256. Gen-Alpha are coming! PLUS! Micro-joy, power poses and what to get the CEO for Christmas

0:00Coming up this week in work. Generation Alpha is coming. That's the 11 to 15 year old about to enter the workforce. A major news study has revealed who they are and what they want from employers. The question is, are we ready? I very much doubt it. Also this week, Starbucks, a company that built its brand on progressive workplace values, is facing the largest strike in its history. Thousands of baristas. Am I saying that right? Or barristers? Never get those. You're never quite sure. Oh, Brazzerick, Brazzerick, yeah. Anyway, moving on. The thousands have moved out. Just raise it, Al. Just raise it.

0:36Four years after the first store unionised, there is still no contract. So how did a once respected employer end up here? And in truth or lie, can standing like a superhero for two minutes actually boost your confidence? It's a viral TED talk. It's in every leadership book. But does power posing actually work? Or did the hype run ahead of the science? Plus the workplace surgery. Someone's pulled the CEO for Secret Santa and desperately needs gift advice without looking like the teacher's pet. We'll find out more shortly. This is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture.

1:14Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My name is Al. I'm a business owner. And together we help organisations build amazing workplace cultures. So we're going to get right into it after a very quick word from our lovely 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. But you know what does know something about your business?

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2:08Holidays are coming, holidays are coming, holidays are coming. So last week we had a little bit of an argument, which I put onto LinkedIn. Basically, Leanne wanted a tree on the 1st of December. I wanted a tree around about the 10th or 11th of December. So we compromised and got a tree on the 2nd of December. What is the point of getting a tree on the 10th when we leave on the 14th for three weeks? Fair, fair. I still felt that first was too soon. But still, anyway, we got one and it is beautiful. She is beautiful. I think any time in December isn't too soon. We had one person on LinkedIn who said just before Thanksgiving.

2:41No, Black Friday. They said Black Friday, that's the day I go out and buy my Christmas tree. Maybe because they're getting a percentage off. I don't know. Fair enough. But this is the last weekend before you go into December, isn't it? Fair enough. Yeah, yeah. Also, we learned as well, I learned, that Thanksgiving isn't a particular date. It's just about Easter. It kind of like just moves around. Apparently, it's the last or the second to last Thursday in November. I don't know how you'd understand. Maybe there's a Thanksgiving committee. Talking of committees, we are now in the news segment. This has got nothing to do with committees.

3:08This is the news segment. This is Leanne's favourite time of the week. It is. It's time for the news roundup. Oh, cue the Christmas jingle. Yep. Did you like the Christmas jingle from last week? Loved it. Yeah. Okay, cool, cool, cool. So what have you seen this week, Leigh? Generation Alpha are coming I can't wait So excited Quick question, right So we went Gen X So we went Baby Boomers Gen X Yeah Didn't do Gen Y, did we? Gen Y, Millennials Oh, I see, right And then he went Gen Z Yeah Then Gen Alpha So is it just going to be like another place Now it's going to go Gen B Beta I don't know I don't make the rules up We might not be around We might not be around now to see Gen Beta Anyway, back to Generation Alpha What do you know?

3:50Generation Alpha. It's a big one. People have been banging on about this, like five, six generations in the workplace for a while. And I saw on LinkedIn, Benadin Health has published a major new study on Gen Alpha. Gen A? Gen Alpha? What are we going to do? Are we going to shorten it to Gen A? Gen A. Yeah. Gen A. Gen A. Gen A. The Gen As. So they are the 11 to 15 year olds who will start entering the workforce in the next five to 10 years. And this is what the report suggests out. And I think you're going to enjoy this. So the report surveyed 500 teenagers aged 13 to 18 and 508 are decision makers to compare what young people expect from work versus what organisations think they want.

4:31Right. You can already see how this is going to turn out. I can see a disparity coming. So yeah, everything I'm about to say comes directly from the report. In terms of what Gen Alpha expect from work, they don't believe in one career path. Only 11 % of teens surveyed said they'd expect to stay in a single career. Nearly 40 % expect two or three careers across their lives. And that's not necessarily job hopping, hopping, not job hopping. Basically a completely different career. So doctor, stuntman, stuntperson, sorry. Yeah. And then IG model. Yeah. Well, I mean, they might be connected. So, for example, it might be welfare to work, service delivery manager, executive brand, writer, consultant, podcast host.

5:21Who would do such a crazy thing as those? I know. I'm not sure I want to meet that person. I'm not sure I'd care for that. So, yeah, they're going to have multiple careers. A portfolio career, I think it's called. Second, they're prioritizing mental health support. So, 77 % say mental health support will be important when choosing an employer. almost 40 % said it will be very important and their reasoning was basically they're looking for more happiness greater loyalty, reduced exclusion and higher motivation and they believe mental health support is going to support all of those things and you know what Al?

