EP # 6 Alvanson So: What Makes Humans Irreplaceable in the Age of AI

Vanson spent sixteen years in HR before he ever led a team. And when he finally did, unexpectedly, mid-pandemic, inheriting a team whose loyalty still belonged to his predecessor, he had to build trust over Zoom without a playbook, without precedent, and without a choice.

In this conversation, I sit down with Vanson, Former Regional People Lead for Canva Southeast Asia, to talk about what it actually takes to build a culture people want to stay in, and what most organizations get wrong about how that happens.

We get into the concept of the leadership shadow: the unintentional signal every leader sends, whether they know it or not, just by how they show up. We talk about psychological safety not as a culture initiative but as something that breaks the moment a manager title gets added to someone's name, and has to be actively rebuilt, every day, in every interaction.

Vanson shares the one piece of advice Melanie Perkins the CEO of Canva, gave him in a fifteen-minute meeting that took him months to fully understand. We talk about what great culture actually is, not perks, not ping pong tables, but the kind of work you can sink your teeth into. And we close on something I think every leader needs to hear: that play is not optional, and that scheduling life like you schedule work might be the most important leadership practice there is.

This is a conversation about what it means to lead with kindness, build with intention, and stay human in a world that keeps pushing us toward efficiency.

What We Talked About

• How sixteen years of competitive Magic: The Gathering, traveling the world, meeting people from every walk of life across a card table, became unexpected training for a career built on reading people and navigating difference
• Being an individual contributor for most of his career: what it taught him to be led by stoic bosses, empathetic bosses, difficult bosses, and how every one of them contributed something to the leader he became
• The accidental leadership role at Canva: stepping into an interim Head of People position right before COVID hit, inheriting a team mid-pandemic, and having to build genuine connection entirely over Zoom
• The leadership shadow: the unintentional signal leaders cast just by how they show up, and why being conscious of it, asking for feedback on it, and actively managing it is one of the most important things a leader can do
• How the manager title creates an instant barrier, turning candid relationships into careful, curated ones, and why leaders have to be intentional about breaking that wall down, repeatedly, because people will always naturally rebuild it
• The fifteen-minute meeting with Mel Perkins, Canva's founder: the advice she gave him, "if you can choose to be kind, choose to be kind"  and why it took months for him to understand what she actually meant
• The unlimited leave policy during COVID: the Nokia mindset that said it would be abused, and the reality that utilization stayed flat, because when you treat people kindly, they reciprocate
• Culture as a self-cleaning system: why great cultures develop natural antibodies that make it hard for the wrong people to thrive, and easier for people with weak values to be strengthened by what they see around them
• Spotting real talent: why interviews only reveal 10% of the surface, how to design conversations that put people in unpredictable real-life scenarios they can't script, and why the KSA framework is being inverted, attributes first, skills second, knowledge third
• The 70-20-10 model reframed: 70% meaningful and challenging work, 20% social learning from mentors, 10% formal training, and the shift toward "just in time" learning over pre-learning
• AI and the human element: why organizations are currently heavy on usage and light on ideas, and why that equation will flip as AI becomes embedded in everyday work
• AI pushing people to rebuild their relationship with difficulty: why the muscle for doing hard, gritty, messy work is atrophying, and why that matters more than which tools you know how to use
• The vision for meaningful work: every job has drivers and drainers, and the hope that technology takes the drainers away so people can do the work that actually fulfills them
• HR spending 90% of its time on relationships: how elevating leadership capability across the organization lifts the admin burden so HR can do the work that actually matters
• Bringing your own chair vs. having a seat reserved: the difference between being invited into critical conversations and having to fight your way in, and why HR leaders have to advocate for the kind of HR their organization deserves
• Becoming a fulcrum: when HR has the hearts of the people leaders manage, it becomes a lever that multiplies organizational force rather than a complaints department putting out fires
• The permission to play: why the balance between work and play shifts too far toward work as we age, and why carving out time for what brings you joy is not indulgence but sustainability
• Closing message: schedule life like you schedule work, and don't let your calendar fill so completely with work that you forget to live

Quote from the Episode

"When you have a bunch of really good people, they create an environment where the bad ones can't thrive. It's like natural antibodies. And for those that enter with weak values, they tend to get strengthened by what they see around them."

