In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss troubling new trends in leadership and how you can navigate an increasingly demanding work environment.
You’ll learn to identify the difference between tough business decisions and disrespectful management tactics. You’ll discover practical strategies to document issues and set healthy boundaries with difficult leaders. You’ll understand the critical importance of building your personal brand and professional network as your career life raft. You’ll explore how to use new tools, including AI, to enhance your skills and uncover hidden job opportunities. Watch this episode to gain actionable advice and empower yourself in today’s evolving workplace!
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Machine-Generated Transcript
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.
Christopher S. Penn – 00:00
In this week’s In-Ear Insights, Katie, “Everybody’s replaceable; work-life balance’s your problem”—which is what the CEO of shapewear company Skims and the label Good American had to say. Other people in positions of power have had equally less. I guess I don’t even know how to put this.
It is a definite tone shift. This is from a Wall Street Journal article from May 11, titled “Everybody’s Replaceable: The New Ways Bosses Talk About Workers.” And the punchline is: shut up, stop complaining, and do more work for less pay.
Katie Robbert – 00:46
The thing I took away from this is, first of all, look at the companies that have been listed. So you have Skims, you have Starbucks, you have J.P. Morgan, you have Uber. Yeah. So these are big global tech companies and consumer brands.
So Skims and Good American are the Kardashians. So take that with a big fat boulder of salt.
Katie Robbert – 01:19
Uber has had nothing but issues.
Katie Robbert – 01:23
Starbucks, same thing. So I look at these companies and—yup, that’s completely on brand for those particular companies because those particular companies have had really shitty leadership issues.
Katie Robbert – 01:38
For a long time.
Katie Robbert – 01:40
Therefore, I read this article and I don’t fully believe that it’s a good representation of quote-unquote corporate America. I just don’t.
I’m not naive enough to think that there aren’t leaders out there in companies speaking this way. They absolutely are. But that’s not new. AI is not creating this problem.
Katie Robbert – 02:07
This is not a new problem.
Katie Robbert – 02:09
New tech, same problem. If your leadership team has always been shitty, AI is just going to exacerbate the problem, not fix the problem. So what these people are saying… And what’s interesting here in this article: very little about AI is even referenced.
Katie Robbert – 02:32
This is really just people being douchebags.
Christopher S. Penn – 02:39
It is. But there’s also obviously a raft of AI-specific ones. For example, Klarna made news about 2 months ago saying they’re throwing over their SaaS vendors because they’re just building all their code internally.
Shopify—their CEO obviously made a big statement. So did Duolingo. Both of them said, “We’re not hiring unless you can prove that the headcount is needed for things that AI can’t do.” And most recently Fiverr published a piece by their CEO—which I thought was actually a very good piece—who said, “Look, the nature of work is changing and what people hired from Fiverr for is being consumed at an extremely rapid rate by AI because that’s all very low-cost gig work.”
Christopher S. Penn – 03:23
And the CEO’s saying, “Look, this is not something that is unique to us but is going to disproportionately impact us, and it’s going to disproportionately impact you because machines can take on so much of this work.” One of the things that was.
Katie Robbert – 03:40
Sorry, apologies for interrupting, but that’s a different conversation. That CEO is saying, “AI is coming for your job.”
Katie Robbert – 03:49
Heck, it’s coming for my job, too.
Katie Robbert – 03:52
That’s a different conversation than saying, “Shut up, do your work.” Don’t. Be disrespectful and take on more work. And be glad you have a job at all. Two very different conversations.
I’m disappointed that they put that example in this same article because it’s two different conversations.
Christopher S. Penn – 04:13
Yep. But even at an event I was at not too long ago, the CEO of a company, in front of their audience, their customers and their staff said, “Yeah, you’re not getting raises this year and I expect you to do twice as much work.” They literally said that on stage. I was—that’s not the place I would announce that.
Katie Robbert – 04:35
Here’s the thing. There’s a lot of harsh realities that everybody is facing right now just because of where we are in our economy, in the world. A lot of people feel emboldened to speak a certain way—and you know what? Good, go ahead. But it’s the f-around and find out mentality of, okay.
If you want to go ahead and speak to your employees that way, that’s your f-around. And then you’re going to find out what happens when you continually treat people with disrespect. What is going to happen is you’re going to have a mass exodus out the door without having that backup plan in place. So if you’re saying AI is going to take your job, if you keep making that threat and people walk out but you don’t have the AI in place, guess what? You are up a creek without a paddle.
