Human-Centered Leadership in the Age of AI

Intro: Welcome to Honestly We’re Learning, a podcast from ClearEdge, the marketing agency that also helps marketers grow their careers.

Join Leslie Vickrey and Lesly Cardec as we explore the turning points that shape a person’s professional story, the highs, the stumbles, and everything in between. We’ll bring you candid conversations with leaders and rising talent, plus our own take on what’s changing in marketing and recruiting today. Because behind every success story is a few lessons learned the hard way. And honestly, we’re all still learning.

Leslie Vickrey: Hi Lesly!

Lesly Cardec: Hi!

Leslie Vickrey: I’m excited to be back here for our podcast with Erica Keswin.

Lesly Cardec: I feel like I know her, but I don’t. I guess when you follow people online and follow their work and admire what they’re doing, I guess it’s the same for social media. You feel like you’re their a friend, but you’re not.

Leslie Vickrey: Well, one of the things that she talks about a lot are rituals. And obviously she has a book called The Rituals Roadmap. And when I first met Erica, it was during the pandemic, and she was talking a lot about how do you bring those rituals that you’re used to having at work and now you’re working from home, how do you continue to have those rituals going? One of the things she talked about is being a transparent leader.

I’m going to throw something out here transparently too, because we’re recording these podcasts regularly and you said something on the call that really struck me, which was we actually get to know each other better because we’re welcoming you into our homes. I’m sitting in my kitchen slash living room, you’re seeing my home. And for full transparency, you’re also seeing, which I didn’t realize until I watched the playbacks, my dog Murphy.

We have two dogs. One is Murphy. He’s a full-bred Doberman, a rescue. And if you ever see my hands to the side like they are right now, I’m petting Murphy. Murphy’s our leaner, Velcro dogs, need a lot of attention. And I didn’t realize he was, you know, like pacing. They’re also pacers behind me on the last call.

But again, that’s something that we talk about just a way to kind of get to know each other better. We can leverage this virtual environment in creating different rituals for companies and for us individually in a different and unique way than we would have had before. Like had you and I worked together at the HQ of Spherion back in the day in Fort Lauderdale, I don’t know that you would have come to my house and met Murphy, but now it’s like Murphy’s one of your dogs.

Lesly Cardec: Yeah, he is. I mean, he cracks me up. I feel like a call without Murphy would be really strange, actually. But you’re right. I mean, it’s like an inside look into our most sacred space, which is our home. And it’s like, you can’t control it. I can close all the doors. I can shut the windows. But things will happen even live on this podcast. I always say, like, if you hear someone mowing, if you…who knows, there could be iguanas stuck to my window right now. I’m in South Florida, guys, iguanas are everywhere. You just roll with it and it brings with it a level of humanity and lets the guard down when you’re here to work, but you’re also human and you wanna bring light to who you are in all areas. So I agree with you.

Leslie Vickrey: Today, I’m really excited to welcome Erica Keswin. I first met Erica during the height of the pandemic when she joined our Lady Leaders Book Club and presented on the power of rituals at work. At a time when so many of us were trying to figure out how to stay connected without hallways, offices, or water cooler conversations, her message immediately resonated not just with me, but with our entire community. Since then, Erica has also shared her insights with leaders across the staffing industry, including presenting at the American Staffing Association, and her work has continued to influence how we think about culture, connection, and leadership, even at ClearEdge. In fact, we’ve adopted one of the rituals Erica writes about, lunch roulette. In our version, teammates receive virtual lunch cards and are paired up with someone they don’t know really well with one rule, no talking about work. It’s become one of our favorite ways to reconnect those informal human moments we used to so easily get in the office.

Erica is a globally sought-after speaker, workforce strategist and bestselling author who spent the last two decades helping leaders and organizations remember something essential, how to bring their human to work. She’s the author of the Human Workplace trilogy, Bring Your Human to Work, Rituals Roadmap and the Retention Revolution, all Wall Street Journal bestsellers published by McGraw-Hill.

