Kelly Price – The 2026 Leadership Reset: Accountability, Trust, and Burnout Prevention

What if accountability isn’t the problem—but the way leaders practice it is?

In this episode of the People/AI Strategy Forum, Sam Reeve and Sumit Saha sit down with Kelly Price, Founder of Thrive HR, to explore how leaders can raise performance standards without creating burnout, disengagement, or fear.

As organizations head into 2026, many managers feel trapped between two bad options: being so lenient that performance slips, or being so rigid that trust erodes. Kelly shares real-world examples and practical frameworks that show how accountability, flexibility, and empathy can coexist—when leaders set clear expectations, give timely feedback, and truly understand their people.

This conversation covers:

Why accountability systems often fail—and how to fix them

How clear expectations reduce burnout and improve engagement

The role of leadership training in improving retention and performance

Why feedback should happen in real time, not just during reviews

How leaders can support people without lowering standards

If you’re a founder, executive, or HR leader navigating rapid change, hybrid work, and rising burnout, this episode offers grounded insights you can apply immediately.

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About the People/AI Strategy Forum
The People/AI Strategy Forum explores how leaders navigate the intersection of people strategy, leadership, and artificial intelligence. Hosted by Sam Reeve, Founder & CEO of CompTeam, the Forum features conversations with executives, practitioners, and experts shaping the future of work.

Learn more about CompTeam and the People/AI Strategy Forum at compteam.net.

Transcript

Sam 0:01

What if the problem isn't that leaders are too demanding or too soft, but that accountability itself is broken. In 2026, the company's winning talent have learned to raise their standards without burning people out. Welcome to the People Strategy Forum when we turn real leadership tension into practical strategy. I'm Sam Ree, your host, and CEO of comp team, and I'm here with Sumit sla, my close colleague. We help organizations design people systems that drive performance and trust. Today's topic is from leniency to leadership, holding teams accountable without burning them out. Our guest today is Kelly Price, founder of Thrive hr. KC Kelly works with executives and managers who are stuck between two bad options being so lenient that performance slips, or being so rigid that burnout spikes. Her work helps leaders reset expectations, rebuild, trust, and create accountability systems that actually motivate people to do their very best work. So if you're a leader trying to attract top talent, retain high performers, and raise the bar without losing your people, this conversation's for you, well welcome Kelly.

Kelly Price 1:17

Thank you so much for having me, Sam and Sumit.

Sam 1:20

Sure. The first thing I always like to do in these conversations is, make you more human. How did you get to where you are today, Kelly? What made you decide to help the people that you do today?

Kelly Price 1:31

Sure. I started, my career in service and have always loved being able to take things that seem stressful or difficult and make them easier for someone. As I entered my career, I started in hospitality, worked for Marriott, had a lot of fun doing that and making people's, vacations or business trips or meetings or whatever it was. Less stressful and then got into recruiting and helped people find jobs, which I found a lot of joy in helping people be able to bribe for their families and bring value to themselves. And then it kind of transitioned into hr. So I'm an accidental HR person, but I think a lot of us in HR end up as accidental HR professionals. I really love the concept of being able to take a business. out how to align the people within that business so the business can propel itself. The biggest compliment I think I've ever gotten from a client is you just make this stuff so much easier. Which that's what we wanna do, right? We wanna take the load off trying to figure out what to do with this person who brought onto the team,'cause you thought it was gonna be really a great fit. And then turns out. It's not always smooth sailing all of the time. So after about 20 years of corporate America, I decided to go out and help small businesses. I, in my positions had been taking apart teams and rebuilding them over and over again, and I thought, I can do this with small businesses and help them get where they need to go so they can focus on what they love, which is their business, instead of just managing people and doing hr.

Sam 3:07

Yeah, that's so important. Sumit and I, focus a lot on global compensation and one thing that I often hear about, leaders is, you know, those small daily problems, helping their managers do their best work, helping them communicate better things like this, it's a huge, need across the industry for sure.

Kelly Price 3:27

Yes, absolutely.

Sam 3:30

Kelly executives want evidence-based ways to replace micromanagement and pressure with clarity, ownership, and fair consequences. How do we raise performance standards without triggering burnout or disengagement?

