318. Toxic Founders, HR Rebels and Stalling Women’s Progress. PLUS! Is it good to have fun at work? With Rebecca Taylor

31:02Welcome back to Truth or Lie. this. That time of the week we'll take a popular workplace idea and ask if the research really does back it up. Today we're testing the claim that work and fun don't mix. Leah, I think we've all heard some kind of a version of it. You're not paid to have fun. No sir. Rebecca, you've said this, for generations work has been treated as the serious part of life, whereas fun is what you do after 5pm. So if people are laughing or chatting or just generally mucking about, it must mean less work is getting done is that right lee well you know i need to first of all to find fun because if a psychologist can suck anything out of anything it's the fun out of the room that's the least fun thing you've ever said so when psychologists research fun at work they're basically looking at things like joking with colleagues celebrating successes maybe taking part in some kind of games or social activities events or just simply working environment where people are enjoying themselves so that's what we're looking at when we talk about fun and when we're talking about whether work and fun mix we're comparing it with outcomes so things like productivity performance employee engagement well-being relationships between colleagues all the good stuff so we clear what fun means and whether whether it mixes with work we're on the same psychologist boring page yeah on the same page so in terms of the case four that work and fun don't mix there is some research done by john michael who has been on the show previously yeah with some of his friends um they undertook a review of workplace fun literature in 2018 they pulled together decades of research and they argue that workplace fun isn't something managers can simply switch on so employees judge fun at three different stages before an activity starts, while it's happening, and afterwards when they reflect on whether it was worthwhile.

32:59Psychologists call this the anticipatory appraisal. The what, sorry? I struggle with that word. Anticipatory. Nice. Anticipatory. It's a tough one. That's a tough one. I like it. There's a lot of... I struggle with lots of vowels, I think. Yeah, yeah. And also, Rebecca, you Americans like to take vowels out of things. How do you say anticipatory? Oh, yeah. I would probably be like, anticipatory. I don't know. I'd probably say it like that, but like, I would say it so quickly that like, you wouldn't even know if I messed it up. Yeah. That's my New York app coming in there too. New Yorkers, we just drop things all the time.

33:30So it's just like, you know, you fill it in. Anyway, I'm sorry. I digress. We digress. Anticipatory appraisal. Is that what you're saying? Yes, exactly. They concluded that if people expect an activity to be awkward, childish, or a waste of time, unsurprisingly, they're more likely to resist it. and if it feels forced rather than voluntary it can create frustration and emotional exhaustion instead of kind of the happy positive emotions we were hoping for and that idea does show up in the actual workplace as well so some research is called and you know i enjoy names al barbara plester plester that's a name that's a good name strong solid name and ann hutchinson spent four months in four new zealand based organizations and they were observing everyday behavior and interviewed 60-ish employees as well they found a very clear difference between spontaneous fun that naturally emerged um and what they called managed fun i think if you put managed in front of anything it ain't fun but especially in front of fun it's really not fun is it no no we always called it forced fun right yeah yeah which is basically it was yeah what you say rebecca's activities they were organized by the company so things like mandatory pajama days ick uh dressing up as tv characters um things like that unsurprising reviews childish contrived and at times emotionally invasive so rather than boosting morale some employees became cynical frustrated and even admitted deliberately calling in sick to avoid taking part guilty guilty yeah there is also some evidence that too much fun negatively impacts well-being so one of the broadest piece of evidence came from a review in 2021.

35:12So rather than carrying out a single experiment, these researchers analysed 326 research papers spanning 40 years in 18 different disciplines. Al, what is that called? It's called a meta-analysis. Yes, sir, it is. So they did that to understand what happens when work and leisure become increasingly blurred. And they found that if organisations integrate work and play too closely, employees can struggle to switch off mentally. so rather than helping people recover highly blended environments can encourage workaholism and create role confusion and make it harder for people to detach from work at the end of the day so basically making work feel more like play doesn't mean people are healthy it's just kind of work follows them home and then there are some practical concerns as well so some other researchers in 2022 they explored four swedish workplaces designed to be deliberately playful you know the ping pong tables and the the slide that Stephen Bartlett famously had in his Manchester office.

