320. Can you bulls*it a bullsh*tter? PLUS! The European hiring crisis, Gen-Z perfectionism and Tik Tok training

0:02This episode contains some coarse language. Listener discretion is advised. Coming up this week in work. You've probably heard someone describe Gen Z as entitled fragile or needy, but have you heard them be described as a perfectionist? Well, a new study suggests this problematic trait is on the rise and toxic work environments might be responsible. Surely not, Al. We will dive into the details very soon. Also this week, now think about this, your team's already hooked on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube shorts and short form video content. So does that mean that short videos are the best way to teach them something new?

0:39Here's the idea that we basically, instead of doing boring L &D presentations, we just pop it on TikTok. Someone's actually studied this and I've got the results. And in truth or lie, can you bullshit a bullshitter? You see now the discretion advised. So the idea is if you're skilled in bending the truth yourself, you're immune to it when someone tries it on you. But is it true? Are practice bullshit is harder to fool? Or does thinking you're good at it just make you an easier target? I've read the research and I've got a verdict. And in the workplace surgery, one listener asks, how do you keep people motivated when work goes quiet?

1:13The business struggles with quiet patches and this owner wants to know how to keep people motivated and engaged when there genuinely isn't enough work to go around. This is Truth, Eyes, and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Al, I'm a business owner, and I'm here to ask the questions you might be afraid to. And my name is Leanne, I'm a charter occupational psychologist, and I'm here to answer them. We are the co-founders of People and Culture Consultancy, Oblong, and together we'll help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures.

1:46We'll be right back after a quick word from my sponsors welcome back welcome back lee sad news sad news why what happened well it's the end of your football yeah yeah i think it ended in the best possible way though yes we had we had a few teams going into it didn't we spain was one of them because we lived there for quite quite a long time and i feel that football won last night yes it did you know yeah i think everyone was rooting for for argentina to lose because it's just they've just been ugly ugly tactics. I know it's all part of the game but surely I mean it's not they're not doing anything that you know can we punish the point that they can't do it but it's not good sportsmanship is it?

2:28It's not the beautiful game that we want to see. So some of you are going to be very pleased because we'll be no longer talking about football until September when the premiership starts but no it's if you have been pushing through with our football chat then I'm with you because I'm not really into football but I do enjoy the world cup because it's just it just feels this feels like a great place or a great way to get everyone together and generally speaking like the norwegians norway england match yeah they lost very graciously and most teams are kind of like yeah and also am i right in thinking that messi was about to be what's that award when you get the most number of goals in there the golden boots yeah and i think he didn't because he didn't score last night so it was mbappe i think who oh is it so i'll do if If only we had one of those people on.

3:15If only there's a way to find a coach. Yeah, we need that Joe Rogan guy who goes and just checks. Pull it up, whatever his name is. Pull it up, yeah. Pull it up. Anyway, so. Yeah, you're right. Kylian Mbappe. Yeah. Yeah, so he was so messy. He's had a bit of a nightmare. Do you know what? I don't know. I mean, I don't think it'll take away from his incredible career. I think he'll be just fine. Did you, I don't think, because you didn't watch much of the match last night, did you? But did you see any of the halftime show? What, the fight? No. What fight? the fight at the end what fight do you not see when the when the final whistle went there was proper punches thrown and everything between spain and oh no i fell asleep after they scored an extra time yeah no you missed probably the best bit of the match but what was the what was the halftime bit so you know in like the super bowl and stuff they'll get on like jennifer lopez and kendrick lamar and they'll do a little they'll have a bit of a turn at halftime oh no well they did it and it was it was it was interesting i felt i felt it was unnecessary watching it but i thought maybe i'm just being a bit grumpy and it wasn't my favorite people like madonna but i'm pretty sure it was all pre-recorded and just popped her head out at the end um shakira was really good actually justin bieber not a big fan um although they did have ted lasso in it doing a little bit he like kind of ushered on uh justin bieber and then uh bts the korean boy band and then I finished with Shakira and some other dudes I don't know but it was just it was all a bit messy it was all a bit unnecessary and it was all very American and it's already been kind of Americanized if that's the word Americanized yeah with like the quarters and stuff but it went back to the BBC coverage the BBC won the coverage from what I'm what I've been reading and Wayne Rooney just went it was crap like I like some of the artists I'm there but let's be honest it was crap and everyone was like yeah so second half yeah so that's Wayne going to be struggling to get out of the country back home isn't he I'm guessing where were they in where were the commentators in yeah in New Jersey which is also confusing I had to ask Jake about this because they kept saying here in New York New Jersey Stadium and I was like well which one is it because I'm pretty sure they're different states oh hi we need Jake on this good news Jake is coming back we've also got right so August we've got some different content happening in August.

