261. This Year in Work 2025 (Part 2) - Our favourite guests of the year, your listeners’ choice, and the most-downloaded expert episode of 2025.

0:00Merry Christmas everyone.

0:08Yeah, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas Al. Happy Christmas, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas listeners, maybe you are joining us on your morning dog walk. Maybe you've snuck off for a nap and we're your Nodcast of choice. I don't mind that. How dare you. Or maybe it's well past Christmas Day and you are now on your daily commute and just want to see how our highlights turned out. Whatever the answer is, welcome. Welcome, welcome. This is part two of our highlights episode. On Tuesday, we brought you our favourite moments from this week in work episode. That's the Tuesday episodes.

0:40And today we're sharing our favourite guest interviews and the most downloaded expert interview of the year. That's our Thursdays. Are you keeping up? I think they're up to it, yeah. What a year it's been, Al. I'm sure you guys 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. Did you see what I did there? That was very smooth. Thank you. If it's your first time, it's not a place to start, but I like it. My name is Leanne. I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.

1:11My name is Al. I'm a business owner. And together we help organisations build amazing workplace cultures. I think you know what's coming up next. We're going to be going into part two of our highlights after a very quick word from our sponsors. See you in just a second. If you've ever done sales for your business, then I bet this is going to be familiar. Your pipeline looks full, activity looks great, but you're not sure which leads matter, which ones are wasting your week and which call you should have made three days ago. It can all be very confusing, Al. Very confusing. But luckily, HubSpot's prospecting agent gives you a clear way forward.

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2:04Welcome back. So this is how it's going to work. We've both picked two of our favourite interviews from this year. That's 2025, actually, technically not this. Is it this year? It's Christmas Day, Al. Yeah, it's Christmas Day. Not at all pre-recorded. Not at all. No, we're literally just waiting here. We just put the turkey in. Yeah, exactly. We've got nothing to do with it. We'll just jump on and talk to you guys. So basically what we've done is we've gone back through all the emails and the messages to see which of our experts you seem to love most. We've got all the feedback together and we're ready to crown our listeners choice of the year.

2:35That's very grand. I like it. Yes, it is. It is very exciting. As if that wasn't exciting enough, we'll also be crowning our most downloaded expert guest episode of the year. So recorded this year, downloaded this year. We know Rory Sutherland continues to top that most downloaded list of all time. So I mean, and in terms of what was the most downloaded this year, it was certainly an episode that resonated and I'd imagine got a lot of shares as well. So stay tuned to find out who gets crowned, listener's choice and the most downloaded episode of 2025. But before that, we're going to kick off with this absolute legend.

3:09He turned a post-recession layoff into what's now a$10 million ice pop empire and one of Atlanta's most beloved brands. Of course, I'm talking about King of Pops. And he's done all this holding on to one quite radical notion that work should be fun. We agree. We do. He is now sharing his philosophy as a speaker and author of Work is Fun, Seven Ways a Successful Ice Pop Company Makes Work Meaningful and How You Can Do It Too. Let's join Al interviewing Steve Kass about exactly this. I think there's going to be a lot of people sitting there going, work is fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How are you going to make it fun, but also keep people productive?

3:46Are they thinking the wrong way? Yeah, I think people think of work and fun even like just to put it more directly oftentimes as opposites and yeah i think that's a big argument of the book is that if you just truly ask yourself like why can't this be fun or why can't this be more fun maybe it's not going to be your warren buffett like i already said tap dancing once i love that i said it twice but i think i had such why that was in my mind i think he has a he talks about tap dancing to work each day and he's obviously wealthy and still loves to go to work. And we all have to be that. I mean, I think I think I want to be in that bucket and feel like I am there right now.

4:27But I don't think that I'm under the illusion that everybody is going to find that all of the time. But what is the harm in trying to make it 5 % more fun? I'd say that to the skeptics. What is the harm in just thinking about and trying to make it more fun for your employees what would be the downside of that obstacles i've already said it on on on the on the podcast not that serious in the grand scheme of things so yeah brain surgeon should they be you know you know being silly while they're doing surgery probably not but there's there's that's probably a small percentage of their time and they're probably actually having fun when they get to that part that's probably something they studied for and probably lit up their brain is probably ticking on all cylinders and i think they're probably enjoying that part it's probably like the whatever the cleanup is or the prep some of the parts that they probably could enjoy figure out ways to enjoy more if they weren't already having fun they might be having fun already those guys are great i always think the measure of whether you are doing something right in life is whether you wake up in the morning thinking about the problem you're trying to solve at work yeah i think that people are saying that that problems are bad, but actually good problem.

