Built by People Leaders

By Daria RudnikBusiness Careers Management

Built by People Leaders episodes

August 17#37 Why Conflict Isn't a Problem to Fix: Dr. Irvine Nugent on Building Conflict Capacity as Your People Team Scales
Dr. Irvine Nugent is co-founder of ConflictEQ and a former nonprofit CEO with a Ph.D. in Management who helps leaders navigate pressure and difficult conversations without losing clarity or connection. In this episode, Dr. Nugent argues that conflict is not a signal something has gone wrong—it is the natural friction of differing opinions and perspectives, and it is the fuel scaling companies need for creativity and problem-solving. He describes his own turning point as a "recovering conflict coward": a key employee quit because the team was not having the conversations it needed to have.
For People leaders at companies in the 100–1,500 employee range, Dr. Nugent addresses a familiar breakdown. As headcount grows, informal communication stops working, HR teams get pulled in as the constant referee, and leadership meetings turn either performatively calm or aggressively winner-take-all. Both patterns stall the decisions high-growth companies cannot afford to delay.
Challenges Addressed
HR as the permanent referee: Dr. Nugent describes how People teams at scaleups burn out because managers escalate every interpersonal tension instead of handling it themselves, expecting HR to resolve conflict "out of a puff of air."
Calm meetings hiding cynicism: Dr. Nugent explains that high engagement scores and agreeable leadership meetings often mask resignation—people stopped raising ideas because past attempts went nowhere, which stalls critical initiatives like AI adoption and org redesign.
Two instinctive threat responses: Dr. Nugent frames conflict avoidance (freeze) and conflict aggression (fight) as untrained instincts that both create destructive patterns as the old "we're a family" culture stops scaling.
Actionable Takeaways
Shift People Ops from referee to capacity-builder: Dr. Nugent advises People leaders to invest in conflict-capacity training so managers can hold hard conversations themselves, rather than escalating every tension to HR.
Open with pressure, not correction: When addressing a colleague's unhealthy behavior, start with "What are you overwhelmed with right now?" instead of "Your behavior is a problem." Surfacing the underlying stress opens a real conversation.
Map your triggers before you regulate: Dr. Nugent recommends writing down your specific emotional triggers and the patterns that follow—for example, asking "Am I 10-angry or 4-angry?"—because self-awareness alone introduces choice and breaks automatic responses.
Questions This Episode Answers
How do I stop being the HR referee for every team conflict? Dr. Nugent recommends building conflict capacity across your leadership team through realistic, tension-filled training rather than staying the person who resolves every dispute. When managers develop their own skills, People teams stop being pulled in as the default fixer.
My engagement scores are high but no one raises hard truths—is that a red flag? Yes. Dr. Nugent warns that surface calm often hides resignation and cynicism. If no one debates ideas in a leadership meeting at a company facing market pressure, conflict avoidance has calcified, and important decisions are stalling beneath the quiet.
How do I give tough feedback to my CEO? Dr. Nugent advises learning how the executive prefers to consume information, pre-framing your feedback with genuine concern for the organization, and accepting short-term discomfort. The truth may not land immediately, but it holds weight over time when events prove it out.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Dr. Irvine Nugent on LinkedIn, where he shares educational conflict-management resources
ConflictEQ website with a free conflict-response assessment: https://www.conflicteq.com/
28 min
August 11#36 When to Lead vs. When to Manage (and Why Most Founders Get It Wrong) with Michael K. Cobb, ECI Development
Michael K. Cobb, Founder and CEO of ECI Development, has run three fully remote businesses across Central America for 30 years: a mortgage bank in Belize, an international real estate development company, and a teak timber operation in Panama that started with 100 acres planted in 1999 and now runs its own sawmill. His single biggest argument for scaling People teams: leadership and management are different jobs, and most growing organizations must deliberately build management infrastructure even when founders resist it.
For scaleups in the 100–1,500 employee tier, informal information sharing—the water cooler, the coffee pot—breaks down as headcount grows and leadership can no longer oversee everything directly. Michael Cobb built remote protocols to replace those channels long before COVID, starting with fax machines in the mid-1990s. He explains how People leaders rebuild connection and trust when co-location is no longer the glue.