And so I really, aside from these leaders, quote-unquote leaders—because that’s not a leader. That is not how a leader behaves. These leaders speaking that way to their employees, there’s going to be major consequences and they’re not going to have the pieces in place for when everybody walks out. So go ahead, speak that way. Good luck. See what happens.
Christopher S. Penn – 06:01
So suppose you are a leader and you are recognizing that from a practical perspective, yes, your business conditions are such that maybe you do need to tighten the belt a little bit. Maybe you do need to ask people to work more, perhaps a lot more, for not a lot more compensation. From your perspective as a leader who is not a sociopath.
Katie Robbert – 06:24
That we know.
Christopher S. Penn – 06:25
That we know of, how do you think about approaching that communications challenge? Because it really is a communications challenge more than anything else.
Katie Robbert – 06:36
Again, it’s not that the overall message is incorrect; it’s the delivery of it. So it’s a very different conversation to say, “You’re going to need to do much more work without compensation, so good luck.” That doesn’t make people really want to feel motivated to do more.
But, Chris, if I came to you and I said, “All right, look, I’ve been looking at the numbers and we all collectively have to take on a few more things in order to get through this. Here’s what I’m thinking. Here’s what I, as well, am going to take on. Here’s what I’m asking you to take on. We will do our best to keep open communication so that should you start to feel burnt out by this, we can start to rearrange. But this is on all of us, not just on you, an individual.” To me, that’s a very different conversation than the one that this article is outlining, where people are just putting this fear in people.
Separate from this article, I saw a LinkedIn post a few weeks ago that said that the way to manage this AI revolution right now is to instill fear in your leadership team. And I saw that. And the person went on to say, “A little bit of fear is healthy, a healthy fear.” And to me, that is just manipulative, abusive, entitled, and outright wrong. Creating fear in your employees is going to create very irrational emotional actions and decisions.
And it’s not going to disrupt your business the way that you want it to. It’s going to disrupt it in a very negative way. Having the conversation with your staff to say, “Look, our revenues aren’t where we want them to be. We’re not hitting the targets. We’re all going to have to pitch in. Here’s what that looks like. Here’s how long you can expect this to go on for. Should you choose to not participate in this and go find something else, that’s your decision. Let’s talk about what it looks like for you to give us that full knowledge transfer so that we can find a different plan.” That’s a different conversation.
You can say the same thing, but in a more empathetic way where people are actually, “Okay, I understand why you’re asking me to do more for less. I get it. We’re all in this together.” Versus “Do your effing work. Do it now. Shut up. Don’t cry, don’t complain. No more money.” Which has been said to me before almost in those exact words—exactly.
Christopher S. Penn – 09:25
And probably in that exact tone of voice. We’ve said for a long time that transparency is the currency of trust. In that you can say, “Here’s what’s going on, here’s why these things are happening.” Because for some people, it makes it easier for them to say, “Okay, I understand why this is happening.”
The other thing, though, that those—a lot of those—leaders are going to run into as an issue is the employees saying, “Okay, great, so I’m not going to be asked to do twice the amount of work for zero extra pay. And yet your bonus is $82 million a year. I’m thinking. I’m pretty sure that the company actually is financially not in any actual trouble.”
If you are an employee of these companies, what’s your game plan? What? You are clearly working for a jerk at the very least, possibly a sociopath at worst. What’s your game plan, given that the job market is soft right now?
Katie Robbert – 10:21
Well, and that’s the other side of the conversation, isn’t it? Not everyone has the luxury of just leaving the job because they don’t like the working conditions. If we’re being realistic, many employees don’t have the opportunity to do that because they are dependent on the paycheck, the benefits, whatever it is. My advice, and what I’ve done personally in those situations: document everything.
So, Chris, if you come to me and you’re saying, “Hey, Katie, I really think that you’re not pulling your weight. You’re kind of slacking off, you’re kind of being dumb. I really don’t like your attitude and you need to just shut up and just do your work.” I need to:
1. Make a note that conversation happened.
2. Keep a log of all of the things I actually am doing to show that you’re just a jerk and I’m doing my work.
Now what happens to that information? That’s where it gets really murky because you may not… A lot of companies don’t even have a human resources department anymore. That was one of those levels of jobs that people thought, “You know what? We don’t need that. We can just get rid of that.” So there may not be anyone to go to.