— Vanson, Former Head of People, Canva Philippines

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I don't think no technology can replace. And so I feel like right now there's fear around this conversation, but I feel like it should not be fear. I think it should be excitement. People just need to be given the space and time to build a healthy relationship with AI. I heard this recently from a colleague of mine. AI is pushing people to rebuild their relationship with difficulty. Because of how AI makes life easy, you know, you tend to gravitate towards doing the easy things. Especially the younger generations, they're having a hard time wrapping their heads around doing the hard stuff. People just invest the time and energy to do that again. I think our relationship with technology would be healthier.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Here in the Philippines, we've built our workplaces on something deeply cultural. Deference hierarchy, don't challenge the person at the top of the room. And it made sense once. But the workforce walking into your offices today didn't get the memo and they're not interested in signing it. Human-centric leadership isn't an option anymore. It's the most commercially intelligent decision you can make right now. This is Lead Human, a podcast for senior leaders and anyone who wants to become one, who already sense that something needs to change and are ready to do something about it. My name is Eli Harrell, and on this show I sit down with people who lead teams in the Philippines, who want to build something different. Not just better businesses, but better ways of leading the people inside them, better cultures, and a better future of work. Alright, let's get into it. In this episode of Lead Human, I sat down with a guest I've been very much looking forward to speaking with. You might have heard of him, Vansen So, I think he's one of the more respected HR leaders in the Philippines. And he has, until very recently, been the regional people lead for Canvas Southeast Asia, who spent nearly a decade helping build one of the most talked-about workplace cultures in the world. And what struck me most wasn't really the scale of what they built. It was just how Vanson thinks. He really challenged me. He got me thinking about things that I need to be paying more attention to. And, you know, I was just kind of pretty shocked to find out he only became a people leader six years ago. But the depth that he brings to this conversation and every other conversation that I've observed from him and what it actually takes to keep the human element alive as AI reshapes how we work, he shares a piece of advice that he got directly from Canvas founder, Melanie Perkins, six months into his role, and how those 15 words took him months to fully understand. And when he did, it changed everything about how he leads. If you are leading people at all, if you're interested in how you and I might be able to steer the future of work and direct how AI affects the future of how humans work, I think you'll be in for a real treat in this conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Let's jump in. Fansen, I am quite excited to have this conversation. Thanks so much for joining us here on Lead Human. Welcome. Thanks for having me, Eli. Yeah, I really appreciate you making the time. I've heard you speak a couple of times in person on another podcast, and I just really like the way you think, and I've learned a lot from you, so I'm really excited to have you here. Let's just jump in and talk now, a little bit of your origin story in the work that you do. I think this makes you really interesting. So I want to ask, what did competitive tabletop and card games teach you about reading people long before you had a job title for it?

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Let's try to unpack that old, old self, that old life that I used to live, right? So I play Magic the Gathering. Some people might know what that card game is, some people might not, but I used to play competitively. Uh, Eli, I used to travel the world to play before I got married. On the local scene, I grind on local gaming shops. Um, and I used to blog about it too. So I'm really passionate about this game, not because of the game itself, but because of the people that you get to meet, you know, the ideas that come into the table, the community, which is quite healthy here in the Philippines, and of course the connections that you end up building before and after the game, right? Um, I never really thought about tabletop games having an impact on one's career. But because of the different people that you get to meet, the different walks of life that people have behind the cards tend to influence how I view the world. So when I ended up being in human resources, you know, you get to interact with people from different walks of life, from different backgrounds, different origins, different culture, with your own quirks and personalities. And you end up having to find ways to work with them. And it also teaches you how to show up as a person. Like in the game, you'll be facing different opponents in a tournament. In HR, you'll deal with different employees every day, in every hour, whether it's a meeting, a one-on-one conversation, or a planning session. Everybody will have its own unique characteristics that you have to navigate. And I think that's what makes HR pretty interesting. And I've been doing it for the last 16 years. So I guess I'll probably still be doing it for the next 16. But uh, you could invite me for another episode 16 years after.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

