, so they're already bogged down and they've got a lot of pressure from the business to deliver results bogged down and they've got a lot of pressure from the business to deliver results. On top of that, you're talking about a couple of generations that have been, I would say, systematically weaponized against each other by media narratives. Right, everything is Gen Z this, but for a long time it was millennials and their damn avocado toast. Right, everything's just.

Speaker 1: 17:07

Oh, this group is awful, awful, and what you end up with is like a group of people. They kind of look at each other weird to begin with, and then you've got really big shifts that happen because of technology. Right, like millennials and gen z, they don't like phone calls, they don't even want to go to meetings. Yeah, we were talking about somebody on the phone. Just text me, or couldn't this meeting have been an email? How many times have you heard that? But it's an old fashioned way to get together. Talk about it, just settle it, and so you're not communicating to people how they want to be communicated to.

Speaker 1: 17:34

In a lot of cases, you're not understanding their culture, essentially because there's age differences or different ways of doing things that you grew up with. Because when you grew up, that didn't exist, like when I entered the workforce, slack wasn't a thing, it just didn't exist. We did everything by email. But you combine all that together and you've got a place where people just don't understand each other.

Speaker 1: 17:57

I feel like and managers, if they are typically a little bit more advanced in their career right now you're probably talking about somebody in their mid-30s to late-40s, let's say, a 24-year-old those experiences are wildly different, right, and their expectations are wildly different. You interpret things at work differently, and now they're being polarized by everything. Oh, I don't understand them and their pronouns and those like that. It's constantly one thing after another to highlight our differences, never our commonalities. We never talk about the things that we experience the same way. We never talk about the things that affect us in the same way. So that's why there is no trust For managers. It's going to have to be a conscious effort on your part to sit down, make a lot of eye contact.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Really, you know what I mean Not an awkward amount, but be present with somebody, be in the room with them, see them as a person, learn about things like energy and body language and personal dynamics, what it is that might be sitting between you and somebody that you're finding it difficult to connect with. Those are the things like as a manager. This job is going to become less and less about technical skills, I'm convinced, because a lot of all the technical stuff you'll just be able to do it with AI. The thing that's going to differentiate you as a manager is your ability to connect to another human being and to see within them what it is you can do to help them achieve that. But it's not easy to do and it's inherently awkward for groups that are different like that, I would say.

Speaker 1: 19:36

Easy, but it's simple it doesn't actually require too much technical thought.

Speaker 2: 19:44

It doesn't, and it's so fun because to point out, like commonalities right, there's way more that we have in common.

Speaker 3: 19:48

humans really don't need a lot, they really don't there seems to be a huge missed opportunity we've reported on, like the silver tsunami that's coming in 2030 and all the the knowledge that we should be learning, but is there a huge missed opportunity happening right now for organizations to have more intergenerational connections and community building to help bridge that gap and have that conversation, especially as we're going through these major transitions? Is that a space where companies should really be focusing?

Speaker 1: 20:21

I would say yes. Here's the challenge, though. We're basically like conditioned to distrust each other, right? So, like older folks, they don't want to trust Gen Z because they're entitled or lazy or whatever the stereotypes they peddle about them. And you've got like the OK boomer side to it where it's just oh, here they go, and we spend all this time thinking about our differences. There's not a lot of motivation to go. Okay, maybe he doesn't get this AI thing, but he was in the workforce when the internet came about and that must've been a huge shift. What lessons did he learn from that? They're not motivated to ask that question because inherently, you'd have to be interested in them or see their value, see their humanity, and everything that we do is meant to polarize and tear us apart, but it's hard to create something totally different within the walls of your organization when the broader culture is constantly peppering people with this narrative of difference. It makes it difficult for us to learn from each other unless there's some other connector.

Speaker 1: 21:24

We did a thing at work. We were just messing around with Sora when it came out, and my team and I we were like, what if we did this with it? I said, well, have it, make me the Pope. And then it did and I was like, oh my God, that's hilarious. That looks ridiculous. Now make it, make all of you my cardinals. So I did that and it was ridiculous. And then we were like, okay, now give all the cardinals blowout hairstyles. And the images were so funny. We were all laughing so hard. I can't remember the last time we all laughed this hard together, but it was lovely. It was like we had a great bonding moment out of it that I ended up making this video.

