Fostering Openness and Unity Through Transparent Communication
Episode Notes
In this episode of "52 Humans," host Paul Wolfe interviews Laura Hammond, an HR executive and founder of The People People, an HR consultancy that focuses on heart-centered HR practices. Hammond discusses her experience with human-first and empathetic leadership, particularly during the pandemic when she was leading a large retail organization. She shares a personal story about struggling with her mental health and the decision she made to be honest and vulnerable with her team and the broader organization about her situation. Hammond talks about the importance of psychological safety and creating a work culture where leaders can show up as their authentic selves. The episode concludes with Wolfe encouraging listeners to think about ways to bring greater empathy into their workplace.
About the Guest
Laura Hammond
Founder
The People Peopler
Laura is an experienced global Human Resources Leader with over 20 years of experience across government, retail, and most recently, a hyper-growth health technology startup. In her personal life, she is passionate about raising funds for mental health research, a devoted Peloton enthusiast, a rescue dog mom, and a fan of all things Canadian arts and culture.
Laura's mission is to support organizations in fostering inclusive workplaces where employees can achieve their professional and personal goals. She has worked for two of North America's most innovative and exciting retail brands and recently led the building of people operations infrastructure for a women's health tech start-up called Tia. Throughout her career, she has built successful People teams to support organizational growth and development.
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0:10
Hello and welcome to another weekly episode of 52 humans, the vlog cast on stories of human first leadership.
0:16
I'm your host, Paul Wolf and I created this show to inspire us all to transform our workplaces by returning to the humanity that binds us.
0:24
I'm so excited for my conversation today with Laura Hammond about human first and empathetic leadership.
0:29
Laura is an HR executive and the founder of the People People.
0:32
Laura, welcome to the show.
0:33
Thanks for being here.
0:35
Thank you so much for having me.
0:37
I'm really excited to chat today.
0:38
It's gonna be a good conversation.
0:40
Talk to, I love the people, people.
0:41
I love the name.
0:42
because I'm a people person, but talk to talk to us about what the people people do, what you do.
0:47
Yeah.
0:48
So I've spent the last 10 years in hr leadership roles and in January, I left my last corporate role and wanted to bring some of the lessons that I've learned over the last 10 years to more folks and different types of organizations.
1:07
So the people, people is an R consultancy.
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I call it a heart centered hr consultancy.
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because I lead with my heart and hopefully is my whole self.
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And I want to work with organizations that are looking to expand their people programs, whether it's a growth stage organization who needs advice on hiring and developing their first people leader, or whether it's a retail organization that is looking to expand their brick and mortar footprint.
1:42
These are organizations that I love to work with, to help them develop their people and culture strategy, such important work and I love leading with your heart because that is kind of what my book in this podcast is all about.
1:54
So I'm sure you've got tons of stories.
1:56
But can you share one story with us about human first or empathetic and empathetic leadership?
2:03
Yeah.
2:03
So when I think about human first leadership and as I was preparing to connect with you today, I thought of a few examples.
2:11
But I'm as we were chatting before the show, we talked about an example from your career where you showed up fully as yourself in a communication to staff.
2:23
And that prompted me to think about how I've done the same.
2:27
And next week we're meeting in April, but next week will be the first week of May and we will be celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week.
2:37
And my example of human first leadership is how I showed up in a particularly challenging situation that I encountered.
2:46
and tried to lead authentically as myself, the human that is a daughter and a sister and a dog, mom and a friend and all of those things in addition to an hr executive.
3:00
And so,, I'll, I'll take you back, over the course of the pandemic.
3:05
I was leading a large retail organization across the US and, we were closing our stores.
3:15
we were having employees whose family and friends had been impacted by COVID-19.
3:22
whether that be, you know, getting extremely ill or passing away, we had the murder of George Floyd where we were seeing protests across the United States and we had some of our staff that were in areas where there was protest activity who weren't feeling safe, et cetera.
3:39
And during that time, I was showing up to work every day trying to troubleshoot.
3:46
Some of these challenges for employees making sure that they were safe that they were had access to support services to help them process some of the things that were happening around them.
3:58
And I loved doing that work and was, you know, working like many hr folks 60 70 hours a week.
4:06
And I, I loved the time at that retail organization and, and I, I was looking for something more and, and made the transition to a health tech startup.
4:18
What I didn't realize at the time was that some of the hours of work and the issues that I was dealing with what I like to call the emotional labor or sharing my, my emotional bandwidth with others, as well as some things that were going on in my personal life were leading me to the point of burnout.
4:37
And this past fall, I started to struggle in a very acute way with my mental health.
