The Future Won’t Wait: Leadership in an Age of Disruption

I recently had the opportunity to sit down virtually with Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., President and CEO of SHRM, the world’s largest trade association of human resources professionals, for a candid and wide-ranging conversation on what it takes to lead in today’s fast-moving, high-stakes global environment. Drawing on decades of experience across business, law, and human capital leadership, Johnny shares unfiltered insights on agility, empathy, culture, and the realities of competing in a world where change is constant and unforgiving.

From hard-earned lessons during the rise — and fall — of industry giants to practical advice for today’s leaders and emerging talent, Johnny challenges conventional thinking and reinforces a simple truth: In today’s business world, relevance isn’t guaranteed, it’s earned.

Q: What traits have you learned are critical for success for an individual or organization to be relevant in today’s global market?

Taylor: Success today demands a level of agility and adaptability we have simply never seen before. The pace of change is unrelenting, and the organizations and individuals who treat flexibility as optional won’t survive.

I experienced this firsthand back in the 1990s when I was Vice President of Human Resources at Blockbuster Entertainment Group. Remember them? When I say we were flying high, I mean it. There was a Blockbuster on every corner. We were dominant. Then it all changed when Netflix entered the scene. Here’s what people often miss about their story: From the start, Netflix was doing more than just shipping DVDs. They were thinking differently. They were meeting customers where they were. Meanwhile, instead of innovating, we at Blockbuster were sitting still, comfortable, clinging to a business model quietly becoming extinct. We quickly turned into a cautionary tale about what happens when you don’t keep pace with the rate of change. 

But agility alone isn’t enough. If organizations are still only fishing from the same talent pools they always have, they’re leaving opportunity on the table. The education-to-employment pipeline is leaky, broken, and busted. The solution isn’t to lower the bar, but to widen the door. The most innovative, hungry, and driven talent is often sitting overlooked. Winning organizations will be the ones bold enough to go find them. In this market, we no longer have the luxury of exclusion. Not with this competition. The future belongs to those who are willing to flex, to reimagine not just what they do, but how they think about talent, technology, and change. 

Q: From your unique vantage point and experience, as an entrepreneur, business professional, attorney, and SHRM CEO, what are the most effective ways you have found to create loyalty between you and others that can be applied in business today?

Taylor: Across every role I’ve held, the throughline for creating real, lasting loyalty has always been the same: Lead with empathy. And to be honest, I didn’t always get this right.

Early in my career, I was a young lawyer, head down, grinding toward a deadline. My secretary came in and told me her child’s school had called, and she needed to go pick up her child. And without blinking, I looked at her and said, “Your kid is not my problem.” I was focused on the work, but what I didn’t understand in the moment was I had just made a withdrawal from a trust account I hadn’t even realized I was building. From then on, our relationship shifted. The loyalty was gone. What remained was strictly transactional.

Years later, I had a conversation with her about it. And what she said has stuck with me ever since. “I didn’t need your sympathy,” she told me. “I just needed your empathy.”

There’s an important difference. Sympathy says, “I feel sorry for you.” Empathy says, “I see you.” And in business, in leadership, people don’t need you to solve all their problems. They need to know that you see them as a human being, not just a function or a title.

Empathy might look like sending a card to a single parent navigating a hard week. It might be flowers to an employee who’s grieving. It might simply be acknowledging a person on your team is going through something difficult. Those are the moments people remember, and the moments that earn you their trust.

We all have an empathy muscle. But like any muscle, if you don’t use it, it atrophies. The most effective leaders I know are the ones who exercise that muscle deliberately, consistently, not just in the big moments, but in the everyday ones.

Q: What drives how you think?

Taylor: My thinking style comes down to a few things: a commitment to lifelong learning, a willingness to try new things, and—I’ll admit it—I genuinely love a good challenge.

Let me start with lifelong learning, because I think people underestimate just how urgent this is. The skills relevant three years ago have already evolved. What’s cutting edge today will be obsolete in five years. It may sound dramatic, but that’s the world we’re operating in. And if you’re not actively and intentionally adding to your skill set, you’re falling behind, whether you feel it yet or not. 

Now, I’m very clear-eyed about something. There are younger CEOs coming up, more digitally native, born into a world of technology I’ve had to work to understand. And that’s fine. I’m motivated by that. I may not always be the smartest person in the room. But I will outwork anyone in that room. That’s a promise I make to myself every single day. That’s the kind of challenge that gets me up in the morning.

