248. What Celebrity Traitors can teach us about lying. PLUS! Trump's war on woke, quiet-quitting success and the work impact of bad music.

0:01Coming up this week in work. President Trump appoints a DEI critic to lead America's top workplace civil rights agency. She's already dropping discrimination cases and challenging diversity programs. So what does that mean for fairness at work when the policy frames diversity as anti-merit? Also this week, a 50-year-old manager decided to quiet quit a decade ago, stop caring, delegated everything, started saying no. The result is completely unexpected. So is this a cautionary tale or something else entirely? And in Truth or Lie, inspired by Celebrity Traitors UK, can you spot a liar by reading their body language?

0:41The fidgeting, the eye contact, the nervous giggle. Does any of it actually work? Plus, in this week's workplace surgery, a manager accidentally made their team too dependent. How do you rebuild autonomy when everyone looks to you for the answer? This is Truth, Lies and Work. The award-winning podcast where behavioural 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 is Al. I'm a business owner. And together we help organisations build amazing workplace cultures.

1:12So let's get right into it after a very 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. Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. Mm-hmm. 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.

1:52Hello, hello. It's Leanne's favourite time of the week. is also Leanne's birthday week as well. So Leanne's birthday is coming up, which is an exciting time. 40 plus 1. 40 plus 1, yep. Well, 30 plus 11, if you want to do that. 39 plus 2. 39 plus 2. And also, because we live in Mostar, it looks like it's going to be really nice weather. It's going to be like 19, 20 degrees. Bad for November, that is it. Not bad at all. Anyway, back to Leanne's favourite time of the week. It is time for the News Roundup. It is. I'll cue that jingle, please. Jingle is being cute. Okay, what have you seen? I suspect it's using the T word.

2:30Yes, it is. Warner. No, it's President Trump. Do you know what? I don't talk about PT very often because I usually get trolled for it. But this one, it's just too in our world to not talk about. So President Trump has chosen a DEI critic to lead the workplace civil rights agency again. So this is someone who's against DEI. Yeah. And their job is workplace civil rights. Yes. Okay, this is going to end well. Isn't it? Isn't it? Well, what's the RuPaul thing? Let's see how this turns out. Let's see how this turns out. So yeah, according to the Associated Press... Pressed? I think they prefer to be called Associated Press, Leanne.

3:15The Associated Press President Donald Trump has appointed Andrea Lucas as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That's the country's top agency responsible for enforcing workplace discrimination laws. Now, Andrea isn't new to the EEOC, as it's shortened to. She was first appointed by Trump back in 2020 and has been confirmed for a second five-year term. But this new promotion does make her one of the most powerful voices on workplace equality in America. It is also described as one of the clearest signals yet that the administration is moving to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs that became widespread during and after the pandemic.

3:57So in her statement, Andrea Lucas said she was honoured to serve and would focus on upholding merit based colourblind equality, arguing that many DEI initiatives have gone too far. Of course, there are some critics, including dozens of civil rights groups and democratic lawmakers. because they're seeing it very differently. They are accusing her of politicising the agency, rolling back protections for transgender workers and undermining Congress's original intent for the EEOC. The Associated Press reports also that since stepping in as acting chair, she's dropped lawsuits supporting transgender employees, increased scrutiny on gender identity complaints and stopped investigating some cases based on disparate impact liability, which is a legal concept used to challenge hiring or pay practices that disadvantage particular demographic groups, so minority groups, of course.

4:48She's also prioritised a string of religious discrimination cases, including one against the Mayo Clinic for refusing a COVID vaccine exemption. So there you go, Al, the reaction has been predictably quite polarised. The National Women's Law Centre also had a say. They said her appointment has weaponised the agency against hard-working people. Well, on the other side of the argument, conservative groups like the wisconsin institute for law and liberty have praised her as a champion of equality and race neutrality our thoughts why can't just we all be nice to each other why can't we just all just get on i'd right okay i can see from i've said before i'm not a fan of trump but i am a huge fan of the way that he markets himself and the way that he he builds his own personal brand.

