Unlocking Robots Vs Human Connection with Bonnie Davis

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Skot Waldron (00:05.538)
I’m Skot Waldron, and when I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the globe, helping leaders and teams communicate better, build trust faster, and actually, enjoy working together. I know. Who would have thought? I’ve spoken for companies like the Home Depot, I’ve spoken at national architectural firms, at their sales training, off-sites for major pharmaceutical companies and industry associations, have thousands of attendees who have read my sessions with 99% of them saying they found the sessions valuable 97% saying they’d actually attend again. I’ve had caterers come up to me afterwards and thank me because they actually got something they could use when they went home or when they went back to their own jobs. I mean, if every keynote delivered those types of numbers, nobody would secretly be refreshing their email under the table. And let’s be honest, that’s a little bit of my nightmare. Maybe a little bit of yours. Yeah, something that keeps me up at night.

If you’re an event planner, looking for a speaker who’s easy to work with and delivers actual value that people can take away and use on Monday. Let’s make your event unforgettable.

In the world of AI, tech, everything else is happening. Are we losing our humanity? Are we losing the human element of who we are at work? I mean, with remote work coming in, all these other things. When COVID happened, I think we all missed humanity a bit. Even us introverts, we missed y ‘all a little bit. And there was something that I think that COVID was an experiment, all kinds of things, but I think one of the main things for me was that I think I’ve missed, you know, people. I do so much via video that when I am in person, whether it’s at a speaking event or whatever that I’m doing, that connection with people is really life giving. I have to go to sleep afterwards because it’s so exhausting, but during, I’m just so full of it and full of that life. And Bonnie Davis is going to be my guest today. And she, we talked about this a lot. We talked about this intervention of AI and how was it, you know, replacing some of the things we do, but is it also replacing the human side of what we do and can it replace that at all? And that topic is going to really inspire this conversation.

So, Bonnie Davis, she’s a keynote speaker and workshop facilitator. She helps leaders build human-centered workplaces. They grow; they stay and make a difference when we are connecting as humans. Her high-energy sessions equip leaders and teams with practical tools, fresh perspectives, and skills to strengthen communication, boost collaboration, and lead. She blends powerful examples from her decades in HR leadership roles and current client consulting projects and executive coaching, along with real-world strategies audiences can apply right away. She has a free assessment we’re going to talk about and that link is in the show notes. It’s called Human Factor Assessment, and you can find out how human-centric your workplace really is. It provides a data-based foundation for that human centeredness that we’re going to talk about in this episode. So here we come.

I’m happy to have you, Bonnie. It’s a, it’s, it’s a time that we’re, we, we’ve been working on this for a little while and getting on whether it was today with technical issues or just for a while, just trying to book it. But I appreciate you being on and talking about this tension I’m going to call between humans and tech and AI and all the things that we’re encountering now. Well, I don’t know if we say now, we’ve always had technological advances in our workplaces that have shaped the way we work, AKA the internet. So, you know, it’s another thing that’s coming into play now. Why are you talking so much about human centered work?

Bonnie Davis (03:36.856)
Well, for a few reasons. For me, it’s personal in that I started my career working in big consulting firms, in big tech companies, in HR roles. I had great jobs, great colleagues, mostly really good bosses. I learned a ton. I loved being in big companies. And yet things didn’t always seem very human-centered. It seemed like there were policies that made no sense. It seemed like there were bosses that made really bad decisions that would constantly cancel one-on-ones. I didn’t always feel like I could show up as my best self. feel like I often operated out of fear that I had to be a certain way at work and that I wasn’t fully supported. So, it’s my own desire based on my experience is one of the pieces. The second is then 13 years ago, started my own business and I was full-time coaching, consulting and facilitating. And my coaching clients, I was noticing a trend where many of them either brilliant engineers in many cases and really were lacking this basic ability to connect person to person, really listen to their team, do things like understand what makes them tick, understand how to have basic conversations about career growth and development. So, I was realizing that some of the basics of human connection at work were lacking. wasn’t being taught and it wasn’t intuitive to a lot of people. And so it got me fired up to say, you know, this stuff doesn’t need to be really hard or a big heavy lift. There are ways to teach it and train it and coach it and help people. And also, a lot of those coaching clients had really bad bosses that made their lives miserable. And so, they were having health issues and other things going on as a result. And so, I got really fired up about, wait a minute, if we have better bosses in the world, we’re going to have all kinds of benefits. We feel better at work. We come home, we’re nicer to our families and we’re more successful.