But as these leaders continue to f-around and find out—in the “find out” phase of their bad behavior—you are going to find those people who you can rally with, who you can find that community to say, “This is what’s happening.” You can start to expose all of these bad things. It’s not easy. It takes a lot of courage.
A lot of people are—again, it’s that fear. It’s that culture of fear. I’m afraid if I speak up, I’m going to lose my job and my family is dependent on my paycheck. That’s a really hard position to be in.
And so I’m not saying go ahead and put yourself in jeopardy, but start keeping track of everything that’s happening. It is more work on your side, on top of the extra work that you’ve been asked to do. However, that proof that things are happening a certain way is the only way to demonstrate how unfairly you’re being treated. Otherwise, it’s your word against someone else’s word.
Christopher S. Penn – 13:01
The other thing I would suggest is it is always a good time. Today is always the best day to be building your life raft, to be building a personal brand, to be setting up your own newsletter, your own LinkedIn profile, and building some visibility within your own network. Because most—now this is anecdotal. I do not have concrete evidence of this based on data, but it reflects conversations I’ve had recently—the only hiring that’s going on is referral based. A lot of the jobs that are being posted publicly either have hundreds and hundreds of applicants, which is kind of a crapshoot, or they’re ghost jobs; they don’t exist at all. And when people are finding work, it is through other people and stuff.
So if you do not have a network, if you do not have that safety net, today’s the first, best day to start building that, especially if you are working in an impaired industry. So this is from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. This is indeed.com hiring demand. The black vertical line at the 100 line represents February 2020—the last snapshot before this crazy half decade that we’ve been in. When numbers are below that line, it means that demand is below February of 2020, before the pandemic. When it’s above the line, it means demand is above. So we can see here, for example, the industries that are clearly experiencing record hiring demand.
Physicians and surgeons, therapy, personal care and home health—and if you are a marketer in those industries, chances are you are probably in demand as well, particularly on the hiring side. I mean, HR marketing is its own separate discipline. How do we attract candidates? Because we clearly need them. When you look at the very bottom, this is what’s being most impaired: Information design and documentation, media and communication, software development, mathematics, IT operations, help, marketing. These are the industries that are most impaired.
So if you’re in those industries or in those fields, it is going to be harder. So knowing what industries are thriving right now can help you guide your very quiet job search if you’re looking for the door. But also in some professions like software development, down here is at 63% of pre-pandemic levels.
Christopher S. Penn – 15:18
And that number has been dropping steadily since about early 2023. One of the reasons for that one in particular is because of generative AI, because AI is such an incredible coding utility that companies are saying we can take our existing one coder and they can do the work of 10 people easily now with these tools. So that is an example of one of those things where, yeah, that one in particular has an AI impact. But if you’re in those other industries or you’re not as a marketer, or as a person looking for work, that might also be a place to pivot to because that demand, for example, for therapists has been high for 5 years now.
Katie Robbert – 15:57
But that does not excuse these leaders.
Christopher S. Penn – 16:01
Oh, not at all.
Katie Robbert – 16:02
Speaking the way that they’re speaking. So the reality might be that AI is taking over jobs, tasks, whatever it is. That does not give these leaders the right to be speaking to employees the way that they are.
It’s… Again, I am not naive to think that this doesn’t happen. It does happen. It’s happened to me. It’s happened to a lot of us. It’s happened to probably most of, if not all of us, that we have been spoken to this way. And we kind of feel hopeless of, well, I don’t have a lot of other options right now.
What bothers me is the impression that I’m getting is that these leaders think it’s okay. They think it’s—they think that this…
Christopher S. Penn – 16:52
Is, I think it’s a good thing.
Katie Robbert – 16:54
They think it’s a good thing. And they think that because they are in a position of leadership that they are allowed and entitled to speak this way to their teams. And that is—again, that’s not a new problem. Absolutely not a new problem. I don’t—I could give you advice on how to start to fix that.
But the larger the company, the deeper the problem goes. And if it’s a company that’s been around for a long time and leadership is family and passed down and inherited, and it likely goes really deep. You, the employee, you have to protect yourself. You have to set your boundaries. You have to be okay with saying no to things, and you don’t have to give a reason to say no. “Well, no, I can’t do that because I have to pick up my kids and I have to make dinner and they need to be fed.”