5:37I think it is incredibly, it's evil in my opinion. Dictator energy. Yes, very much dictator energy. Chairman Trump. But with this, I can see what he's doing. He's basically going, okay, I am really coming down on the idea of this is anti, this is anti-woke. There are a lot of people behind me. My supporters are anti-woke. So therefore, I will bring this in so everyone goes, God, he's doing a great job. The other thing is, it's just, America, we have someone on, in fact, he's coming out, I think this Thursday, is it? LinkedIn guy? Yes. Yes. So coming out this Thursday, and he said there are terrible things going on in America, but the most biggest problem is the polarization.

6:16Is it them or us? And it's just more. It's like the whole point of diversity, equity, and inclusion, inclusion being the key word there, is that there's no them and us. And now this seems like the head of inclusion is going, well, there's definitely a them and us. God, it's exhausting, isn't it? How long have we got left of Trump? assuming that he doesn't change the constitution and run for president indefinitely. When did he get elected? Oh, I don't know. Was it two years ago? I don't know, but it's going to be a long five years or however long it is. The thing is, right, it's not what this woman stands for, Andrea Lucas, that I have an issue with.

6:57Because actually in terms of making decisions, merit-based, looking at things from a point of neutrality, yes yes that's not i'm not fundamentally disagreeing with that i think the problem is when we talk about the difference between equality and equity and adam grant talks about this in hidden potential where he says that talent is evenly distributed opportunity is not so when you take that into consideration the context of of achievements what i have achieved as a white middle-class woman growing up in a two-parent stable home is going to be if it's if I've achieved the same as somebody who has grown up in a very tough economic environment with lots of disruption lots of discrimination potentially violence in the home and achieves the same things that I do by the same age who has achieved more right because I've not had to overcome the same challenges that this other person has so looking at context is so important when we're talking about merit and achievement and my theory is Andrea ain't gonna think about that in terms of context she's just gonna think about the achievements that have been have been achieved so I think it just oversimplifies something which is very very very challenging and let's be honest as well you know psychologists and practitioners in this field have admitted for some time we haven't been getting this right the policies that we brought in the programs we brought in haven't been serving the minorities in our organizations the way the way that they should or intended to but this is throwing out the bait with the bathwater and i think it's also just a a nice polished mask for what is actually huge discrimination and the rolling back of human rights yeah and if you're interested in this kind of thing then definitely go and check out inclusion and marketing by Sonia Thompson part of the Huffspot Network.

8:53We're not just saying that because she's a sister show we're saying that because she approaches this pretty much weekly. Anyway, let's brighten the mood showing my love. What have you seen this week? Okay, so I was reading on, now don't judge me. I'll be the judge of that. On my Google News feed something's called Google News, whatever it is Goose. Goose. On my Goose News a little thing came up with Cheeseburger which is just a trash website. The content's like so thin you could read the newspaper through it it's just a bit more smash than quarter pounder it's just really really rubbish but it did and basically what they do with cheeseburger is they go on to link they go on to um reddit they find threads and then they just do screenshots of it and then get ai to fill in stuff in between it's just honestly it's just absolutely rubbish it's the equivalent of an empty empty calorie of of news however this story did get my attention so I went to the original Reddit sub.

9:46Essentially what this guy is saying is he's turning 50. 10 years ago, he hit his FIRE number, which is financial independence, retire early. That's what FIRE stands for. At 40? At 40, yes. Congratulations, friend. Yeah. He had 2 million in cumulative assets. I know, I know. So he thought he was the smartest and hottest person in the room. He wanted to quit. He wanted to retire. But his wife, no interest in retiring. She's a teacher. So he decided basically to quiet quit his job. He's a middle level manager. And he just basically says, to be blunt again, I decided to stop giving a flying, and you can work out what the alliterative word there is.

10:22No one called it quite quitting back then, but he just basically, he did a few things. He said he stopped sending overly formal emails. Every time a project team member was run thin, I pushed the timeline aggressively back and hard. He stopped working after hours. He put family first and missed deadlines if he had to. and he discovered that his work life became infinitely easier. So his direct report started to love him and trust him much more. And basically, he just continued over the next three or four years just doing this. He was basically just offloading every single task that was given to him to someone else.

10:55If he found that someone else was running, like he called it run thin, so someone else was like overloaded, he just went back to the people who were the stakeholders project and go, nope, not going to happen. And then if they pushed back, if the people, the big bosses pushed back, he'd push back and go, no, it ain't going to happen. People stopped arguing with me after a while and learned to trust me. Life was great and I completely eliminated stress from my life. I was financially independent. I'm now number three or four at this company. I followed this path for 10 years. My net worth is close to the big 10 million.

