From Comfort to Candor: New Rules of the Workplace

Mo Fathelbab: [00:00:00] Welcome to today's episode of People and Strategy. I'm your host, Mo Fathelbab, president of International Facilitators Organization, People and Strategy is a podcast from the SHRM Executive Network, the premier network of executives in the field of human resources. Each week, we bring you in-depth conversations with the country's top HR executives and thought leaders.

For today's conversation, I'm excited to share with you an exclusive recording from SHRM's Visionaries 2025 Summit. An exclusive conference for SHRM Executive Network members. This is a live session recorded onstage featuring SHRM's President and CEO Johnny C. Taylor Jr. SHRM-SCP. In discussion with Jackson o Lynch, writer and podcast host of the Talent Sherpa podcast, where he [00:01:00] discusses human capital.

The session is titled, the New Rules of Workplace Safety. Keep Listening to Learn Why Transitioning From Comfort to Candor is Key to maintaining a psychologically safe workplace. Welcome to Visionaries 2025. Welcome everybody. Great to see all of you. Uh, great to see so many familiar faces and so many friends and so many hugs, and I also see some new faces and I wanna make sure the new folks get recognized and, uh, that the new folks get welcomed by those that have done this a few times.

If you're new, please stand up. If this is your first visionary Summit. All right. Alright.

To that end, I wanna say welcome to the family. This has truly become a family. This is, I believe, our fifth Visionaries summit. Uh, Brian was there, the very first one as well as many, many of you. And, uh, I know it has had a huge [00:02:00] impact on this community. And I'm just overjoyed to see everyone here and to see you leaning into it, getting to know each other, learning from each other, connecting with each other.

'cause that's what we're all about. Uh, hopefully you enjoyed last night's reception powered by uh, indeed. Were you there? Raise your hands. Yes. Good, good, good. Lovely, lovely. And I do want to thank our partners indeed, Paylocity and Raymond James. Uh, also I wanna point out that we are gonna have reflection questions that come up on the app.

Please respond to those because that will help us in hearing from you and getting your feedback and continually improving what we do. And we're also gonna spark some discussions with, uh, those questions that come up for you. So please pay attention to those. Uh, with that, I'd like to introduce our very first speaker, uh, Jim Link, SHRM.

CHRO. He has been with Pillsbury, with, uh, Porsche, north America and Randstand North America, and we are now [00:03:00] lucky to have him here with SHRM. Please welcome Jim Link.

Thank

you.

Jim Link: Oh my goodness. Hello people. Welcome to my adopted hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Woo, it is so nice to see all of you here. I'm super excited. You heard Mo. This is our fifth visionary summit. Hard to believe it's been five. I was at the first one. I've been at everyone since. Mo ask who for whom this was your first.

How many of you have been to all five? Can you stand up? Come on. All five. Wow. Thank you. It's good to see you all. And thank you for being, that's a service award, isn't it? Five years. Yeah. There we go. Alright, so it's such a privilege to be here with all of you this morning, but before I really get into our introductory remarks, I'm just curious, for those [00:04:00] of you who might have been a little bit, uh, later this morning, still getting dressed in your rooms, did you happen to be watching the Today Show this morning?

Yes. Today's CM Day and on Rockefeller Plaza at the Today Show, there were more serm people out there waving signs and banners proclaiming Serm Day than you can shake a stick at. So thank you for SHRM Day. Thank you to all those participants. And what a, just let's just clap and enjoy SHRM Day, right? Woo.

Oh, this makes me happy and gets me excited. I love this stuff. This is my favorite conference, by the way. It, I feel like I'm kind of with my people here. You know, we all are dealing with so many interesting and challenging things right now, and no matter where I go, no matter what group with whom I speak, no matter the size of that audience, the the things I hear are [00:05:00] similar.

Just last week I was with one of our clients down in New Orleans and we were talking about culture and how hard it is to influence culture right now with so many things going on in the broader socioeconomic environment in which we find ourselves. But we're not gonna let those challenges stop us. The reason why you're here is for your own growth, for your own development.

And if you are here, you're not only concerned about yourself, you're concerned about that organization for which you work. You're concerned about our community and our society, and you're concerned about the wellbeing of yourself and your workforce. Over the course of the next couple days, we're gonna try to address all of those things in some way or another.

Each one of our sessions are, is specifically designed to address a need that you've already told us about. So we hope you enjoy those. I'm gonna introduce our first speakers here in just a second. You might recognize a couple of these folks, but in general, our keynote, our general sessions, everything is [00:06:00] designed to assist you in doing your job better, to contribute to your own wellbeing and to help your organizations succeed.

I figure if we can pull that off in the next two days. We've done a lot. So that's what we're after. That's what we're gonna do and we hope that you'll enjoy that ride with us. And oh, don't forget tonight we're gonna have an executive night out. We hope you all will join us here in the fine city of Atlanta to have some fun and to just enjoy each other's company.

As you all know, you all are a unique community. I was just listening this morning about group number 16

and and that's what I've heard about group 16. But it's interesting because it's just not group 16. It's the community that we formed our assemblies. They're actually the most important and most successful part of our executive network [00:07:00] experience. So I hope you're taking advantage of those. Group 16 obviously is.

And there we go again. Alright. So let's thank you all. Appreciate you all very much and thanks for letting me pick on you. Let's now move into our, our first session, and I am super pleased to introduce Comfort to Candor the New Rules of Workplace Safety. But it might not be exactly like you're thinking about workplace safety as today's conversation is gonna explore.

True safety in the workplace isn't about avoiding conflict or staying away from scary decisions or, or being afraid of discomfort. It's about creating an environment where people can speak the truth, challenge ideas, and still feel like they belong. So we're fortunate today to have two incredible leaders guiding this conversation.

