Transform Your Workplace

Tanya Uyigue applied for a promotion she was qualified for and didn't get it. She asked why. Nobody ever told her.

That silence became the starting point for her book, What Your Team Won't Tell You. It's written for the employees who can't safely give their managers honest feedback, and for the managers who were never trained to see what their people are seeing.

Brandon and Tanya talk about what happens when a high performer keeps taking on more work while the goalposts keep moving. They get into the "safe bet" employee managers tend to promote, and what a senior leader really means when they say someone lacks "polish." Tanya also shares the moment she found out she'd been an absentee manager, from her own employee, as a joke, in front of her boss.

You'll walk away with the questions to ask every new hire, and what to do if you recognize yourself in a few of these chapters.

About our guest Tanya Uyigue is a career and workplace strategist, coach, and speaker based in Chicago. She's spent more than 20 years working across corporate and nonprofit settings, and she trained as a professional coach through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC). Her content on workplace dynamics and management reaches a large audience on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where people regularly share their own manager stories with her. Her new book, What Your Team Won't Tell You: The 7 Management Fails to Avoid, is out now from Berrett-Koehler.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:50 Why Tanya stopped being careful with her words
• 04:05 How she was passed over for a promotion with no feedback
• 07:10 What happened when a colleague she helped hire became her boss
• 08:15 Why she sat on her viral video for a month
• 11:00 Who the book is really written for
• 13:20 What "I played myself while they played me" means
• 15:00 What a "safe bet" employee is and why managers promote them
• 18:05 What leaders really mean when they say someone lacks "polish"
• 21:15 How Tanya found out she was an absentee manager
• 24:30 Why "never let your staff know what's going on" backfires
• 26:20 What to do when the problem is two levels above you
• 28:00 How to start strong with a new hire
• 29:55 What to do if you see yourself in the book
• 32:15 Why being direct is still the hardest part
• 34:20 Where to find Tanya and the book

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR Host: Brandon Laws In Brandon's own words: "The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders."

About Xenium HR Xenium HR is on a mission to transform workplaces by providing expert outsourced HR and payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses. With a people-first approach, Xenium helps organizations create thriving work environments where employees feel valued and supported. From navigating compliance to enhancing workplace culture, Xenium offers tailored solutions that empower growth and simplify HR. Whether managing employee relations, payroll processing, or implementing impactful training programs, Xenium is the trusted partner businesses rely on to elevate their workplace experience. Discover how Xenium can transform your workplace: Learn more

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Most leaders who carry everything already know they're doing it. Alli Murphy did. Four years ago on this show, she named her own patterns, from perfectionism to finding it easier to advocate for her team than for herself. She had a coach. It still nearly broke her.

Alli is back to talk about what finally changed. She describes becoming what she calls the Chief Everything Officer, the leader that every decision and fire drill runs through. Then came the weekend a friend joked to her husband on a chairlift that Alli must be a figment of his imagination, since nobody had ever met her.

She explains why "just say no" advice falls flat for leaders who were rewarded for the opposite, and why she runs mini-experiments instead, such as a week with no Slack or email in the first hour of the day. She also shares the question her coach asked that she couldn't answer: "What's your definition of enough for a workday?"

For HR leaders who are a one-person department, Alli gets practical. List everything you own and question what's only there out of habit. Decide what enough looks like. Use a shutdown ritual so tomorrow starts with a plan instead of an inbox.

