2389 - Putting the Human Side Back into Management with Manager Method’s Ashley Herd

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0:38I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, it's Ashley Hurd. Ashley, you're the founder and CEO of Manager Method. You're found on the web at managermethod.com. also happens to be the title of your book, The Manager Method, a practical framework to lead, support, and get results. Ashley, it's great to have you. Hey, Josh. Thank you so much for having me here. Congratulations on the release of your new book. This is very exciting. I can't wait to start. I can't wait to dig into that, to learn all about it. Because management's tough. We'll talk about that. But before we do, I always love hearing what high-level leaders are doing, what they do for fun in their free time when no one's looking, or maybe they are looking.

1:27But I see an acoustic guitar behind you. And so you and I talked previously. You play. I do play. I think every leader is a bit of a kid at heart. And I am working on relearning guitar, which I first learned when I was about 13 years old, so more than three decades later. I am back at it. So I know we're not supposed to talk about work. Sometimes it does feel like work trying to relive it, but it is, uh, it really is. It's a lot of fun. And I use it as a palate cleanser at the end of every day before dinner. Absolutely. When you were 13, 14, like, do you remember the songs that you were learning back then?

2:05Yes, Josh, because I desperately wanted to become, I don't know, a rock star, but at least play cool songs. And I was playing like three blind mice, maybe yellow submarine. But still, when you're learning to play it, it doesn't sound so cool. But I learned to play it. I still remember the name of my music teacher. I won't say it, but I remember he seemed so uncool and kept me going boring when the person next to me was literally shredding away on an electric guitar. And so I remember both what I played, but also the person next to me, which is what I really wanted to be one day. Now, can you shred?

2:41No, I can't shred. I still can barely play. No, I now I can play chords and things like that. I now give myself the patience that I should have had at 13 years old to try to, you know, you realize when you do it over and over, practicing that and having it feel comfortable, the other things become a lot easier after the fact. So shredding is my 2027 goal. What songs do you play now? name some artists or titles that you've been working on lately um so i like to play um as it was by harry styles uh which is you know because i like to have my kids kind of come up and think i'm cool i do like to play songs by adele as well and i like to try to play the grateful dead because my my dad my parents recently retired to the villages in florida not far for not that far from from you but my dad just became a bass player in the largest cover band grateful dead cover band in the villages.

3:39So, wow. How fun. Yeah. So, uh, you know, he's, he is, he can shred relatively on the, on the base. And so I'm trying to catch up. So I'm, uh, trying to play, uh, some, as much of the Grateful Dead as I can to surprise him when it gets down there. Oh, that's going to be so fun that you could join him in that. Yeah. I, uh, I mentioned this frequently. I didn't mention to you, but I, I picked up the base, um, just under two and a half years ago, you know, now I can do about 150 songs, you know, just most of them. I need to see the music. I don't have most, I don't have the vast majority that memorize, but I can like play along.

4:11You know, the way I kind of got into is just treating it like guitar hero, you know, and the, and the software today is so good. You know, you can start with YouTube videos of people like posting their tabs and, you know, playing along with them, which is what I did. And then, you know, now I use, gosh, the software Songster. And so now it's, you know, it's got hundreds of thousands of tabs and you just play right along to the original music and stuff. So that's pretty much what I do. And it's just like so much fun, but you know, just, you know, for, uh, for high level leaders, I just, you know, music is just one of these endless hobbies.

4:43One final thing on this before we, we got to get into here. I mean, I don't know. I'm fine talking about this. Yeah. Um, you know, this idea of, of learning, and I'm so grateful that I came across this concept in a book, you know, and, and I really did want to find a good book. And I think I remember even I re you know, I was researching like, what's a really good book just so I can get in the right mindset for learning an instrument. Like, cause I really would like to be good. I've never played an instrument. You know, it always seemed like, Oh, that's just something that other people can do and not me.

