The Real Future of Managers in 2026 (and Why Most HR Teams Aren’t Ready) (Copy)
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Amy Coleman, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Microsoft, to explore what it means to lead with humanity in the age of AI. After 25 years at Microsoft, Amy shares how HR’s role is transforming, from managing processes to designing experiences that balance innovation and empathy.
She discusses how Microsoft is navigating AI’s impact on work, emphasizing trust, transparency, and inclusion as essential foundations. Amy explains why leaders must reframe AI as a tool for creativity and connection, not control - and how building psychological safety unlocks innovation across generations and geographies.
From vulnerability and gratitude to rethinking leadership in uncertainty, Amy’s perspective is a masterclass in staying human in a tech-driven world.
🎓 In this episode, Amy discusses:
Why gratitude and curiosity fuel innovation
How to balance high performance with empathy
Creating psychological safety across global teams
How AI is reshaping HR and leadership at Microsoft
Why vulnerability builds deeper trust and motivation
Discover how to Build Human-Centred Workplaces which Thrive!
Workhuman partnered with Gallup to decode why only 33% of U.S. employees feel engaged and what leaders can do about it.
The answer? Recognition done right.
When companies build flexible work, psychological safety, and authentic appreciation, engagement soars.
The research shows recognition:
✅ Boosts retention
✅ Fuels feedback cultures
✅ Elevates wellbeing
✅ Powers upskilling in the AI era
Engagement isn’t chance, it’s design.
The future belongs to organizations that make recognition their competitive edge.
Chris Rainey 0:13
Hey, Amy, welcome to the show. How are you doing you? I'm good. How are you so I'm good. I can't believe. How's it been? I don't know, three or three. Good. I saw the announcement, I was so happy. Oh, thank you. We've known each other a long time. When I saw it, I was like, wow, how does it feel? First and foremost,
Amy Coleman 0:31
you, you, you know, try for something for so many years, and it's fun to achieve that goal. It really is a career dream, yeah, and to be able to have that and enjoy your kids that you can get to. I mean, I've been at Microsoft 25 years, always in HR, not an accidental HR. I think we talked about that at some point, and you did to achieve the role that I really aspire to. It's if I take a moment to not be in the crisis of the day. It's very cool. It's a privilege. Things
Chris Rainey 0:59
right as you you always got to wake up and and focus on gratitude. Yep, I have like a stone that has gratitude carved into it, because sometimes, in a heat, at a moment where I feel overwhelmed and there's too much and there's too much going on, I just kind of hold it, hold my gratitude stone to ground me and think about how far I've come, yeah, and not to beat myself up, yeah, too much, because it's tough, yeah.
Amy Coleman 1:21
Every day I'm making mistakes and learning from them. I try to in the morning, too. You know, a lot of people ask me, what do you do when you first get up? If I'm honest, I look at my phone. The first thing I do when I get up, right? You're a global company. Like, what cries up? But I do for a moment, just breathe and realize, okay, what I have around me, my husband, my kids, my dogs, my family. So I do the same kind of thing. I need to hold a rock, though. Maybe that will help
Chris Rainey 1:46
my coach, Chester Elwin. I know if Chester Ellen's so he gave that to me one time, and it just stuck with me. I've had it. I've walked around with it for over seven years. Wow, and i It's because it's weighted. It's in my pocket. It's just a reminder. It's in my bag, actually, as I all should feel grateful. Yeah, I am to where you are. It's really easy to get caught up in everything in life and not understand that how lucky we really are.
Amy Coleman 2:11
Right? Time flies, so you just if you're on to the next thing all the time, and now looking at where you are, I It is a privilege. It's a hard time to be in this business, but it's a privilege. It's a privilege, and sometimes you gotta give yourself grace. Yeah, I could use that. I'm gonna call you when I need a little dote of grace. So what brings you to Paris? Well, you know, I'm trying to be on the road in my job a lot. I mean, we have a very global company. We have more employees outside of what we call the Puget Sound. So the Seattle area, the more outside of the Puget Sound, in the US and around the world, and I want to show up for them in a different way, and then decided to come here good timing. Talk about, yeah, what's going on with AI and people?
