Steve 0:09 The HR Happy Hour Network is proudly sponsored by Workhuman. The workplace is changing fast—and the leaders who understand what's coming will have the advantage. Workhuman's annual Trends Webinar returns January 29th with research-backed insights on the hottest trends shaping 2026. Discover how top organizations are navigating AI, psychological safety, performance, and equity to outperform their competition—plus exclusive findings from McKinsey's Women in the Workplace 2026 report. Featuring an expert panel from McKinsey and Workhuman, you'll get the intelligence you need to lead with confidence this year. Join the Trends Webinar live January 29th at noon Eastern, or catch the replay on demand. Register for free @Workhuman.com. Steve 0:51 Welcome back to the At Work in America show. My name is Steve Boese. I'm with Trish Steed. Trish, what is happening? Trish 0:59 Good morning. What is not happening is the question, Steve, what is not. You know what, you want to know what I'm doing today? Steve 1:06 Very existential way to look at it, I don't know that's possible to answer. Trish 1:10 I'm going to go buy a new truck with my son. So he's flying into Denver. We are going to go buy him a new truck. And I sort of hate that. I hate that I have to go and like, negotiate and like, but I'm teaching him, right? I'm handing over the reins. So that's what's going on in my world, today. How about you? Steve 1:29 Not as much. I think we're recording this in sort of mid January, and it's, I think it's like the depressing day of the year was maybe yesterday, like, oh, right, based on it's a couple weeks after the holidays. It's just about time when people drop their New Year's resolutions. The weather is pretty grim in many parts of the country, so I don't know. I'm trying to I woke up today saying I'm going to be very cheerful all day. That's my goal. Trish 1:58 I like that as a goal! Steve 2:02 We have a great guest to help us out. She's smiling, she's fun. She's honestly, we had a good conversation before the show. I can't wait to welcome her to the show, and I will. She's Ashley Herd. she's a former head of HR, she's a podcast host and author. She's from Louisville, Kentucky, and really, we'll talk to you about her high school at length if you want to. Ashley, welcome to the show. How are you? Ashley Herd 2:25 I am great Steve, and good to see you. And Trish. And I'll give you my little secret to bring joy throughout the day, maybe not all throughout the day, but every day, every single day. The first two items on my to do list are Med and Cal. And med means meditate. And I actually don't meditate, but I read a page from this book, Journey to the heart by Melody Beattie. And it's, it's a good way. It's a, you know, it's just one that's, it's 365, days a year. I'm not always specifically on the date, but I check that off on my list. And then Cal is calendar for my page a day calendar, which is the 1000 places to see before you you die. Hopefully you'll have many more years ahead of that. But I do those two things first, and they put me in a relatively good mood, and I check them off and feel accomplished every single day. Trish 3:11 I love those suggestions. When you said Med, I'm like Medicaid. What are we talking about? Ashley Herd 3:17 Depending on the day and the dosage? It is, yeah, it can be. Trish 3:22 I like meditate. Steve 3:24 Those are great tips. I've been doing the gratitude journal thing for a while now. It's on an app, and it just hangs you a couple times a day with prompts, which I dig. Trish 3:35 I love that. Have you heard of artists way? Ashley Herd 3:40 Oh yes, I have the book thought this way, and I've read half of a page of it, so I need to get back into it. Trish 3:46 Trish, so Steve, you might even like this. You just sort of like, I'm not good at doing it every single day, but several days a week. It's just like, every single thought in your head, just write it down. Doesn't matter. You're not worried about punctuation or whatever. It's just sometimes you need to get get things out before you can start your day fresh, right? Ashley Herd 4:03 And none of them are a cold plunge or getting up at 4am these are realistic life hacks that we're given here. Steve 4:12 That is crazy. Some of that stuff you see with these, like, especially on the men's side these, like, men's influencer deals like those people are insane. It's get up at 4am and, you know, make the protein shake and run seven miles. That's just that's not happening. Trish 4:29 I'd rather not. Ashley Herd 4:30 No, I'm, I think I'm, I'm good. I'll do I'll get up and get Harry, do my page a day calendar and feel accomplished in that way. Whatever works. Steve 4:40 Ashley, we had you here to talk about something really important and something we don't talk about enough, right? Which is what's happening in management, right? We know that managers are so critical to the employee experience, to employees mental health, to success of the organization, certainly, but we don't talk about them enough. We don't. Talk about their own mental health and their own burnout and strategies to help managers. So many organizations just throw managers into the role of manager with very little prep, very little training, in little bit of a sink or swim kind of attitude. You wrote a whole book about it. It's called the manager method, practical strategies to lead with purpose and confidence. Maybe we'll start there. Ashley, what made you decide, hey, I want to