HR Unfiltered - brought to you by SOPEOPLE

Managers are being asked to navigate more complexity than ever. So why does it feel like we’re getting worse at helping them actually manage?

This week, Dean and Sue ask whether we’ve created a generation of managers who are frightened of saying the wrong thing, tackling poor performance or making a call without "checking with HR" first.

We get into why promoting your best individual contributor remains a spectacularly unreliable way of finding a good manager; why traditional leadership development so often fails to change anything; and how AI could finally make development and intervention useful at the point they're actually needed.

There’s also a row about whether management has become too “soft”, why fairness doesn’t mean treating everybody identically, and whether people management should require some kind of professional standard.

Plus: When does empathy become avoidance?

Because good management isn’t choosing between caring about people and demanding performance - it’s being bloody good at both!

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We hope you enjoy this episode of HR, Unfiltered. If you do, please like, share and all that good stuff. And if you'd like to talk to Sue and/or Dean about their consultancy, SOPEOPLE, please do so at www.sopeople.co.uk.

Dean is also open to working with those in and outside of the HR profession in a psychotherapy or coaching capacity. And their affiliate company, COR, a key sponsor of HR, Unfiltered, offers very affordable counselling and psychotherapy that is either self- or employer-funded. Check it out at www.cortherapy.co.uk/ 

After a summer spent working across fractional, interim, consultancy and coaching roles, Dean and Sue compare notes on what they're seeing across organisations - and the patterns are impossible to ignore. The Employment Rights Act isn't happening to HR. It's exposing where organisations have been avoiding difficult conversations for years. In this episode we discuss things like:

AND we offer 4 practical actions every HR team should take now. If Season 1 asked difficult questions… Season 2 starts asking even harder ones. So, as always… Turn up the volume and STAY UNFILTERED.

If you like what we say, please like and share... And if you want to get in touch for a chat or to consult with us, you can do so at www.sopeople.co.uk or [email protected] 

Keep your emails coming, as well... We love hearing from our listeners and we love tackling the issues you ask our opinions on!

STAY UNFILTERED!

After a summer spent working across fractional, interim, consultancy and coaching roles, Dean and Sue compare notes on what they're seeing across organisations - and the patterns are impossible to ignore. The Employment Rights Act isn't happening to HR. It's exposing where organisations have been avoiding difficult conversations for years. In this episode we discuss things like:

AND we offer 4 practical actions every HR team should take now. If Season 1 asked difficult questions… Season 2 starts asking even harder ones. So, as always… Turn up the volume and STAY UNFILTERED.

If you like what we say, please like and share... And if you want to get in touch for a chat or to consult with us, you can do so at www.sopeople.co.uk or [email protected] 

Keep your emails coming, as well... We love hearing from our listeners and we love tackling the issues you ask our opinions on!

STAY UNFILTERED!

To close out season one, it's just the two of us and we've saved one of the most important topics in people leadership for last.

Psychological safety has had a decade of utter hype. Google gave it a TED Talk moment, a lot of HR decks have slides on it and yet most organisations are measuring it wrong, talking about it wrong, and - crucially - doing it wrong. In this episode Dean goes full geek-mode on the evidence while Sue does what she does best: Holds the mirror up to what's actually happening in real organisations right now. What came out of that conversation was something we think every HR leader, people manager, and CEO needs to sit with for a long time. The 3 Ms: the Myths/Misinterpretations, and the Mishandlings - and why the gap between knowing and doing remains one of the most expensive problems in organisational life.

Referenced in this episode

Amy Edmondson - The Fearless Organization (Wiley, 2018) and her foundational 1999 research on psychological safety in medical teams.

Google Project Aristotle (2012–2015) - the study of 180 teams that found psychological safety was the single biggest predictor of team effectiveness.

Tim Clark - The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety (Berrett-Koehler, 2020).

Brené Brown - research on shame, vulnerability, and why people hide mistakes rather than own them.

Morrison & Milliken (2000) - organisational silence research: People don't stay quiet because they have nothing to say.

Erik de Haan and Craig Johnson - leadership shadow and the long reach of how leaders show up.

The Pratfall Effect - and why Joanna Lumley is, apparently, the perfect case study.

Previous HR Unfiltered episodes mentioned:

Season 2 lined up and ready to go!

Thirty episodes in season 1 all showcasing a LOT of opinions but ZERO wallowing. We came to say the things that don't get said in most companies, and we're far from done yet. Season 2 is coming back bigger, bolder, and with even less patience for HR and leadership mediocrity. Watch this space - and if you've been listening since the beginning, thank you BIG TIME. This progressively unfiltered community is exactly why we're going to keep going.

Follow, leave a review, and follow HR Unfiltered on LinkedIn so you don't miss what's coming next.

Connect with Dean: LinkedIn

If you need HR advice or intelligent people and culture solutions, check out www.sopeople.co.uk.

And don't forget, if you're a leader or people professional looking for experienced psychotherapy and/or coaching, get in touch with Dean. 

What happens when an FCIPD-qualified HR consultant spends their evenings performing as an award-winning drag queen? In this candid, funny and surprisingly thought-provoking conversation, Tom Henderson-Griffiths (better known on stage as Aunty Ginger) explores the tension between authenticity and professionalism, the realities of bringing your whole self to work, and why HR and leadership still has a long way to go when it comes to genuine inclusion. Along the way, the discussion covers everything from DE&I box-ticking, workplace harassment, grievance investigations and engagement surveys, to drag performance, workplace identity, and a soon-to-be-famous question: if Becky really is a bitch, should HR care? 

