Non-judgmental Approach to Understanding Individuals

Let‘s Talk HR - Humanizing the Conversation

Maria Kellis shares her insights on the significance of HR and the often-overlooked value it brings to companies. Drawing from her diverse background as an MIT graduate, international speaker, bestselling author, and business professional. Maria emphasizes the integral role HR plays in fostering employee engagement, motivation, and overall company success. She advocates for a non-judgmental approach to understanding individuals within a team, highlighting the importance of emotional and human support alongside business considerations. Throughout the conversation, Maria emphasizes the need for balance, self-leadership, and a holistic view of human potential in the evolving landscape of leadership and AI integration.

Contact Maria

Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariakellis/

Website – https://mariakellis.com/

Leighann Lovely 00:20

HR professionals, business owners and operations at all levels are struggling to figure out what needs to change. Our system has been shocked practices have been questioned, and conversations are finally happening. We all know there has been a huge shift in what people want. inclusion and diversity are common phrases. But often misunderstood generations are coming together more than ever on what's important. Mental health has been brought to the forefront of everyone's mind. Let's humanize these conversations. Let's talk about what's important for employees to be successful in life and at their job and how companies can create an environment to allow them to do both because successful people will make up a successful workforce. I'm Leighann Lovely. Let's get this conversation started. Maria Kellis is a sought after leadership coach, intuitive business consultant, inspirational speaker and best selling author. With experience that spans multiple continents. Maria's journey is one of resilience, passion and a dedication to elevate individuals and organizations in their pinnacle, an MIT graduate, she seamlessly merges her business acumen and spiritual insight to offer transformative strategies, particularly in transmuting adversity into triumph. Maria firmly believes in the transformative power of inner work to facilitate external success. Maria, thank you so much for joining me today. I am very excited to talk with you.

Maria Kellis 01:57

Thank you for having me.

Leighann Lovely 01:59

So why don't you start off by telling my art or the audience, a little bit about yourself, and you know who you are?

Maria Kellis 02:11

Absolutely. And to start with, I'm excited to be here, I feel that the conversation around HR is incredibly important. Because HR tends to have a bad rap. It's almost that they're the people that everybody says, Who cares about HR, or they're like, oh, we'll just use HR is like, it's a thing. And we forget the value that HR has in our lives in our companies, I believe that our companies are stronger, because of our human potential. In fact, a company can go down, because the employees are not working to sustain the company and the company can survive or thrive, because the employees care. And HR plays a central role in that. So I might my background is that I used to be an engineer, I graduated from MIT then I was in business. I actually graduated from Stanford School of Business. And at MIT. So I used to be in startups have always been startups, and we've always had hire people. And that's when my respect for hires came in. Because I realized that we, in the beginning, we always talked about the A players, and how to hire those. And I realize it's not just a player's team, everybody has a role. And it's not about looking at somebody as an individual, but looking at the team as a whole, that makes a difference in the company. So I have had my own personal journey that got me to be who I am today. And this journey has been, I'm gonna say difficult. In 2004, ended up being in a wheelchair. And I had to learn how to walk again, which is not exactly as easy as it sounds, while actually it's as difficult as it sounds. And I remember realizing that everything is a perspective. At the time, I had a tremendous amount of pain. And I realized, oh, I have a tremendous amount of neuropathic pain. So instead of thinking, I am broken, I realized, oh, I have something to work with. And I started saying that pain is not bad. It's just something I need to remap. And so I started remapping pain. I'm like, huh, that pain was hot. That pain was called that pain is movement. That means pain is done. hang out, that pain is falling out. Pain is hitting something because I didn't pay attention. That pain is way too close. But that's when I realized that when we make things good and bad, we are judgmental, and we're not really looking at what we have. So coming back to HR, when we look at people who say, well, that person is good, and that person is bad, well, are they? They're just people. Are they motivated to work? Do they have good heart? They have, like, realization? If they're there to clock in hours, okay, maybe I will agree with you. But if they're there to do work, it's not so much a employee prom, but it's really a management role. Did we train them properly? Did we give them all the resources they need? are we supporting them? Are we taking care of more than just the business side? Are we taking care of the human side? The emotional side? So all those questions are kind of a non judgmental way of looking at people and, and just really being human?

