Brandi Copeland on Employee Experience, the Engagement Crisis, and the 2026 Talent Shift

[0:00] The accidental HR journey

Dan Korus: Hey team, welcome back. Today I have Brandi Copeland with me on the Kestryl Edge podcast. Brandi, thank you so much for making time to spend this morning with us talking about leadership and emotional intelligence and the multi-generational workforce. Welcome to the show.

Brandi Copeland: Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Dan Korus: Yeah, so for those who don't know you, let's do some background questions. In my research of you, you call yourself an accidental HR professional. So tell us all what you mean by that. How does someone go from accounting and finance into recruiting and end up founding something called the employee experience edit?

Brandi Copeland: Yeah, so my background is interesting because I was just always told go to college, get a job, go to college, get a job, and that is what I did. That's the story of a lot of millennials that were raised by baby boomer parents. I had opportunity to go to school that my mom didn't have. So she was just excited for me to go to school and get a job, and I didn't really know what that meant. So I was like, I will get a degree in business and we'll see where that takes me. And that business degree led me to a very small Microsoft partner where I started there as an administrative assistant. But they sold, specifically back in the day it was called Great Plains Software, accounting software. And the owner of that company was like, well, you have far more potential than just being an administrative assistant. Let me teach you accounting. So I didn't have an accounting degree. I didn't want to go and get a CPA, but I was very good at keeping the books. And he was amazing in just teaching me very fundamental finance and accounting skills. Without that person in my life, I think my life might have looked very different. So that was the job that ended up getting me my first real big girl job at MetLife in accounting.

I think when I was at MetLife, I just started feeling like I don't want to look at the past anymore. I want to look at the future. And oddly enough, my StrengthsFinder, one of my top five is futurist, so that makes a lot of sense now that I know that. And I started looking for finance jobs. I also knew I didn't want to get my CPA, and in order to stay in accounting that's what would have to happen. So after probably five or six years, I left MetLife and I started working at Disney in finance. The client group that I supported just happened to be under the talent acquisition and marketing organization. So that's the business I got to serve. And I got so close to that business. I did recruiting trips. I learned that business inside and out and I built really key relationships there. But I remember sometimes going into these meetings and listening to them talking like, I can't believe people get to do this as a job. So I just put it in my back pocket that man, if I ever got to be a recruiter, that's the job I would want, and then I will always be a recruiter for the rest of my life.

Of course, that time came and I saw a recruiter role posted, and it just happened to be for finance interns. I knew everybody in the finance organization, so it was a really good fit. I had built the right relationships, so when I reached out about that job, because I had moved on to another team by the time that opportunity came up, the director was like, wait, you want to be a recruiter? So I didn't even have to interview. They just gave me a chance. And I always say that was about preparing myself. I really knew their business well. I knew my function well. I built key relationships, but also I just got lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. So I guess there is that quote that opportunity and preparation, they kind of meet each other and you have to be prepared to step into that role. So that's what I did and I thought this is it for me. This is the ultimate level of success that I've always wanted. And of course then I started to feel really badly about letting them go on into their careers and passing them off to HR. So I bring you this incredible talent. I've nurtured them. I've provided an excellent candidate experience. It's always been in me to provide something very experiential in what I do. And I am still very close with hundreds of people that I recruited over the years because I loved getting to know them. But it broke my heart to send them along their way.

I had the opportunity then to build a talent program at Disneyland, and the president of Disneyland wanted to build a rotation program that helped them build a more agile cast base. They would sit in their roles for years and years and years and then they wouldn't talk to each other. So they all had these best practices in these very analytical roles, but they wouldn't move. And so they weren't sharing that information. He felt like they were lacking some efficiency. So that's where I came in. Build something in their emerging talent area that almost outlined the value of here's what can happen when you move around. Not only was that good for the people who participated in the rotation, the people who were experiencing them as they rotated through these departments got to see the value in, you just came from the finance department and now you are in consumer insights and you've brought a lot of value here, so maybe I can do that too. So it started to build this confidence in the cast like, I can move around, I still can have a long and healthy career here, and I don't have to sit in this one spot forever. I did end-to-end program management for that, all of the recruiting, all of the communications, employer relations, all of the events, all of the placement, all of the manager training. I worked very closely with all of the top executives at Disneyland. And that's when I realized, I can't be a recruiter forever. I can't go back to just being a recruiter. I wanted more. I tasted more and I wanted more.

