284. Corporate Bullshit, new-collar jobs and interview red flags. PLUS! Are Morning People More Successful?

22:07Leanne:But it is these things like it should be a clear and easy process. Communication should be very transparent and very accurate. Interviews should be very respectfully dealt with. Things should be personalized. Speed is important in terms of the space between application and feedback or application interview and then interview and finding out what the outcome is. it all kind of prevents the best talent from yeah seeing the red flags disengaging from the process and going to one of your your competitors so this isn't something you've thought about as a business owner you really really should and it's not really that hard it's basic stuff that probably just starts with kind of a review of your current recruitment journey and often the simplest thing is having one person who's like project managing it it's like a like why aren't people project managing their recruitment process and you need one person to kind of lead that through anyway Al's yawning at me so uh should we move on I'm sorry I'm not it's just like you said it feels like we've done seven days work in seven hours today um if if you are a business owner then you already probably know how you onboard a client and how you uh or how you sell to a customer or just treat your employees the same way they are in their internal customers and you know and if you think god they'd be they they should be pleased and grateful they've got a job with me in the first place well what are you listening to us for yeah sounds like you're not sure we're for you yeah we're not for you tell you what might be for you though listener is truth or lie which is coming up just after the break and we're gonna be talking about morning people and all those we've already done a profanity um warning haven't we yes all those wankers who put their faces in sparkling water and then post it on on on instagram so we will see you in a few seconds Billion Dollar Moves, hosted by Sarah Chen Spellings, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination of business professionals.

23:54Leanne:Join venture capitalist and strategist Sarah Chen Spellings as she asks the hard questions and learns through the triumphs, failures, and hard lessons of the creme de la creme, so you too can make billion dollar moves in venture, in business, and in life. Maybe start with episode 124, where you're going to hear how industry giants from Canva to YouTube define leadership. Listen to Billion Dollar Moves wherever you get your podcasts.

24:22welcome back this is truth or lie as you know the part of the show where we take a popular idea and i ask leanne does the evidence actually back this up now if you've been anywhere near the internet recently you may have come across a guy called ashton hall he's he is what we've got here is a 29 year old fitness influencer who went viral this year for his morning routine you've probably seen it so he apparently wakes up at 350 in the morning he works out he goes for a swim then he rubs banana peels in his face then he dunks his head in a bowl of saratoga sparkling water the video got over let me just check 100 million views on tiktok and 700 million x but it was and i remember this distinctly very widely mocked very widely shared and accidentally caused a national run on sparkling water now ashton hall obviously is at extreme even by the standards of morning culture or morning routine culture but he is probably the most visible example of this much broader idea that's been building for years this is the belief that waking up early is what separates high achievers like me from everyone else tim cook apparently is 3 45 a.m michelle obama 4 30 a.m al elliot usually about quarter to eight there's also as leanne will tell you there's an entire manosphere ecosystem built around the idea that real men and successful men they're disciplined men they're up before the sun exactly and this isn't actually that new because i remember i remember back the 2005 i went bankrupt and i had to rebuild everything and i remember reading all the books they're going yes so you know eat that frog be up at five do you do all your what not permutations what's it called when manifestations then go for a run and then you've done more before seven than most people have done all day lee i believe we can sum this up in one question are morning people actually more successful excellent question thank you very much it was i felt like it was a long lead up to that i'm sorry it required the

26:26Leanne:context though i think yeah it did it did well done to those people who skipped forward 30 seconds through my diatribe. Let's start, shall we, by defining what we mean by morning person in terms of the science and psychology. Okay. So in the research, it's called a chronotype. Oh. And it basically means it's our body's natural preference for when it sleeps and when it's awake. Okay. So it's not when your alarm goes off. It's when your body, left to its own devices, would naturally do things wake up go to sleep here's the important part it's pretty biological so your chronotype is driven by your internal body clock which is a system that your brain uses to regulate when it feels alert and when you feel sleepy and how it measures time fun fact my undergrad dissertation was on the internal clock was it time yeah yeah it was yeah yeah it was so it's not a habit it's it's physiology.