Challenges Addressed
Losing informal communication in remote scaleups: Michael Cobb explains that remote and high-growth companies lose the informal "water cooler" network that co-located offices rely on, and must replace it with deliberate structure.
Founders resisting management structure: Michael Cobb assumed autonomy always drives satisfaction, but morale rose when he hired a Chief Operating Officer in the early-to-mid 2000s to add management structure.
HR seen only as a problem-surfacer: Michael Cobb describes how People teams struggle to earn executive trust when they only bring problems to leadership rather than offering to help.
Actionable Takeaways
Make remote connection an institution, not an accident: Require cameras on for every Zoom meeting and fund regular in-person gatherings so senior teams get the informal exchange that formal agendas miss.
Calibrate management structure to each person: Some employees want autonomy and others want direction; hire managers who can read where each person sits on that spectrum and give them the right amount of structure.
Open HR conversations with "How can I be more helpful to you?": Michael Cobb says this question earns immediate attention from leadership because most people arrive with problems, not offers of support.
Questions This Episode Answers
How do you replace water cooler conversations in a remote company? Michael Cobb rebuilds informal networks through deliberate protocols: mandatory camera-on Zoom meetings, company-funded in-person gatherings, and both formal HR and informal "mother hen" support roles. He argues connection must be intentional because it no longer happens automatically.
What is the difference between leadership and management? Michael Cobb defines leadership as inspiring people and forecasting future needs, and management as providing the structure that helps employees do their jobs. He says most growing organizations need dedicated management infrastructure, and that founders often confuse the two roles.
How can HR build trust with business leadership? Michael Cobb recommends that HR leaders proactively engage executives and ask how they can help, rather than only surfacing problems. He notes that HR combines hard functions (payroll, recruiting, vacation tracking) with the softer, high-trust work of supporting employees through interpersonal and emotional challenges.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Michael K. Cobb on LinkedIn
Michael K. Cobb's website: michaelkcobb.com
Book: How to Buy Your Home Overseas and Get It Right the First Time (available on Amazon)
31 min
August 03#35 The 91st Day: How Nate Hill Stops Post-Onboarding Attrition and Rebuilds Trust in Scaling Organizations
Nathaniel Sietz is an HR professional who built an entire People function from scratch as the only HR Manager at a logistics company that had no HR infrastructure. In this episode of Built by People Leaders, Nate introduces The 91st Day framework—a practical way to keep onboarding and culture-building going beyond the standard 90-day probation period. Ironically, that’s exactly when most companies stop investing in new hires, even though it’s also when many people decide to leave. He published the framework under the name Nate Hill.
Nate talks about the challenges People teams face as companies grow: onboarding that ends after the first week, managers who push back on structure because “things change too fast,” and acquisitions that create rumors and uncertainty, leading to preventable turnover. For companies that have outgrown informal communication and where leaders can’t keep track of everything themselves anymore, Nate explains how to replace ad hoc ways of working with simple, consistent people practices that scale.
Challenges Addressed
Onboarding that stops at day 90: Nate Hill explains how companies spend roughly $20,000 to hire one person, then withdraw cultural attention after probation—forcing repeat spend when new hires leave inside the three-month window.
Trust erosion during acquisitions and rapid growth: Nate Hill describes employees updating resumes and crying in his office over layoff rumors, and how leadership distraction with new departments left the core team feeling left behind.
Managers without an onboarding framework: Nate Hill addresses the gap where managers own onboarding but lack a structured plan, defaulting to one-week classroom orientations instead of month-long integration.
Actionable Takeaways
Co-design a month-long onboarding plan with each manager: Sit down with the hiring manager to build a role-specific 30-day timeline instead of using a generic company template. Secure manager buy-in so the plan is followed, not filed away.
Run 30-, 60-, and 90-day self-evaluations for employees and managers: Use these surveys to catch onboarding failures before the three-month attrition window. A downward trend signals it is time to rebuild that manager's onboarding plan.
Translate HR issues into leadership's own language: Reframe turnover, meeting time, and disengagement as financial cost for money-focused executives. Bring survey data and cost breakdowns as proof rather than subjective opinion.
