[00:00:00] **Andrew:** Hi, I am Andrew. Welcome to the Work Unravelled podcast. In each episode, we break down a piece of the workplace puzzle, providing practical insights, fresh perspectives, and actionable solutions to help you navigate the ever-changing world of work. 

[00:00:15] **Scott:** And I'm Scott, whether you are a leader, a professional, or simply curious about what makes organizations tick, this show offers strategies to think smarter, work better, and lead boldly join us as we turn workplace complexity into clarity.

One episode at a time.

We're gonna start this episode with one big question. Have some people forgotten how to behave at work? Everyone will recognise the messy office kitchen. Plates and mugs being left for others to clean up the filthy microwave where somebody's food's exploded and they've just left it for you, or taking really loud zoom calls in the office.

Turning up late for meetings, using a meeting room when someone else has booked it and it goes on and on and on. And I was pretty blown away to find out that 45% of companies now run office etiquette training over 359 billion pounds a year are lost globally due to workplace conflict.

So post pandemic, we think that soft skills have softened and we're a bit out of practice. I think some of this stuff was going on before the pandemic, to be fair, but I think it's got worse and it's costing us. You've seen this yourself firsthand as well, Andrew, haven't you?

[00:01:27] **Andrew:** Of course I've seen it. I've never been guilty of it. I've never, I've never been the person that's nicked milk from

[00:01:33] **Scott:** Not,

[00:01:34] **Andrew:** or.

[00:01:34] **Scott:** even a little bit of milk.

[00:01:35] **Andrew:** even a little bit of milk. No, I'd never do that. I'd never do that. Um, yeah, I, I have seen this. I think we've all experienced it and as you say, I think maybe after the pandemic, people, you know, working from home and some people, I, I've talked to people who their first job was working from home.

They started working from home. So if you then gotta go and work in an office and you've never had that office experience, but even people who are experienced in offices, sometimes we, we perhaps should think about our etiquette. Our standards and what we're gonna talk about in this episode, I think is this idea of that culture of trust. My favorite phrase, psychological safety and and trust goes in all directions. It comes from the leadership down, but also from colleagues across to each other and also from anybody that you are, you are supervising. So this is about trust, it's about respect, it's about professional standards. We're not nitpicking, we're not trying to sort of wag a finger.

We're just saying there's certain standards that we should. Aim for such as punctuality and, you know, pleases and thank yous, and there's cultural differences as well. But all these niceties, they actually build that and that workplace culture where people feel safe. if, if I don't res, if I, if you're not showing respect to me, then why should I show respect to you? But then why should I listen to your ideas? Why should I get engaged in your projects? So yeah, this is something about. Building that culture that, that's positive is not just about the overuse of emojis, , but serious things like, you know, sending emails at the right time, not abusing people's trust. Um, and it's, it's less about rules and more about positive relationships. I guess

I think one of the challenges we've got is that the workplace, as we've talked about in previous episodes, has changed so much. And so for a lot of people now they're in that hybrid. Workplace culture where I sometimes work from home and I sometimes go into the office and, and would you think that's, maybe that's where things have fallen down, is that we're not 100% either.

Now we're not all work from home this hybrid thing.

[00:03:30] **Scott:** Yeah, I think there's a bit of a, it presents challenges in itself, doesn't it? Things like, well, some people are in the office, some people are at home. How do you communicate if you're having a Zoom meeting? Do you have the zoom meeting or the teams meeting in an office with other people there and some people are at home.

It's like this kind of, it kind of, it's like the worst of both worlds almost. It's like ideally you'd either all be together on a Zoom call or a teams call, or you'd all be together in an office, and certainly I've seen it's quite tricky to then have that mixed thing because then you sat next to someone who's on a headset and they're chatting loudly.

I think as people, it can, feels messy. That's the word I'm trying to think of. It feels messy.

[00:04:13] **Andrew:** It's confusing. Messy.

[00:04:15] **Scott:** Yeah. So it's also about logistics as well, so it can present some challenges knowing who's where, and that can create friction if you're not available it's transparency around where you're gonna be. So actually do, are people clear about, well, I'm gonna be in the office today. I'm not gonna be tomorrow. You know, marking that clearly in your calendar. It sounds so obvious, but some people don't do that. So you might be expecting someone to come in and, oh, they're not here.