I went to NBC Universal and that's when I finally got the chance to do that on a much larger scale, owning for much larger populations that end-to-end experience for client groups all across the United States. And that is where my heart is, that led me to now want to do this outside of the confines of four walls and make a bigger difference. The data piece of it, so I'm still very much a finance person at heart. That data piece of it, when we look at the Gallup data and how many people are just disengaged at work and how many people are looking for new jobs or they're unsatisfied with what they're doing with their manager, their entire employee experience, we can't continue on the way that we currently are. I think we're reaching the maximum capacity of what we can load onto people in these corporate spaces without having or experiencing a big change.

Dan Korus: Yeah. So it sounds like, and I want to come back to this because this is a really good thing that I want to add some follow-up questions to, but through your journey, the role of having an excellent mentor, first of all, that was a good step, right? In your first job you had a mentor who said, hey, I see your skill and I want to invest in you. That was the first step. And then the other steps were you building these relationships with people and learning an industry and figuring out with all of the pieces of the puzzle how you can deliver value to someone else. To the point where when the job opened up that you wanted, you had all the pieces already. At first it kind of sounded like a who-you-know, right? But I think that diminishes the hard work that you put into building all these really key and special relationships that served you. People always say the next job is just who you know. And I think that really takes away from the hard work that people put into building relationships, into getting to know people and giving to them without expecting anything in return, and then having this extremely strong network that's been stress tested.

So first of all, I think that's really beautiful. I'm wondering if I can ask, you're very passionate about the experience that you deliver to the teams you work with, the people that you serve. It's the name of your current venture. What do you believe about the experience that you deliver to other people that's special? And just kind of tell us, what is your philosophy around the experience that you deliver to other people?

[11:00] What good employee experience actually looks like

Brandi Copeland: The experience is interesting because it sounds like a really sexy word. And people think employee experience is all the fun stuff, or candidate experience is all the fun stuff. My philosophy around that is it's the exact opposite. It's all of these little moments, all the pieces of communication, the very intentional selection of your words, making sure you have clear handoff points. That to me is what creates that excellent experience to make somebody feel special. Like, wow, I received this onboarding email, but this onboarding email is so detailed and so clear I don't even have any follow-up questions. That is a really special moment that we don't give enough credit in the experiential realm. So my philosophy is focusing on those moments and not so much the big splashy welcome gift or the big splashy orientation or the development program that flies you all over the company or the perks that come along with it. All of those things are nice to have, but if someone's coming in their day-to-day job and they're not taken care of, they don't know who to go to for an answer, or their manager isn't trained, or their intranet is a mess and they can't even find one piece of information about their benefit information, all of those are the nitty-gritty details that are going to make or break that experience.

At Disney, I think that's where I started to develop that philosophy because they have these keys to the kingdom is what they tell them. So as a cast member, you have safety, efficiency, courtesy, and show. Show is the fourth one. So that splashy stuff is last on their list. Are we being safe? Are we being efficient? What's that end-to-end experience look like and how can we tighten it up so everybody knows exactly what they're doing? And then courteous, how do you develop that and introduce it to people in a kind way? So there were very specific steps, and I've brought that with me, but I also have added to it and made it my own in a way. That's where I started that understanding of, wait a minute, this isn't the big flashy stuff. This is the very small detail.

Dan Korus: Yeah, that's excellent. Sounds like the basics done perfectly, before adding anything on to an infirm foundation.