Her work sits at the intersection of performance relationships and what it really takes to lead in today’s hybrid world. She also advises and coaches some of the most well-known companies globally, is recognized as one of Marshall Goldsmith’s top 100 coaches, that’s a huge deal, Erica, and was named one of Business Insider’s Most Innovative Coaches. We are thrilled to have you, Erica, here to talk about leadership, connection, and what it truly means to build workplaces that work for people. Welcome to our podcast!

Erica Keswin: Thank you so much, so excited, great to see you guys.

Lesly Cardec: We’re so excited to have you here, Erica, and not too long ago, we realized we’re neighbors, so that’s even more exciting. We’d love for you to start a little further back. You’ve spent years studying leadership, relationships, and what it really means to bring our human selves to work, but leadership is usually shaped in moments, not just ideas. So what’s a moment, or small, that really shaped the way that you lead today?

Erica Keswin: So I’m gonna give two moments and they happened a decade apart. So the first moment was in, I’m taking you all the way back to 1998, and I was newly engaged to my now husband, Jeff, and Jeff invited me to join him at a conference in Bermuda. And I said, I’d love to go, but I couldn’t because I was saving my vacation days for our honeymoon. But then I remembered I had just gotten this brand new device called a Blackberry, shows my age, which presumably would allow me to work from anywhere.

So I said, great, I’ll join. I hopped on the plane. And during the day, I was sitting on the beach with my feet tucked into the sand. And at night, I was with Jeff and his clients and enjoying the beautiful hotel. And the moment was, one night as I was going to bed, and I was tan and relaxed, and I had had a really productive day, I said to myself out loud, I can’t believe this is my life. This technology is so cool.

10 years later, it’s 2008, and I now have three kids, but I have two devices. So I still had that awesome BlackBerry, but I also had an iPhone, which had just come out, which I had for all of the amazing apps. And one day in New York City, I’m pushing my kids in the stroller, I had three kids within two years, I’m running around, one phone is ringing, the other one is dinging, my head is spinning, and all of a sudden one day in contrast to that blissful moment in Bermuda, 10 years earlier, I said to myself, again, I can’t believe this is my life. And it was sort of the juxtaposition of those two moments where I began to think about…the good, the bad, and the ugly as it relates to technology and its impact on our ability to connect. And I went and started doing research and it was really from those two moments though that led to everything from there.

Leslie Vickrey: It’s fascinating to me, Erica, too, just thinking about with, you know, being able to be connected and to be anywhere, to be on vacation, stay connected, to have your kids there, be connected. It also reminds me of the importance of disconnecting as well and making sure we find that boundary. So as you were saying that, I was thinking to myself, I need to create boundaries. Not that that’s even what you said, but just reminding us that it is so easy now to stay connected and to be everywhere.

When I look at you and I think about your career and how much has evolved over, even if you think of that 10 year period, and then you move on to where you are today, even from when Erica, you and I first met, you know, what, five years ago and looking at, you know, continuing to publish books, continuing to work with these companies and bring that experience that you have and your influence, you’re not just really sharing ideas anymore, you’re shaping how people think and act really inside their companies. And again, we’ve adopted one of the things you’ve talked about in your book, which I know you worked with a company on too with the lunch roulette idea, but your influence today, it looks different than it did early on. So even when you think of your experience with the 10 year gap and all of the things that happened in that timeframe, you’re coaching individuals, you’re speaking in rooms full of hundreds and thousands of leaders, you’re reaching people through your books.

How has that changed really how you communicate or try to influence others? Whether it’s obviously with technology, without technology, in rooms, through books, it’s all different vehicles of communication.

Erica Keswin: Yeah, 100%. You know, one of the things that I think about a lot is, this is sort of when I speak one of the slides in my keynote, which says the default use of technology degrades connection. And so it’s not that the technology is bad. I mean, look, we’re in three different, well, I guess Lesly and I are in the same state, but we’re in two different states, we’re all looking on screens. And so the technology is great, but in terms of how we communicate and how we influence, we can’t always default to that communication. And one of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about, and even when you just said, you know, I got to think about boundaries, I feel like after the pandemic, as a society, we were in such a challenging time, but there were some bright spots. Like there were some things that leaders became better at.