And I've come into the office hopefully to see them. So again, it just presents those challenges around communication. And as we said before, the, the office commute has to be worth it. You know, who wants to come in to the office to then sit? On their bum all day on a video call when they could have done that from home.

They spent half an hour to an hour commuting, maybe more for some people to be on a call they could have done from home. So there has to be value and a reason to come into the office. Whether that's to have a whiteboard session with a group of people, to work closely with your customer, to sit with people, it has to be more than just coming in to sit on a video call.

'cause otherwise you may as well just be at home and do that.

[00:05:19] **Andrew:** I tell you that something that strikes me as well, Scott, when you, when you were saying that, is that I will have video calls with people and you can't always tell whether they are at home or not. they haven't explained whether they are, but they've

[00:05:30] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:05:31] **Andrew:** background on. Now, clearly, I, you know, I don't, I don't use a virtual background, but people have a blurred background or they

[00:05:37] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:05:37] **Andrew:** you know, New York skyline behind them, and they could be in the office or they could be at home.

[00:05:45] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:05:45] **Andrew:** You, you never quite know.

[00:05:47] **Scott:** Unless their kid suddenly appears out of the face, appears through the background.

[00:05:51] **Andrew:** this ghost-like figure appears sort of out the New York skyline. Yeah. So, but

[00:05:56] **Scott:** Or I can see them constantly being distracted. It's like,

[00:05:58] **Andrew:** oh, yeah,

[00:05:58] **Scott:** you know, so why'd they keep turning? There's something going on.

[00:06:02] **Andrew:** Well, you get that, you get that in offices, of course. But I think

[00:06:04] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:06:04] **Andrew:** an interesting dynamic now that we, as what we're saying is I think it's that courtesy thing again. I dunno, maybe you put it in your diary that you are working from home and, and sometimes people don't wanna do that because they don't wanna show that they are working from home and so on. But just that recognition that if you are using a virtual background, which a lot of people do, and I understand why, if you've got a messy, messy, you know, background or you've got something in the, in the background you don't want people to see and that privacy thing, you can't always tell and

[00:06:32] **Scott:** I think some companies enforce it. I know my, my other half her, everyone has a branded corporate background with their name on the background.

[00:06:39] **Andrew:** But then again, you could be anywhere again, couldn't you? You, you,

[00:06:41] **Scott:** Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:06:42] **Andrew:** you pull that background up in, in whichever zoom or team software that you are using, you cannot tell. Now the advantage of that is of course you could be in a coffee shop. You could be, you could be. was, I was watching somewhere, uh, car reviews, both you and I, a bit car geeks and there's, um, increasingly people will be having meetings from their car.

I think it was the latest Mercedes. You could have meetings from your car. people will be sitting in their.

[00:07:07] **Scott:** while driving. Of course.

[00:07:08] **Andrew:** No. Or driving, no. These, these are screens that only operate when you're stationary, I hope. but you, you, you could be anywhere having a meeting. Now, do you need to tell people where you are beforehand? Maybe, maybe not, but I think there's that, again, that courtesy of, of, of explaining to people where you are, or perhaps the other way around, is not assuming where people are, you know,

[00:07:29] **Scott:** So, yeah. Yeah, I was running a training session, it was an online webinar, uh, probably about six months ago now. And one of the attendees they were driving

[00:07:40] **Andrew:** Yeah.

[00:07:40] **Scott:** they had their phone in a cradle on video call, and they were like, I'm, I'm running late for home. Sorry, I've joined the session.

We're like, turn off the phone. This is not safe.

[00:07:51] **Andrew:** Well.

[00:07:51] **Scott:** So it was nice they wanted to attend and didn't wanna miss the session, but there's gotta be some safety and some boundaries there.

[00:07:57] **Andrew:** Well, I know we've got hands free in cars, but people

[00:07:59] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:08:00] **Andrew:** meetings from while they're driving.

[00:08:02] **Scott:** Audio fine. But he had the video on as well and kept looking at the screen. It was like, no, no, no. Don't do that.

[00:08:07] **Andrew:** say on this podcast, we don't recommend that. That's not a

[00:08:09] **Scott:** No,

[00:08:10] **Andrew:** from the Work Unraveled podcast team.

[00:08:13] **Scott:** no.

[00:08:13] **Andrew:** and safety, that's terrible.

