244. Waitrose axes autistic volunteer, A.I. clones and managing hiring chaos. PLUS! Are first born children natural leaders?

0:02Coming up this week in work. Waitrose came under fire this week for axing an autistic volunteer after his family asked if he could be paid for some of his work. He'd stacked shelves for four years, over 600 hours unpaid. So what's actually going on here and where is the line between inclusion and exploitation? Also this week, two billion backed founders just raised$35 million to clone your co-workers. Yes, they call your clone Vivans. Vivans? Have you ever seen it written down? And it's an AI twin of every employee in your organisation. So you can ask questions when they're on holiday or in a different time zone.

0:38Is this a great way to share information quickly and easily? Or is it just a step too far towards AI taking over the world? And in truth or lie, are firstborn children natural leaders? They're overrepresented in C-suite and among world leaders. But is that really about birth order or is something else creating that advantage? Plus, of course, the world famous weekly workplace surgery. We're talking to a startup founder who's drowning in hundreds of job applications and desperately needs a better system without spending a fortune. We're going to be consulting with our HR partners at The Curve Group, of course, who specialize in high volume recruitment.

1:12We're going to get their thoughts. This is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. And my name's Al and I'm a business owner. And together we help organisations build amazing workplace cultures. Let's get into it right after a quick word from our sponsors. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident and is completely flipping useless.

1:45Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. But you know what does know something about your business? HubSpot. HubSpot's AI. It works with your actual customer data. every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

2:13Welcome back. Welcome back. It's Leanne's favourite time of the week. It's time for the news roundup. It is, it is. Cue that jingle, Al. Pressing the button right now. Okay, Leanne, what have you seen? Autistic volunteer is sacked from Waitrose after his family asked if he could start being paid after years of stocking shells for free. Ooh. I know. It's been picked up by every news outlet, I think, now. But I actually saw this shared on LinkedIn. It was a Daily Mail article. And it was actually shared by Christian Lang off of Standout Socks. Standout Socks? What's Standout Socks? Standout Socks is an awesome organisation that basically makes very bright college socks.

2:57They're on Dragon's Den, but they're a very purpose-driven organisation. So they support people with disabilities, Down syndrome, raise awareness, employ people with these conditions as well. So a really, really cool guy, really cool organisation. And I'm trying to get him on the podcast. Christian, if you're listening, come on. Yeah, come on, Christian. Answer your emails. Check your email, mate. Anyway, we're going back to, so it's Waitrose, which is a supermarket in the UK, kind of upmarket supermarket, kind of fancy. Yeah, kind of fancy. So as I said, this is the Daily Mail report, but it's been picked up by pretty much every major national and regional media outlet in the UK.

3:37So the Daily Mail reported on Tom Boyd, a 27-year-old man from Cheadle-Hulme in Greater Manchester, who has severe autism. Tom started volunteering at his local waitress back in 2021, helping to stock cages and stack shelves two days a week 9 30 a.m to 2 p.m always supported by a carer over four years he clocked up more than 600 hours of unpaid work staff reportedly loved him one colleague even joked he worked harder than some people who were paid to be there i believe that but things changed when tom's mom francis reached out to ask if he could be given a few paid hours not a full role just two or three shifts a week is recognition uh for his time and effort according to the mail the request was escalated to waitress head office who were said to be alarmed at the amount of unpaid work he'd done they then suspended his volunteering while they looked into it that was two months ago that's a bit unfair yeah tom hasn't been back since his mum says she's had to tell him the shop is being cleaned so he wouldn't be upset uh francis went on to tell the newspaper that we weren't after 40 or even 20 hours we said we'd accept three or four but claims the company said Tom couldn't be made a paid employee because he couldn't do the full role.

4:57She pointed out that there are people on the same shop floor being paid who also don't do every task. She did describe the staff in store as amazing but said things changed when head office got involved, calling it cold, corporate and completely lacking humanity. Waitrose have said in a statement that they work hard to be an inclusive employer and partner with charities to provide work experience. They added that they're investigating as a priority, but can't comment on individual cases. So Francis and Tom's support workers are now trying to find him another role, maybe in another supermarket or even doing cleaning work, which apparently he really enjoys.

