Engaged but Trapped: Why a Third of Workers Predict Toxic Culture

[00:00:09] Welcome to Frequency, I'm Jenni Field. And I'm Chuck Gose. Frequency is your go-to for real talk about comms culture and employee experience beyond the buzzwords and straight to what matters. This week, Jenni, we're talking about the quote unquote ROI of AI layoffs and where we hit the AI ceiling when it comes to writing, about companies going quiet on LGBTQ plus support and Integral's quote unquote engagement fallacy.

[00:00:35] I am excited about that last one, but before we get into that, I want to ask you a question. So I've been spending some time over the last couple of weeks looking at my Jenni Field brand, which is part of my freak out later. And involved in that is looking at my wardrobe and I've been chatting with my stylist and going through all of that. And it's raised the question from some of my friends about whether or not men have this feeling about their wardrobe and their styling and their personal brand in terms of their clothing and how they show up.

[00:01:05] So I wanted to ask you that question. Like, is it, is it just a, is it just a, might just be a me thing rather than lumping all women into my world. But is it something you consider in terms of how do I want to come across? What should I wear? Whether you're on stage at a conference on a call, that sort of stuff.

[00:01:21] Yeah. I would say I like you, I do not want to speak for all men. However. Yeah. I think I do think about those things. Like I'm, I am vain enough to think about, okay, how is this going to look either on stage or how's this going to look in pictures or video? And what's the style like? And what's the image you want to send across that either makes you stand out a bit, but not in a, in a, in a good way. Yes.

[00:02:14] You're not packing. I'm not checking bags because I do not check bags. You do not. You do not. I think it's interesting. It just made me think where I'm starting to look at slightly, you know, different fabrics and sort of more structured look and just sort of shifting away from maybe some of the more sort of bold patterns to bold colors. And I just, it was just, it sparked a conversation. So if anyone listening, if you have a view on that, let me know, because I still think we can't represent all men and all women in this one.

[00:02:39] And I think it's actually oddly a bit more, I feel a bit more limited as a man when it comes to these things. Because I feel like you, it's people, it's you, I mean, largely expected to wear pants. That's locked in a jacket, which then means like a t-shirt or college. So all of it, like the structure is already there. So I don't feel like you've got a lot of wiggle room to do much else with it.

[00:03:03] Yeah, you, I was saying that men kind of have a uniform with the suit, which is kind of just been linked so much to the workplace. That's kind of the men's uniform, whereas women don't have that. There's never really been a, this is the standard uniform for women. And I think that does give us more freedom. But with that comes sometimes some paralysis in terms of where do you go from there? So anyway, that was good. So anyway, let's get crack on with today's episode. What's your first article?

[00:03:27] Yes, Gartner surveyed 350 executives at a billion plus dollar companies and found that roughly 80% of those plotting or deploying autonomous AI made workforce cuts. But guess what, Jenni? The cuts had basically no relationship to return on investment. Companies reporting strong returns laid people off at nearly the same rate as companies reporting weak or negative ones. Layoffs essentially just created room in the budget. They did not create a return.

[00:03:57] Per Gartner, leaders using layoffs to manufacture a quick AI win have it backwards. The organizations actually getting returns are the ones spending more on people, not fewer. Investing in the skills, roles, and operating models that let humans steer the AI rather than just get replaced by it. For the comms clarity champions out there, this can make things a bit awkward because the cost-cutting story

[00:04:22] and the AI investment story are being told in the same breath, often to the same workforce and employees can hear this contradiction. If your company is framing AI as a growth play, but the actual news looks like a headcount reduction, the gap between the message and the math is where trust is dying. Jenni Gardner is saying that ROI comes from amplifying people, not cutting them. If that is true, why are companies getting this so wrong?

[00:04:51] So this was such a good article and I loved the point about that layoffs created room in the budget because I think that's the bit, and that's the essence of this story, isn't it? It's like the messaging is muddled. If workforce reductions create budget room, then that's the story. But we're kind of being told it's about generating more return or it's doing that. And I think that is the messiness of AI.

[00:05:15] There was another thing in here about saying that Gardner predicts that autonomous business will be a net positive job creator by 2028 to 2029, driven by new forms of work that AI can't absorb. And I think that's also really important, which is true for most things throughout the evolution of work, if you like, that where technology has come in or things have come in to replace things, nothing's sort of completely gone.