[00:08:14] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:08:14] **Andrew:** um, yeah, so I think, I think again, these, these modern and we talked about in the previous episode

[00:08:19] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:08:19] **Andrew:** great great reset work has changed. And we perhaps still haven't established some of these niceties in etiquette, have we?

[00:08:27] **Scott:** No, and one thing that I've seen a few times as well is the, the kind of camera's off.

[00:08:33] **Andrew:** Hmm.

[00:08:34] **Scott:** And I, I did a presentation once to, it was a pitch actually to, um, a group of individuals and they were formal, different organizations around the country. And every single person apart from the chair of the meeting that I had joined had their camera off.

And I was presenting slides to a group of people that I couldn't see their faces. And it was probably one of the most weirdest, unsettling things I've done because I had to keep stopping and saying, just check in. You're all still with me. Just check. Has anyone got any questions? And I imagined if I was doing that in a physical office presenting to people and they'd all put bags on their head and I couldn't see them or they were just looking away.

'cause you don't know one, if they're responding, you don't get that visual feedback. Two, they could have left the room for all, you know,

[00:09:19] **Andrew:** Yeah.

[00:09:19] **Scott:** could have just gone and got a cup of coffee and you're talking to nobody. So I think there's some etiquette there around, I think the chair of that meeting should say if you're in the meeting camera's on.

It's kind of felt like a bit of respect thing for me. Now I get that sometimes you need to turn your camera off and pop to Lou or get the door and, and those kind of things. But the whole meeting, the camera was off and it doesn't make you wonder, ah, what are people doing?

[00:09:41] **Andrew:** I, I think there's a lot to unpick there. I think if people have got their cameras off. That says a lot about the culture. They've probably got so much work to do that they're trying to do other work while this meeting is, is going on or No, you use a presentation, but you often see people in meetings will

[00:09:56] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:09:57] **Andrew:** off. Um, a friend of mine, she, she has to join so many meetings. She will turn the camera off. 'cause there's so many people in the meeting, know, people start to disappear, the little face disappears. So they all do it and then

[00:10:09] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:10:10] **Andrew:** the camera back on when she wants to make a point. the meantime, she's actually doing something else.

[00:10:15] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:10:15] **Andrew:** that says a lot about the work culture. If people are doing that

[00:10:18] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:10:19] **Andrew:** we get annoyed with people if they're, if you, if I was talking to you and then suddenly you've got your phone out and started looking at your phone, we find that rude. Well, maybe teenagers don't. I think that's how teenagers but we, we wouldn't like it if people are doing that sort of in any other setting.

But in work, it seems to be acceptable to turn the camera off and I dunno whether you're there or not. So for me, I

[00:10:41] **Scott:** Yeah,

[00:10:41] **Andrew:** that's not very good. That's not very good. Um,

[00:10:43] **Scott:** yeah.

[00:10:43] **Andrew:** very positive. Again, in terms of work culture,

[00:10:47] **Scott:** No, so, so how do we think we can create some, a better balance in these hybrid teams then? In terms of etiquette, ways of working.

[00:10:55] **Andrew:** Yeah, I think again, compared to previous working situations, maybe 10, 15 years ago, certainly pre pandemic, we've, we've changed things in the workplace and we haven't thought it through. Now some organizations clearly are better than others, but simple things like having some sort of rehearsal culture. Ideally, instead of you click from one meeting to the next meeting on Teams or Zoom or Google Meet, you have a maybe a few minutes where everybody has to check their, uh, camera settings, has to check their, headphones working. I've just had some problem with my headphones, um, checking that everybody's got their, their software up to date. Ideally, that would become the norm. You know, everybody does that. What you're finding, I think in some of these softwares, they force you to do that in like the green room before you join the meeting, don't they? So I think, I think that'd be a good thing, is getting everybody used to making sure the tech is working. If you are running hybrid meetings though, and let's be honest, like pretty much every organization these days is running hybrid meetings, is understand the dynamics about people who are remote and people who are. And I dunno about you, one of those very annoying things is that you are the remote person or maybe there's a couple of you and then there's a conversation going on in the room and you cannot hear it. You have that

[00:12:11] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:12:12] **Andrew:** there's like two or three people in the room chatting, talking about something really serious and you just can't really hear what they're saying. So trying to have somebody managing the meeting that you are not allow, you're not having people having their separate chats in the, in the physical room. 'cause that can be so disruptive. so difficult. And I

[00:12:30] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:12:30] **Andrew:** you need to have that, um, action items shared digitally with everybody, whether they were remote or in the room. So something that can happen is a lot of these meeting tools will have a transcript. great, but sometimes the people in the room, they'll take slightly different notes.

