what you missed
Hiiii,
IT’S TIMEEEEE - Mariah Carey voice.
Time for another one of your favorite newsletters to slide into your inbox with info, content and events you cannot miss.
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📺 This month’s HR Therapy is a masterclass in navigating HR tech demos. I’m digging into the most important questions to ask, how to figure out what’s real and what’s hype, and how to get the clarity you need on your tools. I might even share a lesson learned or two because we’ve all been duped by the demo.
🎧 Spooky szn continues for one more week!!! This week on the pod HR horror stories with one of my fave guests Jessica Winder. Proceed with caution because some of these stories were so spooky they left us speechless.
Now, onto today!!! A recap of what you may have missed at the Safe Space Summit.
SPECIAL EDITION
What you missed:Copy anchor linkCopied
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It’s been just over a week since the Safe Space Summit, and I’m still riding the high from the day.
Over 100 HR folks descended on Chicago for a full day of honest conversations and thoughtful sessions centered around the toughest challenges our function is facing and will continue to face.
If you couldn’t make it, we missed you, but I wanted to take a moment to recap some of the key themes and resources that came out of the day.
The throughline was clear: challenge.
And boy was it hard to distill down alllll the things we face to a few key challenges but we tried.
We dug into:
- Leadership & stress
- Constant change
- Learner safety
- Practical uses of AI
These challenges stuck out to me and the speakers as foundational things that impact everything from engagement to retention. We wanted to talk about things that might be overlooked but have a very real impact on organizations. If left unaddressed these core things could spiral out of control.
So, let’s look at what you need to know!
Leadership & stress: Copy anchor linkCopied
Speaker: Jen Laurie, Fractional CPO
We kicked off the day with a presentation on leading through these wild times.
- 95% of HR leaders say working in HR is too much work and stress
- 83% of HR leaders report being burnt out in their current role
We can all agree that this job is a lot.
But it’s not just about feeling overwhelmed, it’s about how that stress shows up in our daily work.
Most of us (yes even you) have a default pattern when things get hard, and understanding it is the FIRST step to leading with awareness instead of reaction AND guiding your leaders to do the same.
⚡ The 4 stress responses and how they show up:
💢 Fight: You go into control mode. That looks like doubling down, micromanaging, and trying to fix everything yourself. Been there. Deadlines become personal, and collaboration starts to feel like chaos. To everyone on the outside this can look like over-assertiveness or defensiveness when what those around you really need is calm direction.
🏃♀️ Flight: You avoid. That looks like delaying tough conversations, skipping the debrief, or hiding behind “let’s return to this later.” It feels safer to stay busy than actually face what’s uncomfortable. The problem is this response aka avoidance erodes trust faster than conflict does. Let that sit for a second.
❄️ Freeze: You shut down. That can look like struggling to make decisions, so you don’t make them. You scroll through Slack or email trying to feel productive, but you’re stuck in analysis paralysis. Those around you sense the hesitation, and momentum stalls.
🤝 Fawn: You people-please. That looks like saying yes to too much, smoothing things over, and prioritizing harmony over honesty. It keeps the peace short-term but often leads to resentment and burnout. You cannot make everyone happy. We know that in HR more than anyone else.
The bottom line: Every leader cycles through some version of these at different points.
The goal isn’t to eliminate your stress response ( that’s maybe impossible), but you can notice it and build the awareness to regulate it before it drives your decisions.
Not only can you be mindful of your response but the response of leaders around you will be a critical tool when it comes to coaching!
✏️ Homework: Identify your stress response as well as the stress response of the leader that works the closest with you. What can you learn from this?
Constant change:Copy anchor linkCopied
Speaker: Lindsay Verstegen, Chief People Officer at Detroit Lions
Change isn’t coming, it’s already here, and it’s not slowing down.
The pace of transformation in today’s workplace has made change less of an event and more of a constant condition. YAY FOR US.
So that means HR needs to be aware, now more than ever, how to handle change as a constant factor.
Skills that will be invaluable in this change is constant world:
- Adaptability: This means designing systems that evolve with the business, not ones that need to be rebuilt every quarter.
- Connecting the dots: HR leaders who can interpret patterns in data, behavior, and business context can turn that noise into strategy.
- Emotional intelligence: In a volatile world emotional awareness can serve as a stabilizing force. Leaders who can self-regulate, empathize, and communicate under pressure can foster psychological safety and trust. The things you need when everything else is uncertain.
Lindsay also shared a framework called VUCA.
VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous.
It was first used by the U.S. Army to describe the unpredictable conditions of modern warfare, but it’s also applicable to today’s workplaces. So much to unpack there…
- Volatility speaks to the speed and turbulence of change.
- Uncertainty captures how hard it’s become to predict what’s next.
- Complexity reflects how every decision now sits within a web of interdependencies.
- Ambiguity is the lack of clarity that leaves even the best leaders second-guessing.
Think of the volatility and complexity as external factors like how we’re navigating shifting markets, new regulations, AI disruption, and changing employee expectations.
And the uncertainty and ambiguity as internal factors like how we’re managing the ripple effects: leadership fatigue, communication gaps, and teams struggling to find stability when the ground keeps moving.
✏️ Homework: What’s one recent change in your org that felt like whiplash?
