Sorry for the delay between episodes but Randal and I have just been freed from an El Salvadorian prison after Border Security found episodes of the Nonsense Dialogues in our phones. This experience may have influenced the topic of this podcast where we explore the psychology behind why people believe obvious lies, using Donald Trump as a starting point. Yes dear listener, we have succumbed and have been sucked into the Trump Maelstrom.

Thankfully, we soon leave him far behind and rather than the usual approach of examining the pathology of liars, we take an audience focused approach to understand why do people believe lies. We discuss the cognitive processes that lead to belief, the influence of followers, and the role of authority and credibility in shaping perceptions. We then provide the public service of providing our listeners with strategies to resist being influenced by bullshit. We discuss the need for empathy, rapport building, and shared goals in persuasion. We propose, perhaps unsurprisingly, scepticism as a method to counter the lies and bullshit that surround us all in an informational miasma.

Being good evidence based practitioners, we are seeking feedback from our audience on our podcasts. So please tell us all the things we are doing well as well as pandering to your innate drive to criticise the work of others.
We may listen and adjust or we may just continue to be ourselves and do things our own way, dammit.

In a world increasingly looking backwards (Make Leadership Great Again!)1, Randal and David thought perhaps they too should look way back for inspiration. So they invited leading international leadership and coaching psychologist, Gaj Ravichandra to discuss leadership through the lens of Eastern philosophies, particularly the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita.

As expected, the Gita proved to be a great starting point for a wide-ranging discussion of leadership development. This included the role of self-awareness, storytelling, cultural contexts, kindness, and particularly, the contribution of the scientific process to the advancement of our understanding of the efficacy of leadership development. This last point proved to be a bit of a trigger for a “vigorous” discussion between Gaj and David - who jointly proposed that our knowledge and practice of leadership has not really progressed much in 4000 years - and Randal, who vehemently defended the contribution of modern science. Have a listen and see which side you come down on.

1 Too soon? Or just not funny in the first place?

Being good evidence based practitioners, we are seeking feedback from our audience on our podcasts. So please tell us all the things we are doing well as well as pandering to your innate drive to criticise the work of others.
We may listen and adjust or we may just continue to be ourselves and do things our own way, dammit.

How to become more powerful and successful using the power of others.

That was going to be our shamelessly clickbait title for this episode but the Olympics are currently on and we thought we'd instead piggyback on everyone's excitement over that.
This episode does indeed explore the concept of power, where does it come from and how can one gain and deploy it. To help us, we have invited Dr Andrew Frain, a social psychologist, who like Randal, is a true believer in the social identity approach. The Nonsense we address this week is the conventional individualistic approach to power as characterised by French and Raven’s bases of power. Instead, Andrew presents John Turner’s model for understanding how power can be gained and deployed through leadership, authority and coercion. We all then discuss the implications of this with each of us taking a different perspective. Randal shows off his intellectual pretensions by quoting Nietzsche and David tries to be the cool kid in school by taking a Marxist approach to the distribution of power in organisations. On the way, we cover the absence of power as a topic in management education, how to resist power, the shaping of collective realities in deriving and sustaining power, and we start to discuss the application of all this to improving management, leadership and change in modern organisations. However, as usual, we ran out of time and decided to carry that discussion over into Part 2 of our exploration of power. That episode will be coming soon. Promise.

Being good evidence based practitioners, we are seeking feedback from our audience on our podcasts. So please tell us all the things we are doing well as well as pandering to your innate drive to criticise the work of others.
We may listen and adjust or we may just continue to be ourselves and do things our own way, dammit.

Resilience racket or corporate calm? What works when building resilience, psychological health and well-being in the workplace.

In this episode David and Randal share their microphones with Diya Dey, an organisational psychologist and leader in the area of evidence based approaches to enhancing psychological health and wellbeing in the workplace. Their discussion explores the concept of resilience in the workplace, its historical context, and its impact on mental health. It delves into the components of resilience, the role of mindfulness, and the challenges of implementing resilience programs in organisations. The conversation delves* into the evidence base for resilience training, and the need for a systemic approach to mental health in the workplace. It also explores the concept of well-being, the SMART work design model, and the importance of group identification in fostering resilience. The impact of workload and the cultural aspects of organisational change are also discussed. The conversation delves further into the concept of resilience, organisational justice, and the systemic approach to building resilient communities. It explores the interplay between individual and situational factors, as well as the importance of prevention and control of controllables. The discussion also touches on the challenges of screening for resilience and the need for a holistic approach to psychosocial risk management.