11:26He also has apparently about another seven to nine million when the company's being sold because he's got some shares or stuff. My main question is, is this the right way to go? Because you always say quite quitting, no that's a bad thing that's disengagement but what this guy is he doing quiet quitting what's going on what was his final summary were you gonna give me that first or i can give you that first yet so he said my point of this post is i see so many young people especially who share their stories here work themselves to an unhealthy amount of stressful jobs trying to save enough money to buy their freedom it doesn't have to be like this you should never give your life and enjoy anything to your job focus on the minimum amount of work getting the stuff done delegate everything you possibly can and don't be afraid to say no.

12:06Is that a good life lesson for younger people? Broadly speaking, I think yes. I didn't expect you to say that. Really? The thing is, I just want to go back to one thing you said that I think quiet quitting is bad. I don't think quiet quitting is bad. I think quiet quitting is essentially setting healthy boundaries within an organization that isn't investing in you the same way that you've been investing in them. um I do know what I think this comes down to what is just really misunderstanding from a lot of people in terms of what management looks like and what success needs to needs to be burnout isn't a badge of honor it doesn't mean that you work yourself to the burn and that the more successful you know your career is going to be what this person has done has empowered his people to take on stretch tasks which is hugely engaging and motivating he has pushed back on unreasonable workloads and deadlines in a hard no way that means that people will have to change either the workload the resources available or the deadlines because it's a hard no and then he's taken his his own his own world and made it more balanced in terms of spending more time with his friends and family not thinking that this work is my entire identity and becoming much more balanced in his view and with that we'll enjoy high levels of well-being which then makes us more productive and high performing at work it's what we always talk about on this show but it's it's such a good example because it shows how we have been we have normalized stress and burnout to such a toxic place that hearing somebody set healthy boundaries empowering their team he's interpreting that as I don't give a fudge and he's saying this is how outrageous it is that I didn't care and now I'm doing really well at work it's like no that's why you're doing really well at work because you're not a control freak of a manager you're not holding on to everything you're not holding on to expectations that are wildly unfair you're actually just putting your team first and yourself first and that funnily enough has shown in in psychology research that that turns into higher productivity performance and well-being so i salute it but i'm very sad that we have normalized toxic workplace behaviors to a point where this is like lol look what i did yeah that's really good point i mean there's there's a problem i think that there's there's there's people like gurus out there who go get rich quick so do this and you'll make 10k of mrr bro um and then you've got broccoli haircuts and they're on twitter with them and so you you go okay so there's that and we all know that's bad because no one gets rich quick but at the same time people think that then the opposite of that is the right way which is you work hard for 40 years you take the shit a bit like there's a bit in layer cake the movie layer cake which is great and it says you start off at the bottom um and you take shit then you move further up and you take a little bit less shit then you move further up and further up and you take even less shit then you're in the rarefied atmosphere where you don't even know anything about shit.

15:08Welcome to the layer cake, son. And it's such a great, great scene. And it's basically, it's showing that you have to work that way up. However, like you said, if the work gets done and people are enjoying their work, life doesn't have to be stressful. Job doesn't have to be stressful. There are so many shortcuts. And let's be honest, if you think about your own job, not you, I'm a listener. Think about your own job. Last week in, let's say you worked 35 hours last week how many of those hours actually actually did something for you for your team or for your business i bet up to 50 was just replying to vacuous emails asking for updates on stuff that takes time away from you actually doing the stuff or getting involved in a little workplace politics or anything like that like you said just it's all bullshit walk away the sad thing is with this person because they did have that financial independence they can afford to to say no and push back and not really care about the consequences yeah good point it also says a lot about about as a business owner are you allowing people to have these conversations with you that's what psychological safety is that somebody can have a conversation like this and then not get sacked or demoted or punished in any other way um so yeah there's so many themes that we talk about all the time but the biggest one for me is just how sad it is that we've normalized this type of behaviour as slacking off when really it's actually just the healthy, balanced way to navigate work and life.

