Gianna Driver: How You Treat the Waiter, Humans First, Employees Second | Work 20XX Ep60
Gianna Driver didn't come to Running Remote 2026 as a remote work evangelist. She came as a Chief People Officer who believes, deeply, that how you design the spaces where people gather, physically, culturally, organizationally, determines everything about the kind of company you actually become. Not the kind you say you are. The kind you are. And that conviction didn't come from a business school case study. It came from growing up on the other side of privilege. Her mother emigrated to the US as a mail-order bride. Gianna knows what it feels like to be on the outside looking in. That experience shaped everything, how she hires, how she leads, how she thinks about who gets a seat at the table and whether the table itself is worth sitting at. Being humans first and employees second isn't a tagline for her. It's a worldview forged long before she had a title. So we got into the good stuff. Starting with the waiter test. For critical hires, Gianna takes candidates to dinner and watches how they treat the wait staff. Not as a trick. As a window. One CRO finalist interviewed brilliantly right up until the server got his order wrong. That was the end of the process. It's a small moment. It tells you everything. We talked about mistake-making as a leadership competency, normalizing failure fast, cost-effectively, and without fear, and why organizations that run on cultures of fear are leaving performance on the table every single day. We talked about the machine-to-machine hiring pipeline and what gets lost when the humans step out of the loop. And we went to the hard places: DEI, the political headwinds, the companies pulling back. Gianna's answer was clear and unequivocal. Call it whatever you want. If the words are triggering, find new words. But the spirit, building inclusive, diverse teams because the science says they produce better outcomes and because it's the right thing to do, that doesn't get to go away because it became inconvenient. And she made a prediction, on the record: companies using AI as cover for layoffs are going to see a boomerang. They've over-cut. They'll need to rehire. And the talent they let go won't be waiting. Good leadership is good leadership. These aren't lessons for remote teams or hybrid teams or any particular org chart configuration. They're for anyone who takes people seriously enough to be intentional about the conditions they create. Please join me in welcoming Gianna Driver to the Work 20XX Podcast. --- *Editor's Note: Recorded May 2026 at the Running Remote conference in Austin, Texas. Special thanks to Liam, Egor, Ana, and the entire Running Remote team.* *Gianna Driver: How'd You Treat the Waiter, Humans First Employees Second | Work 20XX Ep60 with Jeff Frick from Running Remote 2026* *YouTube – Click Here* *Transcript and Show Notes – Click Here*