The people who are. Virtual. So you need to make sure there's that coordination between what did everybody take away from that meeting. the other thing we've mentioned, I I mentioned this on a, on a previous episode, is there's definitely a psychological difference between people physically present together and people who are, uh, remote. And we talked about the, uh, uh, what's called the proximity bias. And I've, I've mentioned this, so if, if people haven't meant, um, listened to the previous episode. People who are remote tend to get slower career progression. And unsurprisingly, people who are physically together working in offices together, tend to build better relationships.

They tend to form stronger relationships, people who work in offices all the time tend to have. Increased, um, career opportunities. So if you are managing a hybrid team, you need to make sure that the opportunities are spread equally amongst the entire team, including those people who are, remote.

Otherwise they get overlooked for, for opportunities. So, so there's a lot going on there. have you got any other sort of pet peeves in terms of this Hy Hybrid work culture that we've got now?

[00:13:57] **Scott:** So, yeah, I think there's some digital do's and don'ts. Uh, I've worked with people, um, I help a lot of people manage the inbox. And, uh, there was someone I was working with who would had this habit of emailing she'd, she'd get all her emails done first thing in the morning, like this flurry of emails out to her staff and her team, usually between five and six in the morning.

'cause she would just be buzzing and get up and hammer these emails out. But of course. Then when the team come in and see the emails, they're saying, oh, the boss has been emailing at five and six in the morning. And we have talked about this on another episode. But that can create pressure and stress for team members 'cause they think.

The boss is sending emails at this time around the morning, should I be sending emails at this time in the morning? So the tip there is I help to understand that you can use this schedule send. So actually you queue that you can file the messages and they get held until the time you say that they should be delivered.

So we set them to be delivered at 9:00 AM or 9:30 AM Um, so that it actually is again. Setting those boundaries and not impacting the team. Same if you wanna work at weekends, you can schedule them to be delivered on Monday morning. And it's just about that perception thing. Um, and something that I would see quite often as well, which is this, I, I dunno if you've come across this, you, you send a, an email to somebody and there's maybe a couple of questions in there and the email isn't particularly long

[00:15:19] **Andrew:** Hmm.

[00:15:20] **Scott:** and you.

If you got a response, it would maybe only to be to one of the questions and not the other question. So you then go back and say, yeah, but I think you missed that point and it felt like painful to, like, I don't wanna keep asking you, but you've, you've ignored this question like three times now. Is it, you just don't want to answer it?

Or, so quite often in those times, it's just my advice is. Just pick up the phone. If you're getting into this email ping pong with somebody, it's very easy to like, oh, we've sent 15 emails. Now having a conversation, like, let's just pick up the phone. There's gotta be a trigger point where one of you says, I can pick up the phone because we could cut out so much time for this back and forward.

[00:15:58] **Andrew:** I, I, I mean, I know that email is asynchronous. You know, I can send it when I want to send it and you can read it when you want to read it. That's in theory.

[00:16:05] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:16:05] **Andrew:** we tend to do is we send these emails out 'cause I'm in the middle of something. You may not even be in the office at that day, but I can send you a message. But you're absolutely right. I think people will get an email and you send an email as a reply, but then they reply to your reply and then you have to reply to their reply and one phone call. saved that five emails back and forwards.

[00:16:28] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:16:28] **Andrew:** that's, that's a reflection of either A, we're not, and I've got a, a structure I'm gonna offer as well, but either we're not very good at writing emails we read into, uh, something in the email, you know, we sort of misunderstand, often as, as I said, pick up the phone, people do not wanna talk to each other.

Now for some

[00:16:46] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:16:46] **Andrew:** an email. I think it's partly that cover your so and so backside idea that I've got an a a, a trail of evidence.

[00:16:54] **Scott:** Yeah, and I think. I think we'll definitely do a whole episode on emails and managing them better. But, but the other thing exactly on that ask, ask, covering or bottom covering is, um, oh, I'll just, I'll just carbon copy someone in or you know, and then you come back from holiday and there's been an entire conversation going on where you were copied in and, I dunno, 20, 30 emails now in your inbox when you didn't really need to read any of them apart from maybe the last email.

