What Happens When Leaders Tolerate Poor Performance

AI is moving faster than most organisations can redesign themselves, so how do you stop transformation becoming a series of disconnected technology fixes?

Every leader says they want a high-performing team. But what happens when poor performance, missed standards and a lack of ownership are tolerated for too long?

In the most recent HR Leaders Podcast episode, I had a fascinating conversation with Paul D. Brubaker, Vice President Human Resources at KARL STORZ North America.

Paul shares what decades of leadership have taught him about building teams around trust, accountability and continuous improvement. From knowing when coaching is no longer enough to preparing HR teams for AI-driven change, he explains why great cultures are shaped by the behaviours leaders consistently reward, challenge and refuse to tolerate.

5 things you’ll learn from this episode:

1. The overlooked “trust dividend” that can remove unnecessary checking, duplication and friction from your team
2. The warning sign that tells leaders they may have held onto an underperformer for too long
3. Why the standards you quietly tolerate can become the culture your entire team starts to accept
4. The AI opportunity Paul believes could remove huge amounts of transactional HR work, and the barrier still slowing many organisations down
5. Why staying relevant in HR will increasingly depend on your ability to learn, adapt and build new capabilities faster than your role changes

🙏 Thank you to our series partner, Leapsome

Meet Leapsome: The AI-powered HR platform that raises your talent density. By unifying core HRIS, ATS, performance reviews, and learning into a single platform, Leapsome turns deep people data into measurable employee growth.

🚀 See Leapsome in action → https://hubs.li/Q04vQ-KT0

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