5:55They're not wrong No they're not Kids are smart They also said that pay still matters most so despite everything when asked to pick their number one priority 64 % chose high pay so I guess it's really support me and pay me properly it's not one or the other which we have been kind of stuck in this cycle of, isn't it? That either we need to hustle hard and get paid well or work in something meaningful and lots of hope work there, lots of free time. Another interesting thing from the report, neurodiversity. And this is one of the most significant parts of the data. So six in 10 teenagers personally nurse someone who is neurodivergent.

6:3315 % identify as neurodivergent themselves and 47 % want to work for an employee that actively supports neurodivergent staff. Interesting. Isn't that interesting when you compare when I entered the workplace, I don't think I even knew what neurodiversity was, really. So it's amazing in 15 years, actually, the awareness that has grown about neurodiversity, which is so important. When I entered the workforce 25 years ago... 1974. We just had the motor car. My boss had a Ford. No, they used to describe, you know, Go and see the guys in tech support or finance or whatever, but they're a bit weird.

7:13So just take someone with you. That was the equivalent of the diversification there. It's like, oh, yeah, weird Steve. Yeah, go and speak to weird Steve. He's a bit weird. Yeah. I mean, in terms of carrying on this neurodiversity theme, in terms of the HR side of it, 64 % of HR leaders say that they have had an increase in requests for reasonable adjustments from neurodivergent employees in the past year we had a question on the surgery recently didn't we about occupational health and adhd um 83 say making their workplaces neuro-inclusive is now important and their reasons included things like improved creativity innovation and productivity and that was all explicitly mentioned in the report so it sounds like hr is understanding the assignment but it's whether whether business leaders are really gonna gonna invest in that um quickly Also, the research showed that neurodiverse executive teams solve complex problems three times faster.

8:09So we're talking about execs now. If we're talking about Gen Alpha, we're probably about 20, 15 years away from them going to exec level or C level, aren't we? Yeah. Yeah, no, we are. But the point it was making is in the research, it cited other research. Oh, I see. That basically showed that executive teams that are diverse in any way, including neurodiverse, are much more creative. what goes shall i dr nancy doyle she's from the genius network i think and we talked to her and she was so cool she's like yeah i looked at a problem and no one else could fix it and i looked and i was like i see straight away what the problem was because i think differently and it was cool yeah absolutely sorry i hijacked there a little bit no it's fine it's okay this is a conversation now it's not a lecture thank you for coming to my ted talk uh teenagers were also asked what they think employers should actually do to support neurodiverse people in the workplace.

9:01Bear in mind, these are, what are these, 15, 13 to 18 year olds? Yep. They suggested quiet spaces, flexible working, mental health support, better manager training. If you do one thing. And more open communication. And that is basically the report's recommendation. So in terms of how prepared are employers, well, they did ask some HR leaders and they admitted that they're struggling to adapt quickly enough. They expect Gen Alpha to demand more personalization, more flexibility and more openness than previous generations. And many organizations simply don't have the systems or leadership capability to meet those expectations yet.

9:38I'm sorry. If your organization doesn't have the leadership capability to meet the expectation of personalization at the lowest of levels, you need to look into that. That's problematic leadership. That's not going to build or grow your business. That's not capability. that's give a shit ability yeah that's someone who just doesn't care well you said there though i think there was five things you said there was that that gen gen alpha one the gen is one is quiet spaces uh better management training flexible work mental health support and more open communication of those things like three are pretty easy like quiet spaces okay well that's a quiet space done it's a three minute job more open communication all right just talk more openly better management training fair enough that might take a little bit of a while mental health support there are so many like add-ons bolt-ons you can go and get to just go look we can't provide mental health support but we know that this organization and we're not talking about going getting a mindfulness app or something we're talking about actually saying right 20 quid a month and you've got access to all these amazing mental health support people we don't have to have it in-house and flexible working come on now i know it's 2025 almost 2026 this is what imagine imagine creating a product going out and interviewing your potential customers and them saying right these are the five things we really want from your product and you going yeah it sounds really nice we don't have the capability so we'll just launch it without those things yeah we don't really have the leadership capability off of flexible working at the minute yeah nonsense absolute nonsense you're ruining my knowledge also sorry also with bearing in mind that mental health support that um our young people might well see it as an individual level as organizational leaders we need to remember that mental health support also comes at an organizational level how are we controlling those um psychosocial risk factors within the workplace to support positive mental health so that's things like how much control and autonomy do our people have well relationships like in the workforce how has change managed etc etc i'll leave link in the show notes blah blah have you seen this everyone knows the link is always in the show notes uh so I came across an article and it was based on some research by Teresa Amabile and Stephen Kramer.