Leighann Lovely 06:09

Yeah, there's so much Well, first of all, I agree with everything that you just said. But there's so many nuances to a lot of what you said with, you know, nurturing, and it's really about putting people in the right seat on the bus, making sure that they were have the proper expectations for each human individual, we can't put somebody in a spot and expect, you know, a certain level of work if they don't have the proper training, the proper tools, the proper, you know, support, if we're not providing that to them as managers, right.

Maria Kellis 06:53

And I find that we, were I, I'm gonna just spell it out, we're in an age where AI is everywhere. And it's only the beginning, still AI more and more, it's going to be taking care of the repetitive analytical tasks that we may or may not need anymore. So we need humans to be humans more than any other time. And we need humans to be the strong humans that they are. So if we're just making them trying to replicate machines, like there are little machines that do things repetitively, it's not going to work. Because first we have tools that right now are supplementing that, and will become better. When I was in college, I remember I had written my thesis in a Mac, and the Mac crashed at the time. And, and I had to like I thankfully had a printout and had to retype the whole thing. So this does not happen anymore. Right? The we have cloud recordings and everything saved automatically and you don't have to remember to press Ctrl S it just saves and things like spell checking. We have Grammarly and we have native tools in Word and Google Docs. I use Google doc these days, but English, and we have charged up when I want to write something and I'm like, give me five versions of this. And any does. So jobs that used to be not so glamorous, are sort of disappearing. So I believe that now we're really seeing the value of human potential which is the humanity and that's what we get to nurture. Absolutely.

Leighann Lovely 08:54

And, you know, you say we have Grammarly. We have spellcheck we have you know, spellcheck is one thing but having tools like Grammarly, that that checks, you know, that checks everything. Like I remember when I was younger, and I was I was at a early in my career at a job and my boss was an English major. And I would type up an email and I would send it to her and she would email me back with the reply. And then below, she would fix all of my grammar errors. I'm like, you've got to be kidding. Okay, well, this is you know what, I took it as a learning you know, opportunity. I was horrible. Horrible at spelling, horribly grammar. I still am still am to this day, but you wouldn't know because now we have. We've got Grammarly. We've got all of these AI tools that basically can make the worst writer in the world look like the best writer in the world.

Maria Kellis 10:00

And in a sense, it's even in the field, I feel that as we are becoming more and more international, as we are opening up our companies and ourselves to international pool of talent, that people are not native English speakers, and that's okay. It's sort of now I am not a native English speaker, and probably not the best writer, I use chargeability daily, I have an email, I type sort of what I want to say, and I'm like, Okay, make it this job. And then it does. And I don't have it, it changed my life, I used to say, there's two technologies that changed my life, cell phones, and GPS, and I'm adding charge up to that, because up to now the tools that we had for so ghost writing, or I'm gonna say, like, just writing tools that they were okay. But they sounded like machine. And now, it's about coming up with ideas. So I wrote an e book, that's actually I can give to the audience, which is the AI and became young, so kind of marrying felt older wisdom with modern tech, and for enhancing leadership. And I purposely wrote that book using chatting for fun, because I'm like, let's see what happens. It took me on less than two weeks to write the book, which is to me tremendous. And I could see how, if I wasn't in charge, if I wasn't telling the AI to go one direction or another, then it will just go somewhere else. And I was like, I don't know that this is what I want to say. Yet, when I was really clear in that direction, really clear on what I needed really clear where I was going, then it became a tense, it became an incredible experience, collaborative experience. It's like I had my own personal writer that was available for any time, I needed a writer period. And, and that was a game changer. And more than more than that, when I, at one point, I had done my own research, and I'm like, oh, based on this research, and this articles, can we talk? Because I was writing about case studies. And I'm like, Well, can we talk about this study? And, and it replied, I'm an AI. I have access to the web. I don't actually need your research.

Leighann Lovely 12:45

Oh, is that funny? Oh, I

Maria Kellis 12:49

was laughing. I'm like, Okay, I guess I don't have to really do research or just like saying, Well, okay, look at different articles and tell me what's happening.

