Welcome to The Talent Drop - First Edition

Welcome to the first edition of The Talent Drop! I'm Mel Plett, Founder of Cordelia Consulting and Co-Founder/Co-Host of Your Work Friends, and each week I'll be sharing a quick, curated drop of valuable talent insights, resources, and tools to help nourish your talent and potential. Whether you're growing your business, enhancing your HR strategies, developing your team, or developing yourself, this is your space to catch up and move forward with confidence. Let's dive in!

Top Reads

Gartner: Top 5 Priorities for HR Leaders in 2025

• Link to download
• Why you should read it: Gartner surveyed more than 1,400 HR leaders across 60+ countries and all major industries to get a pulse on "HR trends, priorities, and expected challenges for 2025." Not only will you get a wealth of great knowledge, but a supply of tools and resources to support you and your org, for example their CHRO Guide to Manager Effectiveness to address the staggering statistic that managers juggle 51% more responsibilities than they can handle!

Fortune: Spotify's HR Chief says remote staff aren't 'children' as company reaffirms work-from-anywhere policy

• Link to read
• Why you should read it: In a moment in time where "RTO" is the new mandate, and we are reading articles like 79% of CEOs expect RTO, Katarina Berg and Spotify are leading with courage and saying what needs to be said which is employees aren't children, and employers aren't there to babysit them. In fact, trusting your employees improves your employee value proposition. Spotify has seen 15% lower attrition rates and increased workplace diversity since implementing its policy. Over at Your Work Friends we discuss this topic at length - you can check that out here - and we firmly believe in meaningful hybrid work for collaboration, community, and innovation. That said, we also know RTO isn't going to automatically make that happen. It requires thoughtful and meaningful design in how we work as teams. After all, employers spend months hiring the right candidates for the job - once they are there, why aren't employers trusting them to do the job they were hired to do? There is a TON of research on this topic, and this is a great opportunity to start the discussion on moving away from control and command work environments to flexible and autonomous work cultures. What do you think?

Top Watch and/or Listen

Podcast

Pivot: Bill Gates on How to Tax the Rich, AI, Misinformation, & The Election

Link to Listen

If you haven't checked out the Pivot podcast yet you may be missing out on some great knowledge! Co-Hosts Kara Swisher (Tech Journalist) and Scott Galloway (Prof G - NYU Professor) bring insightful, authentic, sharp, and fun(ny) takes on the latest stories in tech, business, and politics. Also, if you like bad jokes, Prof G. is the gift that keeps on giving.

Why you should listen: This week, Kara sat down with Bill Gates to discuss his Netflix docuseries What's Next? The Future with Bill Gates, covering today's biggest topics—AI, climate change, the upcoming election, and more. They highlight Bill’s conversation with James Cameron about the potential of AI. Cameron emphasizes the need to lead with a "humanist mindset," prioritizing people over market dominance and power—pushing AI to be a force for good. Later in the episode, when talking about climate change, Bill responds to criticism about our slow shift away from fossil fuels, saying (check out the 31:29 mark for this one):

"There's part of the movement I don't fully agree with, which is that you denigrate the current way of doing things before we have a replacement."

Although he was referring to climate change, it struck me that this idea also applies to how organizations are reacting to AI and other innovations. My take? It's a powerful reminder for all of us to pause—not just with AI, but with any sweeping transformation. We need to consider the impact on our current processes and ask ourselves how confident we really are in the future replacements we’re envisioning. Optimism fuels growth, but it’s also okay to hold back on drastic changes until we have more data. And above all, we should center our decisions on humans, ensuring that people—as well as progress—remain at the forefront.

Tool of the Week

Each week I'll highlight a tool (basic templates or interesting tech) that may be of interest for you to explore. This week I want to highlight Amotions AI, a startup founded by Pianpian Xu Guthrie. I had the pleasure of experiencing a demo of this powerful tech, and if you're passionate about creating a continuous learning culture, implementing solutions that support employees in the flow of work, and complimenting human coaching with AI coaching, this tool is one you should explore. The most powerful part of this tech - it combines internal and external content to train the AI to align with your org for greater personalization.

Check them out here

Opportunity Highlight

Deborah Lee, founder of Creaturae, Trauma-informed and Mental Wellness Consultants & Training, is looking for a technical co-founder for a Somatic EMDR mental health app - "AiEmpath" that will function like a pocket therapist using somatic EMDR principles. Her goal - to provide therapeutic support to the unreached 60% of the population that needs help but does nto have access to quality mental healthcare.

If you or anyone you know is interested please click on this link, or reach out to Deborah.

And, Deborah is doing extremely meaningful work. Check out our latest interview with her here.

Reflection Time

Did you know that creating regular reflection practices can strengthen your performance, reduce stress, nurture your imagination, and also help with wellbeing? So let's collectively take a moment to pause, shall we?

Get comfy where you are, take 7 deep breaths in - hold it - and now take 7 beats to breathe out. Now set your time for 10 minutes for uninterrupted reflection time and ask yourself:

In what ways can I leverage my unique strengths to contribute more effectively to my team's success? to my personal career growth?

What did you learn about yourself? What's one thing you will do between now and next week?

Let's Chat

Interested in discussing these insights and how you might apply them to your business, team, or for yourself? Let's chat! You can book a free consultation call with me here. I'd love to meet you, and hear more about your needs.

Thanks for reading The Talent Drop! Continue to get your weekly drop by Following Cordelia Consulting. If you have any tools, tips, or resources you'd like to share, don't hesitate to reach out!