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That's quickbooks.com/workforce. Welcome back to the Bringing the
Human Back to Human Resources podcast The Replay series.
I'm your host, Tracy Chernoff, and I'm thrilled to have you
join us once again as we journey through the episodes that have
top charts around the world. In this podcast series, we're
revisiting some of our most insightful, thought provoking,
and transformative conversations with industry experts, thought
leaders, and practitioners. These episodes have made waves,
sparking meaningful conversation and inspiring positive change
throughout human resources. Whether you're a dedicated
listener who's been with us from the start or you're just tuning
in for the first time, the Replay series offers a chance to
dive deep into the core principles that guide our
exploration into HR practices. So get ready to rediscover the
discussions that continue to shape the future of HR.
Without further ado, let's step back in time and immerse
ourselves into the podcast's top charted episodes.
Let the replay begin. Hello, everyone, and welcome
back to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here
for another week. I'm really, really excited
because Joshua Berry returns to the podcast, and Joshua has been
on the podcast before, as you can tell from what I've just
said, but he was on the podcast June in 2024 and so not so long
ago. But Joshua has some very
exciting updates for us and we have a lot to cover.
The last time he was on it was episode 183 and the episode was
called Challenging Beliefs There to be Naive featuring Joshua
Berry. So let me remind you who he is
and then we'll jump right into the episode.
Joshua Berry is a world class facilitator of change.
As an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and director of
Econic, Joshua has spent the last two decades evolving the
what, who and why of Fortune 500 companies and venture backed
startups. For employees and leaders
looking to grow themselves and their organizations.
Joshua speaks on overcoming limiting beliefs, adaptive
leadership, and the innovation systems and mindsets that create
create engines for growth. So of course, I'll link where
you can find Joshua and iconic and all of that fabulous
information that you might need in order to connect.
But in the meantime, Joshua, welcome back.
Thanks so much for for being able to join and being open to
rejoin. So glad to have you back.
Happy new year Tracy, excited to be back with you too.
Amazing. Well, I don't want to.
I don't want to share the big news, but you do have some big
news for the listeners. Absolutely.
So the last time I was with you, Tracy, you helped poke some
ideas and we got into thinking about words and the meaning of
words, and we could talk about those later.
But that kind of snowballed into a Ted Talk that I was hoping to
get chosen for eventually got chosen for that.
And I delivered that Ted Talk to a full audience in Omaha, NE in
November of 2024. And in that talk should be
released soon. But it has big implications for
truly bringing the human back into human resources and
artificial intelligence and a bunch of other things we can get
into. But I really just wanted to come
back to say thank you, Tracy, for poking and dislodging
something in my brain, in my heart that turned into what what
hopefully people will see as a provocative idea that's worth
spreading. Oh my gosh, First of all, you
owe me no thanks. But I will say you're welcome
because I was raised not to be rude.
When someone says thank you, you say you're welcome.
No, I, you really, you know, I make joke make I'm making light
of this, but you really don't owe me anything.
It was such a pleasure having you on.
It's why I'm so excited that you're back and I'm really
excited for you. I mean, a Ted Talk is kind of
like, that's the thing. Like that's if, you know, if
we're not doing anything else, like we should probably want to
have a Ted Talk at some point in our lives.
And you've done it. That's so amazing.
I can't wait for it to come out. Thank you.
It definitely was on the bucket list and it was something that
at the beginning of the year, I, I truly set forward a couple of
ideas and goals. And so the fact that that was
able to happen, I'm excited and we'll see how it's received
right. That's, that's always the thing.
So. Totally.
Well, knowing you now for the better part of what is that
about Cigna? 8 months now, no more than that,
maybe nine months, considering we spoke before we recorded, I
think that it will be received very well.
And you know, something that I really appreciate about what you
do and what you bring also to to this audience is that you
emphasize the importance of things that matter.
Like we're talking like words, for example.
And sometimes people, I think undervalue the value of words or
you know what, what we can do with the things that we say or
how we say them. I mean, I'm asked, for example,
all the time about bringing the human back to human resources
where that came from. And it's like, well, it, it's
in, it's in the name, right? So when we think about the power
of words and, you know, coming back to also just what you stand
for and what you've done, I mean, can you take us through or
like, can you give us a slight preview into the Ted talk of
what that was about? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. My pleasure, you know it, it
came from the realization that, as you said, we use a lot of
words without even thinking about them or more importantly,
truly understanding the implications that they have.
You know, I earlier in my career, I LED sales and
marketing teams and we would constantly be talking about our
prospects and our leads and how to put people in a better
funnel. And often times we're talking
about listeners like those to your podcast, right?