5:35So, yeah, it's a frustrating story, Al, and especially when you think about Waitrose's tagline, the quality you'd expect at prices you wouldn't puts it into perspective. Also, that works double-edged sword because Waitrose is known as being quite expensive. So perhaps it's like, oh, it's not very good quality at prices. I would have expected to be a lot lower than this. It is a real shame. And I think, Tom, come over to Mostar. You can come and clean our house. We'd love to have you. We'll definitely pay you. It's just a real shame, isn't it? because it sounds like it's something lovely happened and then potentially, I'm sorry, but potentially head office or maybe HR or someone with a checkbox got involved and went, well, this is not the way we do things.

6:16We're going to cancel it. And it's just like, oh, come on now. It sounded like it wasn't hurting anyone. To be honest, if I was a store manager, if I was getting paid well enough, I might just dig into my pocket or maybe even speak to the staff and go, look, we can't officially pay him, but would anyone, would people be willing to throw a pound in a bucket? because it sounds like it's more like just the principle of the thing rather than actually wanting the money. It's just, wouldn't it be nice if Tom could walk home with a little pay packet like everyone else does? Yeah, absolutely. What are your thoughts, Leigh?

6:42Do you know what? I've heard of this before, people, parents who have children with either severe autism or other learning disabilities being put in these positions with these organisations who shout from the rooftops about how inclusive they are. and when it comes down to it will set a boundary that really shows they're not inclusive at all. And I think this is one, right? I can see, again, I can see the person in corporate going, oh, well, this is a problem because that could be classed as exploitation if this person has worked 600 hours without being paid. Mum, Frances, wasn't pointing that out as a problem.

7:20She was just saying, actually, at this point, he's part of the fabric of the company, part of the team in the store. Or can we just, for his own sense of value in what he's doing, get a bit of pocket money? Come on now, three hours a week paid? It's probably going to be about 25 quid. That's about the price of six eggs in Waitrose. Exactly. But it's just all I can see the whole, oh, well, we'll need to do a proper risk assessment. We'll need to make reasonable adjustments. Maybe we'd need to actually advertise the role out. and it's all this corporate nonsense that actually then completely undermines what genuine inclusive employment looks like when you match the roles you adapt the roles to match the ability and what clearly Tom can do here is a role that adds value to the waitress store in Tudor Hume so why shouldn't he get paid for the um the effort that he puts in and from a PR perspective this has been a bad freaking week for waitrose man and it pains me because dish is my favorite podcast after truth that isn't working anything else on the hubspot podcast network um but i know it's like oh can i not i don't want to watch it because waitrose and feeling each biggest stand and it's just it's such a shame particularly for a company that does pride itself on on quality and shouts about how they like to integrate with the community um yeah i think i I think this is a major mistake, and I hope it's well that they rectify very quickly and very publicly.

8:49Well, I'm sure if they've listened to your take on it, they're going to be on it straight away. They'll put some kind of tiger team onto the problem. It sounds like you're being sarcastic, Al. I woke up this morning in really sarcastic mood. Do you know when you just wake up and everything's like, oh, go away? And our little dog's got a collar on, you know? You know those cones that... He's walking into your knees, doesn't he? He just seems to have a way to get just between, just under your kneecap. And he just comes in and runs in at about 300 miles an hour and just cracks you in there. And he doesn't really, either he doesn't know what he's doing or knows exactly what he's doing.

9:25Anyway, Leigh, can we talk about my thing? Yes, let's talk about your thing. Okay, so Vivian or Vivian, I'm not quite sure what it's called. Essentially, right, this is the situation. You need to ask someone at work for something and they're off or perhaps they're ill or maybe they're just not answering their emails. So what do you normally do? Well, obviously, you just wait if you're polite. If you're a bit of a knob, you'll probably bombard them with DMs or call them or send them loads of emails, get them to pick up. But two guys have come up with a solution to this. They've invented a digital twin for employees.