About our guest Alli Murphy is a leadership coach and speaker who helps women directors and above step out of the Chief Everything Officer role. Through her business, Work & Thrive HQ, she runs The Elevate Lab, a 90-day coaching program, and a free community called the Non-Negotiables Club. Before going out on her own, Alli was a managing director and podcast host at Engage for Good, where she spoke on 700-person stages, led a corporate mastermind, and partnered with brands like Subaru, Hasbro, and Disney. She's a former collegiate athlete, grew up in Mexico City, and lives in Bend, Oregon. She's currently writing a book.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:15 Why Alli walked away from her managing director title
• 05:00 Why the ambition gap is really a support gap
• 06:10 How an acquisition made her the Chief Everything Officer
• 07:20 The chairlift joke that pushed her to get help
• 11:15 What's your definition of enough for a workday?
• 15:00 Where the pattern started
• 18:45 Process integrity vs. outcome integrity
• 21:05 How you still help when you stop doing it yourself
• 23:05 Why knowing your patterns isn't enough
• 25:55 What an HR department of one can do
• 29:10 Coach the leader or change the company?
• 30:20 What kept her from leaving sooner
• 32:05 Where to start

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR Host: Brandon Laws

In Brandon's own words: "The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders."

About Xenium HR Xenium HR is on a mission to transform workplaces by providing expert outsourced HR and payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses. With a people-first approach, Xenium helps organizations create thriving work environments where employees feel valued and supported. From navigating compliance to enhancing workplace culture, Xenium offers tailored solutions that empower growth and simplify HR. Whether managing employee relations, payroll processing, or implementing impactful training programs, Xenium is the trusted partner businesses rely on to elevate their workplace experience. Discover how Xenium can transform your workplace: Learn more

Connect with Alli Murphy: Website LinkedIn Instagram Newsletter The Elevate Lab

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Your Employee Did Their Research. It Was for the Wrong Industry.

An employee walks in with AI research, fully confident they're owed back wages and penalties for missed 10-minute rest breaks. The research wasn't made up. It was valid information for a different industry, and it didn't apply to their employer.

Xenium HR Director of HR Services, Nicole Blevins, is back to walk through what happened next. Her team didn't argue. They listened, asked where the information came from, checked it with Xenium's compliance team and a legal partner, then went back to the employee with what actually applied and a plan to make sure the breaks were happening.

Brandon and Nicole also get into why this is showing up more often, from employees and managers alike, and why a leading question gets you the answer you were hoping for. Brandon admits his own worry about trusting these tools too much, and Nicole shares how to correct someone without turning it into a debate about who's right.

If you lead people, assume your team is using AI. This conversation gives you a steady way to respond when their research lands on your desk.

About our guest Nicole Blevins is the Director of HR Services at Xenium HR, where she works directly with client businesses and their leaders. She has more than 10 years of experience in HR and is a familiar voice on Transform Your Workplace.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:30 Why Brandon wonders if he's trusting AI too much
• 03:05 How employees are showing up with AI answers they trust completely
• 03:40 The missed rest break claim and the demand for back wages
• 05:15 Why the research was valid but for the wrong industry
• 06:05 How missing context changes the answer AI gives you
• 07:30 Why Nicole got curious instead of correcting the employee
• 09:35 How to tell someone their research doesn't apply
• 11:05 Does HR end up looking like it's on the employer's side
• 13:25 Why this is coming up more with employees and managers
• 15:05 Why free AI tools give you weaker answers
• 16:15 How a leading question gets you the answer you wanted
• 16:50 What managers should do when AI research lands on their desk
• 18:10 Why access to information isn't the same as understanding it

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR Host: Brandon Laws In Brandon's own words: "The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders."

About Xenium HR Xenium HR is on a mission to transform workplaces by providing expert outsourced HR and payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses. With a people-first approach, Xenium helps organizations create thriving work environments where employees feel valued and supported. From navigating compliance to enhancing workplace culture, Xenium offers tailored solutions that empower growth and simplify HR. Whether managing employee relations, payroll processing, or implementing impactful training programs, Xenium is the trusted partner businesses rely on to elevate their workplace experience. Discover how Xenium can transform your workplace: Learn more

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Most leaders treat problem behavior at work as a people problem. Dustin Snyder treats it as a design problem.

Dustin came up through HR, then took both the VP of HR and president seats at a 600-employee manufacturing division that had been losing money for years. The turnaround taught him something uncomfortable. The HR toolkit he had been trained on, including progressive discipline, was built to limit liability, not to change behavior. That led him to human systems theory, the finding that behavior at scale is a rational adaptation to the environment. If people don't change when you ask them to, it's because the environment hasn't changed.