First is Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. President and CEO of SHRM. He's also my boss

with more than 20 years of leadership [00:08:00] experience across industries, from entertainment to education, to human resources. Of course, Johnny's one of the most influential voices. In the world of work, he serves on numerous corporate and non-profit boards. Writes a syndicated column every day for USA today and has been recognized as one of the 300 most influential executives in corporate America.

Joining him today is Jackson Lynch. He's the founder of Talent Sherpa. He brings decades of executive HR leadership, including CHR roles across a variety of industries and functions. Now, in his new fast growing platform, podcast and advisory work he's doing, he's doing that with CEOs, boards and others.

And we think this interaction between what those folks are looking for, and Johnny's gonna be a particularly interesting dialogue today. All along, he's challenging leaders to rethink talent, strategy, clarity, rigor, and measurable results. So these two are gonna come on the [00:09:00] stage shortly and they're gonna unpack why clarity is more compassionate than comfort.

And how leaders can set standards that inspire rather than stifle. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming and let's welcome Johnny C. Taylor Jr. And Jackson Lynch

Johnny C. Taylor: people all the way over there. Wow. So good to see you all. Welcome. Welcome.

Come on.

You're in Atlanta now in the South where we respond, right? Indeed. That's the only way you do it. Indeed. All right. I'm hoping that I darn coten. That's right, that's right, that's right. So, so good to be here and I'm, I normally want to tell you what's happening in my life.

I'm a city per day for the last seven days, and I got a week home and it's just been a disaster. But I am so excited to be here and I tell you why. We are at such a pivotal point, a transformation point in our profession. This is the [00:10:00] hardest job I've ever. And this profession is facing the toughest, toughest days that we'll ever see.

It's sobering. It should be exciting, but literally as we think about the title of this conference, visionaries, that's what each of you are within your organization. You have actually got to be able to develop a vision for the future, and not just the workplace, but a societal vision for the future. And so tons of pressure.

I've been meeting with CEOs all over the world, literally Ghana, London. I mean, we've been everywhere recently, and everyone comes back to that place. What's the future of work? And more importantly, frankly, what are the future? What's the future of people? What are human beings going to do? If even half of the story is right, that AI will take their jobs.

I mean, what do you do with people then? And there are policy implications. There's societal peace. You know, that's when [00:11:00] coups and governments are overthrown when people want to work, but can't work. Like, we've got a lot to sort right now. And so all of the weights on the, on the sort of shoulders of HR, I'm excited.

I hope you all are, and we're gonna spend some time, therefore today talking about perhaps a, an amazing paradigm shift. One that we've all had to answer. The age, sort of that question of, um, what is it? Uh, does HR represent the people or management? How many of you have had that question? Right? More and more and more.

It's the question of the day, and it's not as easy to answer anymore. It used to be kind of both. Well both mean none in some ways. So we've gotta sort through that. That's what led me to invite this young man to our stage. I love it in the introductions when they say you've had more than two decades up.

So my team the other day said more than three decades. I said, come it down more than is all you need to say. Yeah. More than a decade means 50. It could mean 10, but stay with more than a decade. Stop the two or three. Um, [00:12:00] so, but I was, I was on LinkedIn, which I live on. Yeah. I don't respond. But I live on LinkedIn, uh, because no, the team won't let me do it and, uh, they really won't.

Look, I got okay for just a second. Yeah. Two seconds of this. So I was on LinkedIn early in trying to build the Shem presence and my presence, and someone said something that hurt my feelings and I responded. 'cause I'm for eye, for an eye or eye for a whole body. Like I just wanna blow you up. You come for me, I come for you.

That's how it works. And um, so the team took my credentials, so I can't respond on LinkedIn. So every time someone walks up to me at the airport, I just love what you said on LinkedIn today. I am like, what did I say on LinkedIn? It's actually someone else, but Okay. Um, okay. But, but I read it religiously.

The stuff with I did just won't let me comment. So LinkedIn post [00:13:00] and it said work is not a safe space, it's a performance space. And that had to settle in because even me, who can be kind of hard driving, CEO guys said, wow, what the hell does that mean? It's not a safe space. And it challenges a lot of current thinking about workplace culture.

I'm very, very good friends with Amy Edmondson, the professor from Harvard who coined that phrase psychological safety, et cetera. And I said, I don't know what you mean. And so I wrote you, didn't it? Yeah. Out of the blue. I just wrote him. It was on my secret LinkedIn account that I can write people. Staff thinks they, I'm just wondering who I've been talking to this whole time.

Right, exactly. The one that says Junior is owned by the company. The one that says the man is owned by anyway. Um, so I wanna know what you mean by that. 'cause I literally wrote him a cold and said, tell me, what does that mean, reconcile that, make that work for me. What's the answer?

Jackson Lynch: Well, first off, I just, uh, I, I appreciate the [00:14:00] opportunity to come and talk a little bit about this 'cause it, it is a change in our paradigm that I think is really important.

So first, let me take something off the table. When I am talking about work as a performance space, I am not suggesting that we come up with a cold workplace. I'm talking about that we come up with an honest workplace. So I think we can all agree that. Uh, the reason why we go to work is to create value.

And in that space, safety is really, really, really important. It is, however, insufficient towards driving performance. And I would further argue that the challenge that we run into is when we conflate two words that don't mean the same thing, safety and comfort. And that's an expensive mistake. Um, if you think about, if you are driving towards comfort, leaders have a natural tendency to soften some of the [00:15:00] impact, soften some of the conversations, soften some of the, the clarity that is required, and that ultimately leads to lower expectations, and that is a very dangerous place for the, for the business to be in.

