Name: Business Impact + People Performance: A CHRO’s Love Story
Uploaded: 2026-02-11T17:30:31.328Z
Duration: 1 h 1 min 32 s
Description: Business Impact + People Performance: A CHRO’s Love Story

Transcript for "Business Impact + People Performance: A CHRO’s Love Story": Okay. And I believe that we are live. So hello, everyone, and welcome. I am doctor Dashie Harps, a facilitation manager at LifeLabs, where I have the honor of leading a national team of leadership facilitators who equip managers around the world to communicate more clearly, lead more inclusively, and drive measurable behavior change at work. I'm so excited that you are here to listen to our panel discussion on how to optimize your business impact by leveraging, employee performance even better. Before we dive in, I'd like to know who is in the room with us today. So drop into the chat. Where are you all dialing in from? I already see that we have Bangladesh in the house. Huntsville, Alabama is here. Atlanta, I am in Atlanta, Georgia, so some of you are here, with me. Romania is in the house. Texas is here, and keep it coming, Chicago, Salt Lake City. Wonderful. And, also, let's just take a moment to honor your being here. In a world where everything is competing for your time and attention, where your to do list is longer than a CVS receipt. Okay? You chose to be here and spend this power hour investing in yourself. You chose to show up and sharpen your thinking. You chose to reflect. You chose to gather ideas that you can take back to your people and teams and organizations, and that really matters. So I want you to clap for yourself and go back to the chat and just type in go me or give yourself a star or the hand clap emoji and clap for yourself and celebrate yourself for being here. Yes. Go me. Whoop whoop. I love to see it, Shannon. You definitely deserve that acknowledgment. Now we have some really smart, talented professionals who are going to share their wisdom, insights, and knowledge with us on this topic today. So I'd like to share with you first a little bit about LifeLabs and who we are. We have this amazing opportunity to get in front of tens of thousands of of people every year and some of the most amazing organizations just like the ones that you all represent today. And we get to get in front of their people and teach them the human skills that matter most for bringing more peace in the workplace that drives engagement and performance so that your businesses can be successful. And so for our first panelist, I would love to introduce Stephanie Schuler, who is the chief people officer at LifeLabs. So Stephanie, would you kindly come off mute and say hello to the beautiful people here today? Good morning, beautiful people. I was scanning to see if anyone else was here from Columbia, South Carolina, or even just the Palmetto State. That is where I am calling in from, and I'm the Chief People Officer for LifeLabs Learning. I'm starting my third year with this amazing organization, I cannot wait to dive into this conversation. I'll turn it over to Andrea. Thank you so much. And next, yes, our next illustrious panelist, Andrea Lagan from BetterWorks. Andrea, would you also say hello to the people and also share a little bit about BetterWorks as well? I will. Hello. So many nice words. Illustrious. Oh my goodness. Don't get your hopes up too high. I'm Andrea Lagan. I am, I serve as our chief operating officer at Better Works, where I oversee both customer success and HR. I have been with Better Works for a little over six years. It has been an incredibly exciting time because I get the opportunity in my role to really see performance from both sides. You know, not only how organize organizations decide design their performance systems, but out also how those systems actually show up in execution and in their results. And a big part of my focus is what we call performance enablement, and that is really helping organizations moving beyond, the tactics of performance as, like, a method of documentation or evaluation and really use it as a way to connect daily work to measurable business impact. Know, in today's environment, leaders, want a whole lot more than just engagement scores or annual reviews. They want visibility. They want confidence that their priorities are clear, that manager conversations are reinforcing the right work, and that the performance signals, are helping them make faster and smarter decisions. And that slide dossier that you had up, is really how we think about our vision for performance enablement and what we are doing to help our customers, provide for their employees a very connected user experience. We take all of the performance capabilities that you see here in our product, and we give our customers the power to reinforce the right work, through the most important, critical performance signals and allow them to really make smarter and faster business decisions. So I'm really excited about the topic today, and really excited to work with LifeLabs. We're learning in this in this journey. So, appreciate being here. Yes. And we are excited to work with Better Works. And, Andrea, where are you dialing in from? Let's just see if anybody here is also in the same city as well as, you. yeah, I was looking. Did I I I didn't see anybody. Is anybody in the Boise, Idaho area? I'm actually in specifically Meridian, Idaho, but anybody here in Idaho with me? And, if so, drop it into the the the cities and states are still coming in, but, thank you for that warm introduction and also letting us know a little bit more about Better Works. As we get into the topic, let's just do a quick landscape and zoom out to see how you all are showing up today and why this topic is really important to you. So we have a poll that should appear on your screen in just a moment. And so what we'd like to know is on a scale of one to five, how confident are you in your organization's alignment between goals and priorities? Meaning that once your company sets an organizational strategy, you may call them OKRs, KPIs. You may have other acronyms or terms in your lexicon. But once the strategy is set, how much are people in alignment with that strategy and executing on a daily basis? So one is no alignment, and five is fully aligned. And the poll is anonymous. We don't necessarily know who said what, so feel free to answer honestly. We just wanna get a sense of what