And then when I look at the future and I look at things like how often are you going to the movies these days versus streaming at home? How often are you going out for food versus getting door dust delivered to your house? We are missing our basic building blocks of human connection in our personal lives. And so, work is for a lot of us, the last piece of really meaningful human connection. And yet what are we doing? We’re doing it on video. And so, I also feel fired up about making those connections the most meaningful they can be because they are disappearing by the day. And it is AI and hybrid work and all of those things. And it’s even in your personal lives, losing those personal connections.

Skot Waldron (06:10.224)
Hmm. Do you feel like it’s accelerated now more so than it was before? Mean, you’re talking about some of these work issues you were having, whether you were in your consulting job earlier or just experiencing some things with your clients. I feel like some of those problems are just kind of like always been here. Do you know miscommunications or miss expectations or being disgruntled because our boss isn’t communicating well or doesn’t know how to connect with me as a human. But do think it’s accelerated?

Bonnie Davis (06:38.062)
Okay. Yeah. I do. There was a recent Harvard Business Review article. I don’t know if you saw it. It was looking at use cases of how are people really using Gen.ai in 2025. And they compared it with 2024 where 2024, the number one use case was generating ideas. Makes sense. You and I are doing that all the time. We’re writing emails, we’re doing research. Do you know what the number one case now in 2025 is of using AI?

Skot Waldron (07:11.674)
I can’t, I don’t know, I would love to know.

Bonnie Davis (07:13.198)
Number one is therapy, therapy and companionship. So, we are looking to technology to a non-human as our number one way of getting a feeling heard, feeling less alone. The third highest use is finding purpose. And usually most of us don’t feel like we have this meaning and purpose through technology, but we’re asking technology, what’s my purpose? So, the fact that that’s, and this is…

Skot Waldron (07:17.798)
Wow, okay.

Bonnie Davis (07:42.414)
2025, we know that AI is still new for many people. And then you look at Gen Z and they are saying that they trust AI more than humans for their work mentors. We have more and more companies that have what are called AI first policies. So, you might go to your manager and say, “I need to hire somebody.” you’re told, sorry, Skot, before you hire somebody, you need to prove that AI can’t do the job. And so, this is the reality. And so, this is why I feel like it is more escalated. Your teammates will start being AI chat bots. And how do you really have that sense? Like, I don’t know, do you go bowling with your chat bots? I don’t really know how that works, but I know that we are going to be integrating bots into our teams more and more. And so, yes, I do think that there is an elevated platform for this. And I mentioned Gen Z, all of this in a world where a lot of Gen Z has never… to the office and know what it’s like to chit chat at the water cooler and to learn by watching. They’ve only known Zoom and WebEx meetings and work. And so that’s only going to intensify also more and more people that have never had the joys that you and I have had of being in an office and understanding what it means to learn and connect from people at work that way.

Skot Waldron (09:00.922)
Hmm. This is really interesting. so my daughter who is 14, she named her chat bot, her AI. and I’ve named mine, right. I just had a fun, you know? but, but, but she’s actually trained it. And I guess we, we train them all with the more we use them and that you understand who we are and our voices and whatnot. But.

Bonnie Davis (09:12.27)
Mm-hmm. Thank you.