5:43Some problems are really good to work on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like the way you said that. And I think one thing when we're going through our, our meeting structure, sometimes I think this goes to like the point of tension or like the, the naysayer. So I think if you ever just feel really frustrated, and this is another thing I borrowed from Zingerman's, but when furious, get curious, like if you're really mad about something, it's probably like, it's probably a pretty good issue. And you probably need to kind of like check in on like why are you mad about that like it's a piece of the business that maybe you want to improve or a piece of your work that you want to improve um but if you're getting mad about it it's it's worth checking in on that emotion like why why am i getting mad on that and it'll probably help you improve it or so that was just a little taste of the awesome steve cast go back to episode 181 for the full episode a link to that and all the episodes talk about are of course, in the show notes.

6:36Now, my first pick was a proper pinch remorment. So Al and I have been obsessed with podcasts for years, like 12, 13 years. Actually, Al, were you there for the launch of Ricky Gervais when he basically invented podcasts? Was it back in the 90s? Kind of, yeah. Because you introduced me to podcasts. Did I? Yeah. I did know that. Do you know what? A big shout out to my friend from school, Quentin James. He first told me about podcasts 20 years ago. Wow. Yeah, I know. Yeah, 2005 Ricky Gervais, which is sure. Wow. I know. Like I said, we're huge fans. And we do like to keep an eye on the charts. Of course we do, to see how Truth, Lies and Work is faring against the greats.

7:16And over the summer, we started to get into a bit of a leapfrog competition with the one and only Andrew Palmer from Economist Boss Class. Yeah, now we could do one of two things. We could slag him off and say his podcast is rubbish and you shouldn't listen to it. or you can do the sort of thing that I would do, which is basically drop a message, told him we were at war and said he might as well come on the podcast so we can be friends instead. And to our surprise, he actually said yes. To my surprise, he did say yes. And it was such a fabulous interview. Picking a clip from it was actually really, really difficult.

7:50But I think when you hear Google and Apple in the same sentence, it seems like a pretty good place to start. So let's go and join Al and Andrew. Is there anything else that like, that any other conversations you've had, which have just like blown you away or you've gone like, oh, that's such a great point, never thought of it this way? So I think probably one that sticks in the mind is a recent one with Liz Reed, who's the head of search at Google, who was talking about how that company thinks about innovation and in particular, talking through their process for developing AI. So we all now see these AI overviews when we do a Google search sort of at the top of the screen.

8:31So that was a super interesting conversation just in terms of how they think about things. The one line that stuck was this line which was, you know, fall in love with the problem, not the solution, which was advice that she had been given as a young product engineer and now sort of recites to her teams and is meant to kind of encourage a problem-solving mindset within the company, which allows for people to sort of pivot, change direction, recognize when something has not worked and you might park it and change course. I just think it's a really nice little aphorism to latch onto, whether you're trying to innovate or just trying to solve a different kind of problem entirely, the first answer or the one that occurs to you may not be the right one.

9:27So again, have the open-mindedness to change course if it turns out that you're wrong. I mean, I think it's not fall in love with any problem. It's fall in love with the problem as opposed to the solution. So it's important that you define a problem that matters. So lots of user research, common sense will tell you, is there an issue with how this product is working? or is there a need that isn't met? But once you identify the problem, approach that with an open mind rather than, okay, and this is the way we're going to solve it. Because you will often have, like meeting one, someone with a large salary and a loud voice will say, this is the way I think we should solve it.

10:09And potentially that's the end of the discussion. So ways to sort of avoid that problem are important and I just like that phrase as a way of thinking about it. You say loud voice which immediately when someone thinks of a boss they tend to think loud booming voice. Some of the people who have had the, I'm sorry volume wise but the loudest voices have been the likes of Jobs, have been the likes of Musk but by all accounts they're not amazing managers, not great leaders. So does that mean that we can say, if you're loud, you're not a great leader? If you're quiet, you are a great leader? It's not as simple as that, is it?

10:48It totally isn't. By loud, I really mean the one that kind of silences debate before it's happened. Yeah, I think that Steve Jobs is a sort of problem because he sort of gets wielded as this ace card in any kind of story or debate. And he was both a kind of one-of-a-kind genius and apparently a bit of a jerk. And so, you know, neither of those things are particularly helpful in a normal workplace. You know, most people are not going to invent the iPhone. Their range of achievement is going to be slightly less high. and most workplaces could, I mean, maybe we should talk about jerks because I think actually you can get, zero tolerance of jerks is not good.

