EP 40 The SAFE Framework and Gamified Confetti with Andrea Hollingsworth

Listen as Tony and Steve are once again joined by Andrea Hollingsworth.  In this fantastic episode Andrea lays out the SAFE Framework that helps HR and leaders cope with RIF's, Layoffs, and survivors.  They discuss how to survive extremely difficult conversations with those leaving the business and those who are staying.  They also touch on gamifying the workplace and performance reviews.

Quote of the episode: "Can we say chicks on the podcast?"  - Tony Benjamin

Learn more about Andrea Hollingsworth at: https://hollingsworthconsulting.com/
Get Andrea's book here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+compassion+advantage+book&crid=3IFCIXBF6LBEE&sprefix=the+compassion+advan%2Caps%2C158&ref=nb_sb_ss_p13n-expert-pd-ops-ranker_1_20
Learn more about Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal Smith" at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
See a list of all of the books referred to on the Podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn more about our sponsor, MegaStar HR, at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Steve and Tony highly recommend supporting the Thrive Life Project.  Learn more at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Andrea Hollingsworth, Ph.D., is an acclaimed keynote speaker, bestselling and award winning author, and trusted consultant who’s spent years studying the transformative power of compassion. Since 2008, she has been speaking and writing about the science and spirituality of human emotions and relationships.

Creators and Guests

Host

Fantastic Tony Benjamin

I am a unique HR leader with more than 20 years’ experience working for some of Utah’s oldest, fastest growing, and most well-known companies. My experience includes Superior Drilling Products, Air Medical Resource Group, Control4, Ovivo USA and Deseret Book. I am a regionally recognized authority on building successful cultures and am an alumni speaker at DisruptHR SLC and DisruptHR St. George. I have earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix, a Bachelor’s degree from Utah State University, and am a certified Professional of Human Resources (PHR). I'm married to a woman out of my league, have three brilliant kids I doesn’t deserve and, although I travel a lot, live in Vernal, Utah.

Host

Steven "Big Deal" Smith

Steve will be the first to tell you that recruiting is marketing. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Finance at Brigham Young University and started his career in recruiting in Feb 2005. In 2008, he took a risk during a recession to help start a new company with Ryan Kohler, called ApplicantPro, a full suite HR platform for small to mid-sized businesses. In March 2025, ApplicantPro became iSolved Talent Acquisition, now serving 177,000 clients and close to 9800 employees. Before the merger, ApplicantPro made the Inc 5000 list 12 years in a row, Top Places to work in Utah 3 years in a row, and Steve was named the Small Business Utah HR Achievement Award winner in May 2024. iSolved was also named an Indeed Platinum Partner in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and is one of only ten ATS platforms in the country to obtain that designation. SHRM-CP & PHR certified, Steve currently volunteers on the Utah SHRM State Council as the immediate past State Executive Director. His book, The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction, was released in early 2023, and has helped thousands of organizations across the country rethink their approach to hiring. If you need help understanding the principles and role of SEO, marketing, and AI when it comes to attracting job seekers, Steve provides a solid framework for hiring effectively.

What is The HR Life Podcast?

The HR Life Podcast is a show about the work-life experience of those of us in Human Resources and business leadership. This long-form podcast is a conversation, casual, and not always the corporate line. Hosts and guests touch on everything from serious or even controversial topics to the absurdity of modern American business practices. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of The Grange Strategic HR Consulting, and Steven J. Smith, Author of The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction and all-around important guy. Guests include the best minds in the HR world. Join the show weekly.

Tony Benjamin (00:07.42)
Welcome to the HR Life Podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are fantastic. Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of the Grange Strategic HR Consulting and Stephen Big Deal Smith, who is a big deal in not just one, but three different industries, real estate, recruiting and selling apples. Hey, Steve.

Steve-o (00:35.998)
Wow. Real estate. I mean, I dabbled in all those things. I'm just glad you didn't talk about my options trading.

Tony Benjamin (00:39.22)
Am I

Tony Benjamin (00:45.548)
Yeah, no, no, no, that's craziness. Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. That's that's daring craziness, if you ask me. But.

Steve-o (00:47.794)
I'm not known for anything there though. Yeah, I'm not known for anything there.

Steve-o (00:56.576)
I will say out of all of those, my favorite though is the apple selling.

Tony Benjamin (01:00.458)
Yeah, well, I figured I figured as much. And if you've not read. Yeah, if you've not read Steve's book about this, then you're really missing out. So all cool stories that.

Steve-o (01:03.358)
It's just fun seeing people, so.

Steve-o (01:11.646)
I actually have a newsletter that I'm going to be launching on LinkedIn here really soon called the laws of applicant attraction newsletter. I actually relate. So this will be the and I've done this a lot in a lot of the conferences that I go to. I always relate hiring to dating. But what I've added to this new article that I'm going to be posting also talks about dating.

And how onboarding is like the honeymoon phase and you the interview process and keeping them on and then divorce and sometimes it's amical, sometimes it's not. So it'd be a really good kind of analogy of dating in general. But yeah, I'm throwing that in there too. So you'll get some dating stuff in there too. you know, I haven't dated in years, but the thing is, is I still date my wife often. And I talk about how important that is because if you don't date your spouse, you will find that...

Tony Benjamin (01:56.746)
Yes.

Steve-o (02:02.43)
Divorce is usually close by, it is what it is.

Tony Benjamin (02:05.384)
You need to you need to call this newsletter like Dating Apples or something like that.

Steve-o (02:09.79)
I don't know anybody who wants to actually date apples, but

Tony Benjamin (02:14.124)
There you go. And everybody there joining with us the dulcet tones of Andrea Hollingsworth. Yay.

Steve-o (02:19.902)
That's right. Yay.

Andrea Hollingsworth (02:21.176)
Yay, it's so good to be here. Thank you, gentlemen.

Tony Benjamin (02:24.852)
Yep. She was being so patient for us to get done with that and then that she just couldn't help it. But she laughed. I thought it was awesome. That's good.

Andrea Hollingsworth (02:33.398)
I had to laugh at that one, dating apples. In some situations that might sound better to people than the person they're dating.

Tony Benjamin (02:37.228)
All right, Steve, hold up our sign.

Tony Benjamin (02:43.148)
That's right. Well, you know, people date people date and confide in AI now. So why not an apple? They could just go out.

Steve-o (02:43.604)
Right. It's so true.

Andrea Hollingsworth (02:50.114)
That's right, they do. Yep.

Steve-o (02:52.234)
my gosh, Tony, do you realize? So I had a, there was a gentleman that I was speaking with. was, he's a younger kid. Like he's, he's a, I think he's 22 or something like that, but he was telling me how he was doing this date and he started saying things and I was like, it literally sounds like you are working with chat GPT for this. And he's like, I am. And he was like, like I could tell, like it was, it was almost so obvious. I was like, I was like, dude, you're not being natural right now.

Andrea Hollingsworth (03:15.33)
You can tell.

Steve-o (03:21.692)
Like I get you want to use chat, GBT and things like that and AI to help better yourself. But when you're depending on it so heavily, like a crutch like that, you're not yourself. And if you're not genuine, even if you impress this girl enough, you're impressing her with the wrong emotions, the wrong everything. Right. Like you if you're not genuine or yourself and you impress her with something completely different than when the you actually comes out, because eventually it will.

It's just a recipe for disaster. So anyway, was an interesting conversation with him. So we'll see how he goes, I guess.

Tony Benjamin (03:56.673)
That's a that's a very good point. You should tell him he should watch the movie Roxanne. And that would that would that would do it with Steve Martin.

Andrea Hollingsworth (04:02.722)
Yes, holy fidigetti. that's that girl.

Steve-o (04:03.13)
I feel like that's that. OK, Steve Martin. There we go. I was like, that sounds like a very old movie that I've never seen. I probably have seen it, but I was I mean, I probably have, but it's been so long. There's no way I could remember it. So I was probably little.

Andrea Hollingsworth (04:14.209)
You've never seen it?

Tony Benjamin (04:19.84)
Yeah. That's based on it, Andrea. That's based on a Shakespearean play. What is it? it? Do you Cyrano? Is it Cyrano? It might be Cyrano. Yeah. Steve's going to look it up.

Andrea Hollingsworth (04:25.23)
Oh, I can't remember the play. Maybe. Yeah. I need to look it up. I need to consult Chad GPT. Or Claude or whoever. Yeah. But it's good one. Good story.

Steve-o (04:27.358)
Steve-o (04:34.034)
Yeah, I'll look it up.

Tony Benjamin (04:36.362)
Yeah, that's right. That's yes, yes.

Steve-o (04:41.79)
it is Cyrano. Cyrano de Bergerac. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (04:45.472)
Yeah, there you go. And it's where Cyrano or Steve Martin's character, he's got this gigantic nose and so women won't like him, but he's in love with Roxanne. And so he helps another guy get with Roxanne.

Andrea Hollingsworth (04:46.744)
Nice.

Steve-o (04:59.366)
Wasn't there a movie called Cyrano, like a musical?

Tony Benjamin (05:05.036)
I

Steve-o (05:05.736)
There's a musical with that little short guy that plays the elf in the elf. He's the book writer and he's the angry elf. I forget his name.

Tony Benjamin (05:16.012)
Wow, there you go. There you go.

Andrea Hollingsworth (05:18.027)
goodness.

Steve-o (05:19.132)
I'm pretty sure there's a movie and I'm pretty sure it's called Cyrano. I don't know. Maybe I'm making stuff up.

Tony Benjamin (05:24.084)
So Andrea, I'm wondering if we're talking about this with AI. I'm curious. I'm starting to think that the, you know, when I was young, we were talking about coming into the information age, right? And the information was currency and it was power. I'm starting to think now, and you tell me what you think. I kind of think that the currency of the day now is authenticity. Right? Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (05:35.758)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (05:46.272)
Mm-hmm. I would wholeheartedly agree. Yeah. I think there's a bit of a, know, like Steve was just saying, you can tell when people are relying on AI. You can tell. Everybody can tell. You can tell in social media posts. You can tell in, you know, whatever it is. If you're reading, if you're listening to something, it's like, that's AI. And it's because so many people are relying on AI to do probably more of their thinking than they should.

Steve-o (05:57.874)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (06:15.924)
It's the distrust is everywhere and inauthenticity is everywhere. And so the folks who are really standing out, the leaders who are leading with more effectiveness are those who are, you know, maintaining a very tight tether to who they are and showing up as who they are in every single interaction. And that is absolutely the currency of today. The human element that just cannot be faked, cannot be can AI your way out of that human presence.

Tony Benjamin (06:46.462)
Yeah, and I'm coming to think it's the secret to politics now. I'm coming to think that it's the answer that everyone's really looking for. Like, how do I connect? How do I get out there? And how do I get ahead? And I think the answer is authenticity. Because AI is so prevalent in everything that I think the only way anymore that you get around with that is authenticity.

Andrea Hollingsworth (06:50.03)
Hmm.

Steve-o (07:03.71)
I agree.

Andrea Hollingsworth (07:14.21)
That's true. And it's scary though, because authenticity involves, you know, maybe being messy, being vulnerable, because AI comes off as, you know, buttoned up and perfect. But if I'm being authentic, it's yeah, like I'm putting myself out there. It's a little bit more risky. And so you have to be okay with your own imperfections as well. But that's all part of it.

