HR Besties: Opting out of Leadership
HR BESTIES
HR Besties LLC
4.8 • 586 Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2025
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's agenda:
- Square affair
- Cringe corporate speak: mother's milk
- Hot topic: all about opting out of leadership
- Why are employees choosing to avoid leadership roles in an organization?
- The work-life balance concerns
- Training and sharing knowledge with others doesn't have to mean managing a team
- Navigating middle management
- What are some positives that we've experienced in leadership roles?
- Finding and following your calling
- Questions/Comments
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Tune in to "HR Besties," a business, work and management podcast hosted by Leigh Elena Henderson (HRManifesto), Ashley Herd (ManagerMethod) and Jamie Jackson (Humorous_Resources), where we navigate the labyrinth of corporate culture, from cringe corporate speak to toxic leadership. Whether you're in Human Resources or not, corporate or small business, we offer sneak peeks into surviving work, hiring strategies, and making the employee experience better for all. Tune in for real talk on employee engagement, green flags in the workplace, and how to turn red flags into real change. Don't miss our chats about leadership, career coaching, and takes from work travel and watercooler gossip. Get new episodes every Wednesday, follow us on socials for the latest updates, and join us at our virtual happy hours to share your HR stories.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you think that your workplace is tame and that there's really no drama, nothing salacious, wild or crazy, you're just not in the know. |
| 0:16.0 | You are obviously not working in HR. |
| 0:19.0 | Truth. |
| 0:20.0 | That is so true. |
| 0:21.8 | Because every single workplace, schools, hospitals, gardening, corporate center, whatever. |
| 0:29.6 | I mean, pick an industry, right, pick whatever. |
| 0:32.5 | They all have their drama, their people drama because people, right? I mean, people are working. |
| 0:39.3 | Yeah. |
| 0:40.3 | And people are flawed and they are very interesting creatures, right? |
| 0:45.3 | So, back in the day, I had an employee come to me to make a complaint, which is totally normal. And this employee was like, |
| 0:57.9 | hey, my boss is playing favorites with someone else on the team. Heard that a million times. I know |
| 1:06.8 | y'all have, right? And it's nine-nine ten times true. Like they are playing favorites, |
| 1:13.7 | okay? Because people bias. And so I said, okay, well, let me hear this. How are they playing favorites? |
| 1:21.6 | And they listed, no kidding, like every single way a manager could play favorites with somebody, right? I mean, |
| 1:28.3 | training opportunities, promotion, bonus, great work projects, all the things, visibility, right? |
| 1:35.3 | And so then I remember saying, well, why do you think that is? And the employee looked at me like I was stupid and was like, um, because they're |
| 1:48.8 | dating. Like, duh. And I was like, wait, what? Baring the lead. Yeah, like, wait, what? Like, I think |
| 1:57.7 | people make the assumption that HR knows everything. Yes, we get a lot of the gossip, right? |
| 2:02.6 | Yes, people are always talking to us, but we don't know everything. |
| 2:06.6 | Okay, like, some things are hidden and some things, you know, we only know what y'all tell us, right? |
| 2:14.6 | So, okay, there's when I finally learned about that one. |
| 2:16.6 | I was like, |
... |
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