16:33There you go, you heard it here first. Leigh, what else have you seen, my love? Well, do you know what else got my beef boiling this week out? But he's boiling, that's not a phrase. Yes, it is. Do you know what grinds my beef? Do you know what grinds my beef? Don't go to that website, grindmybeef.com, that's a very bad website. Sorry, you were saying Christmas. You're such a sleazy old man sometimes. Really? I was actually thinking more about abattoirs and making beef burgers. Oh, okay. But it just goes to show that you're a bit of a slimy old woman. Maybe. Old woman. How dare you, sir? Okay, so you're not an old woman, but let's hear you chirp on about something that's annoyed you this week.

17:12Oh, well, screw you. Do you know what? You take this one. So what's annoyed you? Christmas. In general, you love Christmas. You cannot wait for the first time. Not on the 11th of November, I don't. Fair enough. it's just so annoying right as i mentioned it is it is my birthday month and it's mid-month my birthday and i never remember as a kid my birthday being very close to christmas right like i don't remember seeing lots of christmas stuff around on my birthday and it does it actually does get earlier and earlier and i feel for i feel the people in the uk because i'm pretty sure i saw things on instagram that the christmas decorations were out in like september at least we managed to hit the first november but when i was shopping over the weekend it's just it's the same music that's just on repeat in every shop it's obviously it's mariah carey it's wham it's slayed it's on a loop maybe you get the odd paul mccartney if it's if it's a high level shopping experience but otherwise you're simply having a wonderful shopping time yes yes you go but yeah but it's just the bell isn't it so i was kind of like walking around going oh this is so annoying and then i thought could you imagine having to work in this environment where you are listening to these four five songs on repeat every day oh no for at least eight weeks no i honestly couldn't that would drive me insane yeah it would but then i thought what does it does it drive you insane what does the research say al so i did a little research like a mini truth or lie a mini truth or lie but yeah just to see if we are actually torturing poor retail workers at this time of So I came across a paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Al, if you're interested.

18:54The Jap. The Jap. By Kathleen Keeler and colleagues. And it looked at what happens when the music playing at work doesn't fit what employees need, called music misfit. So their study looked at 166 full-time employees and they were asked what kind of music would help them in that moment at work. Would it be something upbeat to boost energy? Would it be calm to help them focus? then they were asked to complete a short task while this background music played either matched their needs or completely mismatched. What they found is when the music fit people felt more positive and less mentally tired but when it didn't their positive mood dropped by 40 % Wow and their mental fatigue rose by about the same amount Wow So basically I've come in positive, feeling energised and within the space of a couple of minutes I'm now in a bad mood and I'm exhausted.

19:46So what we're saying is that if someone has to come in and listen to Wham, Mariah Carey, all that kind of thing over and over again, regardless of what mood they're in, that will almost certainly drop their mood by about 40%. Almost certainly. But then we are then, of course, is this another generalisation? Are we taking the findings from a small study and applying it to a much bigger concept? So I looked a bit more into it and actually found a real world study that followed 68 retail and hospitality workers across cafes, restaurants and supermarkets for three weeks. Each day, they completed three quick surveys before, during and after their shift, rating their energies, emotions and how well the background music fit what they needed.

20:31And the results, wow. So when the music matched their needs, staff felt more upbeat, more engaged and less mentally drained. When it didn't, their mood slumped and it didn't just stay in their heads. So on misfit days, workers reported fewer helpful behaviours towards colleagues and customers. They were less cooperative, less positive and more like to just go through the motions. So basically, disengage, not going to help you. Get out my face because Mariah Carey is doing my nutting. So let me ask you. So you said that if it fits what the workers need. Now, you go to Starbucks and you've got one person who's dead into death metal, Sepultura's there kind of like, that's what they're looking for.

21:13And then you've got someone else who likes a little bit of country music. And then someone else, that's me, by the way, I like a bit of country music. And then there's someone else who just likes Flickwood Mac, for example. Well, who doesn't like Flickwood Mac? But we can't, no matter what plays, we can't tickle all those pickles, can we? we can't always tickle all those pickles but i think this is where intention is really important the studies did actually go on to give some advice or some recommendations for managers especially retail and hospitality but actually anywhere where you're you're looking as you say all these different types of tasks and moods so the first one is give staff a bit of an input maybe ask them what music they'd like on those poor people in the shopping centers i just think just throw in something non-christmassy just one in every three songs just give us a break from the bells you know the second recommendation was pay attention to volume and tempo so even the right songs at the wrong intensity can be exhausting and remember that not everyone processes noise the same way so if you've got somebody who's particularly sensitive then rotating roles or giving them quieter spaces could make a difference so if you're currently working in retail and hospitality my heart goes out to you go and speak to your manager maybe suggest that you have a bit of input onto the playlist.

