Welcome to the Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources
podcast. I'm Tracy Chernoff, and I've
spent my entire professional career in HR.
Each week, we'll explore the delicate balance between people
and business, with the aim to reconnect the two and create
meaningful outcomes. Listen in as I share my own
experiences, challenge the status quo, and chat with guests
from various industries about our mission to bring the human
back to human resources. 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 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 with you
too. Amazing.
Well, I don't wanna, I don't wanna 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 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, I'm, 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 a streamline, 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 I. Really am like I am really
changing the game for minivans. I'm just saying if Toyota wants
to sponsor 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 BT.
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 mini ven 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 a minivan.
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 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 Clod 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 and 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, you know, I was.
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's 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 in 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, like some of the abilities are around 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, 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 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 or 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 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, and 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 one. 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.
Oh, you. You're not.
Maybe you're not using this. Hey, well, we need to we, 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 chat, actually,
can I? Can I?
Let's see. Yeah, I think you can.
Do you see share and then screen?
Do. But now we're in it all.
We're in the thick of it. And you're gonna see it.
All of my. 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. 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. You're not home or any Tracy.
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'll 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 the show so
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