328: Creating Space for Better Work with KeyAnna Schmiedl

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:11]:

Today I have a really special episode for you, and it was recorded live at the Unleash conference in Paris in 2026. This is someone I met at the same conference the prior year, and she has joined me for a live recording of the podcast this year. My apologies in advance if the sound quality is not what you’re quite used to, there may be a little bit of background noise from the conference going on. My, my wonderful editor Amanda is going to do what she can to clean up some of the background noise, but just to let you know in advance in case that is something that you notice while you’re watching or listening to the podcast. This is the Happier at Work podcast. I’m your host Aoife O’Brien, and today’s guest is KeyAnna Schmiedl from Workhuman, and we talk all things AI, leadership, and what’s really going on in work right now and what does that mean for the future of work. I really hope you enjoy today’s episode, and don’t forget to share it with a colleague who you think needs to hear it today.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:16]:

KeyAnna, you’re so welcome to the Happier at Work podcast. We met last year. That’s right, very festival, and now here we are doing the podcast, so in person, it’s really amazing to, uh, to be here to see you again and to record this podcast. For anyone who doesn’t know who you are, I’ve been following your work over the last year and I love what you have to say on LinkedIn. But for anyone who doesn’t know who you are, do you want to give a little bit of a background and, you know, why do you actually care about the stuff that you care about?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:01:43]:

Okay, so thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited. And, um, my name is KeyAnna Schmiedl. I’m the Chief Human Experience Officer for Workhuman. And what that means is anything people, HR related, I care about it. Yeah. And so for me, my background is, well, I’m a mom times 2 and a wife times 1. And I have always just been interested in how people come together to make something and why sometimes that goes wrong and why sometimes it works, and when it works, it works really well.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:02:19]:

And I think, you know, having a very nonlinear path to where I am right now also gives me an appreciation for you can find talent any and everywhere in an organization. And that’s part of why I care about what I do.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:34]:

Yeah, I love that. And I think similar to myself, I kind of came to this HR space in a very roundabout way. Like, people assume that my background is HR, but it’s not. I worked in market research for about 20 years, and it was those, like, when things go well, they go really well. When things go badly, they go terribly.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:02:54]:

Yes.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:54]:

And that, I think, drove my own interest in what I’m interested in now and, like, how to help that. What are the big things that you’re seeing that people are getting wrong right now?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:03:04]:

I think still somehow, even though we’ve been saying this for about a year now, people are still focused on AI and the tools and how to make the tools work as if that can be separated from the people.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:18]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:03:18]:

And treating the people adoption of the tools piece as the biggest problem, as opposed to leveraging what people have already identified as issues in the work or with part of the process to then say, okay, so then what’s the right tool to create the right solution to this. And so I really think that if we don’t start bringing our people into the conversation, we’re not going to see any or all of the benefits of what we think should be making work easier and should allow us to kind of elevate the human elements of work.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:57]:

Yes, yeah, I love that. And it kind of makes me think of, if you have a hammer, then anything is a nail.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:04:03]:

Right, right.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:04]:

If you buy X tool, whatever tool that might be, whether it’s Copilot or ChatGPT or whatever it might be, then you’re looking for what can I plug this into, as opposed to taking a step back and saying, what is the job to be done here and how can we rethink work? For me, it’s rethinking work from the ground up. Yes. Saying, what are we here to do? What’s the purpose? And what are— not that, you know, we talk a little bit about tasks yesterday. If we can have a talk about that and how to move away from just a task focus, but like, what are the outcomes that we’re trying to achieve here and how do we achieve those outcomes with the humans?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:04:40]:

Yep.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:40]:

And with the robots, with AI, but bringing people on that journey as well.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:04:45]:

Yeah. And I think, look, part of bringing people on the journey is bringing their voice into the conversation. Yeah. And I’m not sure that that we’re thinking about it correctly. Mm-hmm. Meaning a lot of companies have said, like, and, and even us, right? Oh, we did a survey at the beginning to identify the tools. Great. But then keep talking to the people.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:05:08]:

How is it working? What are you finding? Are you just going through the motions and trying to do your job now with AI, or are you actually looking at the processes and saying, I don’t know why we do this part at all. Yeah. And I think there’s a huge opportunity to remove the bureaucracy that nobody likes at work and that gets in the way of actually accomplishing the thing you want to accomplish. But that also means that leaders have to have a much lower ego than they’ve ever had in working experience.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:41]:

Yeah. Do you think that’s one of the big barriers then? So as a leader, I want to own the process, I want to keep everything to myself. And not to get kind of too kind of into psychiatry or anything, but like thinking back to when we were children and saying, okay, what did I not get? So therefore I want to keep control of this, I want to take over. And the kind of default mode that we have when things are not going well is to maybe start taking over and taking control or avoiding situations completely.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:06:11]:

Right. And I think that there are 2 types of leaders that maybe were more successful in the past than they can be in the future.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:21]:

Okay.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:06:22]:

Right? And so I think that the model of what people have seen as leadership has dictated for a very long time then the translation of what does it mean to lead. And being a leader means having all the answers and jumping in when things go wrong and all of those things. And as we think about the human elements that we need to elevate work and taking everything that were soft skills before and now saying they’re the most critical of human skills. Yeah. It’s an opportunity for leaders to admit the goal is not for me to have all the answers. The goal is for me to have the right questions. The goal is for me to know the people who either can get us the answer or will by coming together help us to find the right answer. And I will tell you that it’s, you know, I don’t want to say that I’ve always known this and innately done this, but I think over time what I’ve learned is the more that I let go and let my team own and get creative and think about, the more I’m like, actually, yeah, that’s a better idea than what I would have come up with in the first place.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:07:30]:

Which then gives me license to say, Okay, well then what do I want to be focusing on? As opposed to, we have to accomplish all of these things, and if I’m not involved to the nth degree in every single one, then I’m afraid it might fail.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:43]:

Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s a big fear for a lot of leaders. Do you have any examples beyond, like, your own example of where you see people doing this well or where you see people not doing it so well?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:07:56]:

So in organizations, that have prioritized performance over anything else and said like, what we’re getting out of people is the ultimate goal.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:10]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:08:11]:

That’s where it’s not working. Okay. Right? Like, that’s where the leadership is, yes, focused on outcomes, but focused on outcomes and the delivery and not necessarily like, how was it to get here?

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:25]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:08:25]:

And I think caring about the how is absolutely critical. We have a number of clients, and I’m thinking of some, actually one of our newest ones is Stolt-Nielsen, where thinking about the how is like tantamount to how successful they feel their people can be. Yeah. Right? And showing the care for the people to be able to say, yes, I care about the outcomes, but if getting there is such a drain and a drag that I’m just burning through people, then it’s not worth it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:55]:

Yeah. And that— I think that message in itself was abundantly clear from the Workhuman Forum yesterday. It was kind of a thread throughout the entire day. But I’ve also heard that, you know, we’ve spoken about it on the podcast previously as well. And it’s such an interesting thing, dare I say, but when you’re an early leader, it’s results at all costs. And you kind of forget that the people are there to help you get the results. And if you don’t look after the people, then there’s going to be a problem because you’re going to burn through them, or they’re going to leave, or they’re going to get to the stage and they’re going to learn that that’s how to lead, and you’re going to progress like that. And it’s— sometimes it’s going to catch up on you.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:09:35]:

Right, right. And I think, look, another example I’ll give you is that when I started at Workhuman just over 3 years ago, the first conversation that I had with Eric, our CEO, he was like, I don’t want you to come to me with a 90-day, all right, I figured it all out and here’s my plan, because he’s like, you’re not going to know the company in 90 days because the company is made up of all of these people.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:00]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:10:01]:

And you need to figure out your relationship to the people, how things are working, and get a real sense of what’s the right first thing for you to tackle. And he’s like, and if that takes a year, that makes a lot of sense.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:14]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:10:14]:

And I was in my head, I was like, it can absolutely not take a year. Yeah,

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:19]:

yeah, yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:10:19]:

Right. But that’s because that’s how you’re used to working coming from other places. And I think the opportunity to slow down is actually something that AI can afford us, which seems counterintuitive. But if we, you know, to go to the tasks, if AI is doing tasks for us and we have taken the time to redesign the work that should be getting done, then we have an opportunity to, in elevating our work, take a beat. Yeah. And, and think through this, be very thoughtful, right? Collaborate more and more effectively, not just for the sake of saying I had 20 meetings today. And so I, I get very excited at the prospect of if we get this right, if we really listen to the people, if we truly understand the opportunity that we have to rebuild work, then we will create so much space for our human selves to be happier at work, I guess.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:23]:

Yeah, yeah. I think there’s a couple of things I want to point, kind of drill into on what you’re saying. What I’m seeing out there is With AI, we’re saving— maybe at an individual level, we’re saving time, but at a team or organizational level, we’re not necessarily, because of the collaboration cost, because of what it takes, and because we’re not necessarily sharing what we’re learning, whether we’re embarrassed that we’re using AI, we don’t want it to seem that AI can do our jobs for us, or to let other people know just how much time we’re saving. And then on the other side, With the time that we’re saving, we’re not necessarily reinvesting that into the human side. That we’re saying, oh well, I did 5 reports in that time and it used to take me 20 hours. Now I can do 20 reports instead of 5. And just kind of producing more and more work without necessarily questioning whether that is the work that we should be doing at all.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:12:16]:

Yeah, the question is, do we need 20 more reports?

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:20]:

Exactly.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:12:21]:

And actually, let’s look at those 5 reports and say, who’s reading them? Why are we doing this? To what end? Right? Like, what is it gaining us?

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:31]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:12:31]:

And I’ll talk about Workhuman. We were having a conversation the other day and there was an example on my team where somebody used AI to figure out how to build an agent to intake business processes within our team to then figure out where we could simplify them. And then to explain the agent and get everyone involved, they used AI to write the thing about the agent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when they were kind of indirectly given the feedback of like, I’m still confused, I’m not exactly sure what to do, then trying to use AI to explain the parts that were confusing to people.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:15]:

Okay.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:13:16]:

And what we wound up with was a very circuitous thing that when we stopped to think about it, we were like, why are we overcomplicating this? Actually, all we want you to do is just like write down the process as you do it today.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:30]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:13:31]:

And then we can figure out, okay, and what all does that entail?

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:34]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:13:35]:

And I think that there is— there can be a beautiful simplicity to how we leverage AI. But I think that everybody right now is trying to maximize what we’re getting from it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:48]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:13:49]:

And possibly overcomplicating the things that don’t need to be overcomplicated. And then you have the whole conversation about AI slop, right? Like, yes, I, I love having an editor. I love having a person or an agent or, you know, something that’s there in the hours when I decide, oh, I wanna do a little bit of work now, but my team should not be online.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:15]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:14:16]:

And that doesn’t stop me from still engaging with my team.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:20]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:14:20]:

And letting them know like, hey, I used AI for this. Can you kind of take a look at it? Let me know maybe what I’m missing. Mm-hmm. And bring a human element back to it. And that’s the way that I want us to spend that time that we free up. In addition to, the other day we had wellness chats at work, we’re talking about digital detox. And so where are the opportunities to step away from the computer? I mean, honestly, if AI is gonna do some of this work for us, it should mean that it can do that. Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:14:53]:

And I’ll be back to check on you. Yeah, yeah. But now I am freed up to take a walk or go do something else, right?

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:00]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:15:00]:

And so I, I’m a little bit fearful that when we talk about the future of work, we’re thinking about it in a box and in a very traditional way of work is the 9 to 5 or 8 to 6 or whatever your working hours are and what happens within that time, as opposed to thinking about it as it has been, which is work bleeds into life and life bleeds into work.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:25]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:15:25]:

And so where and however we can, how do we make it clear when work is happening versus when it’s not and be okay with both of those times?