Chris Rainey 2:49
So I love the way it's we can't have a conversation about talking about AI right now. Yeah, you can. So on that point, how do you see AI reshaping people's strategies, and what does it take for HR leaders to balance innovation with humanity
Amy Coleman 3:04
that way? If you just talk about AI, it actually creates craft and the trust with with employees and with people. Honestly, somebody told me, every time we talk about AI, it makes me think that you don't trust me to do the work, to do the task job. And so we need to change that narrative and talk about both, because I do think it unlocks imagination and innovation and that joy toil. You know, I want more people to feel joy in their jobs. I talked about it being sort of that dagged frontier. We got a lot of quick wins, and all of a sudden people feel like now what with AI. So we're trying to navigate that together and show that can be a lot for humans. Give a lot of tools.
Chris Rainey 3:47
We're such a global presence to so many employees. How do you navigate that at scale? Because the whole idea of, what does this mean for Chris, yep, and my role, how have you approached that?
Amy Coleman 3:56
I don't know. I might ask you the same thing right back we were doing all the things we're trying to get quick wins, right? So how can it be important to Chris? And then how can Chris tell a story to Amy? Just like the same way we learned productivity tools on our machines, right? Yeah, like you told me, Oh, do this in Excel, it will work better for you, or do this in PowerPoint. And so there's a lot about it that's a bit organic, yeah. And then that's another reason for coming out here and talking and learning and figuring out, how do we learn together so we build the right solution
Chris Rainey 4:26
for people. And I suppose one of the great things is you've already got such an incredible AI sandbox,
Amy Coleman 4:32
yeah, for all of your employees, I'm very lucky. I get to play with all sorts of things, exactly.
Chris Rainey 4:36
So that's the campaign like that. So the fact that you created that safe space where they could fail forward and experiment in that sandbox is
Amy Coleman 4:44
probably but it's also hard, right? Like, generationally, we use the tools different. That's true. I found myself to be like, I use the tool for individual productivity or search. I love using AI or copilot for search all the time. But other generations, that's not what my kids are using. And for, yeah, way more advanced. And so
Chris Rainey 5:02
even my seven year old daughter, Oh, I bet she likes creating, generating images with her favorite cartoons or shows, but then she'll prompt she's doing. She, this is really random for the show, but she's, she's, she's doing. There's a code.org, wow. It's like, it's like all, a lot of the big tech companies investing to provide free coding courses for kids, wow. So she's been doing it since she was four, and they played games, and they don't know they're coding. They just think they're playing frozen they Angry Birds, yeah, but they coding. And then she then learn about prompting, and she just likes creating images of her favorite cartoons. And she's like, Daddy, look, I made the cartoon do this. Yeah? And I'm just like, You're seven. You shouldn't even
Amy Coleman 5:52
know that she's doing something, but she is, and that's making it fun. We got to remember that for adults. How do we actually bring fun back to it. Kind
Chris Rainey 6:02
of, part of what mine has changed role at HR leaders is I'm always trying to be in the future whilst he's in the presence. I'm out there trying to break things. Yep, you know, experiment. Seek discomfort. And that's something we have internally on the wall. Seek discomfort as a way to constantly be evolving. Yep, that you can't, it's, you have to kind of be in both, yeah, you do, you know, and that's, that's a difficult. It's difficult to be
Amy Coleman 6:25
like, to deliver on what your job is and try to push yourself. Someone told me, try to push AI by making it do 1000 things that you needed to do. And I hadn't like, I hadn't sort of broken out of my own fixed mindset. Yeah, you know, I was thinking very like, prompt specific, but how do you actually break out and and push the tools, push yourself and, yeah, comfortable. And one thing I'm
Chris Rainey 6:51
learning you can ask, one of the best prompts I use, is I was actually asking in the prompt, what haven't I thought about? And you'd be amazed, yeah, of like, because you'll write a promise, yeah, and, but if you say actually at the end and add, give me suggestions of things I haven't even thought like that, I should be yes. And I'm like, wow. Like, that's one of the hacks that's amazing prompts. And it's like, you haven't added this, or you should think about that.
Amy Coleman 7:15
We've gotten so specific, but then you just made it expansive. Like, tell me what I haven't thought through.