36:10Did he? Those ping pong tables I just can't even I have so many things to say about ping pong tables but I won't do that here. Yeah I know. Well no please do this is exactly the place to do that but anyway yeah these these types of offices so through interviews with employees and by observing behavior as well they found that while participants like the atmosphere overall open plan leisure activities particularly activities like a table tennis setup created enough noise surprisingly to disrupt concentration with some employees choosing to work from home instead participants also questioned whether highly playful workplaces were appropriate industries where safety precision or professionalism were especially important so yes there is evidence that work and fun don't always mix specifically if it feels imposed rather than chosen it blurs the boundary between work and home or simply becomes a distraction it can undermine concentration recovery and as we've heard an employee's willingness to engage so so far it sounds like fun and work don't really matter yes so rebecca before we go to the against any thoughts what we've just heard it's like it's one of those things where when you look at something like like bringing games into the workplace like having you know ping pong tables table tennis like all of that.

37:27It just sets this weird sort of expectation where are people playing? Are people able to play? When are they allowed to play? If I'm on a sales call, can you hear it happening in the background? That's the kind of stuff that I had to deal with all the time. Or it kind of like creates this layer of expected ethics or unspoken workplace behaviors where it's like I had so many times where we had a ping pong table in one of my old companies. The sales manager would come up to me and he would say, why are these two people playing ping pong? So-and-so's behind on his sales goal. And I'm like, I don't know.

38:01Like, are they not allowed to play ping pong when they're not behind on their sales goal? Did you tell them that? Did they know that? You're their manager. Why don't you deal with it? It just creates all these other, besides the whole ping pong's annoying thing, it just creates all these other unspoken workplace behaviors that people are judged by without that expectation actually being clearly communicated. But maybe that's my non-fun take on fun. I get this. And also it brings back for certain people like myself, brings back into a school situation where there were the sporty, cool kids who could play ping ball.

38:36And then there's the me who would try and hit the ball, trip over my own shoelaces and end up just falling on my ass. And so it just, yeah, same with like non-uniform day at school. And then also if you wear a uniform, you can bring in whatever you wear at home. Then you get judged on what you're wearing at home. And I turned up at my three pound Walmart trainers and everyone's like, oh look he's got no money which was actually true at the time but it's yeah it's just a whole like thing isn't it there was nothing more stressful than a known clothes day yeah i just think school should have a uniform and just remove that level of peer pressure and no especially not cool yeah it's like me yeah not like rebecca she's exceptionally cool anyway no same i wore uniforms growing up in school and i loved it and then whenever it was like don't wear a uniform day I was like so stressed out about it because I was never one of the cool kids.

39:25I was never, ever like it wasn't even about like who could afford what. It was about what was your sense of style? What was your taste? And I was like, I don't really know. And then it became a whole thing was like, oh, you're wearing that. I'm like, I thought this is what we were wearing. And they're like, this is what you're wearing last year. I mean, there's famously teenage girls are not very nice to each other. So I experienced a lot of that. I'm like, this would have been great if we just wore uniforms again. Yeah, definitely. definitely i never thought about that actually as as a as a boy like a 13 year old boy there's certain ex you know it was quite stressful but i imagine a 13 year old girl it would be a million times more stressful the worst i'll never forget when low-rise jeans started becoming popular and i didn't know so i would i came to school with like mid-rise jeans and everyone else is wearing these like super low-rise jeans that i've never been able to pull off and they were like you're dressed like a mom i'm like what what do you mean and my butt crap's not hanging at and yours is like why is that why am i the weird one low rise was a tough tough time i don't know yeah and they're back and i hate it i know i don't understand what it is you know you know how in the noughties where you'd always see basically they look at the back of a girl woman's jeans you'd see the top of her like knickers or i was very respectful i never looked below the shoulders that was me anyway well today back the whale tail but what the hell's a what no never mind no no we're going down different podcasts right different podcasts different audience what's the argument against so the argument against starts with the argument that forced fun isn't really fun at all um yeah i think yeah i'm with that yeah i think it says it all really doesn't it?

41:06So yes, employees do dislike company organised activities like mandatory pyjama days or dressing up. The New Zealand research that we just heard about also concluded that spontaneous humour between colleagues has the opposite effect. So after spending four months observing these workplaces and interviewing employees, the researchers found that joking together gave people a mental break from demanding work, helped them recharge and strengthen relationships within teams and quite interestingly the researchers also found that employees could dislike the work itself but feel highly engaged with the organization because of the social environment around them that finding runs through some wider research that was conducted in 2020 or is a review in 2020 they examined 11 of the most common myths about workplace fun including the idea that work and fun don't mix so looking across decades of research they found very little evidence to support that that belief.