So, so put it in maybe different terms in the moment, it may feel kind to drive towards comfort. It is, however, over the long period. Not kind at all. It, it is, it is something that lowers our collective standards and forces us to move forward in a, in, in a way that is not optimizing the, the workforce and optimizing for performance.

So I think the first move is clarity. And if you do it any other way, then performance turns into guesswork and I don't think you get as much out of it as, as you otherwise would.

Johnny C. Taylor: So just for clarity's sake, should the workspace be a safe space? And to the extent you answer one way or the other, [00:16:00] what does that mean to you?

Jackson Lynch: Yeah, I think it absolutely needs to be a safe, safe space. But as, and I was more provocative as I wrote that, love it. But if think, 'cause I want to get someone to, it worked, doesn't call me. Um, yeah. But we, we used the term safe differently over the, over the last. Several decades. Uh, we used to talk about safety as someone coming to work and leaving with everything still attached.

SHRM VO: That's right.

Jackson Lynch: Just tired. 'cause they put in a hard day's work. And that was noble. And then we got a little bit smarter and we elevated the language a little bit. We talked about safe meeting. I can bring my entire self to work in a way that is real and authentic and I can be free from bias. I can be free from harassment, I can be free from retaliation.

All of that is necessary. But the real truth when you come to safety in my view, is where you can bring a hard and uncomfortable truth to the table. You can debate it, [00:17:00] you can argue it. You might even be wrong in that position, but you can take that role and still. Belong to the team because if all we are, you know, focusing on doing is, is, is driving a sense of, uh, belonging in, in that safety measure, ultimately that's what allows us to, to over perform over time.

And that's the sustainable competitive advantage that we need to work for.

Johnny C. Taylor: So, and I'm gonna probe that a little further. The lawyer in me guys that comes out and says, okay, so can it, can you truly create, and I've asked Dr. Edmondson this a lot, a safe space because what might make you safe may make someone else feel unsafe.

So reconcile, like, can we, are we shooting for a goal that's actually not achievable given the diversity of our workforces? Like if you let me bring my authentic self to work, can that guy bring his [00:18:00] authentic self to work?

Jackson Lynch: Yeah, I think you're actually tying it into comfort, however, yes. That's where I was going.

That was our second question. Yeah, I,

Johnny C. Taylor: he said, get to my next question. Go ahead.

Jackson Lynch: Perfect. Comfort is not the same as safety. Okay. Comfort is, is something that we will ultimately need to, um, drive performance the right way. So I'm not arguing for being unclear. I'm sorry, I'm not arguing for being unkind.

Kindness is actually really darn important. Yes. Um, but we've gotta make sure that we drive performance in a way that, that everyone has the ability to reach their full potential and thrive. And if we are worrying too much about being uncomfortable, I just don't see that we were able to make that progress.

Well, you have a quote that says clarity is more compassionate than coddling. Yeah, I think that's true. And I, and I stole that from, uh, Brene Brown or, or the concept [00:19:00] from, from her. I, I think that's absolutely right. Can you give an example? Yeah, I have two. Um, one, one is at a more individual level, one is more at an enterprise level, at an individual level.

I had a person that worked in my organization and she was an HR business partner. She was really, really talented. She had a, however won tragic flaw and that tragic flaw was very, very fixable. But it was one where we did not, if it continued, she was not gonna be successful in her role and her direct manager.

When I went by, I was out for a little bit with some health issues. I come back and I look at what we communicated in the, in the performance review, and it's not there. And so we ended up having a conversation about why did you decide not to put that in there? And the answers were, were ones you guys have all heard.

I was concerned about engagement, I was concerned about morale. We have a lot of stuff we gotta go do. I'm concerned if I, if I give her this kind of feedback, I'm gonna end up, [00:20:00] um, you know, driving retention. I, I need someone to get the work done. We have a lot of stuff going on and I was just concerned about the impact of having that conversation.

Fast forward about nine months, the business that I was in at the time was going through some bumps. We had to tighten things up. We had to make a decision. The decision to reduce head count necessarily pointed to whoever's not performing well is the one that leaves happened to be this person. So the challenge that, that we had, and I still feel really bad about this because I didn't override and, and kind of force through the, the.

The discussion is we ended up having someone leave the organization because they had a flaw that was fixable and we chose not to address it. And we did that in the spirit of comfort. So were we kind? I don't think so. She, she was outta work right now. We worked really hard to try to help her find [00:21:00] something else.

Uh, 'cause I felt bad. But that's, that's a, at an individual level, an example, here's a enterprise example. And I think we've all been in this place, and it started as all corporate catastrophes do with good intentions, good intent. We, we were in a town hall at a, at a, uh, our CEO got a question inbound saying, are you gonna do layoffs?

And he said, no. At which point. Away from letting go. About 20% of our technology team in his mind. 'cause you, you try to think about how do you assume positive intent where, where things are going. He had just gotten off a bunch of investor calls and the question was, are you gonna whack heads to go hit your quarterly number?

And we were not gonna go do that. But certainly as he answered that question on stage, all of a sudden you had an entire management team that was no longer trusted. They, they thought we were, we were being dishonest and we were, we were trying to answer that in a way, [00:22:00] I think because it was, it was comfortable.

Okay. We didn't want to give the hard truth, right? So fast forward a month and I had a good relationship with my boss at the time and I said, you know, there's a cleanup on aisle nine. Let me take it. What I need you to do is just stand there and look pretty and say, uh, you know, with, he had great hair and say, look, I just need you to smile and agree with whatever I say.

So we do that. And thankfully he said yes. And here's the conversation I had. I explained here's what the CEO meant when he was answering the question. And to that degree, we were not doing what Microsoft and Amazon and Intel and a bunch of other companies were doing in that moment of just saying, yeah, we're gonna, we don't know what the details are.