Kelly Price 3:46

Yeah, it's a multi-step process. When I'm talking to potential clients, we always start every engagement with an audit. We look at compliance, we look at operational efficiency, and we look at strategy. So like there's one way we can say. Here you go. Here are is a report of what your turnover is, what your retention is, what your, where are you compared to your budget. Here's some market information, compensation, all of that stuff to be able to prove, this is where you should be and this is where you are. And then here are the laws. Here's what's you're abiding to and, and what's you're not. What you're not. The real work in it is not easy. You can show through retention numbers and turnover numbers and ENPS scores. I'm a big believer in employee surveys and using that data through ENPS, which is one of the easiest ways to tell what's happening in your organization, who's happy and who's not, and where they are. But again, I don't have a magic wand. None of us do. No consultant does. No HR director does. No manager does. It's getting to know your people and taking the time to understand where they're good and where they need help, and then giving'em that time and, and helping them along, but also setting clear expectations. So, as an example, I had a client who. Was a aware, they have a warehouse and they've just had constant, constant, constant turnover. When I started they had no onboarding. They weren't even interviewing warehouse employees. They were just taking them straight out of the agency, training them in a couple of hours, putting them on the line, getting them going. Then just letting people go if they didn't work out or they were fine and their attendance was okay anecdotally, they would hire them on, and then after the 90 days that they'd been hired on, all of a sudden they were like, actually, really don't like this person. Let's terminate them. Once they become an FTE. Doesn't make any sense. so it was really evaluating that whole entire process and saying, let's break this down into a whole bunch of smaller, digestible pieces figure out what we need to change so you can get these people who are coming to work for you because they wanna have a career improve their livelihood and have something to get out of bed for every day. Let's make this somewhere that they want to keep coming back to. Because the company was a hundred plus years old company. There were also people there who had been there for like 30 years and they're getting really irritated because now there's all this churn and burn and they can't, there's mistakes and there's errors and there's frustration. So we're burning those people out churning and burning the newer people. We started with leadership. these leaders have any idea how to hire, how to interview, how to evaluate skill sets, how to hold people accountable, how to evaluate skills. The answer truly was no. So we had to start there you can bring in better candidates all day long, but if you don't have leaders who know what they're doing, then you're just gonna have the same problem over and over again. We started doing leadership training. We started doing interviews with the temp employees. We started realizing they don't have the math skills they need to be able to do this job. This is actually an engineering company, they have to be able to execute those drawings. And if they don't understand how to do basic math, then they can't do this job. So we started implementing assessments before they started doing interviews, and then we did 30, 60, 90 day. Assessments. We started doing, leadership training for the managers, interview, training. They started getting some better candidates. And then we said, okay, how are we setting expectations? It's the classic, come to hr. Well, they're not meeting expectations. I wanna fire them or I don't like'em. What conversations have you had? Treat the person with respect. Give them a conversation, show them what they should be doing, you can be very honest kind clear and set expectations people appreciate that all of us understand how frustrating it is when someone gets mad at you or terminates you or writes you up, or decides not to be your friend anymore, but never give you any feedback to understand where that came from think about losing your livelihood because someone chose to never give you feedback and they just cut you. It's not an easy button because having those conversations and building those processes and programs take time. And it also takes courage and understanding of what to say and how to say it and flubbing it up every once in a while because we're all humans over a two year period, we went from over 200% turnover to almost none. last leadership meeting I was at. We were looking at 30 day numbers, and they had had no turnover. better leaders, better teams, people are engaged. They're sweeping the floors, they're picking up the trash. They're keeping their workstations clean. They're excited about the processes and the work that they're doing, and it's a huge improvement.

Sumit 9:04

I belong to, part of the world where, 9 6 is still speaks. Spoken off. So AM to 9:00 PM six days a week. And there are leaders trying to spell out the virtues of, this kind of schedule to, young folks joining the workforce. I think we've got to accomplish what Kelly was just talking about in terms of, setting clear expectations, staying away from micromanagement, and, ensuring that we are empowering people. We are giving feedback on time. We're not doing a postmortem after a year and saying, Hey, A year ago you could have done this to be more effective. That doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help the business. It doesn't help, the individual. It doesn't help the leader. So I think, Kelly, what you're saying is music to my ears. I'd love to take a recording of this and pay to a lot of the clients that I deal with.