*Ok Ok busted…we got an AI to generate this summary. The word delves was the giveaway wasn’t it? Anyway, we thought it did a pretty good job. Lacked our usual smart aleck tone but probably more informative. Hopefully, it has encouraged you to listen to the episode. We think it’s one of our good ones as Diya really does know what she is talking about here. It’s motivated us to seek out more collaborators and guests. Watch this space for new episodes on power at work, military leadership and bad/zombie leaders.

PS Sorry for the long break between episodes. Both of us got busy and two guest speakers cancelled their sessions. No Christmas presents for them this year. But we managed to get one of them back so expect another episode in the not too distant future.

Being good evidence based practitioners, we are seeking feedback from our audience on our podcasts. So please tell us all the things we are doing well as well as pandering to your innate drive to criticise the work of others.
We may listen and adjust or we may just continue to be ourselves and do things our own way, dammit.

Following from our previous episode on Bad Leaders, we look for lessons in leadership from the case study of Citizen Musk. David takes a psychologist’s perspective and examines if Elon’s self reported Autism Spectrum Disorder and his apparent narcissism offers both explanations for his combination of extraordinary achievements and appalling / idiosyncratic behaviours. Randal questions if he can be considered a leader at all - why not just an entrepreneur?

We go on to debate neurodiversity in the workplace, rockets, charismatic leaders, the need for transformational leaders to have complementary transactional managers, and if the social identity approach can help us understand Elon’s appeal. Throughout Randal maintains a very sceptical attitude towards Elon, whilst David speaks as a transitioning fanboy.

The narrative arc of the episode climaxes with what appears to be a reconciliation between the two protagonists but then, in a stunning and unexpected twist, we end up shouting at each other yet again over what we should take from Elon’s story. Plus ça change…

Being good evidence based practitioners, we are seeking feedback from our audience on our podcasts. So please tell us all the things we are doing well as well as pandering to your innate drive to criticise the work of others.
We may listen and adjust or we may just continue to be ourselves and do things our own way, dammit.

In this episode we take a positive approach to discussing leadership development by considering what can we learn about good leadership from bad leaders. And also, can bad leaders grow into good ones? Elon is mentioned. But will it be as a bad leader or as a champion of the iterative fail and learn development model? Listen and find out!

Our conclusions (spoiler alert) is that leadership has to be learned and that even initially inept leaders can become good ones with the right mindset and sustained iterative efforts to learn and improve. Good news!

Being good evidence based practitioners, we are seeking feedback from our audience on our podcasts. So please tell us all the things we are doing well as well as pandering to your innate drive to criticise the work of others.
We may listen and adjust or we may just continue to be ourselves and do things our own way, dammit.

We are very pleased to welcome Prof Mark Williams to the Nonsense Dialogues. Mark is the author of the best selling book “The Connected Species” and is a cognitive neuroscientist with an extensive international career. Randal invited him to present the neuro cognitive perspective of psychometric assessments with the obvious expectation that Mark would join him in denigrating the whole domain. Well, Mark sort of does do this but also provides a great range of insights into the challenges of transferring psychological science to practical applications. David does his best to defend the interests of the psychometric industrial complex but finds himself being less antagonistic than he expected.

Did we come to a conclusion? You’ll have to listen to find out.

All in all, we think having a guest with actual expertise greatly improved the quality of the discussion. Have a listen and see what you think. We’ll probably do it again. And sooner, if we get some positive feedback on this episode.

Being good evidence based practitioners, we are seeking feedback from our audience on our podcasts. So please tell us all the things we are doing well as well as pandering to your innate drive to criticise the work of others.
We may listen and adjust or we may just continue to be ourselves and do things our own way, dammit.

Randal has a lingering suspicion about anything that reminds him of cults, mysticism or good old fashioned snake oil. What has been attracting his sceptical attention of late are the various claims made by the proponents of Mindfulness for improving psychological health, well being and performance in the workplace.
This episode is mostly Randal checking in on the evidence around these issues and best practice on mental health in the workplace with an authoritative practitioner in workplace mental health who has over 40 years of professional experience as a registered allied mental health practitioner. Unfortunately, that person didn't turn up so he spoke to David instead.

PS. Just a small request. If you like this rubbish and think someone you know might also like it, please pass on a link and recommendation. Word of mouth and recommendations are the best way for the Nonsense Dialogues to grow. Also please mention and recommend us on social media, in the campus common room, at the Qantas Chairman's Lounge; wherever you think prospective Nonsense Dialogues aficionados may be. Thank you.

Being good evidence based practitioners, we are seeking feedback from our audience on our podcasts. So please tell us all the things we are doing well as well as pandering to your innate drive to criticise the work of others.
We may listen and adjust or we may just continue to be ourselves and do things our own way, dammit.