27:22Leanne:And because it's biological, it's largely fixed. And you can force yourself to wake up early. Of course you can. But your body's underlying preference doesn't really change. And over time, if you don't have to be up, it will pull you back to your natural rhythms. So that's what the science describes as a morning person. But what time makes a morning person? What time does a morning person make? This is such a typical psychologist question. I'm saying, are morning people successful? You're going, yes, but what? We need to define a morning person first, right? So researchers divide people into two groups, basically, and they've given them names.

28:01Leanne:You're going to like this. We've got the larks, who are the morning types, naturally go to bed before 11pm and wake up before 8am. And then we have the owls, the evening types, naturally go to bed after 11pm and wake up after 8am. Most people sit somewhere in the middle. Yeah. A morning person, let me read that again, you'll go to bed before 11 and you'll get up before 8 right what ashton hall is doing waking up at 350 isn't a chronotype it's an alarm clock there is no kind of you know by scientific standards that's not what a morning person looks like it's it's extreme it's more than likely performative i still don't understand why i had to use sparkling water and there's no real biology that naturally peaks at 350 a.m right you know as a morning person you might as an owl but not as a morning person so in research is so that's what the morning is so morning to find success now we need to find this basically it was success means lots of different things different people doesn't it but in terms of literature we can talk about how well you do in school how much money you make and how well you're able to function at work these are types of things that psychologists looked at when considering people's chronotype okay okay got it would you like to start with a case for yes there is genuine evidence here really there is that morning people are more successful a 2023 study in finland tracked over 5 000 people from birth into middle age what's that called al it's called a chronological um a latitude longitudinal study is that right it is well doing 10 points to gryffindor a longitudinal study so they matched their the chronotype of these 5 000 people against tax records the real earnings not self-reported they found was the evening types the owls earned around four percent less on average by their mid-40s with a gap largest for men okay and a similar study in denmark from 2012 found the same thing morning types morning type so our larks and four to five percent more and the researchers accounted for things like education level job type type to make sure they weren't seeing the results the earnings gap was still there sorry mouthful of water i do have a question hit me these studies were done in denmark and norway did you say finland finland they are in the north so therefore generally speaking they get longer days and therefore so is that got any mind you i wish i shouldn't ask that because now you're going to be defining what actually a morning what dawn is so what you're asking is does the context in which you might be a lark or an owl couch yes that's exactly what i'm asking yes it does and i will we'll come on to that but you're absolutely right you're asking the right questions this is great i I feel like one of those smug kids in the class.

31:05You know, always one called Tarquin or something. He goes, does this mean that it sounds annoying?

31:10Leanne:It's good you're thinking like a psychologist, Al. Love it. Love it. 300 episodes were you, of course, yeah. That's what we've got in terms of wages. Education. Pattern is just as consistent, actually. A 2013 study looking at 272 German high school students found that being an evening type predicted lower grades and not just slightly lower across every single subject. This even held up when researchers accounted for IQ and personality. So it wasn't that ours were less intelligent or less conscientious. Something else was going on. Then there was a large American study followed over 2 ,500 people from their teenage years all the way into their late 20s.

31:51Leanne:Evening types as teenagers were not only getting lower grades in high school, they were also less likely to have completed a university degree years later. And then a 2024 review pulled together 34 separate studies and confirmed the overall picture on this. Morning types consistently outperform evening types academically. So the evidence of a morning advantage is real. It replicates across countries. It shows up in both education and earnings. On the surface, yeah, it looks like the larks win. Morning people are more successful. So you asked an excellent question now, thinking like a psychologist, but doesn't it depend on context?

32:26Yes.