5:14And I read something in the book and I don't remember the title, but you know, the big aha moment was whether you think you're learning it or not, you are, you don't need to worry about that. If you're just engaging in the activity and you keep it fun, like you don't turn it into a chore like you will learn and and it's amazing and i'm sure you can appreciate this about you know when you're playing something you're like wow how do i know how to do that yeah it is it really is i mean i'm the same where i'll have tabs and i love tabs and i i know people sometimes there's there's purists like you should know different ways i am one of those people in guitar and in general in leadership which is take the practical tips that stick with you and i love I love tabs.

5:59And so, you know, I'll play along with those. But sometimes when I can play something by memory and I learn it and people can recognize what it is, there's no greater feeling. I believe that this is probably a good metaphor for management. How's that for a segue, Ashley? Josh, there's a reason you do what you do. Well done. Take it away, my friend. What is the metaphor between playing guitar and being a great manager? Well, I say this because I, you know, my career quilt, so very much like I've been on a quilt of my guitar playing, taking about 30 years off in between. My career quilt in work, so really the 30 years in between, I worked at roles from legal to leading HR at organizations like McKinsey, which tend to get attention more, or Young Brands, KFC.

6:51but I also started out as a sandwich artist at Subway or an electronics associate at Kmart and so I've seen all levels of the latter and one thing I see is often it really is those practical tips that stick with people and it has been amazing to me and not as humbling about myself as much but humbling when I see leaders like senior partners at McKinsey who've been written up in all sorts of you know publications who are incredibly smart but I see that the conversations I would have with them were virtually identical to a restaurant manager at KFC when I was supporting them from the corporate side or that I'd experienced from managers that it's a lot of it is thinking about how do you drive performance?

7:32How do you get people to want to stay? And so as I worked in roles like McKinsey, I got all sorts of publications and thought, what kind of corporate speak do I have to use? But what I realized is some of the smartest and best leaders that I found at one of the most respected organizations in the world, they were very real people, many of which played music, and you could relate to them on that front. But just really practical tips, and that it's amazing that so much of leadership is theoretical, but when it comes down to it, a lot of times people, whether you're an aspiring manager or a senior executive, can just use some tips on what to do and say in trying out how to lead, whether it's your direct team or you're managing a whole organization.

8:22Well, Ashley, I know you talk about this quite a bit in your new book, which has just released the manager method, a practical framework to lead, support, and get results. You know, here we are, we're in 2026. You know, I think that there's been a lot of movement. When I think about, you know, a lot of disruption within organizations. There's been a lot of technology. I think things are moving quickly. And so talk about the relevance of your message today. I mean, it's a question, you know, I had certainly even I started writing the book. I say I started writing the book two years ago. I started taking notes of things that ended up in the book over a decade ago.

9:11And while I wondered, OK, is this still relevant in the age of AI, technology, all of these things, if you were to talk to the people that do the work and say, what matters to you at your organization? Oftentimes, it's really basic information, things like, I'd like to be treated like a person. I want to feel like I matter. I want my boss to listen to me, listen to my ideas, give me actual feedback, and also recognize me. I mean, some of the things that you see haven't changed in over a decade. The ways we do it have. Now, there's all sorts of technology to do things like recognize people at work or to share ideas to give performance but a key part of that is you still have to have the human mindset to know how important it is to recognize people to call out their achievements and to do a lot of those behaviors and so I actually think you know I've seen in the rise of technology that aspect of human leadership can be one that absolutely sets you apart and sets an organization apart when you're looking for all of those things like performance, engagement, retention.

10:11Often those come down to what you do and say to your people and being more human is something that a lot of people are craving. Yeah. And the transformation that you would expect, first off, do you mind just saying what level of manager is the manager method for? Literally virtually all levels. So from aspiring through senior executive. And I say oftentimes, you know, they'll say like a niche down in particular, but I really have seen, again, going back from KFC through McKinsey, there's lessons that people can learn. And so I love, I started posting videos on TikTok, not something you would think to start doing over 40 always, but what I've loved is messages I've gotten from people at all levels that it resonated.

10:55The person that wrote my forward to my book was Steve Cadigan, the first CHRO of LinkedIn. and he had shared with me that in reading the book, you know, he started reading it and he said he couldn't put it down, which again, I very much appreciate him saying that, but it is designed to not only speak to that senior level audience, but also give aspiring managers things that you may not always, always hear. So it really is for any level. Yeah. And Ashley, can you share a bit about the work you do? Who do you serve? And, you know, obviously as a thought leader, by the way, you're, I was, I'm on your LinkedIn right now and you have a really great following.