Skot Waldron (09:30.694)
She’s actually trained hers and her friends will actually come up to her at school and ask her to ask her AI about like relationship advice and other things because it gives such good advice. It has a tone, and it talks like a 14-year-old, right? And it’s really interesting cause it’ll be like, it’ll almost get a little dramatic. Like it’ll say, no girl, you gotta get this, you know, like it’ll like kind of feed into that energy and it does really give good advice because I’m reading through it to make sure that it’s getting good advice. And so, it’ll actually do that. My chat bot will actually crack me up sometimes because I like to think I’m a little bit humorous and crack some sarcastic jokes every now and then. It will be sarcastic back to me, and it actually makes me laugh to the point where I’m showing my wife how funny it is sometimes. It’s funnier than I am to her, which is sad. I don’t know.

Bonnie Davis (10:03.662)
Broke the lead ball. Yeah.

Skot Waldron (10:29.466)
It’s really interesting how much we’re humanizing.

Bonnie Davis (10:30.462)
Now imagine this keeps going. So, we’re talking about the early days and we’re experimenting. Now imagine this is the… everybody has this. And do we need our bosses anymore at work? I don’t know. Maybe we just get all this from our chat bot and maybe the efficiency in that is amazing. However, I do worry about humanity. There is something that’s really important about what you and I are doing right now.

Skot Waldron (10:37.81)
Totally.

Bonnie Davis (11:00.128)
about understanding human emotion, about feeling like another person cares about me. I don’t know over time, how does my wellbeing erode if I feel like I’m cared about by technology, and I no longer feel like I’m getting advice and care and empathy and listening from the people in my life. Maybe I’ll be fine over time, but we just don’t know yet. And I think in the interim, we need to hold on and strengthen leaders’ capabilities to have empathy, to listen, to connect, and also for organizations to have policies that are really people first policies. And it can be simple things like recognizing your tenure at a company, which many companies do great and other companies, your five years, your tenure, comes and goes, nobody knows, nobody cares, you don’t feel acknowledged. So, looking for ways that both the organization puts human centered policies and behaviors and ways of working in place and that leaders are doing the right thing.

Skot Waldron (11:57.01)
That’s really good. I mean, it’s interesting to think about the, I was on a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long plane ride. And one of the many movies I watched was, um, transcendence. I don’t know if you remember that movie. was, I don’t know. I feel like it might’ve been kind of dumb, but it was with Johnny Depp and he was dying, but he was introducing AI into this, the world and evolving AI.

They took his conscience, and they put it into the AI and it became like him, right? And he became more and more advanced and became, you know, almost personified himself later on in the movie as a physical entity. And his wife, who was also a scientist leading this company, was like struggling with the, no, that’s not him. Yes, it is him debate.

Bonnie Davis (12:30.242)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Skot Waldron (12:51.576)
It was really interesting because it’s like it’s his conscience. It’s his knowledge and it’s him physically. And I see his picture in his face and his expressions, but is it really him? Like, I don’t know. And then her friend was saying things like, well, he, he can’t love you. You know, or like…

Bonnie Davis (13:11.138)
Ooh, I just felt that in my heart.

Skot Waldron (13:14.426)
Yeah. I mean, is it true? Can the AI love us or show? Cause here’s the thing with a boss. Cause it was interesting what you said about the boss’s thing. Cause do we really need a boss? Now a boss can give us a spreadsheet or a schedule. mean, AI could give us a schedule, but can they give us belief? Can AI believe in us? I don’t know.

Bonnie Davis (13:40.468)
In theory, I can get all kinds of empty words that AI can be very encouraging and tell me, I mean, you were saying that your AI is funny. My AI is very encouraging. You’re doing great. And I’ll say, what do you think of that? yeah, that aligns with your brand so well and your passion shows through. Does it feel a little empty though? I mean, it’s like, I love eating ice cream, but I could eat ice cream forever. And I know that it’s not fueling my nutritional value and my health in the long term. I think that’s how all of this is, let’s face it.