talk about managers, and management, maybe in a way that's a little bit different from what you'd seen before. Ashley Herd 5:31 So I have what I call my very unique career quilt, which other people may have, when you have the relatives over the holidays, over the last few months, or you come across them and they say, What are you doing with your life? What are you doing now? You know this, the the chutes and ladders look of a career that many people, many people have, especially now, more commonly than in years past, in my career quilt, some of what I did is three big chapters I did cold calling sales for a couple years out of college, consulting sales and so I had a liberal arts education. I learned to thicken my skin and learned what the pressures are in a sales environment and how, yes, we seem to have a lot of fun and have cash machines and rewards. I also know the pressure of picking up the phone and trying to drive the sale. So I saw that in a way that a lot of lawyers and HR practitioners may not have experienced until they go into HR consulting work, and then you're kind of doing that. But I was also a lawyer, so I was employment lawyer, so in the law firm world, I had cases all over the country. I then went in house, and one of the things I saw is, well, yes, there were some situations that tend to get resolved really quickly where managers absolutely did things that they should not, including embarrassing their leaders. Often it was this disconnect. It was really at the manager level. And I would have conversations time and again across every single type of industry, of, well, I didn't give this feedback because it was mean. Like, frequently performance reviews like, Oh, someone gets terminated from employment. We look back and even just a month or two before someone got a great performance review, now then they're getting terminated from employment. Oh, well, I didn't want to be mean the kind of common thread that people don't know how to have a conversation. And then, when I moved into HR, which I really liked, I did kind of the opposite, or not opposite, but an unusual path of legal to HR is to proactively have conversations. As legal, I often felt like a situational janitor, to clean up messes, to do it perfectly, to rewrite history; in HR I do think you can feel that way as well, but what I saw is so many people are put in exactly this role, like the way you said it, Steve is and this happens across organizations. You have someone great leadership says we're going to make them a manager. They're going to teach everybody else how to do it. Win, win, win, win, win. And then tale as old as time, that person doesn't necessarily feel like they have a choice, feels like they need to. They step into the role, and all of a sudden, not only are they trying to coach people, like, I don't know how to teach someone to do something that feels natural to me. Or wait, I'm supposed to teach all of these people who I've always been better at now. I'm supposed to teach them how to do their jobs, or I don't really have the patience for that and deal with things like time off, accommodations like, Oh, this is it can be really hard, and you can take your high performer, drive them out of the organization, and save for the managers. And I saw this because my career quilt had me working with organizations, or I worked in organizations from from KFC to McKinsey Consulting Firm, and I'd taken on a role to lead North American HR for McKinsey when I kind of did this inventory of my life, which is part of the conversation, if you've ever had it among colleagues, that's what would you be doing if you weren't working here? Type. And I really thought about how, you know, there were, there's some amazing leaders there. Everyone is brilliant, but there were some amazing leaders, but there were other leaders that I'm like, Oh, they could learn lessons from a restaurant manager at KFC, and I just saw time and again, there's so many challenges. And so, to your point, managers have such an impact on the work. I've often worked with Lean teams or and so I've had a lot of exposure to managers, and so I've seen they can have such an outsized impact on all aspects of the work, but also the lives of their team members and even themselves. Trish 9:08 I'm so glad that you decided to take this sort of stab at it, because when I was just sort of prepping for the show and thinking about even my own managers, it's amazing how your managers don't just even affect you while you're still in that workplace. It's for your lifetime, right? It's over your entire life, where both good and bad, right? If we've had great managers, we tend to remember emulate them, but yeah, those bad ones that really negatively impacted us, it's really hard to put that down. So to kind of, I was sort of thinking about myself back in that role where I had a really, you know, negative manager, and it's, it's painful, like it's almost physically painful, I think, for employees to feel like they don't have a voice. There's no one that you can tell. They don't just run to HR, right and tell. So, as you've worked in all of these different environments, what have you seen that managers who are successful are doing to maybe give their employees a voice in that impact? Ashley Herd 10:08 The biggest one I've seen, which, in good news, does not cost additional budget and really doesn't take much time, but it's all about communication, and in the book, I frame it out as a three step