Workplace Culture & Psychological Safety | The HR Leadership Blind Spot with Seema Bhansali

Speaker A: We keep sending women to confidence training, but what if confidence isn't the real problem because they've learned, sometimes correctly, that speaking carries a cost.

Speaker B: I went into corporate and I went silent for two weeks. Women will have something to say. They'll write it down. I've seen them mouth things to themselves at the last second. They don't do it. They just hold that back. The brain knows how to deal with risk and it knows it's not going to take it. If it's not worth it, if the cost of it is too high, I'm not going to take it. That is survival. So what I realized was there was some socialization issues happening for women.

Speaker A: We get it. HR admin can be a headache. Most teams are managing contracts, onboarding, compliance and payroll across different tools, different vendors and different rules. But companies like Elevenlabs and Shopify are bringing it all together with Deal. ElevenLabs quadrupled headcount in 2025 across 54 countries. So build your global team with Deal. VisiT-E-E-L.com NickDay HR we keep sending women to confidence training, but what if confidence isn't the real problem? What if high performing women are holding back because they've learned, sometimes correctly, that speaking carries a cost? Today we're going to be exposing the silence tax that never appears on an organization's balance sheet. And we're going to be asking what L and Dean must redesign before another game changing idea dies in the room. If you're new to the show, welcome back to the HR LND Podcast. My name is Nick Day. I'm your host of this show, but also the CEO of JGA Recruitment Group. And um, we're specialist HR recruiters operating worldwide. Please remember to click, subscribe and follow. But most importantly, share this show and this episode with your colleagues and friends. Because today I'm joined by Seema Bansali, who is an author, a strategist, an attorney, and a former Fortune 500 people and culture executive. And she spent more than two decades working inside high stakes decision making environments. From role supporting US Congressman Steve Israel to senior leadership at Henry Schein. And her forthcoming book Hit the Buzzer explores exactly what I've just discussed in my introduction. Why highly capable women can still hesitate in the moments when their voices are needed most. I don't want to give everything away straight away. So without further ado, Seema, welcome to the HR LND Podcast. How are you feeling?

Speaker B: Thanks Nick. It's great to be. I'm really excited to have this conversation

Speaker A: with you Me too. And a really important and valuable conversation that we need to have. I feel like the timing is right for this conversation as well. But before we dive into that, let's start with my first question. What do the words human resources mean to you?

Speaker B: Love this question. And for me, human resources really makes me think of Adam Smith, the Wealth of nations, and he talked about humans as being the real capital, the true capital in any organization. And. And I think we need to get back to that. We've lost a little bit of the way, the fact that we have to treat people like they are the asset. And so I think about human resources, including those folks who run human resources. They are the assets. Sometimes even they left out from the conversation. And I really feel like that's what it means to me to think about human beings in that way.

Speaker A: That's a really great start. And interestingly, that kind of your I wonder if your answer has changed as you've moved from politics into corporate people leadership. Has that shifted your perspective, especially now that you've obviously written about these things you've researched and you work on as a strategist as well?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it has because I think each piece that I'm in, whether it was in government and then moving into hr, gave me a different perspective on what people are, what do they mean to the business, what do they mean to the outside world. And having those two lenses together, I got to see them as constituents that we had to serve. And then again, being inside and seeing what it means to have to lead people through organizational change and differences, it really helped me to get a broader vision of what it means to be an employee. What is an mean to be inside the House? What does it mean to be outside the House? So for sure, I think that perspective was important and I think it changed within. When I was inside, I looked at it one way. And now outside, as a strategist stepping back, I can really see the whole picture, which was really helpful to me in thinking through what do we need to do to help support people.

Speaker A: Amazing. I'm sure that's giving you a really broad view as well of the world and how things happen both inside Congress, of course, and inside sort of Fortune 500 organizations. Let's dive into, I guess, the deeper question straight away. Let's get it off the market, because I think it's important. Important. Why do those environments, whether it's inside Congress or whether it's inside senior leadership roles in those Fortune companies, what did they teach you about the reasons behind why such accomplished Women sometimes do go quiet in the rooms when actually it's when their voices are most needed, when we need some diversity of thought, when we need new ideas. And yet there's that. We called it in my introduction, the silence text. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Speaker B: Yeah, it was interesting because having gone through working in government, I thought maybe it was something there. And then getting into court, corporate and finding. Actually for the first two weeks I went silent and I've been in rooms with United States presidents and on really tough calls and I went into corporate and I went silent for two weeks. I shadowed my CEO for a couple of weeks and I lost my voice there and going through that journey and I'll talk about it a little bit later. But then watching my daughter at a science competition, I realized this issue was not specific to corporate, it's not specific to government, and it starts at a really young age. And so what I realized was there were some socialization issues happening for women and some of the things that we've learned and then the environment themselves are not really built for women. It's not an intentional thing. Honestly, Nick, like this isn't. Somebody did this and are women. It's not what's happening. Or at least I don't believe that's what's happening. I just think historically women weren't part of the picture. And so the foundation of culture for corporate and everything else started before women even had the right to vote. At least in the United States. It's been designed in a specific way and we've just gone with it all that time and never really realized what was happening. How was it truncating the voices of women?