32:27Leanne:if this person experiences a very very long day or a very very long night yeah sure you should pretend that's the that's the question i asked yeah yeah so if morning types are doing better then the obvious question is why and that's the part of the question you asked is why and this is where we start to kind of move into the case against because when researchers dug into it they found something quite important it wasn't necessarily that morning types are more capable is that the world around them has given them an advantage. Right. Think about how society is structured. What time does school start?

33:05Oh, yeah, yeah.

33:06Leanne:What time do offices open? Yeah, early. Yeah. Working day, roughly, nine to five. Yeah. They're not neutral biological timings. They align very nicely with LARC biology. So for owls, every single day starts with their body clock being ignored. Ah. And that has actual consequences that research has been able to measure. So a 2021 study of 6 ,000 people found that evening types had double the odds of poor workability compared to morning types. But when researchers looked at why, the gap was almost entirely explained by two things. One, owls were getting less sleep on work days. And two, they're experiencing what research has called social jet lag.

33:54Leanne:social jet lag is actually quite quite helpful concept actually it's basically the gap between when your body wants to sleep and when your schedule forces you to wake up so if your body naturally wakes up at 8 30 but your job starts at 8 you're effectively living in the wrong time zone every single day and over weeks and months that's going to accumulate so it's not necessarily it's about laziness it's just a biological mismatch between what your body naturally does and what your schedule demands so you're kind of like into your waking overdraft a little bit yeah yeah absolutely yeah or social jet lag also there is already yeah come on there's already a name for that so don't start making up new ones yeah and it's and it is actually quite serious as much as we laugh because it's not just about feeling you know a bit tired and lethargic um there was another a study of about the same number of people, 6 ,000 people, across 20 years.

34:50Leanne:And they found that evening types who were employed showed high rates of depression and abnormal patterns of cortisol. That's the hormone in our body that's released in terms of helping us deal with stress. And chronically elevated cortisol is really, really bad for us. It's related to things like cardiovascular problems, immune suppression, and as we've just seen, risk of anxiety and depression. then we have some findings that more directly challenge the whole premise so that's kind of like yeah it's true but it's context it's not necessarily that morning people are more successful it's the world is built for morning people there is also a study a british study of over 3 000 people and it's set out to test i love british stories they literally wanted to test the old proverb early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise that's so english it's so english so if morning types really are more successful this should have been pretty easy to confirm they're looking at people who are gonna be healthy wealthy and wise what they found was the opposite evening types had higher average incomes and morning types no significant difference in intelligence and no significant difference in health so this british study actually found the opposite that owls earned more money curious curious then we have a 2014 study of university students that showed something that ties all of this together when evening types were put into morning classes their grades dropped right when the same students attended afternoon classes when their biology was awake and alert, their grades improved significantly.

36:35Leanne:And the researchers call this a synchrony effect. So basically, when your chronotype and your schedule are matched, good things happen. Oh, there was one more thing that I thought was interesting because as you rightly said there, Al, if you design your schedule to match your preference, whether you're a lark or an owl, then does that fix it? And we actually have some research on self-employed people. They have much more control over when they start and finish work. And they found that they experienced, self-employed people experience significantly less social jet lag than traditional employees.