We're gonna pull out a lot of head count, be able to be able to hit our forward projections from a cash flow standpoint. That's not what we were gonna do. And then I pivoted and I said, here's unfortunately the absolute [00:23:00] truth, and I'm gonna lean into radical candor and I'm gonna have this conversation that's gonna be really, really uncomfortable for everyone in the room, especially me.

But you asked, and I will answer, right? Here's the way this works. We will always be looking to figure out ways to be more efficient in how we get things done. We will always be looking to figure out which product lines are working and which ones need to be discontinued. We will always be looking at our business markets to figure out which ones are long term profitable, which ones we can handle.

A little bit of short term cash flow challenge. And then, and then, uh, as it grows into something more and, and some places where we're gonna have to decide this isn't going to work. 'cause we have to make rational bets. And the unavoidable implication of that is we will have jobs that go away. And if we have people in those jobs that are helping us get to where we need to go [00:24:00] faster, we can't promise, but we will do everything we can to get people who are driving the business forward a different seat on the bus.

But we're gonna, we're gonna drive forward in that, in that way. And. So if the answer to the, if the question is, are we gonna be laying people off? I would tell you with absolute honesty, we will. And if you are working for a company that doesn't answer it the way I did, they're either being dishonest or they're dying and you don't wanna work for either company.

Johnny C. Taylor: Yep.

Jackson Lynch: And then you know what happened, Johnny? What's that? It was the craziest thing in the world.

Johnny C. Taylor: They promoted you to CEO.

Jackson Lynch: No. Oh yeah. That would've been the craziest thing in the world. What happened next is the 400 folks in the room clapped. Right. They didn't clap for layoffs. Right. They clapped for honesty.

That's right. They clapped for candor. That's right. We didn't coddle them. And I [00:25:00] think we fundamentally underestimate. How people can react. That's right.

Johnny C. Taylor: Thank you by the way. Thanks for saving that for your CEO. Seriously. That's why our positions, I joked when I said you became CEO EO My friends we're increasingly seeing CHROs become CEOs and, and I know it makes us feel good, but it's also a really interesting, uh, shift.

I was Mike Milken in LA just recently and he literally convened a group of CEOs and board members at his kazillion near house up on top of, uh, up above Pepperdine University. And he said this, I was shocked. He said, the future, a significant number of future CEOs will come from CHROs. I was really surprised and I said, he's just doing this 'cause I'm here.

Um, but he actually meant that because the future is about identifying people who can lead. You can actually [00:26:00] buy a lot of the technical stuff. You can buy a finance person, you can buy this. I don't mean that literally, y'all know what I'm on. Um, a marketer, you can, you can hire those skills and then people will be in those roles.

But a leader, someone who can articulate and speak truth and be transparent, honest, but at the same time caring will go a long way in the future. So, heads up, you heard it here. We're gonna see more and more of us going into CEO roles because being able to articulate that to lead motivate people is a real gift.

It's, it's a really unique gift. So we were at Microsoft, I guess two, three years ago starting our AI Plus HI conference. I'm gonna segue into ai. 'cause of course you can't have a convening if you don't talk about ai. And Kathleen Hogan, who was then the CHRO, I don't know if you all know her, just recently was promoted to run all of strategy, strategy and transformation.

That's awesome for Microsoft. Wink wink. [00:27:00] That means a future. CEO is in the making coming from HR. In any event, she said something, she was like, it was really an interesting spot. I said, what do you say to people who are saying, will AI take my job? She said, she says, well, what we say at Microsoft is some of these jobs will go away.

Our job though, as HR professionals is to help you a see into the world, a vision for the world that says, that job goes away. This is the new job, and we're gonna help prepare you to do that new job. So there is a future where you will work. It may not be at Microsoft, but we have an obligation to help prepare you because of your commitment to us.

So you don't have job security. In the traditional sense. What you have is a company that's committed to ensuring that you are employable. Somewhere in the future, we'd love it to be here, and to the extent we can prepare you to do something else, we will. It was the most honest answer because we, for at least two, three years [00:28:00] ago, were saying, oh no, AI's not coming for your job.

It's not true. It kinda is. That's why companies are investing trillions of dollars in this, is to gain productivity, efficiency, et cetera. Let's be honest, our employees aren't stupid like they know. And the more we can be honest with people and help them prepare for taking agency over their own lives, so stronger HR as a profession, our reputation will become respected if people will see us taking this role.

So, so as AI moves deeper into HR from hiring to performance management, how do you see leaders making sure technology sharpens this clarity that you're talking about and fairness, that's an interesting term, rather than simply replacing human judgment and human connection.

Jackson Lynch: How do

Johnny C. Taylor: you do this?

Jackson Lynch: So I'll, I'll challenge the argument a little bit.

I think you're always gonna have to have human judgment in, in the loop for, for the, for some op, some discussions, some questions. Absolutely. And, and kind of think through [00:29:00] how we do that in a way that, that solves one of the bugaboos that we've been fighting for decades. And that's knowledge transfer, right?

So everyone looks at this AI thing and says, oh, this is gonna be really, really good, because we can, we can transfer that knowledge from one generation to the next in, in the workplace. But I think there is something that is more concerning about that, and that is we, we don't want to create an environment where you get solutions like they're coming out of a vending machine,

SHRM VO: right?

Jackson Lynch: What you need to do is figure out how do I build wisdom into the, into the processes? Okay. So, you know, how do we do that? I think it comes from being really clear on what the purpose is, what the constraints are, what the underlying assumptions are. And there is a use for these tools to be able to help challenge each of those.