Questions This Episode Answers
Why do new hires quit right after the probation period? Nate Hill explains that culture and manager attention often stop at day 90, so employees who impressed early feel forgotten once they are "safe." Most resignations happen around the three-month mark, which is why Nate Hill pushes companies to sustain support into the 91st day.
How do you keep employees calm during an acquisition or rapid growth? Nate Hill recommends direct, top-down reassurance: he organized an all-hands meeting where the CEO personally told staff their jobs were safe, because rumors spread faster than management can contain them. Hearing it from the owner rebuilt trust that middle-layer messaging could not.
How does HR earn trust with a skeptical executive team? Nate Hill positions HR as a partner, not a subordinate, and explicitly requests trust during interviews. He uses industry-specific analogies—like a surgeon showing up drunk to the OR as a "never do moment"—to make policy decisions land with leaders who don't think in HR terms.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Nate Hill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielsietz/
The 91st Day by Nate Hill — available on Kindle (Amazon) and hardcover (Barnes & Noble): www.the91stday.com
30 min
July 27#34 Why Training Fails and How to Build L&D That Changes Behavior with Maria Kolesnikoff, Former Head of Talent Management
Maria Kolesnikoff spent 20 years across every HR function—recruitment, compensation, organizational design, and change management—before becoming head of talent management at the corporate investment business unit of a large bank, and now works as an ICF PCC coach. In this episode of Built by People Leaders with Daria Rudnik, Maria Kolesnikoff argues that effective learning and development must be built as infrastructure across performance management, compensation, succession planning, and recruitment—not delivered as one-touch training events that end when people leave the room.
The friction Maria Kolesnikoff unpacks matters most for People teams in the 100–1,500 employee range, where informal oversight breaks down and standalone programs stop working. Content-only training covers learning but skips practice and feedback, so behavior never changes. Maria Kolesnikoff shows how systemic incentives—not entertainment—push people out of their comfort zone and make new behaviors stick.
Challenges Addressed
Training that delivers content but no behavior change: Maria Kolesnikoff explains that content-focused programs only cover learning, leaving out the practice and feedback that the full development cycle requires.
Low buy-in and disengagement in talent programs: After running a talent program for one year at her banking organization, Maria Kolesnikoff found weak engagement because stakeholders were never involved in the design.
The HR–business language gap: Maria Kolesnikoff notes that most HR and L&D professionals speak in behaviors and psychology, while leaders respond to numbers and business outcomes.
Actionable Takeaways
Embed development into promotion and compensation criteria: Maria Kolesnikoff redesigned her banking program so candidates needed set study hours, assessment scores, strong talent reviews, an identified successor, and evidence of sharing expertise—all tied to bonus and promotion eligibility.
Use design thinking to co-create programs: Interview representatives from every stakeholder group—business units, HR functions, leaders, and participants. People advocate for programs built from their own ideas.
Engage stakeholders horizontally and vertically at the design stage: Involve peer HR functions and business units alongside leaders and leaders-of-leaders before launch, so the whole system supports the change.
Questions This Episode Answers
Why does our leadership training never change behavior? Maria Kolesnikoff explains that content-based training covers only learning and skips practice and feedback. Behavior change requires systemic infrastructure—performance management, compensation, and incentives—that pushes people beyond their comfort zone and rewards new habits until they become the default.
How do I get buy-in from stakeholders on a new L&D program? Maria Kolesnikoff recommends design thinking: interview business leaders, HR peers, and participants during the design phase and build the program from their input. People support programs built on their own ideas, which raises engagement and adoption.
Does gamification or edutainment make training more effective? Maria Kolesnikoff argues that edutainment masks the real problem of low motivation. Instead of entertaining participants, clarify the personal and career benefits of the program and build systems that make participation advantageous.

Links & Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Maria Kolesnikoff on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-kolesnikoff/
Maria Kolesnikoff's website: https://www.yourwayup.coach/
25 min
July 21#33 Building HR Credibility with Boards & Executives with Rachel Sutherland at Respondology
Rachel Sutherland is SVP of People & Operations at Respondology, a 50-person venture-backed SaaS company, and she builds HR functions from the ground up at high-growth startups. In this episode of Built by People Leaders, Rachel Sutherland argues that the hardest part of scaling is forcing the founding executive team to stop making every decision and instead build a trusted middle layer that can act without them—her core lens on the startup-to-scaleup transition.