In this conversation, Brandon and Dustin get into why engagement surveys return symptoms instead of root causes, the UPS survey that hit record scores a few months before a companywide strike, the skilled trades team that was quitting over pride rather than pay, and the rural energy company that was hiding the exact thing its best candidates wanted.

If absenteeism, turnover, or disengagement keeps coming back no matter what you try, this one gives you a different place to look.

About our guest

Dustin Snyder is a consultant and the author of Sink or Swim: The Human Systems Theory Approach to Business Performance, the first of three planned books. He spent his career in HR before taking on both the VP of HR and president roles at the American division of a global metals company, roughly 600 employees and $300 million in annual revenue. That turnaround became the basis for SWIM, short for strategic workforce insight mapping, the process he now uses to trace systemic employee behavior back to its root causes. He has worked with manufacturers, hospitals, software companies, and higher education.

TIMESTAMPS

• 01:45 Why the goals were never the problem
• 03:55 How a losing manufacturing division changed his management style
• 05:20 Why the HR toolkit limits liability instead of changing behavior
• 06:35 How stricter attendance policies produce worse attendance
• 11:30 What human systems theory means in plain language
• 12:45 Why engagement surveys hand you symptoms instead of root causes
• 14:20 How UPS hit record engagement scores right before a strike
• 15:45 Why a skilled trades team was quitting over pride, not pay
• 17:35 Why most consulting engagements fade the moment the invoice clears
• 23:35 How triangulation spreads dysfunction through an organization
• 26:15 What a top performer really costs when they leave
• 28:45 What leadership is actually responsible for when behavior is a system output
• 31:40 How a rural energy company turned its weakness into its hiring pitch
• 34:35 Where AI helps with this work and where trust makes it fail
• 38:30 The one mindset shift to try next week

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST

Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR Host: Brandon Laws In Brandon's own words: "The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders."

About Xenium HR

Xenium HR is on a mission to transform workplaces by providing expert outsourced HR and payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses. With a people-first approach, Xenium helps organizations create thriving work environments where employees feel valued and supported. From navigating compliance to enhancing workplace culture, Xenium offers tailored solutions that empower growth and simplify HR. Whether managing employee relations, payroll processing, or implementing impactful training programs, Xenium is the trusted partner businesses rely on to elevate their workplace experience. Discover how Xenium can transform your workplace: Learn more

Connect with Dustin Snyder: LinkedIn

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Most managers have one move in a hard conversation. They tell people what to do. It works until it doesn't, and when it stops working, most of us just tell harder.

Executive coach Heather Graves-Ramsey lays out three kinds of leadership conversations. Managing and mentoring both push. Coaching pulls. The difference is whether you walk in with the answer or walk in believing the person across from you can find it. She explains why the pulling conversation is so hard to learn, why it can feel like you're not doing your job, and why the manager who gets the least credit is often doing the most good.

Host, Brandon Laws, pushes on the obvious question. If anyone can get an answer in seconds from AI, what is a leader for? Heather's case is that the value is not in having answers. It is in the intuitive read, the follow-up nobody else would ask, and seeing something in a person they can't yet see in themselves.

You'll also hear her POWER model for preparing a conversation you're dreading, the three levels of listening, a trick for getting your own head out of the room, and a short list of questions to try with your team this week. Plus the story of the 11-year-old client who hissed at her for three sessions, and what finally broke through.