Leighann Lovely 12:56

Right? That I mean, see, and that's, that's amazing and scary at the same time. For it to come back. Because you almost feel like you're talking to a person who's actually getting, you know, snippy or snarky, or we, I don't know what the right word is, you know,

Maria Kellis 13:15

I'm gonna go with with a, but in a sense, that is the magic. Isn't that amazing, though, like to realize that we have built tools that make jobs that used to be sort of a boring, sort of, like, repetitive become a nice thing. Right? It's almost like the sky is the limit. I feel that we are at the time when the humanity of us is in the forefront. And that is what we need more than anything else. Right. And in a sense, I believe that it's not scary, when on the contrary, it's exciting. Because finally, we can look at human potential as real human potential, right? It's about really saying that we don't need to make humans feel that they're not important or that they can only do one level job that we can really elevate and connect at a whole different level. When I was in China for a talk in Shanghai, and in my hotel, I had done I had given my laundry to be done. And I called downstairs in the in the reception and said, Oh, can I have the laundry stand up? And said sure, certainly. A minute later, I got a call or colleague is at the door. Okay, so I opened the door or do I see a little robot it was a machine and looking Like a big trashcan, I guess with a window, it had like a little face bandit. When I said, when I opened the door, it opened that little door, little window and it had my packet and says, you know, your packet has been delivered. And I speak the package, and then the little, like, robust start started going towards the elevator, call the elevator and left with the elevator. And I was like looking at this, and I'm like I am living in the future.

Leighann Lovely 15:31

I think it was, we wouldn't want it, I probably would have followed it and been like, we're just sick go now

Maria Kellis 15:39

be elevated to probably go to his next job. But I definitely took a video of that. But I was so impressed. Someone's asked, because this is a job that somebody will have to have done. Otherwise, like remember the bell boys, right? And wants to give out boy, right? Right.

Leighann Lovely 16:01

Right. And, and we always talk about, well, robots are gonna replace us, but somebody has to calibrate that somebody has to monitor it, somebody has to make actually creating higher paying better jobs for people. So that they have the ability to learn new and better things. Because I mean, the way of the world is just

Leighann Lovely 16:34

it's just simply the way of the world. The more advanced we get, the more you know, the more we here's an example. And I use this example, when I talk all the time. When I first started to read, I'm pretty sure I was, you know, like first grade ish, you know, kindergarten, you start learning to identify your letters, you start to learn to count, and it's about playing and socialization, right. My daughter is five. And she's reading. She's writing. She's using computers in a way that I never, I mean, at will show my age, I didn't have a computer in my home until I was in high school. I mean, we didn't have that technology. But now kids are growing up, where my, when she was two, she could open up my iPhone and take pictures and play games. And I'm like, How did you know how to do that? You know, like, they watch you do something once on technology, and they can repeat it just by seeing. And that just shows the intelligence already in our kids abilities to do things with the use of technology. Now, some would go you know, some would say, Oh, that's so bad. You know, we want our kids to be outside playing the way we did well, the world is constantly evolving. They're not going to go outside and play with sticks the way that we did because, well, they now have so much more to play with. We now we're creating toys that our learning tools, the way that we didn't have we had sticks and Rottweil okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit I had more than stuff to play with. But you get the point. Like,

Maria Kellis 18:27

hey, I played with sticks and rocks because it was fun. I love what I was literally like my favorite game was to go into mud and become like me this poor mom, she had to wash my clothes, but I just like enjoying being in the mud, like the whole space. Right? And I would like make big money and make like little like things with my hands. And I thought it was like the cutest thing in the world. Like, and I thought it was making food right? Because I was watching my mom make foods. I was like, Oh, do you want like some some food that I made? And they were like, oh, laughter that like oh my God, what did she do again. But you know, there's a pleasure in that interaction with the ground, for example, and the earth but there's also fun to to evolve. And I remember toys that we my mom was obsessed with having smart toys for us. She will like track the whole entire. I grew up in Athens, in Greece and sociopaths the entire city to find like the one store that had like educational toys. And as a result, by the way, I went to MIT and my two brothers also went to MIT. So I'm just here to say that educational pillars are very useful. And in a sense, when we those toys are available now to to In case everywhere, when my first job out of MIT, Bernard was working for MIT at the MIT Media Lab as a researcher, and there was a group next to mine, that they were creating music using drawings. So I literally took the notes, and they very literally composed music. So you could draw lines and create operas, and so many a little kid today can open up an application to a few lines and create music without having to learn them instruments, right. So that creates an incredible ability, where we can have new digital learning, and I remember back in the day, like, yo, yo, Ma, was coming to, to the Media Lab to play so they could track his that once the machines learn how to do it, then they could just compose music. Of course, of course, we really smart programmers were behind it. There was an I give them full credit for incredible chars. Yet, what I'm saying is that something that moto was able to play 10 instruments by this time. And so yeah, he became Mozart. But we haven't had composers since then are not incredible composers are well known, because it's not so easy. And who's going to spend that time, right? Whereas today's little kids, if they're musical, and they have the the amazing creativity that they have, they can compose music without having to remember, right?