Rachel Sutherland reached people leadership through an unconventional route: an English literature degree, 10 years in publishing, entrepreneurship running brick-and-mortar businesses, then seven years building people functions in startup incubators. The friction she unpacks is specific to companies where founders can no longer sit in every room. Rachel Sutherland calls this "brain dumping" onto a new leadership layer—aligning them, then trusting them to make decisions that may not match how the executive would have done it.
Challenges Addressed
Delegating decision authority: Rachel Sutherland describes the angst executives feel when they push decisions to a new leadership layer and must accept choices that are business-aligned but not exactly their own.
Executive hiring risk: Rachel Sutherland treats executive hires as the highest-stakes decisions in a scaleup, where a wrong hire becomes a six-month mistake that damages a small leadership team.
Stage-specific ceilings: Rachel Sutherland explains how early employees who excel at "zero to one" often cannot carry the company through "one to two," forcing hard layering or exit conversations.
Actionable Takeaways
Design incentives before headcount: Rachel Sutherland supports revenue by building compensation and KPI structures that motivate people to hit targets, and by keeping teams lean so capital funds growth instead of avoidable layoffs.
Ask every colleague what they do: At Respondology, new hires spend 15 minutes with each person to learn the business. Rachel Sutherland uses this same curiosity to spot gaps and overlaps before making org design decisions.
Be an advocate and a truth-teller: Rachel Sutherland builds board and executive trust by fighting for their compensation annually while also delivering hard feedback when leaders get in their own way—never acting as a "yes person."
Questions This Episode Answers
How do I get founders to delegate decisions as we scale? Rachel Sutherland recommends aligning a trusted leadership layer with business objectives, then accepting decisions that differ from how the executive would have made them. The executive's job is to reinvent their own value rather than remain the single point of approval.
How does HR actually support revenue in a venture-backed company? Rachel Sutherland focuses on incentive design, executive compensation, and lean org structures so people work on high-impact tasks, not busy work. This lets revenue fund growth instead of covering an inflated headcount.
How do I know when an early employee has hit their ceiling? Rachel Sutherland says the ceiling is usually obvious; the hard part is deciding whether to layer someone with a new hire above them or move them on. She frames it as a stage mismatch, not a failure.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Rachel Sutherland on LinkedIn
30 min
July 13#32 How to Build Workplace Communities with Katherine Hawkins-Jones, Chief People Officer at Somerset Bridge Group
Katherine Hawkins-Jones is Chief People Officer at a UK-based motor insurance company and founder of the People Experience Consultancy PeopleScape. She entered HR from retail and hospitality management, completed her CIPD qualifications, and built over two decades of experience across insurance, financial services, automotive, retail, hospitality, and education — specializing in change and transformation. In this episode, Katherine explains the Bridge Builders model: a system of self-selected, trained employee advocates who launch and sustain internal communities using a shared playbook.
The core friction Katherine unpacks is what happens as a company scales past the point where informal "water cooler" connection holds it together. In a 100–1,500 person organization, junior and newer employees lose visibility to leadership and access to projects, and community initiatives die without structure. Katherine argues that the People team is uniquely positioned to fix this, using its cross-department "aerial view" to connect people who would never otherwise meet.
Challenges Addressed
Informal networks break down as headcount grows: Katherine Hawkins-Jones describes how "water cooler" collisions that once sparked connection and innovation stop scaling once a company spreads across multiple offices and remote workers. Leadership can no longer oversee every relationship directly, so connection needs deliberate structure.
Junior and newer employees get locked out: Katherine shares her own early-career experience of being excluded from working groups and projects, a pattern that repeats for new starters and recently transferred staff who lack access and leadership visibility.
Community initiatives die from lack of structure: Katherine explains that most workplace communities fail because they are launched for the wrong reasons, try to please everyone, and receive no sustained investment, agenda, or scheduled time.
