Whether or not you agree with HR's many methods... we can all agree that humans need better tools to be, well, human. With the rise of mental health awareness, an increasing conversation about ending work stress and anti-hustle culture on the rise - it's important to discuss... your intimacy issues. After much fanfare for their first 'Doc Club' episode, Alexa and Tyson review the new and popular documentary, Stutz, with lots of aggressive opinions to share. Give it go!
Watch the doc: https://www.netflix.com/title/81387962
Read Mark Manson’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Not-Enough-Mark-Manson/dp/1713585189
***Important People Problems disclaimer: We don’t think that HR should take on the role of in-office psychologist or psychiatrist. Are there some interesting and valuable resources and tools in this documentary to help humans better understand themselves and maybe better understand how they work? Absolutely. We’re not suggesting you become the Wendy Rhoades of your office. However if you don’t get that reference, we are suggesting that you watch Billions.
Highlights and Key Points:
What is a doc club anyway? (11:58)
“Stutz” summary (12:38)
SPOILER ALERT (15:03)
“How do you build trust and rapport between two people in vulnerable situations?” (16:10)
Tying the doc and its message back to HR and the working environment (16:35)
SPOILER ALERT (17:09)
“Your manager is sometimes someone you have to be vulnerable with in order to be managed well. You have to honest about failings.” (17:56-18:04)
“You can’t manage people well if you do not know where they come from and you do not know where they are trying to go.” (19:02)
The idea of being fallible and how that connects back to work (27:57)
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Follow the hosts:
Alexa Baggio on Instagram, Tiktok, and LinkedIn
Tyson Mackenzie on Instagram at @hr.shook
Alexa
Tyson! what is up?
Tyson
Honestly, like, it is just like dead winter over here. I got nothing going on. It is just like, you know, grinding it out like nothing to look forward to any holidays are.
Alexa
Passed like a Canadian winter.
Tyson
Yeah, it is just cold. And we've got cold on the horizons for a while now. So it's just, you know, hunker in.
Alexa
Nice. I am two blocks from the beach and it is 86 degrees here yet in my windowless Mexican apartment. So no, to all the listeners, if the windows are closed in the Airbnb listing, ask the owner to make sure that they go outside and not too a hallway. Lesson learned. But beyond that, I basically go from a windowless apartment which is very good for working, very, very focus oriented to 86 degrees and sunny.
Tyson
So that sounds lovely. That sounds lovely. She had to hop on a plane.
Alexa
Mexico it least to Puerto Vallarta. Here we go. All right. Awesome. Well. Any other major updates before we enchant the people with our opinions? About this documentary?
Tyson
Now, let's let's dove right in. I'm excited.
Alexa
All right. All right. So we're here for round two of our club episodes. And for those of you who did not listen to our first one, I highly recommend it. But this is a format for the episodes that I basically ripped off from a thing that my friends do once a month. And if you do not remember sort of the general situation here, it's much like a book club.
Alexa
And we will do some book club episodes this year as well, which I'm really excited about. But we call this doc club short for documentary club. And the idea is that you watch a documentary just like you would read a book on your own time, in your own, the comfort of your own home, and then you come together to talk about it.
Alexa
So I will at some point create a one pager because I'm a nerd in the major world, loves one pagers about how to set up your own doc club. But for the purposes of this episode, we are talking about the relatively new documentary created by Jonah Hill called Stutz, which is about his therapist, Phil Stutz, And yeah, so General Gist here, rules of engagement for Doc Club are that if you pick the documentary, you have the opening commentary or the opening question I believe for our Abercrombie episode, Tyson, that was your pick, and Stutz was my pick.
Alexa
So pressures on me to open up here and clearly I'm delaying because I don't have a great opening thought. I have lots of thoughts. So the first thing that I circled by circled, I took lots of notes as I was watching this because I have lots of thoughts and I'll try my best to organize them. But I definitely circled, for what it's worth.
Alexa
I'm pretty sure Stutz has done psychedelics because there was more talk about love in this documentary than I think I've ever seen between the two men on film ever. But no, I think jokes aside, I think this was a fascinating expo on both an interesting character, which is the therapist Stotts himself. I think we'll talk about him, and I think it was a very interesting exposé on his his what he calls tools.
Alexa
So throughout the documentary, if you've watched it, if you haven't, go watch it. Otherwise, this is just a big spoiler. But he talks a lot about some useful tools but I'm sure you have thoughts on things like life forces and part X and shadow people and gratefulness, parting clouds and all kinds of what I would say are quirky takes on some psychological tools, but found it overall enjoyable.
Alexa
I found it a little staccato, a little all over the place, but that's also part of the film. And we could talk about the style of the film and the film itself at the end. And I think last but not least, I would say out of the gate, I would say I enjoyed it. I think these these are it's useful to see someone else's take on tools and ways to sort of take action.
Alexa
I think that was probably my my favorite takeaway is that he's very action oriented as a therapist. But yeah. What do you think, Tyson? Opening thoughts?