Steve-o (07:24.87)
Yeah, polished and, mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (07:26.944)
Yeah.

Steve-o (07:35.72)
Yeah, my original trainer way back in the day when I started my recruiting career used to call it lipstick on a pig. And he says, I don't care what color you use, how thick you lather it on there. It's still a pig. So.

Andrea Hollingsworth (07:42.804)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (07:48.526)
It's still a thing. last. Yes. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (07:49.056)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (07:52.855)
That's a well, we are very authentic here. So very, very authentic. Nothing is nothing is well, it's 95 % not scripted because I do write down the intros and stuff. Yes.

Andrea Hollingsworth (07:55.702)
Yes, this is space. Yeah.

Steve-o (08:03.902)
Yeah, we prepare, but there's not like there's this huge outline or yeah, or at least I don't read the outlines.

Tony Benjamin (08:12.204)
Yeah, Steve just ignores the outlines. That's exactly right. That is exactly right. So hey, and you know, I want to point out this is an important thing. This is episode 40. This is episode 40. That's a pretty big mark. That's right. That's right. Episode. Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (08:15.326)
That's exactly right.

Andrea Hollingsworth (08:25.902)
Ooh, congratulations gentlemen. That's great. Middle age. Is there a crisis coming?

Steve-o (08:27.184)
Wow, the big four zero.

Steve-o (08:32.734)
Over the hill.

Wow. Here we go.

Tony Benjamin (08:38.47)
Well, yeah, yeah, I don't know. The podcast goes into its middle-aged crisis now, wants to buy a Ferrari. Yeah.

Steve-o (08:42.8)
Isn't 50 the new 40 now or something like that? I feel like every every couple of years you find those people that turn 50 for the first time and then I think they just make it up. I think they just say, well, 50 is the new 40. They're totally making it up. But, you know, they get people on their bandwagon and support it, I guess.

Tony Benjamin (09:00.778)
Well, I'll say this 40 didn't 30 didn't bother me at all. 40 didn't bother me at all. but 50. But yeah, that that age mark got me that really tripped me up. Yeah. And and 20 years from now, when Andrea gets to that point, she can say something about what it was like for her to. So anyways.

Steve-o (09:11.038)
I'm not quite there yet, Tony, but I'll let you know how I feel when get there.

Right. That's right. That's right.

Andrea Hollingsworth (09:19.054)
Right. Try four.

Steve-o (09:23.55)
For me, I just think it's like, you know, it's the grandkid thing. Like once you start getting grandkids, that's when you get really, really worn out and stuff. But I'm excited for grandkids. So personally.

Andrea Hollingsworth (09:30.072)
Mm.

Tony Benjamin (09:32.289)
That's why I told my kid. I well, I sort of am. I sort of am. I well, let me say this. I'm very excited for my kids to have kids. That's that's a different story, but I'm not excited to be called grandpa. So I told them maybe I've mentioned this before. They're not allowed to call me grandpa. They can call me Patrino and Patrino means Godfather in Italian, so they can call me the Patrino and I'm good with that. Yeah, they'll call me whatever the crap they want, but you know, we can try.

Andrea Hollingsworth (09:42.584)
There you go.

Steve-o (09:45.362)
Yeah

Andrea Hollingsworth (09:53.655)
Nice.

Steve-o (09:54.686)
Wow.

Andrea Hollingsworth (09:58.284)
like that. Yeah.

Steve-o (10:00.306)
I mean, do they have to do it with the accent and everything, Petrino? Do they need to do this when they say it? Because I just... Yeah, yeah, like the little...

Tony Benjamin (10:03.532)
Yes, but today, you know, that's it. Move their hand like that with their fingers together. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly that's exactly what they got to do. Well, everybody, we have Andrea back with us today and she is awesome. We're so we're so happy to have her. She's we we enjoyed our previous conversation. And even though only one aired, we had two conversations conversations with Andrew, which is really cool.

Steve-o (10:28.306)
We did.

Andrea Hollingsworth (10:29.378)
We did, we indeed did, yes.

Tony Benjamin (10:31.02)
Um, and, and I've really enjoyed that. So with, with that said, we've decided that we want Andrew to come back on every once in a while and, uh, set us all straight on some stuff. And I love this component that we bring to bring to the podcast. Yeah. I, everybody asks me, you know, in a world where eight, where AI is starting to do a lot of what HR does, what, what do we need? Like, what is the thing? What is it? And maybe we, think Steve, talked about this with Rachel on the last episode too, but.

Steve-o (11:00.413)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (11:00.618)
Like what is the thing that HR people now need to get ahead? Like what is the thing and the answer and an understanding of people? I think that's the, that's it. It's psychology. It's right. It's the understanding of people. Otherwise a lot of what you do. Yes. AI can do. I'm just starting to get where a point where I'm experimenting now with, I'm using AI to help me write performance reviews for clients.

Andrea Hollingsworth (11:11.528)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (11:12.511)
The human element.

Andrea Hollingsworth (11:20.855)
I fully agree with that.

Steve-o (11:21.054)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (11:30.284)
And I have a very, very specific format in how I do it. And my whole career, the writing of the performance definitions, the behavioral definitions has been the hardest part, right? This is what a level two is. This is what a level three rock star is. And writing those out and going back and forth with the manager and all that. Well, it took me like two and a half, three hours to work with chat GPT and write, you know, I created a GPT and put its brain in there, all these details and everything in there.

And I'll tell you what, if freakishly does a good job on the initial draft now, like what used to take me maybe days takes me like five minutes now. It's awesome.

Andrea Hollingsworth (12:07.15)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (12:07.602)
Well, and I think that's the point, right, Tony? The whole reason why we create agents like that and we have those conversations back and forth is so that it can learn because it is a learning language model in that sense. But we start to fact check and make sure that things are accurate or what we want. I think that's why the prompt engineering is becoming so critical to is just making sure that, you know, don't just put in a one sentence thing and expect to get the answer you want. Like you need to feed it a lot of detail, which means our intelligence

Tony Benjamin (12:15.18)
Yeah. Yes.

Tony Benjamin (12:28.32)
Yeah.

Steve-o (12:37.338)
of the subject matter is still going to be very critical because we have to be able to prompt it appropriately. So big deal to me.

Andrea Hollingsworth (12:41.518)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (12:45.676)
Yep. Yes. Well, everything's a big deal to you, Steve. So. So, OK, now that I've distracted us a little bit, Andrea, why not? just to refresh everybody's memory, tell us a little bit about you other than the fact that you're brilliant and Steve loves your book. But tell us about tell us about you.

Steve-o (12:49.054)
Man I saw and I fell right into that one dang it dang it

Andrea Hollingsworth (12:49.898)
Yes, you did.

Steve-o (13:07.484)
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Andrea Hollingsworth (13:08.83)
my goodness, y'all flatter my ego around here. I think I said this last time before, but I really do need to watch my ego when I talk to you guys. Yeah, it's such a pleasure to talk to both of you again. I am a compassion researcher. I've been researching compassion for decades. For a long time, I was in academia and my work there was at the intersection of religion and spirituality and human psychology and neuroscience.

Steve-o (13:11.486)
Ha

Tony Benjamin (13:11.776)
We try. We try.

Andrea Hollingsworth (13:38.126)
And there I studied, know, compassion kind of is a wonderful middle space for studying human psychology and human spiritual growth and development. so I focus a lot on how compassion has the power to transform and heal people, just the power of caring, attuned, empathic, advocacy-based human relationships. And around the time of COVID, I

I had left my post at Boston University several years prior for lots of different reasons, and I was at home with a toddler, locked in the house, of course, with a toddler. And I thought, I have to do something else with my life. I love my son, but this is hard.

Steve-o (14:22.952)
You sound like almost every other person out there. I was locked in the house with teenage girls.

Tony Benjamin (14:23.318)
Being locked in. Yeah, yeah, I going to say, on. Yeah. Yes, yes. Yep.

Andrea Hollingsworth (14:25.906)
Exactly, yes.

Oh, wow, we all had our own unique form of suffering during that time, didn't we? Anyway, so I started offering courses for my community on how to be a compassionate leader during difficult times. And I was basically translating all the work I had done in psychology and in religion and science and spirituality in my academic career into, you know,

Steve-o (14:32.945)
Right?

Andrea Hollingsworth (14:56.054)
into a form where people could really grab onto, hey, this is how I can show up for myself and for other people when there's so much suffering and so much fear and so much uncertainty in the world. Well, as we all know, the suffering, fear and uncertainty has continued and we are facing different things than a pandemic now, but leaders are still wondering how to, as you put it, Tony, like how to have that authenticity and certainly how to show up as caring, compassionate, genuine leaders.

in times of great stress, pain, ambiguity, volatility, all the VUCA things that we are facing today. So that's what I do now. I do consulting, I do coaching, and I do keynote speaking on compassionate leadership. And it is absolutely a passion of mine. Lately, I've been thinking about it a lot in terms of healthcare. That's kind of the area I've been niching in lately. So that's a little bit about me. Yeah.

Steve-o (15:49.096)
Healthcare is a big one. My wife's a nurse and let me tell you, and she's a hospice nurse, so she deals with families who are losing a loved one over the next anywhere from days to a few months left of their life. And it amazes me to watch her because she's just naturally compassionate in these situations, which is really cool. After reading your book, I actually see some of those characteristics in my

Andrea Hollingsworth (15:51.598)
Mm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (16:02.402)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (16:11.192)
Yeah.

Steve-o (16:17.278)
Especially when she's dealing with the family, which is really cool. But yeah, it's so critical, right? And so healthcare is a big one. Because sometimes she gets burned out, you know, it's that whole concept that you say where, you know, you need to care but not carry. And I love that comment because, my wife does, yeah, right? Yeah, my wife likes to carry stuff. That's right. Yeah, it's a great thing. So yeah, it's just important. Just remember, don't carry it. You know, you can care and...

Andrea Hollingsworth (16:30.2)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (16:32.818)
Empathy fatigue. That's one of my new favorite phrases that I got from Andreas. Empathy fatigue. I love it.

Andrea Hollingsworth (16:38.734)
That's great.

Steve-o (16:45.342)
That's why listening and giving a listening ear is helpful, but it's not your burden to carry. And honestly, they need to carry their own burden to get through it, to really grow and become, I don't know, something new or...

Andrea Hollingsworth (16:48.226)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (16:57.878)
Yes. I think that's a crucial point to remember, especially for HR leaders and just managers in general who are navigating tough situations in workplaces. Uncertainty, know, maybe layoffs, whatever it is, or just change management, which is constant, is realizing that, you know, part of not caring, not carrying, but caring is letting people do their own work.

Steve-o (17:02.29)
Yeah.

Steve-o (17:06.078)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (17:25.39)
creating a space where they can do that work and they can feel safe, but realizing that it's not your job to solve every problem and to make everybody feel better. And if you try to do that, it'll probably make it worse for everyone. Yeah.

Steve-o (17:33.086)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (17:38.3)
Yeah, that's a great point.

Tony Benjamin (17:40.853)
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Okay. I'm going to break in here because I think that's a great, a great introduction or reintroduction to Andrea. And then I'm going to do our read. That's correct. That's correct. And we didn't even get censored. It was awesome. It was really good. Okay. Let's, here we go. Running a business is hard. HR shouldn't be.

Steve-o (17:51.23)
If you want the rest of her life, listen to the previous episode. That's right.