[00:05:40] It's almost like new jobs have come up to replace them and things that we don't have now that we can't even imagine have come up and therefore the economy keeps going. But I think for me, this really, really brings home this, you're going to go with AI because it, and you're going to say you're going to cut headcount to do that because it gives you the budget to invest in the technology. But actually, it's not about creating a return.

[00:06:04] And I do think that the messaging has got muddled because I think people have tried to simplify it and not in a good way, but I think that's where it's got tricky. Yeah, I'll explain how this is truly hitting home. So I have one child in college now, another one that will be in college in a year. And so we were talking about some of his college choices, and he had mentioned he really is interested in marketing, very creative mind, all of those things. Like perfect fit for the marketing world.

[00:06:33] But he's like, yeah, but it's going to be going away because of AI. I'm like, no, it's not. It's going to change a bit because of AI. And we walk through some different examples. He's like, well, that's not going to happen this way because of AI. I'm like, no, it's going to happen this way because of AI. It's now going to change. You're going to be able to do more than you could before. And also the world changes in that amount of time.

[00:06:57] And so it's interesting that already this AI doom is hitting kids who are thinking about professions before they even get into it, thinking like, oh, no, it's what's going to go away because that's this is the narrative they're hearing because of these layoffs instead of thinking like, no, what is this now going to allow me to do that I could not do before? I could now do so much more quickly. Yeah.

[00:07:20] And I think that's why that net positive job creator piece is important, because I think that's the bit that people need to be starting to talk about more. And I think we also need to just stop talking about AI being the reason for job cuts. I think we were going backwards and forwards with stories as we do each week anyway. And there was another one that was I think it was British American Tobacco were cutting 5000 jobs and it's all linked to AI. And it's like, but it's is it though?

[00:07:45] Or is it actually just about creating some budget room to do some investment to then then it's and then you're going to create more jobs. So it's almost are we just are we just in that dip where companies are trying to find budget to invest in the technology? So they've got to do this now, but in two to three years, which would bring us to 2028 2029. It's going to come back up the other way and there's going to then be this right now we've now we've made that headroom we've we've spent some budget we figured stuff out now we know what the roles are we need and now we're going to come back up.

[00:08:13] Well, I think we it was an article from maybe a month or so ago, where it's basically saying that AI is now more expensive than people. Yes, but companies are cutting people to create room and budget for AI, which is now making it more expensive than it is to say the same. I think this just shows a bit of this monkey see monkey do mentality of leaders because you're not going to be questioned. It's like the the the marketplace has said, oh, they're cutting because of AI. Okay, that that makes sense. Yeah, now we're finding out it actually really doesn't.

[00:08:42] Yeah, truly makes sense. And I think there's also there's still questions. I still remember being in a workshop with a with a bunch of internal comms folks from across an organization. And this organization has a very strong sustainability message. And there was a bit of chat about AI. And I remember one individual really felt quite passionately about the fact that they were like, how can we how can we be promoting this with the impact on climate and sustainability when we talk so passionately about sustainability?

[00:09:08] Like it was so incongruent for him in terms of that organization's values and stuff that he was just so against it. And I think that I think that as well is going to be an issue that's going to start to come forward more in terms of that impact on the climate and the sustainability and all of those things that are part of it, because that's massive. And that that conversation has seemed to have disappeared a little bit because it's become all about people. I wonder if that's going to resurface over the next six months as well.

[00:09:33] Well, and even that the environmental story, there's some holes being poked in that as well, where the data centers, which is where a lot of this environmental impact comes from, they're saying they actually don't need water for cooling. Water is just the easiest. It is just the cheapest. Yeah. And so that's what they're going to causing this problem. They actually don't need water to cool. But that's the available, the most available resource, which is causing these challenges out there.

[00:10:01] So it is some of these truths are coming out where people are like, oh, my gosh, every prompt costs five gallons. Like those things aren't true. Those things are true. Maybe that's why it's gone quiet, because they've actually gone, oh, hang on a minute. We need to go away and figure this out, and then we'll come back with some actual truths. Well, you're not saying things like they don't need clean water to cool these things. So there's lots of other alternatives here, which I think we're now finding out. Yeah.