Actionable Takeaways
Appoint self-selected Bridge Builders: Identify natural connectors who volunteer, then train them on your platform tools (Microsoft Teams, Slack), communication, and event planning. Never conscript people, because forced participation kills the organic energy that sustains a community.
Block calendar time, like Deal Days: Katherine's "Drop Everything and Learn" (DLD) program schedules learning time directly in diaries with structured comms and shared collision points. Put the time in the calendar rather than trusting that people will find it.
Run an opt-in access system like "Me Please": Create a channel where employees raise their hand for upcoming projects and initiatives. Katherine's "Me Please" group gave underrepresented staff a simple way to say yes to opportunities that were previously invisible to them.
Questions This Episode Answers
How do we keep workplace communities alive as we scale past 100 employees? Katherine Hawkins-Jones says communities survive through patience, investment, diligence, and consistency, not instant results. Assign trained Bridge Builders, set agendas, send pre-meeting thinking points, and monitor conversation quality rather than chasing member counts.
How big should an internal community be before it stops working? Katherine argues that depth beats size: once a group grows too large, conversation quality erodes and psychological safety drops. She recommends smaller, focused communities united under one organizational identity rather than one group that serves nobody well.
Can remote and hybrid teams build genuine community without an office? Yes. Katherine's Women in Insurance Network runs as a hybrid group connecting Bristol offices, Newcastle offices, and home workers. She stresses that technology builds meaningful connection when used deliberately, making hybrid formats more inclusive of parents, carers, and those with health or travel constraints.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Katherine Hawkins-Jones on LinkedIn
PeopleScape website and free organizational health check diagnostic tool
31 min
July 06#31 How Workday Saved 600,000 Hours with AI with Greta Stahl, VP of Organizational Learning
Greta Stahl, Vice President of Organizational Learning and Development at Workday, ran the largest L&D program in the company's 20-year history: Everyday AI, which reached over 85% monthly AI adoption (a 40%+ jump from baseline) and conservatively saved more than 600,000 hours. Greta structured that program on a three-part framework—Mindset, Skill Set, and Habits—and her central argument is that AI delivers value only when organizations redesign roles and embed tools into core workflows, not bolt them onto old processes.
For People and L&D teams in scaling companies, the friction Greta unpacks is concrete: AI gives employees time back, but without clear role design, that time gets reinvested in more low-value busywork instead of strategy, collaboration, and relationship building. Greta details how Workday re-architected its own L&D roles to move people from content execution toward business consulting—proving the shift can be a win for both the business and the people doing the work.
Challenges Addressed
AI creating busywork instead of capacity: Greta Stahl explains that employees who get time back from AI often fill it with more repeatable, low-value work unless their roles are deliberately redesigned to focus on high-value tasks.
Bolt-on tools that fail to deliver ROI: Greta cites research showing only 27% of organizations embed AI into core workflows; the rest run standalone tools that never produce the business value they expect.
Atrophying human skills: As employees spend more of the day working with AI agents, Greta warns that interpersonal skills like relationship building and candid communication can depreciate without intentional investment from HR and L&D.
Actionable Takeaways
Run role redesign with your business partners: Sit down with a business leader this week to map a single workflow—which parts AI handles, which parts the person handles, and where reclaimed time gets reinvested in high-value work.
Build the Mindset, Skill Set, Habits structure: Activate mindset through events (Greta's team ran "Prompt-a-thons"), grow skills with a single learning destination, and build habits through personal goals and usage dashboards employees track themselves.
Measure quality outcomes, not speed: Track quality of hire in recruiting, forecast accuracy in finance, and time reinvested into collaboration—not transaction volume—to prove whether AI is actually delivering value.
Questions This Episode Answers
How do I get my organization to actually adopt AI instead of ignoring the tools? Greta Stahl's Everyday AI program at Workday hit 85%+ monthly adoption by combining mindset-activation events, a digital academy with gamification, and habit-building activations like personal goals and usage dashboards. The program treated adoption as behavior change, not a one-time rollout.
Why aren't we seeing ROI from the AI tools we bought? Greta points to two failures: most companies bolt AI onto old processes rather than embedding it into core workflows (only 27% succeed at integration), and they don't enable people to use the tools effectively. Both the workflow design and the human enablement have to be right.