And we'll have some tips in the future episode on how to deal with that quickly and easily,

[00:17:23] **Andrew:** I hate the copied in certainly more senior people without telling you that you're gonna copy somebody senior in, because

[00:17:30] **Scott:** Oh yeah, it's like passive aggressive. It's like

[00:17:32] **Andrew:** sometimes it's quite a friendly email, but they've copied in the boss or they've copied in

[00:17:36] **Scott:** mm

[00:17:36] **Andrew:** more senior person and it's like, don't you trust me to do this work? And maybe

[00:17:40] **Scott:** hmm.

[00:17:40] **Andrew:** to show your boss. 'cause often you've got the same boss and there's like a matrix, you know? And there's a reason why they've done it. But it can mean like, well, thank you very much. You, you've basically put me on the line here with this senior person. I thought we were colleagues That happened many times.

I, I,

[00:17:54] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:17:55] **Andrew:** CCing people. Sometimes I will CC people, but I'll actually shout out if you like in the email why they've been CC'd

[00:18:03] **Scott:** Oh, that's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Copy new in because, yeah.

[00:18:06] **Andrew:** so and so copied in for this reason,

[00:18:08] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:18:09] **Andrew:** that, that's not good. That's not polite. I tell you the worst ones, I dunno if you've ever seen this people blind copy people in.

[00:18:15] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:18:16] **Andrew:** Have you ever seen that?

[00:18:17] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:18:17] **Andrew:** Like, what's going

[00:18:18] **Scott:** Well I haven't known 'cause they've been blind carbon copied. But yeah. Suddenly someone will say, oh yeah, I saw that email. Like, did you, I, I didn't know you were involved in that email. Oh yeah. I was copied in, and just to wrap up on the email bit for now, , it is your reputation in, in writing, isn't it? It's very easy to respond angrily or frustratingly in haste. So quite often the advice is sit on it until the next day. But even generally, do proof read your emails before you hit send.

And actually, my, my partner, she's been using co-pilot, uh, quite often to, uh, tidy up her emails. So she's, she's putting prompts to like, 'cause co-pilot for those that don't know is Microsoft's AI can sit alongside your, your email and your outlook and she'll say, make this sound less angry.

And it will then re rephrase it or make this sound more persuasive and it'll then reword it for her as well.

[00:19:08] **Andrew:** I.

[00:19:08] **Scott:** So you can use AI to help with that as well.

[00:19:11] **Andrew:** I think those tools are great. One of the things I found though, is sometimes I spend more time correcting the email just created through AI than I would do if I just sent something off. Do you

[00:19:22] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:19:22] **Andrew:** it, it changes this sentence. You wanna change that sentence? So I think there's a sort of, um, there's a point at which, you know, it's good enough.

[00:19:29] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:19:30] **Andrew:** and, and talking of email and, and basically any channel, it's choosing the right channel for that communication,

[00:19:35] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:19:35] **Andrew:** not overusing these channels as well. Like you said, a phone call is far more efficient very often than, than an email. Uh, not sending too many messages on Slack or the internal messaging system.

Not everything is urgent. You just have a sudden thought and people just start messaging each other, and we spend our entire, you know, working day just pinging back messages backwards and forwards.

[00:19:57] **Scott:** Just interrupting each other all day.

[00:19:59] **Andrew:** We're interrupting each other, the equivalent, it would be a very noisy office. So offices are actually silent very often if they're, if people are working in the same place. But there's so much communication going on, and there's these side channel conversations and oh my goodness, the, it'd be if you, if you could turn that into sound, it'd be deafening. All these pings going back and forwards. So, so not everything's urgent. Not everything has to be an instant message. If you've got several things to say, maybe you could save it for one message with some bullet points. And if you are gonna do messaging, some sort of framework where, you know, a clear subject line that explains what the email or the message is about, um, maybe an introduction and a a nicety. Now, not everybody does niceties at the start. But some people like the fact you say, hope you're, well, hope you're having a good day.

Some people are straight into the body of the. Of the, the message, but clarity on what you want, why you're sending it, what you expect the person to do. Maybe a summary and a call to action. So thinking about how you message as well, not just what your messaging is. Also really, really important. Not overusing too many emojis or using emojis to soften things.