11:45But that's definitely not code for you should behave badly. So Jobs got away with it because of what he'd done and I'm not sure that's a useful lesson for anyone. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. This is such good advice, such good advice. And it applies all across your business, including people, obviously. Of course. Yeah, no, he's such a cool guy. And as we've chatted about for a while, I did enjoy how he said that Steve Jobs was a problematic leader. Yes. It might be time to move on from glamorising that kind of toxic start-up culture. It's very 1998, Alan, not in a good way.

12:18No. So go back, go talking, go back, go back to episode 217 for the full interview with Andrew. Right, my turn. Back in April, I interviewed a guy called James Hawkins. Now, you may not have heard of him unless you like salty people on Twitter, stroke X because that's where he basically just puts loads of stuff on there which get people really angry and it's quite funny. He's the co-founder and co-CEO of PostHog which is a company you almost certainly will have heard of. He's grown a 10 million dollar dev tools company by ditching managers and ditching meetings. Instead PostHog runs lots of tiny little autonomous teams where engineers ship first and ask questions later and nobody gets special treatment just because they have a fancy title clearly my kind of guy one of the ways to not get hired at post dog is to say i want to manage loads of people for example um we'll hire people that are just very passionate about building stuff in general and that's kind of what motivates them it's not really money it's not um kind of empire building um because i think this corresponds with the this correlates with engineers who will want to keep building even when stuff's harder because they just love the underlying work um and some of them are a little bit curious so i think it's almost like a development point for some people and we might wind up saying hey you're getting kind of effectively more senior like because you've been leading the team that's influencing this now um but it won't guarantee any kind of correlation kind of thing so um i think people often can end up as stronger individual engineers if they have managed a few people because they kind of get the they might have a slightly broader picture of the business for example they have a slightly better understanding of what the company cares about so which is kind of nuanced or i think people who'd be managers are easier to that they require less work to manage i think often as well because they can empathize with what it's like when you have to deal with a bunch of people um so yeah there's like some interesting stuff but yeah we absolutely will get pushback and we've had people refuse before um to do this then we've also had managers swap with one of their direct reports and the manager has proposed it going hey i think joe blogs who reports to me mary should actually be my boss and i should report to them i think both of us will be happier and then we'll just pay and then often we'll just end up making that change and you just explained that the managers they get out the way yeah they're there to to make things easier yeah but we've still got the problem of meetings and the problem of all these slack messages or emails or whatever have you got a different way of coping with those yeah um so we have kind of a communication hierarchy that we've published into i think it's our handbook as well but it's basically like um a preferred method of communication is a pull request as in like here is the code so it'd be something like uh so yeah communication could be like do you think i should build this thing or whatever but we prefer that an engineer is just like i've built this thing um let's test um as opposed to like okay i'm gonna spend a month thinking about it it's like no i've just spent a week building it in practice let's find out one of the other learnings i think we've had is one of the things that's been quite different in our experience compared to what it looked like it would be on the internet when we're learning about how to do everything um as a startup was i think if you read a lot of like product management stuff online it's all kind of um thou shalt uh validate your ideas up thine ideas i don't know you should evaluate your ideas up front before you waste time but i don't think this is really i think that's like a cultural thing from really risk-averse extremely large companies that might spend like 20 billion on some new thing and they need to be ultra risk averse whereas with a startup like you're screwed by default like you're going to fail like you're on a dying path as soon as you start hiring people spending money and so you need to like you shouldn't be working in a risk averse way you should be really embracing stuff um and i think the when we've tried to validate stuff up front like we've just had the we've had clearer lessons still when we've just built something put our energy into building it in a like way where we're happy to throw it away if it doesn't work and getting it into people's hands.

16:03And so our preferred method of communication from an engineer is not to spend ages like super validating a product, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just build something real, ship it. You'll get feedback from the team afterwards being like, hey, why did you build this? It seems weird or dumb. Most of the time it won't though. And they're like, cool, we can actually just learn clearly if it was dumb because we'll see if anyone used it or not. So we'd rather have some risk-taking over what gets built in an extremely low consensus environment is our preferred way of building stuff. What I'm enjoying about listening back to these interviews that you and I probably haven't heard for a couple of months either um is we're starting to hear those themes that we've been talking about with psychologists more recently as well so with james i'm seeing there a bit of danny warham's constellation leadership yep yep and the learning environments we heard about from andrew palmer psychological safety from basically everyone everybody i mean as a business owner i do like a bit of chaos because it keeps things exciting but when you're running a company the size of post hoc you need to get the balance just right and post hoc really have i think and so does james they're innovative they like to experiment and they like to make sure the right person is sat in that manager role yeah really good stuff uh the full conversation with james is in episode 189 definitely worth a listen and do you know what else is worth a listen now um i think i do because i've got a note down in front of me but tell everyone episode 171 the science of resilience with dr marie helen pelliter and this one takes us all the way back to february 2025 off the hope that we had for the world in February.