Brandi Copeland: That's right.

Dan Korus: Right, nailing all of the touch points, all the small things, all of the basics done extremely well, really quick before moving on. What are some of the little things that you've added on to make the experience that much better? What's the Brandi magic?

Brandi Copeland: Yeah, so it's going to be different depending on every situation because every company is different, every person is different, and people are unique and specific. So you can't always know going into it exactly what somebody needs, but it takes time and effort. My magic is, let's map this first. I don't do anything until I map something end-to-end. Take me through the candidate workflows, take me through every piece of communication, take me through every job description. We comb through that line by line. Again, it's not sexy. It's very unglamorous. But I like that work. I think that's the problem, is we don't have enough people who like that work, to focus on it. All of these companies, a company doesn't have somebody solely dedicated to it. So moving on, the pre-boarding process. What are all the pieces of communication? Who needs to be involved? Identifying what is their role that's involved? So my magic is getting down to such a granular layer that they feel it in the movement, but they have no idea someone has been there looking at it that granularly.

[15:00] The engagement crisis companies won't acknowledge

Dan Korus: That's awesome. So just the fine-tooth comb. That's how you make sure that the foundation is solid. There's no cracks. Everything's been combed over, tip to tail, soup to nuts. So earlier you were kind of explaining some of the why behind your company and some of your motivating ideas, and you were saying, okay, if you look at the Gallup survey data and you look at what people in the workforce are going through today, specifically the engagement data that I think they came out with in the last year or so, that's quite concerning and raising a lot of alarm bells for people, and definitely a big focus that we're going to be looking at in the current years for employees everywhere in corporate America. Walk us through that. What tipping point are we approaching? And why does this matter to us?

Brandi Copeland: Gosh, that's such a loaded question. Because where do you start? The thing that concerns me the most is companies know this information.

Dan Korus: Sorry.

Brandi Copeland: They know that the engagement data ticks down every single year. You know what else ticks down every single year? The investment in L&D efforts. That is confusing to me. And something that ticks up is direct report loads. I think we're operating now at 50% more direct reports than we were just about 10 to 12 years ago. So we're giving people more and more and more. And companies are focused on, how do we optimize everything. So you're trying to optimize things. You're saying, okay, employees use all of these tools to optimize, this is going to save you time. But instead of giving them that time back, they're just adding more work onto it and doing it with less and less people. That's the most concerning thing to me, is that right now, because it's not an employee's market, it's an employer's market, they have the pick of the litter for talent, they don't have to focus on these things. But my belief is the pendulum always swings back. Eventually they're going to learn that you can't burn your employees out to a state of they're just no longer engaged and productive for you before they just leave, before they just give up.

That's what we're seeing in the job market, I think. 2026 is interesting to me. All of a sudden, you have seen this uptick in portfolio careers and people going off and doing solo endeavors. I'm one of them. I'm one of them because I care about this experience in corporate, though. I think there's a difference. I don't necessarily want to be out of the corporate game. I just want to make it better for everybody else. But there are so many people I know, and so many people I talk to every single day that they're like, I can't do this anymore. I have to figure something else out. I don't know if I always give this account a shout out. I feel like I'm going to start rambling now because my brain starts to swirl around it. How do you really solve this problem? But there's this account that I've been following and I've been learning more about human design, and I don't know if that's something that you're familiar with at all, but it says in February of 2027, we're going to shift from this idea that...

Dan Korus: Ramble away.

Brandi Copeland: ...we conform to organizational policies and processes and systems to our own individual agency. A lot of this unsettling feeling that individuals are having towards moving towards their own thing, it's starting to happen in a lot of us already. I am not an expert on this, so follow... I think the account is HD and Me. It's amazing. It's so fascinating and I restack this all the time. This information to me makes a lot of sense when it comes to the corporate workforce because you can feel this turmoil that's coming to a head in the workforce. People are simply sick of it. Now, the companies that are going to start paying attention to this, I think, are going to be the winners on the back end. And there are companies out there that are doing right by their employees that are really strong examples, and I've written about a good number of them up to this point.