Speaker 1: 22:06

But I thought to myself you could use that, though In terms of management. You can use that to create all kinds of experiences, to change people's narratives about each other. If you got somebody from Gen Z guiding somebody from Gen X or a baby boomer through that experience and they're joking around and working through it together to make the funniest, goofiest, stupidest thing they can make, well, all of a sudden, in that moment, you are just like two human beings having a good time, and that should be okay. At work, us learn from each other and figure out. Okay, I don't agree with them on everything, but maybe Tom over there, maybe he has an idea about how this could work. That's what we need. We need that institutional knowledge to transfer somehow, and it can't just be through SOPs and internal documentation.

Speaker 3: 22:58

Right, like it's going to have to be that conversation.

Speaker 1: 23:00

Yeah, it has to be. That's the only way. That's really the only way people are going to remember it or actually apply it.

Speaker 3: 23:12

We talked a little bit about, organizations are ripping out the middle, and now we also see there's definitely well, let's not do that and it's just a turmoil across the board. What does all of this mean for someone who maybe has invested years of their life so far just to reach the manager level, and now they've made it, and this is the year they're experiencing? What does this all mean for them? What advice would you give to someone who's in that place?

Speaker 1: 23:41

does this all mean for them? What advice would you give to someone who's in that place? It's difficult, right? Like you spent 10 years trying to climb the ladder and then now the ladder has been abandoned and about to fall over, with you on it, right?

Speaker 3: 23:51

Yeah, it's like the top rungs are gone, the bottom that you were on are gone and now you're just hanging on.

Speaker 1: 23:57

You're like the whole thing rotted out from under me, yeah, but it does mean that you're going to have to be as flexible as you can when it comes to things like upskilling, showing your skills differently, finding ways to play the game in a different way, showcasing your impact essentially on any project or whatever it is that you're working on, ascend in an organization. I'm looking really hard at how I can showcase my outcomes and basically build narratives about how I've been a driving force behind whatever it is we were trying to do and how I integrate tech into my skillset. So you want to be really flexible around that. I work in an editorial space. Right, we are, I would say, in general, we are, I would say, in general, a curmudgeonly bunch. Anyways, editors are not lighthearted and high-spirited people.

Speaker 1: 24:49

most of the time there's always a lot of resistance to anything.

Speaker 2: 24:52

You guys don't have a fun committee there's no fun committee.

Speaker 1: 25:00

The fun committee is occasionally get together, have a few drinks and have a big bitch session. You're constantly trying to understand things in a different way or look at it in a different way, and a lot of this AI stuff does make you go oh, what is this? Oh God. But one of the things that's been tough for everybody is that, essentially, the job as it was five years ago doesn't exist anymore. The term editor is actually starting to mean something different, and you've got to be comfortable with that. You got to be prepared to integrate tech into it. However, you're going to do it, and this is not just our roles. This is across the spectrum of roles within the workforce, whether it's marketing or you're doing coding. The things that you thought were going to be central or core to your work aren't necessarily that anymore, and you're going to have to figure out how you're going to be flexible and adaptable and learn to use this stuff to do it better, quicker, in different ways than you've ever done it before.

Speaker 3: 25:52

Francesca I think I used to say this to you a long time ago where I was, like everyone needs to start to tap into their inner Madonna, who has painted herself like a million times over the last 40 years Got to tap into that right Reinvention.

Speaker 1: 26:09

Yeah, don't be attached to your title. Be attached to things that matter. Your salary matters, it's how you pay your bills. Your title is not how you pay your bills. I've always said you can call me the head schmuck in charge, I don't care. Call me whatever you want. This is what I want to make. This is what I want my benefits package to look like those concrete things that make my life possible. That's what I'm after. You can call me whatever you want, I don't care.

Speaker 3: 26:38

And don't let work define your self-worth.

Speaker 1: 26:40

You shouldn't even really connect it to your worth at all, like at all. One of the things that we did recently was we did a survey about the TV show Severance. We did a survey asking would you get the procedure?

Speaker 2: 26:54

What is Severance about for those that don't?