framework of pause, consider, act with this aspect, the biggest one being to pause. Because in communicate, people are, you know, hear that and think, great, what am I supposed to be saying? And that's, that's why I wrote the book. Is because, as I did my personal inventory, which I used the ikigai exercise, if you've ever heard of it, it's like, ikigai, you know, four questions, what are you good at? What do you like doing? What people need? What will they pay for? You know, summarized. And I thought, you know, what I've really helped with is help people have, have hard conversations. And that can be all sorts of things. For some people, that's literally onboarding, things that they're not thinking about the importance of onboarding, but often it is performance. And so what I've seen from communication is people to pause and I say, consider, because some managers, and those bad managers that we may think of a lot of it is like as I think about my frustrations of that, or I've heard frustrations from others, it's I never had a chance to hear my side of the story. They were they were hell bent against me. They just seemed to have it out for me. I never knew if they were throwing me under the bus. Everything. A lot of that stems from from communication. And so for those managers that pause to think about in a situation, okay, what do I not know? And then also, how do I communicate something I'm hearing from my bosses in a way that my team members like, not over communicating, so just telling them things they can't control, but really pausing to think thoughtfully about what information do people need, and what do I need to hear, and even further, kind of what's, what's the end goal, and what are ways we can back into that? Because most people managers, if you were to say, like, let's say you have a employee that's having performance issues, many, many, many managers will say, okay, HR, we need the termination paperwork. I need you to figure how to out how to exit them. You have the conversation, hand it off, but then you think, Okay, well, tell me what the hiring process is going to be like. What's that person going to say about you to the people in their life? What are they going to go on Glassdoor and say about you? Okay, well, and so some of this is just pausing to really have those conversations and communication and think about the person on the other side as a very real human being that at the end of the day, this might not be the right role or organization for them, but it really matters how we get there, both for this situation, but overall for your leadership. Trish 12:35 Yeah, having that, honestly, I think, is the real key, too, to that communication, right? Not being afraid to actually just say very plainly what they could be doing that would improve their performance. But also, if they're not that fit, having it very upfront. I think in when I worked in public accounting, for example, we had an internal outplacement person. I don't know if you had that at McKinsey, but yeah, you know, you could very, you could have these very complex, difficult conversations without tearing the person to shreds, right? Without sort of taking the wind out of their sails, because they might be a very good performer for one of your clients or just for another company, right? So it was a little bit of having. It was almost always HR too. It was rarely the partners that wanted to do it. But I will say this, the partners that could have those conversations over time, now that I've looked back and I've been gone since 2007 like they are the partners that are the most successful, right, and who are still there in those roles too. So I think having that pause not only helps the employee, but it helps the leader over time, right? Because you're not just there to get frustrated and the fix is the firing, right? There are so many other ways to fix things or aid someone in sort of adjusting their performance themselves, really, with that pause, so great examples, absolutely. Ashley Herd 14:02 Steve, I heard the I heard the Chuckle of recognition. I would say is that is there is that familiar to you as well? Steve 14:08 Yeah for sure. I think, I think a big what I was thinking about as you were talking Ashley, and a little bit when I was prepping for today, too, is the importance of empathy, and it's woven throughout some of the recommendations in the book, in even in the pause, consider act framework, right? Like thinking about an issue or a set of circumstances from different points of view, which is essentially empathy, right? Like, that's the definition of it, and, and, but walking that fine line, which I think is another really key here between being overly empathetic, if that's the right way to phrase it, and also keeping folks accountable right for what they're what they're there to do, what they need to do, what you've they've committed to do, if you've had those conversations about managing expectations. But stepping back for a second, I think that's another challenge with management, right? Because I don't think we often equip managers, and some people are naturally empathetic. Others have to figure it out or be coached. I'd love for you to comment a little bit about that and how you either would work with managers, or you advise folks are in management to approach taking that empathetic view towards individuals that that would be on your team, and then managing that balance. Ashley Herd 15:33 I love the question. I do think