What Every CHRO Needs to Know in 2024
Larry Emond, Senior Partner at Modern Executive Solutions, joins us to discuss the evolving role of CHROs. He emphasizes the importance of rotating business leaders through HR roles to enhance strategic impact. Larry also explores the future of HR technology, DEI challenges, and the shift toward skills-based organizations. Learn how these trends are shaping the future of HR.
In today's HR Leaders Podcast, we chat with Larry Emond, Senior Partner at Modern Executive Solutions and former Gallup executive.
Larry delves into the evolving role of CHROs, highlighting the value of rotating business leaders through HR roles to boost strategic impact. He also touches on key topics like HR technology, DEI challenges, and the shift toward skills-based organizations, emphasizing the need for CHROs to stay adaptable in the changing HR landscape.
🎓 In this episode, Larry discusses:
Tackling ongoing DEI challenges in large organizations.
Navigating rapid changes in HR technology and automation.
Benefits of rotating business leaders through HR for deeper insight.
Shifting to a skills-based approach and the role of internal talent marketplaces.
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Larry Emond 0:00
When you identify future leaders early in their career, out in the operations roles, early in their career, you look for an opportunity to rotate them through a first HR assignment. Maybe it's two to three years as the head of HR for the UK and Ireland. Right then they go back out into an operating role. And if they continue on the path of going to the future, you might consider rotating them in a COE role, maybe they rotate into a talent role or a learning role, then they go back out. So then what happens is you have CHRO eventually, who spent a lot of their life out in operations in the business, but did one or two previous HR rotations, and they inherit an HR function that half the people in it are rotations from the business. It just makes a lot of sense. I think that model is something that companies ought to look at more than the structure of HR, yeah, the staffing strategy for HR, I think, is where there's so much opportunity.
Chris Rainey 0:57
Larry, welcome to the show. How are you?
Larry Emond 0:58
I'm wonderful.
Chris Rainey 0:59
How has it taken us so long to connect?
Larry Emond 1:02
It's really crazy because we've been in and around the same thing for a long time. It
Chris Rainey 1:06
makes no sense that we haven't connected until today, like every we've spent the last hour behind the scenes, everyone having a conversation about all the connections that we have before we jump in. Tell everyone a little bit more about you personally and your background and the journey to where we are now.
Larry Emond 1:21
Yeah, it's Larry Emond. I had been at Gallup for over 25 years, actually closer to 30 years. And over those years is when Gallup evolved into being what it is today. You know, workplace, helping companies build better workplaces. We still say we created the word combination we Yeah, well, it is, you know, and you know, and I'm still very good friends with them, but, you know, created the word combination, employee. Combination employee engagement when we wrote the book, first break all the rules. And my whole life has been about helping large organizations build better workplaces, which, of course, is through identifying and developing better managers and leaders. So it's been my whole career. A lot of it was in Asia. I was your chief marketing officer for a long time, the publisher of all the those series of books. I was the executive publisher of all of them and and then oversaw most big chunk of Gallup's enterprise business, the big company business. So my whole life has been in this area. I stumbled into what I do about a decade ago. I handful of large CHROs. I knew there. Well, there's a lot of things out there. They really wanted to, to be able to go to meetings that were limited to only large, mainly global, only the person in the CH row role, not too many of us. And let's maximize the time that we just talked to each other. Yeah. And so started building that. It sounds crazy. I three years ago, I moved from Gallup to help build a different kind of town advisory firm called Modern executive solutions, about 140 of us now. It's a search leader, assessment and development Oregon talent strategy. It's basically a collection of a lot of people from the big firms in those spaces who've come together to do something different. We're really, really proud of what we're building, but I've at the center of it, as I've continued to manage this global CHRO community. It sounds crazy to say it, but I've done somewhere around 375 large company CHRO meetings in person. They range from catch up with you. They range from a from a kind of day and a dinner to some ski and golf and wine and other kind of retreats that are long hard life. It's not for everybody, but it's, it's really, I feel really lucky, yeah, because the big company, CHRO, is, without exception, these are really good people. You wouldn't take on all the hard stuff in that job if you weren't trying to build better cultures, better workplaces, better lives, develop leaders. I mean, these are people that are very passionate about that, and so they're great people to spend your time with.