42:01So instead, the literature consistently linked workplace fun with high energy, greater creativity, stronger attendance, increased loyalty, and better organizational performance. That review also challenged the idea that fun has to be expensive or carefully planned. They pointed out that around 80 % of workplace humor and laughter happens spontaneously, suggesting again that the most effective fun is often the kind that develops naturally rather than being organized by management. But what happens when organizations do introduce something more structured? Well, some researchers looked at exactly this in 2014 and they followed more than 230 salespeople at a technology company.

42:40And it was over two, three weeks. One group took part in a basketball-themed sales game. Another simply saw a public leaderboard showing sales ranking and a third group carried on as normal. the employees who embraced the game experienced significantly higher positive emotions of feeling very very happy um much higher than other groups but simply displaying performance rankings without the playful elements actually reduced performance so the researchers concluded that it wasn't um competition that exactly made the difference it was the experience of play and providing employees with that experience so long as they genuinely bought into it and finally the benefits don't have to come from organized activities all according to a systematic review in 2023 they looked at something many managers might discourage at brief periods of personal internet use during the work day is that okay to know but the research found and this is from around the world that these micro breaks whether it be looking at youtube or browsing online or playing a quick computer game helped to restore attention and mental energy and one study even found employees who took moderate digital breaks were nine percent more productive than those that didn't the key though was moderation once those breaks exceeded around 12 of the working day they became counterproductive interesting interesting by the way if um if friends listening and they want to know how to be funny at work without going to hr then go to episode 269 uh with beth sherman and uh she explains exactly how to do that lee do we can we go to rebecca and get her thoughts at this point well we reckon truth or lie working fun don't mix so um i think it's a lie with a caveat so So have you heard the term social effervescence?

44:36Oh, they have. So I read about it first in the New York Times, which sounds so obnoxious of me to say. Can I just, just in case anyone didn't hear about that, you wrote about it first in the New York Times might be the greatest sentence. Read about it. Read about it. Didn't write about it. I apologize. I thought you said you wrote about it. And I thought, oh, my God, that's awesome. No, no, no. That would be a flex. I would definitely mention that way earlier. So you read about it in the New York Times? I read about it in the New York Times. It was an article that came out around, I think it was 2021.

45:10So it was sort of a social article talking about what we were missing from the pandemic. So what was sort of the impacts that we were feeling? Why was loneliness, you know, becoming such a thing that we were all experiencing more, even though in a lot of ways we're more connected than ever? But it came, they introduced the term social effervescence, which is essentially the concept of when people are in a group together, whether they know each other or not, and they just start playing off of each other, they start either teasing or bouncing ideas off of each other or just inserting each other in conversations, you know, asking each other questions just like, if you were an apocalypse, what role would you play?

45:47Would you be the fighter? Would you be the hunter? Like, what would you do? Just introducing these types of kind of pieces where people can just bounce off of each other, that's considered social effervescence. So when in this research, Leanne, that you mentioned, the moments where it's mentioned that fun is sort of appropriate for work, I would call that social effervescence. All of the footage that we're seeing about fans enjoying the World Cup together, you know, the rowing, everybody rowing, everybody sort of like bantering with each other. That's social effervescence. That's just people experiencing a shared moment together and organically just finding ways to enjoy it together and finding ways to contribute to it together.

46:28And that to me is where work can be fun, but it has to happen organically. The thing about social effervescence is it doesn't start with like a corporate icebreaker. It doesn't start with a pizza party. It starts with a group of people who feel like they can trust their environment and they trust each other. And it's more a result of a really healthy environment that people are in where it actually allows them to kind of bring some of their guard down, let some of their own humor in and form connections, genuine vulnerable connections. Vulnerable meaning even just laughter. Like laughter can be very vulnerable when it's like real, genuine and authentic.