I'm sure we'll still both be passionate about the human side of leadership, even that far into the future. So thank you for that. That's quite interesting. It kind of throws me back to some of my hobbies that I used to have, including some MMRPGs many years ago and meeting people from those games in real life. It's pretty interesting. But I'm now realizing I need to get some hobbies again, because yeah, the community and yeah, I miss it. All right. Thinking back to early in your career, because one of the things I really like to dig into is kind of the part in people's journeys when they start to discover how much there is to learn about leadership and why it matters so much. Maybe early in your career, some of your roles, John Clemens, PSG, anything you can remember where you kind of started to realize how much people leadership mattered to you or how much you wanted to dig in and start intentionally growing yourself in this area.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Sure. People might not notice this uh unless they really read my resume. I've never been a people leader until I joined Canva. So I was an individual contributor all my life. Yes, I've been up and down the corporate ladder, but I've always been led rather than leading. Right. And so I had my fair share of interacting with different kinds of bosses and managers. Right. Um, I've been led with people older than me, younger than me, same gender or not, different generations with different backgrounds and even different nationalities. What I'm quite grateful for is that every person I've met had an impact on how I ended up showing up as a leader. I've been led with, you know, very stoic personalities that really just wants to get results. And then I've also been led with very empathetic leaders who wear their emotions on their sleeve. You know, I'm sure you've met people like that. Um, but I've also seen how these different personas add value to how you show up and what kind of leadership shadow that you cast to the people that follow you. I wouldn't say that I've had the best leaders in my life. I've also had very difficult ones. But they also, you know, share a dimension of leadership that is rich with a lot of learnings and a lot of insights. So when I took up a leadership role here at Canva, it was also a curveball I didn't expect. So I joined the organization as an IC, as a people partner or an HRBP. And then before my first year there, the head of people for the Philippine campus had to move up to become a country general manager. So I ended up being the most eligible bachelor for the role. And so I took it on as an interim role with the goal to hire somebody from the market to replace the country and the country HR. But then, of course, another curveball hit. The pandemic uh hit us in 2020. Right. So I was kind of stuck in the role. But at the same time, I had to push forward and navigate an organization through a pandemic, which no HR rule book, handbook, playbook trains you for. Right. And so I took that as an opportunity to discover who I can be as a leader in a very tumultuous time, inheriting a team whose affinity was still with the old manager while having to create my own, I would say, uh following. Right. While building relationships over Zoom, because you can't be with people back in the day. Yeah. Um, and that's where I felt that making genuine connections and being intentional on how you build your relationship with the people that look up to you matters a lot. And I would say that 90% of the time that I use to lead is centered around building these connections.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

And that's something I've heard you talk about before that I would love to double-click on a little bit in a minute. Um, but there's a couple things you talked about there that I would like to ask more about first. You said something about a leadership shadow. Can you talk to me a little bit about? You know, I get a pretty fast word picture and I think I understand what that means. But yeah, I guess talk to me a little bit about the power, the unintentional consequences of the leadership shadow that we cast, whether we know we're doing it or not. And yeah, how do you see that term if you unpack it?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Well, of course, before I casted my own, I was under somebody else's shadow, right? So there are shadows that really empower you. They show you the things that are worth emulating. This could be how they communicate, how they resolve conflicts, how they drive results, right? And then of course there are shadows where it's not as pleasant. You have very restrictive environments where you feel like you're not enough or that you have to give more than what you can, right? Or expectations are could be unrealistic, right? But then as a follower of that shadow, I can feel what that I can feel what that creates in me as a follower. You know the saying, Eli, where when the boss is stressed, the team is stressed, and when the boss is happy, the team's happy. I resonate with that deeply because when I took the role as a leader, it's not that my mission was to keep the team happy. It's more like we have the mutual understanding of what we want to achieve as a team. If something goes wrong, everybody knows that we can lean in on each other. And when things are doing well, we understand that we need to celebrate. And when we're doing something difficult, we know that we need to cuddle and come together.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective on leadership shadow. I think that's for me, it's such a fascinating and I think very important thing to think about because like I'm aware of it, but I still think I'm not very good at being consistently intentional. And I guess the question I would have just to go one step deeper on that is yeah, none of us can be a hundred percent accurately aware at all times of what other people are experiencing, how they're experiencing us as a leader, right? So do you have any thoughts or anything you've learned on how to be more accurately aware of the leadership shadow that you're casting?

