The Most Complicated Person I Know
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What is the purpose of today's episode?
Hey, what's going on? It's Ryan Leak, and welcome to the Ryan Leak Podcast, where we keep things short and sweet for you. Before I jump into today's episode, I wanted to just take a moment to thank each and every person who purchased a copy of How to Work with Complicated People. It is officially a New York Times bestselling book, and that would not be possible without you. And so I wanted to just take a moment to say from the bottom of my heart, thanks for your support. Thanks for listening to it on Audible. Thanks for sharing about it on social media. It has been a wild ride over the past couple of weeks to see how this book has impacted so many people. So once again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Today's episode is called The Most Complicated Person I Know. Okay, the most complicated person I know, and spoiler alert, it's not who you think it is, or perhaps it's exactly who you think it is. I want to... unpack the research a little bit behind the book. My company has actually been doing a lot of research lately at the Ryan Lee Group. We actually just conducted some research on stress that I find extremely fascinating, and I'm very much looking forward to sharing that in the near future. We also just started another study on change as well. It's a massive problem that a lot of my clients deal with, and even just a lot of friends that are just navigating change. And so we wanted to do a deep dive on that and super excited to share some insights that we're learning in that regard too. Now, as I've been extending a research arm of the Ryan Leak Group, I've thoroughly enjoyed that process. But for the study actually associated with how to work with complicated people, we actually partnered with the Center for Generational Kinetics.
Shout out to Jason Dorsey and his brilliant squad over there. We joined forces with them to conduct a national research study on one specific thing, complicated people in the workforce. Now, this wasn't just a few Instagram polls or a roundtable of a couple of buddies over at the house. This was a statistically valid nationwide study of 1,000 working Americans aged 18 to 65.
What does the research say about complicated coworkers?
We made sure that it was weighted to match the U.S. census on age, gender, region, and ethnicity. And so just so you understand how research works, the margin of error here is is about 3.1 percentage points, which means the data paints an accurate snapshot of what's really happening in today's workforce in America. So if you polled 10,000 people, you would get the same results, plus or minus three percentage points. So just so you understand how we go about doing our research. Now, here's what we found. The impact of complicated people in the workforce is massive. 80% of people say complicated co-workers are exhausting. That means there is an emotional toll that happens when working with complicated people.
48% say they've taken a day off work because they had to work with or for a complicated person. Think about that for a second. 48% said they've taken a day off. They say, hey, you know what? Let me go ahead and use some PTO for this person. It is not paid time off. It's a personal time. I want to take time out from a person. And maybe, maybe the most shocking statistic that we found was that 48% of workers would take a slightly lower paying job just to avoid complicated people altogether. That's not just a culture problem. That's a retention problem. That's a costly problem. That's a your best talent just left for $5,000 less kind of problem. And here's where it got really interesting for me. Check this out.
How do complicated people affect workplace dynamics?
79% of people say they work with someone who's complicated. Okay, 79%. I get this. 74%. those same people believe they themselves are less complicated than the average person. Listen, my friends, the math ain't math in here, okay? The math is not math in right now. There is a major awareness gap between who we think is complicated and whether or not that person might actually be us. And that's a problem. Because here's where it gets real. And just, my friends, allow me to go first. Hi. My name is Ryan Leak. And I am complicated. And I can prove it. I have what my friends call selector frugality. Which means I have no problem sparing no expense on certain things. And I am insanely cheap on other things. I'll book a five-star resort without blinking. But...
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the purpose of today's episode?
0:00–2:42
2
What does the research say about complicated coworkers?
2:42–4:33
3
How do complicated people affect workplace dynamics?
4:33–5:35
4
What surprising statistics were revealed about complicated colleagues?
5:35–6:28
5
Why do people perceive themselves as less complicated?
6:28–7:14
6
How can we address our own complexities?
7:14–10:01