Speaker A: I want to take something out of the room here. I was just listening to, I'll say, um, I'm a Caucasian middle aged man, right. So I'm going to view these things slightly differently and I want to take something off the table. I think it's important. The example you gave there where you said even you went silent, right. You could have listeners saying, well, I would go solid if I was on a call with ah, a prime minister or a president or these senior people, right. Anxiety exists in all of us. That's normal that we would go quiet on such high powered, pressured conversations. That's not necessarily gender specific. But I'm really interested to know them because I know from your work and my research that you realize that there is a pattern rather than isolated experience that we're talking about here. And although your experience of course on those high stakes calls. Yes, m Maybe we all would have gone quiet because they are high stakes calls, but there's more at play. So tell us a bit about some of the behaviors you've noticed, because I know you've seen that there are behaviors people follow when they want to contribute, but then they don't. And then they choose silence over action. And there are a lot of, I would call them muted cultures out there at the moment.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great way to call it. Yeah. I, uh, think being on the high stakes calls meant that I, it shouldn't have been so alarming or difficult for me to go into rooms of business with leaders and have an issue. I'd already been exposed to leadership. I've already used my voice in those settings. So I think for me, that translation, even for me, was difficult. And so what I'd say is, what's happening is, what I've noticed is women will have something to say. They'll write it down. I've seen them mouth things to themselves. They have the answer right. You think they're ready to jump in, and at the last second, they don't do it. They just hold that back. Sometimes I'll see them send an email afterwards, after they're out of the room, after they're not in that environment, they'll send an email saying, I liked what you said. Here's what I would add to that. It's great ideas, but they won't say it in the moment. And I think what I've noticed is a lot of times it is the first of all how people react when women speak. That's one. And women learn that. They learn very quickly, oh, if you say something in this moment, you might have some judgment. So I'm going to hold back. That's one thing. And that's a neuroscience issue. The brain knows how to deal with risk and it knows it's not going to take it.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: If it's not worth it, if the cost of it is too high, I'm not going to take it. That is survival. That's just neuroscience. But the other part of it that I think truly happens is they are in settings that aren't really built for them necessarily. If it's loud, if we don't take turns, if people speak over each other, you can really set this up in a way that, that women are going to hold back. Right. You can make it so that the environment itself is not productive for women to have their voice. And so I think there's two angles to this that we have to look at. We have to look at the environment. Are we creating an open voice environment? And that's good for everybody, by the way, not just women. That's a really important piece. And then secondly, what are the reactions to people speaking? Are we reinforcing that this is a risk for women that they shouldn't take?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think you make really good points. You talked about the neuroscience, and we know the amygdala fires before our conscious mind catches up. Right. And it can fire to a perceived threat in the same way as it can as a real threat as well. So if you've been kind of, I guess, exposed to this feeling of judgment for many years, generations, then that's going to start playing a part as well. And I read something in my research for this interview, so I thought was really interesting. When you talk about how confidence training is not necessarily the right angle that corporations need to be taking, it's almost like treating the symptom rather than the cause. And it's interesting. I do talks on fear and I use. One of my examples is telling someone to be more confident is about as useful as telling someone the flat tire to drive faster.

Speaker B: It doesn't work.

Speaker A: So I wonder if you could bring your research into play here, because it really resonated with me.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly the point. Right. The amygdala has learned how to fire in certain situations. And the more you're exposed to certain patterns of thinking, and I worked with a, uh, clinical psychologist on this to really understand deeply, hey, what's going on? The more you're exposed, and we're exposed to it in culture, right. When women speak up, I'm just gonna give you a really simple example. Think about Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, right? Everybody actually loves her as a character, but she doesn't have friends. In the beginning, she's outspoken. She always raises her hand. Sure. At the end, once Harry and Ron sort of adopt her, she's great. But in the beginning, she doesn't really have any friends. And those are small, subtle, and I love the series, so I'm never gonna say anything bad about it. But those are small, subtle signals that women get throughout culture that if you're too out there, you're an outcast. And the brain takes that in. You don't even consciously know it, but the brain takes that in and starts to build up a schema of what that looks like and understands, hey, we're not gonna go out there that fast because we're gonna get punished for it. So that's really one of the. When you think about the neuroscience, you really have to think about what's the subtle messaging in the room that's happened and that women may be taking in. And so you can't just go to confidence because that's actually the end thing. I need to do a lot of stuff before I get to the end thing, which is confidence that's at the end and it's helpful, but it's not going to answer the problem. You have to talk about the structures too.