Leighann Lovely 21:46

Yep. So I'm going to shift us back. So we don't go too far off.

Maria Kellis 21:55

I can talk forever about AI is so fascinating.

Leighann Lovely 21:59

So I've been really excited to talk to you about your teachings and how you use your background and experience to lead businesses. So let's talk a little bit about that. Absolutely.

Maria Kellis 22:11

I believe that I take a very human centric approach. I believe that everything starts with us. And also, I believe in the way, not so much to me. So when we create leaders, so my job is my my focus is on leaders, and leadership. And I work with leaders, but I always say leadership always starts with self leadership. Because if we can lead ourselves, then how will lead an impulse. And it's not about control and manipulation, it's about vision and inspiration. So standing in our power today means very different things than what it meant in the past. We're no longer in the time of the fires when we had slaves, buildings, appointments, machines, were doing that. So now we're at the stage where we can understand leadership at a different level, understanding the nuances. And when I talk about the yin and yang leadership, this is really the pinnacle of my work, I have a method that I use called existe. Maxim's because I always say if you're at your center, just rotate around your center around Praxis as it were. And it it really uses the idea of balance. So the first step is awareness. So we have the awareness of who we are what we're doing and the awareness of the problem. So we go in a very mindful way introspective way really understanding and taking perspective, then the second part is execute for the x axis. And when we are executives or we execute, literally what we do is we take into action and are inspired action is really what drives the results which and then we integrate the two that's the i and b axis by integrating awareness and execution will really create extraordinary success, which is really the essence the axis and this access method may seem simple, but those steps are very vague. And every step is years and years of understanding and training in my life. I personally started with the export, because while I was in technology and also I learned how to do the things using more structure approach the the young approach we wanted call it God. And the rest of my life, especially after the wheelchairs, bashing, understanding life in a much different level was to understand the flow would we call the flow, the amazing ability that we have. This, by the way is incredible and sales as well be in sales, if we understand the flow, we can increase our results. So this is something that I want to say that we as humans have access to something called the flow that is so much better than what we ever had before. And this is really our human potential. So when I work with leaders, even they may be managing a small team. Okay, you may just only be managing yourself that I talk to them about this access method that allows them to have bombers leadership, and create extraordinary results.

Leighann Lovely 26:00

Now, may I ask, because you've brought up the wheelchair? Yes. Now, did you? Was that before? Or after you founded? Inspire Leadership Academy?

Maria Kellis 26:16

That was it. That was 2004?

Leighann Lovely 26:20

Yeah, it was okay. So it was quite a bit before all

Maria Kellis 26:23

it was quite a few years ago, it took me It changed my life. If you speak to people who had very difficult experiences, very often, they will say all best thing that happened my life. And I can tell you the best thing that happened my life, I probably have forgotten the pain and went through that. It was truly something that changed my life changed the course of everything for me, because I had to see the world in a way that I wasn't trained or willing to do before. And I want to say, I am truly grateful that I am now walking not not not to say anything for those people who are still confined in a wheelchair. I mean, I was in a wheelchair for 18 months. So I have a lot of compassion and, and memories of that time. But I do want to say that, to me, it would start with the decision. And it's almost that it was after I had graduated and my base assumption by age two. And I it was the beginning of my career. So I was reading startups, I was reading tech companies. And it was almost like a game, although for me, and I had to be reinvent life based art, everything.

