Quit Being a Cynic at Work. It’s Holding You Back.

We don’t want to be friends with our co-workers . We don’t want to help out with that project. We don’t trust the CEO…or our boss…or that guy in accounting.

Have we taken our cynicism at work too far?

In some ways, our bad attitude makes sense. Many of us made work our church, only to end up laid off , burned out or underpaid. Now we check out, do less, gossip and snark.

It isn’t getting us anywhere good, according to Jamil Zaki , a Stanford University psychology professor who runs the school’s social neuroscience lab.

“Cynicism, if it were a pill, would really be a poison,” he says.

Zaki has spent years researching sunny concepts such as empathy and compassion. One of his studies, for example, found that giving away money activates a similar part of the brain as eating chocolate. His forthcoming book, “Hope for Cynics,” explores the rise of our darker sides, our belief that other people are selfish, greedy and dishonest.

Betrayed once, we practice what Zaki calls “pre-disappointment,” always assuming others will let us down. The mindset feels productive and cunning, like we’ll be able to protect ourselves. But Zaki says it can actually stunt our careers in the long run, and hurt our mental and physical health.

“By never trusting, cynics never lose,” he writes. “They also never win.”

He assures that you don’t have to become the company cheerleader, or even an optimist, to grow your faith in other people. You do have to take a chance on them, examining your own assumptions and suspending your conviction that you already know how this is going to turn out (not well).

While the approach might initially seem blasphemous to the more negative, sarcastic and skeptical among us—like, say, me—anyone can become less cynical , he says.

You might even find you like it.

How we got here

Once upon a time, Americans were less cynical, Zaki says. A longstanding survey from research organisation NORC at the University of Chicago, which has examined American attitudes since 1972, shows we used to trust each other more. Around the middle of the last century, many hummed along on the rosy glow of plum benefits, robust job security and the knowledge that the chief executive was making, say, 20 times a worker’s pay, instead of 200.

It isn’t that we never complained about work, but Zaki says we repaid our companies’ loyalty with commitment, as part of an unspoken covenant.

Today, that employee-employer pact can feel like a relic of a bygone era. Workers have swapped pensions and equity in their companies for more meagre benefits that put the risk and onus on individuals. Instead of reporting to paternalistic employers, many people now operate under tenuous contracts and gig work.

Some of us work from home in isolation or spend lonely days in the office trapped on back-to-back video calls. There’s less chitchat, less interaction.

“We don’t like people when they’re abstracted,” Zaki says, “but we love people who we actually know.”

Zaki understands why, given all this, we might scoff at the notion that our company is a family, or roll our eyes at the prospect of joining in forced fun at the office happy hour.

Sometimes, I suspect, we also adopt a toughness because we don’t want to look like we’re trying too hard, only to fail or be rejected. Maybe it stems from perfectionism, or anxiety, or insecurity after being exposed to everyone else’s highlight reel on social media for the past 15 years.

Fighting our own worst tendencies

It might seem like all the office snakes are scaling the ladder, but Zaki says studies show cynics’ earnings and leadership potential level off with time. To do good work and attain success, you have to build alliances and share information. Translation: You have to trust someone.

Cynics are prone to poor health, from depression to heart disease, he says, adding that at an organisational level, cynicism can lead to pervasive backstabbing, higher turnover and even corporate corruption.

Cynicism is also a self-fulfilling prophecy, he says. People often mirror how we treat them. Micromanage your team—surveilling them and wresting away their ability to make decisions—and they’ll become the slackers you think they are, doing the bare minimum and buying mouse jigglers to mask time away from their home computers.

“Cynics tell a story full of villains and end up living in it,” he writes.

Resisting cynicism’s pull starts with being open-minded. Examine the data of your life like a scientist would, he says, instead of jumping to conclusions, positive or negative. Think everyone at your job is out for themselves? Ask 10 colleagues for a favour, and see if anyone agrees to help. Convinced every conversation with a co-worker will be painful? Spend a day rating your interactions with them on a scale from 1 to 10.

Challenging your assumptions will leave you pleasantly surprised, Zaki promises, because people often rise to the occasion when we let them. You can start by doling out what you hope to receive. Try engaging in “positive gossip,” speaking highly of others. Take a leap of faith in someone, and do it obviously.

“I trust you,” a manager might say to her direct report. “I really think you can do this.”

Calibrating our hope

Could all this make us too soft? Rejecting cynicism doesn’t mean you can’t hold workers to high standards, Zaki says. Just don’t pit them against each other, with practices like stack rankings, where collaboration is discouraged as workers try to claw above each other on a scoreboard.

Your humour can still be irreverent, even biting, he adds, but jokes should ultimately bring people together or improve something.

“Snark, in the absence of any hope, kind of curdles,” he says.

And don’t be blindly optimistic, he adds. If leadership isn’t giving you any reason to have faith in them, don’t. Find another group to trust—maybe your small team or a union. Band together to provide a buffer to the daily stress of working in your organisation, or enact change by fighting for something better.

“We often underestimate how much influence we have,” he says. “Own that power.”

The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.

This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.

1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo

There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.

She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.

2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.

If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.

His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.

3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast

Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.

Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.

4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media

Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.

The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.

5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor

The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.

Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.

6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30

Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.

Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.

7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group

The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.

When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.

8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator

The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.

Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.

9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest

Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.

The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.

10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News

Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.

Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.

That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.

The common thread across this list is not follower count or platform presence. It is that each creator has built an audience willing to act on what they say, and for the Australians making financial decisions off the back of this content, that trust is the only thing that actually matters.

Quit Being a Cynic at Work. It’s Holding You Back.

There are ways to fight the tendency to see the worst in everyone

How we got here

Fighting our own worst tendencies

Calibrating our hope

The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.