Chris Rainey 7:20
Yeah, because what I don't want otherwise, you just get a feedback mechanism of
Amy Coleman 7:24
what you're already your prompt is so specific you're getting an answer, yeah. And we need to get
Chris Rainey 7:29
diversity of form, yeah, diversity we spent you mentioned earlier quickly about transformation. Everyone right now is going through a lot of transformation and change. What lessons at Microsoft have you learned in terms of transformation and how HR leaders can apply to help build that trust and connection during these times of disruption is something it's coming at us from every direction
Amy Coleman 7:50
right now. Yeah, I think the idea that a transformation starts and ends is over. That's the first one. Yeah, never ending. So how do you get more on, you know, comfortable with uncertainty, and I think, you know, you, you've read all the same things, Chris, like the worst place to be is uncertain. You know, people say I'd rather know the bad news. Yes, then and be uncertain. So it is. It's a really uncomfortable place for humans to sort of be, yeah, and I think we have to figure out leaders to build trust, or HR, to build trust, we have to figure out how to do that within that. Yeah, uncertainty. And I don't think I set it up on stage. I don't think the answer to uncertainty is certainty anymore. I think it's clarity. I think it's proximity. I think it's me leaning into you and knowing you know us building a relationship. So I can tell you I don't know either, but let's figure it out together. I think it's ironically, goes back to really human interactions in the workplace or and, yeah, getting to know one another and so that when you're uncertain, you can be uncertain together.
Chris Rainey 8:51
Yeah, I agree. I think one of the toughest moments in my career was during the pandemic. We were an in person events business, so we lost 100% of our revenue. Wow, overnight. And I remember having to go in, or go traveling into work to have a meeting with my team where I was supposed to come with a plan of how, yeah, how you what, what? What are you going to do? And I had no plan. And I think the best decision I ever made was to go into that room and say to the team, I don't know, yeah, I need your help, yeah, and we're going to figure it out together. And whilst at the time, I felt terrible, I've never seen my team more motivated, and I've never built so much trust with my team by saying, Hey, I don't have all the answers, but let's figure it out. Because as a leader, there's a sort of pressure that you need to have all the answers and everything right. But now leading, being vulnerable as a leader, and leading with empathy is something that I was always a bit worried about, and now it's probably my superpower. Oh, absolutely. But yes, you don't you're not taught that.
Amy Coleman 9:53
Yeah, stepped up because of you, yes, right? Because you led and you had built those relationships. Relationship with that vulnerability and with that trust?
Chris Rainey 10:02
Yeah, I think that even down to whether we were gonna follow everyone, yep, I let them make the decision which they were like, what like you're gonna make? I say we can have a furlough like everyone wasn't at the time in the world, or we all stay and we've got this much runway, and we've got to figure it out. Yeah? And everyone was like, we want to be in charge of our destiny. Yeah. We don't want to wait around and hope, right? You know, push for what I've never seen my team so motivated to be where we are now. So I agree. In terms of building trust, it starts
Amy Coleman 10:30
with vulnerability, yeah, it's also and it's also courage. And yeah, you know, I was just asking someone to come do a job that they weren't all that excited to do, yeah? And they asked me, Well, what's your vision? And I said, I don't know. I want to build it with you. And I thought to myself, you know, looking back at the conversation, and thought, I should, I should have known like that would have been my recruiting tactic, right, to tell you that amazing vision, but I didn't know it. And so I'm asking this woman to take a bet and come do this work with me, and that was actually the thing that recruited her. I would
Chris Rainey 11:04
be all over like, This is amazing. I can I can actually show up. My ideas are valued. I'm not going to come in and be put in a box. Yeah? And say, do this
Amy Coleman 11:12
actually? I have no clue. Yeah. Let's go figure it out. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 11:15
And every time we think, we assume we get it wrong, yeah, every time I go into me with my team and ask him a question around what really are you really excited about? What gives you energy? And I'm always wrong in terms of what I assume. So I've learned now not to assume anything.