9:56Lee, I'm going to have a go at these guys' names. Ashutosh Garg and Varun Karacholia. Oh, great names. Ashutosh. Ashutosh. um they're already co-founders of a 2.1 billion ai recruiting startup called eightfold and they've just created this new thing called i need to know what it is i'm going to call it vivan from now on vivan is a digital twin for every employee who in theory knows just as much as the real person does the way they do this is that vivan access the email account google docs microsoft docs i'm guessing all that slack anything that the real person got access to and builds up this sort of personalized they're calling it the ai twin but essentially it's just a like a chat gpt for that person so they just they're trained on what they know this is what we say they told tech crunch link in the show notes when each and every person has a digital twin you can just talk to their twin as if you're talking to that person and get the response leah does this way lay madness this is some scary creepy ar stuff right oh no i do not like this for a number of reasons and i'll tell you i'll tell you for why i'm i can see this being used in in ways that it shouldn't i can see it being used to make layoffs because now we've what's the word duplicated cloned yeah control c control v got all of the knowledge that that person has and put it onto a onto a computer system so therefore we no longer need your knowledge which is already it's already tough out there for knowledge workers with with ai anyway i think this will take it to a whole other level then it's also the case of like as we know with these these kind of learning models they can hallucinate they can go wrong and call the wrong answers so then where does the accountability lie if I'm on holiday and they use my clone and my clone messes up and causes a massive issue or loses a company loads of money is that then my fault because it's misinformation that I've provided or my twin is provided or I think that's hugely problematic and also you've got to wonder something as well around something kind of privacy laws whether this is really something that individuals would want to participate in don't get me wrong I'm sure there's business owners listening go do you know what I'd like to me that'd be great I can go on holiday my team has all the answers that they need yeah but I'm not sure it's that simple and actually any kind of effective leadership comes down to 20 % knowledge and 80 % how you manage those relationships, isn't it?

12:27So I don't know, I don't want to be a negative Nelly and kind of kind of throw petrol on the AI fear fire, but it's not for me. Throw petrol on the AI fear fire is one of my one of my favourite things you've said this week. I love it. I love it. Well, in terms of privacy, they have, they have tackled this, they call it, they've got something called pairwise context and privacy technology, which sounds a little bit like someone's just made that up. Essentially, what it is supposed to do is control what information can be shared with which people. And also, the real person sees all the messages and all the queries sent to their twin, and they see the messages going back and forth.

13:05But does that mean then that I'm going to have to go through when I return from leave all the different queries to make sure it all makes sense? Is that just like a million emails, but worse? Yeah, good point. Also, I'm on my list of negative Nellies. what about things like hacking? Is it not a really massive intellectual property risk for organisations if you could just hack into the mind of Andy Jassy or something and get all of his knowledge? That's a good point. I'm reading from the article that says here, but perhaps the most important safeguard is that everyone can see the query history of the digital twin which acts as deterrent against people asking inappropriate questions.

13:42No, you just pointed that out because like you say, when you come back from holiday, the last thing you want to do is go through your inbox and the very last thing and the thing you'd never want to do is sit through there and read through all the messages that someone's been sending your twin. Well, these guys seem to think that it's going to work and they've got raised$35 million for it. I can see from a business point of view, there are some issues in that essentially Claude has now got skills, which is where you can define how it does something in a particular way or it does something. OpenAI has now got the Atlas, which is their new browser, AI browser and you'd think that with these huge companies they already have so much data and so much data on us that they could just launch one of these with better guardrails rather than just you know Well absolutely, I mean they just take this podcast they could take all 240 odd episodes and give it them clone us Which is why I do not approve We do not care for this So I'm sorry guys Ashutosh and Varian nice names we don't like your idea I'm out I'm out Lee what else you saying my love how do you feel about a three month notice period Al?

14:52I haven't had a job since 2002 I don't really understand I don't even know what notice period notice period is when you have to you say I want to quit and they go no you have to give me three months before you can oh no I don't like that at all long time right? yeah yeah yeah yeah so this caught my eye in the telegraph this week it was titled I'm working my three month notice period were a drain to our workplaces. I was like, this is for me, open. So if you're not sure, three month notice periods are literally what that is. You hand in your notice, you want to quit your job, you've got another one waiting, you need to give three months that job before you can move on.