Speaker 1: 26:56

know. So, essentially, severance is a dystopian workplace drama, in which this company called Lumen Industries, I think it is has created a way so that you can sever your personality between work and your private life, so when you're at work, you don't remember anything about your private life, and when you're in your private life, you don't remember anything about work. It's called your innie and your outie, right, and so you live these two completely separate lives, not knowing, and you just know that you have to go like here at this time kind of thing. So I asked people would you do it? I had been asked by a UK journalist in response to a UK survey that found that 12% of the UK population would do it. So I was like let's see if we can find out a little bit more about the US and Canada. So we did our own version of it, and, for us, 20% said either definitely or they probably would 20%. Wow, 20%.

Speaker 1: 27:52

Here's the really disturbing part, though. We asked people what would be the amount of money that you would need to consider, and almost 70 gave a price only 30. I wouldn't do it for any amount of money. Almost 70 had an amount in which they were like yeah, I'll do it for that I was like oh man, what does that say say about us, when we're at with work, how we're connected to it? People aren't seeing value between what they learn at work and applying it into their life. Every experience I've had informs who I am as a person. That includes what happened at work, not just the stuff that was outside of it. But I think other people aren't maybe seeing the connection or aren't seeing the value of the connection, and that's a little disturbing and sad, quite frankly.

Speaker 2: 28:41

Let's extrapolate that to the US population that 20% of the population wants to hasa dollar amount figure that they would go for to sever their work. Mind it's actually almost a benefit, yeah, To cause yourself a traumatic brain injury.

Speaker 1: 28:57

It's actually almost a benefit, yeah, to cause yourself a traumatic brain injury. That's essentially what it is, if you think about it.

Speaker 2: 29:03

Yeah, it brings a really interesting question around what's the biggest thing that needs to change? If you could change one thing that would make the role of a manager more palatable right now, or at least not want to have to sever some sort of autonomy. Basically, what would need to change?

Speaker 1: 29:26

This isn't just a workplace thing. This is how we all serve, and I'm not to get too political here, but too much of our lives is now dedicated to serving capitalism. Essentially, that's really what it is. This idea that labor unions are bad was the beginning of the end for reasonable behavior about work. And you think about the way Europe constructs work and what their expectations are for people. It's very pretty reasonable.

Speaker 1: 29:59

But in the United States your life is work. Your value to the society is tied to whether or not you have a job and what you do within that job, how much money you make, how much you consume. All of our lives is essentially in some service to capitalism when you really break it down and that would have to change culturally in order for this to get totally better. Because what people are really trying to block out when they answer that question is the way in which they serve it, and they'd almost rather just not remember it than have to deal with all the demands of it and trying to make it match their personal values, Because that's hard. A lot of organizations really don't. How often are you going to find a job that matches your personal values? If you I don't know care about the planet. It's hard Culturally. We just have to shift away from your purpose is to serve the machine, and I don't know if that's going to happen.

Speaker 2: 30:57

I think these Gen B kids are gonna do it.

Speaker 1: 30:59

I have a lot of faith in them. I do? I have a lot they've had a real I'm not gonna put up with this shit kind of attitude and I'm like good for you guys. You know children are our future, yeah we'll see how alpha does when they get there.

Speaker 3: 31:28

We do this thing called wrap it round, where we'll ask you a question. You can respond yes, no or elaborate if you feel so. How do you?

Speaker 1: 31:36

feel All right. Yeah, I'm going to ask anybody I work with. I'm super long-winded all the time, so I'm always going to elaborate.

Speaker 3: 31:43

Let's do that. This is where the juice comes, so we love it. So it's 2030.

Speaker 1: 31:52

What's work going to look like? Well, haven't you heard? We're all going to be wandering around trying to figure out what our purpose is in life. Least you listen to bill gates, right? I do think it'll be very mechanical, like in all respects, like robots will be in the workplace. They've made it to agi the white collar jobs. I don't know if they'll exist or not.

Speaker 1: 32:09

There's this cool thing going around. It's called like ai 2027.com, and somebody ran like a simulation based on all current events and everything, and it was very, I don't know to say, enlightening or disturbing, but it was interesting. Let's just put it that way. I don't know, will white collar jobs exist in five years? Maybe, but this goes all the way up to the ceo, right, because strategy is a skill like it'll do that better, it'll do decision making better, supposedly. Yeah, creative tasks you go right down the list, and they may even do some of the blue collar stuff too, better too. I was saying to somebody recently that old saying plumbers rule the world. They do, I don't, I do, they do. And I don't know if it'll do plumbing as well.

