How to Find the Future Leaders Everyone Else Is Missing (before they leave)
In this episode of our On The Road series, we sit down with KeyAnna Schmiedl, Chief Human Experience Officer at Workhuman, to explore how organizations can identify future leaders before they are already in the obvious succession pipeline.
KeyAnna shares how Workhuman’s Future Leaders technology is helping companies spot the people giving off strong leadership signals across the business, including those who may not be visible through traditional talent reviews, manager nominations, or proximity to senior leaders.
Her message is clear: the best future leaders are not always the most obvious names in the room. If HR can use better signals to see talent earlier, organizations can retain, develop, and invest in people before they walk out the door.
🎓 In this episode, we get into:
Why the most visible people are not always the best future leaders
Why managers need to become talent exporters, not talent hoarders
How proximity bias shapes who gets noticed, sponsored, and promoted
How AI can help HR spot future leaders earlier without replacing human judgment
How better talent signals can help companies retain future leaders before they leave
What if your 2030 leadership team was already inside your organisation?
What if the people who will lead your business next are already showing the signals today?
Future Leaders helps HR teams identify rising VP+ talent up to 4 years earlier, using real-time recognition data and behavioural signals to reveal who is already influencing, leading, and driving results.
Because succession planning cannot rely on gut feel, old snapshots, or who happens to be most visible.
The future leaders in your business may not be the loudest voices in the room. They may not have the title yet. But their people already know who they are.
They are the ones building trust, driving performance, solving problems, and earning recognition from the people around them.
Future Leaders turns recognition data into a living, predictive model of leadership potential, helping organisations build stronger pipelines, develop talent earlier, and promote from within with more confidence.
Because by the time someone looks like an obvious future VP, it may already be too late.
00:11
How are you doing, friend? Well, I'm doing great. How are you? Fancy seeing you here. It's wild. I was just walking by and I said, look, I know him. So we said we're going to launch our own show. So here we are. Yeah. This is ours now. The thing is, I'm stressed, though, because if I have to sit next to you every week, I have to step my game up.
00:28
Like my swag game. I need like a stylist or something. Or we could just play off of each other. I'm just a plain white guy. That's basically what I'm rocking right now. What are you rocking? Zara Basics. I am just a plain old black lady. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't start that. You can't be glistening.
00:51
Well, you know, you have to have a little hidden something. The like, hey, yeah, I could do business my way. You know, every person I spoke to yesterday when I was trying to find you, the first thing they said to me was like, she's in gold.
01:09
And I said, what do you mean? She's like, what do you mean you can't find her? She's dressed gold. And I didn't get to see this ensemble of gold. And then you told me you were a globe. Yes, I was walking around as like human illumination. Did you sign up for that?
01:26
No, but I had it. So I thought I should wear it. You're in a band. I'm in a band. Called? Called The HR Violations. Why?
01:37
I hear nothing funny. And you've got a set.
01:41
We have a set that we are playing tomorrow as part of the closing festivities of We're Human Live 2026. And who makes up the rest of the band? Well, so Tom Libretto, our president.
01:55
So you've got to be like Tom thing on the drums, and then you've got to give it like that. Oh, okay. So who have we got? So Tom on lead guitar. On lead guitar, nice. We've got Jeff on rhythm guitar. I didn't know that was a thing, but cool.
02:12
We have James on the slap of the bass man. I thought he was going to be like the tangerine, the tambourine. The tangerine.
02:21
You are terrible at band. Yeah, I'm terrible at band. And then we have Pei Bei who tickles the ivories. That's a cool name. Right? Pei Bei. Pei Bei. And she's in finance. She's in finance.
02:35
Pei Bei is in finance. When you see her, you're like, Pei Bei. I mean, how do you not? You kind of have to. If you've got a name like that, I want to be like, hey, babe. Yeah.
02:44
Of course. Is that acceptable? That's right. So if I just meet her and she doesn't know me, I can be like, hey, babe. That's right. Yes. And she'd be like, hey, it's so nice to meet you. Because she's just nice. She's on the keys. Yes. And she's tickling the ivories. And then we have Raul, my man on the drums, who keeps us all in time. And then we come to the ladies three. So we have three lady vocalists. So when you said like, you've got a whole, how many members?
03:10
Well, how many is that? Eight, I think. Wow. So I missed the last part. Sorry, I interrupted you. No, no, no. The lead is three. So we have Tiffany, who is mind-blowingly good. And she is part of our go-to-market enablement team. We have Katie Ware, who you may know because she is the chief of staff for our CEO. And then...
03:35
We have me, and it's like blah, blah, blah. You're singing? Yeah. You're on the vocals? Yes. I'm on the tickling the vocals. Tickling the vocals. Cool. So for everyone listening, right about now, I'm going to insert the video. I want to get your kicks. Now you don't need a money with it.
04:10
It's going to live on your LinkedIn profile. Forever. It's going to have to be there. Yep. And I'm going to have to live with that. Yep.