So again, I think it's this understanding of modern messaging because it, they can

[00:21:13] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:21:13] **Andrew:** easily be misunderstood. I'm sure you've had. Emails and messages that people got the wrong end of the stick, got very

[00:21:20] **Scott:** Oh yeah. Hmm.

[00:21:21] **Andrew:** Um, so there's definitely an etiquette with email and communications about why am I sending it?

Do I have to send it? Do I have to send it now? And as you said, maybe I can schedule this for tomorrow morning. It doesn't have to go out at 4 55 because I've just had an idea. Maybe I'll schedule it to go out at 9 0 1 when everybody's back in. Otherwise they're

[00:21:41] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:21:41] **Andrew:** they're gonna ruminate about this all evening.

I can

[00:21:44] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:21:44] **Andrew:** tomorrow morning.

[00:21:45] **Scott:** Yeah, those teams that are distributed across. Different continents as well, uh, can have an impact. So etiquette can vary. What's polite in one country may be rude in another. So people listening who've worked, um, across cultures and, um, geography will have come across this.

[00:22:03] **Andrew:** Yeah.

[00:22:04] **Scott:** time, for example, is experienced objectively. There are different cultural attitudes towards timekeeping. So in some regions showing up late is a display of authority. In others, it's actually a breach of trust. So to give you some examples and listeners some examples in Germany and Japan, absolute punctuality is key.

So you need to be early in US and Canada, virtual punctuality, so you can kind of be up to five minutes late. That's tolerated. Southern Europe, Latin America. Moderate you can beat up to an hour late is often acceptable, believe it or not. And in the Middle East and Africa, you can be flexible how many hours you're late.

You may not offend anybody.

[00:22:40] **Andrew:** Mm.

[00:22:41] **Scott:** actually that can have a bearing on on the workplace as well.

[00:22:44] **Andrew:** Yes.

[00:22:45] **Scott:** So yeah, just for those people working in those kind of different time zones, think about that as well.

[00:22:50] **Andrew:** I think that's fascinating. That's, that's a massive area which we don't have time to go into, but my late. If I'm, you know, Northern European is not late for us, maybe a Spanish person, and, and we talk, we use the, the label late. It just means, well, and I think we need to clarify, you might have to emphasize certain things are more important than other important, even know if you just say we're having a meeting, somebody from a

[00:23:10] **Scott:** Mm.

[00:23:11] **Andrew:** culture doesn't think's that urgent. So

[00:23:13] **Scott:** Or made them turn up.

[00:23:14] **Andrew:** yeah. They might not turn up 'cause they don't think it's that urgent. So clarity and urgency and maybe in, in Britain, in British culture, we're not very open about. Things like urgent meetings and we really want you there. It's essential that you are there. So yeah, understanding those cultural differences and, and helping people with that clarity.

But I also think it's interesting you talk about culture. We've got different cultures in terms of ages

[00:23:36] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:23:36] **Andrew:** I always get these confused, but you've got boomers, that, um, insult,

[00:23:42] **Scott:** never remember which one's which. Yeah.

[00:23:43] **Andrew:** I think I'm a, am I a boomer? I think I'm a boomer, you know, but it's an insult, isn't it?

A boomer

[00:23:48] **Scott:** Sounds like it.

[00:23:49] **Andrew:** Yeah, my daughter accuses me of being Boomer. Um, gen X millennials. Gen Z, and we've got all these different people working together at different ages. Although we talked about before we start recording, that maybe younger people are gonna be replaced by ai and they've got, if you like, different cultural attitudes to messaging and to communication styles.

To work, to punctuality, to the amount of work, to the, the work ethic. So yeah, we also need to think not just across cultures, but across ages as well. So Bo boomers a bit more formal. more old fashioned, perhaps, uh, gen Z are into that sort of quick chats, a bit more friendly, uh, au authenticity. and you're gonna try and find in, in that culture some sort of shared equity and whichever, and, and presumably the older person can be a bit more flexible 'cause they're mature, but recognizing not only the cultural difference, but the age difference as well is

[00:24:47] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:24:47] **Andrew:** of that sort of, you know, nice culture, isn't it, I guess.

