The People Managing People Podcast

The People Managing People Podcast: inspiring people leaders, managers, and HR Professionals.

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Carolyn Stern

Latest Episodes

Why Financial Wellness Programs Fail—and How to Fix Them

Why Financial Wellness Programs Fail—and How to Fix Them

Why is financial wellness such a universally agreed-upon priority yet so painfully hard to deliver in practice? In this episode, I sit down with Jason Lee—founder of DailyPay, Salt Labs, and now Chief of Chime Enterprise—to break down why employees don’t engage with financial programs, why saving feels like the world’s most boring habit, and what it takes to design benefits that people actually use.

Jason lays out why most employer programs are stuck in the 1980s, why rewards points sometimes function better than savings accounts, and why the best financial wellness programs should look less like coupon clubs and more like full-service hospitals—ER, diagnostics, and rehab floors included. We also explore how brand trust, design simplicity, and modern tech will shape the next generation of employee financial benefits.

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Equipping Teams to Use AI Without Losing Purpose

Equipping Teams to Use AI Without Losing Purpose

Most people don't burn out because they're working too hard—they burn out because they’re performing at a pace they were never built to sustain, chasing goals that don’t align with who they are. Matt Granados joins David Rice to unpack why the language we use around productivity—high performance, hustle, passion—is misleading at best, and actively harmful at worst.

They get into the mechanics of optimal performance, the difference between consuming and contributing, and why fulfillment requires more than vision boards and vague inspiration. If you're leading people in an age of AI, distraction, and burnout, this conversation offers a clear path forward—one rooted in structure, intention, and personal agency.

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How AI Is Reshaping Leadership (and Why Agility Matters More Than Ever)

How AI Is Reshaping Leadership (and Why Agility Matters More Than Ever)

In a world where AI is eating the routine work and career ladders look more like Escher paintings, what does leadership agility really mean? In this episode, I sit down with David Jones, CEO and Partner at Mercer Assessments, to explore how leaders can ground themselves in productivity, positivity, people, and purpose while rethinking the broken systems we’ve inherited.

We dig into why organizations don’t actually have a leadership shortage—they have a followership problem. From the dark matter of astronomy to the dark matter of organizational life, David makes the case that 93% of performance depends on the people who don’t sit in the spotlight. We also examine how AI is reshaping careers, why assessments should be GPS systems for skills, and why employers may need to stop outsourcing education to institutions that are years behind reality.

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Building Hybrid Teams That Work — Lessons Leaders Need Before Adding AI

Building Hybrid Teams That Work — Lessons Leaders Need Before Adding AI

We’ve all heard the pitch: “Hybrid work is the future.” But dig beneath the slogans and you’ll find wildly different realities—some thriving, others quietly imploding. In this episode, I sit down with Lynette Caruso, a PhD candidate at Australian National University, to unpack her field research across public and private sectors on what makes hybrid work succeed—or fail.

From the power of casual coffee chats to the pitfalls of hot desking, Lynette shows how flexible policies often collapse under rigid cultures. If you’ve ever wondered why your “flexible” workplace feels anything but, or why your team can’t seem to find its rhythm under hybrid rules, this conversation will help you cut through the noise.

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How Nextdoor’s Head of People is Protecting Workplace Mental Health While Adopting AI

How Nextdoor’s Head of People is Protecting Workplace Mental Health While Adopting AI

We’ve spent the last few years talking about mental health at work like it’s always a crisis—trauma, burnout, damage done. Bryan Power, Head of People at Nextdoor, thinks that framing actually makes the conversation harder. Instead, what if we positioned mental health as something everyone can access, not just people in distress? In this episode, we cut through the jargon and look at resilience, performance, and the everyday practices that actually help people do their best work.

Bryan and I also dig into the cultural pendulum swing from “bring your whole self to work” to “respect my boundaries,” the generational divides shaping expectations around connection, and how AI is reshaping not just jobs, but how leaders set boundaries, communicate, and build culture. Spoiler: the hot takes on AI are everywhere, but the real opportunity isn’t doing more with less—it’s doing more with the same.