Speaker A: Yeah. And readiness doesn't precede action or action precedes readiness. But you need to be able to take that step. And actually it's not, I would argue, and I think this is where you were going with it as well. It's like it's not about confidence, as you say, is at the end game, we need psychological safety first. So if you have enough of that, you don't need to have the confidence because you're going to feel safe enough to speak up. In the first instance, we bring this into an LED and sort of HR perspective. How much work do you think there needs to be done in relation to distinguishing between personal habit, the amygdala response, the generational, I guess, fear response that sits in our minds versus actually a rational assessment of organizational risk and creating environments that are just psychologically safer for employees? So rather investing in confidence here, which is a symptom, we actually look at creating in a cultural environment where people feel safe to speak up in the first instance, is that the course of action that we need to be taking? And if so, how do we get there?

Speaker B: Spot on. The psychological safety piece is everything in this, I think, because you start there and then you can end where you need to go. I do think we need to be investing in that. It's going to be far more productive, honestly, for HR and L and D teams to be able to look at those structures that you have in place. And so one thing I'd say is just how do you create an open voice culture? And one of the things you have to do, I like to think about it as an algorithm. What's the algorithm of your organization? Is it only specific leaders that are consistently speaking up? Do you have repeated people? Right. Are they always the same people who are presenting and what does that look like? And I mean this, that it's operative for women, but it's also for new entrants. When you think about Gen Z coming in and the next generations, how often are they in the spotlight? How often do they get seen? So if you want to create an open voice culture. The first thing is, what's the algorithm of your speaking culture? Who's out there? Is it only the top leaders that get to speak? So you want to do that. And then I have. One of the things that I really like to talk about is no repeats. If you're presenting to, let's say, senior leadership, are you repeating the same people time and again? Reach into the organization, have others. And what that requires you to do is have leadership, say to themselves, no matter what this person says, it's important for us to have. Even if they're not quite ready. Right. So a lot of times we wait till people are ready. How do you get ready? How do you get ready for anything that you have to practice it. You have to be able to do it. So you have to expose people early because if you want that next pipeline of leadership to come up, this is women. This is people from all different parts of the organization. You have got to get them into a place where they're practicing, hearing their voice. They stumble. There's, to your point, psychological safety and forgiveness. When they stumble, nobody goes, oh, well, they're done. And that's what happens, right? That's really what happens in organizations. They go, did you see what happened there? Right. We write that person off. You got to create these rooms where people are free to say and mess up a little and keep going. We're not going to judge you if that's what happens. We're going to coach you, we're going to help you, but we're not going to judge you. These are the types of things I think organizations need to start doing in order to create some level of open voice for all people.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love the acronym. I've used it before on the show before. It's always stuck with me. Which is fail first attempt in learning. Right. We've got to have we feel safe enough that we can make those mistakes. Otherwise, if we learn the behavior, there's a consequence to a poor performance. We don't perform. I think that's something really interesting here because from a recruitment lens, which is obviously how I view the world of HR predominantly because I work in the world of recruitment. It's the silent cultures that have the highest attrition and the worst productivity. Because what people do is the presenteeism exists. They silently quit. They don't speak up, and eventually they will leave. And organizations never know why top talent's walking out the door. Because no one saying anything, no one feels safe enough. And actually, the ones with the Best retention and the most, I guess, success when it comes to those strategic meetings are those that feel like they can be unmuted, they can speak up, they feel confident speaking up. Not because I've had confidence training, because the environment and the culture and the learned behaviors really, that if they speak up, actually I will get praise and understanding and people will listen rather than criticism, judgment and rejection. But that's sometimes easier said than done. And I know that there is something I call the silence tax. So again, how do we encourage that first attempt in learning how, how do we get organizations to understand that. Yes, we know we're speaking about really important issues here. This about potentially the strategic vision of our company and we're going to make mistakes. How do we make those mistakes acceptable almost for anybody?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. One of the things that I realized when I got into corporate was risk aversion is its own risk. And I don't think people really understand that necessarily. But uh, one of the things you have to do in becoming sort of a risk tolerant organization is understand what is the risk of not allowing people to speak up. So you know, we know that companies that don't have engaged employees that are silently doing what was back in the day, quiet, quitting, there's lots of names for it, but they take the steps back. It hurts your bottom line, right? It hurts the productivity, it hurts you in the marketplace. And so one of the things I really like to say is look at where, especially when it comes to women, look at your market. Have you, if people have gone silent, you will see it will come out as a cost in the marketplace because you may not be doing as well with women, you may not have innovative ideas in that space. You're going to see it a little bit show up at the end result. So that's one of the places I really want people to look. But overall there's lots of different metrics for organizations to take a look at. It's employee surveys and to your very good point, retention. What's the turnover cost? There's a lot of cost to doing this wrong and not taking some of these risks. It's a much bigger cost than we even realize. So making sure that you're looking at what is the cost of what we're doing here, uh, in the marketplace, to our customers, to our brand value, internal brand. When you talk about people wanting to go to an organization, I'm sure for you you have to be able to say, hey, this organization is worth going to. And if they don't have that culture to sell. It's really challenging. Right. And people want it was. It came up in almost every interview I to do in corporate, which was tell me a little bit about the culture of your organization. People want to know they can go somewhere that they feel good and if there isn't that, it can be a real challenge.