Leighann Lovely 27:48

You know, and a lot of people that I have spoken with a couple on my podcast, have had traumatic events that have changed the trajectory of their life. And having gone through that, they look back on it, and they will say that it was while going through it was, you know, horrible, that it was painful that it was you know, everything that it that it was at face value. But that, you know, when it's all said and done, and they look back on it, that they wouldn't change anything. Because they come out the other side, in a different, you know, like any human would, right? You experience something either traumatic because we have traumatic positive experiences where they are, for all intensive purposes, something that's traumatic, but at the end of it, you go oh my gosh, that was that was quite amazing. While be it traumatic. And you have the traumatic events where it's like, oh, my god, I can't believe I survived it. But you do walk away, altered.

Maria Kellis 29:12

And the pupils, oh, I'm sorry.

Leighann Lovely 29:15

I was just gonna say the people who can walk away and learn something, you know, are are just usually so much more powerful in their own right, because they have the ability to learn something from an event that took place. Because if you if you don't learn anything, then it was all for naught.

Maria Kellis 29:45

I do want to say I'm gonna start by saying that I do work a lot with trauma, and people who carry trauma and I just say that most of us carry some form of trauma. It doesn't have to be as dramatic As I had crazy neuropathic pain, and I was in a little chair, but it can be all, you know, like I was bullied at school or I. So trauma is, unfortunately, a part of every human experience. And I believe that it is God's

Leighann Lovely 30:19

they say changing, you know, changing careers changing a job is a form of trauma. I mean, we have little traumas throughout our life. And then we, you know, unfortunately, some have large traumas.

Maria Kellis 30:34

And I do want to say that I have, because I have been in this field, and because I studied this trauma is an intense event, where we were not able to process the emotion. So there's a difference between drama, and trauma. So an intense event is only becomes traumatic and stays with us and unfortunately, is something that we have to carry until it releases only if we are not able to process our emotions. So I encourage people to always process their emotions in grief, if they have just one of my incredible slides, who's also a rock star, she's amazing. She just had a miscarriage. And we've been taken two months to help her through that pain. And that grades, because most, most women don't talk about miscarriages, let alone go through their grief. And then 20 years later, they find themselves finally addressing the trauma. So I'm like, Well, you know, because of single women 20 years later, how but we let you grieve. And it's been such an incredible growth experience for her. I'm not saying that this is something that she will have chosen. And I'm not saying that this is one. But it was something that could be very traumatic, but because she's passing the grievance taking her time, and we're doing smoothly, she's really able to grow as a human and as a leader in ways that she has never been able to do before. So in a sense, now she's starting to have the gratitude and the appreciation for the event, even though it was extremely difficult to go through. I mean, I don't wish it on anybody, although it is very common. For men, miscarry.

Leighann Lovely 32:34

It is extremely common. But most women don't realize it until they've experienced it themselves. And then have the courage to tell somebody and with me, and it's amazing, because when you acknowledge something that you're experiencing, and people see that you are authentic, and that you are experiencing something, people are more likely. And I've experienced this in my own life, more likely to say, I understand what you're going through. Because it's also happened to me. And then you go what, and you realize, I also experienced a miscarriage. And I was told that I couldn't have a child. And you know, my husband and I were like, oh, okay, we can't have a child. We went, we were considering it, and my audience knows this. We were considering adoption. But when you, you know, in my, my employer knew I was pregnant. And then so when I wasn't it was kind of all of a sudden, like, oh, it's not I can't keep it a secret. They're gonna figure it out. Right? Yes. And it was it was amazing. The amount of women that I was working with at that time, that called me and said, I know what you're going through. And I'm like, well, and you think, right, you kind of do but and they're like, no, no, you don't understand. I know what you're going through. And I went, Oh, and then you have that outpour of people who have gone through it and you go, wow, this is way more common than is ever, ever talked about because it's not a conversation that comes up unless you know somebody who's going through it.