But there's also a, you know, I don't know how many people use red teams. Um, I'm not, maybe I'm the only one that even calls 'em that, but they, they are teams that are [00:30:00] designed to push back and we, we give them, you know, a lot of opportunity to say, Hey, wait a minute. I wanna challenge this assumption. I want to think through it.

And, and if you were to do that, you have like a pre-mortem,

Johnny C. Taylor: so it's called a red team.

Jackson Lynch: I just call it a red team I've never heard of, but

Johnny C. Taylor: Okay, tell me more.

Jackson Lynch: Tell us more. It, I like red. Um, I'm Irish. It should have been a green team, but I, I've already, I've already used that, uh, that term for something else.

It, it's a, it's a team that will look and challenge the underlying assumptions in decisions. And don't worry, I'm gonna come back to the question, but if you have something like that, then, then now I have the use of AI as a tool. Not to make the decisions, but to build wisdom. I can do different scenario planning.

I can, I can be much more clear on the assumptions that get built in and what the underlying context might be. And at the end of it, I have an output that now is challengable and I have a red team that can come in and challenge. Do these assumptions [00:31:00] make sense? Um, there was a, uh, you know, when, when Don Rumsfeld came back, uh, into the Secretary of Defense in the second Bush administration, and he sat down with all of his generals and they were saying, let's talk about these war games.

And he said, wait a minute. Don't, don't tell me what the war, what the war game is or what the strategy is until you tell me what the assumptions that you built on, 'cause I'm gonna change, challenge the assumptions first, and then we'll see if the output makes sense. I think that is where AI can help in, in, in fairness, because it's gonna make our decision rational.

Visible. Right. And historically it hasn't been.

Johnny C. Taylor: I like that. Actually, I wrote that down on red team. That concept, you know, we have built into the Shem culture and I see two of my bosses out here, our board chair, Betty Thompson. Please say hello to my boss. Hello, shout it out. Former CHRO, Booz Allen, [00:32:00] and of course, board member, former MAC member volunteer leader.

Miss SHRM, the SHRM's person in the room. Paula Harvey, another SHRM board member. Please stand.

Jackson Lynch: You just made me more nervous.

Johnny C. Taylor: That's why I let you settle in first. Fair enough said. The big bosses are here. If you ever want to get,

Jackson Lynch: if you ever, ever wanna get nervous, get in front of 400 of your peers. Yeah, right.

Have a conversation on a controversial subject. It's, it's wonderful. I'm not even gonna have to exercise today. Part rate's already up.

Johnny C. Taylor: Okay, so here's a question that I didn't even know we were gonna ask, but it's a great question. I spent anybody from ServiceNow in here, or anyone was at their event last, last week. Uh, Jackie, uh, canning over at, um, ServiceNow, the CHRO who also now owns transformation. Uh, she, within their organization, she convened probably 70 CHROs and some, and various CEOs and board members of publicly trade companies.

At the end of the day, we had a really good [00:33:00] conversation, a very candid conversation, and at times uncomfortable conversation with the former CEO of Xerox and phenomenal, really, really interesting Ursula Burns first African American woman to run a Fortune 500 company, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And she was phenomenal, but she was really honest.

I mean, brutally honest about. You know, comfort, clarity, the HR challenges as she called them, which as she pointed out, they're not HR challenges, they're business challenges, everything we do. She said at the end of the day, sure we make machines, but guess what? Humans make those machines and then we sell machines.

And who does that? Humans and who buys those machines? Humans. So she was like, you are literally are at the core at it. So we couldn't have a more supportive environment, but she was very candid about the need to extract more out of human beings, more efficiency, more productivity, and ultimately more profitability.

Her argument is, and then we can give it back to [00:34:00] employees in different ways than their families and society, et cetera. But no mission if you don't have any money. It was just brutally honest. One of her questions that I'm gonna now post to you, what's a common mistake most leaders make when building high performance teams?

Jackson Lynch: Yeah. If we have 400 people in the room, we'll have 400 different answers. Sure. But, but here's mine. I think there are actually two big ones. Okay. Um, the first is, I think we lean too heavy on experience and less on learning agility. Ooh. And as we think about, can I hear it? Amen. Now come on, HR people.

Johnny C. Taylor: Come on now.

Why? Because it's kind of lazy, right? Like if you, if you've done it for 20 years, you gotta be better than the person who did it for three. Of course.

Jackson Lynch: Yeah. Well, but it, it goes beyond that, Johnny. I think it, it, if you're looking at experience as a key decision maker, I'm not saying you ignore it, it's necessary, but a factor.

Right? But if you are answering the question within pattern recognition of experience, what you are really asking [00:35:00] is, can I solve yesterday's problems? When I start leaning into learning agility in this VUCA world that we're in, what I'm really asking is, can I solve Tomorrowist? So I think the, there, there are tools that are out there.

I'm not, uh. Yeah, we can go into 'em off offline if, if you'd like, but there, there are ways you can do that, both through external assessments and also through a just different way of looking at, at the interview process. Um, but I think the first one is we, we need to focus more on learning agility

Johnny C. Taylor: before you go to the second one, guys, for the people who know, we throw acronyms out here and not everyone actually knows what he meant when he said vuca.

It's really more and more business circles. They're talking about it, volatility. It's an, it describes it from the war college. It's a way of thinking about how we assess an environment and threat. So the V is for volatility. I'm gonna test

Jackson Lynch: uncertainty.

Johnny C. Taylor: Uncertainty is the U, the C is

Jackson Lynch: chaotic. Yeah. Chaos.

Johnny C. Taylor: Chaos. And what's the a. [00:36:00] I can't remember

Jackson Lynch: Me either.