are some of the potential pain points or challenges that you might be experiencing around alignment as you show up today. Okay, just five more seconds. Okay, and I am myself not 100% sure. If I can see all of the responses, I am sure that there are a range, maybe some ones all the way up to fives, but that is why we are here today to give you some very practical, pieces of knowledge and skills and tools that you can take back to your organizations and apply immediately. So let's go ahead and talk about this alignment piece because here's where it gets really interesting. Research shows that only 14% of employees understand their company strategy. That's pretty jarring. And there was another study conducted by Gallup that found only 45 of employees selected strongly agree in terms of saying that they understand what is expected of them at work. So when I look at this research and these statistics, my interpretation is that the issue isn't that strategy doesn't exist. It's that somewhere between that fancy PowerPoint deck and the Tuesday afternoon one on one conversation, something gets lost. An organization rolls out a beautifully crafted strategic plan, clear priorities, strong metrics, executive buy in, and then three months later, employees are working super hard but not necessarily on the right things. So here is the first question I want to explore. And, Andrea, I will come over to you first. What do you think actually happens between the strategy deck and everyday conversations where alignment starts to quietly slip away from us? Yeah. Yeah. You know, the the alignment isn't, I would say, usually broken. It's it's partial. Right? Strategy exists. Every company has a strategy. They have goals. Goals exist. But it's the consistency that kinda breaks down in the middle layer that, you know, creates this what's what's viewed as a breakdown. And it it is really more like alignment isn't so much about clarity. It's about maintenance and maintaining the the work between managers and teams every week. Strategy gives the direction. But every week, managers and their teams, they face new requests. They have urgent work that's coming their way, shifting signals, you know, local pressures if you're in office. And if if you don't have a habit of revisiting your priorities on a regular basis through check ins or conversations or one on ones with your folks, you know, people are gonna default to what's loudest, not necessarily. what's most important. So I would say that it it really is about alignment, not necessarily failing because of confusion. It's really, I would say, more like drift. You know? That's right. That's right. Stephanie, how about you? I 100% agree, Andrea. I plus one, as we say at LifeLabs. What I would also add to that is I think we've gotta do a shift with how we view alignment at a lot of our organizations. And is alignment a consensus building moment, or is alignment about understanding and negotiating trade offs? And I think the trade off and shifting it more to the trade off is going to be helpful when we think about that breakdown, and like you said, what are people spending time on? If you're thinking about consensus building, you're structuring meetings structuring and meetings around how to get comfort from folks, how to get people to agree. You're actually taking likely responsibilities and DACES that you aligned on, and you're now distributing them unnecessarily. When you think about it more from a, excuse me, more from a trade and a negotiations type perspective, now you're really coming to the table. You're ensuring that you've got the right stakeholders that are involved, and your outcome is not comfort. Your outcome is action. So I think. that that will shift as well, like you said, in combination with the regular maintenance that can be helpful for making sure that you really do have true alignment throughout the process. Yeah. I yeah. To when you think about that sustainment of the alignment, it really is, like, building in an operating rhythm as opposed to just thinking about how you how alignment works. It's not just it can't stop at the planning part. Right? You've gotta have the rhythm within the operations to keep it alive. Yeah. And the you know, I think we also think about alignment as like you said, it's like this one moment, and so it's the explanation that matters in that one moment. And it's the preparation throughout. And it's how do we prepare people for what it's going to look like, what type of discretion they need to have, what type of judgment we want them to exercise throughout the strategy, like throughout the q one or the annual strategy. And those are things that we don't spend as much time in, like as Dossier was saying when we're looking at our wonderful decks. That's so true. right. You know, another reason I think alignment breaks down is that, you know, if leaders don't have shared visibility into progress, there are no signals that allow for quick decision making. And if the only signal is something that is viewed on a quarterly basis or even is just self reported, then, you know, there's no trust, and trust in being able to make the right business decisions. You gotta have the transparent signals visible to everyone, you know, running the business. You're right. I think folks are picking up what you two are putting down. There's comments coming in through the chat, some hand claps. They love it. Andrea, you mentioned that alignment can break down, as a part of habit building and a little bit of the stamina, which is incredibly important. And you talked about the reason why that could happen is our attention is often focused on the thing that is making the most noise or the thing that in the moment feels really urgent, like a fire that we have to put out. And it's that immediate gratification that sometimes, takes our attention because we want to check things off the to do list. We want to feel good like we're making progress where sometimes things like the the coaching and the feedback conversations are taking time to follow-up on progress and make the visibility, it doesn't always have that immediate gratification. So the next question I have is more of a mindset question that when we talk about these things, it kind of sounds like, oh, yeah. That makes sense. But then we don't do it. So the next question that I have for both of you is thinking about what's at stake here if