Tom can be contacted on LinkedIn and offers consulting services through EZHR.

As always, your thoughts, comments and challenges are welcome on the HR, Unfiltered page. If you're looking for straight-talking, highly progressive and commercial-grade HR/People support (fractional CPO, advisory, transformation, coaching and Executive/HR psychotherapy) feel free to get in touch with SOPEOPLE. We're also available at [email protected]. 

What if the biggest risk posed by the Employment Rights Act isn’t legal at all?

In this episode of HR, Unfiltered, Dean and Sue are joined by employment lawyer Dan Smith from People Law to explore a provocative idea: Many of the challenges organisations fear from the Employment Rights Act may actually be management problems in disguise. 

Drawing on years of tribunal advocacy, employment law practice and leadership development work, Dan argues that legislation doesn’t create poor management, it simply exposes it. The conversation explores why organisations continue to underinvest in management capability despite overwhelming evidence of its commercial value, how HR can reclaim strategic influence by stepping away from operational firefighting, and why the future of workplace performance may depend less on policy and more on relationships.

The discussion also tackles the growing tension between intent and impact, the rise of workplace conflict, the increasing legal awareness of employees, and the danger of organisations responding to uncertainty with silence rather than leadership.

Most importantly, Dan introduces his framework for building workplace connection through four essential management behaviours: Communication, Courage, Curiosity and Candour.

As Dan puts it, when managers communicate well, have the courage to address issues early, remain genuinely curious about people and deliver kind, szpecific truth, connection naturally follows. And connection is what drives healthy workplace relationships. 

Dan Smith is a Legal Director at People Law and leads Liberate Management Training, helping organisations build management capability, strengthen workplace relationships and reduce people risk.

HR, Unfiltered is the podcast where HR, leadership, business and society collide; no scripts, sod-all spin, and brimming with honest conversation about the realities of work, people and performance.

What does it take for HR to be seen as a genuine business function rather than a support service?

In this week's episode, Dean and Sue are joined by fractional Chief People Officer and one of HR Mag’s Most Influential, Nebel Crowhurst, to explore the future of HR, leadership and work itself.

From building influential networks and communities to challenging the profession’s obsession with engagement scores, Nebel makes the case for a more commercial, courageous and human-centred approach to people leadership. The conversation tackles AI, agile HR, employee experience, appreciation versus recognition, and why emotionally intelligent leaders remain the biggest differentiator in organisational success. Along the way, Nebel offers a provocative challenge to HR professionals: If you don’t have a voice in your organisation, what might need to change about how you’re showing up?

This is a truly candid discussion about credibility, leadership, technology and the future of the profession.

Nebel can be reached, contacted and connected with on LinkedIn.

As always, Dean and Sue can be contacted via email on [email protected]. Please feel free to follow the HR, Unfiltered LinkedIn page.

For SOPEOPLE's GLOBAL advisory, project, transformation, fractional CPO services, proprietary Executive/Performance Therapy and signature PlayerCoach coaching, check out www.sopeople.co.uk.

Dr Jo Burrell is a Clinical Psychologist, co-founder of Ultimate Resilience, and co-author of the 2026 HR Mental Wellbeing Report which is now in its third year and drawing on data from nearly 3,000 HR professionals.

The numbers are confronting:

But in this conversation we go well beneath the statistics. We explore how the report was designed using clinical-grade measures (the same tools a GP uses before prescribing medication) and what it actually means to score at those thresholds. We also get into the invisibility of emotional labour, why HR professionals are among the least likely people to seek support despite designing it for everyone else, why "workload" may be too blunt a word for what the profession is actually carrying, and what three years of consistent data tells us about the structural problem underneath it all.

Dr Jo Burrell is a joy to speak to and can be reached on LinkedIn. The HR Wellbeing Report published today, 1 June 2026, is available to download here. 

As always, you can get in touch with Dean and Sue via [email protected]. 

And very importantly, if you are struggling with work or experiencing any emotional challenges, please get in touch with Dean about his psychotherapy practice, or he can point you in the direction of someone suitable.

This week, Dean Corbett and Sue O’Callaghan are joined by leadership consultant and former CPO Lorna Baines for one of the most honest conversations we’ve had yet about leadership, HR and organisational reality. Together, we explore:

A deeply human conversation about leadership, courage, honesty and what modern people work now demands from all of us. Topics include leadership, culture, organisational systems, psychological safety, AI, HR strategy, facilitation, emotional intelligence, business transformation and the future of people leadership.

As she says, Lorna is available on LinkedIn.

Everyone says they care about AI ethics. Very few organisations are actually doing anything meaningful with it. This week Dean and Sue sit down with Oliver Hill - Head of HR, qualified AI ethics practitioner, and former nightclub bouncer - to have the conversation most leadership teams might be avoiding.

It's not theoretical, it's not policy-heavy, it's about what happens at the point of decision, when the algorithm says you're fine, the data team says it's legal, and something in your gut says it isn't.

Get hold of Oli on LinkedIn.