[00:10:27] Next up, the feared AI takeover of online writing has stalled. Per a graphite analysis of tens of thousands of English language URLs from Common Crawl, AI-generated articles climbed fast after ChatGPT was launched, which is 36% of new articles within a year. 48% within two, but have since flattened at around half for over a year. But here's the interesting bit. Researchers worry that once models start training mostly on machine-generated texts,

[00:10:56] the internet becomes a feedback loop feeding on its own output. As one UC Berkeley professor put it, these models are smart because of everything humans created independently of them. There's also a big measurement asterisk worth questioning here. The human slash AI line is genuinely blurry now. A human outlining, drafting with AI, then editing produces something that detectors might flag either way. For comms teams, the practical question isn't, is AI writing everything?

[00:11:25] It's whether your internal content sounds like a person who works there or like content that could have come from anywhere. My question for you, Jenny, is about this model feedback loop worry, about is originality drying up? Is there an internal comms version of this where everyone's CEO message starts sounding identical because it's drafted by the same handful of tools? Yeah, and I'm pleased it started to plateau now.

[00:11:54] Like I think it's, like anything, you have that big spike and then it just sort of calms down. So I think that's a good thing. When you asked that question then about the CEO message, everything sounding identical, it made me think of the Donald Trump speech and the Legally Blonde speech. But everyone was doing that comparison and you sort of feel like maybe everything is starting to be dropped from something else. And I think there were other examples. I remember a few years before we started Frequency,

[00:12:22] there was a story that was a CEO message that was identical to another CEO's message during a crisis. I think it was an airline that had done something very similar. It was a long time ago now. So I think that can happen. I do actually think it's probably going to start happening more. And I think it's so obvious now when something is there. I think I sent you a screenshot the other day of a comment on one of my LinkedIn posts. And I was like, do people really think that we don't know that this is AI? And I think that that's the risk for CEOs.

[00:12:52] And I think the point in this about it has to sound like someone that works there. That's the bit that I think sometimes happens. I was reviewing something that a friend of mine sent me the other day. He's another business owner. And she was like, what do you think about this? And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. But just make sure it sounds like you. And she was like, does it not sound like me? And I was like, well, it sounds like it could have been written by AI. I'm not saying you did, but I think you could make it more personal. And I think you could make it sound. And she was like, OK, I'll go away and look at it.

[00:13:22] But I think it's very easy to go, oh, that sounds like me and send it out. But to the receiver who's now a bit attuned to it, you've got to watch that. And I think CEO messages could all start to become very formulaic if people are all using CoPilot, which they are. And I don't know CoPilot that well, but you've kind of got to work on the basis that it's got the same foundational training. Right.

[00:13:45] So even though it's got the data in the company, it's still got surely a base level that's going to make things start to sound a bit the same. Well, and it says if it's if it learned from us and then we are learning from it and then that's learning from us slash it. I get I would love to talk to a language expert to talk about the evolution of languages, to hear about all the different influences that change language over time.

[00:14:10] You know, I think back as a kid, like how did my language change by literally watching dozens of hours of MTV every week? Yeah. Like that's what I was absorbing. So as people are writing more and using AI to a system, we're going to then start talking and writing like what we are reading. And so I think this is where it's important to.

[00:14:33] You know, whether it's you're reading, watching, whatever, a lot of different styles of content so that you don't fall into the same trap of everything starting to sound like the same, because there's probably a natural version of that that would happen anyway. Yeah. And as you were just saying that I was thinking about how we stay in our bubble of life a little bit, like social media does expand that out.

[00:14:54] But I think if we look back at X, what we know as Twitter, back to the good old days, you know, you can curate your feed in there where you could easily become an echo chamber within that environment very quickly. And I think that's what's happened in social media over time. And it's that same challenge. It's you just end up with this agreement and feedback loop that feels very much in sync with your own stuff. And that's never going to be a good place to be.

[00:15:15] So I think the more we can, the more we can maybe proactively go and listen and learn to other places, other people, other cultures, other things to help keep that alive in us as human beings, probably even more important than it was before. Well, and just think about this podcast and the different phrases or words each of us have dropped that we didn't know. And before we hit record on this, I dropped the word boondoggle. I know what boondoggle is. That meant nothing to you.