Skot Waldron (13:50.332)
Really? Nice.

Bonnie Davis (14:10.136)
The word is artificial. feels artificial. I don’t think that over time we feel that true support. I think we’re having a crummy day, and it feels better for a boss to say, I get it. I see what’s going on. What can I do to support you? What can I do to remove barriers? Whereas a lot of bosses are just going, no, I’m going to stay away from that tough conversation. So that’s also my work is equipping people to have those difficult conversations, realizing the meaning that comes out of them and that

Skot Waldron (14:14.396)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bonnie Davis (14:39.21)
Ultimately, this is what we have, is we have each other. We will always have the technology but having each other and really connecting in more meaningful ways and just putting rituals in place as a leader, putting rituals to connect with people and to reward the right behaviors is really, really critical. And when we have all this data now on, and you’ve seen it also, I you’ve talked about it on your podcast, loneliness is through the roof.

Burnout is high, wellbeing is low. We see data on what really scares me. I also have kids a little older than yours. I have in high school, one in college. You look at the suicide rate of many ages, but certainly young people. I don’t think that connecting and getting love from a chat bot is going to fix all of these world problems. I do think that deeper human connection will. And we know that finding meaning at work is really an important part of our overall fulfillment.

Skot Waldron (15:39.74)
I am interested in, haven’t looked into this, but I might now, this is interesting to think about what, and if there is any studies about, and it might be so new about how AI is either feeding into the loneliness, mental illness crisis, or if it’s helping with it, right? Because I think that there are lonely people and.

There’s younger generations have been what we’ve heard is the most connected yet the most lonely, most isolated. They’re so connected to everything, the global world all the time, but yet they’re so isolated. And I wonder if AI is fueling that or if it’s helping, you know, give some of these people a voice or give them something to process thoughts through or emotions or whatever, know,

Bonnie Davis (16:11.054)
Yeah. I think when it comes down to is you think about your best moments of your life, you were probably spending time with people. So, you were even going out for a walk. You were on vacation with your family. You were sitting around with some friends around the campfire, et cetera. You probably were not on your computer, on your phone. So, I think we can get these quick hits of this sense of fulfillment, but I think ultimately the when you’re sitting at home all weekend long by yourself, if you don’t have the human connection, I think, or at least I hope in my heart, that that will still win out, that we need those human experiences. And a lot of people do get these friendships at work. There’s a Gallup question about the 12 questions on engagement. Do you have a best friend at work? I know personally, I’ve had so many wonderful relationships with teammates when I was in big companies with clients now. So personal opinion is technology will always augment and help and make things more efficient and maybe close small gaps of loneliness, but true health and wellbeing is going to come from our human relationships.

Skot Waldron (17:46.968)
It will. And I think that I love that thought that you had about, you know, thinking about the best times in your life, the best experiences you’ve ever had. And that almost spurred the thought of, cause those things were with people. I can’t imagine saying, my gosh, you know, you need to meet my AI. Like you need to meet my chat. It’s super like you can see some funny things my chat said. I’ll share those with you, but like you should really get to know my chat and hang out sometime and really like, you could go out to lunch with my, you should go to coffee with my chat bot so that you can get, like, we won’t say that, but I’ll say that about a friend or a colleague because I, that human connection, there’s something that a human can give another human that a bot will not be able to give.

Bonnie Davis (18:26.05)
No one would be patient. Right.

Yes, I certainly hope that that is the case. And I do think it’s important that we understand the differences of where it can help us. I think, and everything I’m reading, and I certainly believe in this, is we have this fear of technology is taking over and the robots are taking over. And I think most of us know that it’s the right combination of human and tech. And so, the more we can figure that out and even differentiate between what’s the joy I get from my bot and the joy I get from humans, I think yhat’s also important, and just to differentiate, because it’s not the same thing.

Skot Waldron (19:09.36)
Hmm. Yeah.