What I will say about saying no and setting boundaries is the less information that you give around why you’re saying no, the less opportunity the person who is making the ask has to poke holes in it. So, Chris, if I say to you, “No, I am not going to show up to that meeting on Friday,” and you say, “Why not?” You’re expecting me to give you a list of reasons that you can then have comebacks where, “Well, you could do this instead or you could do that instead. So therefore, you can come to the meeting.” Whereas my responsibility is, I already said no. That’s all. That is it. Period.
It is hard, very hard to stop there because we feel like we have to give rational explanations. You don’t. You don’t owe anyone a reason for saying no. And they’re going to keep asking, “Well, why are you saying no? Why can’t you do this thing?” “Because I can’t. I can’t make it work.”
Christopher S. Penn – 18:58
It.
Katie Robbert – 18:59
It—I can’t. Period. Done. That is your best defense. It is hard. I’m not going to go ahead and say, “Oh, yeah, it’s easy. Just say no.” It’s hard. It takes practice, and it’s not always going to work out the way you want it to. But you have to protect yourself. You have to set those boundaries.
Christopher S. Penn – 19:23
What else should individuals be doing besides building the networks so that they have an escape pod and setting boundaries and documenting that bad management is behaving badly, which is not a huge surprise.
Katie Robbert – 19:44
Pay attention to your peers and the people that you follow. So, for instance, if you subscribe to the Trust Insights newsletter, we try to make things educational, sort of give you practical advice on how to approach things like AI. Our live stream, we do live demos. So it is one more thing on your list. But as much as you can, make sure you’re following people that you feel like you’re learning from, that are keeping you up to date on what’s happening on the things that you care about.
Maybe it’s not AI, maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s writing, maybe it’s content, maybe it’s whatever. Make sure you have those newsletters, those LinkedIn profiles, those videos flagged and that you do carve out time, even if it’s 5 minutes a day, just to see what’s going on and where you can start to sharpen your own personal skill set. Continuous education is going to be your best friend. Again, not an easy thing to do and it really depends on the industry you’re in. Could be more cumbersome, could take more time, but you can’t stay static. You also have to continue to evolve in order to stay competitive in this, as you say, Chris, very soft job market.
Christopher S. Penn – 21:05
Yep. One other thing to your point Katie, use the tools that you have access to now. There are so many good generative AI tools out there now that have things like deep research capabilities and stuff that—I don’t want to say there’s no excuse for not doing it, but there’s certainly strong reasons to use them for stuff like stealth job hunting. I’ll give you a real simple example. Take any of the prompt structures that we use. Take the Trust Insights Casino prompt structure and rewrite and tweak it to say: here’s my LinkedIn profile contents, here’s my resume, my CV. I’m looking for jobs in this area. Deep research tool. Go out on the web and find me some places that I could apply to that maybe aren’t on just a straight up LinkedIn job feed.
Because it costs money for a company to post on LinkedIn. It’s like 200, 250 or $350. Indeed.com I believe is still free for companies to post. But other companies sometimes will just put stuff on their websites. They won’t even put it on job boards, particularly if it’s not a strategic priority. But they are still hiring. You have these AI tools and there’s open source ones. If you don’t have access to a paid tool, there are open source ones. Yes, to your point Katie, it’s all—it’s another thing on your to-do list. But if you are looking and you’re highly motivated, some of these two open source routine research tools can do a very good job sniffing out hiring opportunities, networking opportunities, things that you can do to keep building that life raft.
Because to your point, bad management, bad leadership is very difficult to dislodge especially if it’s baked into the DNA of the company. Oh, boy, it’s the way we’ve always done it. Yeah, that’s going to be very difficult to change. Absent catastrophic shakeup. Like, oh, look, the entire leadership team just got arrested for embezzlement. And so if in those situations, if you work at that kind of company, yeah, maybe use the generative AI tools that are out there. In fact, if you go to the Trust Insights Academy, go to Academy.TrustInsights.AI. We have a free course, completely free, called How to Land Your Next Job with Generative AI. And I would encourage people to, even if you’re not doing an active job search, it’s still a good exercise to go through to improve your LinkedIn profile and things like that using these very capable tools. It’s always a good day to build your network.
Katie Robbert – 23:41
What I will say about these tools—and I’ve made no secret, I’m not someone who, when I’m outside of work, I’m thinking of work. I’m not thinking of tech when I’m not forced to be thinking about tech. So if I were in a position where I had to start to sharpen my skills and start beefing up my network and my LinkedIn resume and everything, it would feel really daunting because it’s not necessarily what I’m passionate about. So what I would do in that instance is I would think about what I am passionate about outside of work.
