John Kral
Chief People Officer
Green Garden Child Development Center
Episode 196
Curiosity: Reshaping HR for a World of Non-Linear Careers
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleMay 12, 2025 · 11:41
Thesis
“Careers are non-linear, and while titles change, people remain at the core; effective leadership in HR requires a posture of curiosity, deep listening, and applying organizational values consistently to both customers and employees to drive positive change and foster growth.”
Show notes
John Kral started his career in ministry before moving through corporate leadership on his way to becoming Chief People Officer at Green Garden Child Development Center. The throughline — and he's deliberate about this — is that titles change, but people are still people.
That conviction shows up most vividly in how he reshaped HR at Green Garden: from rules enforcers to what he calls a "health and wellness" function for the whole organization. The reframe isn't just semantic. It changes what HR says yes to, what it investigates before making a decision, and how it talks to managers when employees are struggling. His most memorable example: advising a manager who was frustrated with a staff member by asking, "If this person were a three-year-old in your classroom, what would you do?" The manager's immediate answer — more patience, more curiosity, more support — was exactly the behavior John was trying to unlock. The childcare context made the principle obvious in a way that no HR training manual had.
His leadership practice is grounded in a posture he calls curiosity: never accepting the first version of a situation, always investigating the full picture before acting, and consistently looping in people leaders before policies are finalized so they can model how those policies will land with employees. His parting advice is one of the simplest and most underused in HR: listen more than you talk. Change doesn't start with a policy or a technology. It starts with a leader's posture.
- HR as health and wellness, not rules enforcement — how reframing the function's identity changed what managers trusted it to do
- The "three-year-old" leadership reframe — a disarmingly effective technique for shifting managers from frustration to empathy
- Curiosity as an HR operating principle — investigating the full picture before acting, not just the version that got reported first
- Values alignment between customers and employees — applying the same care principles internally that Green Garden promotes in its childcare work
- Involving people leaders before policy rollout — why CEOs and HR leaders benefit from a "pressure test" conversation before anything is finalized
- Listening as the beginning of change — why posture precedes policy in every successful organizational transformation
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What you'll take away
- 1Always approach situations with a posture of curiosity; don't just accept initial information or narratives, but investigate different perspectives.
- 2Shift the perception of HR from 'rules enforcers' or 'gatekeepers' to a supportive function focused on the health and wellness of the entire organization.
- 3Align internal leadership practices with the core values you promote for your customers; treat employees with the same principles you apply to clients.
- 4For leaders (especially CEOs), bring people leaders into strategic discussions early to understand how policies and vision will be interpreted and received by employees.
- 5Realize that change begins with a leader's posture of listening and empathy, rather than solely with new policies or gadgets.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Challenges the traditional, often negative, perception of HR as merely enforcers: 'Instead of being somebody to look to and to find support in, it was the gatekeepers. It was the ones that holding people accountable and not in a positive way, but in a way to bring shame, to find blame.'
- •Reverses the conventional wisdom that organizational change is primarily driven by formal rules or procedures: 'Change doesn't start with policy, it starts with posture.'
- •Challenges the idea of leadership as simply recruiting top talent, emphasizing development and inspiration instead: 'leadership isn't about finding the right group of people and who are, have already arrived. And just assembling them together, right? It's about actually getting together those people that have the same passions and enthusiasms that you do and inspiring them towards growth to go from here to there.'
In John's words
“what I learned is while titles change, people are still people. And so my journey has been definitely not linear and not normal, but it's been an opportunity to connect with and to love and to build up people into different avenues and different venues.”
This quote encapsulates his core philosophy about the enduring importance of human connection and care, regardless of professional role or career path.
“I realized that what my leader told me, it wasn't that he was wrong, it was just he didn't have the full picture and the full story. And so what I learned from that very early on experience was that I needed to do some investigating on my own. I needed to be curious, right?”
Highlights the critical importance of curiosity and independent inquiry for leaders to understand the true dynamics of a situation.
“we shifted what HR was from the rules enforcers to the people that were really a part of the team to just bring about health and wellness for the entire organization.”
Illustrates a successful transformation of HR's role and perception within a rapidly growing company.
“I found myself often with our leaders saying, hey, if this staff member was a 3-year-old in your classroom, what would you do? And they'd go, oh, I wouldn't do it that way. So what should we do? Let's carry that value now that we have in our product or our service into leading our people because it's who we are.”
This provides a vivid and relatable example of how to bridge the gap between customer values and internal employee leadership.
“That change doesn't start with policy, it starts with posture.”
A concise and powerful statement that challenges conventional approaches to organizational change by prioritizing leadership mindset over formal rules.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Leaders making decisions based on incomplete information or a single perspective, leading to alienated employees.
- •HR departments being viewed negatively as 'gatekeepers' or 'rules enforcers' rather than supportive partners.
- •Inconsistency between an organization's stated values for customers and its internal treatment and leadership of employees.
- •Visionary leaders (CEOs) developing policies without input from people leaders, resulting in misinterpretation and ineffective implementation.
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