CHROs Are More Qualified To Become CEOs But Don’t Become One: Why?
In a work landscape where employees have become the priority, CHROs have many qualities and skills that make them suitable to be a CEO. However, they rarely become CEOs. Liz Pavese, Ph.D., director of behavioral science, CoachHub, busts some myths keeping CHROs away from this position.
The COVID-19 pandemic has left a changed world in its wake. Evolved digital ways of working have shifted from temporary solutions to permanent fixtures. And after more than two years of fluctuation and adaptation, the corporate world is still settling into how to work and handle every organization’s most valuable asset: its people.
CHROs have been on the front lines of leading this change. After all, they are in the people business, but not just from an administrative point of view. Sure, they have created, recreated, and improved work processes through the use of talent development technology to keep pace with the evolving nature of work, and administrative people management tasks naturally fall to their business functions. But the modern CHRO position has risen above pure administration or damage control. Post-pandemic CHROs are now expected to proactively address workplace culture and productivity issues with powerful technologies and toolkits, including AI- and ML-driven talent software.
Sound business strategies rely on a high-functioning workforce, making the CHRO’s purview of talent acquisition, development, management, and performance an essential piece of enterprise success. Although the connection between HR practices and operational efficiency may seem tenuous, CHROs spearhead projects that significantly influence company-wide productivity. McKinsey’s research shows that organizations in which CHROs generate a positive employee experience are 1.3 times more likely to report “organizational outperformance.” CHROs improve company progress through several critical responsibilities. They define and maintain an organization’s culture, advance diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, head up mission-critical succession planning, and act as trusted advisors on all things talent. The list can go on, but the bottom line is that CHROs create tangible impact.
In the corporate world, this blend of business acumen, interpersonal skills, and technological savvy is rare and incredibly valuable. Many CHROs lead workforces with empathy and kindness in the face of disruption. But they also couple understanding with creativity, agility, clear communication, transparency, vision, and decisiveness — all prerequisite skills for the very top leadership positions, according to Forbes Coaches Council.
Still, CHROs rarely become CEOs. Why? Here are the most pervasive misconceptions keeping CHROs from the corner office.
Myth 1: CHROs do not possess enough autonomy.
C-suite leaders often see CHROs as resources for building workforce support, not proactively driving growth. But people growth, which is fundamental to a CHRO’s job, is synonymous with business growth. Increasingly, CHROs implement powerful digital tools to generate people growth and drive organizational efficiency as a result. Individuals with a depth of HR experience can use their proficiencies with these tools and their willingness for positive change to transform organizations through employee engagement, organizational design, workforce planning, and productivity coaching. And their own foundational skills can help them recognize the value and abilities of every voice on the leadership team.
Myth 2: CHROs are not a big picture or visionary leaders
Despite popular misconceptions, CHROs’ responsibilities do not stop at hiring employees — they enable strategy execution. Effective CHROs take high-level initiatives and translate them into action by aligning their own operational strategies with the organization’s desired outcomes. Is the business building its sales capacity? Does a company need to increase productivity? Maybe a CHRO needs to examine the current sales function, envision the ideal team, and creatively put the pieces in place, hiring people with complementary personalities, positions, and responsibilities. Perhaps the CHRO needs to create a strategy for boosting output, requiring a thorough examination and streamlining of processes, new learning, and development strategies, and change management plans. Whatever the challenge, today’s CHROs replace reactive, myopic thinking with strategy and execution.
Myth 3: CHROs are too soft
CHROs have highly attuned soft, or more appropriately named, foundational skills, but it does not stop there. Logic is also a must, and that is an unbeatable combination of skills. CHROs solve problems efficiently, but people also follow leaders who understand and care about them. After all, empathy cannot be faked as employees quickly see through attempts at ingenuine leadership.
See More: 3 Ways Leadership Must Evolve for the Future of Work
Myth 4: CHROs are not as strategic with data as they should be
As employees continue to absorb changes to the modern-day work environment and the world at large, learning and development are playing an increasingly important role in strategic business planning. In fact, according to our study, 77% of learning and development (L&D) professionals feel the need for upskilling and people development has grown since the start of the pandemic. But forward-thinking CHROs and their teams do not just rely on all-day workshops or one-size-fits-all solutions.
Today’s HR functions, like all business functions, are metric-based. Strong CHROs use digital solutions like talent development software to track progress on focus areas and goal achievement while measuring HR-driven KPIs such as decreased turnover, increased engagement, and reduced time to hire. This data-driven mindset can transcend the HR realm and address organization-wide issues and opportunities. And as CHROs adopt innovative tools to track analytics at record-high rates, they are able to bring a technologically savvy mindset to the highest level of the C-suite, increasing the likelihood of an effective digital transformation for their organization.
Yesterday’s CEOs were expected to be masters of profit and loss, finance, operations, and process. In a business landscape forever changed by the pandemic, those typical business activities are important but not enough. The sometimes harder-to-develop emotional and foundational skills have become increasingly critical to healthy workforces and ideal business outcomes. CHRO responsibilities also develop effective leadership beyond the emotional realm. In fact, a study found that among all C-suite positions, traits held by CHROs map closest to those of a CEO (only bested by COOs, who share many CEO functions). This rang true across a breadth of leadership styles, thinking patterns, and emotional competencies, including confidence, humility, energy, and intelligence.
Forward-thinking enterprises should start thinking differently about CHROs’ professional capacity, putting their distinctive critical thinking and increasingly vital emotional intelligence skills on par with more traditional CEO-career path positions like COO and CFO. Reaching the upper echelons of an organization may take investment, development, and C-suite sponsorship. But this largely untapped pool of CHRO talent has enormous potential to lead businesses through the next phase of workforce transformation with empathy and impact.
What do you think is holding back CHROs from becoming CEOs? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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