Chris Rainey 3:55
Yeah, and everything you just said, obviously, is similar to what we were hearing. Shane and I were in the space for 10 years before we started HR leaders, and we're getting the same feedback, feedback from leaders, you know, they want conversations, not presentations, right? They want to be in a room where they could be, you know, speak openly and freely, without being attacked by vendors and partners. And it will be in video recorded, right? Yeah, and that didn't really exist. So, so excited to hear about your community and what do you do, and obviously, what you're doing at modern as well. So what's on the minds? Yeah, of CHRO,
Larry Emond 4:29
yeah. Fun with this. I've done a workshop. I do a lot of workshop, a lot for HR leadership team. CHROs asked me to come in and, you know, spend a half day or whatever, what's on their mind. So when I do all these meetings like what you guys do, so let's call it close to 400 in person meetings, and then did a bunch in the pandemic that were virtual. I don't do anything virtual anymore, but I tend to curate the agendas, right? We get a group, a dozen CHROs are going to come in two months, and I reach out and say, What's on your mind? What do you want to talk. Talk about. So this has been one gigantic piece of qualitative research with with literally 1000s of data points about what's on their mind. So if you look across the entire decade, there are three, four things that are always popular topics and always will be. And the number one may surprise a lot of people, but the number one is, anything in the area of HR, technology and automation, now, it's changed, and what they want to focus on has changed. But you know, when I first started doing this, eight, 910, years ago, that was the time when everybody was making a move, a big move, to one of the the new, you know, human capital management platform. So you're either going to the workday or SAP SuccessFactors, or maybe you're going to go with Oracle's new product, or part of their digital transformation, correct? And it was a UKG, all the other players that were possible, what is now called UKG day. And it was funny in retrospect, because it was like, Hey, we're finally making the decision. Who did you go with? Why did you choose them? That happened all the time. Yeah, there wasn't a meeting that I did that weren't checking in, right? Yeah, yeah, but, but the feeling was, hey, once we make a commitment to one of these platforms, our life's gonna be so much easier, because if it's not on the platform, it doesn't exist, and will like, well, that's not what happened. No. I mean, you've seen the research, you know? You put those systems in, and then here we are, X number of years later, they all have like 100 plus other HR technology apps platforms in addition to their HCM platform, because there's something out there that does something that is on the platform better enough to consider it or it does something else. And of course, those platforms are never going to keep up with all this stuff, because they you know, the innovation can come from all over the place, from single person shops and so if you're that big CHRO and you got a lot of things in your life, it's very hard for you to feel like, you know, HR technology and automation that well. So if you're in the safe environment of just a small group of you, and you're not trying to show off or pretend like you don't know what you don't you want to know. Is there anything out there I haven't heard about yet that I need to know about, or we're thinking about going has anybody done this yet? Because is this going to be a good use my money, or is this not going to be a good use my money? So they they continually want to talk now of late, last 18 months, of course, it's been AI, and in particular, Gen AI everything and everyone in almost any meeting that I do, whether it's on the agenda or not, they're going to want to check in on latest, greatest, interesting. What have you tried? How's it working? So that's kind of always going to be there. And
Chris Rainey 7:37
every vendor now is releasing their own AI, right solution.
Larry Emond 7:42
So which there? And they're probably all going to morph into a similar area. So the second most, the most requested meeting topic over all those years is the evolving Diversity Inclusion, Diversity equity, inclusion. When I first started doing this, equity wasn't in in the word in the phraseology yet, but anything in that area. So let's say that's been in over 200 meetings, maybe 250 where that's either been on the agenda or been the whole agenda again, safety of a meeting where it's off the record. I can be honest. I don't got to pretend like things are going well. Those 200 250 meetings have been largely humble, because if you're real honest, and you feel like you're in a safe place, you may talk about all the things you've done, but very, very few large companies have had big changes in the D in diversity, at least at the top of the organization, right there are numbers. They more diversity overall. But if we're looking at our most senior roles, you know how many have had huge changes in in gender, ethnic, other forms of diversity? And the reality is, in the big company world, almost none of them are where they want to be, and they want to find out if anybody in the room today has done something that's working better than because we've we made some progress, but then we lost some people, and we're kind of back to where we were five years ago. So it's, it's, those are really, those are just humble conversations, because there's still so much work that needs to be done there. And of course, now, in some
Chris Rainey 9:20
sense, no, given the current economic client, the climate, the DEI backlash, yeah, the political backlash is that, is that still, you
Larry Emond 9:27
know, it's interesting right after the right after the affirmative action decision in the US, and since the CHROs that you know come to the meetings from all over the world, but most have significant US operations. And so it's a topic of importance. I actually did a bunch of meetings, I think 15, in both North America and Europe, where we opened with the future of affirmative action and dei programs based on that US based decision. And how it was, you know, coming out around the world at that time, and this is last year, there was unanimous, like, we're not changing anything, and that's just not me speaking. That's what our CEO speaking. We're not changing everything. We believe in this for all the right reasons. So we're not, we're we're as committed as ever, and we don't care about the letters we get. We don't care, right? I whether, whether that's true or not, or whether or not, in the close some companies that's
