Want to get taken seriously by your CEO?
According to Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. (President and CEO of SHRM) only 10% of CEOs actually love working with their HR leadership.
The other 90%? Let’s just say we have some work to do.
In our inaugural episode of the Culture Creators podcast, we sit down with Johnny to find why HR leaders often aren’t taken seriously by the CEO and other executives…
And, we find out how to repair a broken CEO/CHRO relationship so you can become the most valuable and trusted person in the organization.
You’ll learn:
How to have a conversation with your CEO to rebuild trust
The credibility gap that quietly kills HR’s influence (and how to spot it early)
The leadership move that turns disagreement into trust instead of friction
Check out the episode wherever you get podcasts. And keep scrolling to find out what we think are the most valuable takeaways from today’s episode.
— Nate Bagley, Producer of Culture Creators
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Johnny Taylor has sat on both sides of the table.
He’s been CHRO at Blockbuster, LendingTree, and Paramount.
And he’s been a CEO for 16 years across both for-profit and nonprofit orgs.
For nearly a decade, he’s acted as the President and CEO of SHRM — the world’s largest HR association — which gives him a front-row seat to the trends (and tension) shaping work across industries and company sizes.
So when Johnny asked a room full of Fortune 50 CEOs one simple question… it triggered some serious conversation:
“How would you describe your working relationship with your CHRO?”
The answers:
😍 ~10% the said they loved their CHRO.
😬 ~60% said they tolerate them.
💀 ~30% said they would rather avoid their CHRO altogether
That’s some brutal feedback.
And when Johnny pressed that last group — “Why not just replace them?” — the response was even worse:
"I don't think it'll get any better."
That’s a big problem.
Not “some CEOs don’t like HR.”
It’s that we’ve quietly accepted broken CEO/CHRO partnerships as normal.
As HR’s de facto leader and spokesperson, Johnny isn’t satisfied with that.
He wants CHROs to be trusted business partners to the CEO and the rest of the executive team.
But he understands (from experience) that it can be a struggle for HR leaders to get a seat at the table.
He’s been the CHRO who feels ineffective and stuck, working with a CEO he didn’t click with.
But he found a way to reset the relationship — rebuild trust, create real alignment, and earn influence again.
How did he do it?
It all started with one hard (and freeing) lesson…
You can’t change the CEO!
Johnny knew he was a capable CHRO. He’d seen success in that role at a previous company (Blockbuster).
But for some reason, things felt “off” with his new CEO.
Johnny understood one of two things was going to happen:
He was going to learn to serve his new CEO and the business
He was going to have to leave
Let's just face it, the CEO is whomever he or she is going to be — and only the board can fire them. So it doesn't matter what I think about them. […] They are the customer. Remember that line about the customer's always right? They're always right. So you gotta figure out how to work with them.
So, Johnny took a risk.
He invited the CEO to dinner.
He started with casual, non-work related conversation: How’s your life? How’s your family? What keeps you up at night?
Then, he pivoted to the big, scary question:
“I want to work here. My job is to make you and this company successful. So tell me — this is your safe space — what bothers you about me?”
The feedback wasn’t comfortable.
He said it was “hard as hell” not to get defensive.
But his CEO finally told him the truth.
(If you want to know the 3 pieces of feedback he was given, you can hear the nitty-gritty details in the episode.)
But here’s the important thing…
That dinner conversation was the beginning of the relationship reset.
Johnny was given a choice to adapt, make changes, and commit to what this CEO actually needed from his CHRO… or walk away.
He chose to stay.
And that relationship became one of the most fulfilling professional relationships in Johnny’s career.
But it wasn’t just the conversation that made the difference. That was just the turning point.
The lasting change happened because Johnny changed…
The 3 C’s
Johnny credits the actual transformation of the broken relationship with his CEO to the development of three traits.
He consistently sees these three traits in that 10% of CHROs who are beloved by their CEOs.
1) Competence
You have to be the most competent person in the room when it comes to HR.
You can’t be “the people person” in the room if you don’t understand the room.