But how do you fix all of it? It's partly acknowledging that, yes, this is a problem in our workforce, and we need to figure out what's wrong with it. The second is start talking to your employees. I don't mean engagement surveys. While engagement surveys can serve a purpose, I'm not a super fan of the engagement survey because you're not having a conversation with people and you're not allowing them to be vulnerable in the moment. You're not getting what it is that your population needs. A lot of surveys are designed so that they just tell you the same things over and over again. You can word a question any way you want so that it gives you the information you want. So you're almost leading the witness in those surveys. But if you sat down one-on-one with your employees or in a focus group and said, this is a safe space, you can host it with a third party so it's anonymous, this is a safe space, what's really going on in your workplace and what would need to change in order for you to be engaged here and want to stay here long term, I think companies would be shocked at the information they could find out in going about gathering that information in a different way.

Dan Korus: So what I want to know, just briefly, if you could give a couple of pieces of advice, or maybe even make some predictions on who these winner companies are going to be in the future. What are they doing differently that is allowing them to have higher engagement, for their employees to feel valued? What are they investing in? Is it the conversations? Is it the vulnerability? Is it the knowing their people? What are they doing differently?

Brandi Copeland: I think for the companies that really want to get this right, it's going to start with that conversation and truly understanding from your employees what it is they want and what it is they need, and then aligning that. What can our business support here? Obviously you think about a manufacturing company. They can't support remote work. But can they support more flexible hours? Can they support additional manager training or some more hands-on training? But they're never going to know exactly what they need until they talk to their people. So investing that time and energy, and what an inexpensive endeavor to go down. That is not an expensive thing to do. I think that's one of the things that when I was thinking about putting my company together, the employee experience edit, I didn't want companies to think you have to burn it all down to the ground. You don't. You can look at what you have because you probably already have things that are working. You have people who care. You just need to make some tweaks along the way. So that's not expensive. You don't need a Fortune 100 budget to do that. Talking to your people is free.

Now, it might take them off the floor for an hour or take an hour out of their day, but how much time is already wasted in sitting in meetings all day, every day, anyway? How about we use one of those meetings for something really, really useful? Understanding what your employees need and want, and then acknowledging it and implementing things that come from those conversations. And if you can't, communicating out why. Is that so hard? Again, it's free to do. You don't have to sit there and spend money to craft a message that says, here's the thing that we heard from you, here's why we can't do that, but here's what we're going to do instead. That communication is all people are asking for sometimes.

I know of one such company right now, and I always keep companies confidential because I don't need to get in any sort of hot water. But there is a company that moved the office location probably about 25 miles from their current office location. It negatively affected over 50% of their employees, and employees continued to give this feedback in surveys and after town halls. The company refuses to acknowledge it. How far would it go for a company to just say, you know what, we understand that this is impacting you negatively and that it might affect your way of life. We're going to be more flexible. This same company, by the way, you have to be in the office four days a week. You've got to get that badge swipe in. And if you don't get that badge swipe in, you're going to land on somebody's naughty list. So they're not even accommodating with the flexibility piece. They simply refuse to acknowledge it. What a difference it would make. This company also has very poor Glassdoor reviews, very poor outlook. People are turning over like you wouldn't believe. It's a mess. All because they refuse to acknowledge that decisions that they're making are negatively impacting the employees that work there. And that's all they want. A little bit of empathy. Empathy goes a long way. Even if they can't really do anything about it.

Dan Korus: Yeah, that sounds pretty tough, and like a little bit of flexibility would mean a lot. Depending on where you are, that's an extra 30 to 40 minute commute, maybe more depending on the location and what the traffic's like. And so you're asking people to give up, if they're working four tens or something, that's an extra eight, nine hours a week just for commuting, gone.