37:11Leanne:So for evening types, especially the freedom to work around your own biology rather than somebody else's timetable appears to largely neutralise any disadvantage they have. Fabulous. Yeah. So do we have a verdict? We do. The verdict, are morning people more successful? it's not untrue but it is nuanced and context is really really important so yeah morning types do show better average outcomes and education and earnings and that's consistent across multiple countries and large data sets but they're not winning because they're more driven or disciplined they're winning because the system was built around them and aston hall is just clickbait and on a serious note if you are an owl that's been feeling a bit a bit behind um you know before the days even started the studies say the problem isn't you it's a schedule so there's anything you can do in terms of making your work more flexible or your timetable more flexible i know it's really hard in most cases you can't that would absolutely help so in terms of truth or lie it's true but only in certain contexts cool okay thank you so much if you have your around truth or lie then get in touch i'd love to put it to leanne i put it talking putting things to leanne if you're a psychologist who wants to come on and present a truth or lie we do have two psychologists booked in oh yes to do it um as a guest little segment so if you fancy if you've got a truth or lie that you want to chat about obviously one we haven't done before then drop me a message on the old linkedin and we'll get you booked in yeah sounds good sounds good okay so we're on to the world famous weekly work for surgery where i put your questions to leanne we have three questions i think i did it right i think i did it right so first question number one leanne it's about uh someone who's a high performer but a low impact on the team hi alan leanne thank you for including me you didn't need to include me i only read them out i've got someone in my team who's a top performer on paper delivers great work clients love them never misses deadlines but a few team members have come to me saying they feel talked over their ideas get taken and it's starting to affect morale one person is even thinking of leaving There's no single big issue, this person writes, just a pattern that's hard to pin down.

39:21I've raised it once with them, but nothing's really changed. So I feel like I'm stuck. Leanne, how would I handle a high performer who's quietly damaging the team?

39:32Leanne:A high performer who is quietly damaging the team is also known as a toxic superstar. And they are very well studied in the old psychology literature. i think it's something really unbelievable like you'd have to bring in three superstars to your team to counteract the impact the toxic superstar is having on performance morale productivity wow there's such a drain as you can see as you're seeing on on people in in the team that really really does take a toll on performance in a way that is hard to really grasp, especially when you're looking at something that's a high performer and all their numbers are looking really good.

40:21Leanne:This isn't something that you're just going to be able to have one conversation with and fix. You're going to have to keep having this conversation with them. You're going to have to coach them essentially in terms of the impact their behavior is having. Like you say, it doesn't sound intentional it might not be intentional but as you know our friend dr enya says you know lack of intention doesn't mean lack of impact people are you know having a suffering here so it's going to be these regular conversations feedback loops coaching in terms of when they do you know handle something particularly well it could be you might to change some processes around ideation if ideas are getting taken things like that or managing meetings better if people feel talked over that's part of your job as well as a manager to manage that situation before it it escalates to that and if you've got one person thinking about leaving then this is a critical critical stage other things to think about but I wouldn't necessarily jump to them is this person neurodiverse sometimes communicate a bit differently if we have neurodiverse colleagues we need to communicate differently with them and and yeah appreciate they communicate differently with us the other thing you could also do which can be quite helpful for people who are like this is to actually put them on a coaching course because opening their awareness to things like listening to empathy can be really helpful and kind of having those examples in taught moments can be really really helpful and I've seen that actually on coaching courses you know people who come in who are very direct and and all the things you've described there and actually seeing the transformation they go through in terms of realizing not only the impact they're having on other people but how much more they can achieve for themselves if they're better at listening and better at managing the people around them so I would say you probably need to step up a little bit as a manager these are going to have to be regular conversations be really clear and specific about the behaviors that that are having negative impact what you want to see differently making sure people are telling you when these happen so you've got all the information that you need maybe think about getting them on a coaching course if you have the budget to do so and maybe shake up your meetings and ideation process a little bit just to give people that immediate relief I think would be beneficial.

42:54Superb. Thank you so much, Leanne.

42:56Leanne:I didn't think you'd add, Al. You must have dealt with a toxic superstar more than once. I've got nothing really to add because you've covered everything. I think the difficulty is that when you employ someone like this, it will hit your bottom line or your top line actually more likely if you were to say, right, I'm going to have to get rid of them if it's not working out. So I totally understand why someone wouldn't want to get rid of their top performer. But from the stuff you've said there that never would have occurred to me when this happened to me with employees. So I think it's really solid advice, Lee.

