# Authentic connection vs. artificial fun

- **Episode:** [223](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/223.md) (2025-08-14)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** authenticity, connection, artificial-fun
- **Time:** 34:49–45:04 (start 2089s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/223?t=2089](https://truthliesandwork.com/223?t=2089)

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[34:49] John Michel: Right now we are in the process of doing some work where we're looking at the relationship between fun and more destructive behaviors, if you will, not all destructive, but more counterproductive type behavior. So physical and psychological withdrawal, individual deviance behavior. So like making fun of people, gossiping about people, talking poorly about people, burnout. So like the actual experience of burnout, not just emotional exhaustion. So we're in the process of looking at that right now. And the way we're looking at that is like, what are some of the ways in which fun could potentially deplete your resources? So we know that it adds to your resources, right? We know that it helps you build relationships, feel less stressed, but how can it add to your stress? And some of the ways it likely does that are through creating time pressures or You know, creating work-life imbalances, right? Like, because we had fun today, I've got to stay late at work and get my tasks done so I can't get home to my family or to my other responsibilities. So we're starting to look at that right now. Our prior research, there wasn't that many surprises we've seen so far. A lot of it has been focused on coworker socializing and manager support as they relate to things like job performance and employee turnover. And a lot of fun operates through this idea of relational attachment, where fun promotes relationships and those relationships make us more likely to stay. We've done a number of studies looking at turnover at 3 months, 6 months, a year, and 18 months. And we found that fun helped to increase employee retention. And even performance, both task performance and organizational citizenship behaviors, especially helping behaviors. So, and it happens a lot through that relationship building. How committed are you towards your fellow coworkers? What kinds of relationships are you developing? So that's really where fun happens. But the unanswered question from our research has been these kind of more destructive or counterproductive type behaviors. So that's the area we're going in now. And I don't know yet. I don't know. What the data will show
[37:09] Leanne Elliott: Are employers, sorry, business owners and leaders chasing the wrong thing? Is it right to chase fun or should we actually be chasing that authentic connection where then those more organic pockets of fun will just happen? Is fun the wrong focus?
[37:24] John Michel: It's, I think it's really more, don't force fun. Don't say we are going to create a fun environment, right? It's more like we're going to create an environment where people like you said, can bring their true selves in, where people can build connection, where people can goof off a bit, but where we're getting real work done. I mean, if you think about kind of the most common example would be Google. I don't think the founders of Google ever set out to create a fun workplace, but they just thought, if we want really innovative, creative people, we need to create a space where they can be innovative and creative, and we want to get the best and brightest. So we need to create a differentiated environment where people are going to want to come. And oh, by the way, with all of these benefits, it actually forces people to stay at work longer. So they're actually getting more out of their employees than otherwise they otherwise would have. So, but I don't think they ever intended to create a fun environment per se. And I think the problem was, is that after Google became the poster company for this, You know, for these positive work environments, everybody tried to create Google, but they only tried to do it by instituting one or two things. Well, let's have free food. And then free food didn't really change anything because that was just one little piece of what Google was doing, right? And that wasn't— people weren't working hard because of free food or because they had a slide or because they had beanbag chairs. It was kind of this whole concept, right? This whole entire culture that was built. And so, organizations need to be much more thoughtful of what are we trying to create? I would really start at Are we trying to be a more cooperative or competitive environment? In finance, competitiveness is good, right? Competitiveness helps financial institutions do what they do. But in more high-tech or more innovative research and design, it may be more cooperation. How do we come together and collaborate and work as teammates? And that would— those 2 environments would have very different cultures, right? And then it's really an idea of, Regardless of what type of environment we've created, how do we go about making people feel like they belong in that environment, they fit in that environment, and we want them there, we value their contributions, right? So, so organizations, I think they need to stop just taking these off-the-shelf solutions and saying, fun seems to work, let's do fun, and think about what are we trying to create here. If we want to create an environment where, you know, where we want people to connect and we