[00:24:51] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:24:51] **Andrew:** AI is also something we need to think about in terms of the culture and of etiquette and politeness and trust. Was reading some research that only 51% of the employees are excited about ai, which means a lot of people are fearful and anxious about, uh, ai and I think. As organizations start moving into this post AI world, we're using it all the time. There needs to be some clarity about it. You know, how are we using ai? What are we gonna be using AI for? What are the implications? And if we're gonna start using AI in our messaging, like we mentioned copilot, we're gonna lose some of that human touch. And we don't want to outsource our human empathy to chat GPT. If you are gonna be using AI to respond to messages, you know, is that the best thing? Now we're all doing it, we're all using these tools, but is this an authentic voice that's coming from, from you or is it coming from ai? And if you are

[00:25:50] **Scott:** Do you.

[00:25:50] **Andrew:** write your responses.

If you are, are having AI write your policies and so on, you are gonna turn up to a meeting and there's gonna be that clash. It doesn't sound like your emails now.

[00:26:01] **Scott:** It's transparency as well. So what if a line manager decides to feed all of their employees work and outputs and emails over the year into AI and says, right, generate the annual review for my employee.

[00:26:14] **Andrew:** that's right.

[00:26:15] **Scott:** Do they tell the employee that actually this review is entirely done by ai, not me, and I've just rubber stamped it potentially.

That sounds awful, but that could happen. Um, there'll be some tells in there that AI's written it if people know what to look for. But again, it's just being transparent with that. Um, what are the implications? I still think we haven't, we certainly haven't fully discovered the implications of all this stuff on workers and the workforce, but it leads, it leads me on to an interesting topic around how we treat ai.

[00:26:44] **Andrew:** Hmm.

[00:26:45] **Scott:** And, , there was some stats that research shows, if you are polite to ai, so say please and thank you and ask it nicely. The performance of it can improve by up to 30%.

[00:26:56] **Andrew:** Yeah.

[00:26:57] **Scott:** So it's not only being clear, respectful, and kind to humans, it also makes the machines work better

[00:27:02] **Andrew:** Yes,

[00:27:03] **Scott:** hopefully in years to come.

When they become sentinent and take over the world, they'll remember that we were kind and nice to it, rather than coming to destroy us and wipe us out like Terminator. But um. Equally, we have to balance this. So open an ai, CEO said that the company spends tens of millions of dollars on electricity costs because people are saying, please, and thank you.

Just please and thank you. So there is an environmental impact on this as well.

[00:27:27] **Andrew:** amazing.

[00:27:28] **Scott:** balance and actually an average query through AI uses 10 times more energy than a Google search. And I think I was reading something the other day by Eric Schmidt, the ex. One of the ex bosses of founders of Google,

[00:27:39] **Andrew:** Yeah.

[00:27:40] **Scott:** not the founder, but of one of the bosses, and he said that he's worried that the energy requirements of AI is out gonna outstrip the Earth's capability to support it in the future.

So we just have to balance that up. You can say, please, and thank you, you'll get a better AI response, but you could be destroying the environment in the process a bit more.

[00:27:57] **Andrew:** it? We, we are all

[00:27:58] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:27:59] **Andrew:** to these AI machines 'cause we're worried they're gonna take over the world and kill us all.

[00:28:03] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:28:03] **Andrew:** and we're using, we're using it more energy, which actually damaging the planet. There's such an irony there.

[00:28:08] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:28:08] **Andrew:** it? But, um, shall we,

[00:28:09] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:28:10] **Andrew:** and wrap this up then, Scott, in terms of what this is about, this whole etiquette and politeness and respect. It's one of those hidden aspects to the workplace. It's one of those, we don't talk about it because we just assume, and we've talked, touched on so many different things here, communications, electronic communications, face-to-face communications, you know. things like respect and courtesy to people saying, please and thank you to each other.

But also saying, please, and thank you to the ai, this, this is a really, really important topic. And it, it can make the difference between a workplace that people want to be in and a workplace that people avoid and want to work from home. Or even worse still, they want to leave and they want to try and find another job.

So it isn't, isn't something that leaders and managers can sort of ignore. It's something they want to engineer and they wanna work on and they want to improve. And as we say, time and time and time again, if you're a leader or a manager, you want to lead by example. You know, you want to be respectful, you want to be courteous as courteous and kind. Um, and be a good example to everybody else.

Thank you for listening to the Work Unravelled podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you don't miss the next one. If you'd like Andrew or me to help you or your business, whether it is for team productivity, leadership, coaching, or communication skills, our website addresses are in the show notes.

Thanks, and until the next time.