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Definitely. Two things come to mind. Of course, number one, feedback. The conversations I typically have with my direct reports or even my stakeholders that don't report to me. I am the kind of person, Eli, that injects a dimension in conversations to talk about how we're working. You know, how do you see me show up as your leader, as your partner, as your customer, or as your stakeholder? Right? These different hats entail different ways of how you come towards people. As a customer, you tend to be demanding. As a stakeholder, you tend to be more understanding. As a partner, you tend to be more collaborative. As a manager, you tend to be more, I would say, have higher expectations. And as a direct report, right, you tend to be more cooperative. So there are different wirings. And so I want to make sure that I don't create short circuits in these wirings. I want to make sure that how I show up is how you see me and vice versa, right? Because if it can happen to me, it can happen to those around me. So that's feedback. Number two is feedback is only as powerful as it can be if there is psychological safety, which I think is commonly spoken about. And that's actually hard to build because when I first took a leadership position, immediately when you slap the manager title as a suffix beside your name, it creates an unintentional barrier. Because the person I work with, which was the second people partner that we've hired, our relationship was so fluid as if we were friends in high school. But then when I was elevated as a leader, conversations tend to be more scripted, more thought-off. Like you're more careful with the words, right? A little filtered. A little bit, yeah, exactly. A little bit more filtered, a little bit more curated. Right? Feelings tend to be more fragile. While before it was, I wouldn't say it was less important, but it was more candid, right? From being candid to being very careful. So there's that shift just simply because you outrank somebody. And so I made it a point that in the six years that I've been a people leader, that I tear down that barrier every chance I get, whether it is through performance reviews or through one-on-one conversations, through meetings, planning, day-to-day interactions in the hallway, in the elevator, you know. Um, because I think that people will always naturally bring that wall back up because they want to protect how management sees them. But then I feel like management should also be intentional in breaking these down because that's how you build connection. Especially in organizations, Eli, that are very tall, like there's so many layers between a person and a leader. The walls get thicker the higher you go. So I think that there is merit and there is value in being very intentional in when to break these walls down.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

All right. So the big question that's kind of shining out to me as I listen to you talk about your journey. Only six years leading people and the depth of understanding that you have around how to lead really well. And then also sounds like you've practiced it with quite a bit of success. I think there's a lot of leaders out there that either they've been leading a lot longer than you and they still don't grasp some of these concepts as deeply. And maybe there are those who grasp them very deeply, but still struggle to embody them. So, how did you learn? Like what books have you been reading? Like, how did you get so far ahead of the game, or how were you so prepared for this role? How did that happen?

SPEAKER_01 14:57

I wouldn't even consider myself ahead. One of the things I am trying to remind myself to stay grounded, Eli, is that maybe I show up this way because I haven't been under pressure in the same way other senior leaders would have had. Like I pay huge respect to people who had to make hundreds of people lose their jobs or have to make budget cuts that would impact thousands of employees. I've not been in that kind of situation. So maybe you ask me again if I have my fair share of those experiences. But of course, every person has its own experiences and will have its own ways to navigate. But to answer your question, Eli, at the end of it all, I was given a very, very timely advice by Melanie herself, the owner of Canva. So I was six months in on my job, and quite timely, she has a book flight to the Manila campus. So at that time, the country manager or the country HR then made some time to introduce me to Mel, and we had a quick 15-minute one-on-one just to get to know each other. The first question, of course, I had to prepare questions to make that conversation meaningful, right? I had one question. I asked Mel, hey, you know, I'm really quite challenged to wrap my head around the culture that you've built here at Canva. I came from a very traditional company from Nokia. Everything there is, I guess, established, structured, stable, right? Here at Canva, it was very open. There's a very high appetite to try new things. And I'm very afraid that I might bring too much of my Nokia into Canva. And so, as an HR person in your company, how do you want me to show up to make sure that I am aligned to how you want us to show up as a Canva nut, right? Or what we call Canva employees. Yeah. She gave me a very thoughtful response. She smiled, paused for a few seconds, and told me, Banson, if ever you find yourself in a situation where you can choose to be kind, choose to be kind. And you know, when you're awestruck because you're talking to the CEO, right? So that advice went straight from my right ear out my left. Um, and it took me quite a while. So on that day, my drive home, I kept contemplating on what she meant. And then I remembered that I had a policy I was trying to write, and the amount of commentaries that that Google Doc had was longer than the doc itself. And after resolving every revision, Eli, only the title was left untouched. And I keep telling this story to people who know me, it's because I felt like I wasn't showing up the way Canva wanted me to. I was still bleeding blue, which is Nokia's color, and I should probably be bleeding teal, which was Canva's official color then. But then beyond that, I understood what Mel meant after a few more months in the role. I felt like when you treat people as people and when you treat them with kindness and show up thinking that people always had good intentions before you start doubting them, relationships become more human, become more organic. So I guess the case study that I could share that could encapsulate this was during the pandemic when we had to unlock literally unlimited leaves. Because you know, when you get hit by COVID, you don't have enough sick leaves to recover from that. And if you use all your leaves, then you might end up not having enough pay to bring home to treat yourself from all the symptoms. So when we unlock unlimited leaves, the Nokia person in me felt that this will be abused by many people. Only to be surprised after a few months of it being activated that our leave utilization stayed the same. I wouldn't say that we hired the kindest people in the world, but because when you treat people kindly, they reciprocate. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