Kelly Price 9:54

Yeah, it always cracks me up when people are like, well, I'll talk to them about it in their review. It's like, do you remember on February 13th, 2025 when you did this? Like, no. What are you even talking about? It's so frustrating and so funny to me how, it seems not obvious to share feedback, one of the things that's been really interesting in the last year or two is people are afraid to say the wrong thing. There's so much fear to offend somebody, or to make someone upset because we need them here, so I'm just gonna say nothing and let it slide. Then it becomes this much bigger thing when it was like, Hey, please don't do this, just do this. And it's so easy to get feedback if you can just do it.

Sam 10:40

Yeah. I think that's the big thing we're seeing right now is that, leaders need accountable. Models that work, when managers can't rely on just seeing people because of, the different ways we work today in a hybrid workforce, and so forth. What does healthy accountability actually look like? And, and these, these type of organizations, Kelly.

Kelly Price 11:01

Yeah, I think it's constant conversation and you're trying to attract people and help them understand the expectations one of the things I've always done when I start a new employee, or even if I start in a new organization because I'm coming in as the leader. I still have to be trained. They don't put a chip in your brain when you get hired as a leader and all of a sudden, you know everything. I tell people, I'm gonna be all up in your business for a while and I'm gonna ask you a lot of questions. it's not because I think you're incapable or I don't trust you. It's because I genuinely don't know and I'm trying to learn. And I want to know the details because I can't help you be more successful if I don't understand them. just giving people that simple clarity and setting that expectation that I do trust you. I do believe you were hired for a reason. If there are performance issues, we'll discuss them. But I'm not asking questions because I don't think you're doing a good job. I'm asking questions'cause I. Genuinely want to know, and I want to be able to do my job and support you appropriately. So setting that up from the beginning makes such a big difference. And then having those constant conversations. And a lot of managers, when I talk about one-on-ones will say, well, we talk constantly. You chitchat constantly. Or maybe you give feedback constantly and maybe you are doing in the moment and that's really amazing. If you don't have a scheduled time for that employee to come to you with what they need. One-on-ones, in my opinion, should be the employee's time, it should be the employee's time to come and say, Sam, I need this, this, this from you. I have a question about how I get promoted. I have this personal thing coming up. Can I take PTO? I'm struggling with X, Y, and Z, or, I think you're doing a great job and I'm really excited and I have a friend who wants to work here. You know, it's not always bad stuff. It can be great stuff too, but having that dedicated time is really, really, really critical because you can also say to them, I think you're doing a really good job at this, and there's a project coming up, and I'd like to give you an opportunity to grow. Especially with the younger generations, they want constant feedback. They want to know how they're doing, they want to hear what opportunities they're going to be getting, and they want to be able to tell you how they're feeling. Gen Xers and older need to figure out how to take that feedback more in stride sometimes, take it seriously and then help them grow. Sometimes that's within your organization and sometimes it's beyond because maybe their dream is to go be an astronaut and they're doing this to save money so they can go to astronaut school.

Sam 13:49

Right. Which is funny that you mentioned that.'cause that's actually happened in my experience with, my clients.

Kelly Price 13:54

funny.

Sam 13:55

the person wanted to be an astronaut

Kelly Price 13:56

Oh my gosh.

Sam 13:57

And so, they actually did it. They, went through and they're contributing in that industry, at least at this time.

Kelly Price 14:02

That's

Sam 14:02

But, that wait to get their feet off the ground.

Kelly Price 14:04

Yes.

Sam 14:06

One thing, I think that we were talking about accountability and it's important. Those one-on-ones are important to have, to ensure that, employees have time to, get feedback and become enabled. One thing about accountability is that it goes both ways. C-Suite increasingly sees manager inconsistency, not. Employee effort as a root cause of underperformance in attrition in organizations. So how do we hold managers accountable for accountability?