But that’s just table stakes.
What most HR leaders don’t understand is their CEO needs them to have business competence.
The CEO isn’t looking for an HR encyclopedia.
They’re looking for a business partner who understands how the company actually works — how it makes money, what levers matter, where the risks live, and what tradeoffs leadership is making.
It's about showing up as a business partner who happens to own HR, rather than an HR expert who occasionally talks to the business.
If your CEO only sees you as the “HR expert,” you’re already losing.
In other words:
If you don’t know the business, you’ll never lead the people strategy. You’ll just administer it.
📌 Pro Tip
Need to fill some knowledge gaps? Ask a fellow executive (like the CFO) to give you a crash course in their area of expertise!
2) Confidant
The CHRO must be the CEO’s safest place.
The CEO is often the loneliest person in the building.
Everyone is pulling from them. Their board, investors, leadership team, employees… even their family. When they go home, no one asks how they're doing.
The CHRO who understands this (and shows up accordingly) becomes irreplaceable. Because most CHROs try to earn respect. The best CHROs earn trust.
Being the CEO's confidant doesn't mean becoming their therapist. It means creating a relationship where the CEO can:
be 100% honest
share something they can't tell anyone else
know — with absolute certainty — that what's said in that room stays there
Johnny is unambiguous on that last point. Confidentiality doesn't expire when you change jobs.
The CEOs watching you build a career want to see if you can be trusted. Every conversation you keep private is career capital.
📌 Pro Tip
Say it out loud! “This stays with me unless you tell me otherwise or we’re in a legal/safety situation.”
3) Courage
The hardest C.
You can’t have courage unless you have developed the first 2 C’s…
You have to be competent in your role.
And you have to have a foundation of trust resulting from becoming your CEO’s confidant.
Then you have to develop the two sides of courage:
1) Speaking up.
Challenging bad assumptions.
Saying the hard-to-hear thing with kindness.
Choosing what’s right for the business over what’s easiest for HR.
Johnny tells a story where he and his CHRO disagreed about whether to terminate a high-performing exec for dating a subordinate.
The “easy” policy answer was termination.
The courageous answer was nuance: transparency agreements, monitoring for favoritism, legal protection — but no automatic firing.
As Johnny puts it: “Policies are guidelines. Courage is leadership.”
2) Listening.
Hearing the hard-to-hear thing without getting defensive.
Johnny says it was “hard as hell” to sit across from a CEO, invite direct feedback, and not flinch when it came.
But that’s the point: if you want truth, you have to be able to receive it.
📌 Pro Tip
Have a conversation with your CEO about how they want to receive pushback. Then try it out. Remember, disagree in private. Align in public.
Let’s Summarize
Johnny says his goal is to grow the percentage of HR leaders whose CEOs LOVE working with them.
If you want to be among the 10% of HR leaders who are beloved by their CEO…
Stop trying to change your CEO
Have a conversation with your CEO about what they need from you. (Stay humble.)
Develop Competence to be a trustworthy business partner
Become the Confidant, so your CEO has a safe space
Be Courageous. Invite feedback. Say the hard thing
We’ve developed some cool worksheets and AI prompts to help you do all this stuff… scroll to the next section to learn how to access them.
Want to practice the Three C’s instead of just thinking about them?
We put together a bonus toolkit — templates, AI prompts, worksheets, and assessments designed to help you build trust, speak up, and get real reps in.
Companies that consistently recognize and reinforce the right behaviors and values build cultures where people stay longer, perform better, and pull in the same direction.
Nectar helps HR teams and leaders make those moments consistent with a culture platform that’s easy to adopt and actually gets used.
→ Recognition that doesn’t feel forced
→ Engagement + listening you can act on
→ Communication that reaches people where they are
See how Nectar works:
"My job is to make you and this company successful. It's not to make me successful. 'Cause that's a byproduct of making you and this company successful."
This is the mindset shift that separates the 10% of beloved CHROs from everyone else.
When your goal is to make the CEO and the company their best, there’s no room to question your talent or competence. You’re proving it every day.