Tyson
Yeah, for sure. So definitely spoiler alert, because there's something that happens very early on in the film that things sort of switch gears and I was really happy that they did because the opening scene, it was very like, I'm a huge Jonah Hill fan, but he was like, No, this isn't about me. And we can't really like he kept like deflecting a little bit.
Tyson
And I'm like, Oh, this is going to be like, really? Like, how is this going to this conversation? Going to be really like one that's of interest? If he keeps deflecting like that, yeah. And then at one point very early on, he's like, all right, I need to be really. So it was a conversation with Jonah Hill and starts and he says, I need to be really honest with you about something.
Tyson
This is not going well, and we need to do something to make this film actually be successful. And the first step of that was me, Jonah Hill. Being honest with you starts about how things are going and how like what are your thoughts in terms of like how we can make this film be one that people are actually going to benefit from Yeah, and I, I really, really liked that action because I think a huge part of this documentary for me was how do you build trust and rapport between two people in sometimes very vulnerable situations?
Tyson
And the first step of that then was in this situation was being honest about things. And I guess like where I sort of like link that back to me and I'm not saying and like I think we've made it very clear on this podcast, like H.R. is not a therapist, but for me it's almost sort of like was this lesson that sometimes like you have to go to people that you're working with, whether it be in a situation or not, and like be honest about where things are failing in order to like move forward so I, I was very interested in the working partnership between the two of them as they were making this documentary.
Tyson
So sort of like slashing down the fourth wall but then also obviously in the tools and the rapport that they built through like therapy with one another.
Alexa
Yeah, I think it was it was interesting to see, you know, again, spoiler alert, you know, in the moment where they show the green screen and they kind of like this what I would call sort of like the second half of the film where they he kind of comes clean and is like, this isn't going well. I need to be honest with you, etc. As you explained, he he goes into this diatribe about vulnerability and honesty and that basically like that is where you create connection, right?
Alexa
And what's interesting is like, you know, I think we just shared in our newsletter recently that there's an article about how like not to bring your whole self to work and how there are like real detriments to actually doing that. And, you know, basically like the workplace is not does not have the scaffolding or the structure to support some of those behaviors or needs or whatever.
Alexa
And so they breed disappointment and hostility and blah blah blah. But but that said, you know, in saying that H.R. is not a therapist, it is also important to say that your manager is someone you sometimes have to be vulnerable with in order to be managed well. You have to be honest about, to your point, failings. I also think what was interesting about this documentary is it becomes increasingly about his Parkinson's, which is something that they mentioned up front.
Alexa
And they have the awkward scenes of him kind of taking the pills while he's, you know, shaking and like he's clearly like such a sweet sweet guy. It's a little hard to watch. But over time, you realize that, like, Jonah Hill also has not asked him a whole lot about this and it has not been a big topic of conversation even though the guys say I love you throughout the whole documentary, you know?
Alexa
And so you think like, well, how can you be this close and not ever ask this man about the thing that has plagued him since he was 21? And so it was really interesting over time for that to become more and more a part of the story of why he's developed these tools, of how he's sort of come to some of these conclusions as a therapist and why he has the philosophy that he has.
Alexa
You almost can't understand his philosophy as a therapist. And his style as a therapist if you do not understand where it comes from, which I think is very in parallel with like you cannot manage people well if you do not know where they come from and you do not know where they are, go trying to go.
Tyson
And I think it also went from probably being what was naturally very one sided. So obviously Jonah Hill is paying an individual as a therapist to help him with his problems. But I think the shift that happened was they became business partners as well. Right? So they are working together in a partnership to create this film. So again, like some of like the connections I sort of thought of is like when you're working with someone.
Tyson
So let's use the example of an H.R. with their manager that they partner with. Okay. So oftentimes it starts out kind of like the way that I'm sure Jonah Hill and such started out, like it's very one sided. Maybe it's like H.R. asking a lot of questions. Then once you reach true partnership, it becomes a lot more like two sided.
Tyson
So like working together to like, you know, be vulnerable and share the issues and like be upfront and that sort of like what switches from in the H.R. world, someone who is just sort of like maybe a generalist and like reacting and like to someone who actually has like a strong partnership, a strong partnership where they actually can do some really good, strong, deep work.
Tyson
Yeah. So yeah, that was sort of.
Alexa
And I love I love it. You know, we can go through some of the tools specifically if you have favorites. But I love and this is sort of a personal mantra of mine said differently, but pain, uncertainty and the need for constant work, our life's three inevitabilities or three truths. I think that's something that I think people, especially in the age of like shitting on your work environment and complaining about having to work and us all realizing that hustle culture is exhausting and non-sustainable as millennials like, yeah, cool.
Alexa
All of that is true. But also like pain, uncertainty and the need for constant work are also life's truths. Like shit changes, shit gets hard sometimes stuff is not always certain. You are not entitled to feel secure all the time. And that goes for sort of like any part of life, right? Like that's where growth comes in is like a little bit in the chaos.
Tyson
I love that when he's sort of like saying to Jonah Hill, like, don't just come in here and shit on me and dump.
Alexa
All your shit on me.