Like who actually wants to be put into a funnel or to be
prospected or targeted or any of those things.
And yet those are words we just, we just throw out.
And what I explore in the talk is that unfortunately, just
copying and pasting those words that were used before us, we
sometimes start to rationalize behavior that we wouldn't
normally take if the person was sitting right on the other side
of the screen like you are to me, Tracy, right?
And that extends into human resources, right?
When we start to think about head count as just a number or
people as an expense to be controlled or others, we start
to dehumanize. And truly, dehumanization is one
of the first steps towards even worse actions that that can come
from that. So I get into all of that in my
Ted talk in a nice little bite sized 10 minute entertaining.
Wow. Well, my next question would be,
how do you do that in 10 minutes?
I mean, but it's the power of words.
I mean, that's so amazing and it's really powerful.
You're right. When when like I'm thinking
about, first of all, let me take a step back because I could.
I'm about to ramble if I don't. When I think about one of the
main functions within HR, especially when you're starting
to work on strategy and things like you are analyzing people.
And when you're analyzing people, you eventually get to a
place where you're analyzing people as numbers, to your
point. And the bigger the company, the
easier it is to remove yourself from what that number
represents, who that number represents and who that person
actually is. And so when you talk about
dehumanizing, it is it is so real.
And you know, The thing is, it's so beyond just business, like
when anyone or anything is dehumanized, I mean, that's,
it's kind of like the breakdown for everything, right?
So when we keep the focus on the human and we do our, because of
course it's unrealistic to think, Oh, well, we're going to
look at every single person as a human when we're analyzing big
things, sure, fine, no problem. But it's like when you're, I
think the most important point in all of that when, when a
company is analyzing people is once you come to the point where
you're making a decision about those people that you reframe
it, it's like, OK, you have 10,000 people that you are going
to lay off. Well, who are those 10,000
people? Who are they made-up of?
You know, like what, what comprises that group of people?
Do they have children? Are they on the benefits?
Like what kind of resources are they going to need, you know,
so. What you're hitting on is, is
I'm not saying like remove all of that language.
What I, what I advocate for is just being more intentional
about the language that we're using and, and not just using
unconscious words because a mentor of mine, Ari once told me
that that words are just a symptom of our conscious or
unconscious beliefs, right. And, and often times when we,
when we throw out those words like you said, what we got a
layout, we got a right size, we got to stream the line.
The buzzwords. Any of those sorts of things
that may be true and it may actually be necessary for a
healthy organization going forward, let's say.
And yet maybe those words are actually representative of some
underlying unconscious or unspoken belief about the
replaceability of people within a system that you're working in.
OK, I at least want people to be cognizant of that.
It'll even be intentional that. OK, that's what I think.
And then back to what we talked about in episode 183, there are
things you gain and there are things you lose by holding that
particular belief. And so I just want people to
wake up a little bit more to the consciousness of that,
especially in today's day and age with artificial intelligence
and, and the power that our words have on shaping our future
through AI. Oh my gosh, yes.
And actually, when I think about AI and words, my initial
thought, and this is probably just because I just bought a
minivan and it came up and I, I promise you I'm going to make
the connection. I'm really excited about the
minivan, by the way, even though I'm so much cooler than what a
minivan necessarily like portrays.
I'm so. Redefining the minivan, Tracy,
you're going to redefine. I really am like I am really
changing the game for minivans. I'm just saying if Toyota wants
the spots for me, I got the Sienna.
I'm so excited. I'm going to make the connection
here in a moment when when I think about AI, my first thought
because of my experience buying the minivan is the what we ask
AI if we're using generative like, you know, language with
like let's say Chachi. PT.
And I think about that because it's kind of a perfect example
of like what you give to AI can sometimes be what you receive.
It's not necessarily thinking beyond the scope of what you
might mean, what your context might be, right?
And so I share the minivan anecdote because when my husband
and I were going to buy it, they were like, and you know,
according to Google, this is like the percent above MSRP that
it should be like above MSRP for I'm any that and no offense,
minivans, but I love you. And the question was how much of
what percentage above MSRP is the Toyota Sienna or the
minivan? I'm like, well, of course that's
going to tell you a percent above MSRP because you're asking
it to tell you the percent if you ask what the average price
of of a Toyota like that might not be above MSRP.