Andrea Hollingsworth (17:54.062)
I lay it all bare.

Andrea Hollingsworth (18:02.282)
Hahaha

Steve-o (18:02.654)
It was awesome.

Tony Benjamin (18:09.824)
Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR with expert support in everything from hiring to handbooks, compliance to culture, need payroll help or recruiting power. We do that too. Fractionally and flexibly, no overhead, just results. Visit megastarhr.com and let's grow your business together. All right, shout out to Becca. Thank you.

And Steve, we must be having an awesome effect on back his business because she's been super busy. She got back to me today. So we it's all because of us. That's what I'm saying. I'm just saying it's all because of us. That's right. So at some time when she's on the on the show again, we'll we'll which she said she will be.

Steve-o (18:39.816)
She's been way busy. That is great, yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (18:41.829)
that's great.

Andrea Hollingsworth (18:46.286)
Absolutely.

Steve-o (18:51.774)
I'm gonna say we're only like 5 % Tony, cause I've seen Becca work and I'm pretty sure it's mostly her. So. All right, I'll just let you live in your own world.

Tony Benjamin (18:58.654)
Steve, Steve, don't burst my Bible with reality, okay? Would you just tone that down? That's right, thank you. Let me keep my delusions a grander, at least for a few minutes, okay?

Andrea Hollingsworth (19:05.358)
Thank

Steve-o (19:08.766)
I'm just trying to be authentic over here.

Tony Benjamin (19:13.956)
Fair enough. enough. So, um, maybe a shout out to Becca. Thank you for doing that with us. Okay. So Andrea, we, and what you were just talking about there is how to, for managers to be authentic and be able to do that sort of stuff. And we've, we've been talking about this and one of the reasons why we want to have you back on every once in is so that we can have these conversations about, about some of the emotional and empathetic or compassionate ways.

Andrea Hollingsworth (19:28.462)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (19:41.033)
in which we can handle certain stressful situations. And as we were all talking about this, one of the hardest things for people to do is to lay people off, is to give some really bad news and give it to them. And you've been kind enough to give us a methodology to do this. And I love it. Do you want to give us a brief introduction? Then we're going to drill into this a lot. So go.

Andrea Hollingsworth (19:44.302)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (19:57.118)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (20:08.574)
Yeah, I'm so excited.

Andrea Hollingsworth (20:08.918)
Yeah, absolutely. I will just say this is a really timely conversation because, you know, as we know, like layoffs are definitely happening right now. There's a lot of instability out there. And even if there aren't layoffs now, people are, organizations are changing. They're trying to become more lean. We've got uncertainty with AI adoptions and it's just...

Steve-o (20:21.522)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (20:37.262)
There's a lot of fear out there and I think people, a lot of leaders especially, and HR folks are looking for a bit of support, reinforcement, refresher on how can I show up well for people because they know how important that is when things are especially stressful in an organization. When you've got leaders who know how to handle these difficult conversations around a layoff or maybe fear of an upcoming change.

or reorganization involving layoffs. You've got people who are like, what's coming? Or maybe survivors. Maybe there's just been a layoff and there's a bunch of people who are left going, okay, what now? Or maybe some of the people listening may have a friend or a family member or maybe they themselves have just been laid off. How do you have a conversation with that person? So I think.

Steve-o (21:25.608)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (21:29.836)
that this framework, which is built on my Compassion Advantage framework, which has been tested and is effective. This one is kind of an offshoot of that specifically for these situations. I hope that so many people will find it helpful. with all that preamble, basically we have an acronym. I mean, what would we do without an acronym in HR? Right?

Steve-o (21:51.174)
right? And AI can't come up with an acronym.

Tony Benjamin (21:52.333)
That's right. Okay. Hey, wait, wait. No, no. So here we go. Here we go. Andrea is about to tell us here it is. So before she does.

Andrea Hollingsworth (21:55.822)
So, yes, it's, I call it the safe framework. my goodness. I totally bombed it. It is the safe, the safe framework. Yay. So yeah, I'll outline what that is, but S-A-F-E. Yes.

Steve-o (22:04.222)
Ha

Tony Benjamin (22:05.322)
Yay! No, no, it's, that was all good.

Steve-o (22:08.318)
It's all right.

Tony Benjamin (22:11.092)
Yay. That's a.

Steve-o (22:15.038)
And for those who don't know, is spelled S-A-F-E.

Tony Benjamin (22:21.33)
If AI has been helping you spell lately, this is how it's spelled,

Steve-o (22:25.982)
This is how it's really spelled.

Andrea Hollingsworth (22:26.078)
Exactly. Yes, yes. So the S stands for settle. You settle yourself. You regulate yourself. A stands for ask and acknowledge. So be curious about what's going on. Find out what's going on. Become more aware. F stands for feel with. And this is where the empathy comes in relating with compassion, but also remembering boundaries because remember, as we've said, we care, but we do not carry. That's not our job. And then finally, equip.

Tony Benjamin (22:29.023)
Okay, so go ahead.

Steve-o (22:49.47)
Correct.

Andrea Hollingsworth (22:55.052)
So this is an action component. You want to empower people with next steps they can take and be forward looking and instill hope where possible.

Tony Benjamin (23:04.236)
Well, there you go, everybody. So you just got the secret of how to handle this and and and handle it well and come out sane. We're going to we're going to. Yeah.

Steve-o (23:09.118)
.

Steve-o (23:13.406)
I want to talk about each of those too. You know, this morning, did you guys see the news this morning? Meta, because today is the 16th of March. So Meta just announced a 20 % layoff that's going to be happening. I don't know if you guys saw the news. I see this because I do the investing. I do the options trading and stuff like that. and you know, it's funny because when you keep just listen to this for a second, did you know that when a company typically announces layoffs, their stock jumps in price?

Andrea Hollingsworth (23:15.394)
Let's do it. Let's dive in.

Andrea Hollingsworth (23:28.75)
I didn't see that.

Andrea Hollingsworth (23:42.24)
Interesting.

Steve-o (23:42.856)
Did you know that?

Tony Benjamin (23:43.593)
Yeah, it's because it's because the street looks at the expense of the human capital being gone, and they say earnings are about to go up. So if they can afford to get rid of those people, they were a drain. And that and that means that the earnings are about to go up.

Steve-o (23:51.368)
Yep. Yep. That's exactly what it is. So.

Yep. They see it as a betterment of the business overall. so stocks will always jump. Now, sometimes it'll jump and then come back and kind of taper depending on what happens at that point. but literally they they employ about seventy nine thousand employees now and fit like 20 percent of that is a good fifteen thousand or more. So this is going to be a pretty big one. So so just as an example, like this this is happening in the marketplace and there was an announcement just as of this morning. And so here we are. Right.

Tony Benjamin (24:07.264)
Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (24:13.979)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (24:18.624)
Mm-hmm. It is happening.

Andrea Hollingsworth (24:23.916)
Yeah. Yep. And yep.

Steve-o (24:26.27)
Reality has is sinking in for a lot of folks and and they attribute it to AI They attribute it to and not only just AI replacing people but the cost of using AI Because to use AI you have to use Energy and and electricity and things that kind of like electric vehicles, you know, everybody thought at first electric vehicles Oh, this is great. It doesn't cost me anything. I'm gonna save all this money in gas and then it turns out Oh, wait a minute. It costs just as much as electricity

Andrea Hollingsworth (24:31.799)
Yes.

Andrea Hollingsworth (24:38.562)
Yes.

Andrea Hollingsworth (24:43.384)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (24:55.848)
as it does in the gas, maybe it's a wash, but anyway. So.

Andrea Hollingsworth (24:55.982)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (24:59.788)
No, it's just so we all know meta right now is up $12 and 99 cents. Just on just on the very good as of this recording, right?

Andrea Hollingsworth (25:05.59)
Wow.

Steve-o (25:05.66)
Yeah, yeah. As of this recording, yeah, yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (25:08.096)
Interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, it is is happening. You know, last year, 2025 was all about like the fears of is AI going to cause job loss? And now we're actually seeing it happening. working with another. Yeah, yeah. Been working with another major, like very big company with AI related layoffs, and it's really difficult for leaders to I mean, they're asking very nitty gritty

Steve-o (25:19.482)
Mm-hmm. And we knew it was coming, right? We knew. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (25:37.922)
very human questions about how to care for themselves, how to manage their own anxiety, how to radically accept the new normal, and then how to lead people, lead their teams through uncertainty, through survivor's guilt, through grief, through lots of change, through changing roles, like everything. And it's a lot to ask, especially in a culture where we are outsourcing a lot of our mental and even some of our emotional energy. AI, help me with...

Help me with how to respond to my mother-in-law. AI, help me with how to answer this text. It's like, well, no, if you're in a meeting with someone or with a team that has just experienced a loss of half the team, I hope to God you're not turning on chat GPT to try to figure out how to respond to these people and how to lead them well. No, that needs to be in your bones. Needs to be in your bones.

Steve-o (26:27.473)
Ahem.

Tony Benjamin (26:27.82)
Well, if you can use it for dating, what else can you use it for? Right? Geez, come on. Yeah. No, no, that's exactly that's exactly right. You're you're exactly right. That's yeah.

Steve-o (26:31.614)
man, no that

Andrea Hollingsworth (26:33.358)
you

Steve-o (26:38.29)
And you know, and I've, I've experienced both sides of this. You know, I've, I've been the one doing the layoffs, but I've also been the survivor of layoffs and you're absolutely right. It's difficult because you know, when those people get laid off, inevitably you don't just never talk to them again, especially for those that you have really good relationships with. mean, let's be honest at work, we create some really solid relationships and I think it's important.

Andrea Hollingsworth (26:46.37)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (26:59.348)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Andrea Hollingsworth (27:06.413)
Yes.

Steve-o (27:07.784)
that you develop those solid relationships. We shouldn't be so hands off that we don't even know one another. And those relationships are meaningful. There's realism there, right? So.

Andrea Hollingsworth (27:13.633)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (27:18.742)
Well, and we in HR work very hard to make those relationships meaningful because it's for the benefit of the company. This is why we have company activities and Christmas parties and whatever else is because we're trying to make those connections meaningful so that you're less likely to leave. Right. The number one thing we all know it. What's most important about your job. And it's always the people you work with. The number one thing is always that number two varies.

Steve-o (27:22.908)
Exactly.

Andrea Hollingsworth (27:23.148)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (27:26.162)
The company. Yep.

Andrea Hollingsworth (27:26.52)
Absolutely.

Steve-o (27:37.064)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (27:48.332)
survey to survey and number three is always money but number one is always people it's always people and so you're right Steve we work hard to make them that way

Andrea Hollingsworth (27:57.74)
Yes.

Steve-o (27:57.992)
Yeah, we really do. Which is why when it's our turn to deliver the news or we have to coach and help the manager deliver the news after we have worked so hard to develop these relationships. I want to talk about that with you, Andrea, like that those kind of feelings like what are we going through? What is what is some of the science behind that? What is like, how do we cope? In essence, yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (28:07.373)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (28:11.021)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (28:23.254)
Yeah, sure, absolutely. Well, let's start with the S of the safe framework, the settle. Settle yourself. know, the question here is, I in a mental, physical, am I in a mental and physical and emotional state where I can show up for somebody with calm, with curiosity, with connection, and also with just a lot of

strength, lot of professionalism. I'm not going to fall apart in front of this person. I'm not going to be looking for them to soothe me. I'm connected, but I'm not emotionally distressed. so taking some time to really ground yourself before you reach out to others, make sure you're not coming in hot, coming in triggered is really important, I think. And sometimes if it's a layoff situation where it's one...