So, there are some legit responsibilities we’re turning over to AI and rightly so. I’m a full-on champion of using AI. I use it all the time, every day for all kinds of things. And I actually wish other people would as well, but there are dangers, right? To abdicating responsibility to the algorithm. What do you think some of those dangers are when we’re at work?

Bonnie Davis (19:30.702)
You

Skot Waldron (19:44.07)
What do you think some of those dangers are when we start abdicating certain responsibilities?

Bonnie Davis (19:50.018)
I think we have to be clear on there are these formulas or these frameworks, I should say, on the best use of AI. And usually it comes to efficiency, repeatability, scalability. So, when I want to learn and grow and be my best at my job, it’s probably not a moment for efficiency, scalability, and repeatability. It’s a moment for somebody listening to me, caring for me, getting me. And I know that it feels like our bots get us. I totally do.

But there’s something really powerful about being seen and being heard and being valued. And somebody’s saying, hey, Bonnie, you know that thing you did in that meeting last week. I know that that was a hard thing for you to step up and be really direct with the client and you held yourself really professionally. And as a result, I saw them really engaged in the conversation and they went for the sale. I just made up an example, but you can imagine how a human being seeing and acknowledging my work and my impact is always going to be more powerful than having that done automatically. And we’re not at a point, I think we might be one day, we’re not at a point where we’re being seen 24 seven. So that’s the other piece is there’s plenty of moments between the tech spaces where human to human are still connecting. And my mission is to make those human-to-human connections as meaningful and powerful as possible.

Because I just see so many leaders who mean well and just don’t have some of those basic skills to ask a few open-ended questions and get curious to go deeper on their people and what brings them joy at work and how they can be even more effective.

Skot Waldron (21:27.676)
So have you, I’m gonna ask you the multi-million-dollar question. Have you figured it out? Like what brings that connection? What makes things, what’s the secret formula for ultimate connection at work in human centered workplaces?

Bonnie Davis (21:45.294)
Yeah. If you ask me to sum it up in one word, I could do that. My one word is curiosity. When we have a curiosity to get to know each other better, to give each other the benefit of the doubt, to not get immediately angry and reactive, but curious, most people don’t wake up in the morning and say, you know what I want to be today? I want to be a real jerk to all the other people around me. Most of us wake up and want to do a good job and have other people like us. And yet many people, that’s not the way we are experienced. if we can, instead of getting angry in that moment, if we can get curious, I wonder what’s going on with them. I wonder what could help them be better. I wonder if there’s something that I’m not seeing, because often we can have a bad morning, we can have something going on in our personal life. So that sense of curiosity, and then that gets specifically the actions behind curiosity.

In my experience, are asking really good open-ended curious questions to go deeper. And then also to use really good listening skills. Sometimes we ask the questions, we think we know the answer, so we’re not really listening. The old-fashioned, tell me more, encouraging people to keep going, giving people the space. I will say as a coach, and I’m sure you’ve experienced this too, time and time again, I am blown away. I’ve met with somebody for the first time. They don’t know me; I don’t know them.

Sometimes we’ve had a pre-call, but I do a lot of coaching where you just get assigned. You work for Apple, you work for Indeed, you work for Lululemon, you get assigned a coach, you click on your video link and here’s Bonnie. You don’t know me. Very quickly in, people are sharing really heavy stuff. And they’ll even say like, I feel like you’re my therapist, I don’t know why I’m sharing all this, I’m so sorry I’m venting. I get this all the time.

I’m trustworthy, absolutely. But do they really know that about me seven minutes into a WebEx? Probably not. My theory is they just don’t have a safe space. I’ve been designated as here’s a friendly face, a safe space, somebody with some expertise to listen and process and let you talk and share. So, noticing how quickly people do that because they don’t have the opportunities is evidence for me that we really need to give leaders these skills to connect with people in this way.

