Many of you know the famous Stephen Huerta. If you don’t, he is the co-host of Modern People Leader and a 25-year HR operator whose career spans consulting, corporate HR, HR tech, and media. He brings a sharp point of view on what managers are really carrying right now.

In this episode, Stephen breaks down how HR’s push for scale quietly dumped performance work, survey follow-up, and talent development onto managers - then AI showed up and raised the stakes again. The conversation gets into manager overload, change management, trust, and why performance reviews are still here even if nobody loves them.

Amin and Gavin push on what better looks like: less admin, better feedback, and performance inputs captured in the flow of work so talent decisions can get faster, cleaner, and more fair.

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This episode was brought to you by Topicflow - the team building the next generation of agentic performance management.

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Connect with the hosts and guest on LinkedIn:

Gavin Johnston | Amin Palizban | Stephen Huerta