All right, thank you so much for sharing that story. That's amazing. I know that Canva scaled pretty fast during your time there. Curious if you ever had any moments where you andor the other leaders that have helped build that culture, you ever had any challenges where protecting that culture and hitting business targets pulled in opposite directions? Did you ever have anything where it was difficult to choose, or was it always just so obvious because of the culture?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

It had its own difficult moments, I would say. You know how the size of the company can directly impact the fabric in which the culture is placed on, right? Because every person you add to the company can either be a culture fit or a misfit, a good hire or a wrong hire, right? And when you grow at scale, that becomes harder to control. But I think that what I really am amazed by what a good culture is able to provide is that it self-cleans itself. You know what I mean? Like when you have a bunch of really good people, they create an environment where the bad ones can't thrive, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's like natural antibodies of sorts, right? The same way, it creates an environment where it fosters the right kind of behaviors, the right kind of values. That those that may have entered with weak sets of values tend to get strengthened by what they see around them. To me, as an HR leader, that was a blessing because you didn't really have to change much, right? But then, of course, in the last seven years that I've stayed there, there were moments where that was tested, right? Especially when, you know, you have really brilliant people that you need to hire, but their wirings need to be rewired a little bit, right? But there are there are also moments where where you had to make a very difficult decision that somebody who didn't fit quite well, but had the skills still needed had still needed to be let go, you know, because I think many of the leaders do subscribe that skills can be taught, right? But the attitude and the behavior that you bring is something that has been molded over the years of that person's existence. And if you hire the right people with the right set of values, everything tends to fall according to plan.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Yeah. I have seen that and I believe it to be true. The standard that's set by the norm, right? Being able to self-regulate and, like you said, self-clean and bring people up to that standard, even if they're slightly below it. That's an amazing thing when you get to witness it. Speaking of talent, what does spotting real talent look like in practice for you versus what most performance reviews actually measure?

SPEAKER_01 21:36

So I've been in fair share of recruitment conversations. So both as a recruiter when I started in my craft to a hiring manager. I think that in interviews you tend to only scratch 10% of the surface because people technically show up with their polished selves, right? So I'm a fan of interviews where we turn it. Into very casual conversations, and I asked them about how they respond to real life situations. There are already existing models in the recruitment space, which many recruiters can probably expound more in detail. But there are questioning techniques that would really put the person on the spot and have them respond in ways where they could not script it because these situations are unpredictable, but they happen in real life. So they're not theoretical. You also subject people to challenges, like actual things that they need to submit and actually do. Of course, right now it's a bit tricky because people now have access to AI. So you also need to validate whether can they actually do the job? Do they actually possess the skill? Of course, you don't expect them to be plugged and played, especially in a very high context environment like Canva. Although, of course, that's not uniquely to Canva. Many organizations still need to upscale and enable new hires. But definitely moving forward, Eli, you know, the framework of KSA, which is knowledge, skills, and attributes in that order, used to be the gold standard in identifying talents. Right now, it's the other way around. It's the attributes that actually what you want to source from new hires. There has been uh research that says the 70-2010 model, which is 70% on-the-job training, 20% social, 10% classroom, is being renamed or reworded. Where what we want new hires or even old hires to be able to do is that 70% of their work is meaningful work or challenging task. And then 20% is the social learning that they get from mentors, and then 10% is for formal or classroom training. So it's a bit different, but basically sings the same song, right? The direction of organizations moving forward, I believe, is going to shift towards people knowing the questions to ask rather than the answers themselves. I mean, we want people to be able to build organic, meaningful relationships and stop working in silos hoarding information for themselves. While classroom trainings may shift into just in-time training, where you don't learn because of a what if. You learn the new things that you need because of if not, right? Like if not, like if you don't learn it, then what's gonna happen to you? AI might outpace you and you know render you obsolete, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