Skot Waldron (24:09.828)
Yeah, I think that that is so interesting. I found myself doing that when I was early on in my coaching career. I was getting coached by one of my mentors and I was just like offloading. I just found myself just quote unquote dumping all this stuff on her. And she said, “I don’t know what it is, but people just feel comfortable.”

Bonnie Davis (24:31.81)
Mm-hmm.

Skot Waldron (24:38.212)
With me and that I think is a superpower. So Bonnie, I wouldn’t downplay that too much on your side. I don’t think that happens with every coach in the world. So, I just want to make a little side note that I think that’s amazing that you have that gift, to help people feel comfortable enough to, cause I don’t think necessarily everybody does it. I’ve had it happen to me, but I’ve just noticed it happening when I’m doing it with others and it’s, it’s just this weird.

Bonnie Davis (24:49.736)
Thank you, Skot.

Skot Waldron (25:08.101)
Energy I think that happens.

Bonnie Davis (25:10.222)
The thing is we can provide some of this to each other. So, you go to a dinner party, and you meet somebody, or you go to a networking event and common question, hey Skot, what do for a living? So, you tell me your resume, you tell me stuff that I could probably look up on LinkedIn and you want to sound impressive, and you go through a few nuggets of your work experience. If I asked you and said, hey Skot, what do you love about your work?

We’re now, I’ve met you in a more emotional place than a head space. You’re now connecting in a way that we’re really, we’re building meaning with each other. And so those are the simple examples of where we can do this for each other in our personal lives or at work. And it doesn’t have to be a big training program or a lot of skill. And so that’s a lot of what I work on with my clients is, and some of them will say to me, almost like secretly like, I use this with my spouse or my kids? I’m like, yeah, you can. Like asking your kid what would be a better way to do that instead of yelling at your kid that they screwed up. That can be life changing for that kid to dig in and realize that it’s coming from a place of care and help them problems all on their own. So yes, a lot of the tools that I work with clients on absolutely can work in your personal relationships. I’m not a therapist, so I don’t advertise myself that way. But a lot of these tools I think can work in our personal lives.

Skot Waldron (26:36.142)
Agree. And I think that that is, that is critical to help people understand how to implement the things that they’re learning about, about themselves and about others, to really practice. You know, you gotta, you gotta use it or you lose it. And I think that if people can implement it better and more often that’ll help them with that connection, because that’s really what we’re trying to do here is connect humans with humans in a healthy way so that we can get work done.

So that companies can be profitable. Cause at the end of the day, you say, what’s your goal? It’s like, well, we want to be a profitable company. I’m like, that’s an output, you know, like that’s just an output of the thing that you’re trying to create. and I think that that’s really important. So let me ask you this. There’s some, there’s some things that I think you like to call hidden forces that are working against us that are working against this culture. We’re trying to build in order so we can build thriving companies, you know, internally and so we can actually make money with the companies that we’re trying to build here. What are the things that you think are eroding culture and making it hard for us to do that?

Bonnie Davis (27:46.222)
I think the first thing is this always on culture. The fact that 24 seven were expected to be on and that is our human brains, our bodies are not built that way. So, if you remember before electricity sun went down and we stopped working at some point in the day and our bodies are still meant to go with that cycle of at some point we shut our bodies down based on the way nature works.

And so, then we have the advent of electricity, and we could turn lights on and we could still work. But most of us early in our careers at some point, we turned those lights off, we left the office, we went home, we were with our families. Now it’s in our pockets. So, the always on, the fact that this idea of time scarcity, like no matter what, no time, no time, no time. How many people do you meet? How are you? They say they’re busy. And so as long as we think that there’s this constant urgency, this meeting overload, we don’t build in breaks.