15:28Typically, it's been reserved for senior executives, the big decision makers, people with the handovers, but now they are creeping into ordinary white collar jobs right across the UK. according to consultancy firm Clover HR the number of roles advertising a three-month notice has risen by eight percent in the last 10 years and barely 10 percent of employers still follow the legal minimum of one week's notice everyone else is just kind of making it up so yeah the piece went on to argue that it's all part of a defensive move from employers who are sick of moving on too quickly a faster younger job market means more people changing roles sometimes every year and one stat from insurer canada life shows gen z workers aged 18 to 25 have already had six employers on average the same number as people in their late 60s that's quite a stat that it is quite a stat but then i also wonder where the stats come from if you appreciate the context if somebody was kind of 18 turned 18 in in what 2020 it's been a fairly disruptive five years or even in the UK 2016.

16:40You know, there's lots of nuance to this. I think actually, yeah, in the time, if you actually take that, look at that same thing for millennials upwards, there is no difference in terms of how quickly they'll move jobs. It's a youth thing, not a generational thing. Anyway, the article went on. Marie Hart from Poppocky HR. Oh, what's it called? Poppocky. Poppocky. I like that. I'm going to be saying that word. I'm writing it down right now so I can use it later. Popper Key. Popper Key HR told the Telegraph, historically, longer notice periods were foreseen executives because it took longer to recruit and hand over, but now we're seeing them everywhere from middle management up.

17:21There's a feeling it's more acceptable now. So I think the issue comes when we actually think about what this looks in reality. Because on paper, you're kind of thinking, yeah, it would be nice to have three months to deal with that, find somebody else to fill a role, do the handover. That makes sense. It seems intuitive. But the problem is when we actually think about how this plays out in the organization, because you've got an employee who is already mentally checked out. You've got an employee whose manager might take their resignation personally. And then you're in this kind of couple breakup when you're still living together for three months.

18:01Awkward. Yeah. Awkward. So workplace researcher Christine Armstrong said if somebody really wants to go, let them go. Otherwise, they sit in the canteen all day and moan. And this isn't just an anecdotal thing either from Christine. Reddit is full of people describing three month notice periods as soul destroying, career killing, with managers either piling on the work or freezing them out. Employment lawyers say that long notice is supposed to protect both sides. you keep getting paid that's true they get time to find a replacement but compared to the us where it's just two weeks or australia singapore where it's a month britain's approach does feel a little bit excessive our thoughts i can kind of see both sides i can um i don't know i mean three months is a long time a very long time and if you if your job is to answer the phone well three months is just a ridiculous amount of time but if your job is perhaps you're working on multi-year contracts sales contracts then you do need some time to hand that over and do you know the solution is someone should invent a digital twin yeah well played nice nicely what was it called looping back yeah it's a callback i think callback um that's the thing isn't it i get where people are coming from but i think the reality just isn't really worth it and i think there's a better way a best way to do it one thing i would say is if you're a really great manager having these constant conversations with your people you're never going to get a surprise resignation you're never going to get a surprise you're going to feel it coming if you're a really great manager you'll even know it's coming because you don't have the career progression opportunities the person needs or you can't offer them the same financial award as another company could so you know they're going to be moving on the other thing is succession planning man why are we not really focusing on succession planning this is an operational issue as much as it is a people issue because you look at it as somebody somebody leaving you know oh they were a really key player in our team if they left it'd be a massive issue so we're going to put in a three-month notice period and then we'll deal with that issue when the when the shush hits the fan and we'll we'll um yeah we'll deal with it then and it's like cool but what if this person's in an accident what if they're like long-term sick what if you know something awful happens and they can't be in the business it's a huge risk particularly within a small business if this one person is very dependent you depend on them very much in terms of revenue or customers or processes compliance even so i think it's a poor solution to a problem that is gonna happen it's not a case of if it's when somebody's gonna leave usually isn't it yeah it's like waitrose their knee-jerk reaction are going to Tom, the autistic guy we just talked about earlier, saying, right, okay, no, well, you can't work here anymore.