43:24Excellent. You should do this for a living. Okay, question number two. Now, I chose this because it's kind of similar, but a little nuanced to question number one. So this one is about same voices dominating every meeting and how you can fix it. So I run a team where almost every meeting, the same one or two people end up doing most of the talking and everyone else stays quiet until last. It's not a capability issue because the rest of the team are more than able to contribute. I've tried things like round robins, calling on quieter people and sort of like calling them out and tightening agendas.

43:58It helps a little bit, but often feels forced and a bit awkward. So Lee, how would you encourage more balanced participation in meetings without making it feel unnatural or even overly managed?

44:09Leanne:The simplest way of probably explaining this is the people that are speaking up are more than likely extrovert and the people who aren't are more than likely introvert. and you're designing meetings currently in a way that supports extroverts. Right, yeah. So we need to think about how we can approach meetings in a way that includes everybody and how everybody thinks. And in terms of that, what's a really good way to think about this? I'm introverted. Al is more extroverted. Al will want to discuss 80 % of a problem out loud and then spend the remaining 20 % of that problem-solving time figuring it out in his head.

44:45Leanne:i will spend 80 of the time solving the problem my own head and then 20 of the time talking out loud so we can come into into tricky time sometimes because when i'm talking out loud i've basically got the solution i'm just validating it when al talks out loud i respond in a way that he's he's now just asking me to validate the idea and i'm like yeah that sounds good he's like no no but i'm still thinking it's true i'm still thinking so it's it's kind of worth remembering this is how people think about things and problem solve and make decisions so it sounds like you've got some introverts in your team who aren't currently able to contribute in the way that meetings are are currently structured a few things that can be useful send people the agenda before so they can have a good think through and before i mean the day before two days before as early as possible really so they can have a think through things include specific questions that you're looking for feedback on or you're looking to answer to help come to a team conclusion have one-to-ones with these people before the meeting could just be a quick 10 minutes nothing formal just go hey did you have a chance to look through the points what you're thinking anything that you want to chat about ahead of the meeting it's more like you'll get some feedback in in a one-to-one than you necessarily would in a group other things and this came from Mamie oh yeah who came on she did a whole episode on how to run a great meeting so I'll leave a link to that and show it as well go and listen to that she had a really great technique around change and this can work really well as well because if you've got a mix of introverts and extroverts is you ask people to vote on whether they agree with the solution or not that you're proposing without saying anything they just write it down you don't know who's written what so you'd go so our new idea is we're going to put a brand new coffee machine in the break room instead of and everyone loses a day's holiday right what do we think good idea or not five you think it's the best idea ever one you think it's the worst idea ever three you know somewhere in between people vote you kind of count up the votes if you've got 50 50 then that's going to require some discussion if you've got a landslide either way then that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about that change.

47:03Leanne:That can be a really useful technique as well. But it sounds as though you've done stuff like calling round robins, things like round robins, calling on quieter people, don't do that. It's just going to make someone feel really awkward and exposed. And that is why it's feeling forced and awkward because it is forced and it is indeed awkward. Leanne and I had a bit of a falling out about a week ago for something I said. And I said it in the wrong way, but I meant... I said I got clawed. I bought Claude so I wouldn't have to talk to you. Oh, yeah. And what I meant was I now use Claude to do the stuff that Leanne was describing, the 80 % out, so that when we come together to talk about an idea, we're both doing the last 20%.

47:46But obviously it sounded very much like I was saying, I bought Claude so I wouldn't have to talk to you. What I meant was actually I bought Claude so you wouldn't have to listen to me. And it basically is a similar kind of idea. But yeah, so that didn't go well. So there's a top tip for an extrovert. Go and buy Claude and be very careful how you describe you using it. Okay, question number three. How do you step up as a leader without dropping the day job? It's difficult to read that. My business has grown quickly and now I've got managers reporting into me. The problem is I still feel very hands-on and stuck in the day-to-day.

48:17Things like delegation, giving clear direction, handling performance issues, all feel a bit clunky even though I'm strong on the product side. I know I need to step up into more of a leadership role, but I'm not sure how to do that whilst running the business. Leanne, how do you make that shift from doing the work to leading others without everything slipping in the process?