So I was just having a conversation, similar topic recently with somebody on my team who wanted to build some certain technical skills. And I said, you know, I think that could be valuable, but what I've observed is that things have changed so much that you can learn so fast. Don't try to pre-learn. Learn when you're doing it, right? Like when you have the specific objective, you have the specific project, you're deep down in it, and then you recognize you don't have this understanding. You can get that in two days or one day. Like you can get it so fast now, right? So don't spend all this time like pre-learning things necessarily. It's a completely different game. So let's there are a few things I really want to go back and talk about if we have time, about some things you spoke about earlier. I think a lot about the future of work and about how do I help organizations to support everyone in the organization to really understand where we are in the stream of time, how critical it is that each of us take ownership of our own learning and that we make it clear to everybody we can what we expect them to do. And is it safe to actually automate yourself out of your job so that you can move up the value chain? And I think as leaders, we have a lot of work to do in clarifying strategies around these things and committing to them. But I would love to hear, you know, you talk about. I know this is something you think about and talk about, and uh I would love to hear balancing AI-driven automation with keeping people, you know, the people experience intact and just anything you want to talk about on this general topic, what I just threw out there.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Sure. My stance with AI is that people or organizations need to exert an equivalent amount of effort in keeping the human in the loop as much as we want to inject as much technology into the workflow. Right now, when we bump into a conference recently, if you take a look at the agenda of these conferences, 90% talks about how AI will change their workflow, how AI will impact jobs, how AI impacts hiring. The recent conference I was in was about how AI changes the world of comp and Ben. But very few people actually talk about how does the human element change in that equation. How can we as humans stay relevant in these conversations? What should we change? Or what should we not change, which I think is also equally important, right? Right now, I've been hearing and I've been reading that if you were to split AI in three dimensions in terms of usage, application, and ideas, usage is high right now, application is moderate, ideas are little because people tend to rely on AI for most of the things because it's a mission critical agenda for many organizations. But many empiricals have also been saying that give it five years or maybe even less, the equation will flip on its head. Ideas will be more, implementation would be more than what it's used to be, while usage will be little because it will be so ingrained into your ways of working that you don't feel like you have to go out of your way to use it. It will be embedded. So it will now rely on people to think about how will you be end up using it. Right now, the focus is usage because you want to get your money back because of how expensive these subscriptions are. But it becomes like, you know, your typical application that comes with your laptop, for example, which today it is. Like when you buy a laptop, it comes with a subscription or a free AI platform, right? Then what do you do with it? Right. And so the human element remains to be a critical component that I don't think no technology can replace. And so I feel like right now there's fear around this conversation, but I feel like it should not be fear. I think it should be excitement. But people just need to be given the space and time to build a healthy relationship with AI. I heard this recently from a colleague of mine. AI is pushing people to rebuild their relationship with difficulty. Because of how AI makes life easy, you know, you tend to gravitate towards doing the easy things. Especially the younger generations, they're having a hard time wrapping their heads around doing the hard stuff. Right. Yeah. So I feel like that muscle is losing its strength doing the hard, gritty, messy things. Yeah. And I feel like if people just invest the time and energy to do that again, I think our relationship with technology would be healthier.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

I think that that's such a powerful philosophy, what you just laid out. And it reminds me of a realization that I had in my, I think maybe somewhere around the age of 40. I kind of realized that I had a lot of inner work to do and I wasn't developing myself intentionally enough. And I'd been focusing on the doing and the having and the dream. And but I realized like, wow, I think I have a lot of work to do. And in that journey, I also realized that through a lot of contemplation, something that seems pretty obvious maybe to some people, but maybe other people haven't realized, is that we never grow when we're comfortable. And hmm, so all the times that I felt amazing about myself and I felt like I grew so much was when I did something very uncomfortable. But I was only doing those things when I was forced to do by, you know, something kind of went wrong or somebody made me do it. And so I thought, well, okay, if I wanted to really grow faster, then if it's not a gun or a lion or a fire, then if it's scary, I should go look for it and do it on purpose, which I started doing. I started looking for what are the conversations I'm avoiding and like go find them on purpose, right? Which I think you could, you know, use that as an analogy to what you just said is like we really need to be consciously intentional now that we got to go seek the difficult because we have tools now that if it's not really difficult and complex, it's not worth doing and it's not gonna be meaningful, it's not gonna be valuable because AI can do all the easy stuff, right? So now that I just you know gave you that my speech about that, but when you mentioned meaningful work earlier, and we're talking about you know, prioritizing the human element, can you paint a picture of the future that you see that you would you know like to see happen or that you would like to direct the future toward a more human future that we have more meaningful work because of what AI did for us?