And that’s where trying new things comes in. It may surprise people, but I regularly meet with an AI coach. I’ve built my own AI agents in my free time. Not because someone told me to. Because I refuse to speak about the future of work from a distance. I want to live in it. You can’t lead people through change you haven’t been willing to experience yourself. And candidly, I enjoy the discomfort of not knowing something yet. The tension, the feeling of being a beginner again, is where real growth happens. I chase that feeling.

Q: You’re a proven achiever, with wins and losses. You never seem to give up. Some would call you a “Catalyst-Thought-Leader,” as you push others to think. What are some of the top points you would advise a manager/leader to know or do to reap the best performance out of their team and organization in this global market?

Taylor: When I think about what separates high-performing teams from everyone else, one thing rises to the top that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: cultural clarity. Here’s what I mean. You can have the best strategy in the world, the best product, the best market positioning. But if your people haven’t genuinely bought into your culture, none of that matters. And I want to be direct about something: Culture is not a poster on the wall or a slide in your onboarding deck. Culture is what people experience on a Tuesday afternoon when no one is watching. It’s how decisions get made. It’s what gets rewarded and what gets tolerated.

So how do you build it intentionally? It starts earlier than most leaders think. It starts at the interview. Be honest about who you are as an organization. Tell candidates the truth about your environment, your pace, your expectations. Because here’s the thing about interviews we don’t say enough: They’re a two-way street. You’re evaluating them, yes. But they’re evaluating you just as much. And when you’re transparent upfront, you attract people who actually want to be there.

Now, I also want to push back on something. Leaders spend too much time benchmarking other companies’ cultures and trying to replicate them. There are no universally good or bad cultures, provided you’re operating within legal and ethical boundaries. What works at one organization can be completely wrong for another. The goal isn’t to copy a winning culture. The goal is to define, live, and protect the culture authentic to your people and your purpose.

Q: Let’s talk about the role of SHRM in business today. What should business leaders know about SHRM? How can one know if their CHRO is performing at their highest level of proficiency?

Taylor: Let me start with what SHRM does, because I think a lot of business leaders underestimate the resources and intelligence they have access to. I like to think of us as meteorologists. A meteorologist doesn’t create the weather. They don’t control it. But they see it coming, they track it, they help you prepare for it. That’s what SHRM does for organizations. We don’t create workplace disruption. But we see it forming on the horizon before most organizations feel it. We study it, we predict it, and we equip our members to lead their people through it. The storms are coming regardless.The question is whether you’re prepared when they hit.

Now, when it comes to knowing whether your CHRO is performing at their highest level, I always come back to three things. I call them the three C’s: competency, courage, and being a confidant.

Let’s start with competency. Your CHRO must know HR, full stop. But here’s where I see so many fall short: They also have to know the business. Not just the people side of it. The revenue model, the competitive landscape, the strategic priorities. HR leaders who can’t speak that language will never be in the rooms where the real decisions get made, and frankly, they shouldn’t.

The second C is courage. CEOs need a CHRO who will tell them the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. A CHRO who only echoes the CEO brings nothing to the table. What a CEO needs is someone with the backbone to challenge their thinking, surface the hard truths, and broaden their perspective when it gets narrow. That takes real courage. And it’s rare.

The third C is confidant. This one goes beyond strategy and execution. It’s about trust at the deepest level. Being a confidant means being the person a leader can call at the end of a hard day, not just to strategize, but to think out loud, to process, to test an idea in a safe space before it’s ready for the boardroom. It means what’s said in confidence stays in confidence. And it requires judgment: knowing when to advise, when to listen, and when to simply be present. That kind of relationship between a CEO and a CHRO is one of the most powerful forces inside any organization. When you have it, you know it. And when you don’t, you feel that, too.

Q: If someone were to apply for a job with you, or your organization, today, what should they know and do to get noticed and considered?

Taylor: I’ll start with something that sounds obvious but isn’t as common as it should be: Do your homework. I remember interviewing a candidate who came from one of the major tech companies. Impressive resume. Strong background. He walked into my office in jeans and a T-shirt. Now, I want to be fair; his outfit may have been completely appropriate at the company he came from. Google, Microsoft, many of those environments are built around that kind of culture. But not SHRM. And the issue wasn’t the jeans. The issue was what the jeans told me. They told me he hadn’t taken the time to understand who we are, what we value, or how we operate. In one moment, before he said a single word, he had already communicated something about his preparation. So, research the company. Understand the culture. Show up as someone who genuinely — and specifically — wants to be there, not just somewhere.

Now, beyond preparation, there’s something else every candidate needs to understand about the world they’re walking into. The way organizations measure employee value has fundamentally shifted. We’ve moved away from effort as the primary currency. Showing up early, staying late, checking every box—those things alone won’t distinguish you anymore. What matters is the value you bring to the organization. You could complete 10 tasks perfectly, and if none of those tasks move the needle for the business, the impact is the same as if you had done nothing at all.