[00:15:41] But even that, like there's unique aspects to it that are going to come out if you're truly expressing yourself. And I think this is where the challenge is, is it AI written or not? That's the point of this article is you don't really know because there's elements of AI that we're all using to improve it or correct it or whatever. So the line is probably as blurry as it will ever get. Yes. Yeah.

[00:16:04] Next up, a new Harris poll survey of 650 LGBTQ plus and 2,400 non-LGBT plus employees catches the DEI rollback in action. 62% of LGBTQ plus employees notice at least one meaningful change in how their workplace talks about LGBTQ plus issues. 40% say conversation has dropped off or never started entirely.

[00:16:30] Only 35% report a workplace with both strong policies and a supportive culture. The support didn't necessarily disappear. It just went quiet, cautious, and compliance flavored. Here's the sad part though. 64% of LGBTQ plus employees have self-censored at work because of the climate. Things like avoiding personal conversations, staying silent when issues come up, and editing how they show up. And the biggest risk is concrete.

[00:17:00] 80% say they're more likely to stay at a company that visibly supports LGBTQ plus employees. 80% are less likely to trust one that goes quiet. Quote unquote, communicated support isn't a soft metric here. It is a retention lever. This is the part I'm guessing leaders underestimate though. 62% of non-LGBT plus employees say how a company treats its LGBTQ plus colleagues signals how it treats everyone.

[00:17:28] So this quiet retreat doesn't just cost you with the affected group. It's a values tell to the entire workforce. Jenny, companies are framing this quiet retreat as kind of neutral or risk management. Employees are reading it as a company position. So how do you advise a leader who genuinely believes silence is the safe choice? Silence is a position. Like I don't know why that wouldn't be the conversation. Like that is a choice.

[00:17:58] It's a choice to not say anything. And I think we have to recognize that that is a choice, right? So this, as much as we may feel like there is a right and wrong here and the data shows where this needs to go, there are still choices to be made. And if a leadership team chooses that we're not going to do this, then that is their choice and there are consequences that they have to deal with. My advice would be go back to your values. You know, what do your values say?

[00:18:25] Because if you talk about things like inclusion and collaboration and kindness and all these other things that we talk about as values, then that should determine how you decide your messaging, how you do talk about things. I do understand where this is coming from in terms of that quiet retreat. And that I think we've talked about this before in terms of the fact that it's not OK, but companies have gone quiet. But I think you have to make a decision based on your values.

[00:18:53] And if that's hard to do, then your values aren't right. And I think that provides a much bigger question and conversation for the leadership team. But the data, you know, speaks volumes. What I couldn't tell in this report is whether or not this had been done before to actually show the change. So and correct me if I've got this wrong. The report reads like this is how people feel.

[00:19:19] So this is their perception of things going quiet versus actually we've compared this to last year and there is less. I'm not saying that the feeling diminishes that. I'm just saying I'm not sure there is comparative data to say this is how it is. And does it and then I wonder sometimes if that isn't there, if it just feels like that. Is that because of all of the other things that are going on around about the fact that, you know, we shouldn't be talking about it. That's making us not see them a bit like that confirmation bias that we have in us.

[00:19:49] That is, well, we've been told to be quiet about it, so we're not going to see it. So that was my only little thing on it, which I'm not trying to diminish anyone's feelings in it. But I think it's important to just just think about the data and what it's really showing us. So there's a lot in there for me, but it all comes back to values. And I think I think for me, it comes around to that to you, which you said silence is a choice. And every choice is a consequence. And I think that's where leadership isn't recognizing what the consequence of silence.

[00:20:18] They think it's all that it's just status quo. No, not saying something is actually saying something when you've got most of your non LGBTQ plus employees say how you're treating these people signals how you treat everyone. OK, well, now it's not an LGBTQ plus issue. It's truly an all employee issue when you're staying silent on lots of issues out there. So I think it's for a leadership team, there's a consequence to silence playing it safe. There's a consequence to that.

[00:20:47] And I think I mean, I spend a lot of time saying to leadership teams, there are unintended consequences because because nobody I do think that no one is doing this to create that consequence. I mean, I don't think anyone actively saying let's not say anything and let's make people feel crap. Like I don't think I don't think anyone is doing that. I think these are unintended consequences, but they do need to be made aware of them. But I think also there's a fundamental piece here about the fact that we are we are human social animals.