Speaker A: What I really like about your approach is most of the people are doing really credible, great work. I don't want to be critical at all, but a lot of the work I've seen out there in the corporate world is supporting the individuals. So they'll say to individuals, now, what is the cost of your inaction? What's the cost for you for not speaking up? And there's definitely something we can manage there and we can measure it in different ways. And there's an impact of the cost of not speaking up. Might see promotions and opportunities go to somebody else who did and these things completely. The other standpoint is actually what's the cost of the organizations for not creating the environment and the culture to enable or to allow your people to feel safe enough to speak up? Uh, like it has a bigger impact from that perspective. And it's a perspective I haven't heard enough people really talk about or tackle it from. What's been kind of the challenging parts for you, There must be some pushback, I'm sure, to. Some of the organizations have always done it one way. I love the idea of what got you here won't get you there. But even I don't want to change something they perceive as working.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's really hard to look at systems. It's much easier to look at an individual person and say, here, we'll give you these tools. You work on them. Because if we look at systems, then we have to be honest with ourselves about what's going on in the organization. And it takes more people. If I just give it to you and say you have to do this, then the onus is on the person and the system is left alone. But if I want to do the systems change, which I've done in my previous life, then I have to talk to leadership. I have to present to the board. I have to look at different levels of managers. It's culture change is not easy. And so it's much easier to do this right and say, okay, it's just you, but it's not effective. It's just easier. And so I think that the pushback has been really around. People are responsible. I think this is the one phrase that came over and over to me that I struggled with when I was there, which is, you're responsible for your own career growth. And I would say that's not true. We are responsible. That's a joint effort. It's me, it's my manager, it's the organization together. And I think a lot of times women think they're failing, but they're not failing. It can't be that all women are going in there and they're all failing. It doesn't make sense. You look at a pattern. So I think we have to look at what are we doing as an organization and as corporate culture as a whole that creates some of these barriers. And I think when people take a step back, Nick, they start to realize, hey, we can actually do more. And I actually think that's why a lot of HR&L and D leaders got into the space. They want to know what they can do. They want to know. And I think we've just driven one path and nobody said there's other pathways. Let's take a look at them.

Speaker A: HR leaders, I know you're driving culture transformation, engagement, and now digital reinvention as well, but none of that works without the right people in the right seats. I'm Nick Day, host of this podcast, but also founder of JGA Recruitment Group, and here's what I hear every week from top HR leaders. They say, nick, we can't find the talent. It's our biggest challenge, and when we do, we can't retain them. Well, that's where we come in. At, uh, jga, we specialize in HR recruitment and only HR recruitment. From executive search assignments, placing chros to contingency hires, finding HR pros to global HR transformational contract placements, and every people role in between. Across every vertical and at every single level. We know where the top people are, what motivates them, and, uh, most importantly, how to get them excited about your opportunity, even if they're not actively looking. With engagement rates over 90%, we don't rely on job boards. We rely on relationships. We place fast, we place right. And we do it in a way that reflects your brand, your values, and your goals. So if you're building a strategic HR function, please, please don't leave it to chance. Visit jjrecruitment.com or reach out to me directly and let's build the future of work together. Something's popped into my head. So, uh, I wasn't planning to ask this, but, uh, it occurred to me that you may have come across it in your work. So I'm going To ask the question. So one of the toughest things I think at the moment is it's all in good. We're working with individuals to say you need to be more courageous and be braver to be able to speak up and find this confidence training. I know we've tried to subvert that a little bit today, but the harder work is actually making challenging leadership less costly. Right. We need to make that an easier process, be able to challenge leadership. But interestingly, only in my experience of speaking to leaders, when I've worked with leaders, particularly where retention's been a struggle. So they've got high attrition. They come to us saying that we're losing staff and they have a perception that they're really easy to. Doesn't matter who it is, whoever that leader is. I've got open door policies this, that and the other. But actually when I speak to the people that left the organization, there's kind of these micro, I don't know, body language elements of cuffs or huffs or whatever that they make. They feel that's really unapproachable or they see things organization happen when someone does speak up and they make two and two, maybe sometimes they get five. But the leaders at the top say, hey, I'm the most approachable person in the world. It's really easy. But actually you see it from a different perspective and no, it's not the case. How do we overcome that? How do we make challenging leadership less costly to challenge?

Speaker B: Oh, such a great question. Listen, I worked for a member of Congress and a Fortune 500 CEO. So I understand the costs of challenging leaders and what it can take to do it right. There are people who will never speak truth to power and that's tough. But I'll say two things. One, I think I've always armed my leaders with statistics. It is the best way to help leaders see patterns. Because if you just talk to them one on one and say, but you, I have an open door policy. Okay, but here are the actual facts of what's going on. You may feel that way and there's nothing. I believe you, but no one's come

Speaker A: to see you in three months.

