Jon-Paul Ales-Barnicoat
CHRO
Alivecor
Episode 19
Beyond HR Ego: How Authentic Communication Empowers Your People & Mission
Current chapter: This episode features Previ, the only free tool that helps HR teams boost internal communication
Built By PeopleDecember 18, 2025 · 10:16
Thesis
“Effective HR leadership pivots from individual ego to serving the organization's people and mission, fostering genuine communication and engagement, especially during periods of rapid growth and cultural diversity.”
Show notes
AliveCor has been operating for 15 years — long enough to have accumulated all the communication debt that accumulates in a company that's been heads-down on product. When Jon-Paul Ales-Barnicoat stepped into the CHRO role, the gap between the executive team and the broader employee base was significant. People didn't know the leaders. Leaders weren't visible. The company was changing fast, and employees weren't getting a clear signal about where it was going or why.
His fix was low-tech and high-impact: a "LiveCORE Leadership Series" — a fireside chat format that humanized the executive team in ways nobody expected. The results surprised even Jon-Paul. When people can see that leaders are real humans with real perspectives and real vulnerabilities, the whole dynamic shifts. Engagement climbs. Questions get asked. Trust accumulates.
His insight about language is worth sitting with: he doesn't use the word "transparent." He says it's become too vague. What he's actually after is genuine communication — leaders sharing their real thoughts, their real struggles, their actual perspective. That requires more courage than transparency does. And when they use Google Gemini to help craft those communications, the goal isn't to generate content — it's to make sure every message is thorough, complete, and sounds like an actual person.
What you'll learn:
- How the LiveCORE Leadership Series humanized AliveCor's executive team — and the unexpected impact on engagement
- Why Jon-Paul prefers "genuine" communication over "transparent" — and the distinction that matters
- How AliveCor uses Gemini to improve the authenticity and completeness of internal communications
- The shift from thinking about "employees" to thinking about "people with lives" — and how that reframes communication strategy
- How Slack functions as a community-building tool, not just a productivity platform
- Why the most senior you become, the less it's about you — and what servant leadership looks like in practice
Built by People is presented by Previ — the free tool that helps HR teams boost internal communication engagement.
What you'll take away
- 1Prioritize genuine, authentic communication from executive leadership to bridge gaps and humanize leadership within dispersed teams.
- 2Shift perspective from 'employees' to 'people with lives' to inform more empathetic and effective communication strategies.
- 3Leverage informal communication channels like Slack for community building beyond business-related topics.
- 4Utilize AI tools to enhance the authenticity, thoroughness, and frequency of internal communications.
- 5Embrace a servant leadership mindset, recognizing that senior roles are about enabling others and fulfilling the organizational mission, not personal ego.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Pushes back on the term 'transparent communication' as it can be ambiguous, advocating instead for 'genuine communication' that reflects real thoughts and struggles.
In Jon-Paul's words
“The more senior you become in the organization, the less about you it becomes. And the more you become a servant to the people, the organization, the mission.”
This quote encapsulates a core philosophy of servant leadership crucial for senior HR roles.
“The communication gap was significant, and the organization had been through some speed bumps. And so, I introduced a in a LiveCORE leadership series, which is really a fireside chat.”
This highlights a specific initiative taken to address a critical communication problem in a growing company.
“When you stop thinking about people in their employee persona, and you start thinking about people as people that actually have lives... When you start thinking about people from that perspective, you then start to understand what real communication needs to look like.”
This emphasizes a human-centric approach to communication, moving beyond traditional corporate thinking.
“The thing that the emerging tool for us that's really helping us from an HR perspective and helping us to really humanize some of our communication is where we've really gone all in on Gemini. We're using Google's AI tool to help us to craft more authentic messages, to help us to make sure that we're being thorough and complete in our communication.”
This demonstrates a practical, current application of AI in HR for improving communication quality and authenticity.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Communication gap between executive team and employees in a dispersed, hybrid company (Alivecor, a 15-year-old startup).
- •Difficulty in maintaining genuine, authentic communication across multiple cultures within a growing global workforce.
- •Challenges in humanizing executive leadership and fostering a sense of community in a rapidly scaling organization.
- •Need for tools to craft more authentic, thorough, and complete internal messages to boost engagement.
In this episode
This episode features Previ, the only free tool that helps HR teams boost internal communication
Built by People
John Paul Ailes Barnacote started his career as a recruiter
Built by People: John Paul Ailes Barnacote
Tell me a little bit about your top priorities right now. My top priority is to scale our commercial business globally
Top Three Priorities
Alivecore recently rolled out a leadership series aimed at improving employee communications
Employee Communication at Alivecore
Communication is becoming harder and harder across every organization
Better communication in the workplace
We probably communicate more through Slack than any other tool
What's the Best Communication Tool for Your Organization?
John Paul: I hope people are inspired about the future of the organization
What's Changed at Work in the Last 12 Months?
John Paul shares some parting advice with the Built by People community
John Paul on Leaving the Company
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
Expand transcript (0 words)
Transcript is not available yet.