20:57It's like, there's nuance there. And like you said, this just sounds like someone going, oh, three months, that's fine. Yeah, put it in, it's three months. And quite often, some of these things, they're just like, they're a stroke of a pen, aren't they? So someone's writing the contract, and they go, how many months notice? Audrey, how many months notice would you give this new guy? She'll go, ah, three. Okay, three. And no more is thought about it. Whereas for the average person, they're like, It's three months, Matt. I suppose this person would have known, or people who got three months, they'll know when they take the contract that it is a three-month thing.

21:26Is there something you could negotiate with, perhaps? I doubt it. I mean, you could try, but I doubt it, particularly the way the job market is now. You might have been able to in 22, but then I think that's kind of where all this came from, wasn't it? Because people were moving on quite quickly. And also, I suppose it goes against you. If you're saying, yeah, I'll take the job, but I don't want to agree to the three-month. That's even worse. So, yeah, no, no, no. Don't do that. If you're listening, don't do that. That's a very bad idea. It's problematic, isn't it? So then you are bound in. And I think the other thing as well as a business owner, you need to think about your time to fill a role.

21:57If that's taking you more than four weeks, you've got an issue in your recruitment process. There's also something called rolling recruitment where you're continuously screening CVs for roles that you have a lot of or are regular within your business. So you've always got this pool of talent that you can call on. So then your fill to role might be a week. There's so many things you can do to be more proactive and this feels very defensive and I think ultimately is inefficient. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Okay, so I think that's everything. Is there anything else to add to that, Leigh? No, that concludes our business.

22:29The links are in the show notes. As always, we're going to go to a quick break and after that, we've got the truth or lie. This is, I mean, I'm loving a truth or lie at the moment. This is when I come up with an idea and I go, Leigh, is it true that so-and-so and she'll go, hmm, I think so. Let me go and read up on it. And then we ask her in the pod and she just tells us. That is a summary of this segment, Al. Thank you so much. I've got to take the magic out of heaven now. So we'll see you after the break for that. And of course, our world-famous weekly workplace series, where I'll put your questions to the end.

22:56See you soon. School might soon be out for summer, but marketing school is here to stay. And it is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Genuine marketing legends Neil Patel and Eric Su bring you daily actionable digital marketing lessons learned from years in the trenches with nearly 100 million downloads, probably a million of those are from me actually, and over 2 ,500 episodes, Marketing School delivers bite-sized marketing wisdom you could implement immediately. Whether you've got a new website, you're established business, you're going to learn the latest in SEO, content marketing, social media, email marketing, conversion optimization, and genuine online marketing strategies that work today.

23:35So if you want real-world marketing tactics from practitioners who are still in the arena building and scaling businesses, this show is perfect for you. And if you're considering using AI, which I think you should, then the latest episode looks into why AI often costs companies more than the employees you replaced. It's definitely going to check that one out. Listen to Marketing School wherever you get your podcasts.

24:02Welcome back. So we're back to the segment that I've just destroyed by basically telling everyone how it works. it is our truth or lie is our weekly myth busting segment where we take popular psychological claims and ask is it true or is it a lie so far we've talked about left brain creativity we've talked about maslow's theory of hierarchy of needs and does your vibe attract your tribe last week which was a really interesting one this week i have a question that like me every firstborn wants to know the answer to are first born children natural leaders this feels like a truth to me i bet it does as the oldest child as the youngest child i'm slightly defensive about this so let's see it is popular belief though isn't it in business world on the telly i'm thinking succession i'm thinking the mitchell brothers the mitchell brothers what from yeah because he's senders yeah that's a reference it was a young one grant was the eldest wasn't he's like and grant was like goes in charge until he met his timely demise.