Speaker B: You don't have or you have high attrition in your part of the organization or your employee experience. When we cut your part of the organization, it doesn't look so great. There are other metrics that are going to tell when a leader is not doing that. That's one. But two, just like I said, it's not on the individual person. It's also not on the individual leader. It's not usually just one leader that sets the tone for the organization. There's multiple leaders. So what is your leadership team's vibe? And when you can bring it, broaden it a little bit. It takes the pressure off of one leader to say they're the problem. And it broadens it to what's our culture and how do we change that? So I think both ways. It's not just about my confidence and it's not just about your individual leadership. This is about us as a whole. What are we doing as a whole? Because I've been in organizations, um, I'm going to say very truthfully, where I've had tremendous leaders and the culture is great, but you will have one or two leaders that are off the mark and don't follow with the culture. And they maybe they're great performers, but they are definitely not accessible. It happens, right? That individual thing can happen, but it's not as important as if the whole culture is genuinely good.

Speaker A: Uh, and they always say cliches exist for a reason. I like the one that only takes one bad apple to spoil a bunch. Right. And you can have a great culture and you could want all the best things from a C suite perspective, if you've got a manager in another department that's gone rogue and doesn't embody those values and the way you want to run it, it can change everything within your organization. And you've done a lot of research around the cost of this, right? The cost of loss. So the cost of lost ideas, the. The cost of not taking these actions. And, um, I'm highlighting that because maybe we'll reading this again. Well, you know what? I think we're okay. I don't think we need to make any changes. They're not necessarily seeing what they're missing. So tell us a little bit about what those costs could be that are beyond the retention pieces that I highlighted.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it costs you an innovation. I actually think right now is a really interesting time to think about this because as we're onboarding AI and everybody's doing it, the market demands it. I say to people who are like, oh, we shouldn't be doing this with AI it's too fast. I agree, but the market is demanding that you get this on desk. You also have the opportunity to listen to a number of voices in this time, and it's really important that you do that. I think, think there's a real cost with AI coming on when you make these major transitions and you're not listening and you don't have an open voice culture. You are missing out on people who can actually transform the way this is working. So just think about if somebody has something innovative and important to say when you're onboarding AI and they, you know, like we said before, dies in the voice and it's done. You're missing out on huge opportunities. And this is not a moment that, that any organization could afford to do that. We have got to be in a position where we can hear those voices so we understand, hey, this isn't working the way that we thought it would, or it is, and we can accelerate it here. But if you don't hear those voices, that it's a real cost to the organization in the way that they operate. Right. And so I want you to look at what is the customer service segment looking like and what are they talking about? What is it in hr? What are they talking about? Let's actually have real conversations because you can't afford to not be innovative at this time. And that, I think is the number one problem for me when I look at the silence tax, it is around innovation. Innovation is the hardest thing to do in an organization when there is a closed voice culture because nobody is going to speak up with that idea. That might be a little bit out there, maybe it's a little bit audacious, it's a little bit risky. They're not going to do it if you don't have a culture that allows them to do it. So when I think about the number one cost for sure, besides the retention piece, it's innovation.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. By the way, I have huge admiration for your silence tax. I have something which I've coined the fear tax, which is the cost of inaction. Although how much does fear cost you? As from an individual perspective, you've used the silence tax. From a corporate perspective, you know, obviously I instantly resonated with me because what is it costing you? I always talk about how failure heals, regret can linger. And we. The choice we don't make because we always think we've got more time or we need more credentials or. And every time that fear tax is playing its part, it compounds and it compounds and it charges you. And I think it's the same with the silence tax. The longer that we have these cultures of silence or muted cultures, it's costing us an innovation. Not just once, but every single day that we're quiet. Every. We don't. It's really hard to measure it, but you'll keep Paying it until you make a change. So I'm hoping that this episode will be maybe the acorn that builds that tree for the organizations and the professionals listening. Right. They can make those changes. But what does a practical then voice culture framework look like in practice?

Speaker B: Practice?

Speaker A: Can you give our listeners some, some insight?

Speaker B: Yeah. Look, first things first. And I say this to anybody, when you're doing culture change, assess. What am I looking at here in the organization? You gotta do the assessment. If you don't do the assessment, you don't know where you're starting. Do the assessment. What do we do? Is it hierarchy first? Are we always looking at VPs? Speak first and then we go down the list? Is that what we're doing? Is that our organization? Do we, like I said, we have the repeated people. It's just the same people over and over again. Do we let who chooses who speaks? Is it just your leader that chooses who speaks? Or does the HR and L and D teams get involved in that? So there's broader perspectives? So who's choosing the speakers? There's a whole lot of things to look at and assess and then you can make some of those changes. So you can do a no repeats. Yeah. If we're presenting to management at a, uh, particular cadence, there's no repeats. If you've had Sima present to the management team once, then that's it. It she's done for a little bit of time, somebody else in that part of the org has to speak. Right. So the no repeats rule. Also the different, uh, levels rule. You got to have somebody from a different level. So you can't just be presenting at, uh, the VP level. I want to bring in managers, I want to bring in other folks so that you're building up the bench strength of your organization. Think about how many times we say we don't have anybody in a ready now position. Why is that? You don't have anybody in a ready now position because you didn't make them ready now. So let's start doing that early and rotating your speaker bench and making sure that you're building from within. That's another piece. And then of course, consistently, if you want to have an open voice, what are the reactions?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: This is the time to build confidence, by the way. It's the time to build confidence, not necessarily before, but after, to say to them, because the brain works on reward. Everybody knows that. Right. So to say to them, you did a terrific job. This is going to be great for your career and we can talk through what were you nervous about what was hard for you. Individual leaders can learn how to have this conversation with their team members, but you will develop them far more that way than just giving them a shot of. Go ahead. The other thing is, and this is particularly for women, Nick, is are we creating a place where there's a, uh, time limit? You have 10 minutes to speak, that works, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Right. But, uh, the research is pretty clear. Either it's socialization or it's neurobiology. Women tend to use more words, they use more emotional words. It's just what has happened culturally. And so if you're saying you have to be succinct, you have to do it within two minutes. That is a much more male lens than it is a female lens. So making sure there's a little bit flexibility there will be helpful and teaching both men and women that they maybe use different language in a day. Women, on average, they will use, um, some more nuanced speaking. That's just the way that they're either socialized or the neuroscience works. So let's be a little bit more flexible with the way that we're thinking about, hey, did they do a good job or not?

