Human-First Leadership in a Burnout Culture

Kathy Eastwood started her career as a CPA at EY, thinking business was run entirely by numbers, routines, and standard structures. But when she left public accounting for the tech world, she hit a wall that completely flipped her perspective on corporate change.She was running a project management implementation, teaching teams how to build airtight dependency chains and work breakdown structures. During a session, a client sponsor raised his hand and asked a simple question: "How do you actually get someone to do these tasks?"Kathy answered with the confidence of a young executive: "Well, they're assigned to it. They'll do it."The sponsor smiled and shook his head. "No, they won't. What if they don't report to you? What if this isn't their priority?"That single moment shattered the illusion of "command and control" management for Kathy. She realized you can have the most beautiful Smartsheet or Google Sheet in the world, but if you don't understand the human being behind the keyboard—their motivations, their stresses, and their personal "Why"—the project is dead on arrival.On this episode of I'm Up He See's Me I'm Down, Mike Turner and Kathy dive deep into why human-first leadership always beats task-performance at all costs, and how the best leaders build teams that protect them from the top down.