Number one, leaders were more vulnerable. They were, there was a, didn’t have a choice. It was a storm going on behind us. So the curtain kind of came down and people shared what was really going on. Or I remember I wrote an article about, you know, people would say, how are you really, really doing?

And there was this feeling that people actually wanted to know and care. So there’s that piece. And then the second piece is that when we think about the protocols in meetings, are the cameras on or the cameras off? Do we chit chat a little bit in the middle? All of these things during, when we first met, we were pretty good at, because I feel like as a society, we were all coming together. Unfortunately, I feel like there’s been a fair amount of diminishing returns.

I…I’d be curious to see if you guys agree with this with what you see. But we’ve gotten kind of lazy and I think people are stressed and we’re in the age of AI and the economy and, “Am I gonna have a job?” and all of these things. So to me, when I think about communication today, a great human leader, this is what I aspire to and help other leaders aspire to, tries to do these three things.

They communicate through the lens and bring some of that vulnerability. It’s not pouring out every single ounce of your being, just like bring your human to work, but sharing a bit of that. The second is empathy. So we have vulnerability, empathy. You know, I know that we were only coming in the office two days, we’re going to three. And I know that might be hard for you given certain things, but here’s why. And having that sense of empathy. And the last part though, is more important than ever, which is approaching these things through the lens of experimentation and saying, this too may change. And I feel like when we approach things through the lens of experimentation, we’re walking around like this and it kind of takes the pressure off and takes the edge off.

So that’s what I try to do. And it’s, I think, it’s something we all need to get better. We got better and now we’ve gotten worse. And I think we need to bring it back.

Leslie Vickrey: First of all, we wouldn’t have met probably Erica had it not been for technology because we specifically reached out to you as an author of a book we admired and just simply asked, Is this something you could do? And it was easier for you to then do your keynotes or your presentations or work with groups. And you were experimenting with that. Okay, I’ll talk to a group. I’ll have my book. I’ll join book clubs.

And it created a way for you and all of us to do business a little differently, but also to interact and communicate differently. And I could not agree with you more. I always say the more I can lead with vulnerability, the more trust that I can get from our team, the more open I am. And this has kind of forced us to do that, to be able to do that. And I don’t disagree with you in the sense that it’s…It’s changing where it was heightened in the moment of the pandemic for everyone to come forward and be that way. We always said, you know, how you communicate in a crisis compared to how you communicate outside of a crisis, we should be the same person and carry that communication forward. But it’s easy to fall back on, you know, not communicating as much or turning your video off or, you know, not showing up for different things.

Lesly, your background’s communications as well, in fact, you and I, we worked hand in hand during the pandemic on creating video and getting ourselves out there. And we’ll even say we probably need to communicate a little bit more. We need to bring the sympathy to that conversation, even in messages we were writing this morning.

So what are your thoughts on this, Lesly?

Lesly Cardec: Yeah, it’s so timely. Erica, were you with us this morning? Like, like an hour ago. I couldn’t agree been more. I think I’ve seen more empathetic leadership from others. And I personally feel like I’ve stretched as a leader and becoming more empathetic too with my team. It’s amazing what the last few years have done for us. There’s also been challenges, but you know, when you think about having a glimpse into literally people’s homes and what they cherish the most. I mean, you never know what you’re gonna get, kids, dogs, animals, whatever it is. It almost is the perfect opener to get to know people a little bit more and more closely, good or bad. But I feel like it has built relationships when you don’t have that face-to-face. Thank God for it, personally, I’m grateful for it.

You know, when I think about growth for myself and for other leaders, it’s not about necessarily having all, you the clearest answer as it’s about sitting with better questions. And so you’ve written extensively about connection and rituals and retention, yet these challenges are still very real for leaders. What’s a question you find yourself wrestling with in your own work these days?