It's a single layoff. It's not like a company-wide layoff, but one person who may be under performance or something egregious they did with the company, whatever it is, especially making sure that all that anger and all that frustration is sort of bracketed or set to the side so that you can really come in as your best with that person. So some grounding techniques to settle yourself, learning to sense.

what's going on in your body, where you're holding that tension or that anxiety or frustration as you think about meeting with this team or this person. Or maybe you're a leader and you are working with a team of survivors after a layoff and you're about to have a meeting where you're going to try to regroup and make space for some, you know, some grieving or whatever needs to happen. And you're just feeling really, really lost and really, really scared. And you just don't know how to.

Steve-o (29:54.098)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (30:18.242)
So finding ways to maybe calm your body, your nervous system, give yourself some compassion. Like this is a tough moment, you can say to yourself. This is a tough moment. And then step two, leadership involves difficult conversations like this. That's part of the job. I'm not alone. Every leader does this. And then say, I'm gonna be kind to myself in this moment. And then take three deep breaths.

You know, maybe refill your water bottle. Just little things to show yourself, I'm going to ground myself here. I'm going to show up as best I can. Yeah, that's really important. There's no, go ahead.

Steve-o (30:50.675)
So.

Tony Benjamin (30:54.176)
No, that's really important. I was coaching a manager this morning. He's got an employee that's been with him a couple of years. starting about four months ago, all of sudden, this manager's performance is just dropping. Like it's dropping. And every little thing freaks the guy out. Someone comes into the office to visit one of the executives in the office, and he doesn't know who it is. He's all freaked

Andrea Hollingsworth (31:14.946)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (31:21.836)
He, uh, you know, we, we hire somebody and he doesn't know who it is. get, got new, uh, we got new cameras in there and, and, uh, his, his access level to cameras. So he doesn't have multiple. It got decreased. Right. And he freaked out about that. It was just like every little thing. And so today, his manager today is talking to me and he's like, he was, you could tell he was hot. He was really hot. Like I'm getting so frustrated with this guy. He freaks out every five minutes.

Andrea Hollingsworth (31:36.174)
Yeah.

Steve-o (31:38.558)
.

Andrea Hollingsworth (31:49.592)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (31:49.953)
And then I ask him what's really wrong and he won't tell me like he's been not telling me for months now what he just, I'm fine. I'm fine. And then, and then I'll hang up the phone with him. And two minutes later, he's calling five other people and griping. And I'm just like, and I was like, maybe you ought to wait a couple hours before you call him. Like maybe, and he's like, no, I'll call him now. And then he'd go off for another two minutes. I'm like, maybe you should wait. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (32:00.814)
Sure. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (32:05.848)
Mm-hmm. Good advice. Yeah.

Steve-o (32:09.982)
When you're emotionally charged though, yeah. I remember I had to pull in a lady once who was being accused of something. And obviously when somebody's accused of something, are launches an investigation. And I just remember pulling her into the office to begin the investigation or at least let her know, hey, this has come up. This is our starting of an investigation. So we need to obviously ask you about this because we want to know.

Tony Benjamin (32:24.032)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (32:38.876)
What you perceive right and and and your side of it if you will And and she just lost it and started crying. We're like, that's fine. We can wait We can wait it out because you're just now hearing this And and I remember her telling me later. She's like I was so grateful that you guys just let me sit in that moment And just sit and let it sink in for a minute so that I could kind of collect myself so we could actually have a conversation because I think

Andrea Hollingsworth (32:42.958)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (32:47.79)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (32:52.109)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (32:59.214)
Mm.

Steve-o (33:08.338)
Sometimes when we go into those meetings, we just bring it up and we just want to just trow right through and just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And we have to remember this is the first time that other person is actually hearing this. And if it's the first time ever, you've had a chance to use the S for yourself and kind of settle it, but you haven't given them the chance to settle anything yet. so, giving them that moment, I think is really important. And that's kind of what I took from.

Andrea Hollingsworth (33:12.876)
Yep, just go.

Andrea Hollingsworth (33:19.936)
Yes. Yes.

Andrea Hollingsworth (33:30.786)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (33:35.298)
I think so too.

Steve-o (33:37.372)
when you talked about that, because I remember some of these incidences and there were other incidences that I've been in where we did not give them a moment. This particular woman we did and I remember her being grateful for that. And it just reminds me of what you're saying here is that there's I think there's two sides to this when it comes to settling a little bit and part of this safe, you know.

Andrea Hollingsworth (33:47.565)
Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (33:53.92)
Absolutely. think that's a really powerful story. A moment to collect yourself. You said that. And I think that that's exactly what I'm talking about here with settling yourself, but also you raise a really good point. And that's part of the feel with the third point in my model, but allowing people that space, sometimes they need to be silent. Sometimes it's okay to just say, hey, let's all just take a deep breath. This is heavy stuff. Obviously work isn't therapy. I remember I said that during the first.

Steve-o (34:00.222)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (34:18.514)
Yeah. Yep.

Andrea Hollingsworth (34:22.294)
episode we recorded through it. You're not a therapist. I know, right? It's so true. Most HR folks do feel like therapists, but we can use a lot of the tools therapists use in order to keep ourselves together and help keep other people together. That's advisable. So yeah.

Steve-o (34:22.846)
Even though we all feel like therapists.

Tony Benjamin (34:23.872)
Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (34:39.82)
I really like that. you're saying take a few deep breaths, relax yourself, acknowledge that it's going to be hard, that this is going to be, and then that's okay that it's going to be hard. Right? Get yourself a drink or whatever you got to do. Give yourself a moment. Let it all sink in and then move into it.

Andrea Hollingsworth (34:47.63)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (34:51.49)
Yep, that's okay, it's gonna be hard.

Andrea Hollingsworth (34:57.582)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (34:58.354)
And think about it, all of those activities are physical activities. Yeah, even though we're dealing with an emotion and all of that, there is power in doing something physically to help calm those emotions and get us back to that settlement place, if you will. So.

Andrea Hollingsworth (35:01.646)
They're physical. Yeah, you start with the body. Good point.

Andrea Hollingsworth (35:14.412)
Yep. So true. you know, is emotional contagion is a real thing. And when your body, when you've cared for your body, when you've taken those breaths, taken some water, acknowledged your thoughts and feelings, made yourself feel a little bit seen and supported, right? You come into the interaction in a different physiological, neurobiological state. Your autonomic nervous system is not jacked up in sympathetic mode. You know, you've brought yourself down a little bit. You're in the

They call it the parasympathetic nervous system functioning. And that's the mode where you're much more open to connect and your nervous system is gonna be able to calm that of the other person much more readily. And you're not gonna get sort of off of your center as easily if you come in having really taken care of yourself.

Steve-o (36:01.956)
I love that, that there's science that actually supports that too, because it's so true. mean, have you ever been in a room with somebody who's so all over the place emotionally and then you almost immediately gravitate towards that emotion? And I have some of those friends who are so well-grounded internally that when they see somebody come in like that, they themselves can help them calm down, which is pretty amazing to watch.

Andrea Hollingsworth (36:05.291)
Yes.

Andrea Hollingsworth (36:12.535)
Yes.

Andrea Hollingsworth (36:15.862)
Yes, yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (36:26.42)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (36:30.686)
I mean, but there's this self-awareness there. think it's phenomenal. This is one of those things I loved in reading in your book that that these emotions can be controlled doing physical things. And I think one of my favorites was actually acknowledging it and actually saying it out loud. This is hard, right? And saying it out loud, allowing yourself to hear your own voice, tell yourself that this is difficult, this is hard and that's OK. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (36:44.876)
Yeah. Yep.

Andrea Hollingsworth (36:53.164)
Yeah, this is our normal. Yeah, and it's okay. And I got this. And this is normal. And this is a part of leadership. It's the second step of Kristin Neff's self-compassion model where you acknowledge common humanity. You're not alone in this. To be a human is to suffer. To be a leader is to have to these conversations sometimes. You're not abnormal. This is okay. It's all part of the process. And then it tells your whole body and mind, like, hey,

Steve-o (36:57.746)
Yep. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (37:22.196)
actually like I'm not being threatened right now. I'm just doing my job. That's all this is. It's a different face of my job. It's okay. And then you come in just in a better state.

Tony Benjamin (37:33.133)
I like that. Before we move on to the A, I just want to say you validated this. I've always told my kids, I said, you might as well just acknowledge it now that what we heard in the Princess Bride is correct. Life is pain, your highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. So just acknowledge it. It's bad. It can be bad. That's right. Just it could be bad. Yep. Yep.

Steve-o (37:33.18)
Love it. Love it.

Andrea Hollingsworth (37:43.374)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (37:53.09)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we chuckle, like that is a deep truth. That is a deep truth right there. Yep.

Steve-o (37:53.232)
those influencers out there. Click the link below.

Tony Benjamin (38:01.512)
OK, so now let's talk about the ask and acknowledge.

Andrea Hollingsworth (38:04.494)
Sure, yeah. So this point is really important. This is where you're pause and just admit that you might not actually know what the person or the team is feeling. And you're gonna wanna be curious to find out what is actually true for them right now. And so here...

Steve-o (38:26.812)
And don't assume.

Andrea Hollingsworth (38:29.172)
Exactly. Don't assume it. The A does not stand for assume. And we all know how the second part of that joke goes. But here, you really want to ask some questions as appropriate. Each situation is going to be different. But I'm thinking especially about teams who are navigating a possible

Steve-o (38:32.413)
Exactly.

Tony Benjamin (38:35.564)
Perfect. Yes.

Steve-o (38:37.068)
Well, Tony knows.

Tony Benjamin (38:39.082)
Yes, yes I do.

Andrea Hollingsworth (38:56.206)
layoff that's coming and they don't know if maybe they'll lose their job or their colleague or what's going to happen to that project or they're just everybody's on edge, right? Or a situation where a bunch of people have been laid off and now it's the survivors. And so coming in and asking some open questions like how are you all doing really? Or you what's the hardest part of this moment for us right now? Or

What do you need? What do you need that you're not getting right now from the team? What do you need from me that you're not getting? What would be most helpful in this moment? Really just questions that are not yes, no, that are just they usually begin with a how or a what, and they're just going to invite people into a detailed free form like this is where I'm at. So you're going to ask and then acknowledge when you know, acknowledge whatever is true for them. When you ask a question, it can be helpful to name.

some possible answers because often when you create space for people in a difficult moment, sometimes they don't know what they're feeling or what they need to process. It's just a bunch of like awkward dead silence. so for one example, it might be helpful to name a few common reactions to a layoff situation because again, people don't know. So for instance, I've worked with a lot of coaching clients who

if their organization is in the middle of a change and some of their colleagues have been laid off and there's a bunch of uncertainty because they don't yet know how things are going to shake out in terms of their workload and the projects they're responsible for. And there's all kinds of insecurity that can set in. So you can say, it's common to feel insecurity about literally everything after you've learned about a colleague's departure.

your abilities, your skills, your talents, you know, it's and you can say something like, you know, that's based in the brain's fear circuitry. It's part of what survivors get. means maybe you're feeling that or you could say, you know, maybe you're feeling anger or just list off a little bit of a laundry list of things that people might be feeling so that they have somewhere to start. And that's not just awkward. And then listen.

