Unbelievable HR Tips from the Evil HR Lady

Never Been Promoted Podcast with Thomas Helfrich

Suzanne Lucas, widely known as the Evil HR Lady, shares her unconventional journey from a corporate HR professional to a keynote speaker and improv instructor. With a unique blend of humor and expertise, Suzanne provides valuable insights into modern HR practices, the role of improv in leadership, and the power of embracing reality.

About Suzanne Lucas:

Suzanne Lucas, known as the Evil HR Lady, is an experienced HR professional who has transitioned into a keynote speaker and improv instructor. Based in Switzerland, she has a rich background in corporate HR, writing, and now focuses on incorporating improv comedy principles into HR and leadership training.


In this episode, Thomas and Suzanne discuss:

• The Journey to Becoming the Evil HR Lady:
  Suzanne shares her path from working in big pharma HR to starting her own blog under a pseudonym, leading to writing opportunities with CBS News and Inc. 
• Incorporating Improv into HR and Leadership:
  She emphasizes the importance of accepting reality and building on it, rather than fighting against it.
• Balancing Professionalism with Humor:
  Suzanne talks about the importance of maintaining a professional demeanor while also using humor and creativity to engage and inspire audiences. 

Key Takeaways:

• Embrace Reality with "Yes, and"

This approach fosters adaptability and positive problem-solving in both personal and professional contexts.

• Acts of Service in Leadership

By offering clear options and support, rather than pushing decisions back onto others, leaders can create a more collaborative and efficient work environment.

• Humor and Professionalism

Using humor thoughtfully helps to connect with others and navigate challenging situations with grace.

"You have to accept reality and build on it. Fighting against it only leads to frustration." — Suzanne Lucas

CONNECT WITH SUZANNE LUCAS:

Website: https://www.hrlearns.com/ or https://www.evilhrlady.org/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannemlucas/

CONNECT WITH THOMAS:

X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/thelfrich | https://twitter.com/nevbeenpromoted Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hovienko | https://www.facebook.com/neverbeenpromoted
Website: https://www.neverbeenpromoted.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neverbeenpromoted/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neverbeenpromoted
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomashelfrich/

Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of the Never Been Promoted podcast/YouTube channel. Hi. I'm Thomas Helfrich, your host. If this is your first time coming here, you're in for a doozy. Today is fun. I can feel the energy. If you've been back here before, you'll know that I do mean that. This is gonna be a good one. I've been looking forward to this interview for some time. And and and if listen, we're all about helping entrepreneurs on their journey. I wanna create a 1000000 or so new entrepreneurs this year in 2024 alone. I want them to be better at not only entrepreneurship, but life, and we're doing this through the teachings and learnings of other other people's journeys, mistakes, failures, and successes. But, today, I have a fair fun guest, Suzanne Lucas, who is the Evil HR Lady. So if you're, in the HR world, or you've been fired, you may have come across this this group on on on Facebook. This is how I got to know her without her you know, it's more stalking really than anything. My wife would look at these posts and these threads in the Evil HR Lady Facebook group and I found them to be hilarious. And I was like, I'm gonna find a way to go interview her. And it was a lot easier than I thought. Thought she'd put up a bigger fight. But she's a keynote speaker and also, she does this improv thing here in in Switzerland we're gonna learn about. But let's meet her. Suzanne, how are you?
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I am splendid, and, yeah, there's a little creepy stocky. That's one of the problems of being on the Internet and running groups and stuff that people feel like they know you when they don't because you don't know them, but they know you. Anyhow
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Yeah. They show up, and they're like, I love you. No. Like, when we were talking, you're like, I didn't have that conversation with you. Exactly. Exactly. Do you just, like, not go, oh. So I taught my kids these two techniques when somebody is, when you're not really into what they're saying or you don't understand ego, it's it's a word pairing. You can do it with anything. But the 2 that I taught them initially was, oh, and, oh, okay. Those are great. Oh, yeah. Mhmm. So now we'll be in the we'll be in the car and my son or somebody will be somebody will be talking about something or I will know they'll all go, like, without even, like, collaborating, they'll all go, oh. I'm like, oh, something. So you guys can take that. That's tip number 1. If you really don't know what to say, just kinda go, oh.
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See, guys, I'm so sorry for calling with kids. They listen to you sometimes too well.
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They do. Like, I know this has nothing to do with talking about today, but I will say that, you know, one of my kids was saying that this girl is being mean, and my oldest, my daughter, was gonna go to my son's friend and be like, I'm gonna cut that hair off. And I'm like, you can't say that. You gotta say mother. And my wife was like, what are you doing? I'm like, I didn't actually say the word. I just said it's more impactful. And I I but she was like, really? I'm like, no. No. Don't don't do that.
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You know, you wanna hear what's impactful when you're having dealing with bullies type? And this probably get don't tell your kids to do this, but my son did this. He was on the train. We live in Switzerland. He takes the train to school, and and, the train is crowded. And so how they have the train seats, there's 4 ropes, 4 seats together. So there's 2 on this side, 2 on that side. You're facing each other. And proper train etiquette is you stay in your space. Right? And so he had this guy come and sit down across from him and then put his legs clear into my son's space. This is not proper train etiquette. And so I'm sure this guy figured my son is very big, but he's very baby faced still. He's he's 15, and he's very baby faced. I'm sure this guy thought he could get away with it. Instead, my son didn't confront him. He just started rubbing the guy's leg with his foot. The guy said, are you gay? And my son went and that was the end of the guy. So Right. Solve the problem. Did they date? Crazy the crazy.
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Did they date or not? No. They did not date. Yeah. Obviously, that's a that's a good technique,
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but we're gonna get her back to work, everybody. That is that is bad HR. Proper HR is to say, excuse me. Would you please move your feet? But
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I I agree. And I normally start with a backstory, but we're just gonna hop into something here. I'm gonna give you give you just share I'm gonna share a story. I'm sorry. I'm a little random. No. But this is what's gonna be fun today. That's why I knew it was gonna have fun energy today. So I'm on an airplane. This is probably 18 years ago or so. And I you know, I'm a cons that's probably less than that. So I'm I'm in the consulting world and traveling every week. So when you travel, you know etiquette of, like, you know, this or that or whatever else. Like, you know, put your seat up when it's time to eat or don't ever lean it back ever on a short flight, whatever it is. Right. But this one guy in front of me kept slamming his like kept jerking it. Like he was already back and he kept slamming himself in the seat. And I was like, hey, can you quit doing that? I'm like, you know, it's it's I don't know why you're doing this. Like, could you could you stop, like, slamming yourself into the seat? And he said, no. I'll do what I want to my seat. I was like, it'd be great if you wouldn't do that. And he kept doing it, and I was like, dude, come on, man. Like, like, literally, like, it's banging into me and, like, I'm trying to, like, you know, read something and he's just being an asshole. And so drink cart comes around, and I go, you know, what would you like? I was like, oh, coffee. They're like, no. No. Just just hot black coffee, please. See where I'm going. And I go, when is it okay to go to the restroom to the to the to the flight attendant? And they were like, oh, you know, as soon as I go by, you can. You're like, great. So I get there. They they move the cart. I stand up in the back, saying, I go, oops. And I dumped hot coffee all over this guy. I'm like, I am so sorry. I gotta go to the bathroom. I'm back. Ran off. He's throwing a conditional fit. They're like, sir, sir, calm down. He did it intentionally in the flight attendants. Like, he did. No. I saw it. It was an accident. I think he tripped in my car. I was like, yeah, man. Like, seriously. Like, just calm down. And I came by him. I go, I dare you to fucking do it again. He did not bump into me the rest of the night because I I was like, may I have another coffee, please? And I just looked at him. Gary, you do a fucking good job. Just to be easier. I should I should not have you hang out with my son. He was not happy. This guy was really pissed, and I was like, I will spill in a cup cup on you if you do this again. Yeah. Anyway, so alright. Susan. Susan Lucas coming to us live from Switzerland. That's, that's in central Missouri. If you could explain your background to us a little bit and how you became known as the Evil HR Lady. You have 2 minutes to go. Okay. So my background is I worked in HR.
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I was working in big pharma, and I wanted to start a blog, which was the new cool hip thing to do back in 2006. And because I was working in pharma, I needed a pseudonym because I knew that they would not like it very much if I did it under my name. And so I sat there and thought, what could I do? And how do people perceive HR?