want people to de-stress, then maybe fun's the right thing. Maybe, you know, maybe for some environments it could be the organized fun activities, you know, if through like as a team building activity, maybe through other companies, it's more just like giving people autonomy to socialize and goof off together. It's interesting because we, Michael Toews and I originally identified this kind of area by thinking about Google, but we were working with a large restaurant chain in the United States. who was experiencing high levels of turnover. And we had been working with them trying to find ways to reduce turnover. And when we started instituting some fun activities, and they were small, like upselling drink competitions or who could roll silverware the fastest after a shift, and bosses would walk around with spot bonuses for who could do that. And they'd make it a competition, make it kind of fun. They would have, you know, You know, theme days where people would, you know, they would provide different uniforms and people would come in with those uniforms and make it more fun. So they did these little tiny experiments around fun and it just worked. Retention went up in an industry where, you know, turnover is like 60, 70%, and we were able to help them bring it down fairly significantly, right? So they brought turnover down by a significant amount. It wasn't a small number. It was like—
[41:09] Al Elliott: Wow
[41:10] John Michel: Over 10%, uh, uh, in some stores over 20%. So like, they— fun worked. Now in that environment, you've got a lot of young people. You've got probably a lot of people in high school or college. You've got, you know, people who are not making this their full-time career, right? Uh, 'cause this was a fast casual restaurant. So maybe in that environment, fun is the right approach. But if I were working with a bank, doing executive banking, I certainly would not, you know, suggest that they do, you know, all the wild and wacky things like Zappos did, like having parades around the office and decorating your cubicles in wild ways and letting people wear whatever they wanted to work and talk to customers however they wanted. I wouldn't suggest that, right? For a shoe company, that's great. For a financial institution, maybe just giving people more downtime. Maybe giving people, you know, a couple Fridays off a month or letting people, you know, starting sports teams that people can play in that are company-sponsored. So, there's different ways to do it. And I think that the problem you find is that companies will find something that works and they'll just kind of assume that it works the same for all organizations and it just doesn't. You have to think about your people, your strategy, what you're trying to accomplish, how you're trying to accomplish it, what kind of money do you have to spend on it? Yeah. What your managers are going to, how they're going to react and how they're going to support it. So there needs to be a lot of thought, unfortunately, put into this if it's going to work effectively. Given that a lot of our research has focused on this connection or this, you know, this belonging idea, this idea of socializing, start there. I mean, it's easy to allow people to engage in chitchat or conversations or go out for lunch together, bring pizza in for your people, People love free food. You bring a few pizzas in or whatever your favorite food is and you let people congregate together and share food. They love it. They find it to be fun. They'll be highly engaged in it and they'll engage in conversation that's non-work related often, especially if they're all together. You can do little things like that to start it. It doesn't have to be this big plan that's really expensive. It can be pretty small. And really it's those organic types of fun that people care most about anyway. And that's where the socializing comes in or the small talk or the just sharing, you know, sharing time together is really what it comes down to. Even the most competitive environments could do that
[43:39] Al Elliott: That was John Michel, and you now know a lot about small talk. Just to recap, here are the top 3 lessons for leaders
[43:46] Leanne Elliott: Lesson number 1, create psychological safety first. Belonging second. Don't jump straight into personal conversations. Your team needs to feel safe before they'll open up, and that does mean keeping small talk professional until genuine relationships develop gradually
[44:02] Al Elliott: Lesson 2: support organic fun, but don't manufacture it. Stop trying to be Google with sort of mandatory Fun Fridays and those in-house chefs. Instead, give your people autonomy to connect naturally
[44:15] Leanne Elliott: Provide time, space, and permission And lesson 3, watch for the warning signs. If your team is experiencing uncomfortable small talk regularly, it's a red flag for emotional exhaustion and potential burnout. So train your managers to recognize when casual conversation is actually isolating people rather than connecting them
[44:37] Al Elliott: If you want to find out more about John Michel and his work, then go to johnw.michel.com. michel.wordpress.com. Links from the show notes, or search for me on LinkedIn
[44:47] Leanne Elliott: That is all for today. We are back on Tuesday with another summer session of the podcast. That's the episodes where we sit on our terrace, drink wine, and chat about the more fun aspects of work
[44:57] Al Elliott: And we'd love you to join us. This is Truth, Lies and Work. We'll see you next week