Speaker A: Yeah. And we know that language shapes perception. Right. So it's a really important thing that's probably not discussed enough. I think, in the boardrooms. There probably needs to be more training around that, actually, than anything else at the moment. I think there's a lot of reporting versus strategic talking. And as you said, I haven't delved into the masculine versus feminine type language, but I can tell totally understand why that could have an impact. I think if people are listening to this at the moment, they'll want to jump on board in full agreement and say, yeah, this is the culture we need. We need people to feel safe to speak up. I want to manage the risk that I think sits in the middle of this because we want to teach women to speak more powerfully inside systems at the moment. But we know that a lot of these systems do penalize dissent in inverted commas or they penalize that behavior. So what we don't want to do, I'm guessing, is train women to speak up and then have. Have them absorb even more personal risk as a result. But that must be a really delicate balance because of course you want people to feel safe to talk, but they're only going to do that. I mean, I know we're still in that safety conversation, but how do we manage that balancing at leaving this conversation now as People listening to it or watching it with the content to be able to say, okay, we want to create this situation for our organizations. We can feel safe. We've got to balance the change and the transformation. I imagine that must be quite. It shouldn't be, but I imagine it is quite nuanced and quite challenging.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's a, uh, yes and not an either or. Right. So we have to talk about empowering women to speak up and at the same time we have to create those environments where they feel comfortable doing it. And I don't think one can go ahead of the other. So what I'm hesitant to do is say, put the cart before the horse. Women speak up, be empowered, go out there, use your voice, quote, unquote, hit that buzzer, get, do the thing. I am hesitant to do that. If you don't also have some of that cultural change working right alongside it. They're a unit and they have to go together and so make those progresses together and make them incremental. I'm a big fan and I never thought I would be as a young person. I was like, burn it all down, change it all and it'll be fine. And I grew up as we do and I sat inside systems, I sat inside government and saw what it looked like there. I sat inside Fortune 500 CEOs office and saw what it, it looked like there and I understood. Change is best when it's incremental and people can adopt it better. It's easier for them and it helps to actually move the needle. Whereas burn it all down is a one in a million shot that it's actually going to work right. And it's much more likely to fail. And so I'd rather see that incremental change.

Speaker A: Have you found the uh. I don't know how much has progressed in the US but I'm seeing and M for these. I've had a huge shift moving away from commander control into more coaching based cultures and coaching type of training and leadership, which I'm assuming that must support the work that you're doing because rather than telling, we're now asking questions and most importantly we're listening a little bit more. And I feel like the leadership boards and C suites are listening a little bit more to the needs of their employees. We had the great resignation. People did vote with their feet. Like if they weren't being listened to, they walked. And we've seen a little bit of an empowerment shift. Move away from the boardroom and into the employees a little bit more has that really supported some of the work you're doing as well. Has it moved enough, or is there still a huge number of Commander Control enterprises out there which do struggle to make this shift as quickly as perhaps we'd like to see them move?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that shift has been really helpful for team members for sure. So I won't discount that. That shift is really important. I do still think we have command and control. And I'm going to tell you something that I learned going through Covid. So I also led government relations through Covid for a company that distributes ppe. So you can imagine I was on White House calls with our CEO every day, morning, night, Saturday, Sunday, like, all throughout. Right. And there are moments when command and control is important because you have to really be careful about the flow of information. I understand that at certain levels, however, especially at those moments, you need to make sure that some people somewhere are having the conversations that they need to so that information flows to your leadership. This is one of those moments, like I said before, during AI, uh, like that transformation, I think sometimes we pivot and, you know, this is just a psychological fact. When things are uncertain, the brain goes to what it knows. If what it knows is command and control, that's what it's going to do during really challenging times, times we're going to be able. We want to just have everything under one spot. And that is where you're at most risk, because you're not having those conversations. You're not, uh, team members are shutting down a little bit, especially right now when there's AI coming in and maybe there's a risk of job loss or whatever. We're going to control the narrative, but this might be the actual time you need to lean into not doing that. And you actually have to have conversations. It doesn't have to be at the leadership level. You can have it at other levels, but you need to get that flow of information.