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They don't like it. So Do they like the HR people? Because my wife's in HR. So I wanna make sure Well, HR people are awesome.
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But here's the problem is that if you get if your boss calls you into his office and you walk in and there's an HR person sitting there It's over. It's over. You know that conversation is going to go poorly. So, so I adopted the email HR lady. It was literally a 2 minute decision and best marketing decision I could have ever made because people can't remember your name, but they certainly can remember Evil HR Lady.
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And so I started writing They know Sherry. I I mean, Susan.
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Suzanne.
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So you see what I did there? I didn't remember your name. I it was improv. We'll get there. You'll get there. Never mind. Keep going.
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And so I started writing this blog, And then my husband, who's now an ex husband well, not technically an ex husband because we still have not had the door divorce finalized even though we're 5 years in. Anyway, got a job in Switzerland, and so you can't turn that down. Right? So quit my corporate job, moved over here to Switzerland. Plan was to be here for 2 years. I was gonna stay home with the kids for those 2 years. Blah blah blah. 2 years is 115. But while I was home with the kids, CBS News reached out to me, and they said, hey, we love your blog. We'd like to pay you to write for us. And I was like, what? I can make money doing this? And they're like, yes. And so that was that. And I started writing for CBS. I moved to Inc. I write for a bunch of people. And then I as my kids got older so that I could do more, I started doing webinars. And, now that they're old enough that I can travel without worrying about babysitters, I do a lot of keynote speaking.
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What's now you just worry about comedy. Right. And you have to worry about people on the train putting their feet on your stone. I yes. About your son.
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I don't have to worry about him. No. Probably not. No. Not at all. Got it together. He's he's he's got it together, man. I thought that was super great because I would have just, like, held myself in a smaller area, right, to let the let the guy be obnoxious. But
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I think, though, you you've you're on to something there. I think it's better to take a shoe off and kill him with kindness and start rubbing his feet and be like and then, like, who stays for that? Like, anybody stays for that, you might wanna run mad, dude. It's clear. Well, that's that's a problem. Yeah. So if the guy had liked it, that would have been a problem. And then once you establish that, then people start lining up to SIP ID next time. Like, well, if he's gonna do that, I I have nicely. What is your so tell me about your keynote. So tell me about, like, today, like, you know, you've had an interesting journey, and I wanna dive into that. But what do you what do you keynote on today?
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I can keynote on a 1,000,000 topics, but the 2 I've been doing the most is, ChatGPT for HR, and my favorite one, which is incorporating improv comedy principles into HR and leadership.
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Oh, wow. Okay. So let's dive into that because I think if we're gonna give any entrepreneurial lessons today and you've had you've had your own kind of journey. We should we should dive into that here in a second. But I I would love to, you know, tie that into your communication style. Like, you know, a lot of solopreneurs are HR. Like, you know, when you run a company, you're you're initial there's no HR at the place. You're actually part of it. So I think giving advice to people who are running companies and there's not really a formalized thing to kinda set the tone, It might be kind of fun place to go improv on that one. Tell me about your own journey, though, to get there. So, like, I know you did kind of the highest brushstrokes, but, like, maybe what was the hardest thing in doing all this?
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Well, the hardest thing in doing all this so when I started doing the the writing, it was literally just for fun. I mean, like, I was getting paid, but I wasn't responsible for paying any bills. My husband has had a big corporate pharma job. You know, all was good. So I wasn't terribly worried about the actual income from it. And as a result, I was really undercharging, really undercharging. Because nobody tells you. Right? There's there's not, like, a a a list of what you should charge anywhere. You can't go to salary.com and and put in, you know, HR expert freelance writer and and have it give you a a a number. And so when I decided to leave my husband because he couldn't keep his pants on at work, I needed I needed real income. Right? I couldn't I I couldn't just live off of of of his income. I needed a real job, and I didn't want to go back to corporate. And the other problem is my specialty, the thing that I'm the best at, besides improv and keynote speaking, is understanding, US employment law. And so you can imagine here in Switzerland, there's not too many companies that wanna hire an HR expert in US employment law. It's not like they don't need that. And so I didn't wanna go corporate, but also I would have had to if I did have to go back corporate, I would have had to go at a much lower level because my expertise is in US law. And so I was like, I have to make more money. And so at that point, there was the pressure. Right? That I I needed to change this from a part time kind of side gig into a full time I can support my family, gig. And so that pressure was actually really good for me. It was like the kick in the pants
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that I needed. How's your pants rolling at work? It's a good it's a good kick in the pants. It's a good kick in the pants.
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And, around this time, I had the great fortune of being pushed by one of my friends into taking improv classes. And through that, first of all, I discovered an amazing art form. And secondly, I met the most incredible people, who were doing all of these amazing things. And I had people coming out of my network for all sorts of things. And I went all in. I started teaching webinars, and, that was the the pandemic was good for me in that because prior to the pandemic, people really led leaned towards the in live person training. But, of course, in 2020, you couldn't have that happen. Right. And, so I started doing webinars. I built a big webinar business. And once air travel really came back and people started holding conferences again, I started pushing myself as a keynote speaker. And, that's going really well. I gave a virtual keynote today, actually, on ChatGPT for business. And, I do in person, and I tell people I'm in Switzerland, but I have a passport, and I'm not afraid to use it. And so I have spoken in the last year, I spoke in Romania, Croatia, Poland, and then 3 different conferences in the US, and then a bunch of virtual things as well. So I'm really pushing this and incorporating those improv principles. And one of the the big principle of improv, the life changing principle improv, which you can all steal from me and use it in your own life, is this principle called yes, and, which is when you're on the stage and your team member says, oh, your hair is on fire. You can't say, no, it's not. You're you have to accept, yes. My hair is on fire, and now I'm gonna put it out. Or now I'm gonna run around screaming. Whatever it is, you can't deny that your hair is on fire because that's the yes ending. And I decided to do that with life. Yes. I'm stuck here in Switzerland. I can't move back because I have a minor child and a custody thing. So, yes, I'm here, and now what? And so many people just say that, oh, I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna be here. I don't want this bad thing that's happened to me, and so I'm just gonna be angry and miserable about it. And I said, I'm not gonna do that anymore. I'm gonna say this is what my life is. These are the things I can control. These are the things I can't control. The things I can't control, I'm just gonna build on them. So I'm just gonna yes, and it. And that's what I have done, and it's fantastic.