Steve-o (41:11.534)
I love that because you're allowing them to be able, because like you said, sometimes we don't know how to even describe what we're feeling. But when you say that here's some of the normalcy, right? Here's some normal things people feel when this is happening, it allows them to define what it is they're actually feeling because they probably don't know how to express it yet. So.

Andrea Hollingsworth (41:20.846)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (41:31.896)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Exactly. And that would be, I think, a valid use of AI if you're not trained in any kind of psychology or whatnot. You can just ask your, know, chat GPT or cloud or whatever AI of choice, like, hey, what are some common emotional reactions to it, you know, that a team would experience after their colleagues have been laid off? And then just ask your tool to like lay out some emotions and then you can just rattle those off. And it creates space for people to be like, yeah, actually.

Steve-o (42:01.778)
Yeah, I feel that one. Yep.

Andrea Hollingsworth (42:03.554)
Yeah, that one's true for me. And then it gets a conversation started and it helps people not feel so alone. And, you know, hear back to the neuroscience.

Steve-o (42:12.22)
And it feels relatable at that point too. And I think, I think the biggest thing, cause again, I just experienced this recently is recognizes, recognizing and realizing that there are others on your team that are feeling the same way. And so talking about it is not damaging. Talking about it can actually be healing and can kind of help all of us have these conversations. Cause we're all feeling it. Like there's no question we all feel.

Andrea Hollingsworth (42:34.37)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (42:38.358)
Well, unless they're all going to storm the Bastille and go kill the boss, right? I mean, there's always that possibility, too. We don't want to talk about that. Not that we can stop them. If the National Labor Relations Board is listening to this, we don't stop them from saying such things. We just don't like it when they do. So I don't know. The amygdala is a powerful thing, right? It takes over. It's programmed in certain ways to react to certain things. And of course, in times of uncertain fighter flight, uncertain

Steve-o (42:42.361)
Wow, Tony.

Hahaha

Steve-o (42:52.824)
huh.

Andrea Hollingsworth (42:54.014)
Hahaha.

Steve-o (42:56.241)
Right.

Steve-o (43:02.374)
It really does. The fight or flight type things.

Tony Benjamin (43:08.266)
T when you don't know your brain and Andrew can speak this better than I can, but your brain starts coming up with all the different scenarios of what possibly may happen. And of course, the bad ones are the ones that you have to be most concerned about. So you're triggering on those, right? You're flipping those through your head over and over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know.

Steve-o (43:22.45)
Yeah, how am I going to react? How am I going to? What happens if this happens? My wife is really good at that.

Andrea Hollingsworth (43:26.616)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

She's gonna wait which part you got to clarify.

Tony Benjamin (43:31.148)
Think of all the bad things that could happen.

Steve-o (43:33.462)
She's really good at looking at the worst case scenarios and like, okay, if this happens, how are we going to react? What are we going to do? Like, and it's kind of funny to me because I'm a little bit more mellow than she is when it comes to stuff like that, which probably drives her crazy at times. But but I don't know, I feel like we at least have a good balance. So.

Andrea Hollingsworth (43:39.778)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (43:40.768)
Right.

Andrea Hollingsworth (43:52.012)
Yeah. Well, I mean, that brings up an important point because I think a lot of us are wired that way. What can I figure out ahead of time so that I will suffer less in the future? That's what anxiety means. Like there's something we can't control or that feels uncertain. Yes. And that's adaptive. Like we should be doing that. Otherwise, we're going through life blind. Like so our anxiety, our stress can be very helpful. Let's acknowledge that that is also true. But I think it's also helpful to acknowledge that in these situations,

Steve-o (43:57.629)
Mm-hmm.

Done.

Steve-o (44:04.081)
Well, it's problem solving, right?

Steve-o (44:16.658)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (44:20.654)
that we're talking about here with organizational change and job loss and survivors and whatnot, there's so much out of our control. And I think a really important piece of acknowledgement, so the A stands for ask and acknowledge, is acknowledging the things that are outside of our control. And we can acknowledge that ourselves as a leader, like there's a lot here that's out of my control, but just naming that, like...

this feels really hard because we don't know and we can't manage it. And yet I think it's also helpful for a leader to point out and acknowledge the things that are still within our control. And that's part of feeling with, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves here. But I think that's an important part of caring for someone and feeling with someone is saying, look, here's what we can't control, but here are the things we can.

Tony Benjamin (45:03.488)
Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (45:15.414)
And it's very empathic, it's very supportive to say, here's what we can lean into, you know?

Tony Benjamin (45:21.61)
No, that's that's really good. And I was I so when I did debate in high school and college, I thought the most successful people who are they were really, really good at it were not the ones who would just hear an argument and formulate a response to it. But they were the ones that really understood the argument. So they could create a response to it, meaning to really understand it and know what it means.

Andrea Hollingsworth (45:41.102)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (45:46.702)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (45:51.199)
And whether you're going to argue against or not is a whole different story and that's something else. But the idea here is that you got to really understand it before you can, before you can formulate it. And you, you're right. Us as a leader, it's our job to provide the calming forces because the layoff or whatever already caused the, the, the other ones. So, and I think that that dumps us into the F right. So we can talk about that. Let's talk about that feel with.

Andrea Hollingsworth (46:04.782)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (46:09.068)
Yum. Yum.

Andrea Hollingsworth (46:13.57)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So the question here is, I carrying the weight of all of this negative emotion, or am I caring for the person? Can I care without carrying? Can I relate to them with boundaried compassion? And here I have a story to tell. I don't think I told it when we talked prior, but Pamela Maynard, Avanade, did I tell that story? OK.

Steve-o (46:14.056)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (46:42.4)
I don't think so.

Steve-o (46:43.462)
I don't think so either.

Andrea Hollingsworth (46:43.886)
All right. So she was a new CEO at Avanade in 2019 and then COVID hit in 2020. So she had only been in the role for, I don't know, a couple of months and COVID hit. so Avanade is a global tech company and anyway, was chaos for a while. Also, war broke out on her continent and there was just a whole bunch of stuff that hit the fan at the same time.

And she called together her leaders and she said, everyone, this is hard and I don't have all the answers, but here's the process I'll be going through to find them. And here's how you'll have a part and here's how you'll have a part. And so she was able to name the fact that, know, that, and she also said there's going to be some chaos and there's going to be some dropped balls and there's going to be a sense of, you know, just things not.

feeling clear for a while, but in the end, we will get to a better place and we will have gotten there together. We will have achieved it together. So she did several things in those comments to her leaders. She said, I'm with you in this. Like it's hard. There's so much we don't know. Right? And then she said, but I'm going to stay connected to you as we do it. Like here's how, here's the process I'll be going through to find the answers and here's how you'll be connected and be a part of that.

And then she laid out a vision for here's where we're going to go. And, you know, we're all, going to be in a better place at the other end of this. And so it's that balance of staying with people, but acknowledging that, there's a lot going on here, feeling with.

Tony Benjamin (48:28.99)
Right, right, and to set up the parameters of those unknowns so they become knowns. Right, the boundaries of them at least become known, and then you can fill it in as you go.

Steve-o (48:31.932)
I love that. Yep.

Andrea Hollingsworth (48:34.478)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (48:38.666)
And not only that, yeah, and not only that, also, you know, telling them how they're going to be involved in that. Like it's one thing to give the outline, but then to say, here's where you'll be involved and you'll be involved and you know, those are, those are some critical pieces. That's a, that's an awesome story.

Andrea Hollingsworth (48:52.79)
Okay.

Andrea Hollingsworth (48:59.554)
I love that story and I Pamela Maynard. She's an amazing leader. And yeah, she really showed up amazingly at that time.

Steve-o (49:03.891)
Yeah.

Steve-o (49:07.378)
Well, you know, if we were in real wartime, that's called getting in the trenches, right, with the troops and not just telling the troops what to do. And I think that's a to me that has always defined a solid leader is the one who gets in front because they truly are protecting and trying to bring everybody along and to say, here's our vision, here's where we want to go. And is right in the front lines as opposed to the one saying, OK, well, you guys could do that and I'll just watch and I'll.

Andrea Hollingsworth (49:12.824)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (49:22.051)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (49:36.732)
let you know what I observe, know, type things, so.

Andrea Hollingsworth (49:38.206)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a much more, I mean, obviously as a leader, there are certain decisions you're making, but it's a more collaborative approach and, you know, we're in this together. We're figuring this out together. So, some other just really basics with feeling with another person in a situation of some anxiety or some pain, whatever. I mean, these are such basic things, but we're in a moment societally where we have to, we have to remind ourselves of them again, because

Steve-o (49:45.854)
Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (50:05.784)
We're kind of, some of us are losing the ability to live them out. you know, being 100 % present, it's much easier said than done in today's world. You know, we're so distracted by our devices. And so when you're having these conversations, these crucial conversations, really putting away your other notifications and being present so that you can listen. And then things like minding your non-verbals. And, you know, if you're on a

on a virtual meeting, making sure you lean in and maybe look at the camera. Nod your head. Don't be looking everywhere else and working on other things and trying to multitask during the meeting. Reflecting back what you hear. So what I hear you saying is da-da-da-da, summarizing it for people, being OK with some silence, utilizing humor where appropriate. I mean, these are basic.

communication skills, but I think a reminder is a good thing for all of us.

Steve-o (51:10.864)
And AI will never replace that. All of those things you just described, there's no way AI is gonna help facilitate that period. It'll give me a great synopsis at the end, but during the meeting it has no imp...

Tony Benjamin (51:11.189)
No, it-

Andrea Hollingsworth (51:13.07)
No, no, never.

Andrea Hollingsworth (51:19.384)
Assert.

Tony Benjamin (51:19.914)
Well,

Tony Benjamin (51:24.8)
Well, let's say that you've got some sort of physical presence of the AI in the room and it can scan you and it can even read pheromones or hormones coming off from you and it can predict what you're feeling or whatever that is, right? That's all swell and great. That's an analysis tool. And it may even know how to relate to you. Like we were talking about before, there are some people right now who think that their boyfriend is the AI or girlfriend or whatever. That's perfectly fine.

The difference is, is though I can't relate to you as I, as I see that robot face or while you're analyzing me. So you may know exactly what I'm feeling or whatever else. And you can read that on me. I still can't relate to the AI that that's as the person going through it or being analyzed. Right. And it's yeah, it's, it's a different, it's a different level there, but I, Andrew that's really good. You know, I think I'm thinking about.

Andrea Hollingsworth (52:06.894)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (52:20.626)
When I speak in front of group and you probably experiences Steve, don't know, Steve's just such at a high level of speaking that who knows what he's thinking. But I know I know what I'm right. So right. So I get up there and and I I don't do outlines. I don't do memorized speeches, that sort of stuff. But I read the crowd. Right. I'm reading the crowd. And I was taught at a very early age, look people in the audience in the eye.

Steve-o (52:27.774)
Thanks.

since I don't prepare.

I just wing it.

Tony Benjamin (52:49.568)
look them in the eye. And if no one's looking at me, I start wondering what's going on. But I get that feedback. And I really feel my way through a crowd. It's like, I'll crack a joke. Sometimes no one laughs and I pause and I look at someone I say, it's okay if you laugh at that, you know, and that usually gets me a laugh or something. But anyways, the point is, is that that back and forth and being able to relate to the other person, I think to your

Andrea Hollingsworth (52:49.582)
That's right.