it's really important even to think about the words that people use, and I promise I'm not a, you know, super softy that's going to make people, you know, pause, and all of a sudden, every conversation you have, people are like, what is happening with this person who's never speaking back to me. But one is the word empathy. In the book, I talk about how I was working with an organization that had brought me on to do a presentation called empathy in action, and that's what we were calling it. That's what structured everything about and shortly before the presentation, or, you know, as we were announcing it was going to happen, that team actually said, I think we should call it something else. Okay, you know, you pegged me, so you tell me, you know, whatever we want to call it, no, but I was gonna tell me more. And what they said was so spot on, because they said so many people that need to hear this conversation are not going to attend, even if we make it mandatory, they're either, if they're there, they're not going to be listening, because they hear empathy and action and they think this is soft. We got results, you know, it's a total disconnect, and so we ended up changing it. But I think it was called, like, how to work with people who are different from you, or, you know, like more real talk. But some of that really is meeting people where where they are. And so a gap I do see leaders fall into sometimes, and it depends on your experience. Like, you know, I say one of the benefits, candidly, I feel like I've had, especially as I sat in boardrooms, is, you know, when I grew up, my parents didn't graduate college till they were 37 they had me young, and so I saw them at every rung of the corporate ladder. Money was a very, very real concern in our household, and so I've always appreciated things I've I worked at Subway and Kmart. Was actually an outside lawyer for Kmart eventually one day, which was full circle for my days as an electronics associate. But, but I do feel like something that I benefited from was having a very real sense of the challenges of the people doing the work and in the realities and the things, and also the things that really matter to them. Like the people that you tell someone, good job. You tell them specifically you in the moment, may think as a leader, like, Okay, I checked the box that person may go, they're telling their family about that. They're telling their friends about that. It is such a source of pride, especially for again, I said people doing the work who don't always hear it. And so as a leader, one thing is to think about, regardless of your personal experience, is, how can you get a sense of the realities of the work in the way that work plays into lives of the of all of all of the people in your organization. I think about this as a very real example of I was working as a lawyer for a publicly traded company, and I was pregnant with my second child. We did not have paid parental parental leave, aside from, you know, the mishmash of PTO, you know, FMLA, unpaid formula, all the things right, but a colleague of mine who have had three kids at this company, she was talking to an executive, and somehow it came up, and somehow he had the question, and he was like, Wait. He's like, we don't have, we don't have maternity leave or parental just like, not paid. He's like, Wait, it's not paid. Literally, just didn't realize that, and actually think there's this is not that unique. I've heard that unique. I've heard this now time and again. And so when they end up instituting this paid leave, literally, it took effect two weeks before I had my second child. And so I was extremely grateful that this happened and for that reason, you know, when I when I came back, it changed the way I worked. It changed. We got public press about it. But whether it's things like that that are more tangible benefit, or even just the day to day, things that make your teams work harder, things that they really like doing, having a sense of that as a leader and having those real conversations, and to Trish's point, it's honest conversations. I just think when you show that you're not just willing you want to sit down and hear their thoughts. You're not going to promise the world, but you will take what they have to say under consideration and see what you can do. Those are the workplaces that those real talk conversations can often translate into the retention, engagement, performance, all of that, that, that you know the boards of directors are looking at. Trish 19:40 Are you seeing that since we've had more people working at home, not just because of the pandemic, but just that's kind of continuing our hybrid, how do you see that's impacting some of these things you're talking about? I know that. You know we're saying we really want to help managers have all of that communication and trust and that. Help people have pride in their work. Obviously, so important is it? Is it easier now that we're maybe having more remote conversations? Or do you feel like that we're taking a hit there too to a problem that's maybe already existed? Ashley Herd 20:15 I do think it can take a hit because, like, one topic, for example, is like as a manager, saying everyone's screens are off on the call, no one's no one's showing up on the screens. And they take that so personally. You know, no one wants to be here, no one's engaged. And sometimes that's true, and sometimes it's thought, okay, rethink the meeting. Is this one? Is