47:07But you can't orchestrate that without orchestrating a culture of trust that rewards that or at least that allows that to happen. yeah I think it's I think you're right it's a it's a truth of the caveat or it's it's kind of like we don't really know or neither um I think I think essentially as you kind of said that we're kind of asking the wrong question because as you say Rebecca it's much more organic it's much more spontaneous and that is where these relationships um are nurtured and we know relationships are the one of the biggest you know um drivers of all the good stuff in in the workplace in terms of the evidence it doesn't suggest that work and fun don't mix but it also doesn't show that simply adding fun makes organizations more successful and there's a few problems psychologists as i kind of mentioned at the top that we're measuring lots of different things under the umbrella of fun um whether it be humor whether it be organized social events gamification digital breaks enjoying the work itself um those aren't the same experience so surprising and we're not finding any consistent results when looking at them but what does seem remarkably consistent is that forced fun rarely works rarely works so these structured activities only really succeed when employees genuinely buy into them and that's difficult because fun is subjective one person's brilliant team building exercise the dressing up the pajama day is going to be the reason that another person calls in sick so i think perhaps more interesting finding is that the strongest results come from workplaces where fun exactly as you said rebecca emerges naturally it's a places with good relationships with psychological safety with autonomy with mutual respect they tend to have more laughter more spontaneous humor and better outcomes so yeah it isn't fun probably isn't the thing that organizations should try to create um but it is the thing that will appear if you've got all the human stuff right thank you so much leanne links i'm guessing to all of these complicated studies are in the show notes indeed they are fabulous fabulous okay so it's on to my favorite time of the week it's time for the world famous weekly episode we wrap up your questions to leanne so and rebecca yes oh yes you're right these are going to rebecca today no absolutely i'm just here to i'm just i'm just here to listen you can sit back have a cup of tea don't worry rebecca's got this she's got this so we have three questions here from listeners, I will read them out and Rebecca will give us her answer.

49:38Rebecca, people will be loving you by this point, or if they don't, they'll have turned off. But if they love you at this point, how do they learn more about you? Where's your podcast? Tell me everything about you. Yes. So you can find me on my podcast, HR Voices, where we dissect real workplace scenarios with actual people leaders who have been dealing with this kind of stuff for years and years and years. It's a podcast where we talk through, here's a crazy thing that's happening at work. how would you handle it? And so it's kind of a lot like this. It's like it's all about human judgment, discernment, taking things and really kind of applying a microscopic lens to see how the right scenario might meet the right resolution, if there even is a right resolution.

50:13Fabulous. Thank you so much. So HR Voices, definitely go and subscribe to that today. Okay, so on to question number one. The title of this I've written down is, should a manager judge an employee's private social media? But I tell you what, it is a lot more juicy than that. So this person writes, I recently discovered that one of my employees is a public Instagram account where he follows a huge amount of adult content. Sorry, I'm trying to keep a straight face here. This is a serious matter. It doesn't break any company rules and he's an excellent employee, but another colleague brought it to my attention.

50:46Should this influence how I see him as a manager or basically is his private social media none of my business. Rebecca. This is one of those scenarios where you've seen it, you know this, it is influencing how you see him as a manager, right, wrong or indifferent, right? That's called your intrinsic bias. It's coming in. You're making a judgment about this person based on something that you see. That's okay. The reason you're even asking this question is because you must feel some kind of a way and you're trying to digest that and figure out what to do with that, right? Which you've come to the right place because this is basically what hr does day in and day out is helping people to kind of uncouple and talk through what their initial reactions and biases might be so that you're in a situation where it makes more sense for the workplace so it's going to change how you see them as a person whether or not like no matter how you want to think about that right because it's just natural for us to kind of make judgments about different things it's about what we do with those judgments at work that really really matters so you know if If it is his private social media and it is something that has nothing to do with work, my question is always going to be something like, could this could this account ever be tied to him at work in some way or another?

51:57Because there is a way that your colleague obviously found there found this account. Right. So there is some sort of a connection to this person. So it could kind of thread into this does kind of show up at work, even if it's not technically social media that's associated with work. So because of that, I think that this warrants a conversation. When someone's a leader, someone's a manager, they're responsible for other people, right? And how they're seen, how they're perceived matters when they're in charge of other people, because it's not just about the people who report to them. It's about the people who they report to and how you're basically endorsing this person as a leader and as an employee.