5:36Much more relaxed because let's be honest, who wants to think about work in August? We don't. Not me. So we've got some more. I think every single week on a Tuesday we've got a guest hosting. Yep. And every single Thursday is a much lighter interview or workshop or just discussion. So don't worry. So don't turn off in August. It's going to be really good. We're not doing this week in work though, are we? We're doing like different things with our guests. So we're not calling it this week in work? No. We should have. See, I miss this in the production meeting. Things are asleep at the back. Anyway, Lee, anything else to add before we go to your favourite time of the week?

6:10Only to mention that because it just seems like a topical thing. We've got a new Prime Minister today. That's nice, isn't it? I believe that's our fifth in four years. Oh, God. Or fourth in five years. I know. Another one, Andy Burnham. We'll see how that turns out. I'm sure it gives us things to talk about. And before we go to the news roundup, I just want to say thank you to all the lovely listeners who are leaving us reviews and comments. We love to see it. we do reply this is on spotify on spotify and on apple as well we've had we've had a few reviews and so thank you very very very very very very much one of them al i haven't hadn't brought to your attention yet because i wondered how you'd feel about it so this is somebody from the uk their username is dc and alice and the review goes helpful and insightful i enjoy this podcast and it's full of good tips and resources and ideas but oh i hate the constant background music so that's why it's a four oh i know oh so it's for the news roundup yeah maybe we don't cue that jingle i don't know interesting well i'll cue it today or maybe check it down i don't know oh i tell you what yeah let's not do it today let's not do it and if you're listening please just let us know either comment on spotify or you can find us on linkedin or you can send us an email hello at truthliesandwork.com let us know whether you prefer with the music or without keep the jingle drop the jingle yes this is jingle gate keep or drop keep or drop right okay so let's not cue the jingle that's just for you alice yes thank you alice alice alice who the oh never mind that's a different song okay lee what have you seen are we actually in a hiring crisis oh sorry a glass of water there you want some answers you want me to answer that or is it just Sure, yeah.

7:56Are we in a hiring crisis? Yeah, are we not? I don't know. You're the fucking expert here. I don't know. Don't ask me stuff. Let me drink my water in peace. Carry on. So I just feel like we're always talking about people or companies laying lots of people off. You know, AI taking over people's jobs, lots of people unemployed. But according to new research, the hiring market has become much tougher than many organizations realize. So this came from Francesca Cassidy in Fortune Europe. And the article opens with new data from a McKinsey HR Monitor survey, which found the overall hiring success across Europe is just 46%.

8:39They measure hiring success by combining offer acceptance with whether the new hires actually stay beyond their promotion period. And according to the article, business are now fighting the hiring battle in several different ways. So first of all, they're competing for experienced workers, but they're also competing with things like retirement as lots of older employees are kind of leaving the workforce faster than the younger people are replacing them. And at the same time, of course, AI is changing the shape of entry level work. So if we are automating those more routine tasks, organizations aren't offering the jobs to the younger kids, which means skilled candidates don't even start to be developed in kind of the lower rings of an organization.