this meeting necessary? I do think it's important for teams to get together, but sometimes people don't have a concept. The people on the receiving end of that, the people that the people that are choosing to show up and have their camera off. Sometimes you may be in that situation where someone's like, I'm in a studio apartment and I don't want to show my bed. I do think oftentime it's people that have some whether it's meeting fatigue or, you know, they just they don't feel like it, or they don't understand why it'd be necessary. They may not realize until they have a speaking part in a meeting, and know what it feels like to show up and be on the speaker side of that, trying to, trying to generate that. And so one of the things I talk about is towards the end of the book. So those getting in skipping ahead, I do have some real examples of, like, many real examples of bringing this to life. And one of them is, if no one turns their camera on in a meeting, and there's all sorts of approaches like, I've seen I've seen me, I've seen managers not say anything about it. I've seen managers get incredibly frustrated about it. But I do think having this to pause and say, okay, these people may not have a something. They may not care. They just think about this as attending a meeting where you as a, even if you're a manager, you may have like, you may still get nervous talking in front of others. But if you have those conversations, say, Look, just flat out, this is what it feels like to show up and no one's there. And I get it. Some people have off days. There's days I don't want to have my camera on, but how that feels. And I'm, you know, trying to communicate in some give and take, but have more real conversations, not not punitive, and even say, okay, but if we're to then, and totally to be candid. If we're going to have senior VP join the call and everyone's cameras are off, it's going to be much different conversations with me and with the team members. And so just knowing sometimes it's important to do it, because it's not going to be great for your career if you don't have it. But just from a human lens, we're here, and what I don't want is everybody have their cameras off and all of a sudden people see that, like, what we should all be back in the office then so we can see face to face, because I don't think that's that's necessary, but so painting sometimes that picture and being real about it again, sometimes it's just building in that understanding of that that you have to as a manager more than you might sometimes like to. Trish 22:36 Yeah, I find that vulnerability, or you're sort of referring to, is really refreshing. And teams appreciate that as well, right? Because they feel, I think, closer to you as a leader, if you're showing I'm just a person. I remember having a partner who was, he must have been in his 40s at the time, and I was in my 20s, and, you know, things were just kind of imploding in his personal life, and he it was showing up in his work. And so when I went to speak with him about it, and he said, You know, I'm just a guy. Know, I'm just a guy like that has stuck with me. You need to think of your leaders that it's just a guy, it's just a girl, right? They're just trying to do the best they can, but you as the employer, also just a guy, just a girl, right? We're all trying to do we don't show up trying to do a bad job at work, right? Just so many if you're vulnerable, I think it just benefits you by sharing that, right? Ashley Herd 23:24 Yeah, I love the way you put that, and I think it's that's just again, that's a great that'll stick with me now. Steve 23:30 Yeah, I think it's important. I think that's a good you're making a good point, leading me to something else I wanted to talk to Ashley about, which is, we are all just people at work, whether you're an individual contributor, a manager, an executive partner, as you said, but we're all impacted by stress over work. At times, poor work life balance, burnout. We've talked about it. Trish a lot. We wrote about it for our 2026 report, burnout and stress being a major factor in workplaces. Again, this year, Ashley talks about it in the book too, some, but just what I'm concerned about it too. I'm really worried about it, but I think particularly, and I think you make a really good point of pulling this out, Ashley, what managers burning out, that impact it has both on themselves, but also on their teams. I'd love for you to talk about that a little bit, and then maybe, what are some some recommendations, or just some pieces of advice we can give folks who are maybe swimming in it already, like two, three weeks into the new year and struggling. Ashley Herd 24:36 I do think we're definitely seeing that. I see an end. You see the data constantly talks about, you know, managers that that are either burning out in role. I mean, quiet quitting was the term a few years ago. I don't think people are quiet anymore. I think it's people are and if they're not talking internally, they're talking externally to friends, family, they're going on on Reddit. I mean, I see, I'm part of a lot of these. Maybe. You all are as well these like HR message boards and things like that. And it's oftentimes anonymous people, you just read it, and people say, Oh, thank you for capturing what I'm saying in HR and management. Because you do feel like you're trying to support these business results. You have these team members that are relying on you, sometimes half the