Speaker 3: 32:51

So maybe plumbing is the thing to get into someone who lives in an old house in new england. I don't know if AI is going to be able to navigate it like Joe.

Speaker 1: 33:02

Yeah, because Joe has just been rigging that thing for years.

Speaker 3: 33:06

He's been in every janky house. He knows how to navigate around here. It's so interesting you say that as you respond about Shopify's CEO, who is asking everyone to justify hiring for humans and to showcase what they consider to use AI first before they put in human bodies.

Speaker 2: 33:24

We're always trying to see that. I read that same memo.

Speaker 3: 33:27

Yeah, yeah, okay, let's move on to something a little more fun, a little more personal. What music are you listening to right now? What's hyping you up?

Speaker 1: 33:36

It's spring and I'm going through this like reliving of my college music listening, and I'm listening to a lot of like early to mid 2000s indie hip hop at the moment Indie hip hop. Yeah, what do you?

Speaker 2: 33:47

consider indie hip hop.

Speaker 1: 33:49

Oh God, jedi mind tricks and yeah, like stuff that was like not on the radio at the time, so it was like very, we used to call it underground. Now they just label it indie, same thing as they do with rock music.

Speaker 3: 34:04

What are you reading or listening to right now?

Speaker 1: 34:08

I started this book called the Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It's about American history. They present it as seasons it's like 80 to 100 year cycles, and it presents the idea that we are currently in a historical winter, which is a very difficult time, and spring will eventually come. But it breaks down the last hundred years as like examples of these seasons. I can't speak too much about it. I've only just started it.

Speaker 3: 34:34

It's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting to see the patterns and maybe what to look out for.

Speaker 1: 34:39

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 34:40

Now I'm curious did you get to the part where are we in winter, Because it feels like we're like Minnesota January.

Speaker 1: 34:47

I think we're all just to that point where it's like the post-Christmas depression.

Speaker 3: 34:54

Like I got bills and I'm on a holiday hangover.

Speaker 1: 34:58

You're just like I don't know. At least the football playoffs are on. I can just eat chicken wings whenever I want.

Speaker 3: 35:07

Who do you really admire?

Speaker 1: 35:09

Former Liverpool FC manager, jurgen Klopp, is one of my favorite people in the world. I look up to him a great deal, not just because I'm a big supporter of the football club itself, but because he's an incredible example of what a leader could be, and he's just an example of how to transform culture and, honestly, just a lovely human being.

Speaker 3: 35:30

Okay, what's a piece of advice you wish everyone knew?

Speaker 1: 35:35

I was once given a really valuable piece of advice that I think is great for leaders and really anyone working with other human beings to remember, and it's that you can't expect something you've learned through experience to be common sense for somebody else. And it's just one of those things like you think why wouldn't they do that? So you didn't know how to do that. Always, like, eventually, you learn that because you broke the thing or you made the mistake, and so don't expect anybody else to just know that because you think it's a thing that you're supposed to know.

Speaker 2: 36:16

All right, David, so awesome to talk with you today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 1: 36:19

Yeah, yeah, I hope I didn't ramble, too much. No, it's awesome?

Speaker 3: 36:22

Not at all, not at all. And hey, how can our listeners best connect with you Of?

Speaker 1: 36:26

course, you can get in touch with me on LinkedIn. I'm easy enough to find on there. Be sure to check out to the People Managing People podcast. I'm the host on there. If you come over to peoplemanagingpeoplecom, you can get signed up for the newsletter and I'm always sending on a regular basis, a couple of times a week, different messages from us, and then come to one of our events. That's what I really recommend. Our next one is dedicated to RTO mandates. It's on April 24th, but, yeah, give me a follow and don't hesitate to reach out. Awesome, all right, thanks for being here.

Speaker 2: 36:56

Thank you to reach out Awesome.

Speaker 1: 36:56

All right, thanks for being here, thank you.

Speaker 3: 36:59

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.