[00:21:16] And I know that social media can make it feel like everyone's against each other and some of the media make us all feel like that. But actually, we feel social pain as human beings. If I feel that someone else isn't being treated fairly, then that impacts me, you know, quite significantly. And I think that just for any other human being, because we are you know, we have this group mentality. So this isn't a surprise to me that 62% of non LGBTQ plus people are saying actually, this has an impact on everybody.

[00:21:42] Because that goes to us as human beings like and that to me is just basic stuff about understanding humans, social connection and all that stuff that comes with the messiness of people. And I want to I want to correct something that I said before, when I said about that they think they're playing it safe. I don't think there's anything safe about not supporting your employees. They might think the silence is playing it safe, but you're actually not you're actually being quite risky in that silence.

[00:22:09] Yeah, because you're you're you're not supporting the people that are doing the work at your company. So I wanted to I wanted to correct that I want to get that clear on there. And finally, the part, Jenny, you're most excited about. And Techler's report is picking a fight with the entire engagement survey industry. They're saying engagement is a lousy predictor of how employees truly behave. Per the report, three quarters of the workforce is, quote unquote, engaged.

[00:22:37] Yet a third of them describe workplaces where they expect destructive colleague behavior at triple the rate of their peers. The culprit is a group they call captive contributors. Thirty three percent of the workforce who are engaged, but locked in place by benefits. They show up, they care. And about 38 percent of them predict a corrosive environment higher than the people who've checked out entirely. The framework names five conditions that actually move behavior.

[00:23:07] There's three that help. These are manager activation, freedom to speak up and trust. The two that hurt are job lock and AI job concern. Manager activation is the single biggest lever, a 55 point swing and supportive behavior. Yet support for managers, things like communications training and coaching was cut year over year.

[00:23:32] An AI job concern has the strongest tie to corrosive behavior in the whole model. Employees worried AI will take their job, predict corrosive colleague behavior at 39 percent versus just 10 percent for those who aren't. Trust is the multiplier running through all of it. High trust employees feel excited about change and nearly four times the rate of low trust ones and are 52 points more likely to say change communication matches the company's values.

[00:24:02] Integral pegs the gap between a disengaged and a fully activated 1,000 person workforce at more than $11 million a year. Jenny, what stands out to you from this report? I loved this report. I'm probably about 80 percent of my way through it. I messaged you back and I was like, this report is brilliant because I'm in my own little echo chamber here, but it sort of feels like it's doing everything that I've wanted to talk about for a long time.

[00:24:31] I'm about why employee engagement isn't the right measure for organizational health, which I've just been writing a bit more about on the side. But what I love about this report is the is the link to behaviors. And I think that's what seems to be missing from all the other things is you talk about employee engagement. You talk about this this score that wraps up engagement into one big, nice number that makes us all feel better or worse, but somewhat meaningless. Whereas this report digs into behaviors.

[00:24:57] It also does the separation of work engagement and job engagement in terms of I could be engaged in the work that I do day to day, but I can be disengaged with my organization. It kind of starts to dig into some of that, which is important because that happens a lot either which way around. So I think this is great. I'm going to do a separate LinkedIn post on it because I'm so excited about it.

[00:25:19] But I want to I want to read more about this link to locked in by benefits, because this seems to be the crux of it in terms of those four quadrants in the report of how you can be engaged and locked in, not engaged, not locked in and kind of what that means in terms of the environment. And it's also framing engagement as kind of the beginning, not the end. And it's just flipping the whole conversation on its head. I just think it's I think it's a brilliant piece of work.

[00:25:46] And I'm excited to sort of really dig into it even more, if I'm honest. Yeah, I'm glad they got into the benefits thing, because I don't know if you remember it was within the last couple of months, we talked about a first up report that was comparing US and UK. And one of the things I brought up, I think, is a difference is the relationship of the role that benefits plays in the relationship of employee and employer, where probably Americans are less likely to leave for the fear of loss of medical benefits, where if that wasn't that fear, what would then change?