team that you had six months ago, and you have no idea what you're doing. And so two things, one is, I think, is as a manager for your team, this idea of burnout, sometimes managers hear burnout, and very similarly to the word empathy, they hear that and roll their eyes and think, nobody can take pressure. And so I do think recognizing that now we are talking more about these things than we did, certainly, you know, decades or even years ago. But there, it is important to figure out with your team, like, are they, are they just seeing some stress? Are they really at the point? I do think we're seeing more people that are just really, you know, whether their work or their life, they're really at the at their end. And so I think it's important to have conversations. And we talked about about this a bit before we started recording. But, you know, you you get up in the morning, and again, as a manager, sometimes you're dealing with political things, but even not, you look at the news. And you just, you look at the news, or you look at social media. And no matter what it is, it could say, you know, all Trish, Steve and Ashley are going to get together and talk about tips to have a great day. Comments, oh, campus, my day canvas. Should it should have had two men and two men and a woman. You know that? You know people just bring it like it's there's so much stress. And so one thing that I think could be really helpful as a manager to do is talk to your teams about a couple things. One is, what's within your control and what's not within your control. And you're not a therapist. You know, ideally at your organization, you do have resources within your your benefits, EAP, depending on where you are, what you offer. But while you're not a therapist is I can think back to some conversations I've had with managers that are really along those lines, like I get that things are stressful, but thinking about sometimes it's thinking about those things that you can't control, and just knowing I can't control this, and so in a way, how can I let this not affect my mindset right now? And it's important to still be active and think about what's important to you, but the stress to me, I find so much of just seeing the stress of other people and saying whether it's taking a break from that and thinking about the things that you can control. You're not going to solve these problems, but you can be the one that shows up to the meeting, and you are, you're, you're you're cheery. We just came off this, you know, very sad day. You have it. You have you look, you can change someone's whole day with the way that you bring the energy to them. And think about the things that you impact, the note that you send someone, the way you respond, if, if someone's harsh at you the way you think about in this situation, or am I going to be harsher than back because I could, and sometimes you will be very well deserved to be. But I'm going to take a moment, and I'm going to say, let's pick up the phone and have a conversation and say, I feel like you're going through it. I'm going through it as well, but especially if it's internally, we are on the same team, and I'd love to find to find some common ground here, and sometimes that can be productive. And so I think, as a manager, helping your team really think about that, what you can control, what you can't, you control. But then as a manager yourself, ideally, having these conversations with your own leader. And I know people you have to fill the container that you're given. Some people can have that some people some people can't, but often you can find your people, especially among those manager ranks, what I do find is people, when you're a manager, you feel like you need to have the answers. You feel like you have so much going on that it's a lot of like within an organization, parallel play, for those that have seen like toddlers play, or those that have team meetings, that feels like it's like a lot of one on ones kind of right tacked on next to each other, but but get people talking to each other, and find other managers and say, This is how I'm feeling. How do you manage with this? These are things I found helpful, and really have these conversations. A lot of what I do with with with like my work and manager training is to help HR have, you know, have have access to our leadership development, but also run cohorts in the one of the biggest benefits that HR leaders have said is it was even just offering these and having people that knew each other but hadn't had these kind of conversations or didn't know each other. Again, going back to what I said towards the beginning, is communication and that sometimes it's knowing for yourself. And yes, this, this matters. This is but this, this idea of what I can control and what I can't control, you can have an impact. Like even when you're stressed, even if it's talking to your team and having those conversations, you can flip their mindsets around. Oftentimes, it can also benefit yourself as well. And so I just think really, realistically, doing what you can to focus on the things that you can do productively can help water down some of that noise that we often see the second that we wake up. Steve 29:43 I think that's a great point, Ashley. I mean, you come in, you know, to work, if it's you're going to a physical workplace or not, or virtual, but and say, Yeah, this is really bad right now. But listen, we can't do anything about that, right? We can. Let's