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Can you end this sentence, though, with yes and you're fired? Sure. Okay. I've got a good one. Oh, I understand. Yes. You've used your corporate card of due personal expenses and your And your father. Yes. Yes. That's very easy. This is great. I Alyssa, I wanna hear, the most ridiculous HR story you've ever heard, you've ever you've ever read in one of your groups. What what is the one you're like, I can't believe that's true? Oh my gosh. The most ridiculous amount of my groups? Like like or you or it can be anywhere. But but the most ridiculous story where you actually read that going, you couldn't write that. That could not have really ended and it did.
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Oh, I don't even know. I mean, there are so many crazy things that that come up. One of the things that that I try to remind people is there's a difference between conference HR, where speakers are always like, let's talk about the workplace of the future. And real HR, which is let's talk about who's snaring poop on the bathroom walls. Right? Right. Who's the most entitled set of employees we have? False entitlement
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and are the worst. We wanna fire, but we can't.
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I don't I I don't know. I I've gone in a complete blank on a great Alright. Also, let's let's let's imagine now you're a writer for a TV show,
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and the TV show is around the HR department, all the crazy things you have to go deal with. What would one sitcom be? What would be one of the things that came in?
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Okay. First of all, there would be a manager that had some sort of strange obsession, like, Post it notes or, you can't have more than one item on your desk or, you know, you if you have an Android phone instead of an iPhone, then you're not You'll never be you'll never get promoted. You'll never get promoted. Right. So there would be definitely
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definitely that. Was that was that an Android? It was. And that's okay. I'm I'm okay with that because I've also never been promoted.
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I have a I have an iPhone, but it's an s eight, the cheapest. But look at my coolest phone case. It's got my logo on it. That's so cool.
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For those who are listening, she has Evil HRlady written all over the back of her phone. With all over the back of her phone. Copy was ever made.
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Yeah. So, I don't know where I was going with that.
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Well, no. I'm thinking like because, you know, you talk about, not the workplace, the future, talking about kind of this this improv idea of of yes and, you know, and I'm I'm always looking for ridiculous stories because because that ends up being where everyone is supposed to kind of go to to deal with with HR. I think that the advice I think you might wanna give or I wanna talk about to an entrepreneur out there that's that's leading a company in its early stage is that at some point it's like not a bro network. Right? It's at some point you you the things you say and how you're setting up your culture from day 1 are gonna have impact, right, of it. And I think as you go along and these companies kind of evolve, right, then you actually get formal HR in. I I think it's all the culture is kinda set set at that point. Right? Like, there because someone's walking in to whatever it was.
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You can change culture and companies do change the cultures, But good culture takes effort and planning. And so often with start ups, the people that start them know each other, and so they already have a relationship. So they're just like, this is how we are. And they don't sit through and and think about how things are going, that that this relationship that, you know, me and my bestie have well, you know, you and your best friend may do stuff together as as business partners or whatever. That's fine when it's the 2 of you, but it's not fine for a larger thing. Like, inside jokes you have or inappropriate language that you might use, which is fine among friends, and you've taken that into the workplace. But now when you have the two co-founders throwing f bombs at each other all of the time, it that's gonna bleed out into a more chaotic culture, where people feel entitled to perhaps say things that they shouldn't say at the office. And so unless you're thinking about that and I just read somewhere, and I I wanna say it was at Alison Green's Ask a Manager, but it might not have been, about a remote worker who broke his leg and had surgery, and none of his teammates seem to have any compassion towards him. And the reason for that isn't because they're not compassionate people, but because in a remote situation, you can have a broken leg right now, and I wouldn't know unless you told me. And if you told me today and then we met again next week, I might say, oh, how's your broken leg? And you'd be like, oh, it's alright. But then we meet a month later, I I've forgotten. And not because I'm a bad person, but just because I have a life that's busy and that's not pour out anything. That's not a priority. And this is something that that wasn't an issue when we were all in the office. Because if you had a broken leg, I saw you every day. So I'm, like, getting updates. Oh, you've moved from the wheelchair to the knee scooter. Oh, you've moved from the knee scooter to the boot. You know? Like and I can see that you're making progress, and and you feel supported and cared for because people are talking to you about it and and giving you that that support. In a remote environment, people just don't think about it. They don't see you broken they don't see you hobbling around because they see you sitting in a chair. And if they see you at all, if they talk to you at all, your whole relationship may be through Slack. You know? And and those things, they have to come up on purpose. Because if you and I are just communicating via Slack, unless you come out and say, hey, by the way, I broke my leg, How how would I know? Whereas if we're in the office, I'm gonna see, and then I'm gonna inquire because I'm nosy. That's right. That's the best use case. I'm compassionate.
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Compassionate. Yes. And or nosy. And yes and nosy. Yes and nosy. Yes and nosy. What's the best use case, for GPT and HR?