So this is a very, very nuanced example, but that's the way I
take kind of what you're saying in terms of like how we think
about nuance and language when it is related to AI and that
might not be your intention. But no, no, no, it's exactly a
flavor of my intention in that as you said, large language
models that power tools like ChatGPT or Anthropics Clock or
Microsoft Copilot, etcetera, are all built on studying and
ingesting and training on immense amounts of data and text
and images and music and everything that can go into it.
And in a response to your prompt, which you very much have
control over, the agent will do its best to be able to predict
what the right response should be to what you're saying.
But it's all based upon previous patterns that it's seen in the
training data. And so you're right, if they've
asked 1000 times, what percent above MSRP is this van the
thousandth and first time is likely going to give that back.
And that's my intent of marrying this being conscious about your
words, especially in human resources and AI, because as
publicly available sources of training data are exhausted,
companies are routinely turning more and more towards private or
at least once in gated sources of information for for training
their models. And so when you start to think
about the last ways that you described people in your emails
or Microsoft Teams messages or blog posts or other things, and
there's a million examples of treating people like a resource
in, in those previous ones, like what do we expect AI is going to
predict the value of people is beyond that.
And so I, I think we're, we're at a, we're at a very
interesting inflection point where we can start to shift the
narrative even of what generative AI thinks about
people, right, and their value based upon the conscious word
choice that we have. Yeah, Oh, this is really
important because everyone, of course, rightfully so, is
talking about AI. And AI will continue to be a
part of the conversation naturally, because it's our
future, it's our present. It's just, you know, what is
important in today's day and age, but how we use it and
having a better understanding of, I guess just generally like
how we can best use it, what the best use case is, makes a lot of
sense. Yes, absolutely.
And I'm very much a pro AI and, and being intentional in its use
case and just being, as I said, even before, whether we had AI
or not, being a little bit more aware of the types of word
choices that we're using and the implications that they have and
how those choices impact our actions and behaviors.
Yeah, no, it makes sense. I was just talking to someone in
HR who I kind of said like, Hey, what do you, what do you think
about this fear that people have with like AI taking their jobs,
basically? And this was not in the
recording. It was like an intro call
because I'd like to, you know, see what I can get out of
people, you know, because these are some, these are the
questions that people have. And she was like, oh, well, it's
totally true. AI is going to replace jobs.
And this is like, you know, ahead of people.
And I was like, oh, like I was kind of taken aback because part
of me like, you know, I get it. Of course there are jobs that
are at risk. And then the other part of me is
like, well, how do we see AI as a resource to better fulfill our
jobs so that we're not as much at risk?
But that is not something that you can cover in a 10 minute
conversation. And so I wonder like, you know,
from your perspective and how, you know, I guess really
relating it to being very cognizant of what we say and how
we say it, especially in HR. How would you answer?
I'm putting you in the hot seat here.
I'm so sorry, but how would you like answer that?
If someone's like, you know, I'm really worried that AI is going
to take my job. I'm an HR admin, I'm an HR
manager, I'm an HR whatever. And I'm really worried that AI
is going to take over my job. Maybe it's someone in
recruiting. What do I do to how do I, how do
I navigate using AI without putting myself in a position
where it's doing my job instead of me doing my job with AI?
You know, like, is there a way that we answer that?
Or maybe it's on the other side of things where like, how do
you, what would you say to an HR person who's like an HR leader
who is confronted with that and has to navigate answering that
question? Like either perspective, I'd
love to hear. So the first thing that comes to
mind is is I believe you called out and some of your 2025 HR
trends, the need for adaptability, for evolving, for
continuous skill development. I think that all very much
applies here because the the individual or the leader who's
thinking about application of HR and their workflows or or job
tasks for their people, just like digging in your heels and
resisting likely isn't going to work.
The better approach is to start to understand, OK, what are some
of the ways that if I had, this is I think the best descriptor.
Somebody said if I had infinite interns at my disposal, what
would I be able to do? And and and, and because at
least for now, at least some of the abilities are around to that
level and, and so you, you need to think about that's a.
Fabulous. Example things on a different
level of scale. And so if you were basing let's
you to your HR admin role, like if you were basing your job
value on the ability to know all of the policies and how to
implement them and how to adjudicate them and and being a
resource, know how person that that is something that could
probably be replaced eventually, probably not the relational side
of things. But even there, I'll start to
challenge that some younger generations would actually
probably prefer to interface with a non person for some of
that information. And so you, you are left with
thinking what what are the additional skills or other
things that could continue to add value around that?
Because if it's just information retrieval or analysis, that may
not be as as helpful going forward.