Brandi Copeland: Sure. Yeah. Away from their family.

Dan Korus: As opposed to like three to four. Yeah, exactly. And you have to get up early for a four-ten, so you're driving during dangerous times of the day depending on the location. So you're in the dark both ways. That's just not good for your health. I love a four-ten schedule personally because the three-day weekend is just so nice. It feels like every weekend should, and having that one business day to just get normal human stuff done is so nice. But pair that with a long commute and it's tough on people.

Brandi Copeland: I think another thing companies could do is recognize that we're not living in workforce 2016 anymore. It's changing so much. Training that they used to offer over the last five years, it's just not sufficient with the amount of change management coming with the introduction of AI and the expectation of AI, the multi-generational workforce. We have four generations in the workforce right now that used to not be a typical thing, but people are staying in the workforce longer. So how do we give people proper tools to navigate those relationships. There are a lot of things that companies can do to your question. It just depends on their specific situation, and it goes back to, just talk to your people.

[27:00] Four generations in one workforce

Dan Korus: Yeah, and let's talk about that a little bit more. Because I'm loving the theme here that emotional intelligence, a little bit of empathy, some listening, some conscientiousness, some courtesy is all that it takes to make the difference. That speaks to a lot of the mission and drive that I have around Kestryl Edge. So first of all, I love that. I love this content.

Let's talk about the multi-generational workforce for a little bit. You said we have four generations in the workforce. People are staying in it longer and we've got some highly technologically literate Gen Z entering the workforce, starting to get into upper entry level, middle management positions. We've got millennials dominating a big band and starting to take over senior positions. The silent generation, Gen X, boomer, are starting to fall off. I'm not sure if I got those 100% right, but kind of tell us about the dynamics that are there.

Brandi Copeland: Yeah. Baby boomer, Gen X, millennial, Gen Z. So it's interesting because people think of generations and they start to think about age specifically. I don't look at generational cohorts in terms of age, because generational cohorts and the common themes about how they look at their relationships with corporations, with money, with their families, with their friendships, just how they operate in general, their values are shaped by what happened to them and what they witnessed during their formative years, between like eight and twenty-two. So it's kind of a long range, but that's when our brains are forming, and that is when we start noticing that everything might not be what it seems on the surface. Before you're about eight years old, you take everything at face value.

I read something the other day about how there are children in certain countries who are raised around snakes and they're not taught to fear a snake. That's how they operate. So when they go into adulthood, they never have this fear. But in most countries, you develop this fear of snakes because even as young as two, three years old, you're watching cartoons that tell you to be afraid of a snake. Adults tell you you're afraid of a snake. So that's a small example, I think a silly one, but that helps you see that things that happen, things you experience, things you were told, impact what you believe about life in general. These generational cohorts are interesting in terms of the corporate space because people go into the corporate space with these very clear values and these very clear ideas about how I'm going to succeed here.

When you think about the four generations we have now, you have the baby boomers who grew up in a very abundant time. You work hard and you put in your time and you pay your dues and you will be rewarded. And of course they believe that because that absolutely worked for them. A lot of Gen X too, especially Gen X on the back end of it. A lot of Gen X members are also getting ready to retire. People don't really realize that. When we think about Gen X, we're still thinking of our view from our personal seat. To me, Gen X, I still feel very young. To me, Gen X, I'm like, Gen X is in their 40s. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm in my 40s. I'm a millennial. And then that's another thing that people don't realize, is most millennials have families of their own, they are in management positions at this point. So even baby boomers from their seat look at Gen X and millennials and they still look at millennials as, of course you don't have anything. You're spending your money frivolously, you don't have families, you can't buy a house. That's how they view millennials because we do solidify our views on generational cohorts and they stay there. Baby boomers to me will always be in their sixties. But that's not the case. They are aging. That's not going to be the case forever.