About our guest Heather Graves-Ramsey is an executive coach and leadership development trainer and the owner of Coach to Brilliance, based in the Portland, Oregon area. She is a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation and trained through the Coaches Training Institute, with a background that spans business, counseling, and education, including time as a school-based mental health counselor. She works with individuals and teams on communication, retention, and leadership impact, and she is active in community leadership in Lake Oswego.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Intro and a word from Xenium HR
• 02:00 Why managing and mentoring both push, and coaching pulls
• 05:08 Why most leaders don't know which conversation to have
• 06:25 Watching a leader push when the moment calls for a pull
• 07:55 How problem solvers learn to ask instead of answer
• 10:20 Why leaders still matter when AI has all the answers
• 13:30 How to get better at asking powerful questions
• 16:12 Why new leaders can't hear their own intuition
• 17:45 How to quiet your own head and stay present
• 21:15 Why silence after a question is a good sign
• 22:50 Naming what isn't being said in the room
• 24:45 The 11-year-old who hissed
• 26:45 The POWER model for preparing a hard conversation
• 34:25 Questions to try with your team this week
• 36:20 Closing and where to find Heather

• Powerful one-on-one questions [Download]
• Levels of Listening [Download]

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR Host: Brandon Laws In Brandon's own words: "The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders."

About Xenium HR Xenium HR is on a mission to transform workplaces by providing expert outsourced HR and payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses. With a people-first approach, Xenium helps organizations create thriving work environments where employees feel valued and supported. From navigating compliance to enhancing workplace culture, Xenium offers tailored solutions that empower growth and simplify HR. Whether managing employee relations, payroll processing, or implementing impactful training programs, Xenium is the trusted partner businesses rely on to elevate their workplace experience. Discover how Xenium can transform your workplace: Learn more

Connect with Heather Graves-Ramsey: LinkedIn Website Coach to Brilliance on LinkedIn

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More than half of adults say they feel lonely. Among young men, 27 percent say they do not have a friend at all. Dr. Tracy Brower has spent her career studying what work does to people, and her new book is about what happens when the relationships go missing.

This conversation starts with the research and then turns practical. Tracy explains how convenience removed the small interactions that used to hold us together, how many close friends a person can realistically keep up with, and what it takes to build a friendship as an adult when nobody is assigning you a locker anymore.

Brandon and Tracy also get into AI. Specifically, where the line sits between using it to save yourself some typing and handing over the parts of the job that carry trust. Tracy's distinction between cognitive offloading and cognitive surrender is worth the listen on its own.

For leaders, the last stretch is the most useful. Tracy argues that the best team bonding does not come from the escape room or the pasta making class. It comes from groups doing hard work together, which means connection is something you can build into how the work is structured rather than something you schedule.

About our guest

Dr. Tracy Brower is a sociologist and the vice president of workplace insights at Steelcase. She is a senior contributor at Forbes and a contributor to Fast Company and Newsweek. She is the author of Critical Connections: Build Relationships and Harness the Power of Community in Work and Life, along with The Secrets to Happiness at Work and Bring Work to Life by Bringing Life to Work. Tracy holds a PhD in sociology, a master of management in organizational culture, and a master of corporate real estate with a workplace specialization. This is not her first time on the show.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Why Brandon opens with his own friendship habits
• 01:35 Why connection needed its own book
• 03:10 Why loneliness is on an upward trend worldwide
• 04:55 How removing friction from daily life also removed the people
• 05:50 Why young men are the group struggling most
• 07:15 How to build a friendship when the job is remote
• 09:00 What close friendship does to physical and mental health
• 10:10 Why the youngest workers have the hardest time
• 12:20 Where AI crosses from cognitive offloading into cognitive surrender
• 15:40 How to use AI without losing your own voice
• 17:30 Whether the social media backlash is real
• 21:20 Why self-awareness comes before better relationships
• 23:05 What it actually takes to make a friend as an adult
• 25:35 How many close friends a person can realistically keep
• 29:10 How to start a conversation when the mixer terrifies you
• 33:00 Why work is where most people make their more diverse friends
• 34:45 What leaders can do to build connection into the work itself
• 37:30 Where to find Tracy and the book

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST

Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR Host: Brandon Laws In Brandon's own words: "The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders."