And so a simple way to also answer this is just start
experimenting, find ways that are either corporately
responsible, if you, if you can, or off on the side on your own
personal things to at least start to practice with some of
these tools so that you can have a better understanding of what
they're capable of and, and practice that curiosity.
And, and yeah, consider the, the thought exercise.
If I had infinite interns, what might I be capable of?
I love that so much and it's really true.
As a former intern myself, that is exactly where Chachi like AI
is. I shouldn't just say Chachi BTU.
It's really any AI tool that we're using because I guess
depending I think of these, what is the phrase?
It's not generative. I guess it is generative AI,
right. With that's what I'm thinking
of. Yeah.
So with any generative AI tool that I have used, and I've used
a few, anything that I kind of put in it is kind of, you know,
it's a little sophomoric. It's it's coming, it's
delivering information based on, you know, a limited or certain
amount of data. And with limited experience so
far. And I can only imagine once
generative AI turns 30, you know, how how much more or maybe
even 40 or 50 or 60, like how much more it will be able to do.
And then when you were sharing about, you know, not resisting
so much, I'm really basically embracing this technology.
It makes me think about the phrase keep your, keep your
friends close, keep your enemies closer.
Because even though I don't believe that AI is the enemy at
all, I really don't. I say that to be very tongue in
cheek. It's kind of like this, this
idea that you, you could find yourself in a position where
technology could do the a certain job.
I don't think that it's going to be able to do like at least with
an HR, especially from the relationship side.
That's still a very important part of what we do is build and
maintain those relationships. And so it's like, well, if it's
doing all these other things that actually help us to
repurpose our time that was once spent doing heavily
administrative things. It's kind of like you're keeping
it closer. Once you embrace it, it's not
this thing that you have to work against anymore.
It's this thing that you're working with and that's
empowering you, enabling you hopefully and your job to do
more, to upskill, to adapt. I appreciate that you reference
the 2025 HR Trends episode because that's kind of what I'm
hoping to invoke throughout the rest of this year is that like
AI doesn't have to be the enemy. It's something that we really
can kind of leverage. It's, you know, it's a tool at
the end of the day. Yeah.
You know, we so our core business is custom training and
development programming, whether it's leadership development
programming to certain specific skills or behaviors.
We use it quite often to help make us better facilitators and
curriculum designers and and experienced people.
So if you start to think about it as a tool of not just go find
this for me or research this for me, but instead, here's here's
an outline for an experience. Why won't this work right?
Or you start using it in a coaching challenging make me
better sort of way. I think you can unlock then a
whole nother level of potential value out of a tool like that.
Here's here's even a, a silly, maybe it's a meta example of
this is if you're the HR admin and you had your job
description, you could put it into one of these tools and say
which of these tasks are most likely to be taken over by AI in
the future and why? And then teach me why.
And then what are some things I could do?
Like use the tool for itself, right?
Yes, I think that's great advice and I really like what you
shared in terms of this idea around brainstorming like you
don't need to tap the shoulder of your Co worker when you've
got an AI brain readily available to you, you know, and
to think about like asking it, well, what wouldn't work about
this? What am I missing?
What it what are my blind spots? I mean, I think of so many use
cases for that. And as I always share on the
podcast that, you know, I'm the first to admit that I move
really fast, most of the time too fast.
I like don't always like notice like the fine details because
I'm moving so fast and like, you know, execution, execution,
execution. And I find like IAI generative
AI and I tend to use Chachi PT the most.
I find it to be extremely helpful to be aware of my blind
spots. Like what, what question am I
not asking? What, what am I missing about
this like really important topic and whether it's for my podcast
or for work. I mean, it's, it just tends to
be to me like an additional brain, something that will allow
me to think more deeply about something that I otherwise would
probably miss unless I ask someone else and hopefully they
wouldn't miss it. Yeah, yeah.
Yes, great, great topic. We can keep digging into this
and again how it all ties back to that Ted talk.
I think that we can use and leverage the power of AI to also
bring more human back into human resources in the workplace
because our intentional usage each time, hopefully, each time,
hopefully a transcript from your podcast is getting put in the
training data. I hope it's getting smarter and
more more pro human. I hope all the thoughts.
That would be kind of cool, yeah.
I hope. And actually it makes me think
of another question for you here, which is, you know, when
you think about AI and the human, you know, let's say
humanizing work more, humanizing the workplace more, are there
strategies that maybe people who struggle with this, like people
who really tend to lose sight of the human element, are there
strategies that you would advise they take or follow when it
comes to using AI in order to ensure that they're not
inadvertently dehumanizing? Yeah, I, I.