Erica Keswin: So the question I’m getting a lot these days is how do you, you know, in this age of, how do you people motivated in this age of AI when you are essentially asking people a couple of things. One, do your day job and also learn, spend a lot of time learning about AI. You’re also potentially asking people to train their potential AI replacement without knowing what, if they’re gonna have a job after that. And so that’s the question. It’s like, how on earth do we do this?

And what’s been interesting to me, I I certainly don’t have it all figured out, but when we started to get into this a little bit, know, tools, trust, and transparency. You know, we’ve been focused on the tools, you know, are you gonna use…ChatGPT, you’re gonna use Claude, you’re gonna use Gemini, how are we gonna get more adoption?

In the last six months I’ve been hearing, you know, speaking of rituals, Helen Russell, who’s the CHRO at HubSpot, they created a ritual called MONDAI, but it’s spelled M-O-N-D-A-I. You can adopt this one too. And on Mondays, people go around and share one minute each their, like their own AI use cases and what they’ve been using it for.

So there’s been a lot of focus on the tools. Another company said on Friday afternoons, we all get on and we share our wins and our losses and destigmatizing the fact that we’re also messing up with AI. There’s plenty of AI hallucinations, getting people comfortable using it, talking about it for better or for worse. Those are the tools. But what I think leaders need to focus on in conjunction with the tools is, and again, it goes back to also vulnerability, empathy.

I’m now gonna have to add to my list of great human leadership, which is we gotta be transparent and maybe that’s linked to vulnerability. Look, we don’t know if you are gonna have a job after this. I don’t know if I’m gonna have a job after this. I mean, imagine the level of stress going down. It might still be stress, but it’s like, well, okay, at least they’re being honest. They’re not saying, well, of course you’re gonna have a job. And ways to build that trust and to say, look, here’s how I’m gonna help you develop up, down, and sideways while you’re here. We are gonna give you time to take these skills to another role here at the company. Maybe you stay in this role, or maybe we help you get a job somewhere else. I am sort of on a mission seeking examples of leaders and organizations who are doing a great job at this. So if I find any, I’ll let you guys know, but keep me posted as well.

Leslie Vickrey: We always talk about, Lesly, a learning stance, right? We’re always learning. If you’re not learning, you’re not growing. And just constantly being in that state of learning and recognizing that we’re all trying to learn and grow, especially when it comes to AI and how to be, how to maintain empathy, trust, transparency when leveraging AI for communications. I was writing a communication yesterday and a friend of mine said, Well, can’t you just drop that into Gemini? Can’t you just drop that into chat GPT and have it write it for you? And I like I could do that. And I will probably leverage it for some help and advice. But it needs to be me like this is me. This is core and whole to who I am as a leader. And my team will sniff right through that if it’s not full of transparency, empathy, and the way that I build trust. But there is a way to leverage both, but it’s finding how to make it work for you.

Erica Keswin: Yeah.

Lesly Cardec: Speaking of transparency, right, and just our world these days, it’s also important to talk about things that transpire outside of work and how that shapes us as leaders. So I want to talk a little bit about rituals as anchors in connecting with people at work. And is there anything personal, something personal, maybe a ritual or practice outside of work that’s influencing how you show up as a leader,

Erica Keswin: Yeah, so I have been trying, I I always try different things to help me be more present. One of the rituals that really inspired my very first book and then led to the rituals book was, I have a coffee ritual, which I use, it’s sort of pun intended, I guess, ground me for the day. But I would go to Starbucks and get my coffee and I, one day I remember many, years ago, I had my, I mean, I still have one right here. I had my old, good old moleskine notebook with my, my crazy to-do list and I would have my coffee and I would be banging through my to-do list. And one day I looked up and the coffee was gone. And I was so bummed because I really look forward to that first, I’m not an all-day coffee drinker, but that first sip, that first cup of coffee I just really like.

So it was gone and I don’t even remember tasting it. And so it was sort of in that moment where I went from, you know what, like this is something I really enjoy and why just sort of rush through it. And now I go and I will get the coffee. My notebook might be next to me, but rituals are really connected to our senses. So I’ll take the cup of coffee and hold it on my hands, feel the heat, even in Florida, I typically get a hot coffee, take a few deep breaths and just be present before I then dive into the rest.