About Xenium HR

Xenium HR is on a mission to transform workplaces by providing expert outsourced HR and payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses. With a people-first approach, Xenium helps organizations create thriving work environments where employees feel valued and supported. From navigating compliance to enhancing workplace culture, Xenium offers tailored solutions that empower growth and simplify HR. Whether managing employee relations, payroll processing, or implementing impactful training programs, Xenium is the trusted partner businesses rely on to elevate their workplace experience. Discover how Xenium can transform your workplace: Learn more

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Every leader has run the meeting where the team can list twenty reasons something won't work and zero ideas for how it could. Alex Dorr has a name for what's happening in that room, and a five step process for getting out of it.

Alex is the CEO of Reality-Based Leadership and the author of How We Could, out September 22, 2026. In this conversation with Brandon Laws, he walks through the Call to Greatness framework: validate the experience, clean up the thinking, find your part in the mess, know your role in the solution, then take next right action. He opens with a day in New York with a group of regional retail directors who were stuck on a decision they didn't like, and the moment one of them looked at a whiteboard full of constraints and said, "I can see it."

The conversation gets practical fast. Alex explains why he thinks empathy has been weaponized at work and how it stalls teams before they reach action. He draws the line between empathy and sympathy with an emergency room story that will stick with you. He makes the case that your most expensive employee might be your best performer, the one who has started judging everyone falling behind. And he breaks down three roles most people confuse: decision maker, consultant, and good person to be informed. His take on that last one is worth the listen on its own.

If you lead people at a small or mid-sized company and you're tired of the same circular conversations, this one gives you something to use in your next one-on-one.

About our guest

Alex Dorr is the CEO of Reality-Based Leadership, where he works with leaders around the world on ditching drama, building alignment, and coaching teams to next right action. He is the author of How We Could: The Framework to Lead Without Drama, Build Alignment, and Call Teams to Greatness, launching September 22, 2026, and the host of the Reality-Based Leadership Podcast. He holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation and a master's in international business from the University of Derby in England.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Welcome and what this episode covers
• 02:10 Why a room full of retail directors went silent
• 08:15 How making constraints visual changes the conversation
• 09:50 Why leaders should spend less time motivating people
• 12:45 The five steps of the Call to Greatness framework
• 16:45 What loving people up actually looks like day to day
• 20:40 Why empathy gets weaponized at work
• 24:30 How a trip to the ER changed the way Alex solves problems
• 28:10 Why your best performer might be your most expensive one
• 31:00 Decision maker, consultant, or good person to be informed
• 39:20 Why asking teams to think outside the box backfires
• 44:00 What to keep in mind when you screw this up

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST

Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR Host: Brandon Laws In Brandon's own words: "The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders."

About Xenium HR

Xenium HR is on a mission to transform workplaces by providing expert outsourced HR and payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses. With a people-first approach, Xenium helps organizations create thriving work environments where employees feel valued and supported. From navigating compliance to enhancing workplace culture, Xenium offers tailored solutions that empower growth and simplify HR. Whether managing employee relations, payroll processing, or implementing impactful training programs, Xenium is the trusted partner businesses rely on to elevate their workplace experience. Discover how Xenium can transform your workplace: Learn more

Connect with Alex Dorr: Website LinkedIn How We Could

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Most leaders who cannot delegate assume it is a process problem. Susan Drumm has studied both sides of it, and her answer is that the skill gap is real but it is rarely the whole story. Underneath it is usually a belief you have been carrying since long before you managed anyone.

Susan has spent two decades coaching C-suite executives, and her work centers on pattern recognition and pattern disruption. In this conversation she explains how she spots those patterns in a leadership team, why leaders resist looking at them, and what it takes to change one in the moment.

She shares the story of a leader whose habit of sugarcoating feedback traced back to being the middle child nobody paid attention to, and what shifted once he could name it. She makes a direct case that staying in pretense with your team destroys trust rather than protecting it. She walks through her four steps for catching a pattern and shifting it, explains why she uses the Enneagram over DISC or MBTI, and gets into the neuroscience of how music speeds up new habit formation.

Worth your time if you manage people and keep running into the same problem in different clothing.

