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ELE is a peer-powered community where people leaders don't just reframe challenges — they leave with decisions, next moves, and 30/60/90-day commitments to move real work forward.&nbsp;For 22 years, leaders from Fortune 1000 companies have brought their hardest problems here — and left sharper than they arrived.

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This is where people leaders get sharper — and their teams get smarter.ELE is a peer-powered network of people leaders who accelerate business results through shared intelligence and real-work collaboration. Learn more below about why ELE has been the trusted choice for leaders building high-performing teams for over 20 years.

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Find the peer conversation that moves your work forward.The right exchange builds better leaders, closes capability gaps, and cuts through what internal meetings can't.

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Where people leaders share what's working, ask what's hard, and learn from peers navigating the same talent challenges right now. Search before you post. When referencing a resource, paste the key insight directly into your response with a link to the source.

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Insights on Talent Challenges | Captured Peer Conversations | ELE

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Precisely

<div style="font-family: 'Calibri', 'Candara', 'Segoe UI', 'Optima', Arial, sans-serif; color: #333; line-height: 1.6; max-width: 800px; margin: auto; font-size: 1.1rem;">
<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 20px 0; padding: 10px 20px; background-color: #f8f9fa; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"AI doesn't need you to change who you are, but it's going to show you clearly who you've been." -- <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/marty-murrillo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marty Murrillo</a></blockquote>
At the ELE Spring Conference on May 21st, keynote speaker <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/marty-murrillo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marty Murrillo</a> of Precisely opened with a challenge most AI rollout plans never get to: adoption doesn't stall because of the tools. It stalls because the tools force a reckoning with professional identity — who people believe they are at work, where they hold authority, and what they're still worth when AI can do 60% of what used to define them. Until people leaders address that layer directly, no amount of tool training moves the needle.
The identity gap no one is putting on the roadmap
Most organizations are treating AI adoption as a change management problem. Marty Murrillo reframed it as an identity problem — and the distinction matters enormously for how people leaders show up.
Three things are being disrupted simultaneously: the work itself, the tools people use to do it, and the workflows that connect them. Best practices are outdating every 6–12 months. Interfaces are changing weekly. The ground keeps shifting — and employees are privately asking questions their managers haven't been invited into yet.

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"What am I here for? What do I still uniquely add? Where do I still make decisions?" -- <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/marty-murrillo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marty Murrillo</a></blockquote>
These aren't engagement survey questions. They're the internal monologue of a workforce negotiating its own value in real time. People leaders who skip this conversation and go straight to tool adoption are solving the wrong problem.
Leaders in the conversation
The May 21st live discussion brought together people leaders and senior talent professionals engaging directly with Murrillo's framework for identity-driven adoption. The room wasn't debating whether AI would change work — it was grappling with the harder question of how to lead people through a shift that touches role, value, and authority all at once.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 30px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">What's actually changing — and what stays human</h3>
Murrillo was direct about where the real capability shift lands. Task-based expertise — the work AI can increasingly replicate — is no longer a stable identity anchor. What remains distinctly human is judgment, ethics, and the ability to ask whether something should be done, not just whether it can be.

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"What stays with you? Judgment, ethics — thinking about whether this is the right thing to do." -- <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/marty-murrillo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marty Murrillo</a></blockquote>
This is the reframe people leaders need to be making explicitly with their teams. The goal isn't to convince employees that AI won't change their roles. It will. The goal is to help them anchor their professional identity in the work AI cannot do: reading a room, sensing what the numbers aren't showing, holding the relational and ethical weight of decisions.
That's the capability shift — from output production to strategic stewardship. And it requires leaders to model it, not just message it.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">The leader's own identity shift comes first</h3>
One of the sharpest signals from Murrillo's keynote: you cannot guide a workforce through this change if you haven't moved through it yourself.
The shift from knowing answers to asking better questions. From task expertise to judgment and ethics. From holding authority to sharing agency with AI. These are internal moves — and leaders who skip them end up communicating a roadmap they haven't personally walked.
As highlighted during the live discussion:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"Leaders can't just talk the talk. They have to walk it too." -- <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/marty-murrillo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marty Murrillo</a></blockquote>
Visible leadership behavior is the adoption signal the workforce is reading most closely. Executives who say "I don't know, let's try it" — and mean it — are doing more for adoption than any enablement program run without that cultural backing.
Psychological safety isn't a culture initiative in this context. It's an operational condition for AI adoption. Teams need permission to experiment, fail publicly, and keep moving. That permission has to come from the top — and it has to be behavioral, not just stated.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">Clarity about decision rights is the hardest thing to provide — and the most valuable</h3>
One of the most practical signals from the live discussion: ambiguity about where AI stops and humans start is feeding the authority anxiety that stalls adoption faster than any tool friction.
Employees aren't just asking what AI can do. They're asking where they still get to decide. Without explicit answers, they default to anxiety or avoidance — and people leaders read that as resistance when it's actually a reasonable response to unclear boundaries.
Defining decision rights — which calls stay with humans, which route through AI — isn't an IT governance question. It's a leadership clarity question. And it belongs on the people leader's agenda, not just the tech team's.