Johnny C. Taylor: But anyway, look

Jackson Lynch: it up. Yeah. By the way, you can all tell that he didn't remember any of 'em. That's why it's testing. I know your trick. I

Johnny C. Taylor: knew two of 'em. But the point is, seriously, everyone's talking about Luca right now, they've been talking about for a while, and then the term went away and it's back.

It's a way of, it's a new way of looking in some ways about swat. It's a different way of just determining the state of the threats that are coming at your business. But anyway, vuca, we should all talk, walk away saying, really understand that. 'cause a lot of business people are using that term in their presentations, their analyst calls, et cetera.

We gotta,

Jackson Lynch: yeah. Ambiguity,

Johnny C. Taylor: ambiguity, ambiguity. Perfect. All right. Thank you.

Jackson Lynch: Amen. The, so the second challenge beyond learning agility, I think we need to, we make a mistake in, and it, and it's, it's an expense mistake, is we, we end up hiring kind of, um, monocultures from a skill perspective. And so I'm gonna steal a little bit [00:37:00] from, uh, kind of culture index where they look at kind of dominance and accountability on, on a, on a access.

And the degree of social ability and the degree of speed and the degree of precision. I'm, I'm screwing up their, their language. But think about it in those four terms, there are roles where someone who has more natural tendency towards certain ways of doing work make a big difference. However, historically, we end up hiring people that look and act when we, when we do know, they tend to look and act like we do, right?

So, uh, and I'm not sitting here throwing stones. Lemme tell you about my first time building out a 50 something person HR team. I personally hired them all and then we got 'em in a room about a year in and we gave 'em an assessment. And of the 54 people in the room, 53 of them. Had my characteristics. [00:38:00] I can tell you we got a lot of stuff done, but we were, we drove fast.

And then we had my friend, my friend Alex, and we were wondering how, how he joined us. Um, uh, but it became very, we had jokes about it because we realized that we were moving so fast and we weren't thinking about how do we read the room? What are the, what are the other perspectives we needed to add back in?

So all we had was Alex. So we talked to him and say, okay, what is able to think about this? But if you're building a broader team, um, and I'm working with a client right now trying to help do just this, you need a, a balance in all of those muscles. That's right. To be able to drive things forward. And, and there's so many tools out there that can help you do it, but I just don't think we do it to the degree that that will be necessary for us to, uh, to.

To solve tomorrow's problems.

Johnny C. Taylor: By the way, I love that is like one of the strongest cases and articulations for why diversity matters. [00:39:00] Yes. I mean it really is the case is that you and I'm not, you know, listen I, all of the rights of rights categories of diversity, but diversity of perspective, people who think differently, operate differently, process differently can go on to red teams and challenge.

'cause you're not gonna get a lot out of a red team if everybody sees, you know, the same thing. So I, I absolutely. We love that, and thank you for pushing us on it. And it's a, it's one of the more compelling ways. Less, um, less debatable ways or polarizing ways of articulating the case for something that we all truly believe in.

We've just gotta do a better job of talking about. But I want to go off on that. So here's something, what do you think younger generations, you know how we all complain about those damn Zs and millennials and everything else, right? We forget we created them, but that's a different issue, right? You played some role in it, right?

I looked at my daughter the other day, she said something sideways to me and I said, I want to kill you, but I means I want to kill me because I did this right? Is you see so much of yourself in your children, but here's the deal, [00:40:00] she's, she got it. She's like, oh yeah, me. Uh, what do you think younger generations entering the workforce, what are they teaching us about leadership?

Jackson Lynch: Yeah, that's great. So I'm Generation X. Which means, which means like many of you out there, I was raised on hose water and neglect.

My man

Johnny C. Taylor: la it

Jackson Lynch: we and it all worked out. Huh? I even have a hat established 19. I won't say the rest. That's right. But the so it is, it is really challenging for someone like me to look at a work workforce that says, like, we just, we just grind man. We just grind. There's a problem. Yo, we'll solve it.

Check, check out the hook.[00:41:00]

Okay. You guys are all singing that song in your head. Now I know that my

Johnny C. Taylor: grandmother told me about

Jackson Lynch: it. That was, I know it was before my time. You saw it on TV land. I get it. Totally. But let's, but let's think about what this generation is, is grew up in, they grew up in one click purchases, same day delivery.

Um, they, they, they grew up in, in real time likes. So think about it in terms of what they are used to as a input into how we think about how we must lead them. So I would argue the first thing is purpose. They have a significantly strong BS detector that was really close. And, and as part of leading that kind of a, a generational group, you've gotta make it connect into something important and meaningful.

And with that, that [00:42:00] means you also have to change the way you deliver feedback. If I'm used to getting an Instagram, like, and you're talking to me about how I'm doing once every year, that's not gonna work. Okay. And, and in that environment you kind of think through, you know, if you have created a clear purpose, they're gonna engage and they're gonna grind and they're gonna work really hard.

If you have that much more muddled, I think what we'll find is they check out faster than we would we used to. And so what, back to the question. What is the most important thing for us to be doing? I think it's providing clarity, aligning with purpose and giving regular feedback in ways that we are not historically used to or even comfortable with.

And if we choose not to go do that, we are, we are asking them to check out and they have shown that they can [00:43:00] do that. Right. Even if at, yeah, I don't know how old your daughter is. 15. 15. Mine are in the early twenties. And. I hope mine lives that long. But anyway, because it just, she's pushing a brother, you, you have no idea.

Oh, oh, the love them to death. Really do. But, but they, even in our personal lives, the ability to provide that, that level of feedback and, and if we are in a different kind of frequency than they are, there's gonna be a disconnect. So I think that's probably the biggest, biggest challenge. I

Johnny C. Taylor: have two other questions, but before we leave there, 'cause that's a really interesting one.