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:36]:

Yeah. So much to pick up on that. One of the things I wanna share is I’m doing that the same in my business. It’s me. I have a couple of people who support me in the business, and I have probably overcomplicated so many things because you think I have to use AI in this and I have to use AI in that. So that was one thing I wanted to bring up. The other thing is this idea of work. So a couple of things.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:58]:

How do we actually redesign work? What is work? We’ll get on to that. But also, how do we delineate between work and life if they’re going to bleed into each other so much? And my understanding of this is some people need those very rigid boundaries and other people are a bit more free-flowing. So it works well for some people to have boundaries, and it works well for others not to have boundaries between work and life. So maybe we start with the idea that, like, what is work and what are we here to do? You know, it’s

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:16:30]:

a— Yes.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:30]:

It’s a very fundamental philosophical question.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:16:34]:

There are so many people who work in this, like, thinking industry. Right?

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:43]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:16:43]:

And so, for a lot of people, work is no longer making a physical thing. For even more people, it is, and that’s very different because for them, they’re— I can imagine sitting there and going like, I know what I accomplish every day.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:58]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:16:58]:

Here’s the output, like the physical representation of the thing.

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:01]:

Something very tangible that you can show people.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:17:04]:

And working in the intangibles leaves a lot of leeway for calling something work and saying it’s absolutely critical when it may not be, but to justify the, I can show something about the work, right?

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:19]:

I have to feel like I can show that I have done work, therefore— well, it also means that we don’t know when to stop work. And I’m thinking, I don’t know if you know David Allen’s work, but he— one of his questions, and I struggle to answer this, he goes, how do you know when work is done. Like, oh, oh, we haven’t clearly defined this is how we know when something’s actually finished because we can keep going on and on and on and tweaking.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:17:47]:

Yeah, and I think that the way that leadership has worked in the past is almost inadvertently telling you that work is a Sisyphean effort. Like, you’re pushing the rock up the hill and it’s gonna slide back down and you gotta push it back up. And there’s been so many like sports metaphors and leaders and they’re like, you know, come on team, the work is never done. And it’s like, well, timeout. The work is done once I get in my car and I go home. Yeah. I might turn the work back on at some point if I feel like I would like to do that or I wanted to get this thing done that I didn’t. But if the expectation is that people are supposed to be so dedicated to their work that they’re willing to, like, be flexible with the hours and do all of these things, then I think that work owes us something to be able to say, well, then here are the moments when it’s off and here are the moments when it’s on.

Aoife O’Brien [00:18:42]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:18:43]:

And I, I still struggle with the fact that we’re still basing work structures around World War II models and, you know, Industrial Revolution models of, we have a supply chain and we can go from one part of the factory to the other. Yeah. And there are all of these handoffs. And it’s like, why do we have the departments that we have? And each department is its own little fiefdom that generates a certain amount of work. And it’s like, well, what would happen if instead of generating their own work, it was all about what are we creating in the end and who all has to be involved to do that really well?

Aoife O’Brien [00:19:23]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:19:23]:

What does that look like? How does that flow? What does it remove from the process that actually we don’t need? And sometimes I think about it in terms of a lot of startup organizations are very good at like, well, we can’t care about that thing right now because we have to focus on this part. I think what we can do is be more thoughtful, more educated industries with longer-standing histories of this is how work has been.

Aoife O’Brien [00:19:55]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:19:55]:

And it hasn’t been great for most people, right? Like having the type of job where, you know, you’re in white-collar work or whatever you want to call it, and you go home and you’re stressed because a meeting went poorly. Mm-hmm.

Aoife O’Brien [00:20:11]:

Yes. That’s so true.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:20:12]:

Like, when you actually step back and think about it, it’s like, who in the world cares that this meeting went poorly, right? Unless I’m talking about like, well, I didn’t stop them from going to war, right?

Aoife O’Brien [00:20:27]:

Like, aside from that, right?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:20:30]:

And I think sometimes we just get so wrapped up in the identity of work and wanting to be good at work that we lose sight of what is the end goal anyway. And from a day-to-day basis, it’s really easy to get hung up on that. And, and even, you know, even for me as somebody who’s sitting here saying it now, I’m probably gonna go back and be like, oh, in the podcast I could have mentioned these 3 things, and oh my gosh. And, and at the end of the day, it’s like, no, we’re here, we’re having a conversation. Like, that’s also okay.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:04]:

Yeah, yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:21:04]:

And I think we have just put a ton of pressure on how each moment in work goes to the extent that we’ve lost sight of what is work.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:16]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it’s such a good point. I love the idea of each— like, why do the departments exist? I certainly never questioned that. I’m like, well, we just have the finance department versus the operations versus client service. That’s just how it’s always been done. But I love the opportunity to even question that and think, okay, so I’m thinking about it from a kind of a factory. Here are the inputs that we have time and resources and thinking, and here’s what we’re trying to achieve. Now, how do we all collectively work together? Which also lends itself to each individual person in the company knows their contribution to what it is we’re trying to achieve, and I think that’s some.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:55]:

I think that’s really important that a lot of people don’t necessarily know. Like, how am I individually contributing to the outcomes that we’re trying to achieve?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:22:05]:

Right.

Aoife O’Brien [00:22:05]:

The impact that I’m having on clients.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:22:07]:

And thinking about all of the layers that exist in organizations and, you know, the conversation around org design and, well, now with AI, you know, you hear that the founder of Bluesky is like, I’m going to have 110 direct reports. And it’s like, why would you do that? I don’t see the value in that. Yes, I appreciate the theory behind flatter organizations.

Aoife O’Brien [00:22:32]:

Yeah. And he’s trying to make it flat. Yes. So him, 110 people.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:22:35]:

Yes. And I’m like, maybe that’s too flat. And so I’m not sure. I think that there are some promising practices out there of where people have shrunk I think we need some layers, but I also think that as we kind of think about the experience of work and who’s doing what and how do I know what my contributions are, we should be solving for that. And that will probably tell us how many layers to have or not to have, what types of roles are the most critical roles in an organization.

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:11]:

My big question now is, is there an opportunity to totally rethink what we’re doing at work, and how do we get started with that? And by that I mean it’s kind of almost going back to zero and saying, what are we here to actually do? Do you think that’s a realistic opportunity for a lot of organizations, or are we going to kind of struggle with that? And, and what are the steps that we can take? Like, are you starting to see those kind of things, or how do you think about those kinds of things that were human?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:23:40]:

Yes, so first and foremost, I think if we say, how are we going to think about work to redesign work, that is too big.

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:52]:

Yes.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:23:52]:

Right? And so I think what is an interesting kind of challenge is if department by department you thought about what is it that we are here to do, and what are the things that we are doing, how many of those fit into the actual what is it that we’re here to do, and then breaking down the steps of getting those things done. That can be an easier thing to then take and say, okay, now each department has whittled it down, so now as an organization, let’s have a look at this smaller list of things, and oh my goodness, here’s where legal and finance and operations overlap. Here’s where HX and the product team overlap and what they’re trying to accomplish. And then I think that helps us to think differently about, do we have departments or do we actually have like project groups and teams? Yeah. And does that start to rotate? And kind of that idea around pods within engineering teams. I’m not sure exactly the shape that that needs to take. I’ve also heard of different organizations, Klaviyo being one of them, where they got rid of all titles. Okay.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:25:08]:

And so I’m very interested to check back in on how that’s gone, right? I think there are some people who are taking some radical swings, but it’s a piece of the puzzle. It’s not the entire puzzle. And so you have to start somewhere, but I think the way that you start is you have to include the people. And so that’s why I’m saying, like, I think if you think about it department by department and how we’re structured right now, at least that’s something that people can already wrap their heads around. How could my day-to-day be better? What are the— you know, everybody has that list of things that they’re like, I have no idea why we do this. Yeah. It is always a pain, this process, right? Like, work on those things. Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:25:52]:

Who doesn’t have the energy to, like, want to take a sledgehammer to those things?

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:56]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:25:57]:

And then as you kind of get in the habit of, oh, so it doesn’t have to look like this and we can design what it looks like, I think then people will be more willing to be flexible about then how does that start to shape an organization and the way that things are structured. I think if you try to go at too many things too quickly, I mean, even for me, I’m like, I don’t know, how do you even get that started? So I think taking it piece by piece is really important, and I think all along the way reminding people what should happen at the end of this. Yeah. Work should be less complicated. It should create even more clarity about What their contributions are to the ultimate end goal for the organization, and then recognizing people for what they have contributed. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, always kind of putting down someone as a naysayer because they’re like, this process is really cumbersome, and it’s like, well, get over it and just get it done. Just do it, yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:26:58]:

Those are actually the people that you want to say, okay, well, what’s cumbersome about this process? And then thank them.