25:03I think, and also that's not a spoiler because I'm pretty sure they both left about 25 years ago. I think Phil's back. Oh, is he? Yeah. He's got a drinking problem. The actor's got a drinking problem. The actor's heavily into sports betting. You've heard it here first. Sorry. So, Mitchell Brothers, yep. We had Succession, which is the amazing, I think is incredible, you think is incredible, series about the supposedly Rupert Murdoch family. Supposedly, yeah. And then we've also got, I haven't watched it yet, but the new House of Guinness on Netflix meant to be a similar thing um so yeah you've heard it forever the oldest kid becomes the CEO the youngest kid becomes the artist or something in the in the performance area and the middle child will they probably just write books about being ignored but what happens when we actually examine the data um I don't think Jill listens to podcasts but if you do my middle sister I'm sorry you're you're not ignored at all um anyway lol so is it true the case for well when researchers dig into who is actually running the show firstborns do show up more than probability would suggest that they should so there's a 1990 study of 46 world leaders and they found that 45 were firstborns oh yeah and given the family size distribution you'd expect about 30 so there was a significant over representation that pattern also holds across different leadership contexts.

26:26So in 2020, a study found that CEOs were disproportionately likely to be firstborns compared to population baselines. And a Swedish population data from over 700 ,000 people revealed firstborn score higher on psychological traits associated with leadership, such as conscientiousness, emotional stability, and persistence. But why is always the more interesting question, I feel. So evolutionary psychologists point to resource allocation. So basically parents unconsciously invest more in their first child both materially and emotionally and this shows up in things like photo albums count how many baby pictures of each kid there is i'm fairly confident the oldest the oldest child has got more baby pictures than anybody else maybe by the youngest one everyone's just bored it's like oh yeah it's a baby you've got three of those already yeah exactly that gets a spare i once did actually find that firstborns receive 20 to 30 more minutes of focused parental attention every day compared to later born siblings which busts the myth I think that the youngest child gets all the attention.

27:32There's also the dethronement theory that comes from Alfred Adler, a very famous psychologist. Firstborns experience undivided attention and then must adapt when siblings arrive. This creates what researchers call a high achievement motivation. So essentially they're trying to maintain their special status through accomplishment so they become midi adults they take on responsibility for younger siblings and that builds early leadership experience so is it like this is truth well never quite that straightforward in psychology is it but we do have a lot of evidence that so far does to support this claim but as i said it always gets a bit complicated so the firstborn advantage does vary dramatically depending on a few things the first is on what type of leadership we're measuring.

28:21So in family businesses, the effect is massive. Almost 80 % of older family firm CEOs were firstborns. But to be fair, that is probably maybe more inheritance than leadership ability. Dad owns the company, oldest kid gets the company, or if they don't, dramatic ensues. And that's why succession was so good. it's tradition it's not necessarily talent if we look at regular corporations where you can't inherit your way to the top and that firstborn advantage does shrink it's actually about 12 percentage points above expected so yes the older child is still overrepresented but not to the scale that they are in um in family owned businesses among startup founders that basically vanishes so what it's saying is that when firstborns have to compete purely on merit their advantage gets much smaller oh i don't like the implication you're making there leanne i as a firstborn i'm i'm extremely upset with what you've just said there sure you are don't care for it researchers have got very clever about testing this though so instead of comparing random firstborns to random laterborns they compare siblings within the same family so when you control for family wealth education and culture the firstborn leadership advantage often shrinks by half or more so in real terms what they're saying when you actually compare it to a family you say there's a family we've got 20 families of four then it's there's no real correlation between the firstborn being a leader because any of is they're all equally likely to become leaders is that right there is a correlation but it's half as strong as if you did it randomly because what you're doing in that as an experimenter is you're controlling variables.