Are you all struggling with, you wanna learn from future generations? There's a humility that says things have changed and maybe we didn't get it all right. But balancing that against, there's a reason we, we all kind of thought we'd figured it out at 18. And so you, there's this thing where you're trying to adapt [00:44:00] to them, but also teach them like how the world really works.

'cause every 22-year-old. Thinks they figured it out. Yeah. And then they turn 32 and 42 and 52 and they're like, God, I wish someone had just told me. As opposed to listening to me. I, I remind my baby all the time. I said, there's a reason God makes parents. If you could do this on your own from day one, if you had it all sorted, then there actually wouldn't be that much of a role for us.

We as leaders and as HR leaders have to strike that balance between your Right. Not saying, this is the way we did it, so this is the way you gotta do it. But also saying, but this, there's some truisms, there's some facts about how life works. You can't, you know, I told my, you just work matters. Right. It just does.

And so how do we reconcile that? Like when do you strike that balance between getting what is so amazing, uh, from people who see the world differently, but also letting them understand that there's something that comes along with the gray in our hair or the absence of [00:45:00] hair, whatever, you know. Like, really?

That wasn't, that wasn't about you, you know? Yeah.

Jackson Lynch: Yeah. I'm Johnny, I'm not sure That was so bad. I, I'm not, I'm not sure if I'm feeling unsafe or just uncomfortable.

So I do, can I tell a, a good parenting story? Please. This? Uh, like, I made so many mistakes, but here's one that worked well. One of the things I've told, told my daughters for years is, you gotta know a guy. That's how you figure stuff out. You gotta know a guy. And just last week, my, my daughter's looking for, she's gonna go and get a doctorate in, in, uh, occupational therapy.

And I'm so proud of her. And the question, she comes and says, dad, here's where I want to go. Do you know a guy? That. That's it. I, so, so if, if anyone knows anyone at, uh, well, you're in an [00:46:00]

Johnny C. Taylor: HR room. Come on. All righty. Okay. Serious question. So, in your view, 'cause there really is this gap and it's growing. I mentioned this to Betty and, and Harvard, uh, uh, Paula at our current, uh, at our recent board meeting, there's this gap between CEOs and CHROs that's getting wider and wider.

And it concerns me. You grade us and we say, what are the five most important things? We list this, the CEO community, you ask them, what are the five most important things for you to be doing? And they're none of your five. And there's just this amazing gap that is growing and growing and growing. It's now like the top 15.

Our lists just don't match. I really want your thoughts about how we as a profession are room full of the visionaries, the people who are the, who are gonna help us architect the future of work and society. How do we best out, uh, sort of align all this stuff? 'cause there is something going on that's palpable.

You know, back in the day, and I'm old enough to remember this story when it was like, why we hate HR. You remember [00:47:00] that big article that flushed through the country at the time? Well just recently A similar type article is on the Men on the Run. It's being everywhere. Like HR still doesn't get it. Yeah.

There's a disconnect. And now that we at SHRM acquired next to my board, CEO Academy, I don't know if y'all know this, but we actually train now CEOs. We bought a business that was owned by Wharton, the co, the university, the business school, Korn Ferry and McKenzie. They created something called CEO Academy.

We acquired it now about two years ago. And what we in small groups do is we train future leaders. To future CEOs or new newly placed, or like I, the air appearance to the CEO spot. And we actually therefore are able to get real feedback from them. Not just relying on polls from other people, but we say what's going on?

The gap between what they want from us and what we're doing is widening. It's really sobering. So what do we do? [00:48:00] How do we get a more line and, and one other little thing that we're picking up, CEOs are pissed. They are over people. They really are. And, and I mean, if they're being transparent with you, what they'll say is, during the pandemic, when we could have laid people off, when we could have done this and we stuck with them, we offered benefits, we did this, we did that temporarily because we were showing our empathy and our passion and our compassion.

And then we got nothing for it because as soon as they came outta the pandemic, great resignation, turnover. S knew me people, tsunami, like people just checked out on us. So you wanted loyalty from us, and at the same time, you were not providing loyalty back to us. This is what they're saying. And they're saying, am my HR people keep telling me what the people want, and they're not exactly interested in what I want out of this value proposition.

This is what they're saying. I'm not saying Johnny, so I'm not extra group. But anyway, we gotta figure that out. So this question is around aligning, um, CEO and [00:49:00] CHRO, uh, alignment around business outcomes and people outcomes. How do we reconcile it all?

Jackson Lynch: So maybe the place to start on that would be a framework on what HR does, what HR does with what HR does.

And I, I perhaps have a different view on it. I think our job is to look at a business strategy through a talent lens. Predict outcomes, identify root causes. And then go into our bag of tactics and figure out which one meets the moment.

SHRM VO: Okay.

Jackson Lynch: And that's strategic HR. So to the degree that's your starting place, it, it is a lot easier to make sure that you are, are aligned, but there are some things I think that can be tactically supportive of moving forward more quickly.

Here's one. How would you have one scorecard between you and the CFO and the CE one set of measures been in public company, CHRO in private equity, and we [00:50:00] always have more than one, and usually the HR scorecard comes at the end. So if you want to drive, uh, an aligned agenda, it starts with aligned measures.

Okay. And if you can't make your business case. For the ROI of what your people work is doing, then candidly it's disconnected from what you're trying to get, trying to get done. So I, I would start there. 'cause I think alignment really gets real when there's one scorecard that we're all working towards.

Okay. Um, I think we also need to, to kind of think through, um, how do we think about human capital as a portfolio exercise rather than as a placement or supply chain exercise. Um, I used to think that supply chain was the right, uh, analogy to use for, for staffing and, and HR. We need to make sure we have the right inventory of [00:51:00] skills and, and professionals be able to step into the roles.