SPEAKER_01 30:34

My silent dream or hope as an HR professional is that nobody ends up having to do the things that they don't like. There's a concept that every job has a driver and a drainer, right? And I hope that what technology can provide is an opportunity for it to take the drains away so that people can just do what they love. Right. There are a lot of companies and organizations who try to get themselves certified as a great place to work, right? I mean, there are different versions of that, right? Right. But you know, as somebody who have experience building great places to work, what makes it great is not the place itself or the perks or the benefits, it's the job, the work, the kind of work that you can really sink your teeth into, right? That no matter how tired you end up at the end of the day, you feel fulfilled, right? There's this concept about being in the zone, right? Like that's the place, that's a sweet spot that you want to keep your employees in. I'm not saying that we totally eliminate the routinary work, the mundane tasks. I believe that there is also value in those. It teaches you patience, perseverance, it teaches you how to do trial and error, it teaches you lessons on failure, right? Because that's where you do your practice runs, right? But I believe that that should not comprise the majority of the work. And I hope that through technology, organizational will, like the drive of senior leaders to make these happen. And also hoping that the workforce of the future gains a bigger appetite for doing the hard stuff. I think that those are the secret ingredients to making workplaces a great place to work in.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Very much maps and aligns to my experience. Uh you know, I've done some really, really hard work in my life and loved it. And I've done a lot of grinding through mundane, you know, repetitive stuff, and it did teach me those things. I very much agree with what you just said. Before I head toward wrapping up, I want to double back to something you said earlier that I felt is important. Um, you talked about how you intentionally focused on earning influence and trust. I'm using my own words. I think you said it was during COVID in Canva, and I think you said something about night that you have intentionally somehow spent 90% of your time focusing on developing relationships. In a discipline, HR, that tends to be very admin heavy for a lot of people and putting out a lot of fires. I think there's some people in that space that would hear that and think, how could I ever get close to that number? Could you give any ideas to someone out there who feels like they want to be doing that, but don't think they can?

SPEAKER_01 33:19

HR's work is not exclusively to HR people. I think there have been many HR leaders and, you know, thought leaders that have said that the responsibilities that befall on the HR department should be shared across the organization. Right. And I feel like when I speak to other HR professionals in the field who share with me their own stories about having a hard time getting out of the admin work just because it just keeps piling up. After some digging, they realize that they should not be doing the majority of these things and that they should have been building alliances with frontline managers, with middle managers and senior leaders in spreading the load, right? I guess my own personal experience is that when you are able to elevate leadership capabilities within organizations, everybody tends to lift a little bit of that weight so that nobody else carries the grunt of it, right? And that I think is what creates the bandwidth for HR to add strategic value and not just the complaints department trying to fight fires left and right, right? But also I empathize with my colleagues in the field who are in that space because it's easier said than done, right? Yeah. So I also urge HR leaders who can speak in behalf of HR teams that they advocate for the kind of HR that the company deserves, right? Yes, there will be challenges, but it should not be an excuse not to push for that advocacy. I was talking to an HR leader in a separate forum about how his experience is like because he recently just joined a company. And one of the questions I asked was In your current organization, as an HR leader, when you're invited into critical meetings, is there a seat reserved for you or do you have to bring your own? And he said that right now, where he is at the moment, he has to bring his own chair. And I said, Okay, great. But when you bring your own chair, does the door open for you? Or do you have to like open it up and knock? Right. And so that kind of made that friend of mine think about how he wants to show up as an HR leader.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Yes, there's one thing that you're not invited and there's no seat for you. But then there's also that opportunity for you to make your presence feel needed, right? And that comes through how you show up, how you deal with, you know, organizational issues, how you are perceived as a value-adding member of the execom or the leadership board, right? But also how people look up to you as an HR leader. Because when the organizational leaders feel like you have the hearts of the people that they lead, then you become a lever. You become a fulcrum in that it is experiment, right? You can magnify and multiply, you know, the force that organizations need to bring goals forward.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Vincent, you just articulated so beautifully a vision that I've had for many HR leaders that I've worked with, where I could see how passionate they are for what they want to see happen in the organization. And then I see the challenges they're running into where that seat isn't there. I think a lot of times, you know, other ex executives in the company, like from the board down, they may not also have ever seen a model of what HR can really look like when it's leading leadership first. And when, you know, you're carving out this, you're helping grow people so that they can take on more of that load that's often just relegated to HR that shouldn't be, so that you can carve out the space for you to be doing more meaningful work in the department. Very well said. I think it's beautiful and it's a long game. You know, that's an investment if you're a leader that wants to change the way things work in your organization. You articulated it very well. I loved it. Thank you. Throughout this conversation, it shines out to me that you are humble and that you love learning. And I respect that a lot. That's really something that I admire and uh I appreciate the way you go about the way, you know, the thinking that you bring and the leadership that you've developed. I think the maybe just last question as we wrap up, unless you want to add anything, you know, from what we've talked about, just um leave people listeners to this conversation. If a leader listening just remembers one thing tomorrow morning, what would you like to leave them with?