11:38You share a lot of really valuable content. I am disappointed. I don't see sandwich artists in your history. So maybe you'll update that at some point, but could you share just maybe a little bit more about like, you know, and by the way, if you want to incorporate kind of like, you know, the thought leadership that you do share on LinkedIn, because you are a great follow and you're a leading voice on on LinkedIn. But but I am curious to learn about how you do this work professionally. Are you hosting workshops? Are you consulting? Yeah, and I should add sandwich artist, because those who have ever seen me make a sandwich will know I'm very vocal.

12:15Now I would say recently, but now it was over two decades ago, I believe that Subway changed the way they cut the bread. And I still have a lot of opinions about that. But the boat method. It's so funny. I just saw someone post about that yesterday. It's like Like, what? Yeah, yeah, that was a thing. And I still do eat at Subway, which I do think is a good bellwether. But to answer maybe your more relevant question is, you know, I started posting videos to a fictional CEO. And I did that because especially as I advanced in my career, a lot of my conversations were the CEO, C-suite level, board of directors meetings.

12:48But I still had conversations all the time with managers. And so I had people that said, hey, could you make videos more to the manager level? So of the role play videos I put out, and so this isn't a business, this is a hobby, but on social media, you can see me doing role plays, some of them for frontline managers named Kim or a fictional CEO named Luke. But in my business, The Manager Method, I really created it, you know, I don't know if I want to call it a disruptor, but I have, you know, a pretty unique career quilt. Again, having worked at McKinsey, having legal and HR experience, I started in cold call B2B sales, cold calling 21 ,000 CFOs.

13:26And so some of that really does put it together to have a bit of a unique perspective. But one thing I saw is, again, the conversations I was having were really similarly. Sometimes people just don't know things about management, including at the senior level. But often for manager training, you may have a workshop. And I still occasionally will come in, you know, do a workshop. I always do what I call a post-session deliverable, a very fancy name for a two-, three-page document to, you know, bring it home with tips so people actually bring it to their work. But the one thing I say is, I'm not Brene Brown, but I will say, when you bring, you know, you go see Brene Brown speak, you may say, wow, that's amazing.

14:00But Brene Brown's not sitting on anyone's shoulder, generally. the frontline manager through the CEO, when you're then making decisions to bring it into action. So I flip the script a bit. And so when I work with organizations, normally what it is, is a three-legged stool. So I focus a lot on HR, using HR as a conduit to deliver messages and also helping HR move from being the function that delivers bad news or resets HRIS system passwords, but to really help people build skills, again, managers at all levels. And so when it's rolled out managers will each get access to like videos and a resource guide that I have I have a manager 101 course manager 201 even employee success for non-manager employees and individuals can get those but with organizations what I have for HR is a toolkit so they get all the communications behind that to announce okay this is how it's coming and then materials to run live cohort sessions for their managers and all the FAQs like how many people should I have in it but I have those so that you know it's generally a manager 101 let's say it's a six month schedule and so managers get access each month they watch roughly hour hour and a half of videos go through the resource guide then they come together and their HR team learning development team they lead sessions and they have everything done for them to lead sessions to bring it to life and what that was based on was actually totally different but in a previous life when I was a lawyer an in-house lawyer, we did rotations.

15:26And so I actually did data breach workshops like this, where we would say, okay, everything from a credit card swipe to other things. And what I saw was I was in these sessions with C-suite leaders, experts, all these things, and people didn't know what to do in the moment, you know, to ask someone and they'd hesitate. And over time, we built that muscle. But as I built out my manager training program, again, I know I don't have a desire to go and travel all over, but as I know, it's more expensive to bring in an external internal person, logistically sometimes it's hard like, oh, who's available, when can we do the session, but also for HR teams who are going to be the ones ideally supporting those leaders through the business partners, through HR leadership, but for that team to be able to lead these cohort sessions and bring it to life.

