How Authenticity Became Authority: The HR Manifesto Story — with Leigh Elena Henderson

The early days of content for HR Manifesto, I'm a very naturally creative person, totally artsy fartsy, big nerd like that, museum junkie, you name it, right? And when I went to school, college, and then started in the workplace, you kind of have to turn a lot of that off right because you're focused i was anyway i was very focused i was working a lot whatever so you know i stopped playing the violin and you know i was no longer in the city choir i stopped painting or i stopped doing this or that right writing right it was like i could only do it so often and Well, early days of Manifesto was like this incredibly compulsive obsession with the entire creative process of that.

So like I mentioned, I just downloaded the app.

I didn't know what I was doing.

Like, how do you film something? I mean, if you go back and look at my early videos, the lighting, the lighting, that's like the one thing I'm like, oh my God, the lighting versus what I do now, lighting wise, right? The investment in lighting that I do today is because of the lack of lighting, like, you know, in those early videos, right? I mean, so I just like reflect upon all the things that I learned.

But it was just a ton of trial and error and a ton of fun.

It really was, right? Because I was completely unscripted.

I ad lib pretty much 95% of what I do.

I just like kind of know what I want to do.

And I was just trying things on.

So I was free.

Like I felt so free and it was so liberating and so beautiful to return to my creative self.

I just, I felt alive.

Part of the reason why I actually resonated with a lot of your content is because the freeness kind of came through in a sense where I was like, maybe a little too free because you said you were, you know, freshly out of a role and now you're kind of critiquing corporate America and you don't know that this is going to take off.

Like you very much so might as well, like may have needed to go back to corporate America.

Why decide to take the risk?

Well, like I shared, I am a very risky person, you know, but that's just me.

You know, I've already mentioned like I'm neurodivergent, I'm AUDHG.

I have a pretty intense lack of filter.

I've learned to roll it in sugar.

I've spent 20 years masking it because I'm late in life diagnosed.

I had no idea.

So I'd always just play nice and play that role and part.

But I have always been this transparent.

So the way that I talk on camera, if it comes across as natural and authentic and vulnerable and real and free, that's because that is me.

It is.