Learner safety:Copy anchor linkCopied
Speaker: Dr. Erin Thomas, VP Culture, Inclusion & Leader Engagement at Upwork
A lot of orgs say they value learning, but few actually create the conditions where learning feels safe.
Erin’s session dug into what that means and how to scale curiosity.
When employees feel safe to say “I don’t know yet,” they’re more likely to experiment, ask for feedback, and adapt quickly.
Spoiler alert: all these behaviors drive long-term performance. Without that safety, employees play small. They repeat what’s worked before, hide mistakes, and see development as a risk instead of an opportunity. Too many organizations overindex on driving performance without understanding what actually enables it, like creating an environment where people feel safe enough to learn, experiment, and stay curious.
⚡ Curiosity isn’t a “soft” skill; it’s an innovation and performance engine.
Why this matters: In an AI-driven world, knowledge has an even shorter shelf life. Which means performance will depend less on what people know and more on how fast they can learn. That’s where learner safety and curiosity come in.
Scaling curiosity across your org means building the reflex to explore, test, and rethink.
➡️ At the org level it means building learning loops that complement performance review cycles. You can do this by:
- Leveraging stretch goals
- Improving story telling around win/loss/lessons learned
- Starting company wide learning sessions. We did AI Power Hours for employees to come and learn about AI use cases!
➡️ At the manager level it means designing team rituals that reward failing forward and communal growth. You can do this by:
- Conducting team retros upon completing a project
- Celebrating failures just as much as wins
- Blocking off days for no meetings so people actually have time to LEARN things
➡️ At the individual level it means shifting individual mindsets from evaluation to experimentation. You can do this by:
- Celebrating risk taking moments
- Discussing experiments
- Helping employees understand their saboteur habits - a free assessment!
Ultimately if you want to figure out what could be holding your employees back start with trying to understand if they even feel safe to learn.
AI in action:Copy anchor linkCopied
Speaker: Sarika Lamont, Chief People Officer at Vidyard
I hate to ask but, where are you leveraging AI?
It seems like I cannot go a day, NAY A MINUTE, without hearing about how to use AI in HR.
Sarika Lamont delivered a killer session on 3 tactical use cases of AI.
Use Case 1: Onboarding automation. Combining their internal playbooks with a tool named Kinfolk her team was able to automate preboarding and onboarding tasks for the manager + the employee.
Fun fact: They saw their task completion rise to 95% and it freed up everyone involved to do less admin and more focus on the belonging work.
Use Case 2: AI agent + internal support. Using a tool named Risotto they build an AI employee to answer repetitive support type questions. Think of all the questions you get constantly that the answers are either in documentation or somewhere the employee could go look but they don’t. With this use case you wouldn’t have to answer those questions anymore!
Fun fact: They saw 88% of requests solved automatically; 308 hours of time saved per month in DM support. WOWZA.
Use Case 3: AI Coaching + performance. Combing 2 tools: Kinfolk + Klaar they are building an AI growth coach internally so that managers and employees can scale and improve performance.
There are so many opportunities out there, you just have to think about what your organization needs and what is actually helpful!!
What’s next:Copy anchor linkCopied
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I’m back with regularly scheduled programming next week!!
This quarter theme has been energy drains/energy boosts so next week I’m back at it with one last energy drain before we get to the boosts.
(HUMAN) RESOURCES
- Gov’t shutdown drags on for another week
- Louvre heist update
- CEOs are mad about employees texting during meetings??
- Linking layoffs to AI or not
- Evaluating workplace accommodations tools? You’re gonna want this! Disclo’s free checklist breaks down the ten must-ask questions every HR team should use before signing with a vendor.
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
- 📚 What I’m reading: Ann of Avenue A by Audrey Bellezza & Emily Harding. This is the 3rd book from this duo were they remake classic novels into something more contemporary. This edition is inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion. I have had this bookmarked for ages as I’ve loved the other two retellings this duo as done!
- 📺 What I’m watching: Gilmore Girls. I completely skipped season one and went straight to the first episode appearance of one of my fave characters and Rory’s BEST boyfriend imo. Yup, you guess it Jess! I’m already on season 3, i’ll keep y’all posted on my rewatch feels.
- 🎧 What I’m obsessing over: Play this at my funeral. My brilliant friend Dinah recently launched this podcast where she asks guest to make a playlist of music they’d want playing at their funeral and digs into the playlists with each guest. FINALLY I get to yap about something other than HR. My love for music is intense at times. My brain is mostly lyrics and I have an ear that can pick out my favorite producers. Listen to my episode and lmk what you think! And if you want my playlist, you know what to do, ask and you shall receive. <333
SONG OF THE WEEK
🎧 Good Ol’ Days, Hayley Williams Copy anchor linkCopied
Now, y’all know I LOOOOVE Paramore so obvi I’m a Hayley Williams fan.
Not only does she make incredible music, she goes beyond that and shares intimate details about her mental health struggles and leverages her platform to share important info about what’s happening in the world and her political stances.
She even revisited her popular song Misery Business to discuss and take accountability for the misogynistic lyrics.
Big big big fan.
This song has been on repeat alllll week. Enjoy!!
That's all for this week! I hope you enjoyed this, please let me know what you think and what other topics you'd love for me to cover. I'm allll ears.
Reminder: Take care of yourself and know that I support you.