So, when you walk into an interview with me, or with any forward-thinking organization, come prepared to answer one question above all others: Not what will you do, but what will you contribute? There’s a difference, and the best candidates know it.

Q: If you had two minutes to mentor a high-potential individual, what would you share with them from your professional vantage point of experience, training and responsibility to be effective or successful?

Taylor: The first thing I would tell any high-potential person is this: Don’t let familiarity become a ceiling. Some of the best opportunities I’ve ever encountered were ones I had never considered before. Things not on my radar, not in my plan, not what I went to school for. And the people who miss those opportunities are not the ones who lack talent. They’re the ones who talked themselves out of something before they ever tried it. So, stay open, especially to the things that surprise you.

Now, when it comes to mapping out where you want to go, I want you to sit with two questions. The first is: What do you enjoy doing? Not what are you good at, not what pays well, but what genuinely energizes you? Be honest with yourself about that list.

Then ask the second question: Of the things I enjoy, which of them can I build a livelihood around? Because passion without sustainability is a hobby, and a paycheck without passion is a slow drain on your soul. The sweet spot, the place where careers become callings, lives at the intersection of those two answers.

And I’ll add one more piece of advice: Find the thing that scares you a little and run toward it. Comfort is the enemy of growth. Every significant leap I’ve made in my career came right after a moment when I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready. You rarely are. Do it anyway.

Q: In an organization there are a lot of great people, so what makes for an effective and dependable follower?

Taylor: Great followers are the foundation of every high-performing organization. I believe one of the most important qualities of a dependable follower is the courage to respectfully challenge. At SHRM, we’ve built our culture around a principle I believe in deeply: challenge, decide, commit. Every person in our organization, regardless of title or tenure, is not only allowed to challenge an idea, but they’re also expected to. We want people who will raise their hands and say, “I see this differently,” or “Have we considered this?” That kind of intellectual honesty is what keeps organizations from making expensive mistakes.

But here’s where the discipline comes in. Once we’ve had the challenge, once we’ve worked through the debate and landed on a decision, everyone commits. Fully. Even if the final call wasn’t your idea, even if you would have gone in a different direction. You commit, you execute, and you bring your best to it. That’s the difference between a culture of challenge and a culture of chaos.

And connected to all this is something I feel strongly about: Don’t be a yes person. Organizations don’t need more people nodding along in conference rooms. They need people with the confidence to speak up, respectfully and constructively, when something doesn’t sit right with them. Silence in a meeting is not agreement, and it’s not loyalty. More often than not, it’s a missed opportunity to make something better.

The best followers I’ve ever worked with were not the most compliant. They were the most engaged. They cared enough to push back, and they were mature enough to fall in line once the decision was made. That combination is rare, and when you find it, you hold on to it.

Q: Coming out of COVID, what I recognized is that the only people and organizations that were winning were those that looked at change as an opportunity to drive transformation. And when they leveraged their resources to do this, they were what I wrote about in my book: changeformational. How important is SHRM as an institution, and its relationships to business owners, leaders, association executives and even the military generals of tomorrow, to being changeformational?

Taylor: The mindset shift you’re describing is exactly what SHRM is built to help organizations make.

As we emerged from the COVID crisis, we saw two kinds of organizations. Those that were waiting for things to go back to normal and those that were gearing up for their next transformation initiative, and winning. And the winning organizations had internalized something fundamentally different. They weren’t waiting for change to arrive and then responding to it. They were using every single disruption as a launchpad. Every shift in the market, every workforce trend, every technological development became an opportunity to drive something forward rather than simply absorb it. 

SHRM’s role in that is critical, and here’s why: We’re working with nearly 340,000 HR professionals across 180 countries. We see the patterns before they become headlines. We see what’s breaking down in workplaces before it becomes a crisis. We see where talent is moving, where skills are emerging, where cultures are crumbling under pressure. And we take all that intelligence, and we put it in the hands of the leaders who need it most.

But intelligence alone doesn’t make you changeformational. What makes you changeformational is the willingness to act on what you see before you’re forced to. It’s building organizations that don’t just survive disruption but are sharpened by it. And the leaders who do that consistently, whether they’re business owners, association executives, or military generals, share one trait above all others: They stopped asking when things would stabilize, and started asking how they could build something that will thrive amid change, because that’s the one constant.

This article originally appeared in Professional Performance 360 Magazine and is reprinted with permission.

Jeffrey Magee is the publisher of P360 Magazine and the founder of Jeffrey Magee, a leadership training and technology firm.