And where can I start? Maybe experimenting with these tools on topics that I do care about. So if I’m—if my job has always been in the B2B marketing space, but I am not passionate about that outside of work, what am I passionate about? So that I can start to test and experiment with these tools in a way that feels purposeful and beneficial to me in my everyday life. I can then take those skills and bring them back into the jobs that are appropriate for me. And so thinking about it in a way that is more approachable is also going to be helpful.
So a lot of people like fell into IT. They’re not passionate about it, but they just happen to be good at it. So they’ve been able to make a career out of it. And so now the thought of getting skilled up on IT things probably feels overwhelming and daunting. So how do you do it in a way that doesn’t feel that way and also isn’t one more thing on your list? Well, what do you do in your everyday life where maybe you can say, “Oh, I wonder what ChatGPT could do to enhance my gardening.” Or “I wonder what I could use deep research for if I am thinking about building a new structure on my property.” Whatever the thing is, pick whatever your hobbies are and use the tools to enhance those things.
Christopher S. Penn – 25:48
And Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, once said this, which I think is a really good thing to keep in mind: every time you are looking for an opportunity, you are actually looking for a person with your hobbies and things. Get out from behind your desk and go meet up with other human beings in that space. If you’re into gardening, if you volunteer at an animal shelter—I mean, Katie, you can probably speak to the number of different people you’ve rubbed elbows with, our colleagues over at Bay Path who outside of caring about the welfare of animals, also have day jobs that may open some doors.
Katie Robbert – 26:30
And I think that’s the biggest thing is networking doesn’t have to be showing up to the latest digital marketing summit to have small talk with people that may not lead to anything. Go find what you’re passionate about, follow that path, network that way, and then you will find other people who are like-minded that you can speak to. And be like, “Oh, and I also, I’ve been looking for XYZ.” It doesn’t have to be as rigid as it used to be. Find the communities of topics you care about. Start there versus what you think you should be joining.
Christopher S. Penn – 27:14
Exactly. Because who knows, your hanging out with puppies may lead to your next big deal. You could network with a CEO of an AI agency. If you’ve got some thoughts about work, the workplace, and perhaps less than great leadership or perhaps just how you’re thinking about building your own life raft and building your network, pop by our free Slack group. Go to TrustInsights.ai/analyticsformarketers, where you and over 4,000 other marketers are asking and answering each other’s questions every single day about analytics, data, science, AI and all the fun things that come along with that. And wherever it is you watch or listen to the show, if there’s a channel you’d rather have it on instead, go to TrustInsights.ai/tipodcast. You can find us at all the places fine podcasts are served.
Christopher S. Penn – 28:01
Thanks for tuning in and we’ll talk to you on the next one.
Katie Robbert – 28:11
Want to know more about Trust Insights? Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm specializing in leveraging data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning to empower businesses with actionable insights. Founded in 2017 by Katie Robbert and Christopher S. Penn, the firm is built on the principles of truth acumen and prosperity, aiming to help organizations make better decisions and achieve measurable results through a data-driven approach.
Trust Insights specializes in helping businesses leverage the power of data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive measurable marketing ROI. Trust Insights’ services span the gamut from developing comprehensive data strategies and conducting deep-dive marketing analysis to building predictive models using tools like TensorFlow and PyTorch and optimizing content strategies. Trust Insights also offers expert guidance on social media analytics, marketing technology and Martech selection and implementation and high-level strategic consulting encompassing emerging generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, Dall-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and Meta Llama. Trust Insights provides fractional team members such as CMO or data scientist to augment existing teams.
Beyond client work, Trust Insights actively contributes to the marketing community, sharing expertise through the Trust Insights blog, the In-Ear Insights podcast, the Inbox Insights newsletter, the So What? Livestream webinars and keynote speaking. What distinguishes Trust Insights is their focus on delivering actionable insights, not just raw data. Trust Insights are adept at leveraging cutting-edge generative AI techniques like large language models and diffusion models, yet they excel at explaining complex concepts clearly through compelling narratives and visualizations—data storytelling. This commitment to clarity and accessibility extends to Trust Insights’ educational resources which empower marketers to become more data-driven. Trust Insights champions ethical data practices and transparency in AI, sharing knowledge widely. Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company, a mid-sized business or a marketing agency seeking measurable results, Trust Insights offers a unique blend of technical experience, strategic guidance and educational resources to help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of modern marketing and business in the age of generative AI.
Katie Robbert – 30:46
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Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.
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