Kelly Price 14:38

That's a great question. I think ENPS scores are a great way to tell if you're regularly doing surveys, and I don't mean monthly or weekly, I mean quarterly, that's enough. You do have to be conscientious of survey fatigue and people just. Not caring anymore, and then you have to do something about it. If your ENPS score sucks, you have to dig into the data figure out why and what department and then figure out how to help that manager. I work with small business primarily, so I I see regularly people promoted who have, who don't have the skills. To be managers. Often they do, but no one has taught them to do it and how to have those conversations and literally what to do. A lot of times it's my brother, my cousin, my friend, my buddy, somebody's referral that's in there and. It becomes personal and more hard hold, hard to hold them accountable, especially when it's all anecdotal information. When you have an ENPS score or a survey result you can say, this is literally what your people are saying you need to teach them about how to pray and hire the right people that are emotionally intelligent enough to take that feedback, because that's also incredibly important. You have to be able to hear that you're not perfect all the time. If you can't, that's a major problem. One of the most important things we can be as leaders is, humble and be able to say, man, I really messed that up. really sorry. That conversation didn't go the way I, I hoped it would. I wasn't in the right head space, or I took it wrong, or I was grouchy, or I just flat didn't handle it right. can gain a tremendous amount of respect by saying that to your employee, not having them always be the one that's wrong.

Sam 16:30

Right.

Sumit 16:30

Agreed. In fact, I've got a diff slightly different opinion about survey fatigue. I think aren't as fatigued by surveys. They're really fatigued by inaction on the surveys. So if. You're collecting feedback and doing absolutely nothing about it, not gonna help.

Kelly Price 16:48

Yes.

Sumit 16:48

of the models I, learned from a comp team colleague was the say do ratio, if you keep saying that you'll improve things, then you don't, people are going to get tired of it quickly.

Kelly Price 17:03

yes. I can't agree more. And what questions you're asking in that survey is so important I used to work for a company, it was my last corporate job, and the CEO would say, I want you to say, wouldn't it be cool if. They had things like sabbaticals because somebody said, wouldn't it be cool if, and then they listened and said, well, actually, we're really successful and we have really high retention. Let's do that. people. stayed on purpose to get to their sabbatical, and then they stayed on purpose again because that paid month off was so incredible. So they did something about it, they were intentional about saying, you can say this because I will take action, or I will give you a reason why I'm not doing it. But if you're gonna ask a survey question to say, what would be really cool if we did? And the executive team just sits there and laughs like, yeah, right. And then you never get any response. You're gonna end up with really mad people.

Sam 18:10

That's right. It doesn't make sense to ask questions and not take action. It's clear.

Kelly Price 18:14

Yeah. Especially about things like fringe benefits and health benefits and compensation. Do not ask a question about compensation that you don't plan to do something about. Do you feel like you're compensated appropriately?

Sam 18:27

Yeah, Exactly. I mean, I love that because it's always the lowest score in the survey. And I mean, everybody would love more money, of course. I mean, who wouldn't want more money? Right?

Kelly Price 18:38

Right?

Sam 18:38

The important part is am I treated fairly for my contribution to the organization?

Kelly Price 18:43

Yes.

Sam 18:43

You know,

Kelly Price 18:44

absolutely.

Sam 18:45

So Sumit and I see that a lot for sure. One thing Kelly, you pointed out that I'd love to, bring up is that in smaller organizations, there seems to be the thought that I have to be a manager to achieve or be successful in my career. Some people are just not cut out to be managers. They're cut out to be experts in their domain. So what should small businesses do to navigate this problem?

Kelly Price 19:09

That's an interesting question. I think, transparency about what's happening in the organization and about the person's skillset is really the best way to do it. I just had this conversation with a girlfriend of mine who owns a really successful, business the people that she has have gotten her here, they're not gonna get her to the next

Sam 19:37

Right.

Kelly Price 19:37

she knows that. So we were talking through how to have those very honest conversations and say, amazing and I value you and you've done all these incredible things, and I want you to continue to be part of the organization and here's where I see you making the biggest impact. So you just have to be honest. Honesty is kind. tell people that a lot, honesty is kind as long as you say it in a respectful, productive way. You really messed that up. I'm pissed at you and you're not gonna be a manager anymore. Like, that's not respectful or productive, you know? And it doesn't make anybody feel better. Having those honest conversations in small business too. I can speak to this myself. I'm going on year four of my business and sometimes it just goes. That's great, but it's also like, wait, wait, wait. That's not even the direction I was trying to go. It just happened for whatever reason. Sometimes you're just riding the wave. So continuing to be very intentional in small business about where you want the business to go and. Making sure you have the right people along with you and not controlling it'cause you can't control everything. But being conscientious and intentional about which way you're going. That same client with the Warehouse, we had a manager who, was a leader, the vice president and had been with the organization for a very long time, she was on the executive team, she's incredible at her job. She should not be a leader. She sh she was not strategic. She didn't have the ability to at that 30,000 foot view. And we were. Abel, thank God to retain her and move her into a position that made sense where she ran her department. She was a working manager and has a very, very successful team now. but it took a lot of really hard, very honest to help her see her value in the place that it's gonna make the most sense for the business.