Maria Kellis 34:38

Absolutely. And it's also something that is almost like a stigma when it shouldn't be risks. Okay, but but we were talking about trauma and trauma. So, yes, it is very dramatic and very difficult to go through this experience. And so So for my client, I said, Well, let's not let would be a trauma for you. Right? So when, when they first when they first went to the doctor, and the doctor said, oh, there's a problem, you need to have an abortion. And I was like, okay, is this really what you want? And she said, No. And I said, Okay, how about you love your baby? And then let it have its course, let it be natural. And, and she did. So for three weeks, we were not sure what it was going to happen. And for three weeks, she learned to love her baby, even it. It's funny, because it's her learning experience was about learning how not to be perfect. And I said, Okay, so your baby's not perfect. Can you love it anyway? And she said, Absolutely, I can do. And she had the most loving experience. And this allowed her to go through some serious trauma that she had from her childhood that she never addressed before. And she's becoming a better leader, a stronger leader. And her company, by the ways, was doing amazing. She's like, I don't know, how's it I keep having sales? I'm like, okay, Tori. You in a sense, it's almost like, she didn't even have to work like, she has her own company. So clients will just come to her while she was going through one of the most difficult experiences of her life. And she was. And that realization that is that it's okay to take the time we need to grease to take the time to process our emotions to take the time we need to heal is extremely important. I find that sometimes we forget that we're human, and that we have emotions. And it's almost like a badge of honor. Oh, when I was in school, it was a badge of honor not to sleep to pull an all nighter was cool. To to work overtime to not to work weekends. But why would I need to do that. So it's almost like today, I see those things that was considered amazing. I'm like, well, that's a very efficient way. I realized, and I pushed myself so much sometimes I think that the reason I ended up in their wheelchairs because I had my body just shut down from being abused for so long. And I remember there was one week where I had never realized this. But there was one week it was finals, I had final projects and I managed to stay awake for an entire week. I think I passed out before hours, but the entire week that it was and I saw my intelligence and productivity go down. For the first time I saw what this means to humans, we don't often we stop functioning, right. So now I honor my sleep, I want to sleep I am so excited and I let myself sleep and I wake up with a fresh mind. I used to be able to oil call the night out. I will work like throughout the night. And now I'm like, I wake up at three o'clock is on time or four in the morning and I work that's after a good night's rest. And my mind is fresh. So I find that this is something that we cannot ignore that our physical needs are and it's okay to take care of ourselves. It's okay to give ourselves permission to be human. So when I talk about this access method, a for awareness stands for being human This is our humanity that gets to be stressed.

Leighann Lovely 38:48

That's That's amazing. And I I talk about this a lot for about you know, I'm a first year entrepreneur, you know being the workaholic that you know I shouldn't be because I talk about you know we need we need to have our rest we need to take care of us wellness wise we need to end it and you're right it for so many it's a badge of honor. Still and there has been a huge shift of people going yeah, no five o'clock I'm done. Don't expect me to answer the phone. And that is rule with you know, my family, no phones at the dinner table all of that stuff because you are completely and totally correct. We should not live to work we should work to live. Hands down. The most important thing because if we are only living to work then what is what is the point and I remember hearing a speaker talking about To, you know, finding the purpose. And if your purpose is not with your family or with your health or with whatever that is that's personal. Then what is what is the point?

Maria Kellis 40:17

Is it okay to take one step further, and I believe that we're here to create, I believe that we're here to produce extraordinary effects. What I'm saying is that this balance is not about doing less is about doing more with less time. The one constraint that we have is time. So when I'm exhausted, and I can't function, and I have no idea, like I'm sitting there, and yeah, maybe physically, I'm present, but I'm not present. So if I'm well rested, and my mind is sharp, and can do things really. I remember it was one day, I had this very difficult problem I can solve and I have a commitment to exercise. So I went swimming. Well, guess what, it has such incredible ideas while I was streaming, I came back and I was like, Okay, I solved the problem. And a friend of mine was like, Maria, yes, of course you did. Because what is such a nice element to be in, and I was like, I should do more of my thinking in water. And, and that was because I had the commitment that I'm not going to miss exercise, even though I have something that I didn't finish, because I value my exercise very much. And, in a sense, self care has become something that I do. So when I, I don't always cook, but when I, when I eat, I always eat healthy, I may order in, I may eat a certain bar, but I know that whatever I put in my body is going to determine my statements. And so I no longer think of this, I don't want to take my body for granted. And I no longer take my life for granted. What you're talking about our families, our families, we are social animals, we are our happiness is very much a function of the happiness in our time. And so having a well balanced family with beautiful ways of communicating is, in fact, nurturing us and making us become more productive. One of the problems that companies face, especially in the tech sector is innovation and creativity. And they're like, Oh, well, how do we induce that? The humans do that. Which you do is you nurture the human so they can be creative? Innovation is I always studied geniuses, and how, how do we get those genius models to those moments, they're not ordinary, but they're extraordinary. And those happen, by allowing ourselves to be in this creative state of flow. And that happens when we have less constraints, constraints, when we allow ourselves to be more free. And yes, I always describe the yin and the yang as the, the river of life. So the young being the riverbed, so the container, and the yin and the water. And both of them are required to not have the flavor. If you don't have a bunch of water, it's not going to go into line unless you have a river that maybe at best will become a lake or we'll just get reabsorbed in the in beta. Even when we sold, I think you were talking about purpose, our purpose is to choose the direction where our rivers can flow. And when we do that, we're streamlining or our resources, through systems and processes into that action. And that's what creates our life, our direction, where we're going. Absolutely.