Chris Rainey 10:28
already changed. You know, a lot of companies that said what you just said that over the last, say, 612, months, have backed off a little bit. Yeah, you know, we're both totally having the same conversations. That's something that, uh,
Larry Emond 10:41
I'll continue to we'll continue to investigate, we'll continue to make it a topic in meetings, again, safety of a safe place, yeah, what's really happened in your buildings? And where is this headed? Right? Yeah, we'll see, um, certainly, a couple others that are always they like to talk about that big CHROs love to talk about the future of the function, the future of the HR organization, right? What does that need to be? How do we need to be different? And you have some trends that we know. You know we need to be unfortunately, we need to be smaller. Apparently, because we always have pressure on us to be smaller. Like, Hey, isn't it all this technology enable you to do more less? Yeah, probably. But that doesn't mean less money, because these technologies are expensive, right? But, you know, we know we need to be more strategic, right? We've been saying that since HR was called personnel, yeah, right. We need to be more tech savvy, more you know, more business savvy, more data savvy. One of the things that comes out in those conversations is the realization that those are probably staffing issues. Right to just tell your H, your hundreds or 1000s of HR people, Hey, we need you to be more strategic, or we need you to lean in more heavily on tech or data, or we need you to be more business oriented. That does your people aren't just going to change. You got staff differently if you want more business orientation techs, then put more of those people into the HR function. And we talk about that a lot, and they certainly
Chris Rainey 12:09
HR business model itself evolved and changed. What you've seen around that certainly
Larry Emond 12:15
the thing right now is, as everyone continues to experiment with AI, and in particular Gen AI, we talk a lot about, you know, what does that mean to recruiters, right? I mean, these, these platforms, these talent platforms out there, amazing what they can do, and they can do it 24/7, 365, and they're always reaching out to candidates. What does it do to the generalist? Right? We've got new, new gen AI capabilities to do a lot of what a generalist does, of what an HR BP does. So how are we going to repurpose those people to do higher quality things? All of those are the active conversations going on. Certainly you know that there's no big company, CHRO, that's sitting there going, I can't wait to, like, cut the number of HR people, and have they don't
Chris Rainey 13:03
it kind of it needs to be more of a it the technologies and enabling them to free them up, to have to do more, have more strategic conversation, spend more time with their people. It's the opposite.
Larry Emond 13:13
It's absolutely true. The challenge, of course, is the idea of freeing up my HR folks to be more strategic than operational depends on them being more strategic than operational as people, I get it so, yeah, that's, and that's, and not a lot of them are, because that's what was brought into the function historically, because that's what the function right decisions. I think it's, I think that I think what you I'll give you an example, because, you know, part of modern, you know, my, my firm that I've been helping build for three years is a, is a large executive search firm with a lot of longtime industry people. An example is, you know, we get hired to do we work across all areas and all, you know, all areas, not just HR tech, everything, but in finance and marketing and so forth. But for example, you need a new head of HR analytics, don't limit your candidate pool to people from HR analytics. Go find someone who's really good at analytics, yeah, finance. You know exactly who finds out that they can play with human data, which is a hell of a lot more interesting than the data they've been
Chris Rainey 14:15
playing with. See that, right? Like we've got a people analytics summit in two days, and if you look at I would say 50% of those people, analytics executives, came from other functions, yeah, and also because the role didn't even exist, right? If you look only five years ago, you know, we had HR analytics, and then it kind of evolved. But some of the most successfully, as I speak to are from finance, marketing, etc, yeah, yeah, in,
Larry Emond 14:39
um, covid. Had you had the covid response. And I did 150 meetings during the pandemic, which were just about covid response originally, and then we started morph into, let's talk about something else. We're kind of tired of talking about that. And one of the one of the great things that happened was the evolution of the Mental Health conversation. Yeah. So the reality is, you. Historically, when we've talked about mental health in companies, we were talking about mental illness. We were talking about mental illness. We weren't talking about, for example, accentuating positive mental health the way a professional football team, right? The special sports teams have, like psychologists to help their people be in top mental condition all the time. We've never really gone there in the big company world, the opportunities there are enormous, right? We've been spending our time over here trying to help avoid negative mental health or treat negative mental health. And are we going to help our people out with that? So we cover more of that? Yeah, we want to do that. We want to do more of that. But what about the other 90% that we can help accentuate their positive mental health that came out of covid. And it's be it's changed the course. So when we do we now do some mental health retreats. We do with a company based here in London called unmine, who's one of the, one of the leading players as a health partner for big companies, and we spent about half the time talking about mental health programming, and the way we talk about it now, and the things companies talk about they're doing, it's a completely different conversation. And it's great, like, this is really healthy, and this will be really good. And so the other thing that, the other thing that just it wasn't really covid related, it just was mainly technology related that surfaced in that same period, and is now asked of all the time as the whole skills conference, right the skills over jobs? Conceptually super easy to kind of think about how we'd think about how people take skills they have and apply them to multiple jobs rather than one job. Not that easy to execute?