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AI Risks in HR: Bias, Leadership Buy-In, and Employee Trust

AI Risks in HR: Bias, Leadership Buy-In, and Employee Trust

What happens when an executive quietly outsources performance reviews to ChatGPT? Or when your C-suite is loudly preaching about AI adoption while refusing to touch the tools themselves? In this episode, I sit down with Talk HR to Me columnist and Head of People at Quantum Metric, Alana Fallis, to tackle real listener questions in a live advice-column format.

We dig into the messy realities of AI in the workplace—from misplaced trust in automated reviews, to the awkward theater of “innovation” at the executive level, to the human side of employee fears around automation. And yes, we even unpack the HR dilemma of whether an employee in recovery should be allowed to stock the breakroom fridge with non-alcoholic beer.

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From Layoffs to Loyalty: Building Alumni Networks That Work

From Layoffs to Loyalty: Building Alumni Networks That Work

Layoffs are often treated like a dirty secret—a rushed, impersonal process designed to move people out the door with as little friction as possible. But the way you offboard employees says just as much about your company culture as the way you welcome them in. In this episode, I sit down with Jena Dunay, founder of Recruit the Employer and host of Culture Uncovered, to talk about how organizations can approach layoffs, exits, and alumni relations with dignity—and why that matters more than ever.

We dig into the bad habits that keep companies scrambling at the eleventh hour, the power of communication over cash, and why alumni networks and boomerang employees should be a core part of your talent strategy. Offboarding isn’t just the end of the employee lifecycle—it’s the part that makes the circle whole.

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Beyond Corporate Astrology: The Science and Strategy of Personality Assessments in Hiring

Beyond Corporate Astrology: The Science and Strategy of Personality Assessments in Hiring

If you’ve ever sat through a personality test during hiring and thought, “This feels a bit like corporate astrology”—you’re not wrong. In this episode, I talk with Jason Hreha, Founder & CEO of Persona, about why so many workplace assessments are built on outdated theories and questionable science, and how to separate the gimmicks from the tools that actually help you hire better. We dig into what reliability and predictive validity really mean, why they’re non-negotiables for any credible test, and where most HR teams go wrong in applying behavioral science to talent decisions.

Jason also shares his work on a new leadership-focused assessment that aims to measure two very different—but equally valuable—leadership archetypes: transformational and operational. From structuring interviews to making personality data a meaningful (but not overblown) part of your hiring process, this conversation is a crash course in evidence-based talent evaluation.

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Redefining Engagement in a Post-Trust Era

Redefining Engagement in a Post-Trust Era

The word “engagement” gets thrown around a lot—but what does it really mean in today’s workplace? In this candid, first-half conversation with Kamaria Scott, industrial-organizational psychologist and founder of Enetic, we take a hard look at how the definition of engagement has drifted, how the psychological contract between employees and employers has frayed, and why trust is harder to come by in the aftermath of layoffs, AI hype, and corporate euphemisms.

Kamaria brings the receipts. From the history of engagement theory to the real human consequences of gig work and bad layoffs, she unpacks what it means to create work that actually matters—and why loyalty isn’t what it used to be. This episode sets the stage for a broader dialogue about how we redefine value, trust, and meaning in a world of accelerating automation and shrinking safety nets.

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Bio of The People Managing People Podcast

The People Managing People Podcast features guests with diverse backgrounds and aims to inspire people leaders, managers, and HR professionals. Covering a range of topics, including the future of work, employee engagement, retention, leadership development, workplace culture, and productivity, the podcast offers valuable insights for managing and leading teams effectively.

The podcast's guests include best-selling authors, culture innovators, and thought leaders, who share their expertise and experiences on how to create a thriving workplace culture. By exploring these topics in-depth, listeners can gain practical strategies for building amazing workplaces.

With a focus on how to lead and build great workplaces, the People Managing People Podcast offers a wealth of knowledge for professionals seeking to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices in workplace management. By listening to the podcast, professionals in people management can learn from the best in the business and take their leadership skills to the next level.

Influence of The People Managing People Podcast

81 Podcast episodes

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