52:38So not necessarily that you're asking for what to do about this because it's hard to kind of, you know, tell you what I can. I can't tell you what to think. But what I would say is it warrants a conversation with him to say, this is the thing. Like, I've now become aware that this exists. I don't know if you're aware that other people might be able to see this, too. You might want to think about privacy settings or you might want to think about making it less easy to find. what you do in your own time and in your own business that's that's up to you but it's now something that's more visible to other people and that could influence people consciously or unconsciously in how they see you and your progression as a leader and as much as that sucks that's just the truth of the way that this is and you can choose what you want to do with that as the person who has the private social media that they might not want other people to see because I also try to assume good intent right like this person might not even realize that that his account's public.

53:36Or you might not even realize that he can be found. So like the unfortunate truth is that no one's really anonymous on the internet anymore. So just assume that whatever you do can be found by someone who's looking for it. But it never hurts to just bring it to the person's attention at hand and then navigate it with them. You don't want it to become just like a gossip situation, which is kind of how this started. Yeah, I totally agree. I read something just, this is slightly incidental, but I think related. I read something the other day that someone's mother who was in their like 70s, they'd just got a new WhatsApp account and they noticed it was groups and they thought it was a way to group their contacts.

54:15So they created a group called Not Important, a group called I Don't Like, a group called, and added all of their contacts to it. And it's just one of those things that just makes you cringe so hard, doesn't it? And it's very, very good chance. It feels to me there's a 90 % chance this person doesn't know that anyone else can see what they follow. Because that doesn't seem like a thing that most people would expect to be online. Yeah. Yeah. Digital literacy. It's important. Know how these things work and what happens when you do different things on these platforms. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay.

54:51So on to question number two. It's all about a workplace relationships. This person writes. I've been casually seeing someone at work for about a year. And until now, we've worked on different departments. But I've just been promoted and will be managing their department. Now, I'm guessing that the subtext of this is that their partner is in that department. So should I tell my employer about the relationship or keep it private unless it becomes an issue? This sounds a little technical. Rebecca, talk us through it. This is one of those situations where I'm going to give an HR answer and say it depends.

55:24but it's going to depend on what your company's policy is about workplace dating if they have one so if there is a policy about workplace dating where you do have to disclose then that's a pretty straightforward like yes you have to what i found in my experience is that workplace dating policies tend to be a little bit open-ended and vague and tough to interpret until they can become weaponized. So until they do become a bigger issue. And when you're looking at the reason that this is kind of complicated and hairy is that you're now looking at power dynamics. So you're dating someone who now has power over you and that person with power can show favoritism or they can let's say you break up and they decide that they want to fire you and they can just retaliate.

56:11Right. Not saying that any of this is OK, but this is what happened. This is why workplace relationships can be complicated is because of that power dynamic that's involved in it. So as the HR person, I am always an advocate for disclose. Just disclose because you'd rather disclose before there's an issue so that your record is clean in ways and you can say, well, HR knew about this or my leader knew about this. It's documented. We can put rules in place and how we can interact with certain things. Like, you know, sometimes HR will say that if a manager is trying to promote someone that they're dating, they have to have additional authority from their manager to approve it where they wouldn't necessarily with someone else.

56:54Or that they just have sort of a practice of getting double approvals before promotions just to kind of show that these decisions are made, they're consistent, they're not showing any type of favoritism. um but i would say disclose because you don't want to wait until it becomes an issue because that's a terrifying statement as an hr person like what do you mean we're going to hold off on something until it's an issue that doesn't need to become maybe the big issue that it ultimately does become um so it's always in your best interest to just know that you've got your ducks in a row you've got yourself covered you've disclosed it you know and then you might even want to disclose if things change.

57:31So you don't necessarily have to tell HR every single stage of your relationship, right? You don't have to say, we're moving in together, we're engaged, we're married. It doesn't have to be at that level, but you do have to, it could be in your favor to disclose that you're dating. And then if that ends, disclose that too. Say, we're no longer dating. We're now just people or whatever, you know, whatever that might be. Because the other side of this, I know this is kind of a long-winded answer, but HR has so many different kind of layers. The other side of this that you want to think about and get ahead of is if this relationship does end and let's say you don't want to manage this person anymore, HR can usually help you find an alternative.