Speaker A: Honestly, I feel like we see the world in the same way. I'm going to ask about yours now. My book behind me is called the Payroll Pivot, which is exactly about that pivot you've just discussed. So you're speaking a language I fully agree with. So it's really interesting hearing it echoed back almost because I see it and I'm in full agreement with everything that you've said. Of course you've got your forthcoming book hit the buzzer now. You mentioned it a moment ago. Where does that title come from? What is the belief you want every LND or HR listener of this show is what may be watching this to reconsider after reading it. Tell us a little bit more.

Speaker B: So hit the buzzer. Let me tell you where it comes from. I went to a science competition with my son and my daughter, both science people. So they. We went there and I watched the all the teams go through this. And the way that the game was set up was essentially if you hit the buzzer and you got the answer wrong, there was no penalty. There's no penalty for answering wrong. You just lost your turn, right? And so what it did was it incentivized risk. And I watched this happen. And look, but by the way, Nick, what was very clear to me that day was that I didn't pay enough attention in school. These kids were fire like the captive answ. And I was like, how did. I barely remember that. It like these kids were just on it, right? Really smart group of kids. And what I saw was that the boys at that time, and I'm not generalizing, this is what I saw. They slammed on that buzzer, they took my son answered the question was about Jupiter. And he answered with the words ocean. And I was like, what is that? What do you mean? But here's the other thing. I saw the girls hovered over the buzzer. I saw my daughter answer three or four questions, mouthed it to herself. And this was true for all the girls because I got to sit there and watch all the teams, they did not hit that buzzer unless they 100% knew the answer. Which means they got a lot of their questions right, but they answered so few of them. And the system was set up that the more risk you took, the more answers you could get and you didn't get penalized for them. Um, the system was set up to reward the risk takers.

Speaker A: Rewarded speed.

Speaker B: Correct the speed. So if a woman is saying, we've all heard the saying that if, unless a woman has 10 things out of the 10 qualifications, they're not going to raise their hand for the role. Right? We've all heard that. And it was the same thing in miniature that I saw happening with these girls. And ultimately a team with more boys ended up winning that competition. And what I saw in that moment was nothing to take away from the boys, but it was to understand, hey, the structure of this was not designed for women who have been taught, for young girls who have already taken in the idea. This wasn't about confidence, already taken in the idea that if they got something wrong, it wasn't okay for them, it was okay for the boys. But it wasn't okay for them and I was floored.

Speaker A: It also shows as well, it's not about intelligence either. If you looked at the raw data, it would look like the boys were smarter, quote, unquote. Perhaps it's not the case because you've got to look at the whole situation. So I guess let me ask you a question before I open the vaults. Questions come to mind. What would you change if organizations stop treating voice as personality and instead started treating it as infrastructure? You use the word infrastructure a minute ago. So is that something we can do?

Speaker B: I love that. Love. What a great insight. Yes, we absolutely have to start talking because Voices. Let's go back to your very first question. What is human resources right now? Smith talks about the fact that human beings are the most important form of capital. Then voice. Voice becomes the method of transmission for that capital. And you have to look at it that way and say, how do I most powerfully help? So if we look at voice as being that transmission of capital, then we have to think about what's the infrastructure? How do we support making sure that we as an organization are making the best use of that and empowering it? Because it's actually literally the way that human beings provide for the company.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So, yeah, and I want L and D leaders to start thinking about that. Exactly. What is the infrastructure of our voice culture? What does it look like? How can we tweak it to make the best for each individual and for the organization as a whole?

Speaker A: That sounds like a really good place to start. Based on everything we've discussed today, that makes total sense to me. And I think it's a real applicable step. Right. Something we can definitely act upon almost straight away. We can start running that assessment immediately after listening to this episode or watching this episode. We can start making those shifts immediately and understand that infrastructure of voice, which I think is really clever and powerful. Before I open the vault, then, last question. What is the idea? You've not yet said publicly. We've talked a lot today, but believe leaders are finally ready to hear.

Speaker B: Can we look at the systems we've inherited rather than really genuinely developed from what we need? I think so much of what we have, so much of the qualities that we want, so much of the even hr. Right. So much of what we see is built upon itself. We started somewhere and we built on things. Are there things that we need to look at with completely fresh eyes? If I had the opportunity to design this from the ground up, what would it look like? I think leaders are not recognizing it but this is a moment that they can. Because I think with AI's entrance, I think that there is a lot of opportunity to say, what does the design look like right now? As opposed to how do we tweak what we already have have?