17:26Oh, we were younger and less, I was less grey. Yes, I was almost a full year younger. So yes, Dr. Marie Helene, or MH as she likes to be called, is a leadership psychologist, executive coach, author, and two times TEDx speaker who specialises in strategic resilience. Two words you've probably never heard together before. No, not until now. Now in this clip, MH explains, we need to get MH and MFD on the pod. MH explains that resilience isn't just about surviving, the tough moments is about growing from them. And we're going to hear about the four most important things that contribute to resilience.

18:01Steve Carse:If we step back on definition of even mental health from the World Health Organization, our ability to cope with stresses of life, realize our abilities, learn well, work well and contribute to our community. If we look at the definition of resilience, and there are many in the academic literature, but one that most researchers and practitioners use, and the one I use as well, is our ability to go through adversity and come out even stronger. So there is this element of the stressors of life, basically, both acute and chronic. And then the resilience aspect adds this component of growth, of learning.

18:44Steve Carse:Right. And so if we're going to want to bring our best, both professionally and even personally in our personal lives, because it's all connected. Right. We don't there isn't a lane specific for work and a lane specific for personal. We will want to invest proactively in our resilience. It's going to help with everything. And why is it so important today in the world of work we're operating in in 2025? I would say always been important. We're talking more about it. And I love that. And we're also talking more about it, I think, because on one hand, it's become a word we're used to. On the other hand, we're still not fabulous at it.

19:25Steve Carse:So we need to talk about it more. The other thing is that we are facing even more challenges, even looking at recent statistics from World Economic Forum, talking about businesses noticing that 44 % and more of workers will see their skills disrupted by 2027. And even if we just think about AI and all the changes it brings in general, personal and professional life, that in itself will be probably both an acute and a chronic demand that we'll have to deal with. And there are many others. So that's normal. That's fine. We almost want to turn these challenges into the way life is. And at the same time, recognizing that for us humans, these demands are taxing.

20:13Steve Carse:They are requiring some of our resources. And now we'll dive into how a workplace is a system. It's not all in us as individuals. And that's a very, very important aspect of this overall picture. And even in that system, we do have an impact, an opportunity to impact our resilience. The key aspect being, or one of the key ones, is that it is not a personality trait. Sometimes we'll tend to think that it is because we've been so resilient in so many ways so far, recently, that's great. And so, well, that must be who I am. And no, it isn't. It's a state. So that means it will fluctuate. And it also means we can influence it.

20:59Steve Carse:We have agency and we want to use that. So if resilience fluctuates, how do we know when we might be in need of building our resilience and doing something proactive to build that back up? Always. It's similar to if it's not exactly that. But if we said, well, you know, hydration is important. How often should we drink? Well, all day, every day. And it's not because we did yesterday that we don't need to do it today. No, always. And if we know there's going to be a demand, say a phase where we can't drink much water, then yes, we want to front load. And we want to replenish as soon as we can shortly after.

21:36It functions the same way in a number of ways.

21:40Steve Carse:And so how will we know if it's particularly suffering, right? We will start to see things like maybe our concentration not being as good. For a lot of people, they will see themselves being more impatient than they usually are. If you're always impatient, maybe that's not a sign. But even an impatient person sometimes will reach even higher levels. Sometimes it will impact your sleep. It will impact your eating habits, your consumption of alcohol, for example. Often an easy way to think about it is you're just not being your usual self. So when we recognize that in ourselves, if we have that awareness, or maybe it's the feedback we get from others.

22:27I might have been told that before from Al, perhaps, that I'm having less patience than I normally would. If I recognize that, what can I do? What practical things can I do to start to better manage the stress and build my resilience?

22:42Steve Carse:So during the pandemic, especially, everyone, we've all heard the things, the key things that would likely help us build our resilience. And they are solidly research based. We're not talking about a few studies. We're talking about body of research, meta-analysis, systematic reviews, like very established. So four key variables we would want in that equation. The problem is not so much knowing those variables. It's an implementing, which is why I'm arguing we need to be actually strategic about it. But just so we're all on the same page, those four variables. First one is, yeah, movement or exercise.