About our guest

Susan Drumm is a CEO advisor, executive coach, and the USA Today bestselling author of The Leader's Playlist. She founded Meritage Leadership 20 years ago, where she and her team work with senior leaders and executive teams on pattern recognition, team performance, and leadership development.

Her background is unusual for the field. She holds degrees from Harvard Law School and Carnegie Mellon University, plus a master's in acting from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Before starting her own firm, she worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group and later at NBC. She describes herself as an Enneagram type seven, which she says explains her habit of pulling unrelated disciplines together.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Intro and sponsor
• 02:00 How Susan finds patterns in an executive team
• 04:05 Why the old playlist starts in childhood
• 06:05 Why this work goes better with playfulness
• 07:15 How sugarcoating feedback wrecked one leader's results
• 08:50 Why the pattern traced back to being the middle child
• 09:50 Why staying in pretense destroys trust
• 10:45 How to tell if a pattern is helping or hurting you
• 11:40 Harvard Law to acting school and why it all connects
• 17:20 What the neuroscience says about music and the brain
• 19:00 How to pick music that actually shifts your state
• 20:45 The four steps to catch a pattern and change it
• 23:40 Why Susan uses the Enneagram over DISC or MBTI
• 27:15 Where to start if you want to do this work
• 28:30 Why leaders who cannot delegate end up burned out
• 31:20 How leaders should be approaching AI right now
• 34:00 A first step if you feel stuck and cannot name why

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR Host: Brandon Laws In Brandon's own words: "The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders."

About Xenium HR Xenium HR is on a mission to transform workplaces by providing expert outsourced HR and payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses. With a people-first approach, Xenium helps organizations create thriving work environments where employees feel valued and supported. From navigating compliance to enhancing workplace culture, Xenium offers tailored solutions that empower growth and simplify HR. Whether managing employee relations, payroll processing, or implementing impactful training programs, Xenium is the trusted partner businesses rely on to elevate their workplace experience. Discover how Xenium can transform your workplace: Learn more

Resources mentioned: The Leader's Playlist Free leadership quiz Enneagram Applied Meritage Leadership

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Most managers already know what good management looks like. Give real feedback. Delegate. Have the hard conversation. Knowing it has never been the problem.

Nir Eyal spent years asking why people who have the right answer still don't act on it. His conclusion is that the gap is not motivation or discipline. It's belief. And beliefs are harder to spot than habits, because from the inside they feel like facts.

In this conversation, Nir walks through what a belief actually is, why confirmation bias quietly hardens a manager's read on an employee until it stops being reviewable, and what to do when you find yourself already dreading a conversation that hasn't happened yet. He also makes a blunt case against two labels a lot of leaders wear comfortably: imposter syndrome and perfectionist.

The practical takeaways here are small and usable. Look for where you're suffering instead of hunting for the belief directly. Keep a reality log when your read on your own performance has gone lopsided. And pay attention to whatever words follow "I am."

About our guest

Nir Eyal is the author of Hooked, Indistractable, and Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results, an instant New York Times bestseller written with Julie Li. He is a former lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Time. He writes about behavior, focus, and belief at NirAndFar.com.

Nir is offering listeners a free 5-Minute Belief Change Guide at nirandfar.com/beyond-belief-live.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Why managers know what to do and still don't do it
• 02:00 Why readers kept telling Nir his last book didn't work for them
• 06:00 Why the best advice becomes wasted breath without belief
• 07:15 The difference between a fact, a faith, and a belief
• 08:50 Why your conscious mind only gets 50 bits of what's in front of you
• 11:00 How a manager's opinion of an employee hardens into fact
• 13:30 Why you can see everyone's limiting beliefs except your own
• 15:15 Don't look for the belief. Look for where you're suffering.
• 17:45 The flowers Nir sent his mom and what he learned from the phone call
• 20:15 How a reality log corrects a belief about your own performance
• 23:00 What happens to Thursday's hard conversation when you decide Tuesday it will go badly
• 25:50 Why your labels are your limits
• 28:00 Why Nir says imposter syndrome isn't real
• 30:00 Same sweaty palms, different belief
• 32:20 Where to start if you want to test one belief this week

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR Host: Brandon Laws In Brandon's own words: "The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders."