Andrea Hollingsworth (53:07.213)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (53:16.524)
That is where that connection, right? That's where it comes from. It's a human intuition, I guess.

Steve-o (53:25.502)
Well, and physically, you know, I, I've talked about this a few times in some of my own sessions that I do that, you know, when we're present together, we're actually physically together, we're throwing pheromones at each other all the time. And I'm not talking about like love pheromones. There are actual neurological studies that show that there is a real life connection. And I think what I loved about your book is when you have that energy, other people are going to feed off that energy as well. And so.

Andrea Hollingsworth (53:53.006)
There you

Steve-o (53:53.694)
the most dynamic speakers bring the energy with them because they know the audience is going to feed off of that. They want the audience to feed off of that. In fact, when I'm in some of my sessions, I want them to connect with me because I know we're in a room together. We may only have an hour, hour and a half together, but I want that time to be meaningful and I want us to actually get something out of it. And if we can't feel those feelings, I mean, I'm going to spit my pheromones all over you.

Andrea Hollingsworth (54:07.416)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (54:14.19)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (54:22.968)
And it's up to you to connect with that or not. And like I said, not the love type pheromones. And I probably am not even saying them correctly, but I know they're.

Tony Benjamin (54:31.86)
Every time he says that, he says that I have like four jokes in my head that I just bite on.

Andrea Hollingsworth (54:33.976)
you

Steve-o (54:36.094)
Thank you for being so disciplined, Tony. I admire your discipline.

Andrea Hollingsworth (54:36.878)
goodness. He's holding them back. He's holding them back hard.

Tony Benjamin (54:40.778)
That's right. That's but I am I am present. I am present because every time Steve Steve says that I've got a joke going so.

Andrea Hollingsworth (54:44.972)
Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (54:49.356)
But yeah, but like it is true though that we were able to co-regulate that our bodies are always sort of talking to each other on a subconscious level. And that's why it's important to come into these conversations really settled in yourself because you as the leader are gonna be setting the emotional tone for the entire meeting. And so remember that. They do, they really do.

Steve-o (54:59.229)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (55:04.435)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (55:12.254)
Because they look to you for that. I mean, think about that. They really do. They look to you for that.

Tony Benjamin (55:16.832)
Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (55:18.144)
And so one cautionary piece with this feel with part is maybe this is obvious to everybody, but I feel it's important to say anyway, if it's normal for you as a leader to be feeling a lot of these emotions too, you know, when there's a lot of change going on and when there's layoffs, like you've got a lot of big feelings too, but you are not gonna wanna bring those to the meeting and ask for their support. You are the one holding the space for them.

Steve-o (55:46.302)
Hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (55:46.656)
Otherwise you've got that reverse caretaking happening and that's when a team starts to feel very unsettled. So you have to be almost like the mother hand, like, you know, okay, I got you chicks, you know, like I'm, I'm okay, but I'm, I'm here to... my goodness. Just...

Tony Benjamin (55:59.821)
Can we say chicks on the podcast? saying we can say chicks, right? anyways, go ahead, Andrea. Sorry, that was too that was too easy. It was hanging over the plate. I had to swing it that. Yeah. look at that. Steve's holding up the chicks under the chickens wing. Look, that's so sweet.

Steve-o (56:01.681)
Hahaha

love chicks.

Andrea Hollingsworth (56:09.646)
It was hanging there was. Anyway, I just.

Andrea Hollingsworth (56:17.582)
cute!

Steve-o (56:18.084)
This is one of my favorite paintings because it just reminds me of being coddled by the mother hen when things are looking bleak. And just to remember, you always have a mother hen there that's always watching over you. I don't know, it's one of my favorites.

Tony Benjamin (56:34.038)
Well, Andrea is saying Andrea is saying that's the sort of leader everybody should be. Right. So not the other kind of chicks. Sorry.

Andrea Hollingsworth (56:39.586)
Well, obviously you want to care. Yes, like you're there to care. You're there to create what attachment research is called a holding space for people. However, like you're also the one that who's going to be delivering some bad news and like this is again, work isn't therapy and you also have to be comfortable with uncomfortable moments. so.

Steve-o (56:46.856)
Yeah.

Steve-o (57:02.674)
You you bring up a good point there. If you're finding yourself getting into a leadership role, you have to accept the fact that these kinds of things are going to happen. I think I've met a lot of leaders and managers in my day that didn't realize that that was part of the job. And if that's the case, I don't think we're training them effectively or at least preparing them effectively to be a real manager because all managers are going to face this at some point or another. And

Andrea Hollingsworth (57:13.368)
For sure.

Andrea Hollingsworth (57:18.839)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (57:31.52)
Absolutely.

Steve-o (57:32.304)
You have to stand your ground, like you said. I, yeah, it's interesting.

Andrea Hollingsworth (57:35.734)
Yep. Yep, you do. always, in difficult conversations where it's about performance, where you're having to, you know, have a corrective conversation with someone, we might have talked about this last time, but I always think the best way to start out is just to say with a lot of empathy, you know, I have to have a difficult conversation with you. And it just, lets people know that it gives them that clarity, like, okay, here's what's coming, you know, so that they're not blind.

Steve-o (57:44.253)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (57:58.748)
Yep. Even if there's still some unknowns there, it's like, this is difficult, just so you know, because that can kind of help prepare them to be a little settled too as we go into the conversation. So yeah, that's great.

Andrea Hollingsworth (58:05.557)
Exactly.

Andrea Hollingsworth (58:09.43)
Yeah, exactly.

Tony Benjamin (58:11.444)
and they wait for the amygdala to stop doing its thing, right? Yeah, yeah, e, e.

Andrea Hollingsworth (58:14.516)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, the E is good. So this is the E is equip. So this is where you're going to be focused on empowering people with with some next steps. So here, I think it's important to talk about the stages of change, because you're trying to get people to a stage a little bit.

Steve-o (58:14.815)
Okay, Tony, we better get to the e

Andrea Hollingsworth (58:43.342)
than they currently are. So when there's a big change at work or unwelcome news, first of all, there's shock. People are numb, they're stubborn, they're resentful, they're angry. Then there's confusion and victimhood. This is where people start blaming and complaining and not listening. Yep, the self-doubt and all of that kicks in. And then the third stage is radical acceptance. This is where people stop arguing with what is, with

Tony Benjamin (59:00.332)
How dare you do this to

Steve-o (59:04.67)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (59:12.684)
reality and they start asking, you know, what's mine to control here? What's the next step for me? The fourth stage is exploration. And that's where they've got a little bit of renewed energy and optimism because they're starting to take some steps in new directions and figure it out little by little. And then finally, the fifth step is commitment, where there's a lot of high energy productivity because you believe in yourself and you understand what you can do now in this new situation to move forward.

in a way that feels good. So when you're coming into a difficult meeting or where there's a lot of anxiety, a lot of ambiguity, helping people towards radical acceptance, I think is a really awesome goal to have. Radical acceptance of things that they can't control. Getting to the, this is how it is. I'm going to stop futilely fighting reality and just say, like, this is our situation that we're in right now.

And then maybe getting them to do some exploratory thinking about what they could do, what is still within their power to make their situation at work feel like they have agency, like they have creativity, like they have a place, they belong. And so, yeah, I think that that's really important.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:34.816)
No, what you're just saying there though, so I wanna ask this question. So normally when I lay off somebody or something, I go in with a letter that says they're being laid off, So that they can use it to apply for unemployment. And then some sort of description of what's gonna happen to all their benefits. Because I find that people don't really remember when I tell them those things. So I try to have that with me. So there's a piece of paper with that on it as well. And then...

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:00:45.731)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:03.124)
And again, after I say we're going to have to let you go today, I always wait right for that adrenaline, the fight or flight moment to go away. But, but after that, that's when I start to give them information. Any, and I guess I'm asking you what those things are. Am I describing the right sorts of things with answers for them? Or are you talking something else? Is there something else I can come in prepared with to help them with that?

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:01:09.346)
Yup. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:01:25.824)
Right. Well, that's a good question. The scenario you're describing was a little different than I was thinking about teams who are still there, who are still a part of the organization. But in a situation where you're letting somebody go and you're having that one-on-one with them, I think it's exactly as you said, like in a caring way, in a connected human way, looking in the eye way, soft voice way, let them know what's happening. Give them very clear

Tony Benjamin (01:01:35.367)
Okay.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:01:54.062)
a very clear understanding of what's going to happen next, of severance, of everything that you need to say to them. Make sure you've checked all the legal boxes before you go in. I think it's important to prepare for these conversations. I mean, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but HR, you got to be able to know what you can say and what you can't say.

Steve-o (01:02:08.392)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:02:13.886)
We don't check boxes in HR. What are you talking about? Processes.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:20.588)
Come on, tell him whatever came out. Tell him whatever came out of the CFO's mouth before when you guys decided this. Yeah. See how that goes. Right.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:02:27.566)
my gosh. But I think that ask, like, let me just find, asking them what questions they have, I think is one of the most compassionate things you can do, especially at the close of that conversation. And then often there will be a question of like, well, why, or was it me? And, you know, this is where we're back to the dating, I think, especially if it was a large layoff situation, letting people know.

Steve-o (01:02:31.964)
Well, we had I was going to say, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:02:57.666)
that like, it's not you, it's me or it's us is important. this, obviously you have to have the buy-in of your leaders in order to say something like that. like, we were talking earlier about Metta, you know, they announced a layoff today. A couple of years ago, there was a big layoff at Metta and Zuckerberg took accountability for it. Like he told everyone, he said, you know,

Steve-o (01:03:02.59)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:03:26.606)
11,000 people are losing their jobs. And he shared that he had misjudged the potential for market growth and he had invested a little bit too heavily in certain areas of the business. And so he said that that's why this layoff is happening. Now, it depends on where you are in the leadership chain, whether you can say that. But I think it's where possible to be able to say, you know, like your gifts and your talents were so valuable, so valuable here. And we are going to miss you and we're deeply sorry that you're leaving.

This is a business decision, it's not a personal decision. I think if you can say that, it's incredibly compassionate.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:06.432)
That's a very good, that's a, that's a very, very good point. And I wish more businesses would do that. You know, Steve, I've been thinking about this whole layoff thing and how right Steve Jaffe was when, when we were interviewing him about his book and how I really honestly believe that as American business, we are coming to be too accepting of, of laying people off when, when the economy starts to turn. Well, look, it's kind of like this, right?

Steve-o (01:04:12.53)
I wish they would too.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:33.94)
So the gas that is sitting at the tank on your local gas station, we start bombing Iran. Do you really think the gas in the tank changed values overnight? No, it has the same cost structure. It has everything else. But the company's looking at that. So your local gas station company, whoever that is, Maverick or whoever it happens to be, they look at that and they say, OK, the next round of fuel that's coming in or maybe two rounds of fuel for now is going to be much more expensive.

And I have to, I want to be ahead of the curve to pay for that. Instead of recovering the profit on the back end, after I sell it, I want to have the money ahead so that I can pay for it ahead. And it increases overall my margin. Right. That's what they're thinking. And a lot of companies look at this and they're like, as soon as the market starts to soften a little bit, I'm laying people off so that I can, I can do that exact same thing. I can stay ahead of that curve. And it, I think it's a business failing.