we don't get serious about this and deliberately and intentionally start to build that habit and carve out the time to follow-up on the strategy that was talked about, to build alignment, to coach and give feedback. What is the impact or the consequences if we don't start to build that habit or the muscle? So, Andrea, I'll come back to you first on that. Yeah. You know, there's there's a lot of cost with misalignment of people. And, you know, what you end up with is a bunch of, like, misdirected effort. Right? You've got really smart people that are working very hard on work that may not necessarily move the business, and that that can show up as, you know, teams being very busy, but not necessarily moving key metrics or priorities changing, but the work isn't changing. And, you know, we're living in a very, I would say, efficiency driven environment these days. And the fact of the matter is wasted effort is very expensive. And, you know, we used to get frustrated and be you know, if we weren't aligned, we would get really frustrated. But now there's hard cost to misalignment, and there's incredible pressure on, you know, people ROI, if you will. When when the people line item on your p and l is the largest line item, leaders wanna have confidence that the investment in their people is gonna translate into enterprise value. And when there's misalignment, that's where where the risk really kinda shows itself. It's 100%. Absolutely. I think talking about the people investment is key because when we when I think about the cost, think about clutter. And where that clutter shows up, a lot of times, I've seen it show up in, like, these meetings and these syncs that we put on calendars, especially very recurring. And then you get more approvals. You get emails with more people added onto it. Right? Because, again, I I it'll go back to this theme of we're looking for consensus versus looking for, like, the actions that's moving us forward. And so I think that's now not the best use of our people resources and folks' times. But when you put alignment in front of it and alignment sync, then for whatever reason, people stop asking about agendas. It's like, oh, I know what alignment is, but really, I don't know that we do. Right? And so I think when we're looking at the cost of all of these extra or unnecessary meetings and sinks and strains on people's times, it really is time for us to get, I think, have a more discerning eye to some of those meetings, and why are they appearing, and why are they occurring? What might they be signaling? Are they signaling that there's unclear decision ownership or avoidance of ownership? Is it signaling fear of blame? Especially once you start getting a lot of people in the room who don't necessarily need to be there. Are you looking at excuse me. Are you having people that are attending just in case? Right? Like, too many CYA moments, like, built within in these process. And that's how I think the misalignment shows up. You sorry. I could go on all day about all day about the the meetings and the things and the memos and the emails that we get stuck with. And so I think that is just the biggest cost because it's dangerous because it shows up very planned, very disciplined, and with good intent. And you know what they say about the road to hell. Let's talk a little bit more about those meetings and syncs that you mentioned, Stephanie, because at LifeVox, we do have a course on meetings where we talk about the very real and palpable pain points of meetings that a lot of people purport feel like they are not a good use of time where there is not a lot of structure. So can you just, like, clarify or say a little bit more about the ongoing meetings and syncs, and what what does that indicate? So is is that saying that maybe the initial strategy meeting or rollout wasn't as effective, or is there some other indicator or canary in the coal mine situation that that should signal for us? I think maybe just a little bit of repeat. I think it depends on what's going on in the meetings. If you're litigating and relitigating the same decisions, then I think that there's a question there about clarity of the strategy. There could be a question there about competing resources priorities. It could also be an ownership, like who actually gets to make the decision and execute on it. Again, if the meetings are now same meetings, but now you just keep raising them up, so almost like approval layer type meetings, again, I think you've got their ownership indications, maybe even blame. When you're looking at meetings with a discerning eye, I would just start with a very simple question, which is if this did meeting did not happen, what risk actually would materialize? And if there's not a compelling answer to that question, I would challenge whether or not the meeting actually needs to take place. Yes, that's really good. Starting with questions, because one of the things that we advocate for in a lot of the sessions we teach is clear communication and curiosity. And curiosity starts with getting curious with ourselves first, or in training our brains to ask really thoughtful questions that help us find the right answers that lead to the the right or best solutions. So thank you both for that. If we if we come down a little bit from the enterprise level and think about managers. Managers are often the most critical and sometimes the most underleveraged asset in driving alignment, and they really are the bridge in organizations. They are the ones receiving strategy from the top. Sometimes they are still making sense of it themselves while simultaneously trying to help their teams understand it, believe in it, and get buy in. They are translating language. They are reinforcing priorities and trying to coach and support their teams. And they're doing all of this while managing their own projects and workloads while also trying to take care of the the people dynamics. So if we believe and understand that managers are central to making strategy real, Let's look at it from a few sides. And, Stephanie, I'll come to you first this time. Where do you think middle managers need more support when it comes to translating strategy and clear expectations? And what can organizations do better to leverage managers as the engine of strategic alignment? I know that was a very lofty question, but I trust you've got a lot of wisdom to share