<hr style="border: 0; border-top: 1px solid #eee; margin: 40px 0;" />

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-bottom: 15px;">What to try next</h3>
<ol style="padding-left: 25px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Run the Three Bucket Exercise with your team. Ask each person to sort their top 12 tasks into three buckets: AI does alone, human + AI together, and uniquely human. It moves the conversation from abstract anxiety to concrete analysis — and gives individuals agency over their own role evolution.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Use the 50% threshold as a workforce planning signal. If more than half of someone's tasks land in the "AI does alone" bucket, that's a proactive role conversation — not a performance issue. Getting ahead of it builds trust and preserves the talent you'll need for the work that remains distinctly human.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Make your own identity shift visible this week. Name publicly — in a team meeting, a one-on-one, or a leadership communication — which of the three shifts you're personally working through. Leaders who model the internal work build more credibility for the change than those who only communicate the strategy.</li>
</ol>
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Bring your work into the room
If this connects to real work you are trying to move forward, bring it into the ELE community. Share the challenge, compare signals with trusted peers, and leave with practical next moves you can use.
Submit My Challenge Now: <a style="color: #0056b3; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges">https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges</a>

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Identity Drives AI Adoption — or Stalls It

Engagement &amp; Culture

Digital &amp; AI

marty.murrillo

psychological safety

workforce planning

human AI collaboration

change leadership

AI Implementation

AI Adoption

leadership behavior

manager enablement

wise2026

People Leaders

insights-wise-2026

professional identity

workforce mindset shift

role redefinition

decision authority

practical next moves

ELE Spring Conference

LAK Group

Human Synergistics

Session Focus: <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/angie-zeigler">Angie Zeigler</a> will build on the foundation of the Chicago keynote to explore in greater depth why values often fail to translate into behavior. She will lead a peer discussion on identifying the cultural forces that quietly accelerate or undermine performance.
For talent leaders, the biggest culture risk isn’t unclear values—it’s the widening gap between the values on the wall and the behaviors employees experience every day.
In this follow-up live discussion, Angie Zeigler, head of culture practice with LAK Group, builds on the Human Synergistics keynote to explore why well-intentioned values initiatives stall—and what actually drives culture change at scale. Drawing on decades of research and real organizational data, Angie shares practical stories of how organizations that prioritize and reward specific, constructive behaviors are significantly more successful in closing the engagement gap.
This discussion is designed for leaders who want to move beyond culture statements and into the real work of aligning values, behaviors, and results.
Human Synergistics' research makes visible what most leaders sense—but struggle to diagnose.
<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-44495" src="https://wp.ele.llc/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/CHIE2025-Kern-Keynote-80-vs-25-percent-slide.jpg" alt="Michael Kern presenting a slide showing a contrast between “&gt;80%” and “&lt;25%” to illustrate gaps between stated values and lived behaviors." width="1920" height="1133" />
What this data reveals is uncomfortable—but actionable. Most organizations believe they are values-driven, yet fewer than a quarter consistently experience those values in daily work. That gap isn’t cultural “noise”—it’s a performance signal.
In this discussion, leaders will examine how everyday behaviors, systems, and incentives quietly reinforce—or undermine—the culture they say they want, and where small, targeted shifts can create outsized impact.
Who Should Join
This discussion is designed for leaders responsible for shaping culture, performance, and behavior at scale—across HR, talent, learning, and the business. If you’re wrestling with gaps between stated values and what actually gets rewarded, or trying to understand which behaviors accelerate performance—and which quietly undermine it—you’ll be in good company.

How This Works
Each discussion runs for 50 minutes and blends a short framing insight with open, peer-driven exchange.
There are no slides to sit through and no pitches—just focused conversation designed to surface what’s working, what’s not, and what leaders are trying next as culture and performance collide in real organizations.

Join the ELE Conversation
These every-other-Friday discussions are part of ELE’s ongoing peer exchange for leaders shaping talent and work in the AI era. Come ready to listen, contribute, and learn alongside peers testing ideas in real organizations and sharing what they’re learning.
Recordings are posted to <a href="https://www.ele.llc/insights">ELE Insights</a> within 2–4 business days.