And when I was writing the rituals book, when I talk to companies, I would say to the companies, when do you feel or when do you think people in your company feel most LinkedIn-ish, XYZ law firm-ish? You can think about your firm and just fill in the blank the firm.

But for yourself, I like to think of it as what do you do in your life that makes you feel most like you? And that sometimes is a good place to start as it relates to what your own rituals are or could be. And sometimes people don’t even think about them as rituals and I’ll ask it that way. And all of a sudden there’s this process of kind of elevating it to rituals status.

Leslie Vickrey: I love that. I can resonate completely with that sip of coffee. Ironically, I’m not a coffee drinker, but the point of, I start my day, I try to start every day with the ritual, which for me is hiking, snowshoeing, biking, something outdoors and typically with one or both of our dogs. And on the days where I’m doing it and I come home, it’s almost like I didn’t do it, because my mind and brain was working, I was all over the place. Sometimes I take calls with teammates while doing it or I’ll call family. And sometimes I catch myself though saying, don’t do that, be in the moment. And it’s a really good reminder, Erica, because it sets a tone for my day. If I end that really stressed out because I wasn’t present and I wasn’t focused, it sets the tone for that day.

So I never really thought of it from a ritual perspective until you said that, but it is a ritual that I love and when I don’t have it, I can tell it’s just a different part of the day. Or if I do it and I don’t think I’m really enjoying that sip or that tasted really good or…

Erica Keswin: Right! And it’s the awareness that you’re there, even just for a minute to say, wow, like I’m out here, I am outdoors and feeling the sun or the wind or whatever that is. that being outdoors makes you feel most like you. So it is a really important thing.

Lesly Cardec: I think part of it too is we’re so used to multitasking. Like when do we all truly just do one thing? It’s terrible. I know for myself, I really struggle with that. Even when I’m watching a show, it’s like, okay, can I just focus on what’s in front of me versus having my phone, talking to someone, doing something else? It’s like this need to be ultra productive and get so much done at the same time. I don’t know that we’ll have enough time to solve that on this podcast, but.

Erica Keswin: We are all only do all, I’ll speak for myself, I’m definitely only doing one thing right now.

Lesly Cardec: Yeah, thank you. Maybe the key is you need to be recorded. Everyone record yourself doing everything and so you’ll focus on everything.

Leslie VickreY: Ohmy gosh, well, Erica, as you kind of think about what’s ahead for you, what’s a belief or intention you’re carrying with you into the next chapter, both personally and or professionally?

Erica Keswin: So one of my side hustles these days is I’m on the board of the US Olympic and Paralympic Foundation, and I’m actually off to the Milan Olympics in a couple of weeks. And it was something that really brought together sort of my personal life and professional life when I was at a dinner party and I met a bunch of people that were involved in the Olympics and I was looking around the table thinking, you know, were they Olympic athletes or elite athletes or their kids elite athletes? Like my kids are sporty, but you know, nothing to that level. And that’s when I learned that the athletes in our country get no federal funding and so many athletes when they’re competing live below the poverty line. And as we know, you know, being in the recruiting space, the human capital space, you know, we can talk to people about what are their transferable skills. You know, if you can’t do this, then we can help you figure out what you might be able to do.

But these Olympic athletes, many of them have done one thing their whole life. And so I started to volunteer and work with them and talk to them about how to think about what comes next. And so sort of an indirect answer to your question, but when I think about an intention and what’s next for me, a piece of it, I started this women’s circle where I bring women Olympians and Paralympians in and bring other women to understand sort of their specific needs, whether it’s a gymnast who hasn’t gotten her period in 10 years and wants to think about planning for a family or all these different issues. So part of what I’m going to focus on, I think, for the rest of my life is also how can I give back and how can I support and mentor all different kinds of women.