Chris Rainey 16:44
No, not when a company has been set up in the way. It's the companies are set up for the last God knows how many years, right? It's trying to do that.
Larry Emond 16:51
And so talking with my colleagues about, what are you doing? That's actually the skills over degrees. One is a lot easier. That's a huge one, especially in the US, where the cost of education so high? Yeah. I mean, there's still a, well, it's very much. You still, you still have a lot of companies that require a college degree for all kinds of jobs where there's no data to support that that should be required or related to success, that will continue to erode, that'll continue to bring other people into the workforce, right? Also, you
Chris Rainey 17:21
got a gig economy coming into it now, right? Where, like many, companies are tapping into into that in ways that I've never seen before. Yeah, and there's even large multinationals that I'm seeing now and there,
Larry Emond 17:32
and it's not as easy to manage as they thought. Integrating the part time gig worker, contract worker with my full time workforce, yes, yeah, it's tricky, right? There's jealousies, there's dynamics, there's right? So we get into that quite a bit. Look for the big and global companies. One of the other reasons to look at skills and forget about things like degrees or where you you know, where what you're even experiential past, is, I don't really care. I care about what you can demonstrably do, maybe a new skill you've just acquired somehow, if you're big and global, I mean, there's huge labor supply issues. You know, we hear about the the most well known labor shortages, but there's hundreds and and for the big companies the world, especially since the the labor supply in the developed world, Western Europe, Japan, China is super reducing. Right? The numbers are daunting. You're going to have to continue either to have more immigration, which is a challenge and politically in a lot of countries, or you're going to have to start going to other parts of the world. Manufacturing finally has moved at scale into India. It wasn't there. There never really was an industrial revolution India. Now it's happening because we got to go somewhere. Africa is a big one. I did a, I did, we did a first meeting a year and a half ago in Johannesburg with a bunch of big global companies to talk about the future of the workforce in Africa. Doing another one in February coming up, and we'll probably make that an annual thing. The manufacturers, we used to say things like, well, you know, there's corruption and infrastructure problems, true, but the number of big global manufacturers who are finding ways to have successful man, they're figuring it out. For all the tech jobs, software engineers, what doesn't matter. So putting, putting Africa, because the next 2 billion people in the world are net in Africa and South Asia. We're going to have to find ways to tap into those workforces for global solutions. So I think that's going to be and so more and more, cos want to know, is anybody here doing that yet? Because we know we got to get there. There's going to be a
Chris Rainey 19:36
lot of challenges along the way. And
Larry Emond 19:38
then the look the whole
Chris Rainey 19:41
before we go into next year, sort of the skills based organization, yeah, approach many companies now building their own talent marketplaces, right? Internally. Lovely, your thoughts. And you
Larry Emond 19:50
got a lot of good players out there, right? You got, you got a lot of players that have emerged, came in. You kind of had the candidate CRM companies have started over here, and and then you had the. The internal mobility players, and then they've all kind of morphed where they all do everything now. So we can help you with external talent. We can help you with internal talent. If you go to internal mobility, let's just go there, because every big company the world has always wanted to have better internal mobility, and typically reported that it hasn't gone very well for all kinds of reasons. The technology available for that now, to extract from people their skills, to have all the jobs posted internally, gigs and projects posted internally. And it's going, you know, 24/7 365, reaching out to you and going, Hey, there's a thing in France over here. It's in a different function, but actually, of 80% of the skills, and we can close the gap with this free content here, I'll take about 20 at there's HR generalists, you couldn't do that. There's you can't. I
Chris Rainey 20:47
mean, not at scale, not at scale, not at scale. So for the not, and also not and not do it in a way that it's inclusive, right, and fair and equitable. It
Larry Emond 20:55
was used. It was still going to go back to who I know and right? Yeah. So these are working all the time, and they're one of the interesting things with those platforms, is the mentor partnerships. It, yeah, if you turn that part on, on these platforms are powerful as well, right? So it comes out that I'm thinking about going here, and the best person in the company for me to talk to is on the other side of the world in a different business unit, and like, we would have never met, we would have never heard about each other, and it's the best person to help me figure out this next step. The opportunities there are enormous. Then there's the cultural issue that we gotta, we're gonna have to, you know, managers can't be talent hoarders. They got to be talent exporters. Big choice, huge, huge. That one's gonna get easy. That's, it's, it's just, it's going to be free movement. You're, you're gonna remove any kind of friction with managers, because they can leave the company anyway. So we better remove the friction for them to take another job here. So I think you're going to see the policy
Chris Rainey 21:49
season like even many companies are now moved to that's kind of linked to managers compensation, absolutely in them financially. Well,
Larry Emond 21:58
certainly I mean senior leaders, CEO, senior leaders have gone down the road and making it clear, like, if you want to advance here as a leader, yeah, you need to be known as a talent exporter, exactly. Not a not a protector, right? That's kind of goes without saying, and I think we're going to see a lot of that,
Chris Rainey 22:14
yeah, yeah. So those are kind of four areas we we we covered. Um, it. How have you seen the role for all of this, of the CHRO evolve?