22:27Maybe see if there's a way to throw in some slower songs amongst all the jumpiness. And if you do need that quiet space, do have that conversation with the manager so you can find it. Yeah, it was something that, as I said, it was a little bee in my bonnet that I wanted to look into, so I did. But as for Christmas music, it's still November. Behave. Behave. There you go. You said something before, break from the bells. I think that's a really good X hashtag. So there you go. so we'll have a break from the bells march on on parliament that's what we'll do actually no we can't talk about marches and and pt in the same in the same thing so no let's leave that okay so moving swiftly on to a break after the break we've got truth or lie where we start talking about um spotting a lie now if you've not watched all of celebrity traitors i will tell you all about it i'll tell you how to avoid this in a second okay welcome back so we've got truth or lie where we talk about can you instinctively spot a lie and then we've got the world famous weekly workplace workplace surgery I'll put your questions to the end if you've not watched if you've not watched Celebrity Traitors or not finished UK Celebrity Traitors then I suggest you I suggest in fact I'll tell you what I'll do when I'm editing this I will record the timestamp that you can fast forward to yeah I've just finished editing this and it's minute 26 so fast forward to minute 26 and we should have stopped talking about the winner of the traitors we watched it late and we almost we're listening to a Radio 1 on sounds Radio 1 lol as radio 2 yeah it was just scott mills scott mills on radio one though not anymore oh my god i'm so old anyway so truth or lie so this is our weekly myth busting segment where we take popular psychologically psychologically claims yeah that's that's the way you say and ask whether they're true or whether they collapse the moment you look at the evidence so so far we've learned that left brain creativity isn't actually a thing maslow never drew a triangle and yes that caused some waves that one al i bet it did i bet it did and yes your vibe does attract your tribe so we've been binging the celebrity traitors uk um this week oh my goodness oh my goodness i watched the original traitors you didn't did you this was your first my first traitors experience loved it if you don't know anything about this basic celebrity traitors is there's 19 celebrities or in fact the normal traits 19 people in a room it's like wink merge if you ever played that everyone gets blindfolded and then three people get touched on the shoulder and go your traitors the rest of them they call faithfuls and the whole point is that at the end of each episode they try and they try and vote out someone who's a who's a who's a traitor and then if they get it right then it's all celebrations if they get it wrong then they voted out one of their own okay so every episode they were convinced they decided who the traitor was convinced up until i believe the semi-final i think was the first time they actually got someone right uh celebrities were were saying um they were looking at people's body language they were looking at people avoiding eye contact looking people looking at the side, giggling, all that kind of stuff.

25:21So the question is, all the behaviour that we think is someone lying, like I've heard if you look to the left when you're talking, you're creating something. If you look to the right, you're recalling something. Is this true? Which one? The left and right thing? Well, start with that. Is that true? No, it's not true. Really? Do you know what? When I was a kid, I was a kid. Back in 1843, when I was 20, I think I went on quite a few dates trying to impress women and I was telling them oh yeah yeah that's exactly how you tell someone lying they were like really Al didn't go on a second date no I think recall has been correlated with that in terms of looking up but yeah anyway it was it was so it was so funny to watch it because they were so convinced and because you know as a viewer you do have this burden of knowledge so it's hard for you to to kind of know exactly who you'd you'd think but the thing the one that really got me was when and this spoiler alert, you've been warned.

26:20The one person who totally cracked in front of everybody, Alan Carr, who couldn't actually get out the words, I am a faithful without giggling, won the show. Yeah. Everyone believed he was a faithful. Everyone believed he was a faithful. And he was the last remaining traitor. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that probably sets us up in terms of what the outcome is going to be here. But let's take a good look because there are many TV shows that play with this idea, including one that you love, Al. What's it called? Lie to Me. Lie to Me with Tim Roth, which from a psychological point of view is an absolute crock of crap.

