Xenium HR

09/03/2026

"We all have an instinct to matter."

Dr. Tracy Brower on what actually happens when you feel connected to the people around you. Not just mood. Physical health, thinking, and how you see your own contribution.

She is a sociologist and the author of Critical Connections. Full conversation covers making friends as an adult, how many you can realistically keep, and what leaders can change.

Listen here:

More than half of adults say they feel lonely. A sociologist explains what is driving the decline in friendship and what leaders can do about it at work.

09/01/2026

"We've removed friction, but a lot of friction is actual human relationships."

That's Dr. Tracy Brower on the delivery apps, self-checkout lanes, and the little box you can check to tell the driver not to knock. Every one of those used to involve a person.

Her argument is that the small talk we optimized away was doing real work. Research in her new book finds that even superficial interaction contributes to a sense of belonging and community.

Take enough of it out and you get where we are now, with more than half of adults reporting loneliness and 27 percent of young men saying they do not have a friend at all.

Tracy is a sociologist, the VP of Workplace Insights at Steelcase, a senior contributor at Forbes, and the author of Critical Connections. She has been on the show before and she is one of the clearest thinkers I know on what work does to people.

The episode covers how many close friends a person can realistically keep up with, what leaders can change about how work is structured rather than what they schedule, and where AI crosses from saving you time into costing you trust. I also wrote up the parts that stuck with me most.

Read or listen here:

More than half of adults say they feel lonely. A sociologist explains what is driving the decline in friendship and what leaders can do about it at work.

08/28/2026

"The most expensive is when your best people start to get righteous, and they judge the judgers."

Alex Dorr describes a scene most leaders will recognize. You roll out a change. Ten people get it. Two are slower to come around. And the ten start to feel righteous about it.

That righteousness is the part that costs you. In Alex's words, you end up with a high performer who is now high drama, and you have lost twice.

His fix is a non-negotiable that any team can adopt: stop judging, start helping. Anyone can call it a timeout. The people who are ahead reach out and walk the others through the new process. The people who are behind get asked what if you could, instead of being written off.

Alex Dorr is the CEO of Reality-Based Leadership and a Certified Speaking Professional, which puts him in the top 5% of speakers worldwide. He hosts the Reality-Based Leadership podcast and works with leaders at organizations including Bank of America, Salesforce, and John Deere on ditching workplace drama and building accountability.

The full episode is out now. He gets into why the resistant employee is rarely the real problem, what a stop judging, start helping timeout sounds like in a real meeting, and how change rollouts quietly split teams into camps.

Listen or read the companion article here: https://na2.hubs.ly/H07wrfb0

08/21/2026

The way you enter a conversation shapes everything that follows.

In this Transform Your Workplace microlearning video, we break down priming for trust, one of the core competencies of conversational intelligence. Priming for trust means preparing for a conversation before it begins by checking your assumptions, clarifying your intention, and managing your energy so the other person feels safe enough to be open and honest.

The way you enter a conversation shapes everything that follows. In...

08/19/2026

"I can use AI as my observer and tell me what's going on."

Susan Drumm coaches executives by sitting in their team meetings and watching what happens. Who talks. Who does not. What the leader signals without saying anything.

Now she runs the same play on herself. She records her own team meetings, loads the transcript, and asks AI what patterns it notices in how she is leading. Then she asks a harder question. How well did I do.

Most of the AI conversation right now is about speed. This is a different use. It is a leader pointing the tool at her own behavior and asking for the feedback her team may not feel safe giving her.

Susan is a CEO advisor, executive coach, and the USA Today bestselling author of The Leader's Playlist. She joined Brandon Laws on Transform Your Workplace to talk about the patterns running underneath how people lead, her four steps for catching one in the moment, and what is really behind a leader who cannot delegate.

Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast app, or here: https://na2.hubs.ly/H07k6jM0

08/19/2026

With limited HR resources, should an organization lean more on their managers for HR tasks? Lacey Partipilo explains.

08/18/2026

"It's just faster if I do it myself."

That belief is why many leaders are drowning. Susan Drumm interviewed the best delegators on teams, then the worst, and examined what separated them. The gap was what each group believed about their people and about themselves.

Her point is that a skills gap usually sits atop something older. A leader who cannot hand work off is often running a pattern they picked up long before they managed anyone. Until they can name it, the delegation training does not stick.

Susan is a CEO advisor, executive coach, and the USA Today bestselling author of The Leader's Playlist. She has spent 20 years helping executives identify the patterns underlying their leadership and change them. Her background ranges from Harvard Law to the Boston Consulting Group to a master's in acting in London, and it all shows up in how she works.

In this episode, we get into her four steps for catching a pattern in the moment, why she uses the Enneagram over other assessments, and why staying in pretense with your team destroys the trust you think you are protecting.

Listen here:

Susan Drumm, executive coach and author of The Leader's Playlist, on the unconscious patterns that follow leaders into the boardroom.

08/17/2026

Listen to how people talk about AI at work.

Anxiety. Excitement. FOMO.

Those are all emotions. Which means the AI conversation is really a human conversation, and most workplaces are not ready for it.

People come in worried about their jobs and leaders freeze. We have not gotten good at difficult conversations, and this is one of the hardest.
Before you worry about the technology, get honest about that.

Watch this clip of Simon Sinek:

One of the hardest things for any human to do is to be human.The g...

08/17/2026

Sign-ups for What People Want from Work close August 31st.
After that, you wait another year to find out what your employees actually think.

32 anonymous questions. Leadership, culture, management support, recognition, work environment. You get a report comparing your results to every other participating employer in the region.

It takes about five minutes to register. Your employees do the rest.
https://na2.hubs.ly/H07bMn50

08/16/2026

Don’t let outdated processes hold your organization back.

We’ve put together an insightful eBook that tackles these challenges head-on. In it, we explore:
- Detailed breakdowns of common HR hurdles
- Innovative technology solutions to streamline your processes
- Real-world examples of how these solutions can be implemented
- Strategies to boost employee engagement and retention

Download for free https://na2.hubs.ly/H07b9HX0