Lead Human · 2026-07-15 · 42 min
Vanson spent sixteen years in HR before he ever led a team. And when he finally did, unexpectedly, mid-pandemic, inheriting a team whose loyalty still belonged to his predecessor, he had to build trust over Zoom without a playbook, without precedent, and without a choice. In this conversation, I sit down with Vanson, Former Regional People Lead for Canva Southeast Asia, to talk about what it actually takes to build a culture people want to stay in, and what most organizations get wrong about how that happens. We get into the concept of the leadership shadow: the unintentional signal every leader sends, whether they know it or not, just by how they show up. We talk about psychological safety not as a culture initiative but as something that breaks the moment a manager title gets added to someone's name, and has to be actively rebuilt, every day, in every interaction. Vanson shares the one piece of advice Melanie Perkins the CEO of Canva, gave him in a fifteen-minute meeting that took him months to fully understand. We talk about what great culture actually is, not perks, not ping pong tables, but the kind of work you can sink your teeth into.
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EP #5 Nicolas Bivero: The Best Remote Teams Aren't Built on Talent Alone80 / 100
EP #4 Char Rivera : The Jobs AI Can't Replace: Leading People in the Age of Technology60 / 100
EP # 3 Penn Lat: People-First Leadership Even in the Difficult Moments66 / 100
EP # 2 Mia Lim: You Need To Stop Speaking HR & Start Speaking Human