From Values to Behavior: Navigating Superheroes and Saboteurs

single-event

future of work

Your Teams

Learning Circles

digital transformation

innovation

angie.zeigler

upskilling

performance improvement

talent development

Complimentary

online event

complimentary event

Culture Change

employee engagement

collaboration

accountability

Performance Improvement

continuous learning

reskilling

L&amp;D

matt.sernaker

organizational culture

HR leaders

AI in HR

Strategic HR

workplace adaptation

knowledge sharing

Culture Transformation

Values Alignment

actionable insights

practical strategies

employee trust

practical insights

cindy.pinkstaffmiller

cathleen.cooke

1Q2026

performance culture

cultural diagnostic data

targeted intervention

organizational systems

HR processes

culture risk

culture reality check

AI and learning

AI reskilling

reframing hr

For senior HR and Talent leaders, the single biggest culture risk isn't a lack of declared values—it's the massive, draining gap between the values on the wall and the behaviors on the floor. This misalignment actively undermines performance and erodes employee trust, creating a confusing and exhausting work environment.

In this practical, research-backed session, Michael Kern, Consulting Director at Human Synergistics, leveraged over 40 years of groundbreaking culture research to reveal a hard truth: Your organizational systems and leaders' everyday behaviors, not your mission statement, are the true curriculum for your culture.
<h3>Essential Takeaways for Aligning Culture and Performance:</h3>
<ul>
 	<li>The Culture Reality Check: Attendees moved beyond surface-level surveys to understand the deep, diagnostic data that reveals the gap between the "Ideal" (what people value for success) and the "Current" (what people actually experience). You can't change what you can't measure with precision.</li>
 	<li>Identifying Superheroes and Saboteurs: Michael provided a framework for senior leaders to identify the forces—both people and organizational policies—that are either driving the desired culture ("Superheroes") or actively undermining it ("Saboteurs"). This is the critical step to move from generalized observation to targeted systemic intervention.</li>
 	<li>The Three-Part Alignment Strategy: The session detailed the essential alignment needed to bridge the values gap, focusing on:
<ol start="1">
 	<li>Leadership Behaviors: Shifting from mere approval of values to actively modeling the desired culture every day.</li>
 	<li>Organizational Systems: Revising HR processes, recognition programs, and performance management to reward value-aligned actions.</li>
 	<li>Values: Ensuring the stated values are clear, actionable, and connected to business outcomes.</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ul>
This keynote was a powerful call to action for leaders ready to stop declaring their values and start living them, creating a truly congruent, high-performing organizational culture that drives measurable results.

Reconnecting Values to Culture | Navigating the World of Superheroes and Saboteurs

CHIE2025

michael.kern

Culture isn’t a poster on the wall—it’s the unwritten rules shaping every decision, every hire, and every exit. In her keynote at the Milwaukee Talent Development Conference 2025, “Culture Shift: Navigating Constant Change Management Using Better Assessments,” <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/shelley-smith">Shelley Smith</a> (Managing Director, LAK Group) challenged us to confront an uncomfortable truth: most culture efforts fail not from lack of effort—but from fuzzy alignment and wishful thinking.

<img class="aligncenter wp-image-43036" src="https://wp.ele.llc/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Afternoon-Keynote-Shelley-Smith.jpg" alt="Culture Shift - Navigating Constant Change Management Using Better Assessments" width="632" height="352" />

This interactive session explores how advanced, science-based assessments can provide clear insights into leadership agility, team dynamics, cultural alignment, and individual readiness, enabling leaders to proactively manage a dynamic workplace and workforce.

<img class="aligncenter wp-image-43038" src="https://wp.ele.llc/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Afternoon-Keynote-Culture-with-Shelley-Smith.jpg" alt="Culture Shift - Navigating Constant Change Management Using Better Assessments" width="634" height="351" />
If your culture work feels performative, here’s what Shelley says you’re missing:
🔥 5 High-Impact Moves from Shelley Smith:

<ul data-start="1699" data-end="2389">
 	<li data-start="1699" data-end="1848">
📊 Get brutally honest with assessments: Skip the assumptions. Let the data surface the gap between leadership narratives and employee reality.
</li>
 	<li data-start="1849" data-end="1983">
🚀 Train leaders to see their blind spots: Culture shifts when leaders model the future—starting with their own micro-behaviors.
</li>
 	<li data-start="1984" data-end="2106">
🔄 Redefine ‘change’ as human transition: Change is logistics. Transition is mindset. One sticks, the other doesn’t.
</li>
 	<li data-start="2107" data-end="2248">
🧠 Use neuroscience to rewire habits: Repetition and coaching create new neural pathways. It’s not fluff—it’s how transformation works.
</li>
 	<li data-start="2249" data-end="2389">
🧩 Hardwire culture into your talent stack: Recruitment, onboarding, succession—they’re not separate from culture, they are culture.
</li>
</ul>
Shelley didn’t talk about culture as a vibe—she talked about it as an operating system.
💡Want to lead real transformation? Start with the truth, invest in the brain, and make leaders your culture’s architects—not just its mouthpieces.

From Values to Behavior: Navigating Superheroes and Saboteurs

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