Do Human Resources Executives make good CEO’s?
Our Work at Persona GLOBAL gives us the opportunity to deal with a large number of Human Resources, Learning, and Training Executives. These job functions center around employee welfare and ensuring that employees hired by the company have the skills and knowledge to compete effectively and meet the organization’s business objectives. This is a critical function within the competitive landscape that companies operate in today and is being increasingly viewed as a more strategic leadership role rather than a support or administrative function!
This begs the question: How would these Human Resources Officers fare as CEO’s of their prospective organizations?
Most people, it seems, think of the Chief Operating Officer or Chief Finance Officer as the next in line for this role, however this may not always be the case!
Harvard Business Review published surprising findings by Ellie Filler and Dave Ulrich which investigated the CHRO role within the C-Suite.
“In looking at several sets of data, they found surprising evidence of the increasing responsibility and potential of CHROs.”
Link to the Harvard Business Review Article
Mapping Leadership Styles
The researchers analyzed 360-degree assessments of thousands of leaders in six C-suite functions — CEO, CFO, COO, CIO, CHRO, and CMO — in which each executive was ranked on 14 aspects of leadership on a scale from one to seven. The surprising result: The traits of CHROs matched up closely with those of CEOs.
What was their conclusion?
“Except for the COO (whose role and responsibilities often overlap with the CEO’s), the executive whose traits were most similar to those of the CEO was the CHRO. “This finding is very counterintuitive — nobody would have predicted it,” Ulrich says.”
“The discovery led Filler and Ulrich to a provocative prescription: More companies should consider CHROs when looking to fill the CEO position. In the modern economy, they say, attracting the right talent, creating the right organizational structure, and building the right culture are essential for driving strategy — and experience as a CHRO makes a leader more likely to succeed at those tasks.”
This prescription was actually not extremely surprising to us!
Human Resources is essentially a people development role, centering around people and culture. They are responsible for making good decisions to guide the business based on feedback and insights which must support how the organization functions and is viewed both internally and externally!
We understand from working with CHRO’s, Heads of People, Training and Development Executives, and other related roles that this guidance takes a specific skill set.
That skill set, perhaps more than any other C-Suite function requires People Skills.
Original Study Cited:
CEOs AND CHROs: EXPECTATION, CONNECTION, AND SUCCESSION
Dave Ulrich and Ellie Filler