9:27And the article also argues that companies are spending enormous amounts of time, money and effort trying to recruit skills from outside the organization, often with disappointing results. So it asked whether businesses need to think differently and highlighted one company, Spotify. So yes, Spotify, as you remember, I think we actually covered it on the show in 2023, laid off about 17 % of its workforce. But the company has since been investing heavily in internal mobility. So basically encouraging employees to move between teams, develop new skills and build careers inside the organisation rather than looking externally for talent.

10:04and what they're saying is that it's not that hiring new people in doesn't matter but if the labour market is getting increasingly difficult growing the talent you already have may be a more sustainable strategy thoughts see now it's funny because i'm sure we have covered stuff where people saying there's no jobs out there i'm sure we've covered stuff saying that ai is taking all the jobs so therefore there literally are no jobs to be had and now what we're saying is that actually there are plenty of jobs but they're but 50 % of them get they fill them and then they disappear the person disappears again so I'm struggling to understand why how all these things can be true I think what it's highlighting here is that recruitment processes are failing right because if you're running an expensive time intensive recruitment process and your success rate is only 50 as a business owner i'd be looking to whether it be hr or my hiring managers or the external recruiter i'm using and going that isn't acceptable that's not it's basically chance we'll just pluck somebody out of the pile and start them and hope it goes well um so i just feel that it's highlighting that recruitment is failing and that needs to be fixed and it's a really easy thing to fix and it really frustrates me that organizations aren't fixing it's because it isn't sexy and it isn't interesting why should it be you're just trying to find good people in your business and the second thing I think is that rather than always looking to external hires which of course is important investing in recognition and career development people who are already in your business whether that means moving it into different roles or different departments or doing different things I think we just have this very narrow view what it is to develop employees and that's basically put them on a management track whereas it could be doing lots of other different different things it could be retraining somebody who's worked in a technical role to a more of a sales-based role um it could be lots of different things so i think it's really highlighting that the companies that are getting it right have got a really sharp recruitment process that is going to be a lot more successful than a 50 50 chance and they're taking the time to develop their own internal talent so actually they're probably overall cost and frequency of hiring is lower anyway yeah i suppose that makes sense yeah you just explained it to me so what we're saying is that this stat here has got really nothing to do with the number of jobs available it's got to do with the quality of the selection process is that what we're saying yeah yeah well i think if you're listening to this you're going yeah do you know what i'm about i'm hovering about 50 then you need to speak to the ann because leanna's got the we need to we need to package this up into some kind of product or service something because leanna's got the answer to this she she says it like once every three episodes she'll say exactly how you do it and i'm not going to tell you because you should have listened the last time you should have implemented it so you've got leanne's email in the in the show notes, drop her an email.

12:51She'll sit there for half an hour with you and she'll, well, it depends how many people actually email you. But if you've got enough time, I'm sure she'll sit there and tell you how it works. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Leanne. So here's an idea that sounds brilliant on paper. A lot of people we talk to say that L &D is boring and it often is. It's PowerPoint, it's cheesy games. It's not the best experience, but you know what's not boring? TikTok and Instagram because that's where people are actually already on it. So why not meet them there? Ticking and gramming out. Ticking and gramming. Ticking, tocking and gramming.

13:19So it is. And Ewing, the YouTubing. We call it TickTube, don't we? TickTube, because basically everything that's on TikTok is put on YouTube for the old people. Yeah, for us. So this is the idea. Compliance training, for example, in Biteside Reels. Or if it was like a difficult management conversation, it might be like that. Yes, so you can act it out, TikTok style. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like it. It sounds like this is going to be a great idea, but actually we found out according to this study it's one of the worst ways to learn something and actually remember it. So researchers in China, they ran a proper experiment.

13:56Now they took a 10-minute travel documentary and they did one group, watched the entire documentary start to finish. One group watched sort of TikTok style little chopped down bits of it. Short video group did much worse. They were basically asked to do this quiz straight afterwards and couldn't remember nearly as much as people watched the long form. what's worse is when they said and i didn't tell him about the quiz the first time second second group they said right there will be a quiz on this so remember as much as you can they still did much much worse and then they tried the same quiz the next day to see if that made any difference again the people who watched the entire documentary they remembered retained far far more they did a brain scan as well and this is the interesting part i think for anyone who manages people The people who watch the continuous video, their brains actually synced up with each part of the region tied to attention and memory building.