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:04]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:27:04]:

For bringing this up, for thinking through it, for wanting to spend some energy on making it better.

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:11]:

Yeah, I think tying back into what we talked about earlier, it goes back to the leaders not necessarily holding on to everything themselves and feeling like they’re responsible, but also giving agency to individuals to challenge those processes and to rethink how their day-to-day needs to look. Rather than thinking we need to reshape the entire organization, we can think, how does this impact on my day-to-day? And what— how can I as an individual claim that agency as well? Because sometimes I think we feel like, oh well, it’s always been done that way, so we, we just have to do things the way they’re being done because that’s how we do them. But thinking, how can we challenge that, you know, a process or an outcome or whatever it might be, like, why are we actually doing that to begin with?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:28:02]:

Yeah, and I think that that’s kind of also what we were getting at, at what we need out of leaders now that’s different from what we needed before. We need leaders to challenge and to be okay with being challenged. Yes, right. And historically, in some cases, that was never allowed. I think as somebody who grew up realizing sometimes authority is wrong at a very young age, I’m okay with challenging, but I know not everybody feels that way. So what are you doing to create the types of environments that tell people you can take agency, you can push back? Exactly. Is there enough trust there? Yeah. And how can you make sure that it’s not only happening in some pockets, that it’s happening everywhere and it becomes pervasive? And in order to do that, you have to be very clear with your leaders about what you expect from them as leaders.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:28:57]:

Yeah. What do those behaviors look like? Because there are a lot of organizations that say like, yes, our leaders are open and everybody’s free to challenge. But then when you look at it, the things that they get rewarded for are owning outcomes. Yeah. And, you know, driving their team to success and all, and all of this language that says, You need to take charge, you need to have the answers, you need to make sure that your people are doing the things in the ways they’re supposed to do them. And so in some cases, it takes rewriting the behaviors, the values, the, the skill set that you want out of your leadership to then reward them for the right things, to reinforce those right things.

Aoife O’Brien [00:29:36]:

And I’m kind of thinking it will differ from organization to organization, depending on what the outcomes are, but are there some kind of blanket, this is the kind of environment that we want to create through our leaders, through their behaviors? Any thoughts on kind of more that will apply to all kinds of organizations? Putting you on the spot now.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:29:59]:

Yeah, yeah, that’s okay. I think core values to me that I bring everywhere are humility, authenticity, and transparency.

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:10]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:30:12]:

And I think that those need to be core to all leaders as we go forward.

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:16]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:30:16]:

Right? And one thing that I think people can understand humility, which is that sense of I don’t have all the answers and I’m better with team, right? Yeah. Answers, good answers can come from anywhere. You know, a challenge can come from anywhere, that sort of thing. And then transparency is transparency. I’m going to tell you what I know when I know it, and to the best of my ability, I’m going to try to contextualize that in a way that not only can you understand, but you can understand enough to then ask more questions about it or say, look, I understand, but I don’t agree, but we can move forward. Yeah. I think the authenticity piece, people typically hear that as Well, now I’ve got to be vulnerable with the team and I have to do— no, authenticity is literally how are you in a natural state where you’re at like homeostasis, right? Like, I feel okay here. I’m not— I don’t feel too heightened.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:31:14]:

I don’t feel too low. And how can you make sure that that’s the more consistent version of you that shows up at work? Mm. As opposed to the, I’ve got to put on my professional self. Yeah. And then I can be my relaxed self, because I also think that that context switching in leadership is what can throw a lot of people off.