4:47
I've dealt with depression and anxiety since I was a teenager.
4:51
And I've always managed to balance it with my work.
4:55
I would be the type of person that would, you know, have a horrible evening where I would be highly anxious in tears, feeling like I couldn't possibly, you know, work the next day and show up with a smile on my face as if nothing was wrong and only let people very close to me see that.
5:12
and this fall when my issues became very acute, I had to take some time off and the question became, how was I going to deal with that?
5:25
And what was I gonna say about where I was going?
5:29
Because there were a number of activities happening as there always are in the workplace that required me to, to be leading them.
5:37
And I made the decision to be honest in an all staff communication and with my team about what was happening for me and what I was going to need to do.
5:48
And so I first started with my team and informed them and walked them through, what that meant for me.
5:57
And then, we made a larger announcement to, the broader organization because we were small.
6:05
I was very visible,, and talk to them about who would be supporting them during my absence.
6:12
And that was a really scary thing to do for me.
6:15
because I was feeling like especially over the last few years that I've had to be the person that has it all together.
6:24
And so to be vulnerable and to share was, was very challenging.
6:30
Oh, I want to give you a big warm virtual hug right now.
6:33
So one, thank you so much for sharing that because that is tough.
6:37
You are vulnerable again by talking about it.
6:39
And I understand that two the, the I I think leaders in general, but hr leaders specifically, I think sometimes, you know, we always talk about like we're taking care of employees and sometimes we forget to take care of hr and the pandemic and George Floyd and we had a, you know, the murder, we had a contentious president, national election, uncertainty in the economy, like all of that stuff and, and just even day to day stuff.
7:06
And so, and I think you're right.
7:08
I think you talked about that we were, we've been trained as leaders to not show up as our true authentic selves and that's not who I am.
7:19
That's not who you were, that's not what you were going through.
7:21
So like, that's an amazing, like just an amazing example.
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Like that's what this vlog is about to help people see leaders being humans and maybe take something away to think a little bit differently.
7:34
Did you?
7:35
So I I there's a, there's a psychological safety piece to this too.
7:38
And somebody, when I shared what we were talking about before about high mental health with a, with a large group of employees, somebody asked me after the fact if, if psychological safety came into my decision making and it didn't.
7:50
And part of it, I think it was, I was the head of hr so I like, I, I don't know, I, not that I'm better than anybody else, but I didn't really think about that.
7:56
And I think that may be the case for some seaweeds.
7:58
Did that.
8:00
Did you did that thought cross your mind?
8:02
Like what is, what could happen to me if I say this publicly?
8:10
It did.
8:10
And you know what's really funny is I've really been contending with that over the last 12, 13 years.
8:19
because I, I, at one point in my life, I was doing a lot of fundraising and awareness raising work for mental health research.
8:27
And part of that was speaking very openly about my own journey and some quite serious times with my health where I sought medical care and things like that and, and my, my previous career before joining the private sector was government and there were very clear rules about discrimination and psychological safety.
8:49
And I made the transition to the private sector in 2012.
8:53
And I, I did and have worried about how that might be interpreted, what people might be able to find online and what judgments they might make about me.
9:04
But in this case, I was working for a health care company that provided mental health services.
9:10
And I thought, man, if I can't show up, what are we doing?
9:15
And so I, I did worry that I thought this is more important than trying to keep myself safe because I know that there are people out there that are likely feeling this.
9:26
I joke that no one is OK, post pandemic.
9:28
We're all dealing with something.
9:30
And so it was, it, that was more important for me than my, my own private.
9:36
That's wonderful.
9:36
And you, you, by doing that, created so much psycho psychological safety for your team and just the employees of that company because of the role that you had at that organization.
9:46
Exactly.
9:47
Yeah, it's such a, such a wonderful, wonderful example of human first leadership.
9:52
Thank you so much for being with us today.
9:54
You're welcome.
9:55
Thank you for having me, Paul.
9:56
Absolutely.
9:58
Thanks for joining us on this episode of 52 Humans.
10:01
If you enjoyed this, please give me a follow to be kept abreast of future episodes.
10:05
I so appreciate all of your support.
10:08
If you want to watch past episodes or you have a story of human first leadership that you'd like to share, go to Paul Wolf dot com forward slash 52 humans.
10:16
And lastly as I do each week, I'm gonna ask that each of you think about one way that you can bring greater empathy into your workplace.
10:23
It's these small acts of humanity and kindness that make for a better work culture and ultimately a better world.
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I'm Paul Wolf and I'll see you next time on 52 humans.