Larry Emond 22:28
Yeah, let's do a little still, little demographics on the big company, CHRO, because I don't think that's that well known. We've studied it. We've studied it as we've managed this community all these years and looked at it. The first thing is, in the big company world, less than a third of big company CHROs are lifetime HR people. The majority were out in the business, were in other functions, and somewhere in their career, moved into HR. Well, let me the last one. And then over 10% of big company CHROs were never in HR until the day they became CHRO. What's going on there? Well, if you're big, we got these. We got HR functions with hundreds or 1000s of people. We got a lot of technical expertise. So part of it is we have an opening on our executive committee. Let's add another power leader as another senior leader that can carry the communication forward, that can demonstrate the culture we want. All those things. So you're thinking now a lot the leader first. You're not going to put anybody who has no love of HR or no appreciation for HR, but you're not. You're not going to look at them for technical expertise per se, because you already have so much of it right now. Is this going to keep growing? Are you going to have more than 10% is going to be 15% that are, that are? Had never been in HR until I don't know, probably not. I
Chris Rainey 23:48
feel like I'm seeing increase definitely, like year on year.
Larry Emond 23:53
Now, if you look at the if you look at the Career HR, people who do get the CHRO jobs in this day and age, it's usually people with the combination of of talent and generalist in their background, you know, long time ago, 20 years ago, a lot more total rewards people and exec comp people. It's much, much more likely to be talent and big generalists are kind of the way to the CHRO job, yeah, if you're largely a career HR person, right? But we'll see where that all, where that all goes long term. And here's another big trend that's, I think the numbers, about 40% of big company, CHROs, and it's definitely growing, have another responsibility fully outside of HR, so at one time is like, we'll give them external communications, and then maybe external but what about marketing, real estate, safety, security, CSR, in some industries, all of ESG, yeah, yeah, right. So you say, I mean, you have, you have in banking, you have, there's a number that are CHRO and chief marketing officer, makes a lot of sense. We're a service business. It's about customers meeting employees. Like, I think you're going to continue to see the. CHRO have other responsibilities, and that's great for the function, obviously. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 25:05
where do you see the biggest opportunity? We spoke about a lot of stuff, but where do you see? Where do you see is the biggest opportunity for CHROs?
Larry Emond 25:14
Well, you know, I think that this the things that we've said. We know it needs to be any survey of other senior leaders, what do you want HR to be more of this idea of being more business focused, more tech savvy, more data savvy. I think that's where the opportunity is to be all those things you have, tech and data tools and all that that make it a lot easier. But I think you're going to see the HR function staff a lot differently than it has historically.
Chris Rainey 25:45
I'd about to say, because all of those things that I'm hearing and that you're describing are all not the traditional skill sets, yeah, that we have of h of HR executives, yeah. And
Larry Emond 25:56
I think the whole idea of HR being more business oriented, the best way to solve that is to rotate business leaders through HR. One of the best for the last 100 years have been Schlumberger now, now just SLB, right? What's that look like? So the way they've done it for a long time, I actually did an interview with one of their CHROs in the past. That's out there, as there and some other companies do this. When you identify future leaders early in their career, out in the operations roles. Early in their career, you look for an opportunity to rotate them through a first HR assignment. Maybe it's two to three years as the head of HR for the UK and Ireland. Right then they go back out into an operating role. And if they continue on the path of going to the future, you might consider rotating them in a COE role. Maybe they rotate into a talent role or a learning role, then they go back out. So then what happens is you have CHRO eventually, who spent a lot of their life out in operations in the business, but did one or two previous HR rotations, and they inherit an HR function that half the people in it are rotations from the business. It just makes a lot of sense. I think that model is something that companies ought to look at more than the structure of HR. Yeah, the staffing strategy for HR, I think, is where the there's so much opportunity.
