60% of CEOs Only Tolerate Their CHRO — Here’s What the Beloved CHROs Do Differently

When Johnny C. Taylor Jr. asked 50 Fortune 250 CEOs how they felt about their CHRO:

• 10% said they love the relationship
• 60% said they tolerate it
• 30% said they actively avoid their CHRO — and don’t think it will improve

That last number is the real problem.

Because it means many CEOs see HR as a necessary function — not a strategic partner. They don’t see their CHRO as indispensable.

Johnny has held both sides of the executive table. He spent years as a CHRO at companies you know — Blockbuster, LendingTree, Paramount — before becoming a CEO himself. Today he leads SHRM, the world's largest HR professional association.

So when he heard those answers, point blank, the answers felt heartbreaking.

Ultimately, most CHROs focus on being great at HR. The best CHROs focus on being great partners to the CEO.

That’s the gap.

In Episode 1 of Culture Creators, Johnny shared the specific framework he's built to close that gap. Here’s Johnny’s advice for CHROs and HR Directors who want to move from "tolerated" to "trusted."

Lesson 1: Competence Is the Entry Fee — But Business Fluency Is the Differentiator

Most HR leaders are excellent at HR. That's not the problem.

The problem — as one CEO told Johnny directly — is this: "You know your craft, but you don't know my business."

That sentence changed Johnny's career. And it might be the most common, least-discussed failure in the CHRO role today.

Being the smartest person in the room on talent, culture, and organizational design is table stakes. What separates the 10% of CHROs who are genuinely loved by their CEOs is their ability to understand how the business actually works — how it makes money, which levers move the needle, what the CFO worries about, and where people drive the outcomes that make money.

This isn't about becoming a finance expert. 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.

What this looks like in practice:

• You can explain your company's business model in three sentences without notes
• You proactively bring business insights to the CEO — not just HR updates
• When revenue or cost conversations happen, you're included without needing to ask

The shortcut Johnny recommends: Have a focused conversation with your CFO to understand your unit economics. Then map your biggest people decisions directly to those numbers. The CHROs who do this stop feeling like support functions and start feeling like strategic partners.

Lesson 2: The CEO Needs a Confidant More Than They Need a Policy Expert

Here's something most HR leaders don't think about: The CEO is often the loneliest person in the building.

Johnny describes it plainly: Everyone is pulling from them. Their board, investors, leadership team, 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.

But this trust has to be mutual. A CHRO who acts professionally guarded will never become a confidant. The CEO needs to feel the relationship, not just respect the function.

What this looks like in practice:

• Your 1:1s with the CEO sometimes start with your lives, not the business agenda
• The CEO has told you something in the past 6 months that nobody else on the leadership team knows
• You're paying attention to them as a person, not just as your most important stakeholder

Johnny's own example: He once arranged a massage for a CEO flying in on a red-eye, without being asked. Not because it was his job, but because no one else in that executive's orbit was paying attention. That kind of intuitive care is what turns a functional CHRO relationship into a genuinely trusted one.

Lesson 3: Courage Without Credibility Is Just Noise — And the Order Matters

The third quality that separates beloved CHROs is courage, specifically the willingness to walk into the CEO's office and say, clearly and directly, "That's not the right direction."

But here's where many well-intentioned HR leaders get it wrong. They try to lead with courage before they've established competence and trust.

In Johnny’s own words: "You cannot be courageous in your job if you're not competent and if you're not the confidant. Courage without the first two doesn't land as courage. It lands as a threat."

Any challenges must follow follow credibility. And once you've challenged, Johnny uses a principle at SHRM to ensure the organization actually moves forward: Challenge → Decide → Commit.

• Challenge: Create a psychologically safe environment where anyone — including the CHRO — can openly challenge a decision
• Decide: The organization makes a call, incorporating all the input
• Commit: Everyone commits fully. No re-litigating. No passive resistance six months later.

For CHROs specifically, this does two things. It gives you a structured, respected mechanism for challenging your CEO (not just permission, but a framework). And it gives you a model to bring to the full leadership team to end the cycle of good decisions dying from endless re-openings.

What this looks like in practice:

• You've pushed back on at least one major decision in the last year — and the relationship is stronger for it, not weaker
• When you've lost a disagreement with the CEO, you've committed fully and moved on
• Your team runs decisions through a structure like Challenge → Decide → Commit that everyone understands

It's a Relationship, Not a Role

The CHROs who make it into the top 10% don't get there because they have better HR skills than everyone else. They get there because they invest in the relationship as intentionally as they invest in their function.

They understand the business. They earn genuine trust. They challenge when it matters and commit when it's decided.

And when something breaks, they don't wait for it to fix itself. They take control to have a genuine conversation with the CEO. They start with the human before the agenda. And they ask the question most senior leaders are too proud to ask:

"What bothers you about me?"

That question, Johnny says, is often where real careers get built.

Watch or listen to Johnny’s episode of Culture Creators:

• YouTube
• Culture Creators

Johnny C. Taylor Jr. is the President & CEO of SHRM, the world's largest HR professional association. He previously served as CHRO at LendingTree, Blockbuster, and Paramount, and has held CEO roles across for-profit and nonprofit organizations for over 16 years. This post is based on his conversation on Episode 1 of the Culture Creators podcast, produced by Nectar in partnership with SHRM.

What Is Culture Creators?

Culture Creators is the podcast for people leaders who want more than inspiration. Each episode delivers proven strategies, real frameworks, and hard lessons behind building great workplace culture — straight from the world’s best CHROs, founders, and executives.

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