What skills should I be developing as AI takes over more tasks? Greta defines the core skills as judgment (knowing when to override AI and apply responsible AI principles), creativity and complex problem solving, and interpersonal skills like relationship building and candid communication. She stresses that interpersonal skills need deliberate investment because they can fade with heavy AI use.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Greta Stahl on LinkedIn
30 min
June 29#30 Scaling HR Operations with a 2-Person Team & AI Automation with Dom Dib, Head of HR at 'Maplewave'
Dom Dib is Head of Human Resources at 'Maplewave', a technology firm that won the Digital Nova Scotia Talent Champion Award and recognition as one of the best places to work in Atlantic Canada. Dom runs a two-person HR team supporting a globally distributed workforce across Canada, South Africa, and the Middle East, and his core operating principle is "Continuous Curiosity" — a company value that drives both product innovation and how his team adopts AI. After 20 years in HR, starting in retail sales management, Dom treats automation as a way to remove administrative load so the team can focus on strategy.
This episode addresses the friction point People leaders hit between 100 and 1,500 employees: informal communication stops working, leadership can no longer oversee everything directly, and a small People team must scale culture and decision-making without scaling headcount. Dom Dib explains the specific systems 'Maplewave' built to solve this with two people.
Challenges Addressed
Scaling a lean People team across borders: Dom Dib runs HR for a globally distributed company with only two people, requiring standardized processes and intentional connectivity instead of in-office proximity.
Preserving culture and psychological safety in remote/hybrid setups: 'Maplewave' lost natural in-person connection during the COVID transition and had to rebuild it deliberately across time zones.
Keeping human judgment in AI-assisted talent decisions: Dom Dib stresses that AI at 'Maplewave' produces recommendations only, and personal employee data is never fed into AI systems for assessment.
Actionable Takeaways
Map behavioral interview questions to each core value: For "Continuous Curiosity," Dom Dib's team asks candidates how they stay current with technology and whether they use AI in their work, so cultural fit is measured, not assumed.
Automate 30/60/90-day check-ins for both sides: 'Maplewave' sends automated survey links to new hires and managers on each milestone, then uses AI to analyze sentiment on satisfaction, psychological safety, and onboarding gaps. This surfaces relationship and training gaps without manual tracking.
Build AI learning paths from de-identified role data: Have leaders map skills and competencies per role, then let AI recommend training against those gaps. Dom Dib confirms 'Maplewave' uses only role-based data, never personal employee data, and advises checking privacy laws first.
Questions This Episode Answers
How do you scale HR across multiple countries with a tiny team? Dom Dib relies on process standardization and rollout so every location knows the same values, tools, and processes. 'Maplewave' also assigns intentional connectivity work to keep distributed teams aligned, a practice that became critical during COVID.
How can you use AI in talent development without violating privacy laws? At 'Maplewave', leaders first map role competencies, and AI recommends training only against that de-identified, role-based data. Dom Dib advises checking your jurisdiction's privacy laws before deploying AI in any talent assessment or screening.
How do you get leaders to buy into HR initiatives? Dom Dib leads by giving the end result and ROI first, then explaining the work, rather than telling the full story upfront. He frames HR as a partner that enables leaders, defining its own success by the success of leaders and employees.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Dom Dib on LinkedIn
'Maplewave' website: www.maplewave.com
30 min
June 22#29 Connecting People Decisions to EBITDA at Scaleups with Ted Forbes, Co-Author of Making HR Matter
Ted Forbes, co-author of Making HR Matter: What CEOs Want and How to Deliver It, spent 25 years running HR functions at companies ranging from United Airlines (85,000 employees) to the startup Cotopaxi (70 to 300 employees). Ted introduces the "Relevant HR" framework and income statement thinking—a method that connects every people decision directly to EBITDA and cash flow. Ted started in consulting on merger integration before moving into HR at Capital One after the 1991 downturn.
For People teams in scaling companies, Ted addresses the moment when HR can no longer justify its work by activity alone. As headcount grows, leadership demands proof that talent, development, and well-being spend moves financial outcomes. Ted explains how to translate HR work into the numbers executives already track.