Leighann Lovely 44:11

And we are coming to time, I wish that we had more time to have this. This has been an amazing conversation. But the question of the season, what do you think will go down in the history books from what the world has experienced over the last three years?

Maria Kellis 44:29

So many things, definitely a chatroom. The taste as I said changed my life so I'm gonna put it up there. And I believe that charge a bit fee members because of what Elon Musk said, but but because it has come to the forefront. It is something that will finally discuss AI. And some people are scared. The Badgers Guild of America is on strike for months because of it. And some people are realizing Wow Like me super happy because suddenly, I don't have to worry so much about the slide about how to write simple things. And so I'm gonna say the first one is going to be the, the rise of AI. In the last three years, I think we can still include COVID, because it was the first time that we had a global response to pandemic. And it was scary. And he was extremely controlling. This whole idea of isolation, forcing people to stay in their houses, was very difficult because our freedom was attacked in a way, yet, what I'm going to say is that someday we saw the advent of working from home, we realized that people at home in fact, are producing better. And we are letting people stay more at home where they can have their home life. So our, our home life balance is become more important. I mean, yes, some people are asking for employees to go back to work to the office, but it's not really happening, people are quitting rather than going back to the office. And this has really changed the way we do business. Because we realize it's not about having somebody in a seat. Being there clocking hours is not the point. The point is, can you do the job, and people in fact, have a better job than they have to deliver results, as opposed to clocking out? And so am I working from home, and we'll get there. The difference in travel, we, I used to travel so much. And with with a I will change a lot of how we with aim sorry, with COVID, we changed a lot how we travel. And we it's almost like we went backwards, but also in a more quality way. So for the first time, in many years, I was reminded that there's borders, that there's countries that I had forgotten that I will just hop on a plane and go to three countries in the day that I was totally fine with. And this I mean, there was one one week where I went through 10 countries. So I remember it was like in Thailand I wanted to make I went to the United States, I went to Belgium's Gliese Cyprus, I don't remember that. But it was just like, one week. And I now see the borders again. And in a sense, it's, it's good and bad. The good thing is that I'm seeing the difference. But I'm also seeing that people are coming together in a way to bridge through cultural gaps that I had never seen before. We're all doing everything online. And yeah, it looks a little bit different in every country. But you know, every country has now gotten through this. And in Thailand, for example, it was always hard to buy things online, online, let alone European things. And then I believe that travel has changed. And we have changed as we are. So we are almost creating homes that we have forgotten. Like, I know so many people whose home had to be the car, because they will sleep in their car, they will eat in their car, they was changing the car. And in a sense, we're reclaiming our homes. And I feel that that's a shift as well.

Leighann Lovely 49:03

If somebody wanted to reach out to you, how would they go about doing that?

Maria Kellis 49:08

Absolutely, the easiest way is to go through my website, Mariakellis.com. That's M A R I A. And Kelllis with Double L so K E, double L L I S Maria Keller's dot com. And they can actually pick up the book the ebook goes describing the AI and the Xeon. So this idea that this balance idea that they can find there and they can also reach out to the team and say happy to accommodate I am always excited to talk to people who have listened to me to answer questions of talk to them about how this can help them in their lives so they can absolutely book a time to talk with.

Leighann Lovely 49:52

Excellent thank you so much, Maria for this conversation today. It's been absolutely amazing. Thank you again for Turning to Let's Talk HR. I appreciate your time and support without you the audience this would not be possible so don't forget that if you enjoyed this episode to follow us, like us or share us have a wonderful day

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, work, human, life, maria, ai, changed, talk, trauma, wheelchair, job, amazing, realized, incredible, hr, call, grammarly, toys, pain, mit