30:08So you're controlling for wealth, you're controlling for education. And when those variables are controlled, the link is much, much weaker. Right, I get it. We also then have to think about some historical evidence. So Martin Luther King Jr., he had an older sister, Christine, making him a later born child. And of course, his transformational approach to civil rights was, yeah, world changing. so he refused to accept the established system of segregation instead reimagining society entirely which really does get to that point about latter-born leaders who are more creative who are much more open to wanting to change the way things are because perhaps they experience the way things are as somewhat unfair as a younger child I feel that meanwhile you've then got people like Winston Churchill who was first born he excelled in wartime leadership within existing structures you know so if you kind of got the existing system as the older sister older sibling does then they're more likely to know how to lead within it and assert their authority and influence so a mixed bag of evidence there in terms of the verdict truth or lie are firstborn children natural leaders well it's true that firstborns are statistically more likely to end up in leadership positions and they're overrepresented among CEOs, politicians and managers by about 10 to 15 percentage points above what we'd expect by chant but it's a lie that their natural leaders are inherently better at leadership because the advantage largely reflects how they're raised, more parental investment, early responsibility for siblings and training to maintain rather than challenge authority.

31:58So when you look at revolutionary leaders or entrepreneurs who create entirely new systems, the firstborn advantage often disappears or even reverses. Interesting. So key things at play here, early resource allocation, firstborns get more parental attention and investment, role training, they're explicitly taught to be responsible and set examples, institutional bias, so traditional organisations select for firstborn traits like rule following or risk aversion and context matters the advantages huge in family businesses where it is just inheritance modest in corporations and minimal wrong entrepreneurs and smaller businesses of course important caveats here this is very much based on western nuclear families um we don't have much research in terms of other cultures and how that all works so approach with caution is it true or is it a lie our first born children's natural leaders it's a lie oh man that really disappoints me i wanted it to be true i so want of all the ones i wanted this one to be true but obviously because because i'm first born but it is kind of weird as a firstborn like you're the you're the youngest i'm i wonder if there's any if there's any correlation between partners like romantic partners whether they choose or even business partners because my business partner in the property business is the youngest of three i'm the oldest of four yeah there you go right when we finish this go and do some research on that because that would be that would be really interesting yeah i have a feeling that that would be there would be a higher than normal correlation isn't the right words here yeah i'm trying to sound like a psychologist yeah yeah yeah more than chance i mean yeah again insuratively the face validity of that strong isn't it you've got to think in terms of complementary traits you wouldn't want to say two people with same leadership type mentality or capability.

33:49But then equally, what we learned last week is that, you know, similar people attract. Yeah, true. So, yeah, I'll dig into it. But I'd imagine it will either depend or it's not true. Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. So, and also, by the way, I've got a longitudinal study for you. But it's only got a sample. It's gone and gone for a 19 years. but it's only a sample survey of one partnership, which is me and Chris, because I've known him for 19 years. Or two, and there's me and you as well. Oh, yeah, but I was going to say not romantic, but of course we're business as well. Yeah, so, yeah, we've got two.

34:21Of course we're business as well. How rude. 100 % of partnerships are always the older and the younger. But Nate. If you're listening and you do have a business partner, let us know. Go on LinkedIn. Let's know the dynamic. Yeah, that'd be interesting. I'd like to study only child co-founders. I can't imagine there's many of them. Bet they're a pain in the arse to work with. Bet they are. Anyway, we're on to the World Fabulous Weekly Workplace Surgery, where I put your questions to the end. By the way, are there any links in the show notes for the previous Truth or Lie, or is it just all made up?

35:00It's not made up, but if anyone does want the studies, yeah, I can leave links if you want. If you want the studies, email Leanne. Yeah, try me an email. Hello at Truth, Lies and What. Okay, so on to the World Famous Weekly Workplace Surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne. You know by now Leanne's a Chartered Occupational Psychologist. I should be able to say that without stammering. A Chartered Occupational Psychologist and also my former business partner based on the last few minutes. So question number one, how do I manage chaos when hiring without spending a fortune? So I am a founder of a small tech startup.

35:30We're looking to hire our next team member. I'm excited about finding someone great, but the hiring process is an absolute nightmare. Right now we're posting on a few job sites and my inbox is getting slammed with hundreds of applications. I'm trying to review every single one, but it feels like I'm drowning. I'm worried I'll accidentally miss the right candidate and it's taking up so much of my time. We definitely don't want to pay for an expensive recruitment system, but I do need a better solution. Lee, how can you help, Lee? Well, I do have some thoughts on this in terms of being a recruiter for a small business that has a high number of applications.