Sam 21:55

And that seems to be the key here when we're talking about increasing performance and reducing burnout. It's really having those clear communications with our folks so that we understand their desires, their ambitions, their skillset, and then, ensuring that they're in the right seat for what's going to bring them the most happiness, and being the most productive.

Kelly Price 22:17

agreed.

Sam 22:18

So I guess as we, come to, concluding our conversation here, Kelly, as we think about, the most important things that leaders need to know about, coming into 2026 and being successful, ensuring that they are maximizing performance and reducing the amount of burnout, in this world where. Things are constantly changing so fast. What is the key things that, we need leaders to know?

Kelly Price 22:45

I think one is know your people. That doesn't mean you need to know everything about their personal lives, but you do need to know what's important to them what their goals are what they're really good at and what they're not great at. Everybody has stuff that they're not great at that doesn't make you a bad employee or a bad person. Understanding that is really important. Flexibility and accountability are two things that I think a lot of managers do not believe can co-exist, and they absolutely can. So if knowing that one of your employees is the soccer coach to their kids' team and they need to leave at four o'clock on Thursdays. But they've never had a single issue getting their work done, then by all means, please let them go coach their kids' soccer team. It's, not gonna fundamentally change the business. Or if a wonderful performer, isn't performing wonderfully and has a bad attitude, understand that there's either something that's changed the business or there's something going on in their personal lives. So again. Know your people and don't be afraid to ask questions. Are you okay? What do you need? How can I be a better manager for you? you like it here? That's one. Especially when you see someone constantly not performing well. I like to ask them, do you like your job? Sometimes it's actually, no, I hate this. Okay. That's a good start to this conversation. Let's figure out a way to either make you like it or help you move on. No hard feelings, man. Let's just, you know.

Sam 24:29

Yeah, that's right. Sometimes it can just be a small tweak, just moving or changing something or changing accountability

Kelly Price 24:35

Yes.

Sam 24:36

And it's best to work as often if you want people to do their best work. I mean, give it to a person that's passionate about it. Right. You can find those people on your team. It's just asking the questions,

Kelly Price 24:46

Yep. They need and let'em do their job.

Sam 24:50

That's right. So tell us, Kelly, what are you, looking forward to in 2026?

Kelly Price 24:56

A lot actually, I relocated to Southwest Florida over the last, three months. We moved from Kansas City down here and it's really expanding the business, which has been really exciting. Have been doing a ton of podcasting, enjoying that and thinking about the possibility of writing a book. Wanna continue to, get out there and do lots of audits and help small businesses their business and people strategies and and growing Thrive hr.

Sam 25:24

And tell us a little bit more about the audits. You're mentioning you have a special tool on your website. Isn't that true?

Kelly Price 25:30

Yeah, it's a self-assessment. So you can go on to thrive hhr kc.com and complete that self-assessment. If you have mostly nos on there, then it's. It's a good idea for us to talk. So it's just going through things like do you have onboarding, do you have performance management? Do you feel secure in your HR policies and practices? We go through that audit. It's three tiers. Compliance, operational efficiency and strategy. We help you from those results, figure out what you need to do to make sure you're running a legal business. There are many, small. Things you can do incorrectly, unintentionally that can impact you negatively, financially. So we wanna get that out of the way and then making sure your people have the tools to do the work and know what the goal of the business is. From there, we help build those processes and get you on your way

Sam 26:19

that's great. So for our leaders out there, if you're listening in, make sure you go to Kelly's website and take that audit. Sure. To give you some insight.

Kelly Price 26:28

Yes.

Sam 26:29

And if you lead managers, make sure that you share this episode with them and ask them to identify one accountability habit to change this month. As Kelly mentioned, articulate how important those conversations are to have with your employees, to really know them, know their skills, know their ambitions, so that you can, increase performance in your area with also increasing happiness and engagement in your workforce. For our listeners out there, follow the People Strategy Forum and make sure that you like this episode and give us your comments. We're always looking for topics of interest that, are most interest to you. Make sure you give us feedback and, we hope to see you next week on the People Strategy Forum. Alright, take care and, get out there and lead.