14:49So they're building this entire memory map. But with a chopped up version, that synced activity just didn't exist. Instead, these people's brains were just firing in the bits that reacted to sudden change. Basically like, oh, new thing. Oh, new thing. Over and over again. So people felt engaged. They weren't bored. But the front and back of the brain stopped talking to each other properly and nothing got fouled away long term. Does all that make sense? It does. It does. So, thoughts? I mean, it's not that surprising, because given what we know about the impact that this short-form content is having on memory and attention, it's those dopamine hits, isn't it?

15:30They're really addictive, but don't really kind of activate much in a way that is useful, helpful, 20-40. Like brain chewing gum. Yeah, exactly. so it's i don't i don't think it's too much of a surprise i think what could be interesting potentially is if you kind of considered whether kind of the short form could be used almost as like revision cards so say you've gone on like a course or something like a management course and then part of kind of the in-between sessions before your next module or or kind of the the wraparound after continuous learning was going over the same principles that you've done in long form in kind of short form videos i'd be interested to see the research on that to see if it facilitated memory and retention i don't know the answer but i wonder whether it could so anyway what else do you see my love i too saw a study this week al from the british psychological society's research digest it was actually published in psycho psychological bulletin oh yeah if you're interested and it's basically saying or asking are young people becoming more perfectionist and is work partly to blame gen z i feel we haven't talked about them recently i was starting to miss our gen z friends we know that they're described as entitled or fragile or or you know challenging in the workplace in terms of being a bit needy just to be clear we don't describe no people people do we love gen z we think gen z are freaking awesome we do um this research though does paint a different picture so it looked at data from 307 separate studies meta-analyses thank you very much involving more than 82 000 university students in the uk us and canada collected over a 35 year period between 1989 and 2024 longitudinal study beautiful so what does this tell us about what does this kind of what do we know then if we're looking at a longitudinal meta-analysis study, what comfort can we take from that as social scientists?

17:32We can take from it because, see, you've asked me difficult questions. I think because they're meta-analyses, then it's not just one sample survey set of data. It's lots and lots of data. And because it's longitudinal, we can actually see changes over time. Is that right? Yes, it does. Al, come on. Thank you. Thinking like a psychologist. genuinely grinning now from ear to ear we can we can be confident fairly confident in this data and the conclusions it's coming to because like you say massive sample long period of time tracking behavior in this case personality traits to see what shifts and it gives us an idea statistical relevance or something ssl it's reliability and validity yeah yeah that we're looking at various if i won't get into that because there's lots of different forms of reliability and but just know they're strong i overreach there a little carry on so the researchers found that perfectionism has continued to rise since 1989 and it has continued to rise from the last kind of snapshot they did of their findings in 2019 now what they're looking or what they think they're looking at is not necessarily that young people are just setting themselves higher standards but the biggest increases are coming from socially prescribed perfectionism.

18:50So that's the belief that other people expect you to be perfect, expect one to be perfect, that mistakes will be judged harshly and that your worth depends on meeting impossibly high expectations. Oh. Oh, as a millennial, I feel so seen right now. The research has found particularly sharp increases in fear of failure, indecisiveness and fear of negative judgment especially since the early 2000s and in fact concern about making mistakes increased more than any other perfection related trait that included three beliefs becoming much more common one reacting badly to mistakes two seeing mistakes as failure and three believing other people judge you negatively when you get something wrong So the authors say that these trends mirror the rise we've seen in anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts that we have seen amongst young people over the same time period.