Think that one can be more how you are using it for coaching,
right? Just being conscious about the
questions that you're asking and, and why, right?
And then so back to the idea of not putting in anything that you
wouldn't want to see on the front page of the newspaper.
Just being cognizant of, of that and how a lot of that data is
being used. We, we were, we were doing a
workshop on adaptive leadership at one of the big companies out
there that also has an AI product that may sit by your
side. We'll just call it that.
And they too were thinking about and saying, like, we, we believe
that Big Brother is always watching our stuff that we're
putting into here because we, we are the makers of this, of this
tool. And so I think just being
conscious about that can maybe keep some of it into check,
especially because you have a, you have another lens that your
words might actually be perpetuating a different world
in the future that could have ramifications beyond what you
thought. And then the other is maybe a
very practical use of how you can start to humanize your work
a little bit more is to ask whatever AI tool you're using,
things like here's the e-mail I'm about to send.
How might this be received by someone or ask empathy driven
questions to give you feedback, right.
And and I've this has helped me, I'm sure, send out some emails
that were landed a lot better than than the ones.
So you know, you know the old thing in the past of like write
your e-mail if you're mad and then delete it or write your
e-mail if you're mad and then leave it in your drafts for 24
hours or exactly. Yep.
You could potentially also. Do that here and say like this
is what I'm going to send. How might this be received?
Help me come up with a more empathetic way to share this
through AB or C Should I even send this e-mail?
Right. Like there's different ways that
you can, if you think about it from a coaching standpoint,
yeah, makes a lot. Of sense the other piece, I
don't know. If you use this but there is the
setting for instance, I also use ChatGPT as as my primary one.
There's a setting where you can have almost like the master
prompts in your settings and you can put in specific things like
you could actually say if I am referring to people in a
dehumanizing way, call me out on it and you can put some of those
master prompts in there. You.
You're. Not maybe you're not using this.
Hey, we need to we need to teach you.
I know, I feel. Like, I know what you're talking
about and I've probably ignored it.
That's OK. If you go into, tell me.
If you go into, I probably can't screen share, can I?
But when I'm in Chad, actually, can I?
Can I? Let's see.
Yeah, I think you can. Do you see share and then screen
do but now oh, we're. In the.
All we're in. The thick of it and you're gonna
see we're in it all. Of.
For those who are watching a video.
They're gonna really be in for it now.
And now you're gonna see all my search.
Terms. I don't even see what I have.
That's really funny. When?
I am over in the right here and I go into customize ChatGPT.
I can start to see things like what what should it call me?
What traits so I put treat me as an expert, consider new
technologies, no moral lectures like list URLs at the end of
your response. You can add a number of these
things in here to help you have it.
And so in there you could put something like, if ever I am
sounding dehumanizing, like call me out on it.
Oh my gosh. Well, listen, I first of all, I
learned something new today. Thank you.
I can officially go home. The day is over.
Funny. Yeah.
I'm home. I'm home, I can just close my
laptop and be done. Thank you for that.
Secondly, I think you probably taught a lot of people something
new today. So thank you for that.
That's, I mean, first of all, everyone learned hopefully
something new before you shared your screen, but now after
really being able to see how we can make this technology work
for us in the best possible humanly possible way.
I mean, that's really cool. Thank you for sharing that.
You're welcome. Amazing.
Well, I don't know any better way to leave this episode and
conclude, but I all I know is that I want to congratulate you
again on your Ted talk. I can't wait for it to come out.
Hopefully it'll be out by the time this episode is otherwise
we will you. We will keep all of the
listeners totally, totally informed and we'll get it shared
in the newsletter once it's out. I'm just so excited for you.
I can't think of anyone better to do a Ted Talk and any better
topic. I think it's awesome.
That's sweet and thank you so. Much, Tracy, I appreciate your
curiosity and obviously for showing up every week and
putting out great content like this to keep bringing even more
humanity back into the workplace.
So thank you for your work. Oh my gosh.
Thank you so much. It is truly my pleasure.
And with that, I will remind everyone that Joshua's links and
everything that you might need in order to connect or learn
more about Iconic or Joshua in general are in the show notes.
So please click along and don't forget to rate, review, and
subscribe. Joshua, thank you so much again.
Second episode in the books, that just means you have to come
back #3 there's. A special jacket?
Some swag? Exactly.
Ooh, that would. Be fine, don't tell me with a
good time. I love swag.
Amazing. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Tracy. Hey.
Just before you go. Don't forget to subscribe to
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An episode. Drops each week and maybe leave
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and I'll see you next week.