Chris Rainey 27:09
It's interesting, because one of the key insights that, you know, we've done nearly 1000 CHRO interviews on this show, and one of the key things that kept coming over and over again when I speak to CHROs and ask them, you know, hey, what someone one of the things that's made you successful, yeah, career. And one of the things they, they always talk about is the fact that they've rotated, yeah, through different functions and geographies. Yeah, that when they they're now sit in that role, they have a rule under truly understand the business, the different geographies they serve, yep, different functions. They've lived and breathe that and, you know, come back they in.
Larry Emond 27:43
One of the big concerns that comes up in the meetings all the time is it's a lot, it's a significantly fewer people that are willing to move geographically. Oh, interesting. It's a huge impact, if far more leaders in development that are willing to do the kind of geographic moves that have done historically. And it's not obvious to everybody how you recreate those kind of developmental experiences. So you're looking for other ways for people to move without physically moving them.
Chris Rainey 28:14
Not easy to do. You know, it's not going to get the same results, though.
Larry Emond 28:17
It's a challenge that getting, getting getting leader, and I know from again, part of modern being a big search business, even for the most senior roles, when my colleagues are out trying to fill a big technical role, or finance role or marketing role, even for the CXO role, the number of people that are willing to make a big geographic move for that role, it's a small Number. It's a small percentage, even for big roles, it's challenge. It's interesting to watch how these searches often start with that we're going to have to have a person in this city, and then as they start meeting the market and realizing who's willing to do that, that well, maybe they can just travel here a lot, and then over time, it's like, we don't care where they are. Can we just get the right person and we'll figure it out? That's kind of the way these things evolve these days. I would say that's a big challenge for the development of leaders, because those different kind of environment experiences are important. You think,
Chris Rainey 29:08
which kind of leads me onto my next question? Do you think that because of covid and hybrids and people kind of found a new norm in terms of even their family dynamics, how they work, that they're no longer willing to do that
Larry Emond 29:21
for sure, it's, it's, it is, it's. Almost every meeting I do, a seat rose, even if it's not on the agenda, someone go, Hey, are you guys having more and more problem moving people around? It comes up all the time, and everybody goes, Yes, and it's a problem. We're not sure how we're going to do this, because that's, you know, development. We know this. And my whole career has been and around leader development, you know, development is event based, not time based. You It's kind of like the way human evolution works, like nothing's happening for a while, and then you get a challenging assignment or something in your environment change, and you have this huge development happens in a short period of time. Then for the next three, five years, there might. Be very little that happens to you that's really challenging, so you don't really develop, and then you get thrown into a different kind of thing, and you it's, it's, how many events interesting Can you have that significantly move your development? And those events are not easy to just create without changing people's environments and putting them in different situation, which includes geography, yeah, I think it's a big challenge for the way forward, unless suddenly everybody becomes more open to it. Again, it's certainly a big concern of the CHROs. By the way, I got a question. You must. You probably get the same question. I
Unknown Speaker 30:32
do a lot. Yeah. So,
Larry Emond 30:33
hey, you know, what are they like? Like, as though they're like, the big ch rose, what
Chris Rainey 30:37
they like as people? Yeah, like, what
Larry Emond 30:39
are they with an idea that they're like, you know, they're all similar, right, yeah? Like,
Chris Rainey 30:44
so one of the cool things is, obviously, I've been chatting to CHROs for 20 years, and obviously I talked to him outside the podcast. We meet up and stuff like that. And you, you're very close friend. They're just like, us, right? Like, they're just normal people, right? Like, I mean, we did a series during the pandemic, called out of office, where I went and spent the day with CHROs because we could only be outside. Oh, right. So I went to meet them and did a whatever their hobby was. So for example, Tim London, Unilever, we just went for a walk in the park, and we was really around mindfulness, and we just had a conversation walking from Richmond Park. And have just him talking about his experiences, his own challenges, about a half and super vandal, also a great, great person. I did downhill mountain biking with the theater of record. Bink. He's a crazy to do that. I mean, what are they like? They're, oh, they're great. They true. I don't know. I don't like the whole they're people, people. You know, I got into HR because I like people. Yeah, no, I think it's be it goes beyond that. It goes way beyond way. If you guys HR, because you're a people person, you probably won't last long.