SPEAKER_01 37:41

For the HR professionals that might be listening, I hope that you walk away having the power to give yourself the permission to be kind to yourself. The HR work is not for everybody. I think if you're in HR, you probably know that. It takes so much more effort and energy to think about others before yourself, right? So I think that if you are in this space, I commend you for choosing this route, right? And for putting other people's needs and the organizational's needs before your own, right? But of course, give yourself some reprieve and uh carve out space to you know slow down and enrich yourself as well. I think I can borrow this motto that you can't refill from an empty cup, right? Yeah. So make sure that you put on your oxygen mask first.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Real real quick.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

If you're not in HR, okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

No, I was gonna say you said earlier, like that if the leader is stressed, the team is stressed, right? So what's like one little thing you've done morning routine, or like how do you keep yourself in that state where you can show up as a good version of you?

SPEAKER_01 38:50

That's where the magic the gathering comes in. You know, you have to have an outlet, right? You cannot pour yourself too much in work, you know. As a parent of a five-year-old, right? You know, they spend very few hours in school, right? And that was intentional because schools know that, you know, as a kid, you can only pour in this much, you know, of focus and attention to absorb whatever they're teaching while keeping most of the day open for play, right? That balancing scale tends to shift more towards less of play as you get old. But we are human beings nonetheless. And I don't think we should lose play, you know, as we get older. Coming from a Chinese community, successful people that are like grandparents play mahjong or go out and you know, share gossips with fellow senior citizens, right? Because that's when they want to inject more play as they get old. But I don't think you have to wait till you're that old to enjoy play. So I hope that this would be a very good reminder for you that if you haven't played or haven't done anything fun for yourself, hopefully this episode gives you that permission to do so.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Vincent, I feel like you're speaking to me. I've lost that quite a bit. I you know, as an entrepreneur and a founder and a CEO and doing, you know, running multiple businesses. I think I've forgotten how important that is and I I don't carve out time. So I will take that and listen to it and think about it. I just want to say thank you so much for the work you're doing. I'm not sure where you head from here and who you're going to be focusing on supporting, but I'm quite certain that you're the ripple effect of the work that you're doing and um the kind, you know, the leadership that you bring to the community is far outside of the organization that you've been in. And that I'm sure wherever you're gonna go, you're gonna continue that ripple effect. So I just want to say thank you for that and thank you for being here and this conversation. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Thank you as well, Eli, for having me. It's a very refreshing feeling to be able to have conversations that center around something that I'm very, very passionate about, right? And I hope that if there's anything that your listeners and your subscribers can walk away with, is that you know, work is work, but life is always bigger than work. So make sure to schedule life like you do work, right? So just don't let your calendar be filled with so much work that you forget about living. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Thank you. With that, we'll sign off and thank you so much again for being here. Thank you so much, Eli, as well. It's fun. All right, that's the conversation for today. And you know what? If something in there hit, good. Sit with it. The most extensive leadership insight is the one you agree with and never act on it. If this felt worth your time, pass it on to one leader in your life who needs to hear it. That's how this conversation grows. Thank you again for being here. I'd love to hear your comments on the conversation. Again, I'm Eli Harold, and this is what leadership looks like when humans come first. See you next time.