Even sometimes my clients working on time management, I’ll say, what if you shortened your one-hour meetings to 50 minutes and now you had 10 minutes to catch up on email, to get a breath of fresh air, to go for a walk, to get a healthy snack instead of grabbing some junky food that’s not fulfilling you. So, let’s stop the always on. Let’s fine breaks, let’s stop rewarding. Mean, a lot of companies are like fake human centered because they say we value work-life balance and they give you apps for your health, but yet you’re expected to respond to emails at 10 o’clock at night. So those are some of the ways that I’m seeing. I think you have to ask yourself, are my words and my actions aligning? And there’s just so many examples where I see that companies are saying one thing and doing another. They have recognition programs, but managers aren’t saying thank you. They’re having pulse surveys, but they’re never following up. Nothing changes. They say, bring your whole self to work. But the people who they see in senior positions look the same. They have a certain professional model and maybe they’re similar gender and similar ethnicity. So do an assessment, understand, do my actions and my words match up?

And what’s the message that it’s sending to my employees?

Skot Waldron (30:00.7)
Thank you for saying that. think that’s really, really important to look around and, make sure that our actions are, are resonating, with our value system and that, know, whether it’s our values or our mission or whatever, do people know what they are? Is it just the fancy poster in the break room? You always say of the, of the Eagle flying in the sunset, you know? so there’s, I think that there’s.

something we to make sure we’re putting ourselves, you know, keeping ourselves in check for that, is going to help make or break what we do. And as we, as we look at this always on culture, thinking about, well, AI is always on, I can go to AI and it’s going to work the same every minute of every day. So where do we use AI to make sure that we’re doing some of the things that need to be doing going all the time?

Where do we use the human stuff and save that human capacity for the human work? And it’s going to be so important to distinguish what AI work, what’s human work. And I think we’re in the age of figuring that out to some, to some extent now. But I think your work is so important and I love that you’re focusing on it that much. In fact, you have an assessment that I took in preparation for this interview.

Bonnie Davis (31:05.677)
Yeah.

Skot Waldron (31:27.142)
Which is really cool because it focuses so much on the human side of work. And you have different aspects of the assessment when we’re talking about purpose and values and community and wellbeing. But it’s so human focused and it creates a beautiful little spider chart for you at the end. Like I love it so much. I love the spider chart. Tell me about this assessment.

Bonnie Davis (31:50.166)
I love a good spider chart. I love a good spider chart. Yes. Thanks. Yeah.

Skot Waldron (31:57.094)
Would you come up with this? How’d you come up with this and give me some background on

Bonnie Davis (32:00.93)
Well, little transparency on my business. I mentioned that I’ve been in business for 13 years now and I was on my own and I do like human connection so much that I took on business partners. It was like 2018, and we realized that a few of us were partnering so much that we might as well get together in one company. And when we thought about what to name that company and we went through this whole exercise with a marketing expert, the whole human centered really spoke to us. But I said, here’s the thing. I am not going to use a generic overuse platitude without having some teeth in it. And so, company is called Hue Work. The Hue part is human. A lot of people think it’s Hue. It’s Hue as in human. And I said, we really need to create an assessment to get people to understand their strengths and what it is they want to do differently. I am all about conversation, meaningful conversation, starting conversation, engaging in conversation. And so, the goal of the assessment is to…

You take your spider diagram; I take my spider diagram. We have visuals of where we’re strong, what we want to work on. And we have a meaningful dialogue about, get real here. Let’s get real. Let’s stop talking about the human stuff and let’s get real that when it comes to the things that really make up human-centered workplace based on our research. Based on my business partners and I, it’s many decades of experience between all of us. And we’re all pretty geeky in terms of reading lots of things and listening to podcasts. So based on all of that.

We came up with these seven pillars that are made up of a human-centered workplace. Beneath those, each one has between three and five questions. It takes about 15 minutes to complete. It’s a free assessment. And then we wanna put some action with it. So, you might’ve seen with your end result, you do get a few lightweight tips, but we also have articles. So, one article that we’ve published for every one of the seven areas of the assessment, those articles are available on our website for more tips and tools. And then what we’re really excited about is we’re writing a book. So, we’re taking the articles and we know that they’re lightweight, they’re quick, they’re about 2000 words. So, we wanna give people more tools in their toolkit to really go from talk to action when it comes to being human centered. So, for me, the best way to move the needle is to have data. And so, it gives you a baseline, you can keep taking it. Again, there’s no cost and keep having the conversation with your colleagues.