19:49So why is this happening? Well, interestingly, I thought the researchers don't think social media started the problem. Okay. They believe that the rise in perfectionism actually began before smartphones and social media became more widespread. and instead they're putting it down to economic and cultural changes. So as economic growth slowed and opportunities became more rare, young people appeared to respond by striving harder. Then as inequality increased, so did worries about making mistakes and what other people might think. So the researchers suggest that if social media does play a role, it's probably amplifying pressures that already existed rather than creating them.

20:32And their conclusion is that tackling the youth mental health crisis can't just focus on individuals. It also means looking at the economic and cultural conditions that are encouraging perfectionism in the first place, including our workplaces. But I think the thing that kind of got me over the past, if we think about what's this over, maybe like 30-odd years, isn't it? 40-odd years. I would be interested to see or to kind of track this data along with leadership and management competence. Unless I think that, I mean, I don't think we're investing in management and L &D as much as maybe we did 20, 30 years ago.

21:14But also that it's a lot more complex the world of work that managers and leaders are dealing with. So actually they need even more training. So I think it's probably more that we've not increased the amount of training and support we give to our leaders and managers. and just expect them to deal with a much more complex world of work with AI and hybrid and the internet and all that kind of stuff. But I would be interested to kind of see that tracked in terms of that against the failure to make mistakes because what that is talking about is a lack of psychological safety in the workplace, isn't it?

21:46So even if you had, if you think about our young people, even if you had a world of social media that is constant judgment, constant finger pointing for for failing if you're in a work environment where the narrative changes and goes no we want you to fail that's how we learn that's how we innovate that's how we create that's how we figure out new and exciting things failure is a sign of success i wonder how much we'd be able to kind of counteract the narrative that's coming from social media so i just feel that there is an an element of responsibility we need to take as older people in the workplace for our younger people if they are feeling a lot of anxiety around making mistakes is teaching them how to make mistakes safely teach them how to how to recover from mistakes in a way that that we're learning things or how to prevent these mistakes from happening through different safeguards and peer and leader support i just think if that's the main finding that's coming out there's a lot we could be doing as leaders and business owners to just make that whole situation better.

22:48Yeah, absolutely. Totally agree. Totally agree. You learn more from the money you lose than the money you make. And if you aren't making mistakes, you're not making enough decisions. So yeah, there we go. Some wisdom from Al who stole from someone else. Okay, if you have your own, your own, yeah, so we want to hear from you twofold, two reasons. One, did you prefer it without the music on the background? Personally, I didn't know it's a difference. It's funny because Al puts it in post, so we're not listening to music now. and and two if you have your own story that you'd like us to talk about i know someone sent us something recently i think was it um christian sent us something uh so uh yeah we'll definitely include that all right we're gonna take a quick break and then after that we're gonna come back and leanne is going to dispel a myth for us in our truth or lie segment so we'll see in a second welcome back yes you're right truth or lie it's that time of the week we take a popular workplace idea and ask if the research actually backs it up this week's saying is one you've definitely heard you can't bullshitter bullshitter also if you're scouse you can't kidder kidder and if you are from manchester you can't blagger blagger those are the that probably would have been a more a more kind of friendly version wouldn't it so in my defense one of the studies was actually called you can't you can't bullshitter bullshitter can't shitter shitter yes no i'm totally great i totally get it so do you want to set this up or should i just give you no please carry on okay so i think This is the basic idea that if you are skilled at, shall we say, bending the truth yourself, then you're immune to it when someone tries it on you.

24:16Supposedly, frequent liars and exaggerators develop a built-in radar for spotting when someone else is doing the same thing. So, is that actually true? Are practiced bullshitters harder to fool or does thinking you're good at it just make you an easier target? Lee, over to you. There is some evidence that suggests this is true. You can't bullshit a bullshitter. So the first study, Christian Blotner and Sebastian Burgold. Fabulous names. I believe they're Scandinavian. Maybe German. I don't know. They ran a study in 2023 with 525 people, mostly university students. This tends to be the case with a lot of psychology research.