Larry Emond 31:48
There's three that I've settled on gone that given that everybody is very different. I mean, look at their back backgrounds. Like nothing in common, so different, right? So their interest is ever there's three things that I didn't notice at first, and then I eventually did the first one. The first one is not specific to CHROs. The first one is that they have huge intellectual depth. But that's true of anybody that gets to a C suite role in a big company.
Chris Rainey 32:12
It means that anyone huge cognition, cognitive depth easier, so include like growth mindset as part of that could
Larry Emond 32:19
be these are just really freaking smart people, or they wouldn't have gotten that role. But that's true for the CFO, the CD, the CEO. That's true for all the CXOs. You just don't get there in a large organization without which, by the way, makes some really interesting people, because they tend to have a lot of knowledge about a lot of things. Yeah, not one dimensional. So they're interesting conversationalists, for sure. Second is, they're caring and compassionate people. Yeah, you wouldn't have gone all the way to take the job of the head of human stuff in your organization with all the complexities that come with the Labor and Regulation and, you know, nasty things that can happen any day of the week in a big company, and it's just if you weren't genuinely trying to build a better workplace that's better for humans and their families. So these are really caring people, or you don't end up in that role. And that may or may not be true in the other CXO roles. I don't know, because I don't know the role, like I know this one. Here's the third one. They are, almost without exception, incredible listeners, right? So you're sitting there for a day together, maybe two days together, a dozen. They're not talking over each other. They're incredibly listener. They show respect. Their phones are in their you know, away. They're focused and trying to learn and listen from their peers. A guess would be that's some kind of law of nature also to get into that role, yeah? You probably don't get into the top HR role in a big company if you didn't have a reputation for being able to sit down and listen to other leaders, yeah, but it creates this dynamic that's really cool. Like, a lot of the meetings I do are quite quiet, especially if you're in like, day two, we got to know each other. We had dinner last night, right? And I did one in Luxembourg last week at global manufacturing CHROs, and the second morning was just quiet and listening, and people kind of sitting back in their chairs, and there were times when I just let the room be silent. Somebody said something very thoughtful, processing it. That's probably not the same dynamic as one of the other CXO.
Chris Rainey 34:35
So I've never been exposed to those other groups, so I've had some I only know what you're describing at our events. Like to point the listening curiosity definitely, is definitely a trait. Constantly, curiosity mindset is definitely one. But, yeah, I can definitely relate to what and also it's tough to be in that role. So to your point, if you don't truly care and you're not leading with empathy and Like. You won't survive long. No, it's not you. It's this, right? Some of the calls that I get and hit, the things that I hear, I'm like, I don't know how you do that. And it's
Larry Emond 35:07
hardest, and it's hard to be a heavy opinion. I know ever it's not going to work. You know, your job is, well,
Chris Rainey 35:12
they don't last long.
Larry Emond 35:13
They won't last thing. I'll say that, that I started doing, oh, about a year and a half ago and, and it's now more interesting, since I'm in a firm that is an executive search and is in leader development, all that a lot of times we, especially after they got to know each other, we end the meeting with, Hey, let's, let's spend an hour talking about your own futures. Like, where does this go next for you? Do you want to do another CHRO job? Do you want to do something else? Advisory boards like, Where does the rest of your career go and why? Like, we got into purpose last week. Like a lot of them haven't really thought about that. So certainly, like any person, they don't take enough time to talk about where the rest of their both full time and part time career, rest of my active career, my semi retired career, they don't get enough time to really sit back and think about it, and they don't. When you do those conversations, they hear ideas that never occurred to them before. I never thought about that like so it's really fun to give them a safe space to talk about where the rest of their their time goes. Yeah, right, and how you can apply these incredible gifts and experiences that you
Chris Rainey 36:24
I'm gonna add that question from you, if you don't mind. I think that's some off guard I do. How often do you sit back? I'm thinking about my own career. I just got you off guard. Yeah. Because how often do we ask ourselves? You know, I
Larry Emond 36:39
just, I went through exec coaching fairly recently, a few years ago, and I went into it thinking, and I myself didn't have really clarity at all about why the hell I do what I do. And I do advisory and coaching with almost entirely new and first time CHROs, and especially those that haven't been in HR before. I've worked with over 20 in the last three, four years that I've been doing it, I only work like four or five at a time. I don't know that a single one, when I started working with them, had a single sentence clarity of purpose. And it's really helpful to go get that.