here. Okay. Can you repeat the question, please? I'm sorry. So, essentially, if I just keep it simple, first, where do managers need more support, and where can organizations' senior leaders leverage their managers even more to get buy in and better execution on strategic priorities. Mhmm. Okay. I think managers need more support on coaching and feedback conversations both with their team and with their leaders. I think that feedback is going to be a critical part when you're thinking about strategic plans and the execution as well. And so being able to both deliver and receive that are going to be really key for your managers. Again, I talked a little bit earlier about comfort. The most effective conversations are going to push us outside of that comfort zone. And also with coaching and feedback conversations, it's going to be really important to know what moment you are in in those conversations with employees or with your teams or sometimes with your supervisor. Right? Is this a conversation about a need that is not met? Is this a conversation where I just need support? Is this a conversation where I'm actively trying to problem solve as well? So I think it's something that definitely is a need for managers. And I think we talk a lot of to managers about the coaching conversations for others, But I think having the coaching for others that report to them, but I think it's also the coaching and feedback conversations for peers as well as for people that you may report to or that may be potentially higher up the chain than you are are equally as important, and I don't know that we invest as much time into those type of conversations for managers. And wow. I'm blanking on the second part of it again. It's with strategic plan and And how can organizations' senior leaders leverage managers even more or better when it comes to ensuring strategic alignment throughout the entire organization? I think it goes back to that preparedness. I think understanding and communicating clear scope of ownership, what are the nonnegotiables as it relates to priorities, because there are sometimes there are certain priorities where it does not matter what else gets added to your plate. You are responsible for that ongoing, and there are some that can be prioritized up and down. I also believe that when you're thinking about, excuse me, strategic execution in your leadership team, Accountability is going to be important. And the fourth piece is really questions. Like, I think we've gotta make sure that we're normalizing questions as it relates to strategic plan and implementation, and for those questions not to be viewed as a sign of weakness or a sign of performance, or even like to be viewed as not a good use of time, and how do you distinguish between when questions are moving things forward. In other words, they are clarifying a priority, they are clarifying ownership, they are outcome oriented versus questions that are, again, like, to the meetings, relitigating issues that have been resolved and might indicate something that is more of a performance type feedback feedback motion. Yes, so I'm hearing some of the psychological safety around people feeling comfortable to ask questions knowing that their questions are they don't have to feel shame or embarrassed because they want to know something further, but also this idea of discernment in the types of questions that people are asking is key. That was really good. Andrea, what are your thoughts on this? Yeah. You know, if you go back to the why is why does alignment break down, you know, even if the strategy is clear. And and I do think the the first slide you had up, around managers are the translation layer, that is exactly the right statement. Right? Strategy is abstract. Goals become directional. And managers have to be able to translate that into, with their employees, what matters this week, what does good progress look like, what are we willing to say no to, And doing that through consistent conversation, not just, like, cascading goals. Right? Good managers are constantly focused on connecting outcomes. They're connecting signals and the actions, and they're driving course correction. And that's how you coach your team, not necessarily micromanage them. Like, conversations. Good questions to think about asking having your managers and leaders ask, what does good progress look like in the next two to four weeks? Right? Where do you have discretion in your actions if you have discretion? What trade offs need to be made? And this is where through the work effort and the consistent check ins and the one on ones, you keep the alignment with you know, aligned with the the strategy and the execution happening with the strategy. Yes. Okay. Really good insights. I also wanna shout out Shannon who has taken the LifeLabs feedback course, so thank you for naming that in the chat, Shannon. And I actually have a a question for the group that I'm very curious about. We've talked a little bit about coaching and feedback. And when I teach those classes, I find that it's often the it's not the knowing that is necessarily issue or the gap, but it is the willingness and intentionality that you mentioned earlier, Andrea, about the habit and doing these things consistently. So for you all in the chat, I just dropped a a question there. I'd like to know, on a scale of one to 10, how would you generally assess the skill and will of your managers to engage in coaching and feedback conversations? So one would indicate not they're not really doing it. It rarely happens. And if it does, it's unproductive. And 10 means it happens regularly, and managers are really effective in how they execute coaching and feedback. So just drop a number in the chat so we can see where, you know, as you take a bird's eye view, generally, where your organization's people are landing. Okay, wonderful. Jesse had a 10. Yes, that's really good to hear. So I'm seeing anywhere from around three to 10 and then right in that that middle area. So what this tells me is we're not starting from zero, but we also may not be operating at mastery across the the board. And so the next question, the the follow on or deep inner question that I have for the two of you, as we think about this idea of skill and will, Right? That, again, when I teach these classes or when we are even in panels or or events like this, people are like, yeah. That makes sense. Got