So that worked for baby boomers. Gen X, these were your original latchkey kids. They were the ones who started to see both parents in the workforce where baby boomers really didn't see that at all. And because both parents were in the workforce, they came home, they took care of themselves, they drank out of the water hose, and they figured it out. So they have a bit of a tough exterior, even though some that are closer to the millennials, they had maybe a different experience. The xennial overlap there is an interesting case study, but that's their views at work. I'm going to go in, I'm going to figure it out, I'm going to go home, and I'll conform to what I need to conform to, but I'll figure it out. So you do still see this rough and tough exterior from Gen X.

And then millennials, who we were very much impacted by 9/11 and the tech bubble bursting and political upheaval, and just gone through so much. We entered the job market, there were no jobs. That's why I started as an administrative assistant at a tiny company. There were no big jobs to get, so that's what I did. It paid off after I kept working and working, and then I got to go to MetLife. We are highly empathetic to things that make someone feel bad. Our sense of safety is not there. There are a lot of millennials that I talk to that every meeting they go into, they think they're going to get fired or they're going to get laid off. The rug is going to be pulled out from underneath them at any given moment, because that's been our life experience during our formative years.

And Gen Z, they've sat back and watched all of this, so they trust nothing and they call out everything. I believe that Gen Z, they have the voice and the gumption and the willpower to drive that change. Millennials and Gen Z, they're already the majority of the workforce. By 2030, they're going to be over seventy, I think it's seventy-three or seventy-four percent of the workforce. They have the numbers to drive change. The question is, do they have the will. I don't know if millennials do, because we're a little gun-shy about ruffling any feathers. We're people pleasers. But Gen Z is interesting to watch, and they're already even calling out the use of AI that's taking their entry-level jobs. Of course they should be. Why wouldn't they say something about that? Because they've been told over and over and over again that you've got to go to school and you've got to get a job, but then there are no jobs. So they're experiencing some similar things that millennials experience. They're just a bit louder about it, and they've had the tools to be louder about it with social media.

Dan Korus: I think we like to give Gen Z a hard rap, right? We like to say, well, they're unmotivated or they don't work hard, or they aren't willing to basically go along with the corporate status quo that's been there for so many years. And I think it's cool to hear you giving kudos to the Gen Z cohort for their willingness to speak up. It's nice to hear a take I haven't heard before, that Gen Z is kind of the mouthpiece for what millennials have gone through and are willing to vocally push on the workplace in ways that the millennials want to but haven't felt safe to up until this point. I'm sure there are, I know many outspoken millennials, so I know that these generalizations of the cohort are generalizations.

One of the things you wrote about in one of your Substack pieces, which I really like, is you wrote that we didn't prepare managers for this version of work, for this intergenerational workplace. So what I'm wondering is, for the managers who are out there now and have a generationally diverse team, what preparation could we go get for them? What could they do to be more prepared for this intergenerational workforce?

[36:00] Preparing managers for this version of work

Brandi Copeland: Yeah. I think as we move forward in 2026 and into 2027, again, I believe that people are going to start regaining some of their own agency and taking more of an active role in their own development. I think that is something that's very underrated. We wait for companies to provide it, but we can't rely on companies to make us better leaders and better people and more empathetic leaders and more self-aware leaders. If you're going to step into a leadership role, I think you have a responsibility to prepare yourself. I don't know that we're ever fully prepared to step into that leadership role. I thought I was, and then you get into it, and it's scary, it's highly emotional. You're dealing with so many different personalities that you don't even know where to start sometimes. But one of the things that I think people can do is find the podcasts, find the Substack articles, find the books that make you stop and think, and then accepting in yourself that I'm never going to have this all figured out and I only want to just do a little better every day. What can I learn? What can I implement so I can be a better leader every single day? And never rely on a company to provide you that development.