58:07You can, you know, if you they can talk to you about it and say maybe there's another team that you can manage, maybe you can transfer to another location. There are usually options to you that HR can help you navigate. You don't have to go right to quitting your job because you're no longer dating the person who you're now, who you were managing. So the earlier you disclose this stuff the more of a partnership you have the more the less likely something becomes a big issue and the more support you have as that relationship may change for the worse right absolutely and so what we're saying is step one check the policy because if it is dead against that then that might that might change your decision with which one of those you're going to go for um and and secondly disclose if that sounds good lee anything to add just that this is the simplest best possible point to have this conversation because you've been having a relationship that didn't matter because you weren't in the same departments there wasn't a hierarchy involved maybe you do have a policy you meant to disclose it at the time I don't think there'll be that much beef about it because there wasn't really any kind of as Rebecca said power dynamics at that point going on so now it's a really easy easy point to have this conversation and just protect protect everyone in that situation because breakups can be messy breakups can bring up a lot of of different emotions and reactions and and it could be in three months time it could be in six years time when there's all sorts of other dynamics involved so have the conversation now be transparent about it get the guidance of of of hr and and it yeah you're starting off on the best possible foot i think people need to go and listen to your podcast right now.

59:49No, not right now, because we've got one last question. And so we get a lot of questions around about toxic managers. We've had toxic superstars, we've had toxic co-workers, never had one like this. What do you do when the toxic person is the founder? So this person says, the founder of our company regularly sends abusive messages, publicly belittles senior leaders, and has created a culture where people are afraid to challenge him. Good people are leaving, but there's no board and there's no one willing to stand up to him because he owns the business. So I'm part of the senior leadership team.

1:00:23I hate to see what he's doing to this company. But realistically, Rebecca, does this person have any options to save the company? Culture comes from the top. So this is the culture of the company, the bullying, the toxic leadership. This is the culture that the founder has created and seems to be dead set on maintaining. I'm of the firm belief that if your founder is toxic and there's no one to keep that person in check, if you're not up for what they're asking you to do or if you don't like the way they lead or operate, you're better off going somewhere else. I want to say like, yes, we can change.

1:00:59We can do this. We can do that. But the truth of it is, if the person who is the most in charge and has no oversight over them has no interest in changing, it's a fool's errand and you're just going to be wasting your energy to make that person rich i'm curiously why would someone who's built a company that's dependent on employees to make their money treat them really badly what's going on in their head but you're assuming that's their intention ah good point good point it might well be it could just be a narcissistic arsehole that treats people horribly it's more than likely what i see more often than not is founders that find themselves as an accidental MD, an accidental people leader who aren't, who are very used to be strong individual contributors who suddenly have people that they need to motivate and delegate to and coordinate and often they don't have the skills to do that nor the interest to do that.