Leslie Vickrey: I love that. Thank you for that. And if you ever need, if they ever need help or advice, there’s a lot of companies in our industry who actually look for, want to recruit and, you know, help athletes knowing that, you know, they’ve worked so hard to become experts at their craft and that transition going from an athlete into a conversation that sometimes can be tough for them to have.

I would imagine of the what’s next, especially if there’s any site on professional, something like NBA, NHL, NFL, things of that nature, it can be tricky to transition even out of that into the workforce. So anything related to helping elevate women in the workforce, we’re there with you and a partner in that. So I can’t wait to hear about your trip seeing the Olympics and so forth.

Before we wrap up, Erica, I’d love to know if there are any other projects or initiatives or ideas that you’d like to share with our listeners or invite them into.

Erica Keswin: Yeah, sure. So in the world that we’re in today, I put together, you know, a new talk, workshop. It’s a lot of the things that I’m writing about these days, which is all about how to become a great human leader in the age of AI. You know, what I think about, is that it’s not rocket science. For those who are looking for rocket science, I always say, you know, you’ve got the wrong girl. But it’s also not easy. And it really takes intention.

We always are gonna need to understand the latest technology and there will be something next. But what I’m excited about is to help people recommit to the human parts of their job. And one piece of that is connecting people to purpose, connecting the dots. If you have somebody that works in the back office and you know, or an IT job, how are they connected to that bigger mission of the organization?

It’s not always that obvious and we as leaders need to connect the dots. The second part is great leaders connect people to others, which is much harder in a hybrid world. Again, not impossible, but takes intention. And the last part is great human leaders connect people to themselves and how they want to grow and develop. And so I’m excited because sometimes it takes a long time to come up with something that seems, it’s not basic, but it’s very clear and it’s a roadmap.

I don’t know, the feedback has been great and I feel like when leaders hear about it, it doesn’t solve all the world’s problems or all the organization’s problems, but if you have people managers and they can focus a little bit on these three things, there’ll be a good part of the way there.

Lesly Cardec: I think it’s so valuable, especially now. mean, there’s been so many leaders and managers that have only managed in person. So think about, you know, it’s grounding people that those humanistic traits are still so valuable and there’s still a great need to train folks on that. So I love that. This has been so fun, such a thoughtful conversation, Erica. It’s clear that the way we work and how we lead, we’ll keep evolving. So I’m sure we’ll have you back at some point, just as things evolve. And just the need for real connection really isn’t going anywhere, despite all the new technology and innovations coming. So thank you so much for the work that you do and for spending time with us. We’re so glad that we did this. Thank you.

Erica Keswin: Me too, it’s great!

Leslie Vickrey: We’ll talk maybe a little bit about the takeaways from the podcast because her book is Bring Your Human to Work. She has three books, I’m sure working on many more knowing Erica, but three things that kind of stood out to us, the Take Three parts of the conversation.

And one was being present. And she talks about her morning ritual of loving, she said, I’m not a coffee drinker throughout the day, but I love to have that sip of coffee in the morning. And she talked about an experience where she realized she drank the whole cup of coffee and never tasted it. But something she looks forward to a ritual is actually tasting that first sip of coffee, which really struck me as an example of just being present in the moment. And I know that’s something that you and I talk about quite often. For me, it’s more disconnecting from technology and being present in the moment, which my guess is most people would raise their hand and say, they’ve tried different things, they do different things. Some days you’re great at it, other days you aren’t. What struck you in that moment?

Lesly Cardec: I am not great at this. Full transparency. I have a hard time, like, you know, sticking with one thing, whether it’s watching a show. I get, my husband says this all the time, put down your phone. We’re supposed to be watching a movie. But it’s like the doom scrolling or whatever it may be, work related or not. I have a hard time focusing on one thing. And maybe it’s the…the producer in me that wants to be as productive as possible, whether it’s folding the laundry, watching a TV show, answering an email, like how do you do all those things really well? You can’t. I’m not a good, like again, this is like a repeat, right? There’s a trend here. Don’t look at me as the role model. But I do believe it’s something we should work towards and maybe that’s an accountability opportunity for us is try to focus and be present, especially with kids and things like that where, you know, kids are always trying to get our attention and they interrupt a lot. And for me, I feel angst and like, I want to get this out. I want to just send this one thing out. Hold on. But it’s okay to pause, put it down, answer them and then keep going. So work in progress. Maybe that’s something we focus on for 2026. What do you think?