Because when they do, a couple of things are happening. I'm not discounting what companies are offering to people. I do think there are some interesting formulas and frameworks that they can deliver. But you're doing so most of the time in a classroom setting that's not psychologically safe for people, even though they say, yes, be vulnerable here, this is a place to talk about those scenarios on your team. And sure you might, but it also might follow you back to the office, because as much as we wish office politics didn't exist, they do. And so how can you ever fully be vulnerable in those spaces? So you can go and participate, but I think it's highly beneficial for individuals to take ownership of that development and figure out where they can get those micro doses of just making themselves think a little harder about how they're going to interact with their team and support their team.

Dan Korus: I love that answer. This is good. This is such good stuff. We're telling people, don't rely on the company for all your own training. We're saying challenge yourself, think critically about where you're at. And we're also telling people, focus on training your critical thinking and emotional intelligence skills, which is awesome. I love this. This is great. For emotional intelligence specifically, if a manager came to you and said, I want to be more emotionally intelligent with my team, where would you tell them to start?

Brandi Copeland: So there's something that I always coach on, and it's pretty simple. It's, this is the expectation, this is the impact that this has, and this is the result when that does or does not happen. So when you're setting expectations, you're talking about facts. It's not feeling. You can package that in a way that's like, this is what I need done. Here's why we need this done. Here's what's going to happen if it doesn't get done. So let's talk about the deadline. Let's talk about the deliverable here. Keep it focused on those facts and then allow them to share any concerns. What else do you need from me to deliver that? Is there anything that I can do to support this effort? That's how all of those conversations should end. When you are setting expectations, you're in a one-on-one, because leadership is a place of service. You're there to support your team, they're there to get the work done. So how can you set them up for success? But you've got to ask them the question first, and then listen and act on it. It's not just about asking the question, it's, let me listen, let me process this information, and then let's figure out how I can deliver back to them what it is they need to be successful in this role.

Same thing with feedback. Hey, I noticed this happened, this is the impact it had on the team, this is the expectation, but talk to me about what happened here. Tell me more. I'm curious to know from your perspective how that all went down. There are ways to have these emotionally intelligent conversations by being curious and open-minded to what they might have to share. You will as a leader, I believe, the more curious you are about what's going on in someone's day and someone's life, the more open they're going to be with you. And then things that miss the mark might make a little bit more sense. I'm always going to coach managers to tackle expectations and start with the facts first, but then ask the question and be curious.

Dan Korus: I love that. It's such a good answer too, because we like to think, well, emotional intelligence is a really deep subject, and it spans multiple different skill domains. It's tough to say, okay, here's where you start. But I love this advice because it's simple. It's something someone could do today. It's something someone could do starting on Monday morning, and it's asking questions and getting curious and listening. And I love that you pointed out that the action has to happen, because there's no better way to destroy trust than to ask someone what they think, get a really genuine, authentic answer, and then do nothing with it, right? Not even a circle back or anything. What a great way to get people to not trust you and to never want to talk to you again, is to ask them what they think and then do nothing. So I love that answer. Do you have any more thoughts on that before we go to our final questions here?

Brandi Copeland: I think anytime a manager can avoid saying, I feel like this happened, or it felt like, anytime you can get away from that language, it's like, hey, I observed this. It looked like this happened. Share more. We'd love to hear what happened. There's no feeling there on the manager side. The more curious we are, the language starts to follow it too, and language is also important. So I've always tried to stay away from ever starting a sentence with a direct report or anyone on my team like, well, I feel like you're just not engaged. That's my feelings and it's not about me. So that's not how you have to approach that. It's like, hey, I observed you've been a little disconnected lately. Do you want to talk about it? How can I help you? How can I support you? I want to make sure I'm setting you up for success. So let's chat. That curiosity opens a whole can of worms. So it's the curiosity piece plus the language you use as well. Being intentional around that.