it. There's, you know, not a lot of resistance towards the things we are saying about best practices. It sometimes results in I don't want to. I'm nervous. I'm scared. There's the the courage of leadership. Right? Well, people like, if I coach, if I get feedback, will will my teams think I'm weird? I was once a peer on the same level, then I got a promotion and became the boss. So now if I start coaching and giving feedback, how is that gonna impact the relationship? Things that I hear all the time. So I'd just like the two of you, if you from your from your experiences, what do you notice about not just the skill set, but the willingness of managers to engage in these conversations and why it is so critical in the modern workplace? So, Stephanie, I'll come back to to you first. I think managers engaging in these conversations, the skill set that helps folks be really successful is being able to have a conclusive statement at the end of any type of coaching or feedback conversation. People should not walk away from the con your goal, again, talking about comfort, it's not that people walk away from a conversation feeling good. It is that they walk away from the conversation with clarity. And I think we're often where folks will struggle is defining that assessment and really naming what it is, that you met my expectations or you fell short and here is how, or not leaving things lingering in the, oh, just, you know, it's not that big a deal right now, or, you know, keep it up, like some of those things that we use to soften messages. So I really think having the conclusive conversations is a skill that's really important for managers. I think empathy comes in as well. I think also the emotional intelligence to know when you're in a moment that is more empathy forward versus a moment that might be more, I need to be useful in this moment and be providing solutions to my employer, to my team in this moment, and knowing that difference. Because sometimes you're going to come across sharper than you might otherwise depending on the moment because it's like, your need as a manager, you're constantly changing hats for what, like, purpose folks are coming to you for and relying relying on you. Andrea, how about you? Yeah. You know, when I think about good coaching conversations and what that looks like and addressing the skill and the will, I think, you know, there's the when you think about execution of strategy and helping managers drive that execution. So how are you structuring through the support of technology, through the support of the culture within the organization? You know, execution focused is how do you connect the goal, the current reality, the next best move? What are the right questions to ask? How are those questions structured in a way that help managers be great? Right? Is there a way that technology helps serve the skill development and enables the will? Right? Like, giving managers the tools to ask with respect to, like, execution focused orientation. What's the biggest risk? What signal would tell us that we are drifting from what the strategy is? What's the most important next step for us to get back in line with what the strategy is? And and that execution and the development of that skill and the honing of that will, those two things should reinforce each other. And and then the the feedback piece, I think, is really critical too because it takes a lot of muscle to build good feedback skills and how to deliver feedback. And that is also, I think, a great opportunity for, you know, the power of technology to drive such an important aspect of execution. And when you think about execution being a series of, you know, a bunch of small adjustments towards an outcome, feedback, I like to think of it as really the steering mechanism that gets you there. Because if you aren't giving people feedback, the only time they're gonna find out that they were off off track is when it's too late. And so, you know, the key is, like, enabling managers, and I think technology plays a huge role in this, is tying feedback to the most important priorities. Right? If if if x is a priority, this is the behavior, and this is the result that matters so that you're able to connect your feedback to impact, not necessarily subjective personality oriented things. Yes. Really, really good insights. And that is a great segue way as we talk about leveraging technology and emotional intelligence, it's a good segue into our next topic. But I will close out on saying this. Sometimes in workshops, I will make a joke when I say everybody wants to be the boss until it's time to be the boss. And it's like, yeah, when I was going after that promotion or I was going in you know, after that next step in my career, it sounded really nice to move up the ladder or to get that bump in the salary increase. But, oh, but now you're telling me I have to hold people accountable? Now you're telling me I have to drive, you know, strategic priorities? I have to coach. I have to give feedback. And the answer is absolutely. And one of the things in in my work that makes me clutch my pearls sometimes is when people say, oh, being a great leader is just about being a good person. And I'm like, no. Being a great leader happens on purpose, deliberately, intentionally, and it is a skill that we have to develop because good people make mistakes, good people annoy us, good people fail, good people make us angry. And so it's so much more than just personality, but there is some intentionality behind being a really strong manager that I'm very passionate about. And then Anna Anna Maria, what about feed forward? I will answer the question. I'm not exactly sure when you say what about feed forward, like, what what aspect, but I will say I love that you're thinking about feed forward because sometimes the best feedback we can give is being clear on the front end with expectations and priorities and getting aligned to prevent critical feedback conversations from having to take place, you know, at all. So I love this idea about feed forward and just being really strategic and thoughtful on the front end as much as we can within our locus of control. So as we segue into this idea of technology, we can't talk about performance alignment in 2026 without mentioning AI and tech enabled systems. Technology has made it easier than ever to set goals, track progress, surface insights, and, you