24:56A lot of time in their hands, haven't they, the students? And what they basically said for us is let's define bullshitting because it's not necessarily just one behaviour. So they split it into two different types. persuasive bullshitting so that's kind of talking the big game the inflated very impressive sounding language look competent with no real concern about whether it's true or not i don't know to pluck an example out of my head donald trump the second is evasive bullshitting so that's different that's giving kind of vague non-committal answers to dodge a question or avoid causing harm without technically lying think keir starmer okay fair yeah yes and also fair to keir i don't know but the last few i mean there's a few scandals weren't they just seem to kind of knock away and not really deal with so they also then split the personality trait behind bullshitting into two different things and that trait is machiavellianism right one of my favorite words to say because it took it took me a little while to learn it you say it so beautifully thank you so machiavellianism is basically being manipulative, cynical.

26:03It's a cynical way of dealing with people. And they split that into two types as well. So a Machiavellian approach, where you're actively working an angle to gain something, or Machiavellian avoidance, that's more defensive, guarded, distrustful style. And really just to kind of protect yourself to not get embarrassed. Yeah. So to test how these traits and behaviors are connected, they use a statistical method called structural equation modeling, which is basically when research can look at several traits at once and see how they relate while accounting for the variables. It's almost like a little waterfall kind of effect of statistics to kind of see what's shaking and what's connected and what's not and which one is the most important.

26:43So the results showed a very clear split. People high in Machiavellian approach were likely to bullshit persuasively. Right. So their Machiavellian approach to the people that are trying to gain something, bullshit persuasively, is the Donald Trumps of the world. So somebody in a meeting may be very confidently throwing around buzzwords about a project that's actually behind scheduled, but just to sound like they're kind of still on top of it. Got it. People high in Machiavellian avoidance were more likely to bullshit evasively. So if somebody was asked directly if they missed a deadline, instead of giving a straight answer, they might say something like, oh, it's been a complicated week.

27:27There's lots of moving parts. Technically, it's not a lie, but it's not really an answer either. Got it. But here's the part that matters for us. That same guarded, avoidance-driven group were better at spotting bullshit. Oh. Yes. So the researchers tested this by mixing meaningless, pseudo-profound statements in with genuinely insightful ones and seeing who could tell the difference crafty crafty and the defensive bullshit is did better and that link held up even when accounting for other factors the study also measured raw reasoning ability using using a standard cognitive test all that really means is that it's a test similar to an iq test that It measures how well someone can kind of think through problems in real time.

28:16That, kind of the highest score on a standard cognitive test, was the strongest predictor of spotting bullshit overall and stronger than any personality trait. So kind of being naturally sharp mattered more than being a bullshitter yourself. So there is some evidence to suggest that guarded defensive bullshitters, not the flashy persuasive kind do seem harder to fall and basically their own skepticism is working as a shield against other people's bullshit got you so someone who's who likes to make up stories but not make but embellish embellish stories then if they're talking to someone else who's also who's got the same trait they aren't necessarily good at detecting but the other way around there's someone who's a bit evasive will notice if someone doesn't answer the question because they go oh i do that too exactly got it exactly got it so that's the argument four sounds pretty strong to me yeah it is there is definitely some evidence there that you can't bullshit a bullshitter so if we look at the against so the against argument would suggest that you can bullshit a bullshitter yeah so the first thing i want to share with you comes from i was led by a psychologist called shane luttrell i have talked about shane's work on the show before.

29:33It was actually Shane that sent me this study that then made me think, ah, this could be a good truth or lie. Well done, Shane. Well done, Shane. So Shane and some of his colleagues ran three separate studies in 2021 with 826 people in total and they were recruited online. They wanted to settle a very specific question, which is exactly what we're looking at. Are people who bullshit often better at spotting bullshit? or worse. So the first two studies measured how often people bullshit using a self-report scale, then tested them against three kinds of bullshit. The first was pseudo-professed statements that we've heard about before.

