For Cindy Gordon, it turned out that a role in the C-suite wasn’t the destination.

The HR professional with more than two decades of experience working across different companies and industries found that consulting and fractional HR work was a better way for her to tackle interesting people challenges and deliver her expertise to executives in need.

This approach to HR has allowed Gordon to leverage her myriad experiences, deliver on exactly what companies need from her, and protect herself from burnout or over extension, an issue she faced amid her transition away from in-house people work.

Early people skills. Born in Korea and adopted into a white family in Ohio, Gordon said she spent her childhood and adolescence honing her people skills and understanding how humans behave.

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The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) won significant raises for its 45,000 dockworker members this month after a three-day strike that briefly threatened shipping and international trade. That victory, however, was colored by ongoing efforts at the ports to address automation and its potential effect on long-term job security for its members, which remains very much unresolved.

“One of the things that strikes me is it doesn’t matter what the group is or what the industry is. We are seeing this pop up in just about every industry,” said Alexander Alonso, the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) chief data & insights officer.

The dockworkers strike to protect jobs in the wake of leapfrogging automation technology mirrors broader employee sentiment toward the technology as it shows up more and more at work. Unease and fears in the workplace about automation and AI tools, like those that have become wildly available for businesses thanks to advances in generative AI, remain as more employers adopt tools that have the potential to amend employee workflows.

However, HR professionals have the potential to help facilitate this transition to an AI-enabled future of work.

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Valuable HR lessons can be found in the most unlikely places—even childhood stories.

Just ask Pat Wadors, former chief people officer at software company UKG. She told HR Brew that fairytales and folklore have helped her make sense of her world and work.

In her forthcoming book, Unlock Your Leadership Story: How to Build Understanding and Motivate Teams Using Fables and Folktales, she shares the HR lessons that people leaders can learn from stories. Wadors gave HR Brew a sneak peek during a recent conversation.

Keep reading here.—MC