And it would, it would be awfully cool if you were the person getting laid off. If the message was given to you, Hey, Mark said that we could tell everybody this was his mistake. has nothing to do with them. It's his mistake and how he judged that was going to happen. And therefore here, what an awesome thing to tell people. It's not you. We made this judgment error or whatever else is coming. And that's different than saying, you know, the market softened and we couldn't do anything about that. Right.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:05:50.925)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:05:51.325)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:06:02.272)
because that's shoving responsibility off.

Steve-o (01:06:03.678)
Well, because you're owning it. Yeah, you're owning it as a leader that I'm the one that made this decision to make these additional hires because we were anticipating A, B and C. It looks like that's not happening. So now we're having to cut back. So therefore, here we go. Right. Mm There it is rare. Yeah. No, and I'm glad you remember that story, Andrea, about Zuckerberg and that initial layout.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:06:13.25)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:06:18.388)
And it was my fault that we anticipated that. Yes, right, yeah. that's, mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, and that.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:06:22.786)
Yeah, it's rare. It's rare. But when it happens, it's powerful. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:06:32.614)
because I remember that when that happened. And I thought, you know, this is a good leader. You know, even in the stock market, you know, I do dabbling in the stock market and trading and options and things like that. And one of the criteria that I... I'm okay. I'm okay. But one of the things that we always do in the investor world is we research the company and more particularly, we research the leaders. Because when you read the actual letters that the leaders are sending out to the general public,

Tony Benjamin (01:06:41.834)
He does Martin dabble. He's really good. He's really good. Just saying.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:06:45.634)
That's awesome. I admire that.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:06:55.597)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:07:02.61)
that will tell you what kind of leader they are. And you can use that as a tool to determine, yes, they're run by a good leader right now. Like I remember Coles had a very poor leadership for a while. Coles was struggling and the way the leaders were talking, it wasn't their fault. Well, they have a new CEO recently and he's been owning it, right? And saying, hey, here's the mistakes that have been made. Here's what we're doing to try to address it. And now they're doing much better than they were two years ago.

It's still up in the air as to where that's going. But again, here's a leader who is owning up to what was happening and saying, OK, this is why we're making these changes and this is what we hope will happen. We can't always predict that 100 percent, but at least we have this vision. And I think that's what leaders have to have is that vision. And so I love this idea of the E where here's what to expect next. Here we go. Right.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:07:41.73)
Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:07:50.67)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:07:55.296)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. yeah, expect would work too. I had put equip, but like when leaders own it and take some accountability, you're equipping people with a little bit more self-confidence as they leave, right? Otherwise it's very natural for us to blame ourselves and just to look, you know, to spiral into self-doubt. And that doesn't help anybody when they're job searching, right? And so anything you can do to keep people from the self-doubt spiral as they're losing their job is going to equip them.

Steve-o (01:08:05.95)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:08:18.504)
Mm-mm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:08:24.782)
with the psychological resources they need to stay resilient in a job market that's really tough right now. But you want to empower, like if you're talking to a team that's still there or navigating a possible upcoming change, layoffs, I think it's important to equip people too with knowledge of what they need right now and to talk about that. So this is straight out of Brené Brown's leadership playbook, but you know,

saying something like, hey, this is a tough moment right now for all of us, but let's all go around and name one thing that we need in order to keep producing excellent work during this tough time right now. Give everyone a little bit of time, because people are generally not tuned into their needs. And then, just listen. Someone might say, need, when my calendar's blocked off, I really need you to honor that and not.

put a meeting on my calendar. Like if it's, I'm doing one thing, I can't do a meeting. Okay. You know, someone else might say, well, I really need to exchange dad jokes in the, in the break room with Mike every day at noon. Like who knows what people need, but they may need, yeah. Like they're going to need different things, but then there's a, there's a sense of like, am equipped with what I need to handle this difficult situation right now. And my leader is helping me figure that out and meet the need. Wow.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:33.786)
Hahaha.

Steve-o (01:09:35.71)
That's important.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:09:49.674)
That is active, compassionate leadership right there.

Steve-o (01:09:53.31)
And what a way to equip them, right? Because now you know what to equip them with because I'll be honest, I think sometimes as a leader, I don't even know what to equip them with. And so if you're not asking and actually gathering and saying, OK, let's talk about this openly, it makes you that much more effective as a leader to be able to equip. Because I don't know, sometimes I hear people saying, yeah, I need this, I need that. It's like, we can do that. That's great. Let's do that. And that's empowering.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:09:55.352)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:10:01.758)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:10:08.909)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:10:13.091)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:13.356)
I

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:10:18.7)
Yep. Yeah. And you may not be able to meet every need, but you can do some of them at least to make people's lives just a little bit easier, a little bit less friction at work because their brains are working overtime with all the anxiety.

Steve-o (01:10:22.696)
Yeah, exactly.

Steve-o (01:10:28.624)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that. Love that.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:30.284)
No, I think business leaders are often too scared to be open enough with their employees to do that sort of thing. Meaning, we all think if we look ahead and we're looking at a little bit of bad news, let's not tell the employees because we don't want them to quit and start running for the hills. On the other hand, we don't want to tell them good news either because we're afraid that they will hear that and go, oh, we're doing really well. I bet it now is time to ask for a raise.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:10:45.87)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:59.828)
Right? Those are, those are the fears. Why don't we tell people how the business is going on it? Like on a monthly basis, why don't we go through revenue with our employees? There are reasons. There are real reasons. And those things, I think it takes a lot of courage to say to somebody after a riff, okay, here's the five things that we really need to focus in on right now so that our company excels. Because what you're afraid of is that you're going to say, here's five things. And if we don't do these, we're all in trouble. And then everybody else panics and they start.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:11:00.515)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:11:18.706)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:11:18.862)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:28.406)
peeling off your best people leave, right? Cause they can. And I, and I just think that that's the, takes a lot of courage on the part of a business leader to be open and transparent with people. then to what you just said, equip them for the next layer or the next space. Those people are still there. We're just, we're not good at this. We're not good at it. And I, it's something we got to get better at just as leadership in general, we got to get better. How can I be as forthright as possible?

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:11:31.384)
Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:11:44.685)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:11:52.312)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:57.663)
And if I think if I do it enough, people maybe learn when to really be scared and when not to be scared. That's all I can think of maybe.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:12:03.732)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's nuanced. mean, in every different business situation, there are going to be things that you should say, things that you could say, and things that you definitely should not say, right? And they're always going to look a little bit different. But one thing that I think you should always say is stressing the vision and the mission of the business, whatever needs to be done, whatever's on the horizon.

You don't necessarily need to announce a layoff, you know, like way in advance, because to your point, like that just makes people unnecessarily anxious for an unnecessary amount of time sometimes. But always be dealing in hope, always be dealing in hope, no matter what what's happening. So what needs to be done? What are our underlying strengths here? All of us. It's the sense of like having a pragmatic optimism while this circumstance may be difficult.

We are focusing on X, Y, and Z positive thinking because we know that that is crucial to booing our morale and doing good work together and having success moving forward. And that is also equipping people and it's giving them a sense of what to expect. And as I have said so many times, the leader creates the emotional environment or sets the emotional footprint or imprint for the entire team.

Steve-o (01:13:15.922)
Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:13:30.242)
having that, always having that sense of like, this is what I'm envisioning next. Even if you don't have all the answers, you don't have it all mapped out perfectly, there's that sense of hope and of optimism. And that is, again, that's emotionally contagious. And when people see their leader, you know, dealing in hope, they get off that call and they take a deep breath. like, you know, I'm so glad that I, I just, feel like I can trust my leader. And, and they, and they weren't being fake. Like they were, they were being real.

Steve-o (01:13:54.558)
like we're using. And they were like, they were like,

Tony Benjamin (01:14:00.939)
Now, it's that that's exactly right. You know, one of the coolest environments to be in and that to me, this is why this is the biggest advantage of going to Utah Silicon slopes, because you get in there with a ton of entrepreneurs and all of those entrepreneurs are talking about how to get VC money and how you grow. And there's all these success stories and man, you just get pumped up about what you can do as an entrepreneur. Like it's really, really cool. And I think there's something because they're all leaders and they're sharing that vision with you.

And they probably don't share it a lot with their employees. anyway, right? Something to think about. OK, that's right. So I want to recap this. Safe is safe. And the safe, what do we say we're calling?

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:14:36.866)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:14:39.714)
Now there's the synergy.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:14:48.622)
Settle, ask and acknowledge, feel with, and equip. So the safe framework for difficult conversations or for hard conversations.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:52.331)
Right.

and equip. There you go, the safe framework for difficult conversations. Thank you very much. I think that's awesome. And yeah, no, that's really cool. So

Steve-o (01:15:07.894)
And if you want to have Andrea come talk to your business or come speak at your conference, she's a great resource for things like this. I just want to throw that out there because I've seen her in action and obviously we've had her on the podcast a few times now and I just, really appreciate all the research that you do, Andrea, and your willingness to share it with the HR community.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:12.349)
huh.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:15:19.192)
Thanks for the shout out.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:15:32.91)
Well, thank you. I love HR folks. They're the people people. I just, every time I speak with an HR group or work with HR leaders, it just feels a little bit like I'm just at home. These people are my home. I'm not like, that's not my specific field, but thank you for the shout out. And I would, yes, I'd love to work with any of your listeners or partners.

Steve-o (01:15:46.066)
Yeah, so cool.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:56.363)
Yeah, so you can email us or we'll put Andrea's information again in the in the show notes and you can reach out to her. Now we had planned for HR life segment, but we've talked a little bit long, so I don't know if you still got a few minutes or you got to get out pretty soon. OK, excellent. Here we go, everybody. Now it's HR in life.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:16:11.592)
I have a couple of minutes. I can share, yeah.

Steve-o (01:16:14.429)
OK. I'm excited because Andrea's story.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:16:16.8)
Okay. Alright.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:31.87)
All right. It's HR in life. Here we go.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:16:32.8)
Alright. I'm starting life. Alright.

Steve-o (01:16:35.07)
It's a new segment as you can tell Andrea

Tony Benjamin (01:16:39.083)
Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:16:39.136)
I love it. Yeah, this is good. So this has nothing to do with anything we've been talking about, but I am. This is from the world of parenting, so I have an eight year old son and he has been having a little bit of trouble with his morning routine. Like I just I feel like at almost nine years old, I shouldn't be having to nag him to do every last thing in the morning. Go brush your teeth, go over and comb your hair. Make sure you've got your folder in your backpack like.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:44.597)
Yay!

Steve-o (01:16:45.406)
Perfect.

Steve-o (01:17:01.854)
Run through the checklist.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:17:07.008)
eight different times for every single point. I just, he and I are both fed up with it. And so, you know, dad and I sat down and said, well, what can we do? So we bought this thing called a skylight. Do you guys know about this skylight device? Okay. So it's this really cool thing where it's, an electronic, it looks like a picture frame and it just sits on our counter and

Tony Benjamin (01:17:22.879)
I don't think so.

