We get into what playwriting teaches you about how to be successful in HR: how to sit with rejection without internalizing it, how to give feedback that people can hear instead of one that makes them defensive, and how to read a room well enough to know when the story you're telling isn't landing. Tara also opens up about the specific tax of doing this work as a Black woman - in both theater and corporate America and how she's learned to fight those battles without becoming a character written by other people.

Highlights include:

🎭 Why playwriting builds a thicker skin than almost any other professional training
💡 The power of the reframe: "I am not for everyone AND everyone is not for me."
🪞Show, don't tell: what bad theater and bad leadership have in common
🤝 The "one slot" problem: how gatekeeping in theater mirrors gatekeeping in HR
📚 Why impact outlives title, and what that means for how you measure your own success

Tara's not asking anyone to burn it all down. She's asking them to get specific, get strategic, and stop mistaking volume for effectiveness - actions speak louder than words.

Find her at equityactivations.com or as T. Tara Turk-Haynes all over the internet (except TikTok; we're done with that).

- HR onstage

- HR as pit orchestra

- HR's backstage personality

- The musical SIX (with appropriate shoutouts to Milly Parker) and how each of Henry VIII's wives is a different HR Archetype. It's a full on Ted Talk, and Brittany came PREPARED.

We laughed. We cried. We laughed till we cried. We learned lessons about history and theater and work. And we remembered why any of this matters in the first place: diversity is only as good as the way you utilize your team's diverse skills, experiences, perspectives. Theater kids know that it takes a lot of different people to tell a story, from conception to reception. Good HR leaders know how to develop an org that plays to people's strengths. The skills, they are transferrable.

Take a listen.

Oh, and click here to get Brittany's Spotify playlist inspired by this episode.