48:37Leanne:So I think there's three answers here. Yeah. And one of them's a bit tough love. One of them's a bit kind of psychological and one's more kind of operational. Tough love bit. How hands-on do you really need to be versus how hands-on do you want to be because you're the founder you want to be in control you want to be disruptive you want to be that center of attention it's what has been called in the past i'm not saying you've got it i'm just saying what it's been called in the past big toddler energy you know you're not superhuman you can't do everything and it's it's really a case at this time thinking that you might be one person doing multiple jobs really averagely because you've had to while you've been building your business and good for you you know you've hustled and you've made it happen but you now might be at the point where you need to let someone else do one job brilliantly and just let it go um so that's kind of the tough love aspect of it in terms of the more psychology aspect of it letting go is also going to be really hard because this is an ending this is the end of an era your era is like a scrappy start of having to do everything yourself you're grieving that version of that entrepreneur that you were when you know you had to do all of that and that's completely normal it's going to be really really hard but your goal isn't to be irreplaceable it's to build something that runs brilliantly but with you in the right role not doing everything so you need to really grieve this close it as an end of of a chapter in in the history of your business the story of your business and the really practical answer and it's really boring do a job analysis do a job analysis map out what needs doing what skills matter to do it what skills matter for your business what you can do better than other people what you need somebody else to take off your time to make sure you're adding the most value to your business get those competencies nailed down then use you know go down your mixed methods of assessment to find out who's the best person is that could be people you've already got in your business it could be people you need to recruit in or contract but basically you need to figure out if you need to step up into a leadership position exactly what roles need to happen in the business that you will no longer be doing and one thing we've talked about before did we talk about the podcast we're just talking about between ourselves Al the idea of going dark yes we talked about ourselves just ourselves that's part of um part of uh foundation the new product we're coming for i shouldn't have said that that's part of something i might edit that out we were saying about how we'd like like if we were working with a founder who really wanted to get into this our advice would be go dark take a week off be uncontactable you even emergency you're not around to any of your people because what breaks when you're not there will show you the things you need to prioritize to make things easier and if nothing breaks it's you yeah it was you blocking the progress it was you making it feel too hard i have a feeling that most business owners with with that type of team i don't know 15 plus ish one five yeah yeah i think they could go off for a week and absolutely nothing would happen yeah i think it'd be fine i think you'd figure out you know that that actually your people thrived in that autonomy that they enjoyed the actual decision making that they now have a list of things they do need your guidance for and it might be a process thing it might be a role-based thing but i think you'd actually realize again with love you're probably not as important as you think you are right brilliant thank you very much if you have your own question make sure you put it uh put it to us oh goodness he put it to us he fell off my chair and we will see you next week I believe no we'll see you Thursday we've got Geoffrey Furman I think on Thursday oh is it Geoff I think it's Geoffrey Geoffrey is an incredible guy can I tell the story yes yes tell the story so I posted on LinkedIn about 50 things I'd like to banish you might remember we did a live on it and one of those things I wanted to banish was Office Vibe and then Geoffrey Furman commented going as the co-founder of Office Vibe I agree and I was like oh my god this is really awkward so I mentioned him I was like dude do you want to chat like kind of want to explain myself and he was like no it's cool it's fine and we did and he was awesome and yeah now here he is yeah so he's like he's on this Thursday really cool guy really down to earth if you've ever used any kind of platform for HR then learn how it actually works and what the motivation behind it is and whether it's evil or not that's what Geoffrey will tell us in fact we will see that's an hour later oh my to cut this down a tad a little bit i'll take all my bits out don't worry so we will see i did a lot of things just take that out we will see you on thursday i'm not sure you need the expensive petroleum bit i quite like that we will see you uh next week no sorry i've done this already thursday oh bye you