About Xenium HR Xenium HR is on a mission to transform workplaces by providing expert outsourced HR and payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses. With a people-first approach, Xenium helps organizations create thriving work environments where employees feel valued and supported. From navigating compliance to enhancing workplace culture, Xenium offers tailored solutions that empower growth and simplify HR. Whether managing employee relations, payroll processing, or implementing impactful training programs, Xenium is the trusted partner businesses rely on to elevate their workplace experience. Discover how Xenium can transform your workplace: Learn more

Connect with Nir Eyal: Website LinkedIn Instagram Beyond Belief Free Belief Change Guide

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Deloitte's David Mallon on the Culture Debt AI Is Building

Most organizations are treating AI like the last big tech rollout. Buy the licenses, run some training, expect results. The data says that approach is backfiring.

David Mallon leads the research behind Deloitte's Global Human Capital Trends report, now in its 15th year. In this conversation, he explains why 59% of organizations taking a tech-first approach to AI are 1.6 times more likely to miss the return, and what changes when you redesign the work instead of layering tools on top of it.

Brandon and David get into the human side of the shift. Work slop and what it means for developing people when entry-level roles disappear. Culture debt, and the 80% of leaders and workers who suspect their teammates are using AI to look more productive. Decision rights, and why accountability breaks down when nobody can trace a choice back to a person. And the question sitting underneath all of it: who actually owns work.

There is a practical throughline here for small and mid-sized companies. You do not need a transformation budget to start. You need to think in capabilities, build friction back in where people need to practice, and say out loud what counts as good work now.

About our guest David Mallon is a managing director at Deloitte Consulting LLP and head of research and chief futurist for Human Capital in the US. He has more than 25 years of experience in human capital and has been a contributor to Deloitte's Global Human Capital Trends study since its inception. He leads Insights2Action, Deloitte's Human Capital decision intelligence capability, and is a former head of research for Bersin. He co-hosts the Capital H podcast and speaks widely on organization design, culture, HR strategy, and learning.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Welcome and what this episode covers
• 01:45 Why 2026 is the year leaders can no longer sit on the fence
• 04:15 The tech-first trap and why AI is not the last tech wave
• 05:40 What a human-centric approach looks like in practice
• 07:25 Hardwiring and softwiring when you design human and AI work
• 08:40 The telecom example, 5% versus 30%, and the lesson for smaller companies
• 10:50 How to bring an entire organization along on new tools
• 13:00 Fabrication, embellished profiles, and verification in hiring
• 15:15 Work slop, the experience gap, and building friction back in
• 17:30 Decision rights, machine autonomy, and where accountability lives
• 19:15 Culture debt and what suspicion does to a team over time
• 21:30 Isolating what the human actually brings to the work
• 22:35 A history teacher's assignment as a model for verification
• 24:45 The orchestration gap and what is getting in the way
• 27:15 Who owns work, and the trio organizations will need
• 29:40 Have organizational functions outlived their function
• 31:45 The biggest change workers felt this past year
• 33:25 Decisions that echo and the one message for every leader
• 35:20 What David wants people to take away and act on

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR Host: Brandon Laws In Brandon's own words: "The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders."

About Xenium HR Xenium HR is on a mission to transform workplaces by providing expert outsourced HR and payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses. With a people-first approach, Xenium helps organizations create thriving work environments where employees feel valued and supported. From navigating compliance to enhancing workplace culture, Xenium offers tailored solutions that empower growth and simplify HR. Whether managing employee relations, payroll processing, or implementing impactful training programs, Xenium is the trusted partner businesses rely on to elevate their workplace experience. Discover how Xenium can transform your workplace: Learn more

Resource mentioned: 2026 Global Human Capital Trends report

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