Steve-o (01:17:23.304)
I've never heard of this.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:17:31.854)
It's got the entire schedule laid out and the routines and the chores and the things you do and you just Bennett is our son and he'll just check off things as he does them in the morning So this morning, you know, he's checking off Okay, I brush my teeth and I got dressed and I've got my folder my backpack and I've got my water bottle and then when he checks everything off there's like this confetti that blows up on the screen and It's working like it's actually working. I'm not having to nag him so much to do every last darn thing. So

I was thinking about HR and then I was like, so this is my question. Is there a place for gamifying tasks? Like turning traditional practices into, I mean, I know there's a bunch of stuff around badges and points and challenges and leaderboards in order to like do things like boost engagement or productivity or whatever. What are your, do you have experiences or thoughts on gamifying HR to

to get people to do things more regularly or without so much, you know, management.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:40.07)
yes. Yes. This is one of my favorite conversations to have about how to motivate people and all that. And I love gamification. love ranks. So, okay, so here's the basic things, right? That you have different functions and different teams within your company. You can identify them and set them apart, whether that's t-shirts or stickers for their water bottles.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:18:41.281)
Yes.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:18:55.213)
Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:19:04.195)
Good.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:08.138)
Right Tracy, you're, you're listening to this. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, you can, mean, you can do it. you differentiate people that way, not in a way that pits them against other people, but in a way that makes them feel special. And then you have something that is, is a reward or shows progress along the way, because gamification isn't necessarily about competition. It's about measuring how far along the path you are. Right. And whether that's in a team or for the individual. So in.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:19:08.718)
There we go.

Steve-o (01:19:09.02)
Yeah, because we, Tracy Calmar, we had a good episode on that.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:19:16.174)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:19:30.146)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:37.601)
blue collar production facilities, for example, it's one of the reasons why I love writing up on a board in the shop or wherever it is, what you've done. And you're watching these progress go along. And that's that's your confetti. That's the that's the exact same thing you're talking about there. And as long as management does something to recognize that or notice it. Otherwise, it just becomes how you're spying on me and how you're watching me. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:19:46.819)
Nice.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:19:52.396)
Yeah, perfect.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:19:59.01)
Yes, that seems cute.

Steve-o (01:20:03.43)
Yeah, it's just another thing to have to do, right? I what I love to. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:20:05.612)
Yeah. Yep. I've noticed this.

Tony Benjamin (01:20:07.904)
No, I was I like all those things. Go ahead, Andrew, you're going to say something,

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:20:13.496)
I've noticed that too, when I stand next to Bennett, when the confetti goes off and celebrate with him, that's a different moment for him. Like that's much more powerful than him just getting the confetti all by himself at the counter. Right. And so if we're gamifying things and rewarding employees and stoking motivation this way, I think it's important to your point, Tony, to have that relational and that acknowledgement and that recognition element. Otherwise it, like you said, it just is another boss checking up on me.

Steve-o (01:20:20.68)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:20:42.13)
Just another thing to do. One of the things I love about what you described is what you're doing is you're helping him to behave the way you need him to behave in the morning so that everything goes smoothly. And if we're going to gamify something, the gamification has to lead to the intended behavior that you're trying to seek within the organization. You know, I'm in the area of sales, right? And so sales, there's always all kinds of games because it becomes really competitive.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:20:43.544)
End of the...

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:21:01.198)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:21:11.198)
What I hate though is when the competitiveness is to put down others because those are not the behaviors that you want to promote within the company. Wow, Tony. Wow. So it is a good game. have that. Did you know my wife, I'll have to, I'll have to show this to you, Andrea, but my wife and I, actually created a life-size model. have the little houses that are like this big in the cities that are like this big. Cause we had a cotton board outside that we put in our, in, our backyard.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:21:15.694)
Mm. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:18.974)
Except when you're playing Catan with your wife and your kids, then it's all competition.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:21:21.774)
Oh, totally. Such a game. We do that too in our family. Yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:21:36.333)
fun.

Let us in.

Steve-o (01:21:40.926)
And so we had a Ketan game in our backyard that we would run. Yeah, we had the blue rocks for the water and yeah. So yeah, I to pull out of we have in our closet because when we moved we lost it. Obviously we lost the board because this at the old house. But but but yeah, we still have all the pieces and I totally want to put that up again because it's it's just one of those fun things to do outside. Can you just bring the cards out and you play Ketan? Yeah, we'll have to have you over Tony. You have to come over and play Ketan with us. We'll do that. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:42.796)
That's cool.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:21:44.642)
That's amazing.

I gotta see that, that's amazing.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:22:00.791)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:22:03.296)
That sounds cool.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:22:03.394)
Wow, that's super fun. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:22:07.808)
Yes, yes, let's do that. Let's do that. And Andrea should fly in just for a game of Catan in Steve's backyard. No, I, I, what you're talking about though, the gamify and that sort of stuff. It's, and by the way, hint for everybody who's listening with performance reviews, your performance review should be gameable, meaning they should be manipulatable. So your employee can manipulate to, to, get a higher score on their performance review. You want that to happen.

Steve-o (01:22:10.674)
Yeah. That's right. Totally should. So fun.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:22:12.366)
That'd be super fun.

Steve-o (01:22:20.05)
I love it.

Steve-o (01:22:37.618)
Yeah, because it drives behavior.

Tony Benjamin (01:22:37.92)
Because when they do, right, when you do it, you get the behavior you want. You just have to set up the rules so that it rewards what you want. That's what you're after. And I don't mean promising them a 5 % raise if they get a certain score on their performance review. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creating a process by which they can gamify it and manipulate it to be what you want. And that's what you actually want.

Yeah, no, what you're talking about, Andrea, I'm all into this stuff and creative ways of doing this. Yeah, no, I think, I think that's great.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:23:08.654)
Okay, that's the whole thing.

Steve-o (01:23:10.97)
It is a whole thing and there's some companies that don't do it right.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:23:13.686)
Okay, well, it's not my wheelhouse, but...

Tony Benjamin (01:23:14.188)
Leader boards and yeah, no leader boards and all that stuff is really. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:23:16.85)
No, that's such a good little experience. That's so cool. And I'm glad it's working for your son, because like I said, it's driving the behaviors that you want, but it also makes it fulfilling for your son. And that's important that if you're going to gamify anything, you again driving behavior. And I love your comment earlier how we need to always apply it to the core values and the mission of the company. When you were talking about the safe, you know, I think gamification can do the same thing. It should always tie back.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:23:25.633)
It is.

Tony Benjamin (01:23:40.618)
Yes, yes.

Steve-o (01:23:46.302)
to the core values and who you are as an organization.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:23:49.41)
Yeah, that's right.

Tony Benjamin (01:23:50.251)
Yeah. And, then to tie all this in together and to go all the way back to like episode two of the podcast, it can even be cutesy if you want a little bit cutesy. That's right. A little bit cutesy like a tan in your backyard. That's yeah. Same thing.

Steve-o (01:23:56.264)
you

Right, if you want it to be.

Steve-o (01:24:03.742)
That's not cutesy, that's just cool.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:24:04.334)
you

Tony Benjamin (01:24:06.86)
For nerds. Just kidding. I'm just kidding. Anyways, Andrea Hollingsworth, everybody. Yay. Andrea is incredible. You couldn't see this. I'm I'm waving my arms out here.

Steve-o (01:24:10.003)
Hahaha

Steve-o (01:24:15.272)
Thank you, thank you.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:24:16.398)
Aww.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:24:22.988)
I see that I'm blaming. Thank you, Tony.

Tony Benjamin (01:24:24.446)
Yeah, there you go. You're fantastic. I just want to point out, I want to point out here that Andrea is the only person that has ever crowd surfed on the podcast, so that's the crowd loves her. The crowd loves her to death. So anyways, you've been great with it. Thank you for joining us here. I hope everyone's learned something again. I hope it's a useful tool.

Steve-o (01:24:25.49)
He's going crazy. I wanted to see him roll back like that and like fall over. I think it would have been so much more fun.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:24:30.638)
Go back in, Breeze, while recording.

Steve-o (01:24:38.726)
This is true. This is true.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:24:42.542)
funny.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:24:51.746)
Me too.

Tony Benjamin (01:24:52.012)
And I think that, I think what you've given us today is something that the deeper people chew on it, the more they try on it, the more they're going to find usefulness out of it and an application to them. And it's not just with layoffs or survivors. I really think there's performance conversations in there. There's, you know, following up afterwards for different, anyways, I think this is really good.

Steve-o (01:25:04.774)
Absolutely.

Tony Benjamin (01:25:19.008)
Really, really good stuff. So thank you again. We're very grateful.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:25:22.606)
You're so welcome and it was as always a pleasure to spend some time with you both. I look forward to next time.

Steve-o (01:25:29.544)
That's right.

Tony Benjamin (01:25:29.59)
Good. Well, Andrea, the last thing I've got for you, is there anything else you want to promote? Anything else that's going on you want to tell us about or promote?

Steve-o (01:25:34.258)
Yeah, anything coming up or anything our listeners should know?

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:25:38.25)
well, I have revamped my coaching packages, which you can see on Hollingsworth.com. So I would love if someone's looking for coaching, leadership coaching, especially, or if you have a group of managers that could use some help with emotional intelligence and compassionate leadership skills. I also do workshops. and of course, as Steve mentioned, I'm a keynoter as well, and I love speaking on stages. So if any of those, if you're interested, just get in touch and I love to have a conversation.

Steve-o (01:26:07.96)
She's so much more fun in person.

Tony Benjamin (01:26:08.32)
That's.

Well, I got to say she's been fun on the podcast. If she's more fun in in person, we're going to have to like take some safety precautions because she's been pretty fun here. So. OK.

Steve-o (01:26:13.918)
I'm not arguing that either, but I'm just saying, yeah.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:26:19.054)
Too much fun. Too much fun.

Steve-o (01:26:22.514)
Well, if you can cloud, you know, crowd surf in a podcast, I mean, you can only imagine what it's like in person. So there you go.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:26:27.584)
I can do anything, truly anything.

Tony Benjamin (01:26:28.32)
Right. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. It's exactly right. OK. When a child faces a serious illness, the entire family feels the impact. Thrive Life Project steps in to lighten the load, delivering nutritious meals and engaging STEM kits directly to families homes completely free of charge. It's more than support. It's a community of care. Learn more at the Thrive Life Project dot org. That's Thrive Life Project.

Steve-o (01:26:32.743)
guys.

Tony Benjamin (01:26:58.156)
And a shout out to Brock and all he's doing. And if you want some, if anybody's looking for a wonderful Christmas or whatever charity to support or raise money for thrive life project is incredible. So tip of the hat to that. Now it could be Easter too. Right? Sure. I'm just trying to set it up.

Steve-o (01:27:11.57)
Don't you mean Easter?

Steve-o (01:27:16.382)
I'm just saying Easter's the holiday coming up, so there you go.

Tony Benjamin (01:27:19.136)
That's right. So, but I'm just trying to set that all up for everybody. anyways, again, Andrea, thank you very much for being on with this. Wow. This is really good. Really, really good. And don't panic. Thank you. Don't panic everyone, because you will get to hear Andrea again. I'm sure if she'll tolerate Steve and I and our terrible sense of humor, but that's that's good. All right. Well, everybody, I think we're going to head out the same way that we came in.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:27:27.234)
Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Wonderful, wonderful conversation.

Steve-o (01:27:28.83)
That's been great.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:27:38.542)
I would love to. I would love to.

Tony Benjamin (01:27:45.982)
Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review. That's a five star review on your favorite podcast app, comments or questions for us. Email the podcast at the HR life podcast at gmail.com and we'll talk again soon.

Andrea Hollingsworth (01:28:10.051)
You can't