26:56I can't watch it. I can't watch it. However, if you're not a psychologist, it's a good show. It's fun. It's just silly. It's like house, but... Yeah, so... Anyway, carry on. The question is, can you tell if someone is lying just by watching their body language? Yes. well i mean there are some reasons why people believe that behavior does reveal deception okay so first of all let's not take for granted that lying does require cognitive effort it's hard so the theory is that sometimes that effort will leak out so in 2023 a review from two psychologists in norway summarized dozens of modern deception experiments what do we call that al it's called a longitudinal study is that right no it's called a meta-analysis oh man but you were close so the so these studies use controlled tasks so basically participants might watch a staged event or commit a mock theft or complete an interview where half instruct to lie and half are told to tell the truth their responses are recorded often with very high quality audio your video and then analyze frame by frame and word by word much like your friend off of your television show.

28:13Across these controlled tasks one pattern consistently appears and that is that lying is mentally demanding because lies must create a story, hold a real version of their mind, keep it all consistent, monitor the interview's reaction, regulate their face and tone, suppress anything that might look suspicious and that mental workload does create pressure and under that pressure small things can surface so in terms of this review it noted slightly longer pauses before answering a higher vocal pitch more verbal slips such as hesitations repeated words or corrections and stiffer or more contained posture so these aren't necessarily reliable signals that you can use in the real world because these people have been put in very specific experimental conditions but cognitively speaking yes they're real the effort is detectable when we're in controlled lab conditions.

29:03The other thing about deception study which is really interesting is that these stereotypes are universal. So in 2010 there was a review that summarized research from multiple countries and it found that almost everyone believes the same thing across cultures which is very rare in psychology research usually the main kind of limitation of studies. So across cultures people believe that liars avoid eye contact, they fidget, they touch their face, they took their face they shift nervously and they suppress their natural expressions police officers believed it judges believed it students believed it customs officers believed it business leaders believed it everyone believed it universally this idea feels instinctive then the third thing that kind of makes us wonder if maybe we can tell it when people are lying is there is a small number of individuals that perform above chance and have been studied but this study often gets misquoted so this comes from a psychologist called Paul Ekman who identified a tiny group of people who performed noticeably above chance at detecting lies he called them wizards and he said that these people are um are yet better than chance at finding liars but when you actually dig into how they do it they're not looking for stereotypical cues they're not looking for a lack of eye contact they're not looking for touching the face what they do is actually far more analytical they track story structure they look at where the details align logically they notice temporal consistency so whether the timeline changes under pressure they compare emotion and content so does the emotional tone match the context of the conversation they spot over control when someone sounds rehearsed rather than lived and they tend to speech patterns so those small hesitations or corrections that appear which we have also seen in lab settings so the problem is is that there is some truth to it but it's either in a very controlled environment or these so-called wizards and there's not many of them are actually using a completely different way a completely different approach to to spot out lies i also remember as well talking to ryan sherman on the show who said that they did a research with cia agents and found that they were better than the average person at picking out liars and when they asked them about that they said that they just assumed everyone lies right so if you just assume everyone lies you're going to pick out all the liars right um so there is some truth to it but it's it's not quite what has been popularized in the media and on TV.

31:50In terms of the case for against, what does the decades of research actually show? People are, as I said, only slightly better than chance at spotting lies. So the same 2010 review, which is the most comprehensive study that we have, it looked at mock crime scenarios, real police interviews, video-based deception tasks, cross-cultural comparisons, trained versus untrained observers, and high stakes and low stakes lies across all methods, the accuracy rate was 54%. Right. Essentially guessing. Essentially guessing. And the really sad making thing is professionals did not outperform the public. Right.

