CONNECT WITH JESSI ON LINKEDIN >>> HERE!

Great leadership is not just about holding people accountable.

It is also about understanding what is actually happening before deciding why someone is struggling.

In this episode of At Work, Under Pressure, Jessi Beyer sits down with leadership coach and author Mike Goldman to talk about high-performing leadership teams, accountability, coaching, vulnerability, talent development, and why assuming positive intent can completely change the way leaders respond when someone is falling short.

Mike explains that leaders often become frustrated because they unconsciously assume negative intent: they’re lazy, they don’t care, they should know better. His alternative is to assume that people are doing the best they can with the resources they have, then get curious about what the leader or employee may be missing.

Jessi and Mike discuss:

• Why assuming positive intent creates better coaching conversations
• What separates a merely good leadership team from a genuinely great one
• Why vulnerability includes being able to say “I screwed up,” ask for help, and give difficult feedback
• How leadership teams can stay connected to what employees closer to the front line are actually experiencing
• Why employee feedback is useless if leaders never communicate what they did with it
• How to decide whether someone should be coached up, moved into a better-fitting role, or coached out
• Why Mike believes the number one driver of profit growth is people growth

Mike also explains why senior leaders cannot afford mediocre performance in roles with outsized influence, and why companies often make the mistake of investing disproportionately in struggling employees while failing to keep developing their strongest people.

This episode is for CEOs, executives, HR leaders, leadership coaches, people managers, and anyone trying to build a team where accountability and humanity can exist at the same time.

Because assuming positive intent does not mean lowering the standard.

It means getting curious enough to understand the real problem before deciding what needs to happen next.

CONNECT WITH MIKE

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Jessi's interview on The Better Leadership Team Show

CONNECT WITH JESSI ON LINKEDIN >>> HERE!

Most organizations obsess over strategy, talent, and effort.

But Karina Mangu-Ward argues that the real action is happening somewhere else: inside teams.

In this episode of At Work, Under Pressure, Jessi Beyer sits down with Karina Mangu-Ward, partner at August and author of Teams That Meet the Moment, to talk about decision-making, hierarchy, politics, psychological safety, trust, belonging, and the everyday ways teams organize, decide, and learn.

Karina explains why teams often get trapped in decision swirl, why “just have one decision-maker” is not enough, and how practices like rounds, starting proposals, “safe to try,” and naming trade-offs can help teams move forward with more clarity and less fear. She also connects broken decision-making to the psychological experience of work, including how talented people start leaning out when they feel excluded from the decisions that affect them.

Jessi and Karina discuss:

• Why better strategy, better talent, and more effort are not enough when team practices are broken
• How lowercase-p politics and hierarchy can either help teams or exhaust them
• Why decision-making is one of the most important everyday muscles organizations need
• How “safe to try” helps teams move without waiting for perfect certainty
• Why leaders build trust by explaining the logic behind hard decisions
• How exclusion from decision-making can erode belonging, engagement, and mental health

This episode is for executives, team leaders, consultants, HR leaders, organizational development professionals, people managers, and anyone trying to help teams make better decisions in complex, high-pressure environments.

Because the quality of work does not just depend on the strategy.

It depends on whether the people doing the work can organize, decide, and learn together when the moment demands it.

CONNECT WITH KARINA

• LinkedIn
• Website & Book

CONNECT WITH JESSI ON LINKEDIN >>> HERE!

Everything starts with a job.

A job supports families, homes, cars, dreams, and the ability to build a life. And for Janel Hunt, EVP of Human Resources at BGSF, that means HR is never just paperwork. It is where people, business, compliance, technology, and human support intersect.

In this episode of At Work, Under Pressure, Jessi Beyer sits down with Janel Hunt, EVP of Human Resources at BGSF, a publicly traded workforce solutions company focused heavily on real estate, property management, and property technology. Janel shares how her psychology background shaped her HR career, what it means to keep HR human inside a regulated public company, and why people teams have to balance compliance, business outcomes, employee experience, and human connection.

Jessi and Janel discuss:

• How BGSF supports companies through staffing, workforce solutions, and property technology
• What changes when HR operates inside a publicly traded company
• How people teams can keep compliance human and business-forward
• Why benefits, inclusion, volunteer time off, parental leave, and connection groups matter to culture
• How AI can support HR teams without removing the human from the loop
• Why suicide prevention readiness belongs in every leader’s toolkit before a crisis happens

This episode is for HR leaders, staffing leaders, executives, people teams, public company leaders, and anyone thinking about how to use technology, benefits, compliance, and culture to support people at scale.

Because HR is not just about keeping the company compliant.

It is about making sure the humans inside the company have the tools, resources, and readiness they need when work and life collide.

CONNECT WITH JANEL

• jhunt@bgsf.com
• LinkedIn
• Website
• Blood Cancer United Fundraiser