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The best thing and the thing that I like the most with GPT is job descriptions, because everybody hates writing job descriptions. It's, like, the worst. And and the thing that you can do with Tagpt and the job descriptions is that it gets you a rough draft in about 10 seconds. And and when you're creating a new job, especially, you're like, okay. We're hiring our first marketing person. What are the responsibilities that we need? And you can brainstorm, but you're gonna miss things. So you say, hey, ChatGPT. Can you write me a job description for a marketing director in the tech sector? You know, whatever your things are. And this is the salary we wanna pay, and it'll give you a sample job description right there. And then you can edit it from there. You have to edit it. Anything that comes out of ChatGPT is a rough draft, and you need to edit it. But it gets you that starting point, and so I absolutely adore it for job descriptions. Not for finished job descriptions, but for starting and and getting that rough draft. And then, of course, using the various tools along with with ChatGPT for, like, scheduling and all of that are a great a great thing. The places where I find it scary is anything when you're evaluating. ChatGPT has tremendous biases in it, as do all AI. This is not a this is not a slam on open AI. Every artificial intelligence helps these huge biases because every human has huge biases. You have biases. I have biases. We all have biases. But they get magnified in these large language models. And so anytime you're doing anything with employees, if you introduce a name, then it knows the gender, the age, the ethnicity, where you're born. All of those things can be told in a name with surprising amount of accuracy, and then those biases come into it. And I've done tons and tons of work on this using ChatGPT, and I find this all of the time, that it will treat men different than women if you're doing a performance evaluation. And I give the same criteria for a guy named Steve and a woman named Jane. Steve is always a higher performer than Jane, even though the input is identical. If you're looking at, writing what are the strengths that a particular job needs, If that job is a generally gen gendered job, it'll come back with different strengths for a male versus a female. So, like, if I put it in and say, what are 5 strengths kindergarten teacher needs? It gives me one list. If I say, what are 5 strengths a male kindergarten teacher needs or 5 things the female kindergarten teacher needs, they're gonna be 2 different lists. And that is a huge problem because then if I ask you to evaluate a kindergarten teacher, are you evaluating the male kindergarten teacher on this list and the female on this list? That's illegal. We have to evaluate them on the same list. So anything involving humans is a little bit scary.
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A lot. I think that that's a great point. I also think but I think another way that an intermediate piece of what you described as a strategy. So HR related. Another one I I think would be a good use case is you get a difficult email from an employee, maybe they're a complainer, they're they're baiting you, maybe whatever it is, or a boss, is to without to be clear, without sharing personal information that you don't want on the open Internet, put in the email, maybe just to track names and things like that if you need to. Ask it, like, what's the tone? What's what's the most professional way to respond without giving advice or or acknowledging the pain? Or what is the main issue at hand here? How should I reply to help diffuse? And if you give it some nice instructions, it is a really good way to make some very concise emails and give you and say, what else am I missing? What would be ideal? What should I put in here to help, appease or or move the situation to a better space?
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Absolutely. It's brilliant at that. And it's also brilliant at when you're angry and you've written, like, a nasty email, and then you're just gonna delete it. You don't have to delete it. You put it into ChatGPT and say, here's here's the magic three words, direct, professional, and kind. If you put in those three words, direct, professional, and kind, it'll spit back a beautiful email with all the points you made in your rant, but in a direct, professional, and kind manner. That's a really helpful tool. And like you said, with the the tone, one of the things that that I like is if you're dealing with an employee manager or whatever who is speaking in a condescending tone and they don't acknowledge I'm not being condescending. She's just dumb. Right? You can take what they said, put it into ChatGPT and say, can you identify the tone? And and oftentimes, people are far more willing to accept a bot's evaluation of their tone than the HR person's evaluation of their tone. Because if I say, Thomas, you're really being condescending. You're just like, no. I'm not. And but if if Chi GBT says, no. What you said was just really condescending, then you're like, oh, crap. What I really said was condescending. And so that's really helpful. It's also helpful in, putting together strategies, like I said, for dealing. Here's the problem I have with an employee. How do I approach this? It'll come back with ideas. Caution, though. Big caution. It's a rough draft and it's not perfect. When I ask it to to help me address an employee that's having problems, it always tells me to start with a compliment. And I know this is popular. I hate it. Yeah. I agree. Because I I I don't wanna train my employees, oh, that when Suzanne shows up and gives you a compliment, the next thing out of her mouth is gonna be A but. This is this is why you're bad. I want those to be separate things. I want to be able to say, Thomas, you are awesome and have you go, thanks, and then I walk off. And then when I hit need to deal with a problem, then I wanna deal with a problem. I I don't like the the whole feedback sandwich thing. But it always gives that advice to start with the feedback sandwich unless you tell it not to. Well, it it won't be sandwiches. I can't just acknowledge
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a problem, not compliment it. I was thinking acknowledging, hey, I understand your frustration. I understand, you know, maybe things that weren't clear to you. Let's discuss what I I think the acknowledgment of the intent or the lack of capability on the other person on the other end. I understand you're a bit slow, Sally, but, we're gonna need to. Anyway, I I didn't know that, by the way. Actually, I'm gonna run a fun experiment with that. It might be a fun post. Is I'm gonna give you get 2 separate chats, and I'm gonna give it 2 different names and say evaluate this person to this exact same set of metrics just based on the name. I wanna see if it comes back with anything different.
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Yeah. I ran 1 today. 1 to 10. Because the the keynote I was doing today was for, business officials in Alabama. And so I did one of those on a payroll person, payroll manager, and I done three names, Liam, Mohammed, and James. So those names are loaded, right, with
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different ethnicities and gender and all of that. Yeah. I I that's I was gonna say if you did male, female, and then did, like, you know, maybe more traditional Spanish or African American or, you know, Canadian. I don't know. Is there a Canadian thing? No one cares. Anyway, the It's just the same as American age but with an a on the end. So it's like Yeah. B. Steve a. Oh, well, this is a good opportunity to do this.
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Yeah.
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You wouldn't you should use that in your improv if You can't. You could say, well, maybe not actually. So when you do the keynotes and you're doing these and you're saying here's the use of technology, do you tie it into some bigger concepts of, like, that's, you know, not to be tactical, but it's it's the cautionary tale of, hey. It's a great tool to help you organize your thoughts, not make professional mistakes. Is that kind of the overall tone and and The overall tone. Tone. Tone. Mistakes. Is that kind of the overall tone? And