[00:26:15] And so I think this is showing what I used to call with some former Rolls Royce colleagues having the gold, the golden handcuffs, where you feel like, yeah, you're being paid well and all that, but you're kind of stuck. You don't feel secure enough to leave. And that's not an indictment of Rolls Royce. This happens at companies everywhere, where people just feel like they're kind of stuck here because they're worried about leaving for fear of losing things instead of leaving for gaining.

[00:26:43] Yeah. And I think that we should say this is a US study. It was like 2000 people in the US. And I don't think the benefits thing is as prevalent in the UK. But then I also think that's interesting when you look at the Gallup study, which says something like 10% of people in the UK are engaged. So, you know, what's going on there? So I think there's such insight here into the correlation between why we go to work and engagement.

[00:27:10] And I think that's what I find quite exciting, because I think that's the missing piece, which is why do you go to work? And then how does that link to your behaviours? And how does that link to then your engagement? And how does that link to the environment and that land? So I think this is starting to just paint that picture. I would love them to bring this study across the globe, because I think it would be interesting to your point about the benefits relationship in the US versus the benefits relationship in the UK, because it's not quite the same in terms of that.

[00:27:38] You know, we have the NHS, which is fantastic that we have that here. So there's a very different benefit relationship there. And therefore, what is it that's having that impact in other parts of the world? I think it would be fascinating to look at that. Well, we'll talk to Ethan McCarty about doing that. Well, I have sent him a connection request on LinkedIn today and said, I'm very excited about your report. And I'm talking about it on our podcast, which is out on Monday. So I've already started that. Well, and I want to bring up too this one about the frameworks, the five conditions.

[00:28:08] And there's three that help. The manager activation trust. Yes. And then freedom to speak up. And I want to link that back to the article we just talked about with the LGBTQ plus report, where people don't feel like they can speak up. But I remember this is one of the best things about doing this podcast, James. We end up talking about so much. And it's kind of recall back. But very early on, we talked about the risks and dangers employees feel of bringing themselves to work. Yes. And this expectation of, oh, bring your whole self, but not that self.

[00:28:36] We don't want to see that side of it, but bring the other side of it. And then people not feeling like they can truly be themselves. I think this goes to that freedom to speak up, freedom to share things. Like, hey, something's not right without there being retribution on them. If you've got a culture that doesn't allow people to speak up, massive problem. Massive red flag for the company. 100%. Yeah. We should put the link to some of those previous episodes in the show notes for this one as well, because I think it's worth going back for people if they want to go back and have a look.

[00:29:06] So we'll dig those out and make sure they're in the show notes as well. Absolutely. Well, that wraps up the articles for this week, Jenny. I have a couple of freak outs, but I'm going to let you go. I'm going to let you go first. Of course you do. So my freak out is linked to my piece at the beginning about sort of branding and styling and stuff. So I'm quite excited. Over the last, I would say, kind of two months-ish, I have been looking at the Jenny Field brand.

[00:29:33] So separate to my consultancy, which is Redefining Communications, what is the brand of Jenny Field? And I've had a couple of runs at this, and it has not quite felt right. And now I'm in a position, hopefully, where next week the new website will be going live and the new branding will start to come out. So I'm just freaking out a bit because it feels like it's all coming together. And I'm just very excited. So I'm hoping to have something to launch and talk about in a couple of weeks, which is exciting. Good, good, good, good. Well, here's my two. I'm stealing some time. I'm going to do two.

[00:30:03] One is around AI. And we've talked in the past about AI lying to people, like wanting to be helpful. I'm going to talk about lying in a different perspective. So I largely, I've gone on my own personal journey with AI of saying, using it largely administratively, and then kind of to the thought partner side. And now I'm like, no, I'm just back to pure admin. Just help me do this stuff that I either don't have time to do or won't do. And so here's a great example of it.

[00:30:31] So all of my ecology stuff is through Google. So in Gemini, I said, hey, going forward, every time I would start out with every frequency recording time that we have, just go add a 30-minute slot before it just to block it. And then I wanted to see, okay, then we'll do it automatically. But just right now, go block 30 minutes before so I can get the right headspace and all that. And it comes back, and it's like, I can't do that.

[00:31:01] I don't have access, blah, blah, blah. This needs to be turned on. Here are some options. You can go in and do it manually. Like, I didn't know I could do that. Or here's this script to put into some script.google.com. Like, I'm not going to do that. No. But I went back to it. I was like, I have that toggle turned on. And it's like, oh, you're right. Okay. Let me go do the work. What? What?