1:01:51That's why typically with larger organizations, even larger small organizations, you'll see somebody else there to hold them accountable, whether you say, whether it be a chair, whether it be a really strong cor or operations director you'll see a leadership team that has equal um equal hours accountability around this type of thing um i think the only thing that my i'm with rebecca i don't think this is a scenario that you're gonna be able to fix you know to change a founder like this particularly if they're not aware to it and show no willingness to to get any type of feedback on this i mean if nobody's ever told them maybe give them the benefit of the doubt and have a conversation and go just so you know that message came off as a little bit aggressive is this the intention you meant when you said that was that the outcome you were hoping for you seem really frustrated at the minute by how how things work in the organization there's something we could change today that would make things better for you over the next few months these types of coaching questions in the conversation might give you an indication of where their intent lies how open they are to coaching how open they are to to developing themselves but I'm with Rebecca where it kind of the way the question is where it sounds that that's unlikely so I think the only other thing you didn't say what your role is in the senior leadership team the only thing that might be worth just looking at is is what your obligations are as a leader in that business so for example if you are if you're the opposite right during people and cultures lies under your remit you might want to have a conversation about um these bullying type behavior should somebody bring a formal complaint about that is your obligation professionally to make the you know the founder aware that this behavior isn't acceptable within terms of the law and somebody might make um a formal formal complaint or raise this in a in a way that that is going to cause a lot of problems for the organization its performance and its its teams as well that might be the only thing to do i you'll you only you can judge this because you know the founder in question but i think these things are always worth a conversation if you think they there could be an element that they're not they don't intend to behave so they don't they don't imagine their behavior as having the impact in in the way that they thought um if you don't believe that at all you just think they're they're they're just not a people person um then i think rebecca's right just just walk away once your professional obligations are dealt with and also this person's seems really passionate about the company don't they they're not just saying how do i protect myself they're like how do i save this organization so maybe they've been there from the beginning and this this behavior is relatively new which would suggest that perhaps there's a little bit of pressure perhaps there's a bit of financial pressure perhaps they're going through their exiting and they don't know quite how to communicate that to the rest of the team i'm not sure yeah there's lots of context that we're missing here aren't we but i think yeah i think yeah i think Rebecca on the same page that yeah chances are you you're not gonna be able to fundamentally change the situation or this founder but there's a glimmer of hope as I said if things used to be different or you there's a even a hint that it might not be intentional it could be worth a conversation but even even if if that is the case as Rebecca said it's still on this founder to actually do the work and and either put somebody else in charge of people or change and go through go through that development which is going to be a long a long road anyway so i think it you read that book a subtle art of not giving a fuck yeah it depends how many fucks you've got in that bucket right now if you've got enough go for it if not maybe just leave it absolutely it's like the question of just like what's the point right so it's like if your point is that you believe in the mission of the company if the point is you know you're doing good work that impacts a lot of people and that there's a lot more good that can be done again in spite of this particular situation then like go for it if that's not the case then you know like you said leanne like maybe don't give a fuck i think that they might be the first f-bombs as well weren't we very well behaved i know very well yeah i'm actually very proud of us and that was in the context of a book title so i don't think it counts does it yeah yeah yeah okay superb thank you so so much rebecca thank you leanne but you don't need thanks because you're part of this podcast.

1:06:04Rebecca didn't need to be here and she's not even getting any money for it. But well, just that hopefully that's not news to you, Rebecca. No, no. I mean, I'm just so glad that we were able to do this. Thank you so much for having me and for just being able to talk through this stuff together. I feel like we never spend enough time together. So I'm just going to keep crashing your podcast so you hang out with me. And I guess that's just the way we have to do this. Love it. 100 % crash any time. Go and listen to subscribe to HR Voices wherever you get your podcasts go and look at all voices is all voices.co.co all voices.co yep yep go and have a look at that fantastic we've had jeffrey fermin on before uh twice i think one on let me just double check my memory i.e my notes episode 285 jeffrey fermin was the guy who built off his vibe and how he's you hear his entire story how leanne was very rude to him on linkedin and how he decided to come on and talk and then start his new venture so definitely and now we're kind of friends yeah i have more than friends though he called you cool and jeffrey's cool cool cool af jeffrey's super cool jeffrey's like my better half on this team he's amazing go check out rebecca on linkedin thank you so much for listening next thursday we're joined by ellie glasson ellie glasson you you may not have heard of her in fact there's a very good chance you've not heard of her but you will 100 have heard heard of the people that she represents She's a PR wizard.

1:07:26The majority of great guests we've had on this podcast have had something tangentially, tangential. Is that a word, Rebecca? Can I say that? Can you say genitals? Tangentially. That's the word I'm looking for. Tangentially, tangentially connected is all through Ellie, which is going to give us an absolute masterclass in PR, but not just PR, just like ethical PR. It's not about shouting. That's her message. So come and join us on Thursday. join us next week for sadly just us two but um we then got i think can we mention um bw yeah bbw gotta be why bill yost is joining us in two weeks time the bill yost yes the guy from with a pirate flag from linkedin he's our he's our co-host and then we're going on to august which is a little bit silly and i think we might see if rebecca's knocking about and fancy a virtual beer maybe a bit of a chat maybe so anyway just definitely go and check up Rebecca check out HR Voices check out All Voices and if you haven't subscribed to this podcast then you should probably do that now Leigh anything to add before we go just the usual head over to LinkedIn that's where the conversation continues check out check out check out the Instagram been putting some more clips on there as well on the TikTok go and have a look at that subscribe review it really just makes a difference and thank you for all the lovely comments we're getting on Spotify at the minute I'm loving the questions I'm loving the insights I'm loving people sharing other different articles or things that they've seen it is brilliant keep it coming we love it yes definitely thank you so much we love you we do love you we do love you in an appropriate amount thank you yes we hate child approval yes we'll disclose our relationship