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and and The overall tone is this is what you can do to make your life easier, because HR people are always overworked, because we deal with people. That's never done. Right? You know, when when you're an accountant, you can be, ah, I have filed the taxes. They're done. These reports are in. I have done all of the accounts payable and all the accounts receivable. I am done. But there's never a moment in HR where every employee is happy, every job is filled, every manager has been trained, everybody has a succession plan. Like, there's there's never. There's never that. And so we're always looking to level up our ability to do things and remove some of that difficult stuff. I I just read today that the average job description takes 2 hours to write. And if if I can get use ChatGPT to bring that down to half an hour, that's a tremendous
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a tremendous savings. You know, I started doing just for fun. I like to take, a job description and then have it create a resume that would be most appealing to it, and then I go apply for it just to see if they say anything, and they never do. So it doesn't work. Yes. At some point, by the way, when you're, an entrepreneur guys, I hear this if you're entrepreneurs. Listen up, because this is important. Once you put the word entrepreneur or CEO of your own company, you become unhirable. Just so you know. We'll never get a job again. Not happening. I'd like to hear I'd like to hear challenges in that. And since there's no one on the other line right now except you, we're not gonna go discuss it. I'm just gonna accept it as fact. We're gonna you know,
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we can accept it not as fact, but as probable. And and I actually agree with you on that. People people don't want someone that own their own business, and I actually changed my LinkedIn for this very reason. Mhmm. Because I had listed as owner and, or president or whatever of Evil HR Lady, and it was scaring people off. I changed it to consultant, and then people wanted to talk with me. Like, for some reason, I I became this untouchable whatever when I had owned the business. But now I'm a consultant who just happens to own the business, And, it opened a lot of doors, which I think is silly. Because to me, in my logic is that, like, by saying that I was the owner, I'm the top person. I'm the person you wanna talk to. But when I switched it to consultant, it really it really helped a lot. Interesting.
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I'm actually I was I was discussing with my wife. Like I said, she's in HR and, doesn't agree with everything I do, on the channel or otherwise sometimes. But I said this is what I was gonna do in my LinkedIn because they go all in on this entrepreneurial brand is I was gonna list the kind of the 3 main things I have, which is instantly relevant, never promoted. Maybe leave the AI nerd up there, whatever. Right? And then then just create one line that says, does it really matter anymore for my other jobs? And and basically, it's like, it's 20 years. It doesn't matter now, like, because I'm just an entrepreneur. And then you could put in there like all the things you've done maybe just so people wanna see that you have some kind of professional background. But I was like, I don't think it actually matters anymore. I was like, just simple for my HR. I was gonna make a fake resume where, like, my top skills are derailing meetings, if allowed to. No doubt job. Absolutely humor when I shouldn't. Not inappropriate, but just not well timed, and and deflecting comments for the purposes that I may be just tormenting somebody I just don't really enjoy being around. I'm very good at that as well.
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Same. And I've actually had the same thought because I've been doing this Evil HR Lady thing for 15 years now. And and really, my corporate jobs the reason why I leave those on LinkedIn and I leave them on my resume is that it shows that I just didn't wake up one morning and said, hi. I'm an expert in human resources. Right? That I actually had industry experience before I started doing this. But what what yeah. I mean, I've been doing this for for 15 years, and I'm good at it.
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Solutionist right now. So you and I both wanna do the same thing. Because I wanna have so because I tell people I have 20 years consulting big companies, and that helps build credentials for what we do. But I don't really want it on there anymore. I kinda wanna just, like, do it more fun, more of like it it got me where it is. Let's not dwell on it. I don't know. We should solution that. We'll do that offline. It'll be fun. Alright. Alright. So you have the that that's the speaker. So someone's gonna so I I always like to throw kind of the shameless plug in the middle. Right? If someone, wants you to come talk to them, about, HR and and using these technologies for improving your life, HR, some other fun, you know, comedy, and and we're gonna get into the improv where you kinda push this some of these things in, the the as and. First of all, where should they get a hold of you?
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I am easy to find. You can email me, evilhrlady@gmail.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn, Suzanne Lucas. And you can message me on LinkedIn. And, those are the 2 easiest places to find me. You can tweet at me, but it's not nearly as fun. No.
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Do you, do you own evilharlady.com?
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I do. And you say, why are you dot org? My website is dotorg, but I own the dotcom. And it's because I when I started my blog, I did it on Blogspot. You remember Blogspot? Right. Yeah. So for a long time, my website was evilitechairlady.blogspot.com. And, when I wanted to move to a stand alone website, somebody had bought up the .com, and they're trying to sell it to me. And I was like, I'm the only person on the planet that wants this URL, so I'm just gonna go with the dot org. And I just waited, and it took 10 years until they finally got tired of paying the renewal fee every year. So now I own it. So if you go to evilacharity.com, it redirects to evilacharity.org.
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That's pretty damn cool. I like you just waited them out. Like, I don't care. Waited them out because I was like, nobody else wants this.
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And I'll hit them with a a, you know, copyright, whatever. Yeah. If they try to put anything up there.
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So yeah. Yeah. Look how evil you are just getting all nasty. I just waited. Alright. We got Evil HR Lady. Is it Evil HR Lady or Evil HR Lady? What's that? Sorry. Is it the evilhrlady@gmail?
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No. It's just evilhrlady.
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Evil. So don't put it. So it's like it's not the Facebook. It's Facebook. So Right. Correct. Alright. So let's come into this. So the other kind of topic you could talk about is this kind of improv. And you started a school classes and so so tie that in for me. I know you have a high you know, you love it, the art form of it. I'm sure it makes you smile and have it's probably the thing you look forward to doing more than anything. Tell me about it and how how you're incorporating it as kind of your, you know, the professional side of the work.