11:49They've got a book called The Progress Principle. And essentially what they're talking about in this is the idea of something called a micro joy. Have you come across this micro joy idea? So it's not like huge life moments like buying a house. That I suppose would be a macro joy. Buying a house, getting promotion, you know, getting a pay rise. The micro joys, they're just little things like a really nice cup of coffee. or a quick walk or someone just sending you a silly message or someone just saying, I really like your jumper dress. You look great in green and black. And I never would have put you in green and black, but you look great in it.

12:23It's navy blue. Today I learned that I'm colorblind. The point of this was that we can spend months chasing these big wins, but actually if we can start to incorporate micro wins and more importantly recognize the micro wins, then that's going to make us happier. So they've got written down here sort of seven key things they've got out of this. I'll just pick a couple. So they said they create, these micro-winds create psychological upward spirals. So someone called Barbara Fredrickson, that's a good Scrabble word, Barbara Fredrickson, sorry, Barbara, she says that frequent micro-positives broaden attention and build long-term resources like creativity, coping skills, and stronger relationship.

13:06So it builds resilience. So it's not these huge celebratory moments of getting like, you know, I'm getting a new car or whatever, which might only happen once every two or three years. It's just a tiny little thing like, oh, got a really nice cup of coffee. The other thing they said that if you actually control these and be present for them, I'm sorry to sound a bit like a new world. But if you're going to get a really nice cup of coffee, don't go and sit down and type in your keyboard and drink your coffee while you're doing it. Just go and sit in a park for five minutes and enjoy your coffee and just nothing else.

13:37put your phone away. They also suggested that if you write down your gratitude, you're a big fan of gratitude journals, aren't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you were to write down the things you really enjoyed, your micro joys at the end of the day, just be a little note on your Apple Notes or whatever, if you're in other mobile platforms are available. And just, you'll be able to spot those micro joys because you go, oh yeah, yeah, I had a really nice cup of coffee or that sandwich I had was great. See where a lot of your joy comes from. To be fair, it really, really does. I love a good sandwich.

14:10Leanne made a crab salad. Here we are. Welcome to Recipe Hour on Truth, Lies and Work. Leanne made a crab salad yesterday, which is based on something called a Cantabria salad or something. Basically, crab sticks. Basic bitch of all the seafood sticks. Of all the fish sticks. Chop it up. Add mayonnaise, tomato sauce and radish and what was the other thing? Cucumber. Cucumber in it. Beautiful. Delicious. Really nice. Bit of toast. Beautiful. Anyway. So that was my micro joy from yesterday. Lee, thoughts? My micro joy from yesterday was getting our tree. That was actually more of a macro joy. You know how much I love it.

14:46Yeah, it makes sense. This is all, I guess, it's living in the world of mindfulness, of gratitude practice, of positive psychology, which we know has loads of research that has shown if we can be mindful, if we can be present, if we can focus on the positive things and train our brain that way, it builds our psychological capital. That's our hope, our optimism, our resilience, and our self-efficacy, our confidence in our ability to do well. And they're the four psychological states that are really important in terms of maintaining positive well-being. So it makes complete sense to me. And yeah, I think in terms of the gratitude, it's what the research has found is that it's more impactful if it's very specific.

15:23So like you say, I had a great cup of coffee, the milk was so creamy, and there was a perfect amount of sweetness. being more specific is actually gonna um kind of drill down into that micro joy and that gratitude um and what are the other ones um social things people rather than things so my micro joy yesterday was sharing our first rudolph of the season with you as we put up our christmas tree rudolph being just in case you don't know it's from our other podcast we invented a drink we did invent a drink i'm sure someone had done before sparkly just cheap old sparkly sparkly wine or a prosecco if We can't get decent Brosecco where we are.

16:02And even if we could, I'm a tight, I'm not going to buy Brosecco. And then just a shot of Campari in it. Delicious. Lovely. Beautiful. Beautiful. So, yeah, I enjoyed that. Yeah. And then taking, and things that take away, just finish it off, that take away discomfort or pain. So, for example, when you finally got rid of your wedgie yesterday, that was a micro joy. Wedgie.