04:19
Give us one of the songs and then we'll get into the actual podcast that we're supposed to be doing. That's what happens when we get together.
04:25
What's one of the... One of the songs? Yeah. Well, are you a person who is superstitious? No.
04:36
No. Okay, well, you may be getting some superstition. Oh, that's cringe. I see where you went there and it was bad. It was bad. I'm accepting it because we're recording. But if it wasn't, I'll take it out. Yeah. Serious superstition. Yes, that's right. I don't know any more words. That's it. Those are all the words. Look, you said you didn't know more words, but then you're singing my song. Oh, I can dance, remember? Right. I'm a dancer. So then let's get you up there.
05:05
Let's get you in the front. I could do some lock-in to that. Yeah. I think that's quite a good break-in. Do that.
05:11
And then for some of the other ones, I want to see you full break-in. Oh, and your wife is here. We should get the dynamic duo. I know our dancers as well. What? The trio? The trio Rainies.
05:23
It's raining break dancing. That would make an interesting, like Robin's got to like vlog her trip to show her classmates when she gets back.
05:34
Imagine her sharing her own stage dance at a conference with her mom and dad and a band. Yeah. And the HR violations band. You can't make that up. You can't make that up. Well, you know, it was one of those things when we said we're going to start a company band and then people were just throwing out names and somebody had thrown out HR violations as a joke, obviously. And then obviously that was the most perfect name of all.
06:03
Because it shouldn't be the name. Right. It's like the anti-name. Well, and because I'm the head of people, right? I'm the chief human experience officer. Some people call people in this role chief HR officer. Yeah, but you don't want to do the human capital, right? Right. So we're the HR violations. Because why wouldn't we be? And plus, we do a lot of covers. And I got to tell you, songs from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today, they are HR violations. Okay. Well, now we've got that segment out of the way. I've been talking so much to your colleagues and customers, everyone who's attending over two days about so many things. What's been popping up? You know, you've been right on the stage, close to the action. What are some of the things that you've been hearing that really stood out to you? So listen, I think one thing that never gets old is hearing from especially first-time attendees how different they feel like this conference is to other HR conferences.
07:03
They feel like the people are realer, that they...
07:07
are comfortable kind of navigating the spaces and the things, but they're also really interested in the talks, especially because we believe in having all of the conversations. So we're not necessarily editing out anything that's not in vogue right now and those sorts of things. And I think people still appreciate that, right? And then the other thing I would say is as soon as Eric started talking about future leaders, you saw the room light up. And I actually was sitting close to the front row when he was talking about it. And you saw people rapidly taking notes and snapping the pictures.
07:40
And we knew that it was something special. I think maybe I underestimated the uptake and interest in what that technology can do. Break it down for everyone. Sure. What is Future Leaders? Future Leaders is essentially our attempt at solving that gap of how do you identify the high potential talent that you should be investing in so that they become the future leaders of your organization, right? So in the background, yes, I'm going to say the ill-fated word, AI.
08:11
Oh, okay. I was going to say technology, but cool. Yeah.
08:15
But so there are a few different AI technologies kind of running this model or send model, right? That takes your sort of leadership ethos, whether you have leadership principles or taxonomies or whatever it is. Yes, all of that stuff. And then it uses that as its map. And then it says, who are the leaders in your company who are succeeding, who are doing well? And then takes a lot of those strategies. kind of soft skills and other nuances of like the context of your organization and then says, okay, I've now created a strong signal pulse for what leadership looks like. And now we can start to kind of go out there and see who are the people who are starting to give off signals in the noise that say, okay,
09:03
they're showing some promise or they're really demonstrating like this is the path for them or the like they're right there knocking on the door so that you make sure that you're not losing the best talent that you have for exceeding in the future. Yeah. And for me, kind of sitting in the space that I am, you can imagine I've done succession planning exercises and I've done the all right now, who are the successors for the successors? And everybody talks about wanting to have a strong bench. But then do you trust every leader in your organization to do that objectively? Yeah, exactly. That's what I was about to get to, because it's based on like. people's opinions and judgment. The who do you know? Where did you go to school? What's your background?
09:48
Right, right. Oh, I like that. She never challenges, but is always willing to, you know, get out there and go after it. Takes direction well. It's like, is that a leader? I don't know. Maybe, but shouldn't we have more of a discussion about what those intangibles are in addition to the tangibles?
10:11
And I just like the idea of not necessarily the technology solving the challenge for us, but giving us a decent roadmap to then go and interrogate, right? And the purpose of the Future Leaders technology is for it to be able to explain itself, essentially a show your work, which is one of the hardest things for people to do when talking about other people. Yeah. And I think also like there's so many, so much untapped talent, like you don't even know they exist. Of course. Because they may not, you know, if you have a distributed workforce and but you're the one I see every day in the office, there's bias that I'm more likely to get that promotion or be tapped on the shoulder. Right. Whereas for someone working remote.