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Well, like I said, with that principle of yes and, when I first learned that, I was like, oh my word. This is this is such a good principle, because everybody spends so much time fighting reality. It should be like this. Okay, great. But it's not. So let's deal with what it is. And this is gonna get me canceled, but I'm gonna say it anyway. I just had a friend the other day say, oh, you know, I really hate it when they say, you know, young women don't go out after late at night because you could get raped. We should instead say men don't rape. And I'm like, well, that's great. But here's the reality. Our reality is is it's not safe for young women out late at night. Okay? So we can deal with that reality, or we can yell about the other. Now we can try to solve the other problem, but until that problem is solved, we've gotta deal with the reality. And the reality is is stay with your friends. Don't be walking off by yourself. Watch a drink. Whatever. Is it ideal? No. But it's reality. And we see that in business all of the time. You know, well, I'm really angry because this is not the raise I wanted. So I'm gonna be angry that I didn't get the raise I wanted. Okay. You didn't get the raise you wanted, so let's just yes, and that, yes, this is my increase, and now what? I can stay in this job with the salary I don't like. I can find a new job. I can start my own company. I can quit and go on welfare. I can, you know, defraud my neighbors in a pyramid scheme. I can start selling LuLaRoe. Like, there's all of these different things, but you just have to accept it. When you spend every day focusing on the thing that you can't change, it just makes you miserable. And then, these other principles of improv, one of the other big principles is service, where your job is to make your team member's life as easy as possible. So if we were doing an improv scene together, I would never say to you, oh, what what's in your hand? Because now I put the burden on you to come up with what's in your hand. Instead, I would say, there's a chicken in your hand. And then you're like, okay. Now I can work with this. I know I've got a chicken in my hand. And that principle of helping others for instance, in HR, someone comes to me and says, I I don't want anybody to get in trouble. This is something that you hear a lot in HR. I don't want anybody to get into trouble. I just wanted you to know that, you know, that I that I overheard heard someone telling a dirty joke. I didn't think it was appropriate. I don't want anybody to get in trouble. I just wanted you to be aware. And oftentimes, HR people will say, and I used to say this, well, what would you like me to do? Now I've just thrown the burden back on that person. They don't know what the law is. I know what the law is. They don't know what the company policy is. I do. So why am I throwing it back on them? I use the active service, and I say, okay. Thank you for telling me. Here are 3 options. Right? And then I present them. I give them this act of service of trying to make it as easy as possible for them, instead of putting that burden. What would you like me to do? Because they don't know. That's my job to know. It's not their job to know. It's my job. So making sure that you can you can do that. So that's another principle of improv that applies directly into HR and into leadership. Let me help you out. And you're like, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I want a chance for my people to shine or whatever. Yes. This is a different thing. If I'm just like, here are 3 options. You can do plan a, plan b, or plan c, and I never let you give creative input. That's that's sucky. But there are areas in which my job is to serve and to help make your life easier. And HR is a very service oriented oriented business. And even when you're dealing with, you know, the CEO and sometimes CEOs don't have a freaking clue about what's legal and what is best practice. They don't know. It's not their job. They didn't know about it, especially founders who may not be great managers to begin with. So let me tell you what best practice is instead of making you fumble, and then I criticize you for it. Just let me tell you what it is. Let me do this act of service for you.
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I I think also the improv of context context or contextual where if you have that same example of, oh, I don't wanna say who it is, you know, but but that person comes in always trying to get a certain person in trouble.
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Right.
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Do you you know, it's the context of thank you for sharing. It it's it's almost like the parent principle. You go, I'm gonna have a conversation with the team on this and and the boss. Let me just take it from here. Thank you for sharing. You just don't do shit about it. You just you just take it in and go, I'm tired of this lady lady complaining about everything that doesn't actually have or a guy. It's it's I'm I'm being sexist in my my scenario, though. The the other way is, like, right, you know, is also I love but you we also have to have that hat on. It's it's almost like an improv show. Right? Improv is a shows I've been to, I feel aren't very improv. Like, they have their a b c paths and they're they're very spontaneous looking, but they are somewhat rehearsed. They know their little bits to get in and when to get them in. And I think that's okay because it makes it fun and entertaining based on crowd interactions that are usually around, you know, sex, drugs, politics, something. Right? There's usually, like, you know, concepts that always come up. And so for yours, like, your your options, right, I think the ideas, and you can use GBT to do this if you like, is that you need to have responses for certain types of situations and options ready to go based on the situation that's there and or or the the the wherewithal to be like, you know, yes, and let me get back to you and what you can do about it. Like right? It's it's the it's not shutting it down or, like, you said, or making it hard for someone else to kind of come do and interact.
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Improv is not winging it. So many people think it's winging it. And, like, you just get up on stage and do whatever. No. No. There are set formats. There are things that we do. There are rules. And, actually, those rules, this thinking inside the box makes you more creative than everything. So if I say to you, say something funny. That's really, really tough.
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I'm actually going through it. I have one for you. It's it's I I think anyone in charge would be flogged with a rubber chicken on day 1.
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Yeah. Fine. I agree. I have a rubber chicken.
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Hey. You should.
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I I I have one. I got it at a street
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stand in Dubai. No pick, no proof. No pick, no proof. I don't know where it is. If you're you know, if you pulled down a rubber trigger right now, I I I was gonna
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drop the mic right there. Just slam it down. It's probably up on my top of my head. Oh my god. You really do have a rubber It would have been so great if I if I had it. Yeah. Sorry.
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It's somewhere. I I think more people should be talking with rubber chicken. Not only is it embarrassing, but it's also funny to watch someone getting beat with a rubber chicken. Not harshly, but, like, enough where they're, like, embarrassed, but stop, it hurt, it stings. That would correct behavior. Is that why we That would also
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fall under the category of illegal. In every state? I don't know. I yeah. I I'm gonna go with every state.
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I'm gonna go with every country.
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No. Good. Not every country. Alright. So it's my dream Every state. Switzerland, definitely. Switzerland has some real bizarre laws about beating people.
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What about spouses that cheated on you? Did they go to jail?