work on the things we. On control. Let's talk about the things we have direct influence over. Let's talk about supporting each other in the ways we have, you know, power to do that. And I think that's huge. It's I think most people realize that, like, most people realize, like, you know, if you take that time to communicate that, Hey, okay, I can't fix all these other things, right? Maybe, maybe the organization's going through some downsizing or something. Well, that's out of your control, right? Especially a frontline manager has very little control over those kinds of situations typically, right? Say, Okay, well, what can we control? How can we show up together here and make the best of what we've got here and show up for each other? Think that's a huge thing, and it's that's not easy to do. And I would, probably would have said, like, even for myself 20 years ago, I probably wouldn't have been capable of doing it. I think I'm smarter now, and I've hopefully developed something allegedly, but I think it's great. I think it's great to have to have the conversation, right and and one other thing you said, Ashley, and I'll shut up, is that pressure for a manager to have all the answers or the solutions. I think it's significant, right? I feel like a lot of the situations I was in in my when I was, you know, working for big corporations, right, we were always looking to the manager to solve our problems, always, always, always. And I feel about this one person in particular, I'm thinking, I won't say his name, it was, it was a male but like, oh my gosh, we put this guy under so much pressure, because it was a lot of nonsense coming down on him, raining down on him, right from the dysfunction around him. And we but us, we weren't helping him one bit. We kept going to him, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? Right? And I feel bad for him. Sorry out there. Ashley Herd 31:44 Well, I think it's, I think that's such a good point, because I think one thing that's really important, really, really important, exactly what you touched on is it can feel hard like, you know, I'll often say, as a manager, it's great when people bring questions and challenges to you, because that means you are opening up. I also know so many times you are so frustrated. How HR professionals feel like this as well, when, right now it's, it's January, it's w2 season in the US, and so then you can just the number of emails you know, you have. But so the biggest role, I think, a I'd say, like, you know, Frontline, so first line to mid level manager can have is really to be that conduit. And so thinking, as people bring questions, you want to, what are things I can do to help to have those off. I know what it's like to get a million questions about W twos. So I put out, you know, proactive communications. Sometimes I would make them funny. Have a, have a, you know, a picture that, again, trying to build, build some of that. And people still don't always read your emails. Got that but, but help to cut down on things, but to think you're the one of the best things I think you do is talk to your team to say, here's how it can be helpful to bring frustrations to me or questions to me, and not just me, not just me personally, but your whole career. Because people don't often think that they like when you say you feel bad about pressure. Sometimes it's because, I think the way we bring questions is it's, it's, it's, it's venting, and it's often well deserved, but so as a manager is thinking about, okay, when you see those frustrations, it's really important you know about them. It's also really important to do something about them and tell your team what you're doing. And so the flip of that is to your leader above, rather than being like the people to you that are just coming to you and, you know, griping, and you almost dread the conversation, thinking to be what's a way I can have this conversation productively with more senior leadership to get something done. So whether it's saying, rather than, you know, my team's half of what it was, what do you expect me to do? Okay, I team, my team's half of what it will have, what it was, we get it, and we all, we all want to have jobs, and we want to be able to rehire people that worked for us. Here are our priorities. What should we focus on? What should we not to make sure that we're getting the work that really needs to get done well? And here's my ideas. Again, people tend to like to edit more than right from scratch, so you productively bringing those conversations. I do think, as a manager, can be helpful, and then talking to your team about them, because that's the step that sometimes gets mixed your team does this. You're like, I'm on it, and then you are on it, hopefully, but telling your team what you're doing to be on it. Trish 34:09 You know, I would also add to that, Ashley, because I think you're right. You have, you have to take that pause before you're going up the chain even further, right? I've also found that if you push that back to those team members from the start, and you tell them, always come to me with you can come with a gripe, come with a solution. I may not go with it, but at least we're then in a dialog. So I think then teams feel like they're more heard, even if they don't get the exact outcome they're desiring for, whatever the gripe is, and it's just reminding them constantly, we are a team. We're all trying to get the same goal right accomplished. We're here to