Chris Rainey 37:17
It's interesting because we both know Lauren Schuster. That's how I met Lauren. Yeah. So I went to a purpose to impact, sort of retreat, two day workshop where I was one of the participants with and Lauren had been there before. And the whole two days was around discovering your purpose. Lauren's
Larry Emond 37:35
come into a thing in a couple of weeks, which is in that same area, yeah, like the broad, broader picture of, you know, what are we doing here? Yeah, but you know, for
Chris Rainey 37:44
the longest time, I feel like me and Shane were running in the direction. And yes, you know, we, we were passionate about building HR leaders, but never really thought beyond, to your point, beyond that,
Larry Emond 37:56
no. And you think about it, the CH, where we laugh about at meetings, when, when you have a moment where everyone in the room kind of is willing to realize that they individually don't really have that clear themselves. Their whole job is like the development of the leaders in their organization. But it's like the last person they think they're developing is themselves absolutely
Chris Rainey 38:13
around well being absolutely. We did a well being workshop last week with six teachers speaking and around 1000 citrus joining. And when I always ask that the each of the Suros is like an opening question, like, tell us how you're taking care of your own mental health and well being. Yeah. And some of them are not doing too great, and they're like, and that actually goes also for the global heads of well being in companies that I chat to as well. Welcome
Larry Emond 38:38
to my weekends, which is, you know, I've been doing this for so long, like you, a lot of these, these, these folks have become important personal friends and and they reach out often, yeah, because they're trying to figure something out there. You know, especially if you, you also do some coaching, like I do. I mean, almost everybody I've ever worked with in that space. Has got something in their life, in their immediate family, their extended family, they've got something quite problematic. 100% right, we all do, right? And they've got to make space for that too. And they often don't create enough space for that, right? These are achievers. These are this is true with leadership in general, right? Is got to slow down. And I certainly with
Chris Rainey 39:22
what I hate it a lot as well, though, because there is so I think there's an unspoken conversation around the sacrifices, yeah, that these leaders make. And when I asked them about some of those, they kind of reflect. They talk about family, the fact that they wish they were more around, more for their kids. Yep, they wish that they didn't miss that school play, you know they missed the fact that they can't spend they haven't seen their own parents in X many years, because they're always on the road, right? Like some. Of these things that no one really talks about that you don't you learn the hard way. Yeah, that during events like ours, they can have those type of conversations as well. And hopefully the leaders, the HR leaders of tomorrow, can learn some lessons from that as well about fun.
Larry Emond 40:13
You've probably seen this too. The the ones that you get the sense, are the most impactful CHROs and leaders, they're very often the ones that do have that balance, like they are very thoughtful about why they do what they do, how they do it. There's a correlation there, for sure, and I think that helping everyone else at all levels and in all types of roles and organizations, kind of I got two kids. My boy just started graduate school. He's 22 my daughter's got a year left of undergraduate then is going to go to law school, man, if you but the best gift you can give them is right out of the gate early on, to have those things in check, to be thinking about the bigger picture of my life and impact and my my well being and health, and not just go down a road, you know, just killing yourself, to have some kind of achievement that I know, not a hard way. We've done this, right So, hard way, yeah, I, you know. And as is, I look forward to what I will be doing with my colleagues at modern and with other partners and so forth in the future, I definitely plan to evolve to more and more of these longer format meetings, off sites around maybe some skiing or golf or time in nature where you provide an opportunity that's a little different than what They're used to going to so that they can have a chance to be vulnerable. Yeah, you know, and, and, and decompress. You know, these are important. That's
Chris Rainey 41:50
a good word, decompress. This
Larry Emond 41:52
is fun. We should do this more often. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 41:54
I know. Well, hopefully we'll do some events together and get some of these together. Where can people connect with you learn more about modern, yeah, modern
Larry Emond 42:03
exec solutions. You know, I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. Larry Iman, just like two or three of us in the whole world that have that name, it's not very common. You can just reach out to me there. I, you know, I'm very easy to reach, amazing and just anything I can do to help advance this, this function and this role, and what it does, not just for organizations, but societies. You know, anything I can do to help amazing
Chris Rainey 42:29
and for everyone listening, as always, those links will be below. So to make whatever platform you're on, wherever you're watching or listening, I'll include those links. But I'm glad we finally managed to connect, to connect. It was, it was going to happen at some point. Appreciate you being here, and I wish you all the best until next week. Excellent.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Richard Letzelter, CHRO at Acino.