23:27Steve Carse:Three categories, subcategories in there. One is cardio, one is strength training, and another one is meditative type activity. Yoga, meditation, tai chi, all of these. Okay, so that's variable number one. And actually, number one in the me listing them right now. They're not in order of priority necessarily. Another one is nutrition. A lot of research is focusing on the Mediterranean type diet. Fish, leafy vegetables, that kind of thing. Huge impact on our resilience. We do it for physical health. It's huge for mental health. Sleep, seven to eight hours a night. And no, the phone is not something to do in your bed or your laptop.

24:09Steve Carse:No, not doing that either. And fourth category is our relationships. Spending time with people we enjoy spending time with. And I'm seeing most leaders and professionals let that one go. They'll prioritize exercise. They'll prioritize specifically cardio, maybe strength training. They'll say meditation's not for them, even more of a reason to do it. They'll sometimes compromise on nutrition, often compromise on sleep, and very often cancel any social plan to work. And yet these four variables would have the most impact on our resilience. So you say to approach it strategically, what would that look like?

24:50Like, how can I assess where I am on those four variables?

24:54Steve Carse:I know this, this I think is truly the game changer here. And here's the way even I got to realizing this is the missing piece. I was working with leaders, business owners, that kind of thing. And some of them were saying, well, you know, what's my problem? Why am I just not implementing those things that I know I should? I believe in them. I believe in research, like crystal clear. I've done this before and felt better. Everything is there. I'm still not doing it. Then at some point I said, well, it's similar to in business when you have a great idea about a new thing to launch, new service, new product.

25:34Steve Carse:Would you just have this great idea and say, great, let's do it. Or would you have this great idea and say, OK, who else is offering it? How much are they charging for it? Who is buying it? What forces in the near or far future might impact the demand for it? You would do all this. This is evaluating the context. This leads to a strategy. So a higher level direction on how you're going to launch the thing. So same thing here for us with our resilience. So we have this great idea. We know some of the things we think that we should do. And what I'm saying is, let's be strategic, which means your plan, Leanne, and mine will be different.

26:18Steve Carse:My plan will be different from my plan in three months from now because my context is changing. And I'm saying three main ways to get to designing a plan that's yours, that's uniquely aligned with your context. We're focusing on your values. We're focusing on a realistic assessment of your sources of supply and your sources of demand. We're assessing your context using the same framework as the SWOT analysis in business, looking at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, so that you can create a plan that is actually doable. and that's what then changes everything because now it happens it builds self-efficacy that sense of yes i can impact my resilience and now we're actually on our way i love mh's approach because it's just it's practical it's relatable and it's all still backed by science i think the big takeaway for me again we're listening to that interview is remembering that resilience is state it's not fixed It's not part of our personality.

27:23It moves, it fluctuates, but we can also influence it as well. Yeah, and remember those four pillars. Move, eat properly, sleep well, and spend time with people who lift you up. That's what I do every day. Yeah. Yeah, I spend time with you who lift me up. I think, to be honest, a lot of us do sort of push those aside when work gets busy, which is why MH says we need a plan that fits real life, not just some perfect version of it. And when you do that, you're going to find your resilience will genuinely grow. Yeah, it's such a great one. Add it to your January listen list when we're all just running a little low on energy, aren't we?

27:57That's episode 171. And I wanted to mention as well, MH has a brand new TEDx talk out, literally out at time of recording very recently, time of listening, maybe a couple of weeks ago. But yes, a brand new TEDx talk called Crossing the River, Resilience in the Age of AI. As you'd imagine, it's brilliant. And it does use a crossing the river as a really brilliant analogy for dealing with all this disruption and building resilience in a strategic and sustainable way. So I'll leave a link to that as well in the show notes. Okay, we're going to go to a very quick break. Those are our favourites. And coming up now, we're going to be talking about your favourites, the ones that got you talking.

28:38Is that right, Leigh? Yes, we've got listeners choice and most downloaded guest of 2025. You have to come back. You have to come back. Otherwise, we'll come and find you. See you in a second. If you're like me and you hate all this workaholic hustle nonsense on the socials and somebody's getting up at 3am to drink butter, then here is a brand new podcast that I know. If you're like me and you hate all this workaholic hustle nonsense that's all over the socials, You know, that dude who's getting up at like 3am to drink butter. Well, here is a brand new podcast that I know you will love. It is called Seven Day Weekend and is, of course, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals where all good podcasts live.