Challenges Addressed
CEO expectations are capped by past experience: Ted Forbes explains that if a CEO's prior HR was tactical and compliance-focused, that becomes the ceiling for what they expect from the People function.
Activity over outcomes: HR leaders struggle to justify development and well-being investment because they report training attendance instead of results like sales improvement or EBITDA impact.
Expensive hires made blind: Forbes describes how technical hiring decisions get made without visibility into their effect on company-wide bonus and EBITDA metrics, and how HR sits isolated from FP&A.
Actionable Takeaways
Apply income statement thinking: Map every HR initiative to a line on the income statement. If a People program has no connection to the financials, Ted Forbes advises questioning whether the work should continue.
Build a fixed labor cost metric: Bundle salary, benefits, relocation, bonuses, and perks into one number reported monthly against a ±2% tolerance. Ted used this to make hiring decisions transparent to the CEO and CTO.
Identify growth drivers with a modified nine-box: Plot employees by cultural role modeling against economic value creation. Ted invests differentially in the upper-right quadrant—typically 15–20% of staff who open markets, design products, or improve distribution.

Questions This Episode Answers
How do I connect leadership development ROI to financial outcomes at a scaleup? Ted Forbes recommends income statement thinking: tie each program to a financial line item and measure outcomes, not attendance. He invests more in the 15–20% of employees who drive economic value while maintaining baseline development for everyone else.
What metrics should HR report in monthly business reviews for a high-growth company? Ted built a single fixed labor cost metric—salary, benefits, relocation, bonuses, and perks combined—tracked monthly against a ±2% target. One aggregated line lets executives see how people spend affects EBITDA.
What financial literacy does an HR leader need when scaling from 100 to 1,000 employees? Ted Forbes advises building a relationship with FP&A and requesting walkthroughs of the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. He stresses using the right outcome-focused numbers, not vanity metrics.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Ted Forbes on LinkedIn: search "Ted Forbes"
Making HR Matter: What CEOs Want and How to Deliver It (200 pages) — available on Amazon
28 min
June 15#28 Managing Executive Stress & The Physiology of Pressure with Ed Howard
In this episode of Built by People Leaders, host Daria Rudnik sits down with Ed Howard, founder of One Breath Leadership and author of the One Breath Leadership book and app. Ed spent 20 years as a global compliance executive in investment banking before combining that high-stakes corporate experience with three decades of Zen training to create practical micro-recovery tools for corporate skeptics.
Together, they break down how sustained stress physically alters our cognitive state, and how people leaders can help executives maintain decision quality, emotional regulation, and sanity without needing hours out of their packed calendars.
Challenges Addressed
The Stress Hijack: How the physiological threat response silently alters a leader's perception, causing intelligent, values-driven people to narrow their honesty and miss critical signals.
The Failure of Standard Wellness: Why traditional corporate mindfulness programs fail when they are simply bolted onto a high-speed culture that actively rewards hustle, speed, and reaction over reflection.
Email Apnea: The physical habit of holding your breath when opening stressful inbox messages, and how this oxygen-starved state reduces an executive's day-to-day effectiveness by 30-40%.
Actionable Micro-Habits for Leaders
The One-Breath Rule: Demystifying meditation by stripping it down to the bare bones—breath, mind, and attention—to switch the brain out of "cognitive wheel-spinning."
Trigger-Based Habit Stacking: How to spread micro-recovery throughout a 12-hour day by anchoring a single deep breath to existing operational triggers like opening a laptop, sitting at a desk, or getting into an elevator.
The Professional Athlete Model: Shifting the executive culture from performative, fear-based busyness to a high-performance framework where recovery is valued just as much as performance.

Links & Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Ed Howard on LinkedIn
Learn more about the book and app at One Breath Leadership
27 min

About Built by People Leaders

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Built by People Leaders is a podcast for HR, People, and L&D leaders at scale-ups and fast-growing companies. Host Daria Rudnik — Team Architect, Executive Leadership Coach, and former Chief People Officer — talks with the in-house HR and People leaders building the people side of scale.

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