work together, and I've found too not assuming that you as the leader have to have all the right answers all the time, rely on those team members. They're going to have expertise. They may not have the years of experience, but they'll have expertise you wouldn't have. Never achieved on your own, right? So it is truly setting the tone for them to feel that comfort, to come with a solution. Now I probably, as a younger, a younger manager, doing that was a little harsh. I'd be like, do not come in my office if you don't have a one page executive summary of what you want me to do. Ashley Herd 35:19 You know, well, you were in public accounting. So that was, that was, you know, the idea, you know, you needed those. Trish 35:24 It works there. But like, once I got out of public accounting, into, like, you know, a children's hospital that didn't fly as much. So we would say things like, my experience here would be even better if we did these things, even better if, if we tried those things, right? So, yes, you have to read the industry you're in too. Steve 35:44 Yeah, and maybe that's a conversation for another day, but the cultural context in which you're operating in does impact some of this stuff. You mentioned McKinsey. Actually, you worked there for a time. I consulted at McKinsey. They were a client of mine for a pretty long time as well. And then I went from that, that gig, that a couple years of consulting at McKinsey in New York City, to working at a college. So talk about, like, the difference in how decisions were made and how things ran between a place like McKinsey and a college where everything was a very large meeting with lots of people and coalition building and, you know, things like that. I couldn't believe it. The first couple months I was there, or maybe six months even, I think, how does anything ever get done here? Because we can't ever make a decision, but, but it's important to understand that as well, but maybe we can talk about that another time. Ashley, I think this was really a fun conversation, and I think not only an important one at the beginning of the year, but a very relevant one for how we're operating right now, with leaner teams, more stress on people, managers under the cash, quite honestly, in a lot of places, having to deal with their own issues and trying to support people at the same time. So I think, I think it's a good conversation to have, and it's a great resource for folks as well. And I know, and I want you to maybe share not only a little bit about the book, but also you've got a lot of resources as well that you've made available for folks who want to learn more and sort of exercises they can take. I love maybe to have you mention that before, before we wrap. Ashley Herd 37:24 Thank you. Thank you, Steve, thank you, Trish. I really like this conversation. So I wrote the book The Manager Method. My website is manager method.com. So you can, you can go there. But really, what I've tried to do is, what we have done is create a business that puts HR at the center of empowering managers. So everything HR needs to roll out a leadership development program. Have live cohorts. I say sometimes I love giving tips, but I won't be on sitting on the shoulder of the managers making those you will maybe not in HR. Maybe, you know we got to be HR proved, but, but, but to really break bring HR into those, but also make your life easy by having things ready done for you and having plenty of other resources, of tool kits and things like that. Like I do a monthly tool for organizations that includes one was like, how, like a two page tool for managers of when you're making a decision how to bring team members into it. So Trish, exactly like in talking points of how to do that and why it matters, to help people pause, consider and act. So you can find me most social media at manager method. I do a lot of role plays there and tips in on LinkedIn. I Ashley H, E, R, D, and I like to give some of the free tools there, there sometimes as well. And I appreciate so much your podcast and listening to both of you all, and it's been a great discussion. Steve 38:43 Thank you, Ashley. Trish 38:44 And I love the resources, because I'm someone always wanted to take those back to my teams and to my managers, right? I think also, for anyone listening, this is the time of year where, even if these problems or weight on your shoulder has been going on for a while, it's January, it's like a fresh start. We all feel like, Okay, we're ready to try something new. So I feel like it's a perfect time to get your your book, Ashley, because then they'll have a fresh start for the year and a new approach maybe. Ashley Herd 39:12 Thank you all very much. Steve 39:13 Awesome, great stuff. All right, Ashley, thanks again. Go to manager method com for plenty more. Find Ashley on social. Trish, good stuff. I love this great way to sort of kick off the year. This is our second or third show of the year. But I love how we're how we're getting going in 2026 we want to remind folks, Trish, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Go to hrhappyur.net, and find us on YouTube. Our YouTube's blowing up. Trish, out of out of control. Ashley Herd 39:38 Like and subscribe. Like and Subscribe, leave them and leave them a comment, and good luck with the truck purchase Trish. Steve 39:45 Thanks everybody for listening. We will see you next time on the HR Happy Hour Media Network. And bye for now. Transcribed by https://otter.ai