Dan Korus: Yeah, I love that. Especially the emphasis on not leading them towards an answer or painting the picture for them, letting them fill in the details, and really making it clear that we're here to support. So knowing our observations is just so important.

[45:00] Three questions for new hires, mid-career, and senior leaders

Dan Korus: So now for my favorite three questions. I always love these because I think they're really fun. Okay, so Brandi, someone's starting their day at a new job. This is their first day in the workforce.

Brandi Copeland: Yes.

Dan Korus: They have no experience. What's your advice for them?

Brandi Copeland: Get curious, stay curious, ask questions, and do it for longer than you think you need to. Because you're not going to be an expert at your job in even six to twelve months. It takes a few years, I think, to really master any given job. The more you set yourself up to learn from other people around you when you're starting that new job, everybody else there, they already know the environment, they know the role, they know how the business operates. Take that opportunity to learn from them. Play that new card as much as you can for as long as you can, and ask all the questions. Because there really are no dumb questions when it comes to starting a new job, especially your first job ever. Nobody expects you to know anything. That's the beauty of it.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Really take advantage of that. If people aren't expecting you to know something, ask as many questions as you can. Nothing can go wrong. So for a mid-career professional, we're talking the team leads, the middle managers, the people who are caught in the messy middle, what's your advice for them?

Brandi Copeland: Understand that it's going to be more emotional than it should be, or you will want it to be, because you are dealing with things coming at you at multiple different levels. You're managing up towards senior leadership expectations. You likely have direct reports who are just entering the workforce, who operate very differently than you, and so you're this shock absorber, and it can wreak havoc on your nervous system, and it's going to be more emotional than is comfortable. So take time to keep that nervous system regulated. Schedule 15-minute blocks throughout the day where you can get up from your desk. Even if it's walk around your floor, go walk outside, get some sunshine on your face, and practice some breathing exercises, because it does go so fast. In my last corporate role, my head would be spinning on back-to-back meetings. So I started blocking time on my calendar. Just go outside, get in the sunshine, take a few deep breaths, and then come back to it. The work is always going to be there. Our favorite phrase when we're in this middle layer is like, things will slow down soon. We're lying to ourselves. Things are never going to slow down. So you have to take the time to slow it down a little bit. And that's okay. We don't owe anyone every second of every part of our day. And if someone is bothered by that, then that's a whole separate issue that likely you or I could offer some coaching on. But schedule some time for yourself to keep that nervous system regulated, and don't feel like you owe the world every single ounce of every single thing that you have.

Dan Korus: Yeah, I love that. Schedule time for yourself to just think and be and do the important things in your day. That way when someone does need you, you can be there 100% for them, and you're not showing up half-baked for everybody. So for the top, for our senior leaders out there, for our rainmakers, for our organizers, for our 10,000-foot people, for our CEOs, C-suite, VPs, what do you got for them?

Brandi Copeland: My biggest piece of advice, never get so far disconnected from the employee experience that you don't know what's going on in the daily life of your people. I think CEOs, senior executives have a very bad habit of outsourcing some very key decisions that affect people's daily lives that they know nothing about. HR will take care of that. Our senior managers will take care of that. They'll give the information. And so they stop understanding how people feel about their work and about their job, but then they wonder why we have such high turnover, low engagement, low productivity. Employee experience is directly tied to business outcomes. The more a senior leader, a CEO can appreciate that, understand it, embrace it, the better off they will be, because the better off their business will be.

Dan Korus: I love it. Brandi, thank you so much for joining me today. Really quick everyone, Brandi has a lovely Substack and I'm going to post that in the show notes. So if you like what Brandi has, all of her Substack writing is outstanding. I highly encourage you to click the link in the show notes and go check it out. Give her a subscribe. You'll get some regular updates from Brandi. Thank you Brandi for being here.

Brandi Copeland: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Dan Korus: Awesome, that's a wrap. We did it.

Brandi Copeland: Yay! Thank you so much. That was so fun.