Aoife O’Brien [00:31:33]:

Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:31:33]:

I— one of the hardest lessons for me to really grasp was the sense of if you are in a leadership role, people are looking at you and looking to you for different things than when you’re a peer-to-peer colleague or somebody who just works in another department that they like to chat with sometimes. And the reason why that was hard for me was because I don’t think of myself as like leader is separate from.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:02]:

Yes. Right?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:32:03]:

And I think in a lot of organizations and for a lot of folks who have a longer work history, that has been their experience. Oh, those are the leaders, or that’s the leadership team. And yes, I’m on a leadership team, but my team are my people, right? And, and all the people that work at Workhuman, when I show up to visit different departments and the like, I’m not going there as a leader who’s here to inspect what’s happening. I’m going there to just check in. How are you doing? What’s going on here? Because I’m a naturally curious person, and that can throw some people off. Yeah. So I’ve also learned that that if I couple authenticity with transparency and let folks know I tend to ask a lot of questions, and when I get very excited about something, then I pepper with even more questions. And that could feel intimidating, but if you know that that’s something that I do, hopefully that turns down the heat a little bit.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:33:00]:

Yeah. And allows people to say, whoa, that is a lot of questions. And then I can go, you know what, I actually only have one question that I feel like I need to know the answer to now, and then the rest we can figure out. Yeah. Um, but just getting used to working with people in a way that’s like, hey, here’s how I like to work and when I think I’m doing my best. Here’s what I would love from you in terms of how to give me feedback and how I want us to interact. And now tell me the same about you so that we can figure out that happy medium, as opposed to I’m the leader, so you need to work in the ways that are best for me.

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:35]:

Yeah, and I think it’s good that you let people know that that’s how you are, because otherwise they’re thinking, oh, she’s coming and she’s coming to check on me, she’s asking me so many questions about what I’m doing. But knowing that, it’s like, oh, that’s just how she is. She’s being herself as opposed to being the leader who needs to check in and make sure everything’s okay.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:33:57]:

Yes. Yes, because I very much so have had the experience of having leaders like that, and I know what that feels like to be like, oh, at any point there’s gonna be an inspection, right? And I’m like, I don’t want that environment anywhere around where I am or where I can have influence. Yeah. And at the same time, I don’t want people to hear that and then go, she doesn’t care about compliance, and she does. It’s like, no, No, no, that’s not what I’m saying.

Aoife O’Brien [00:34:25]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s the happy medium.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:34:28]:

Exactly, yep.

Aoife O’Brien [00:34:29]:

Yeah, yeah. And KeyAnna, the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what does being happier at work mean to you?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:34:36]:

Oh my gosh, being happier at work. There are a few things that come to mind. The first is, so for me, when I go into our recognition platform, that really, I shouldn’t say this, but really the only report that I really care about is how many of my team members were or weren’t recognized within the last month or week or whatever. And I am always so proud to see that consistently all of my directs have been recognized in the last month, right? And not simply by me, by other people. Yeah. And I think it’s just a really good reminder of people are putting in work every day. And it’s been nice to kind of leave behind the, we only acknowledge the exceptional. Yeah.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:35:30]:

And that we can acknowledge that you showed up today. Yeah. You did a good job. Yeah. You pushed something forward. Yeah. Right? And the impact that that has on your people. And then also how you show up as a human.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:35:43]:

We can celebrate when you have a birthday or buy a house or have a baby. And so I think that for me, I have learned that happiness at work is really being able to appreciate other people.

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:57]:

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And if people want to find out more about you, what you do, and Workhuman in general, what’s the best way they could do that?

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:36:04]:

Yes, so workhuman.com. Go check it out, read our thought leadership, and then test me. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m not on other social media just because I’m like, that’s a lot of business. And they don’t. I’m not sure how to do that well. But please, like, write, you know, write to me, ask me questions. I’m happy to share more information or connect you with other people at Workhuman who think about this in a similar way and are working with other organizations to do so.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:36:38]:

And also, if folks are around, we have a conference in the States every year. That’s a big one. We also have forums in London and in Paris. So check us out in person as well. Brilliant.

Aoife O’Brien [00:36:50]:

Thank you so much for your time today. It’s such a great opportunity to be able to record this in person. So thank you.

KeyAnna Schmiedl [00:36:55]:

Thank you.

Aoife O’Brien [00:36:56]:

That was KeyAnna Schmiedl from Workhuman, and I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Do let me know what you think and don’t forget to share it with someone who needs to hear it today.