Amy Coleman 11:30
That's something you've always been Yeah, you Yeah. We don't know each other super well, but you're exactly my experience with you is exactly who you are. And so yeah, it's a model that for
Chris Rainey 11:40
years. This is exhausting, yeah. I think the first 10 years of my career in the corporate world, I was trying to show up to be what I thought the organization wanted me to be. And it was just exhausting, yeah, and at a certain point I was like, I just have to be me, yeah? And if me is enough,
Amy Coleman 11:55
great, yeah, here, then I'll go find some place that they and I did
Chris Rainey 12:01
you built me. Yeah, exactly so. And I feel like a lot of employees feel like that. They turn up to workplaces where they feel like they can't be their true, authentic selves. Yeah, and it's up to us to create that environment that they can. It's an it's an awesome
Amy Coleman 12:15
idea to think you just gave me this idea. You know, I get this question all the time about early and career, and AI, like, will AI take those early and career jobs? Yes, like, the jobs that my daughters are trying to be joining the workforce. And, you know, you think about actually, how, Chris, how do we teach them? What you what took us a decade to learn earlier? Yeah. Like, how do they become better learners and better people in the workplace? Like, being authentic, being vulnerable, figuring out together, hustling with courage, and all these things like, I think that's what their
Chris Rainey 12:47
problem is. I see people going into organizations expecting that, and it's just all set up. Yeah, they're not set up for success. I had an employee who joined recently during our one of our meetings, one of the team members said, I completely disagree with you, Chris, and we should do this. And we ended up, it's like, no worries this guy, I trust you. That's why I hired you. And the new employee said, I can't believe that person challenged you. Yeah, you're the CEO. I said, What do you mean? I hired them for do that, to do that, and they're like, I could never do that in my last company. Oh, and it just hit me. I was like, lucky. Oh, I was like, oh, known here, that's why you're here, right? We got to push each other to get back, yeah? Like, just because I'm the CEO, our titles don't mean anything if we're not winning. Yeah, I can see it was such a like culture,
Amy Coleman 13:35
yeah, yeah. What haven't
Chris Rainey 13:39
we spoke about that we should have. Oh,
Amy Coleman 13:41
that's a good problem right there. What haven't we spoken about that we should
Chris Rainey 13:46
have? Yeah, what's really top of mind for you right now? Oh, boy.
Amy Coleman 13:49
I mean, you know how we make HR, I mean, there's many things that are top of mind the world, how we operate in such a complicated, hard edged world, I think is on my mind. How we make the company, the place that you can do all the thing, the magical things that you want to do, and we can hold, like high performance and empathy together at the same time, those are hard things I think a lot about too. How can HR be like, Is this our moment to be even more credible. We've, you know, we've talked about whatever 20 years ago, like, you know, sort of made it to the proverbial table. We're now talking about ourselves, yeah. And I'm like, Come on, we are now right on the cutting edge of, it's up to us to help make this
Speaker 1 14:34
happen after the pandemic. HR, really elevated. This is, can we stay there? Yeah, I think, what do you? What do you? What do you feel like the AI is going to mean for the role of the CHRO?
Amy Coleman 14:47
It's a good question. I think that my job, I mean, my job looks different. My job looks something more about unlocking, if there's so. Much of sort of, the tasks and assessment and all of that is done by tooling, and I'm grateful for it right when we when we light it in agents and things like that, my job is going to be different, and figure out, how do we have a workforce that, how do you have a team that has agents and people working alongside and how do you really bring out the humanity in a company, especially in the tech company where I sit, you know, yeah, you could really lose your humanity and your mission and your purpose, because the desire to make everything so driven by AI and technical. So I have a do my job is shifting, which is, I think, which makes it fun, yeah, and scary and unknown,
Chris Rainey 15:39
if you're going to be in HR, just know it's gonna evolve and adapt. When I started 20 years ago, personal relations, yeah, oh yeah. When I say that people like, You're too young to even know that. No, I started at 17, to where we are now, yeah, almost crazy, unimaginable, yeah, yeah. And it's very cool, yeah, yeah. Well, listen, I know you've got to run to other faces, but thanks so much. It's so nice to see you again. See you in person, yeah, I know. And have a good event, and I'll see you soon. All right. Thank you.
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Amy Coleman, EVP and Chief People Officer at Microsoft.