know, generate feedback prompts. I use AI in my own workflow, but here's what I have also learned is that while technology can accelerate efficiency and it can organize information, It cannot replace judgment or discernment. It cannot replace trust, and it definitely cannot replace relational or human or emotional intelligence as you mentioned, Stephanie. So when we're talking about feedback and coaching and execution, that human layer really matters. So here's what I'm curious about, and, Andrea, I'm gonna come to you first this time, is where do you think technology strengthens performance alignment, And where do you think human leadership matters most? Mhmm. Mhmm. Well, I think, I mean, I love this this topic, and I think it's a really good question. You know, technology helps with visibility. It helps with signals. It makes goals transparent. It surfaces stalled progress. It allows for the visibility of patterns across teams. But where technology where it doesn't help necessarily is in making the trade off decisions. You have to have the information to do that. It doesn't coach judgment. It doesn't recalibrate context. It provides the signals, and the managers provide the interpretation, and they provide the direction for action. And and I think that technology is very, very powerful when it connects the people activity to the business outcomes. And this is what we talk about in the context of performance enablement. Right? It really helps leaders see patterns across teams, identify where you have stalled priorities, and understand where the human effort is generating value for the organization. Thank you so much. Stephanie, same question. Where do you think technology could strengthen performance alignment, and where does human impact matter more? I agree 100% with the areas that she outlined. And I think it's important because when you're talking about identifying the patterns and surfacing, like, what like, priorities and where things might not be going as planned, it's actually raising the issues the raising topics for the conversations that you may be avoiding and that you actually need to have. And I think that's so critical. And so it can serve, in that regard as a bit of a, I'm going to say, unbiased or maybe I'll say, less biased in some regard, because it's only based off of the information you put in there, a source of these are the things that I need to figure out how to grapple with. You still have to prioritize them yourself, and it's not going to give you the courage to actually execute and to actually deliver on those moments. And so I think that is where again, it definitely does not help with discernment. It does not help with the courage to actually have the conversations, but it can be this nagging voice in the back of your head or maybe like in the very front of your mind telling you that you do have actions that you need to decide on, prioritize, and determine what outcomes are next. Mhmm. K. Mhmm. Yeah. And I really think, you know, the technology, when used appropriately and used for, you know, the the the orientation towards outcomes is really what allows performance to be all about value creation and not HR administration. And this is the win for all of us in HR because it does help us align everything that happens within an organization to the outcomes of that organization. Plus one to both of those. Andrea, you mentioned the appropriate use of technology. So, for example, sometimes I might read an email and I will say, that was definitely AI generated. Other times, I will read an email and I'll think, you didn't even try to use AI to help you out a little bit. Right? So I am curious from your experiences, where do you what what does appropriate use mean, and where do you see people misusing AI or technology to support them in their work as leaders? So, Andrea, I'll come back to you first, for that. Yeah. Where I've seen it misused. I don't know that I've I have too many experiences with it being misused misused. And I think, you know, even, like, within our organization, we're very progressive in terms of, you know, encouraging everybody to innovate and experiment with AI tools and develop their own skill set. I don't know if y'all remember and you don't need to go back to the slide. But in the in the vision slide for Better Works, you know, AI is at the core of everything we do. Well, it's at, you know, kind of the foundation of everything we're doing. And, you know, the the, the solution that we deliver incorporates AI to help the humans be better. And the key is, like, the humans stay at the center of, you know, everything that's done. And like I said earlier, like, the technology, it can't make those trade off decisions. That's the job of the human in the role. It doesn't coach judgment, like you said earlier. Those are, important aspects that have to stay at the core of how we run our businesses, how we drive our people and develop our people, how we think about skills and augmenting skills across the organization. All of that, there's a lot of room for the power of AI, and there's just as much room for the power of the human to help drive better business outcomes. Yeah. Jennifer. I think, you know, AI, I've said this before, that it's your artificial intern, and your intern still requires management and supervision. And we sometimes forget that when it comes to AI, and that's where I would see the potential misuse. I think AI is great for summarizing, condensing large chunks of information. I think it's great for kind of getting, like, the version one of your idea out there. I think that's really strong for that. When you talk about, like, innovation experimentation, I think a lot of times people get caught and stuck on I I just don't know what, like, the first version should be. And it can help you at least get that out there and then have something to now build on. I think that when you forget, again, that it's your very, very, very smart in intern, that it is just, as Andrea said, like and when we were talking about earlier, it's looking at patterns, and it's surfacing, like, probabilities. And you've gotta be able to live within that in the gray because AI is offering in the black and the white. So that's where I think, when people gets, caught up, it's not fact checking AI. It's not thinking about what assumptions AI may be making. Like, what information maybe from your prompt