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I wish spouses that cheated on me no. Actually, I don't wish spouses that cheated on me went to jail because I'm getting alimony. I didn't get paid.
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Well, that's that's jail. That's that's financial jail, so I'm I'm okay with that. It is. And and
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he cries about it, and I don't give a flying fake. I don't feel too much compassion for that. With a rubber chicken. I'd smack him with a rubber chicken. Yeah. I actually totally did that. Rubberchickenviolence.com.
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Check it out. Susan, thank you. I'm conscious of time here, right, because I I I could go on just improving, but I like to wing it, so I don't think I'm doing improv. You've talked me out of it. Thank you. My dream is dead. No. You should take a class. And and let me tell you,
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because I teach improv now. I took a whole bunch of classes. I did classes in Basel. I did classes in California via Zoom, which I didn't recommend because I had to get it at 4 in the morning for them. But they were awesome, through the groundlings. They were just amazing. Anyway, but it was at 4 in the morning. It wasn't great. But the people that take my class, almost all of them are people that have no interest in being an improv performer. What they want to do is do better at their job, and they want to learn how to respond quickly. They want to learn how to think on their feet. They wanna be able to do presentations better. They wanna do public speaking better. And they have identified this as a tool, and they did that on their own. Like, hey. This is a tool. So I I recommend it for everybody. It's not just if you wanna perform it. Performing it is fun, but it's learning those principles. It's learning how to think on your feet.
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That's, you know, that that gives my ADD brain, business ideas, which is always a dangerous thing. Did you get certified to kinda do that? Like, how did you get to the point where you could actually do your own school or own own class then?
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I took a bunch of classes, and I performed in a group. And then, my friend that owns a theater company said, hey. I need another instructor. Do you wanna do it? And I have gobs of training experience. So, I was just teaching a new topic. Like, I know how to stand in front of the classroom, and, so I just started doing it. Now there's no, like, improv certification.
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No. No. I I get it because, actually, I see the benefit of that. I I know there's lots of individuals in my professional career I've met. As somebody who's totally comfortable being asked to go on stage with no notice and have a I mean and if at least I have a general idea of the the conference or the topics about it, I'll be okay. I can answer questions. I can present. Don't really you know, like, it helps to have slides, but you don't need them. You can just entertain people. Do you meet people in your career though who are like, I wish I could do that. I'm they've said that. Like, man, how do you how do you just kinda come up with stuff? And it's in you, but I think, like you said, I think to some degree, you you can develop that skill set to to be more confident with it. Because I know lots of people who would just they don't know how to do public speaking. They're afraid of that random question. And And when they do speak, they're so mechanical because they don't want questions. And and they don't want interruptions. They don't want anything to happen that gets them off their track. And I I absolutely see the value of that, like a improv for for professionals. And
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it's absolutely a a thing that you can do this improv for professionals. One of one of the things that we learn, is to fail with joy, because everybody is going to fail. Everybody in every class, every performance, there's gonna be something that doesn't go right. And and you can sit in the corner and cry and never do it again, or you can laugh and keep moving. And so we focus on laughing and keeping moving. And one of the things I say to my students is when something goes horribly bad, I say, did you die? They say, no. I'm like, good. Then let's keep going. Like, if if you're not dead, then we can keep going. And you can learn that it's okay to make a mistake. And the other thing that we do, is this concept of rescue me. So when you see somebody floundering, you jump in. And, actually, last Tuesday, I was at an improv performance given in Swiss German, which is a language I don't speak. I speak high German, but not the dialect. I understand about 50% of the dialect. But this was done by a professional improv team. They were amazing. But because I know the form and I know how well it how it goes, I can see the moment that somebody would jump in to rescue. And you can do that if you're in a meeting, and the person giving the presentation is flustered or whatever. You can say, well, hey, and then say something supportive. Oh, yeah. I I agree with you on that that that and then repeat it to get them back to where they need to be when you can see that they're flustered. You're doing an act of service. You are rescuing them.
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Right. And I think yeah. Sometimes it's from the, in the HR world, the asshole boss that's intentionally attacking the tree because they don't like the idea or they whatever it is. So I've I've seen that one play out. Sometimes when you do that, right, then you get the attention of the person who's just gonna be a jerk face going up there. We can take that on a different topic one day. Yes. And. I love it. Alright. So Suzanne Lucas, evilhrlady@gmail.com. You can find her, obviously, if you Google those words, evilhrlady, all her stuff comes up, because there is there can be only 1. Are you a, are you a Sith lord or more like something in from Star Trek?
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I am more like Glinda the good witch.
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Oh, I like that. Still a witch, but a good one. A good witch. Right. Real power to be used against the evil spirits of the world. I like that. Alright. All good. Yes. And I I typically wear brighter colors. I'm wearing a dark blue today. I don't know why. I typically You you know what? You gotta go with what your emotion is. Okay? It's good.
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It's it's the day the rubber chicken died. Actually, it was it was me being professional because I told you I did a a keynote earlier today. So this is me being professional.
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The, it's okay. You can you can I'm wearing jeans,
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but this is a professional top.
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I I I'm I had I had to start putting a normal pant big boy pants on because I have a down angle on the camera. Alright. Hey, listen. Anybody who's made it this point in the show, I really appreciate you being here. And this was your first time coming here, you rock. If you've come back, I would give out dad points. Dad points are spend you can spend it anywhere. And if you figure out where, let everyone and every child in the world know. I will. Do that. To now. Yeah. Let me know, Susan. Suzanne Lucas, thank you for so much for coming to the show today. It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me. And once again, hey, this is Thomas Selfridge, your host of the Never Been Promoted YouTube channel, podcast. Until we meet again, get out there, go unleash your entrepreneur. Thanks for listening.