32:29So in some studies, police officers performed worse due to overconfidence and stereotypes. You know, that's a big issue. judges anyone kind of working in a world where you might think that that would be an advantage or they'd have more practice at it were no better than your average person so yeah not not great in terms of stereotypical cues they are not found to correlate with lying and this is actually where the evidence is the clearest so in these studies we had trained coders who use structured behavioral analysis and analysis that word out analysis systems which basically means right thank you getting thumbs up from out if you're looking if you're looking at a transcript of something a code is going to go through and pick out anything that might might link to what you're looking for like a fidget a gaze in a certain direction facial expressions touches posture changes all that type of stuff they found no correlation between these types of behaviors and lying um so that doesn't really doesn't really stack up eye contact didn't predict lying fidgeting didn't face touching didn't looking left didn't predict lying looking right didn't predict lying um none of it predicted predicted lying um and then finally in terms of these micro expressions which i know you're a big fan of al micro expression research um often gets cited as the solution because we just need to be a bit more a bit more detailed but the studies are conducted with slowed down video and expert coders who can freeze frames and analyze facial muscle movements in those scenarios yes we might pick out some small clues but in real time human interaction micro expressions are too fast to see they appear inconsistently they indicate emotional conflict not deception and they cannot reliably distinguish truth from lies um so scientifically interesting but practically very very limited so in terms of can we use body language to tell if somebody is lying no no now here's a question that did surprise me because i honestly thought you could but not because i've lied to me because i know that that's just a bit rubbish but um if it although you can't decide or can't tell someone's lying is it still worthwhile all of us trying to avoid doing those things if we can because the majority of people across the world believe that that is a sign of lying true yeah true true yeah there's an argument you're hearing i'm thinking in real time here you are yes there is there is a danger isn't there that people are going to think that we're being deceptive because they have this universal belief that that that's how i pick out a lie and traitors was perfect example of that all these different things that they cited that was just nonsense the thing is though you're still by doing that and being so conscious about how you're moving is still going to create that cognitive strain and it is that strain that sometimes shows or is interpreted as deception so you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't basically so if you try really hard to do all the opposite of what people think is lying then it comes back and people are going they're spending a bit long too you know yeah okay i get it i get it so basically just tell the truth tell the truth yeah um i think to summarize it all because we covered a lot there but across decades of research al and this is where psychologists get a little bit frustrated with the pop cycle occasionally and the over generalizations decades of research the stereotypical body language cues do not work in terms of detecting deception overall accuracy in terms of people identifying lies is barely above chance training does not improve performance micro expression micro expressions are not usable in real time and professionals are no better than public um so yeah the key thing here is in terms of looking into what the person is saying not to show how they're saying it.

36:39So that consistency, that clarity, where the details line up, all that stuff. Yeah, behaviour won't tell you the truth, but content and questioning might. Love it, love it. If you've got a question for the Truth or Lie segment, then drop us an email, check on the show notes. You can find all our details in there. Okay, on to my favourite time of the week, which is the world famous weekly workplace surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne. Leanne is a chartered occupational psychologist. She knows an awful lot. And what she doesn't know, she has friends. Hello Harry if you're listening He's a brand new person who's going to be answering questions soon So Harry's like an expert in occupational health Is that right?

37:14Yes he is And then of course we've got the Curve Group Where we get Kat and Liam who often pop up And answer technical or legal HR issues Today I believe Leanne All three of these are answered by you Is that correct? No we have one from Harry Beautiful Yeah You see I should have done a bit more prep Okay so question number one I think I accidentally trained my team to stop thinking for themselves I want to fix it. So this person writes, when I first became a manager, I thought I was being helpful by answering every question and stepping in whenever someone was unsure. But now I've realized I've created a habit where the team always looks to me before making a decision, not because they can't make a decision, but because I've made myself the easiest route.

37:53Now I'm trying to hand decisions back, but it's hard to know how to shift the dynamic without everyone feeling awkward or unsure. So how do I rebuild this sense of ownership in a team that I've accidentally made too dependent on me. Such a common, common pickle, isn't it? Particularly for new managers or insecure managers. Or what people would maybe, what I've heard them describe themselves as accidental MDs where they've got a business, they've not had teams before necessarily and create a coach that is quite dependent on them. It's very, very common. And actually some coaches you do require people to be more dependent than independent or interdependent.

38:33I would suggest to you as a short easy answer go and get some coaching training go and get some coaching training because what this is going to require is curiosity excellent questions the ability to feel help people feel safe emotionally psychologically professionally whilst they're going through this transition and as you've said you've got these habits that can be pretty hard to change so I think for you go and get some coaching training whether it be a short course a full-on coaching course to really understand how you can coach somebody through making decisions so rather than than you saying oh just do this helping them to come to the answer themselves and that is going to feel like a lot of effort from your point initially and probably feels like you're wasting a lot of time initially but you're going to have to go through this process to help people understand that they are able to work through problems themselves or with your support and come to a decision that you will then sign off, agree with, maybe slightly challenge or tweak.