did it not get? What might it be making up or hallucinating as well? So that's where I've seen some potential instances of of misuse with AI. Edit. Alright. So in our last fifteen minutes here, let's zoom out for just a moment. We've talked about manager behavior. We've talked about coaching and feedback. We've talked about technology. Now let's talk about what CHROs can do to actually shape alignment at scale. Because at the enterprise level, performance platforms are one of the biggest investments that organizations make. We get this fancy new system. We roll it out. We've got the nice dashboards, new workflows. There's a lot of energy at launch similar to what you told us in the very beginning of this, discussion, Andrea, but then it's the habit building and the maintenance. And so after things go live and folks log in, there's a lot of excitement, but then something shifts a little bit. And the new technology becomes flat, and behavior doesn't evolve with the technological changes we're making within organizations. So my question for you all before we go to Q and A from the audience is if CHROs could change just one thing about how managers set goals or improve performance conversations tomorrow, what would you recommend they start with? And, Stephanie, I'll come over to you first. Well, I'm gonna give two really quickly. One I just mentioned earlier, and that was having more conclusive conversations with your employees. I think that's really paramount. I think the other piece when you're thinking about strategy and planning, you know, when you've got an employee who's exited the organization, we tend to ask managers, like, hey. Would you work with this person again? Right? It's a exit interview type conversation that you have with the manager regarding an employee who's left the team. I think we need to have that as a standard when it comes to big projects and initiatives where folks are driving. Would you want to work with this driver again on this type of a project? And let's start surfacing some of that so that we can really develop people who we are going to essentially continue to, like, put in front of the wheel on future projects, but we never really go back and do a debrief moment on how well were they driving, the projects because we look more at the result versus how we actually got there. I love the notion of not just waiting until the exit interview to get data. When I worked in HR, one of my favorite things to implement were stay interviews for high performers, but I like the angle you are talking about as well where it's like an almost a retro or like these these intensive feedback loops to understand where we can develop in the moment and skill people up to build, you know, better teams and efficiency in our workplaces. Andrea, how about you? Yeah. I think and and I have the great opportunity to see this in real time. But, you know, CHROs, CPOs really have the opportunity to redefine performance, not so much as an evaluate backward looking evaluation process, but as the operating system that connects all of the daily work in an organization to the business value that that organization is driving. And, and I think moving, you know, performance away from what is typically or has, in the past, been more of a compliance or, you know, driven process, for documentation. But it is really about enterprise intelligence and generating real time signals that drive, you know, much higher confidence people decisions, if you will. Yeah. It's I I think at the end of the day, CHROs are taking advantage of this opportunity now to really connect human effort to measurable business value, and they're able to do that in real time. Let's look at some of the questions from the audience so we can get to the most salient ideas that are at the top of mind for you all. And as we scan the questions, we have another poll that we'd like to hear, get some more feedback from you. Would you like to hear, learn more from LifeLabs, Better Works, or both? Hopefully, it's that last button. The the both. You like to hear from both of us. So where can, LifeLabs help you skill up your people? We have a core series where we talk about strategic thinking, how to lead change, managing meetings mastery, going back to some of those pain points around meetings that Stephanie mentioned early on in the conversation. And where can Better Works support you in thinking about modern and effective performance evaluation systems? I wanna make sure I'm doing it justice, but, Andrea, would you like to mention anything else about the benefits and value of Better Works? Well, I think, you know, one of it kinda goes back to exactly what I was saying is, you know, the the landscape that we're living in right now is very much about efficiency and predictability and the ability to tie your people performance to your business outcomes is incredibly meaningful and incredibly important right now. And our solution allows for leaders across an organization to do that and provides the tools to enable the real time work and that operating system within the organization to run very efficiently and very effectively. And so we'd love to chat with you if you have an interest in exploring that more. Wonderful. So reach out to both of us. With Better Works, you will have a tool that you can implement to help your teams be more efficient. And with LifeLabs, we are going to teach our people we're going to lean into that courage and discernment to help people feel really good about the tools, the new tools, and how they use it to support their teams. So with that, let's look at some of the questions that you all have raised. Okay. Let's see here. We've talked about skill and will. The okay. This is a good question from Jackie. We continue to talk about skill and will, but I'm wondering if it isn't necessarily will, but mindset. Willingness can assume someone may or may not want to do something, but the mindset considers the environmental nuances that affect perspective shifting within an improved skill set? Is this adjustment in vocabulary necessary to promote and amplify potential the potential of managers? So I have some thoughts, but I will give it to the panelists first to talk about skill, will, or the mindset piece in being effective as a leader. I I can weigh in on that dossier. So I think, you know, there's there's various stages of our skill set, right, as we move into management