16:09And now we have all sorts of tools to bring it into the flow of work, but so it really is scalable. And so a mix of on-demand learning, but also live sessions that are really done within the organization. And so that's how I've built a program that, you know, candidly tends to be more budget friendly than if I came in person, but also to really make it have a lasting impact. Yeah. Ashley, next steps for a friend that's listening. Where would you recommend they go? What should they do?

16:40I guess what I'm hoping for is maybe something actionable, too. I feel like, you know, again, we all experience frustrations with leadership and management. You know, we have organizational challenges. We have people challenges. You know, as of when we're recording this, I mean, there's a lot of change going on. And that's always a lot of fun as well, because change can be very hard for groups of people who, you know, appreciated doing things a certain way. But it's tough. stuff. But maybe we'll just give someone, you know, some either resources or an action step, something that they can do today, including how they can further engage with you.

17:23So I'll give you information first. I'll tell you how you can further engage, but I'll give you the information first, which is the core of the Manager Method book is a three-step framework, which is pause, consider, act. And it's something that people can do in any situation. I've designed it to be any situation at work, people have said, I used it with my spouse or my kids. Great, if that's helpful as well. But what this is, is to think about in any situation, we often react. We give an answer right away. We react in a way that maybe later we think, okay, I could have done something differently.

17:52But it's to pause, which does not mean stop, but to pause and using that pause to consider. What information do I have? What do I not have? How would I want to be treated? What assumptions am I bringing? And am I treating this person differently than I would if they were this person. And so really considering, especially thinking, how would I want to be treated in this situation or what would I want to see happen? And then to act. So then do something about it because the biggest traps I see are on either side. People don't pause, especially in leadership because you feel like you know all the answers or you're crushed for time.

18:24But then the flip, you don't act. Sometimes it's because you forget, but when you don't, you tell someone I'll follow up and you don't, they think, well, you know, I'm an idiot. Oh, everyone's laughing at me when really you probably just forgot. But so making sure that you're following up with people, but also acting, having that decision. And so in the midst of change, for example, what a lot of leaders do is they'll retreat. Well, I don't want to give information until we have a clear plan. Everything from you're a manager, someone on your team's quitting. Well, I don't want everybody to know until we have a replacement plan.

18:54And I say, everybody probably already knows already. and also you can shape it by saying okay this is what we know let's think about that replacement we spread work among the team as i said promotion and so bringing people into those conversations to change at the top things like ai as an organization if you're a senior leader if you talk about ai publicly does your team know actually what's expected of them and how they're allowed to use it how they're encouraged to use it and how others are really using it effectively. So again, pause, consider, act can help you just think in the moment. It can just take a few seconds, but can really change the impact away from the assumptions that we often make.

19:35So if you want to learn more, you can, I'll tell you easily, you can go to managermethod.com. If you go to managermethod.com slash book, you can find all the places to pre-order my book in hard copy, digital, audio book, didn't record it. And also resources. So individually, a reflection guide if you're reading it on your own. There'll also be a book club guide if you're reading it with a group. So if you start from there, then you can pretty much find me in the social media everywhere else, but that's a nice place to start. And you can also explore my courses and my leadership packages there.

20:05Yeah. I would be remiss, Ashley, if I didn't mention that you are also part of a team on a podcast called HR Besties. And so to our friend that's listening, right, I was going to read the tagline, but I don't know how to do that eloquently. You can't. It's hard to read the Astra. The BS. Business plus BS. It's with two other creators that may be familiar to some of the leaders from some social media. I tell people it's there. We have a good time. We also bring practical tips in every and try to give a peek behind the curtain of how HR thinks and operates. I love it. That's, by the way, at hrbesties.com.

20:45And you can, again, just search for that. The book is The Manager Method. It's available on all formats. It's available at Amazon and everywhere. And again, you can get to that by going to managermethod.com slash book. And then when you're on, Ashley, when they're on your website, there's all kinds of other ways that they can engage with you, including that learning hub, which you mentioned. There's a lot of good stuff there. Ashley Hurd, thank you so much for joining us. I love this conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much, Josh. And let's keep on playing. Brr.

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