# 302. How Do You Stop Being the Person Everything Falls On? PLUS! Bot bosses, poisoned chocolate and the dumbest Teams call mistake. With Cait Donovan

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/truth-lies-and-work-5599780/302-how-do-you-stop-being-the-person-everything-falls-on-plus-bot-bosses-poisoned-chocolate-and-the-dumbest-teams-call-mistake-with-cait-donovan
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/truth-lies-and-work-5599780/302-how-do-you-stop-being-the-person-everything-falls-on-plus-bot-bosses-poisoned-chocolate-and-the-dumbest-teams-call-mistake-with-cait-donovan.md
Podcast: [Truth, Lies and Work](https://stenobird.com/podcast/truth-lies-and-work-5599780)
Published: 2026-05-19T15:35:00+00:00
Episode link: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/HS5811841483.mp3
Audio file: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/HS5811841483.mp3
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Duration seconds: 3470

## Resource

Welcome back to Truth, Lies & Work, the award-winning workplace podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. This week, we are skipping Truth or Lie because we have a massive, jam-packed episode featuring the brilliant Cait Donovan! Cait is a culture and leadership keynote speaker, host of Fried: The Burnout Podcast, and author of an upcoming book out later this year. Together, we tackle the existential anxiety of AI, the baffling world of employee retaliation, a hilariously disastrous federal crime, and a deep-dive workplace surgery to help you protect your energy and lead authentically. 🔥 Stories covered Word of the Week: Circling Forward Leanne introduces a phrase coined in an Esquire article by Kyle MacNeill exploring why so many workers feel pessimistic about the future of work. "Circling forward" is the idea that progress doesn't move in a straight line. Esquire Article Link: https://apple.news/AqVByb5pFTsKcDzvf_F50iA When Candour Hurts the Business (and Someone Poisons the Chocolate) Cait brings a highly controversial Harvard Business School article by Henrico Castro-Pires to the table. The research suggests that managers are giving overinflated performance reviews to mediocre employees because they are terrified of employee retaliation—ranging from workplace gossip to an extreme case where an employee dumped ethanol into a tank of melted chocolate. Harvard Business School Article Link: https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/when-candor-hurts-the-business-economics-of-employee-retaliation Two Brothers, One Firing, and the Ultimate Teams Call Blunder Al shares a wild, real-life crime story from February 2025 involving two brothers, Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, who were fired from government contractor Opexus on a joint Microsoft Teams call. Ars…

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