30:15The second was fake scientific claims written in very convincing scientific language. And the third was fake news headlines. So across all three, people who scored highly on persuasive bullshitting so that's the confident impressive sounding kind were more likely to rate these fake statements as true or meaningful and this wasn't explained away by other factors the researchers also measured general intelligence so as we said before a person tends to think things through carefully rather than go on their go and they call this cognitive reflection and they also looked at how confident someone was.

30:54And even accounting for all of these things, the link between persuasive bullshitting and falling for bullshit held up. A third study they did then dug into the mechanism. So participants were shown the same set of pseudo-profound statements split into two groups with different instructions. So one group was asked to rate how deep the statement sounded and the other was asked to rate how true the statement sounded. And people who scored low on persuasive bullshitting answered differently depending on which question they were asked. So the people who scored low on persuasive bullshitting, they could tell a difference between something sounding clever and something being true, whereas people who scored high on persuasive bullshitting rated the statements of the same.

31:47yeah so the researchers basically took this as evidence of a blind spot so for frequent bullshitters sounding impressive and being true had essentially merged into the same thing and if you think about that alone and the political world we've seen unraveling the past two three years it's people that can't tell a difference between sounding impressive and being true interesting you have covered these people indeed there was a related finding as well from a different angle so a researcher called john petrocelli ran two different experiments also in 2021 on bullshit as a persuasion tool and he found that when an argument was weak dressing up dressing it up as confident in a bullshit style language made it much more persuasive than presenting honestly but it did backfire when an argument was strong so people found the honest evidence-based version more convincing.

32:43And the second experiment looked into why. So when arguments were framed as bullshit people stopped weighting the actual content and were swayed by surface things like how attractive the speaker looked in a photo whereas with the evidence-based framing that didn't have an effect at all. So basically bullshit works by pulling people away from careful thinking which is part of the reason why even sharp people can fall for it at times and then one final study i want to share with you which i thought was interesting this was in 2018 and looked at 125 people and measured narcissism using a very well established questionnaire called the narcissistic personality inventory an mpi participants also rated their own ability to tell lies detect lies and tell convincing truths the people who scored higher on narcissism constantly rated themselves as better at all three but the study only measured self-belief not actual skill so nobody tested whether they could really detect a lie um it just kind of shows confidence rather than competence but i think the key thing here is that narcissists tend to think they're really good bullshitters.

33:55So all the research is suggesting that bullshit works by switching off that more careful thinking and the people most sure they can't be fooled are often the ones that are worse spotting it. So whether that's persuasive bullshitters or people who are high in narcissism. Interesting, interesting. And there is a check for five British pounds for the person who counts up how many times Leanne said the word bullshit. I'd imagine it'll be a record before we move on i just i couldn't help but reflect on what this could mean for business owners because i know sometimes our truth and lies are very kind of in the workplace and others are less so but i think this one is very much in the workplace in kind of advice for leaders is don't mistake confidence for quality if you're listening to a presentation it's very polished and jargon heavy it could be trying to hide a weak idea if somebody is rating their own work performance ask them to back it up confidence and competence are not the same thing and if you're just a moment of self-reflection if you're the one who's sure you can't be fooled maybe reflect on that um because it is often as we heard the surest people who fall for the bullshit interesting so if you say i can't be fooled no one fools me it's more likely that you are a persuasive bullshit to yourself the swine swine's the science i would suggest so oh well that's uh yeah so we've lost those people now they've gone right i'm not listening to this bullshit anymore anything else to add before i'm guessing the links are in the show notes as always lee yeah sure sure you say sure he's just gonna throw the document into claude aren't you and say do me some show notes we should mention that this week's episode was inspired by a conversation with Dr.

35:39Shane Littrell, one of the researchers behind the study we covered. If you want to go deeper on the psychology of bullshit, I think you should. He writes about it regularly on his sub stack, which has got the best name ever, Bullshitology. We're going to pop the link in the show notes. Okay, on to my favorite time of the week is the world famous weekly workplace surgery. I put your questions to Leanne. Okay, so I've got three questions here that have been sent in and I will put them to Leanne. As I've just said that, they're a bit tautological there. Leanne, I didn't need to say that. Just in case you're wondering why, if we're slightly off today, the aircon in our studio seems to have broken on a day when it's like 38 degrees outside and humidity is high and struggling a bit here.