39:34But it is going to have to be this whole learning moment for all of you. So I would prep yourself in terms of the skills you're going to need to do that. The other thing you can do is talk to your team and go, guys, I worry. And it came from a good place of wanting to be helpful, wanting to be enabling, wanting to you to just make your job as easy as possible. I wanted to do that. And I worry now that I've clipped your wings. I'm not allowing you to make decisions in the same way, have autonomy in the same way, have control in the same way. And I'd really like to change that. So in terms of work at the minute, where do you think you can handle decisions?

40:11Where do you think you don't need my input? Are there areas that you're like, oh, I have to go to the end and get it signed off when really you don't. Let's just have a conversation about decisions that you think you can handle. Areas that you don't think you could right now that we can focus on because I think you've got the capability I think you've got the talent it was just me being overbearing wanting to make sure that you're all okay and had as much help as possible have that conversation with people you might find that people are completely oblivious and like oh right um yeah it would be nice to have a bit more control and autonomy but it wasn't really on my mind you might find out that your team like thank god because I feel like I've not been able to breathe for the last three months to have this conversation with people again I would always say try and try and get a little bit of training around kind of this coaching style of communication because it's really going to help you out um do some googling listen to some specific podcasts uh we did one with um ride the wave in the day um that talks about coaching and mentoring which which would be relevant for you as well um but yeah very typical problem not too complicated to unpick but will take time and will require a lot of consistency and patience from you in terms of handing back this autonomy but it sounds like your heart was in the right place and you've got a team that that are probably on board because I'm not getting any sense of anyone's annoyed or things are bad so yeah have that conversation with your team and I think I think it will be easier than you think in terms of of the change but it will require that consistency and patience from you yeah i think what comes through in a lot of these questions is that and questions overall any questions like well how do i get this to happen without this happening and the answer is well go and speak to them yeah go and talk to your team but don't just think that you are this like this magic manager who just comes in on a carpet and goes i will fix everything for i am the magic manager you just go sit down and go guys i kind of messed up in here a little bit i think this is what's going on what are your thoughts and people might go oh we thought you always wanted to wanted every decision to come through you and it's like no i don't want that at all i was trying to help you it's like oh we were trying to help you do you know what i mean so i think that that is such a key thing for anyone who thinks they might be falling into this trap uh just check your ego a little bit and i don't mean that in a horrible way but just like a lot of people like especially new managers want to feel first of all feel like they're making a difference and secondly feel like they're needed like we all need to feel like we're needed and wanted but um the best managers are the ones who just let people go oh that's fine that's fine and And if you're a business owner listening that's thinking that sounds a bit familiar, what I would, again, I think, as you said, a bit of an ego check because there is an element of wanting to retain control as an MD, an entrepreneurial MD, of not wanting to allow mistakes because of how that might impact relationships with clients or workflow or all of that stuff.

43:09And the reality is until you start to let go and allow people to make mistakes, it's never going to change. You're always going to have a team that dependent on you, which significantly reduces your ability to grow your business in the way that you want to do. It's that cliche, isn't it? Where you're spending too much time in the business so you can't work on the business. But it's true. And it's very hard and it'll be harder for the MDs and it will be for the managers. But yeah, yeah. Ego check. Fair play, Al. if you're a founder who's got somewhere between 15 and 75 employees you've been in business for five years and you've got this problem email me because we have created something which is just for you um it's exactly what leanne's just said there and you are gonna love it okay on to question number two which is what is the real role of occupational health this is interesting this is from an employer's perspective i think a lot of occupational health you'll see questions and they'll be around the employee but from an employer what does occupational health do so this person writes, as a business owner, I've always been a bit unclear on what occupational health is actually for.

44:10OH, as they say in the industry. I've tended to see it as a process we go through when we're trying to assess if someone is well enough to do the job or if they're going to be a risk or a liability. But that feels quite negative and maybe even unfair. Is that how it's supposed to work? Or is OH meant to be something more proactive, something that supports both the employee and the business? This person said, I'd really appreciate some clarity on what it's actually for and how to use it well? Excellent question that I would not be able to answer as well as Harry Kramer. Harry, if regular listeners will remember Harry, he's the CEO of Smart Clinic, which is a really cool organisation, works with schools and businesses around the UK, offering the very best health and wellbeing services, occupational health services, for a very affordable price.