16:26I didn't have a wedgie. That's not true. I'm a fan of the looser pant. By the way, those of you who are interested in, who are big into continuity will notice that the Anne referenced yesterday is getting the tree, whereas this is going out on the 9th. I specifically referenced last week. So, yeah, this is not recorded the week before. Come on, guys. We've got 18 episodes to record in 10 days because we're off for a month. So give us a break. Stop coming at us. Lee, what else have you seen? Starbucks. Oh, yeah. of good cups of coffee. Good coffee, bad culture. Is that what we're saying? Yeah. So Starbucks apparently is in the middle of what workers are calling the largest and longest strike in the company's history.

17:09Now don't get me wrong. I have been aware that Starbucks has been a bit of a pickle. Yeah, we did something a couple of weeks ago on the Green Apron something. Yes, we did. All that training stuff, didn't we? And I think something on that. Yeah, that kind of CEO transition as well. They had, they brought out like a manifesto, didn't they? Of new values, but didn't consult anybody about it. It's been car crash after car crash for Starbucks. Yeah. And it continues. Saga continues. So currently about 2 ,500 baristas across 120 stores in 85 cities have walked out. The union behind it, the Starbucks Workers United Union, is warning this could stretch well into the holiday period unless the company comes back to the table with something meaningful.

17:50So Starbucks themselves... This is not... I feel this is probably not going to be the way that one should respond to this, just by your tone of voice. No, Starbucks themselves have said, oh, don't worry, the impact's really tiny. Like, it's like less than 1 % of our stores affected. Right. Like, is 2 ,500 of your staff? Yeah. Deadly arithmetic of compassion here, Al. Anyway, so Starbucks seemed quite chilled about it. In terms of how we got here, we did kind of allude to some things that went down. So four years ago, there was one small store in Buffalo, Buffalo, New York? Is that right? I believe so.

18:26I've just been talking to Erica about that. Sorry, I've just realised that Erica, this might have been a private conversation that I was supposed to have with her. Yes, Buffalo. Carry on, Buffalo. So Buffalo held... Hi, Erica. Buffalo held a staff vote on whether they wanted to unionise and they said yes. Since then, more than 650 stores have had their own votes and also chosen to unionise. These aren't political elections. They're basically store-by-store ballots And when employees say, yes, they want collective representation, then this newly formed Starbucks Workers United. The SWU. Yeah, it comes into play.

19:02So the reason the workers say they wanted to unionise is that basically pay has fallen behind the job. So some long tenured baristas were earning barely more than new starters. Conditions worsened during the pandemic. So stores stayed open. They got more abuse from customers. and workloads intensified. Staffing levels dropped, so there were basically fewer people. People left were picking up the slack. So understandably, Al, people were getting a bit frustrated. We're having conversations with management and nothing was really, really happening. So hence the unionization. So in terms of what the company says, Starbucks insists it is ready to come to the table and bargain.

19:45It points to average hourly pay of around$30, high application numbers and turnover that's less than half the industry average. So they're basically going, yeah, but it's not that bad. And yes, stores are open and busy, but that doesn't make the underlying issues any more of a problem, really. There's, of course, a leadership churn. We've seen that in the past few years. They've cycled through multiple CEOs. And the barista's view in this article is pretty blunt. Leadership is relying too heavily on algorithms and dashboards to run the business and not enough on the people actually serving customers.

20:18There you go. mic drop moment. So anyway, apparently more than 100 members of Congress have backed the workers. There's been mayors on picket lines and even Bernie Sanders has shown off at one of the programs. Oh, Bernie, Bernie. Hardest working man in finance, that guy, ain't he? Bernie, oh, hang on, am I thinking of Bernie Sanders? Am I the wrong person? I'm thinking of Bernie Sanders, the guy who was with that meme with his mittens and he was like for about five, six years ago and he says, once again, I'm asking you two, is that Bernie Sanders with the oldish guy with the grey hair? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

20:50I just feel like he just turns up whether people invite him or not. And he's just a bit like that slightly grumpy, slightly weird old man at the park who just sits on benches and shouts at pigeons. But maybe I'm completely wrong. I don't know anything else about him apart from the fact that he just seems to turn up and say things. Yeah, well, he's turning up for the baristas. So there you go. He likes a coffee. Yeah, I think the listeners can fill in, connect the dots at this point, can't they? Like if you're going to turn around an organisation, You have to actually invest in the people that run it every single day.