Speaker A: Yeah, that resonates. That makes sense to me. I think also to play into your silence tax element, it's looking at just, we tend to look at systems and say why we need to change them when they're working. We don't look at systems and look at it with your silence tax mindset on and say, but what's it costing us? Yes, we think it's working, but where in this system at the moment that we've inherited, where is it costing us? Whether that's in voice, which means it's costing us in ideas, is it costing us in attrition, is it costing us? Another area is because I think it's too easy to say it's not broken so we don't need to fix it. Right. But if you look at this even from a talent lens, a lot of companies will say, I have a payroll podcast and I don't need to change my payroll. We pay people accurately on time every single month, so I don't need to change anything. But your competitor down the road is doing pay on demand, right? And you're going to see that slowly your employees are going to leave your organization to go and get that service over there and you won't know why. You're still paying them accurately, but they're all leaving. You've got to evolve with what's happening in the market, what people need. Otherwise, without you knowing it, it, people will silently quit, they'll silently leave, they'll stay muted and you won't get that level of innovation that drives the business to the next level. I've absolutely loved this conversation. I mean that really sincerely. I've really enjoyed it. I'm going to open the HR and evolve for you. See, to challenge you a little bit more, short, sharp questions for us. Number one, what is one piece of advice you wish you'd received at the beginning of your career?

Speaker B: Your career is not a straight line. It is going to take a lot of loops and turns and go with it. You don't need to have a 10 year goal to get somewhere in life. Just go with it. See where your career flows. Take all the roads that you didn't think you were going to take because honestly, it's going to lead you to the best place.

Speaker A: Yeah, love that. Fantastic. What is one belief about Leadership that you think needs to change.

Speaker B: I think one belief about leadership is that leaders control everything and leadership is people. Yeah, they have day to day lives and they do all this stuff. And yeah, there's a lot of embodiment in leadership. But. But honestly they are human beings and they are fallible and they are also. Most of them have really good intentions. Let's stop looking at leaders like they are specifically different from the rest of us. They're just at a different level. They're not different. And I think humanizing leaders is probably really important. And that just comes from having sat with so many leaders in so many spaces, particularly in politics. You see those leaders and they. You forget that they're real people behind, behind the scenes. And I think it's really important to remember that because it'll make it easier for you to approach leadership. And I think that's why I love that as well.

Speaker A: I always love the fact that so far that there's any research that's really come out to say that a good leader is this. It's so nuanced. There's no such makeup that makes the perfect leader. Right. Really depends on so many factors. So yeah, I like the idea of humanizing. It's really important. A bit of fun. If you could summarize the Charleston industry now as we currently see in its current state as either a song, a film, a movie, a book, a quote, anything you want it to be. Which one would it be and why?

Speaker B: Oh boy, that's a tough one for me.

Speaker A: I said what I'd give it. I've said it before, I've used it before, I've heard it. I like Bohemian Rhapsody.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It has its highs, has its lows. It can be orchestral, it can be pressured and banging. It's constantly holding like the spinning plates always changing, as is the music. Fast, speed. So that's my answer for that. I think Bohemian Rhapsody is quite a nice little song to uh. That's how I'd go with it. Not because of what it's called, but because of the way the music. Music plays.

Speaker B: Oh, I love that. That's a really good one. All right, so I'll take a page out of your book and I'll say under pressure. Okay, that works. Which would probably be the one that I think that HR leaders are under all the time. They are in the middle. They are always constrained. And like I said at the beginning, sometimes I think we forget they're people and employees too. They are in charge of. It's like being a parent really. People forget the parents are human beings so they need time to breathe and they need to do things. I think a lot of times we forget that HR leaders, L& D leaders, they are, are human beings that deserve some time and space and need to be taken care of as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Seema M. Vansali this has been a really, uh, enjoyable conversation for me. I love the way you see the world. I think the work that you're doing is really important. I can't wait to get a copy of your book and I hope our listeners go and grab a copy as well when it comes out. Please do share the links when they're available. We'll put them in our show notes as well so people can grab a copy directly. I will put a link to your LinkedIn profile as well so people can access and find out more if they wish to do so. So I think today's conversations remind us that silence shouldn't automatically be interpreted as an absence of ideas, ambition or confidence. Sometimes it's just a record of what people have learned about power, right? Belonging, evolutionary. Even the potential cost of being heard can sometimes just be too much for us to bear. So we're not, we don't feel safe enough sometimes to speak up. So I think the challenge now is not just to tell people to speak right? It's to create evidence that that speaking is worthwhile and give them the infrastructure to feel safe in doing so. But it's been an absolute pleasure having you on Today Show. I suspect we could have talked. I certainly could have asked you questions for another hour or two. So thank you so much for joining me today on the HR LND podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks Nick. It's been a pleasure to be here.

Speaker A: Deal is the platform to hire, manage and pay your global team, onboarding, offboarding, Payroll, compliance and IT access across 150plus countries all on infrastructure owned end to end. Companies like Elevenlabs and Shopify already scale effortlessly with deal. ElevenLabs quadrupled headcount in 2025 without adding tools. So build your global team with deal. Book your demo at uh. D eel.com nickdayhr if you enjoyed that conversation, you will, uh, love this one. Click here to watch our previous episode of the HR LND podcast where we continue exploring the ideas, the people, the insights, the leaders who are shaping the future of work. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a future episode.