10:54
It doesn't have that interaction, for example. Because proximity bias is real, right? Yeah, exactly. That's what I was trying to get to. Yeah, thank you. I was like trying to figure, yeah. So that's a thing. And then also, have you looked at timelines? Like how long now? Have you reduced this time? Right. Because now you have the data? Well, yes. And that's the thing that's interesting, right? Is that...
11:15
you can get a list of the people that you're going to promote three years from now, four years from now, the people who are right there knocking on the door that you go, they were not on my radar at all. So then you can be thoughtful and intentional about, well, what does the program need to look like to sustain them, to continue them on that path? And then ideally you can go, well, what is it about them? What have they been doing and how do we create more of those opportunities across the board? Right. So it's,
11:43
kind of beautiful partnership between the technology and the humans to be able to say, I can have this thing running in the background, checking on some of the most important things to the organization, having that happen in real time so that I just don't go, oh, it's succession planning time. And maybe some of that talent's already out the door. yeah it's either out the door or you rush you rush the process and then you're back to well who knows this one and can you second their vote and that's all about how much exposure do people have not necessarily if the inherent talent is there or if you've nurtured the right kind of talent for people yeah once you've identified the talent what's the process look like the next step
12:26
sure so i think it's once you've identified the talent it's kind of up to your organization how do you want to treat them right like we can give you the buckets and eric walked through those of the you know monitor yeah and the you know accelerate and all of those things but it's how do you want to treat those people how how important do you think it is to retain this talent And I think what it does is it helps you build better development programs to invest intentionally in that talent and to think about it not just as the, I have to get this person ready in 18 months, but rather the, if I have three years to say we have a fantastic bench of leaders. Well, what would I want them to know and have exposure to in that time? And I think what it does is it brings in all the things that we always say we want to do if there's time, right?
13:19
It gives you the opportunity to really think about what does a rotational program for leaders look like that is additive to the business and not just distracting? What does it look like to identify Okay, these are the paths that are open to you now let's have a conversation about the ones that interest you the most, and where we think the opportunities will be so that you keep as many options open as possible. So I think it, it allows for more of a two way kind of design and
13:49
create and innovate opportunity for the people who are showing the signals as well as the people in the people space to co-create something that retains them, but that continues to grow them in ways that say, we also want to be great exporters of talent. We want to, everybody wants to be the company that's known for, Oh, you worked there. okay, well then that means something, right? Insert positive adjective here. And that makes it easy for you to be hireable anywhere. But then why would you want to leave the place that helped you to build that in the first place? It works both ways. As you were talking about that, I was thinking, how do you bring managers and leaders along this process? because like their assumptions about what their top talent is, or they may have been working with a group of leaders to become the next talent, but in the data may
14:40
say something different. Honestly, I think it... And then they are naturally more so talent importers than exporters. Right. That's a big shift. Right. It is a huge shift. And look, I think we need to be celebrating and recognizing those leaders that are great talent exporters. The ones that say, hey, I hear you have this position open and I've got somebody on my team who I think would be excellent at it because they understand being a great leader... is not just about saying, my team is the best. It's actually about saying, I can recognize the people that can do well for the company because I understand the company and the business. And so I think what having a tool like this does is it helps to neutralize that conversation of, well, I've already got my successors picked. Well, are they showing up in the model? Let's understand why they are or why they're not.
15:33
Just because they've been with a company the longest doesn't mean... And then we can have a conversation about, so then what's the gap to get them there? Or they're not. Or they're great individual contributors. And it shouldn't be that future leaders of the organization are only people leaders. And I think that this is a challenge to all organizations to say, there are going to be people that fire in the model that...
15:58
they should always remain an individual contributor, but they can have a broader, more expansive maybe reach into the organization. And that's what the elevation does for them. And so how do you have those conversations and how do you have the conversations about the people that
16:17
are just your steady eddies. And I don't mean just your, as in it's not good enough. I mean, that's just where they want to be. And it's the perfect space for them right now. Great. Because I don't know a manager that will tell you, oh, I really hate it when somebody is not banging down my door every two months for a promotion.
16:37
So you have this on one hand, but on the other hand, to know somebody is really happy in what they're doing and they're crushing it. Awesome. So just keep checking in and saying like, there's more opportunity for you, but you let me know when you want to ring that bell.
16:54
Yeah. Listen, I could talk to you forever, but you've got other duties. I do. That you've got to go to. There's like a whole conference happening. I'm already in trouble already for keeping you this long. So I'm going to let you go. I'll see you later though. Yeah. And I'm looking forward to seeing you on stage as well. I'm going to film everything. I'm going to get like 20 angles, post it all over LinkedIn, tag everyone in. So you're going to be famous. Okay. Well, you all knew me before I was famous. See you later. I'll see you later.
Jennifer Reimert, SVP, Consulting Practice at Workhuman.