and leadership. And this is where I think technology plays a huge role because technology can help me as a new manager construct think about and, have the right conversations with my team, and and help me be better and help them be better. Right? And you going back to the coaching discussion that we had earlier. And and even, you know, as a manager, how do I keep from micromanaging the people on my team? And and my job is to make sure that people are aligned. Right? What does good progress look like in the next couple of weeks? What trade offs need to be made? And then we have those discussions so that I can help clarify for my team outcomes and guardrails. Technology can help me do that. It can help me become a better manager, and it can help me drive business outcomes. And this then is the skill then that I get to hone. Right? My will might be there. Maybe my will isn't there because I'm afraid. But if the technology can help me be less afraid and have more will, At the end of the day, my will gets better and my skill gets better, and my business does better too. I think, you know, mindset the mindset that I sometimes think we've got to look at are like the expect the consistency of the expectations that we are setting with our managers, and then the behavioral outcomes that we see. And so when you think about behaviors and what are we rewarding, what are we incentivizing as it relates to durable skills or anything along those lines, I think that sometimes we have conversations with folks about moving fast, experimentation. Awesome. And then we turn around and have conversations with them about you didn't collaborate and check-in enough. You didn't involve the right people. And, again, it's like, how do we go about just setting up consistent messaging that I think is kind to your mind, as a person who's executing? Sometimes I think people get burnt out from the not just the change in the pace, but also sometimes the conflicting messaging that they are receiving and the lack of acknowledgment for that for those conflicts. Yeah, really, really good answers. And then Jackie, just to affirm you very quickly, your question was very astute. In the field of psychology, this concept of skill and will actually is a trio. It is skill, will, and mindset or attitudes and behaviors. So the fact that you called that out was very important. Sometimes I shortened it to skill and will because it rhymes and it's easy to remember. But our mindset or our attitudes about things, regardless of where those attitudes and mindset come from, they do impact our willingness to do certain things and maybe even our skills. So, Jackie, that was very astute. Andrea, you talked earlier about one of the, what's at stake is thinking about the bottom line when we don't do certain behaviors. And so, Peter asked, how do you specifically measure business outcome on the p and l with your people strategy? Yeah. It's a really good question. And, I mean, there are a number of measures that we think about, and we talk with our customers about, that are related to you know, there are performance and execution type measures that might be important to an organization. What's the goal achievement rate look like? What's the time to goal completion look like? What's your feedback effectiveness look like across the organization? How are you measuring those? When you think about business and financial impact, as you employ different strategies for how you engage your people through a performance enablement system as an example, what uplift does that have on revenue employ per employee? What is your retention rate of your employees versus your retention rate of your high performers? Is there cost avoidance that you've been able to put in place because of a reduction in attrition? Those are some of the measures that I know are important to a lot of our our customers when they're thinking about how, you know, performance aligns to their business outcomes. There's growth in mobility measures. Of course, there's employee engagement and retention measures. But those are some of the key ones that we see a lot of our customers driving towards. And it, you know, it takes a minute to get there, but you've gotta, like, make sure that you've got the right framework in place so that you can get to those business outcomes that are really critical to your company. Thank you. And we have forty seconds left, but this is a good HR question I'm gonna give to you, Stephanie. It's great a great chief people officer question. Another Stephanie, wants to know, I've asked for constructive feedback on my performance during my annual review, and I was told you're doing a great job. Keep going. So this is very vague and maybe even nonfeedback, and they wanna know is their manager checked out or how do they manage when they don't get great feedback on a review? I'm going to respond. Please let me know. There's some noise, and I hope it's not picking up. I think that sometimes, unfortunately, we have to be more explicit with our managers about the feedback we are speaking because some managers, frankly, do not know how to deliver good feedback. So it's not necessarily that they are checked out. It could be that they do not know how to deliver it. And especially if you are doing well, those are the moments that people feel as though just hearing you're doing a good job works. So I would say go back, think about what your goals have been, whether it's the goals or KPI set for you and professional goals, and ask more specific questions. Thank you. I can oh, I. Yes. add to that dossier? I would say, and this is, Stephanie, who asked this question, another Stephanie. Reach out to us at Better Works because part of what we enable through our platform is the ability to deliver regular, consistent feedback so that it is timely, it's meaningful, and allows you to deliver better in the job that you're in. There you go. Reach out to Better Works, reach out to LifeLabs, and please give us your feedback. We're over by a minute, but if you quickly scan that QR code, we would love to know how this session impacted you in a, deeper way. And we read all of the comments, all of the feedback. You all, thank you so much for coming to this power hour, investing in yourself. Again, go you. You showed up today, and we will see you at the next event. All the best. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Bye, all.