36:20Really struggling. So I might do the last question in my pants. Let's find out. So question number one, am I being naive, putting in a free gym? This person says, hi, Alan Leanne. Oh, thank you for including me. Most of my team are office based and it's stressful in there. I'm restructuring a few things and I want to do something for morale. Free meals, free childcare, or building a small gym they can use around the clock. Everyone says happy staff equals productive staff and I've read the reports. But I've got no idea if I'm about to spend a load of money on something nobody actually uses. Lee!

36:49Ask them. Ah, yes, that's probably a good idea, isn't it? Yeah. Didn't you say, sorry, just slightly off. I'm sure you told us a story about this company who wanted, who were going to like increase salaries and actually when they asked everyone, they said, I don't want to. no it wasn't it was dr carrie equity share yes dr carrie cooper wasn't it yeah there was like the grand idea of kind of the partners to to offer equity share and when they talked about nobody wanted it they wanted investment in either basic salary bonus or professional development i think it was so anyway sorry you were saying yeah i mean i think you're always gonna hear kind of negative conversations around things like gym memberships and fruit in the break room and ping pong tables and stuff like that that's not to say that these things can't have a place in a well thought out well-being and wellness strategy but they're kind of what we call hygiene factors in that people notice when they're taken away but won't necessarily appreciate them while they're there and often kind of the gym can can fall into that and I think it's also what's the what's the intention are you wanting to keep people on site even longer because they'll go to the gym after work and then maybe just pop upstairs to finish that email is it that you'd encourage them to do it at lunchtime so then they're using up their own free time like paid you know in the work when it could be should be used for doing something else or it could be that actually physical fitness is very very important to the people that you have working with you and they would absolutely adore to have free gym membership whether that be a gym that you build yourself or elsewhere I don't know the answer to that you're gonna have to ask them things that you mentioned though that could be a lot more impactful as part of a well-being strategy things like free child care that could be massive for carers who yeah it's a huge cost and expense isn't it couldn't free up a whole load of of kind of worry having something like free child care particularly if it was on or near site you say that people are in the office all the time maybe there's a reason for that maybe there is a genuine reason for that but is there some flexibility you can offer that again in terms of people dealing with other demands and priorities in their life that could be an absolute game changer i would have a massive boost to morale and well-being and just i think to to kind of say you know happy staff equals productive staff yeah but happiness is a really difficult metric for you to chase as a business owner because happiness is a state ebbs and flows and there's lots of different things that are going to impact an individual's happiness and well-being that are beyond your control.

39:30So I'll be asking questions about what can we provide you to help you rest and recover better? What can we do to help you set better boundaries between work and life? What can we do to build in more flexibility? It could be free childcare and hybrid working. It could be free meals in a gym in the basement. It could be something else entirely. Do you remember we were talking about an organization called slate that introduced a cleaning stipend so rather than a gym membership you could use that same value against a cleaning service to come and clean your flat twice a week it's things like that that can have a real impact because again you're you're giving somebody hours back you're giving time back in terms of rest and recovery because that's not time they have to spend cleaning their house so there's lots of different things that you can do but of course none of that is going to make any impact whatsoever if you don't have manageable workloads if you don't have supportive relationships really great managers a clear vision and mission for the organization people are paid fairly they're developed in terms of their professional development and career development all of that stuff is going to have a much bigger impact on the well-being and morale of your team than perks like this so it has to be part of a bigger package but ultimately if you want the specifics go and ask them nice nice and also i think probably the way that i sort of tease this by saying am i naive putting in a free gym to be fair to the person who wrote in they said they said there were three options free meals free child care or building a small gym um and so yes you can but i think leanne says the the simplest way is to just say just start off and go right okay so we're doing three this month we're doing three vouchers for three particular services.