Leslie Vickrey: I think so, and finding grace in ourselves. We’re not perfect at any given time, and that’s okay, but we’re constantly learning. Right? The theme of this podcast!

Lesly Cardec: I know, I know. The other thing that struck me was empathetic leadership. I remember early in my career, had a leader who you never knew they had a family or kids or anything like that. It was all work all the time. And I love present moments so much more because there’s something just really human and vulnerable about getting to know the other side of people. Just yesterday, I was talking to one of our colleagues and just learning about their background and they dance and how they have, you know, a degree, they were also, you know, were on the track to become a lawyer. And I’m like, how did these two polar opposite things exist? But it’s because of something that was brought up in the background that I got to ask and that opened up a whole new conversation. And I know will help, you know, kind of forge that relationship. So again, I think empathetic leadership is something that I’m definitely seeing more of, transparent leadership, all the things that make us human.

Leslie Vickrey: And we talked a lot on the podcast about communication, especially post pandemic and the importance of kind of if you think you’ve communicated enough, you need to communicate more. I talk about that living here at Elevation. People are like, I drink plenty of water. I’m in Breckenridge, Colorado, and it’s dry. You’ve got the altitude. When you think you’ve had enough water, you haven’t. You’ve got to drink way, way, way more. Communication is the same way in that we have to over communicate. And you and I worked really closely on this during the pandemic, actually. And it was, how do we communicate at a time when our team needs us most, but how can we keep that momentum going over time to make sure that we’re constantly communicating and it’s not just something we do in that moment.

One of the things I wanna mention about her rituals is that we’ve adopted a couple of the rituals. And it made me think of today when we were talking about communication and transparency and so forth. One of the things we adopted as part of our quarterly meetings that we have with each other is something called the Charlotte Shuffle. it’s actually something Charlotte on our team, she actually had helped us come up with. And that again, is getting to know each other in a more personal way.

So at the beginning of each of our company meetings before we dive into the agenda, we put up a slide with the Charlotte shuffle on it and we have a question and we break everyone into groups of two or depending on the numbers that could be in some cases three, but it’s become a ritual people love in the company. It’s a way for them to be really open, get to know each other and just bring the team kind of closer together and again break down those barriers of something that you normally would have potentially gotten to know about someone in an office. We’re creating that environment for people to do that. But again, it’s a ritual that people look forward to with the Charlotte shuffle for sure. What else would you add on that? Just kind of the communication piece.

Lesly Cardec: Yeah, I I would say too, it’s the intention behind it too. Yes. It’s something that we literally incorporate into every single company meeting and so we’re always looking for ways, and kudos to you, we’re always looking for ways to build that in. You have to be, especially in a remote environment, you have to be so intentional about building that connection because it’s not intuitive for everyone, right? I mean, even the other day we were talking about, Leslie, okay, where does everyone exist? Where do they live? And how can we even find moments where people are connecting in person more and the leadership team really promoting it? And for some people giving them permission that you can meet in person. This is what we encourage you to do so in fact. So it’s looking for those moments where leading by example, when we’re traveling, we always look who’s around there, what clients are there, who can we connect with in person?

There’s ways to make it work and I think we’re a great example of that.

Leslie Vickrey: Well, Lesly, we’ve got our three things, being present, empathetic leadership, and the communication and transparency, and just really adopting some of the rituals. So I think that’s a wrap.

Lesly Cardec: It is and we have homework to do so we’ll update everyone on our progress but thanks for thanks for joining us and we look forward to the next time.

Leslie Vickrey: Yeah, so if something from today resonated. We hope it gives you a little permission to pause to reflect or to lead a bit more honestly this week.

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