21:21And that means going to talk to them about what their beef is and how you can make their lives better. It's not necessary that you give them everything that they are demanding. Maybe that's not possible within the constraints of your business. But you need to at least have a conversation. I think the fact is this new CEO came in a year ago, still hasn't had an actual conversation with unions about how it's going to progress things. And people are just getting really frustrated to the point where they go, I'm off. I'm walking. um so there you go i think i think yeah the trust is broken it's going to be really hard to put it all back together um workers aren't asking for anything outrageous um you know they're asking for yes higher pay but they're asking for a bit of clarity a bit of stability a bit dignity at work have they got customers customers kicking off at them um do you better starbucks um please because you do make my favorite flat white but i will go somewhere else if i have to yeah you may have to if they're striking in the mould store in Wales okay so all the links are in the show notes we're going to a very quick break but after that we have got our truth or lie we're going to be asking can power posing actually increase confidence I've got a new hat and I will tell you about it after the break we've also got there you it's Christmas it's all getting a bit unhinged today it is a little bit we've not even had a drink and we've also got our world famous weekly workplace surgery I'll put your questions to Leanne and see you in a second bye bye Okay, welcome back.

22:45Let's kick off with our truth or lie. Can power pose... Do you want to tell people that your new hat? Well, I wanted to say, like, it's not a power pose, but Leanne bought me a hat, and it is a Pull &Bear, I think, hat? Beanie hat. Beanie hat. And I've been wearing the same hat for about five years, and it was from Primark, which if anyone knows that from, who's not from the UK, it's like, it cost about a pound, and I loved it, and I lost it, and I've got my new hat, and when I put it on, I feel different. Really? I love it so much. I don't feel more powerful, I just feel more cool. Right. The problem is, I realise now it has nothing to do with power posing, so tell me what is power posing, Leanne?

23:23Dr Leanne, tell us what is power posing? I'm glad you like your new hat, Al. I love my hat. Yeah. Do you want me to just go into it? Please. Normally we do like what truth and lie is, and if people haven't listened before. Oh yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, truth, lie, myth-busting segment, what most people believe and Leanne's about to say whether it's true or not based on the psychology of it. Is there anything I've missed out from that bullet point there? Yeah, no, that's fine. So the question is... Do you want to build it up a bit more? A little bit. And now it's the moment you've been waiting for.

23:56It is the truth or lies segment with the incredible Leanne Elliott. She has post-nominals. She has pre-nominals. She is just incredible. Okay, Leanne. What is power posing? Do you know what's funny? I actually stood up in my chair a little bit when I said that so maybe I was power posing a bit can standing like a superhero that's what power posing is for two minutes actually boost your confidence well this is one of the ones that in terms of like is it true or is it lie in the psychology world has been going on for about 14 years maybe yeah 12 14 years it's basically the psychologist version of his EastEnders.

24:36Like you never know which way it's going to go. That's just, we probably have, I think we're about 71 % non-Brit, so the 71 % of listeners are going, what the hell is EastEnders? Days of our lives. Days of our lives. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, where did it come from at the start of the beginning? So back in 2010, 15 years ago, three researchers, Dana Carney, Amy Cuddy, you You've probably heard Amy Cuddy and Andy Yap ran a small experiment at Columbia and Harvard. They were basically testing if people were put into a powerful posture, would they feel more powerful? They defined high power postures as open, big body language.

25:19So take up space, shoulders back, chest open. So like the Superman pose. It's like the classic power pose. I'm doing it right now. now um and then they also had this um people test a low power pose that's kind of small more closed hunched arms tucked in legs crossed tightly so we're saying like in he-man terms cringer and battle cat is that what we're saying watched he-man but sure what we're gonna rectify this afternoon carry on i have the powers of that one by the power of grayskull and he points his sword at Cringer, which is a little cat. He's cringing down like, oh, and he goes, oh, and he turns into Battle Cat and goes, rawr.

26:00It's all very exciting. No, I was more Power Rangers, too, Todd. Power pose. Power pose. So, yeah, high power pose and a low power pose. So the researcher brought in 42 students to the lab. They randomly assigned them to either high power or a low power pose, held those poses for a couple of minutes, and then tested three things. So first, they tested the feelings of power. So participants rated how in control or powerful they felt on just a simple scale. Second, they measured hormones. So the team took saliva samples before and after the poses to measure testosterone, which is linked with dominance, and cortisol, which is linked with stress.

26:37Can I just ask you quickly, so women have testosterone as well, and that would increase? Yeah. I know it's a really basic question, but I wasn't 100 % sure. I believe, yeah, I believe we do. Yeah, I believe we do. Not as much, but yeah. And third behaviour, they gave participants a small gambling task to see if the pose made them more willing to take risks. And the results at the time were pretty, pretty big. So people in the expansive poses, the power poses, they did feel more powerful. They did take more risks in the gambling challenge. And unbelievably, some might say testosterone went up and cortisol went down.