In this episode of Work’s Not Working… Let’s Fix It!, Siân Harrington sits down with entrepreneur, investor and author Dalton T. Sirmans to ask why employers searching for adaptable talent may be overlooking millions of refugees.

Refugees are usually discussed through the language of humanitarian crisis, politics and cost. Dalton argues that this can obscure another part of the story: people rebuilding their lives as employees, entrepreneurs, business owners and economic contributors.

Drawing on his research into forced displacement and his experience as an entrepreneur and impact investor, Dalton explores what he calls ‘the refugee advantage’: the resilience, adaptability, persistence and problem solving that can be developed or revealed when people have had to start again.

But this is not about romanticising displacement. Refugee status tells an employer very little on its own about someone’s ability to do a job. The bigger question is whether the way we recruit and assess people makes some forms of talent almost impossible to see.

Dalton shares the stories of refugee entrepreneurs who have built substantial businesses, Afghan helicopter mechanics whose skills translated into entirely different jobs and a US manufacturer that redesigned its training for workers who did not speak English – and saw production increase as a result.

Whether you’re an HR leader struggling with skills shortages, an employer looking beyond conventional recruitment channels or simply interested in how people rebuild their working lives, this episode asks us to look again at who we recognise as talent.

Key takeaways

• Refugees can disappear from employers’ view when unfamiliar qualifications, language and conventional recruitment criteria become barriers to recognising capability
• Adaptability, resilience and problem solving are characteristics employers frequently say they need. Dalton argues that displacement can reveal or sharpen these qualities
• Refugee entrepreneurship is significant. Dalton points to US research showing refugees are almost twice as likely to become entrepreneurs as native-born Americans and other immigrants
• Humanitarian framing has an unintended consequence. Seeing refugees primarily through vulnerability and need can make their economic contribution harder to recognise
• Better inclusion can improve the system for everyone. One manufacturer removed written language from training and used diagrams instead, opening jobs to non-English speakers and increasing production
• Being a refugee should neither qualify nor disqualify someone for a job. Employers need better ways to uncover what people can actually do
• Employers do not have to start alone. Refugee organisations, local colleges and other businesses can help them find talent and understand how to support people into work
• The private sector has a role in a displacement challenge that governments and humanitarian organisations cannot tackle on their own.

Interested in insights about people leadership, HR and the future of work?
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In this episode of Work’s Not Working… Let’s Fix It Siân Harrington sits down with neuroscience-based executive coach and leadership strategist Bruna De Palo to challenge one of the biggest assumptions behind modern management: that people can think rationally, leave emotion at the door, absorb constant change and keep performing under chronic pressure.

For years leaders have been taught neat stories about the brain: rational versus emotional, left brain versus right brain, the fear centre that hijacks the meeting. But Bruna, author of The Brain Instruction Manual for Leaders, argues that much of this thinking is now out of date. The brain is not simply reacting to events. It is constantly predicting what might happen next and deciding where to spend its energy.

This changes how we understand resistance, disengagement, procrastination, burnout and silence in meetings. These behaviours may be less about poor attitude and more about a brain spending too much energy on protection.

Bruna introduces the idea of the brain as the CFO of the body budget, deciding whether energy goes into defence or into the thinking, creativity, collaboration and problem-solving organisations say they need most. She explains why tough leadership can appear to get results while quietly draining performance, why uncertainty is so costly and why leaders need to create the conditions for people’s brains to work well.

Whether you’re leading change, trying to build trust, dealing with burnout or wondering why your leadership development programme hasn’t shifted behaviour this episode offers a more accurate and practical way to understand people at work.

Key Takeaways

• Outdated brain myths are still shaping leadership, HR, wellbeing and change management.
• The brain’s primary job is survival, which means predicting danger and managing energy.
• Resistance, defensiveness and disengagement may be signs of protection rather than poor motivation.
• Tough leadership can get results, but often at a hidden cost to energy, trust and performance.
• Clarity, structure, predictability, transparency and coherence help reduce the energy people spend on threat.
• Leaders can use the SCARF model – status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness – to spot where people may feel unsafe.
• If we want better creativity, decision-making and collaboration, we need to stop wasting so much human energy on protection.

Interested in insights about people leadership, HR and the future of work?
Seize and shape the future of work with The People Space, a leading digital HR magazine for forward-thinking leaders. We empower you to put people at the heart of work, navigating the evolving intersection of technology, business and human insight. Join us in building a future where people and machines collaborate for a more human-centric workplace

• Sign up for our free fortnightly newsletter on the future of work, human-centric organisations and people-first leadership
• Follow Siân on LinkedIn
• Are you an HR professional seeking to raise your profile? I can help!
• HR vendor or consultant? Check out how I can help you reach senior HR leaders.
• Follow The People Space on Facebook