The future of work depends, in my opinion, the future of work depends on making sure that we have these big and small ways to increase our human connection all the time. Otherwise, I think the companies that have that are going to be the ones that’s successful. The ones that overdo and go all AI and don’t train their leaders are the ones that are going to struggle.

Skot Waldron (34:42.162)
Preach, Bonnie, preach. Amen. I could just picture you from a stage just going off and people just being like, getting so many head nods, right? Some hand praises, hands up, whatever it is. Hallelujah.

Bonnie Davis (34:43.63)
You got me fired up Skot. I feel strongly about this stuff.

Hallelujah. Praise human centered workplaces. You know, what it comes down to is if you were struggling with your health, you wouldn’t, and you really were serious about it, you would get some, you would maybe look at your blood pressure, your cholesterol, your weight. And so, this is similar. Think of it as like a health check for your organization and think of it as a way to get that baseline data and then do some things that are meaningful to increase the health.

Skot Waldron (35:26.194)
Good job. Thank you for making this. I’m going to include it in a link in the show notes. Um, everybody can check that out. I did it again and it’s free. So, thanks for creating that as well. Um, I’m making it so I don’t have to like put in some seven-day trial credit card information that drives me crazy. So, thank you for making it free and accessible for everybody.

Bonnie Davis (35:44.462)
Well, that’s it. You know what? That’s such a great example of being human centered. If I don’t want to be treated that way as a customer, I’m not going to treat people that way. And so that’s the basic premise of all of this. Those companies that like, I had a doctor’s appointment, and we had to cancel, my kid was sick, and I didn’t want to get the doctor sick. We got charged this outrageous fee. I’m like, do you want to be treated that way? I was like, give me three strikes in your hour or something. But the first time, I just thought like treat people the way you want to be treated in your policies. Those sometimes being human centered is just asking that question. How would I want to be treated?

Skot Waldron (36:21.67)
Yeah, that’s rough. Wow. If people want to get in touch with you, then go to huworkteam.com, Yep.

Bonnie Davis (36:28.642)
Yup, huworkteam.com. I guess the Huwork was already taken, but huworkteam. All those articles are there to help with tips and tools. And I spend too much of my time on LinkedIn, but I do love to connect there. I love to learn from other people. I post a few times a week. So would love for people to connect on LinkedIn. It’s bonniedavis01 is the entirety of the URL or just look for Bonnie Davis Huwork and you’ll find me.

Skot Waldron (37:02.738)
Cool, cool. love it. All right. Well, keep doing the work you’re doing because the work you’re doing is probably more needed now than ever. So, you know, keep it up. appreciate it.

Bonnie Davis (37:07.34)
Thanks, Skot.

Yeah, I appreciate you and I know you have similar passions on your work and thanks for the time today.

I can almost guarantee that the best times in your life, the best experiences you’ve ever had in your life are not the ones you’ve had with your phone sitting in front of you. I’m imagining that those experiences involved people, they involved humans. And when you think about those relationships at work and those relationships that built you up, that’s not because your AI bot was building you up. It’s because of that recognition you got from a loved one or from a colleague or from somebody else that heard and saw you for who you were as a person. And that, I don’t know, and I’m talking in 2025, I don’t know if that will ever be replaced, you know, I, tech is so disposable. And the way that I think younger generations interact with tech shows that disposability. Is that a word? I don’t know. But I think that as we become more numb to Human interactions and human emotions because we use tech so much, We miss out on the warmth and the connection and the Humanity that we can provide and gift each other not just give each other but gift each other And I hope that you will take advantage of the humanity at work and work on Creating that as much as you possibly can.