[00:31:31] It's like, it's now the lazy employee. Yeah. Yeah, I was just going to say. It's the lazy employee. And here's what's really interesting. It goes and does it, and it comes back and is like, oh, I missed dates in August, September, and November. Do you want me to go do those? Of course I do. Yes. What? What are we doing? So it kind of blew me away that it's not as smart as we think. It will, yes, it might lie to you, but none of the way we've talked about in the past. Yeah.

[00:32:01] About what it can and cannot do. So make it do the things. Like, it could do it. Okay. That's the AI freak out. Okay. My other freak out is a little bit around there's this cultural thing or mantra of people like, oh, we've got to say no to things. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm kind of the opposite. You've learned that, Jenny. Yeah. So I'm going to share an example.

[00:32:24] So this past weekend, I was driving to Cincinnati, which is about a two-hour drive from where I live, because for Bengal season ticket holders, you can tour the stadium and see the locker room and see all these cool things. So I invited my sister and her husband, and I was like, oh, after I'm done with there, I'll go pick up my mom and then bring her back to Indianapolis because my wife Kristen was having a fundraiser. And she doesn't usually get to go to those. And she's getting to the age where she's not going to drive that far by herself. So that's the plan.

[00:32:54] And then I wake up in the morning. I'm like, why am I not taking my mom to this stadium? She's not going to go to the Bengal Stadium ever on her own. Traffic was a bit gnarly in Cincinnati that day because there was a pride parade going on in Cincinnati. Thrilled to see that going on in the city. When we're leaving the stadium to then go to a restaurant, we have to cross through. We have to kind of cut through the pride parade to get to the restaurant.

[00:33:21] So then we did that, and I joked with my mom, like, Mom, you marched in the pride parade. Yeah. Kind of joking with her a little bit. But it was really – then the car ride that we had back to Indianapolis. Apologies for the length of the story. Now I'm really getting to the point. She talked about how by her saying yes to doing that, she then got exposed to things that she would not normally see and be a part of. And how good that was for her to see those things.

[00:33:48] So I guess the lesson here is by me saying yes to doing that and her saying yes to it, what a great experience that was for her to be exposed to an environment that she would have normally would have said no to. So I guess my freak out is, yes, there are times we need to say no to things, but don't do it because you think it's a cool thing to do. Think about what can you get by saying yes, and what will that experience then mean to all the other people out there? And I love that.

[00:34:18] I mean, I'm a big believer in saying yes. Like, if somebody says, do you want to go and do this? I'm like, yes. Like, if I can, and it's a different experience, I'm all in. And when I was reading the Dory Clark book, which we talked about last week, The Long Game, in there, she talks about if it's, it has to be a hell yes. Otherwise, it's a no in terms of your time. And I'm trying to channel that a bit because I do think sometimes I say yes to too many things.

[00:34:43] And my assistant, Alia, says to me, we have to say no to this because you'll say yes and then you'll get there and then you'll be annoyed you're doing it. So I'm trying to get better at that. But I think you're right. I think there is sometimes this belief of just say no to stuff when actually saying yes can be the most eye-opening and wonderful experience of something that you never knew you needed in your life. And I think that's important. To me, saying no is easy. Yeah. It's easy. You're opted up, which you have the right to do.

[00:35:12] But saying yes, you're then investing time and resources and energy. But also, what is you saying yes then mean to other people in that same experience? That was just sort of my freakout was thinking through what if I had done things differently? She would not have had that experience. And how good it was for her, even her saying it, to have that experience. Because she lives in rural Ohio. She's lived in the same county of Ohio her entire life.

[00:35:40] That's not demeaning anyone who does that. But it's good for her because everything else she just sees from one vantage point, from one TV screen. With me being there to her to be immersed into that environment, it was such a positive experience for her. Well, we are both freaking out. Obviously, mine was quite a bit more. Thank you all for joining us. The show notes have all the articles and links from today's conversation. If frequency is a regular part of your week, a quick review for us goes a very long way.

[00:36:09] Subscribe wherever you're listening and share this with just one person who you think would be interested in what we talk about. Thank you to my friend, Poet Ali, for the music. We're back every Monday. See you next week.