And then I got a little smarter and I said, actually what we need to do is figure out what is the ascension plan, not the succession plan. And now I've kind of stepped even farther from there. And, and I, I, I, I believe so strongly that we need to look at how we deploy human capital with the same rigor and focus and measures as we do every other piece of capital in the business.

And if we start with one scorecard, that makes that a lot easier. I think that, what do y'all

Johnny C. Taylor: think? Does it make sense? I, I think so. We should do a master class on that, but anyway, more to come. Okay. 'cause I, another question. How have you seen leaders create a culture? 'cause culture is the word now where people can challenge one another without fear.

Yeah.

Jackson Lynch: Yeah. I think, uh, two, two ways of doing that that I've seen successful. One, it has to, one is leader driven. So you have to set the clear [00:52:00] expectations that it is okay if you to say, uh, I don't, I don't agree with that. And so, I don't know if you guys picked up on this, but I have a fairly declarative way of speaking.

I end up all my sentences in the down. I do that whether I am confident in what I'm saying or if I'm making it up on the spot like I just did. And so I've had to actually talk with members of my teams to say, just 'cause it sounds like it's a final decision. If you think it's wrong, you have an obligation to That's right.

To, uh, push back on that. So I think that's one. The second is you create systems and you create systems with the red teams that we were talking about before, where you have kind of a two step one is, is there's a moment for debate and you, you, you, uh, you deputize the red team to, to take the contrarian position.

Yes. And then ultimately you, you have a decision window. And when you're done with that, now it's, now it's, I've disagreed and I've [00:53:00] support and I'm going on. We have one voice and we worry about how we get stuff done. I think those are the two things that we can do to make it better. My gosh,

Johnny C. Taylor: permission he just described.

You have to give permission to people to be honest with you. It's easy to just say it, but most people don't believe you. You know, it's like, tell me what you think about what I'm wearing. You actually don't want to know. Um, and people know you don't want to know unless it's positive news. So we all have to figure out as a profession how to give people permission to be candid and transparent.

The other thing that you point, we had Cher and my CHRO, Jim Link said over who introduced me. We, one, we just added a guide, added a guiding principle. We had a whole bunch, we had five of 'em, and, and then we added one. And it's called Challenge Decide Commit. In that order, you're free to challenge respectfully, civilly right time.

Got it. And then we will make a decision based upon all of the information we could, we can gather. And then you have to decide if you're gonna commit or not. And that's it. Like there's no re-litigating things 'cause that'll go on and on and you go forever. So this [00:54:00] notion we added as a guiding principle.

And I'm telling you the number of times that people quote us, they'll call me and say, Johnny, I wanna talk about that decision. Those hours, work hours. Can I challenge? I say, yep. And then we challenge and with an open mind, you listen to them, you gather all the data, and then you say, now a decision has been made, now it's up to you to commit.

It's a really interesting way of thinking about it. So I love that permission. And then this notion that we can't keep relegating, uh, re relitigating 'cause we just have other things to do. Final question. If every leader listening today could take just one step, may not be the final step and maybe several steps, but one step tomorrow to move from comfort to candor, what would you tell them to do?

Jackson Lynch: So if, if, if the folks here in the room are like me and any job I've ever had. You have someone, when that question came up about, uh, how do you, how do you provide clarity? And where do I have a performance [00:55:00] challenge? So think about that person. And what I would do is I would spend just a little bit of time writing down the most important objective and make sure it is clear in your mind.

And then I would share that and I'd have that person repeat it back. And if it is, if that is clear, then lock it in. If it's unclear, go back to it. Because starting with clarity, everything else gets so much easier if you are starting from the same place. And then when you're locked in like that, um, you know what, what I think becomes super helpful is doing a pre-mortem what's gonna get in your way and then take the action to get something out of their way.

Now this process does two things. It helps you really think about the clarity upfront. It also tells, tells the person that you are investing in their success and you're demonstrating it by taking something out of the way. And the more uncomfortable the better it is to start with that one easy [00:56:00] step.

Johnny C. Taylor: Gosh, that was really good, my friends. Thank you. See why I brought Jackson Lynch to join us, um, is really, really good. I have to make a, uh, as I'm running off the stage, 'cause I have no time, but I gotta make a pitch for you. We are, uh, as you all know, controversially, we are tackling the diversity, equity, and inclusion conversation this October next month in Louisville, Kentucky.

And if you follow that stuff online, a lot of folks have a point of view about it. But I gotta tell you, uh, if SHRM wanted to abandon. This work, we could just as easily abandon it. My bosses here said, you know, for all the hassle, since it's polarizing and not worth it, why don't you just get out of the business of it?

We're not, we're actually going to run head into this. We're going to figure this out, but in doing, and thank you, but in doing so, we need your support. You can't say you want the, the most like, mind-boggling thing to me is to say, we [00:57:00] know whether you, whatever you think about any of the topics, diversity, equity, or inclusion, at the end of the day, if, if we just can say we're gonna continue doing what we've always done, it's a losing proposition.

All you gotta do is watch what's happening, not just in the current administration, but look at what's happening in the court. We have got to be intentional as a profession about doing this in a smart way. And so SHRM has literally framed up a way of thinking about we're not abandoning diversity work and inclusion work.

Our diversity is our strength. And my God, if you've got a diverse population together, you better sure as hell make 'em feel like they're included. That like defeat the purpose of having a diverse workforce. Right? But we've said three things. The work, whatever you call it going forward, must be what legally compliant it must be.

That's just a gating issue. Secondly, it must be workplace unifying. There's just no point in doing something that so divides the workforce 'cause you then don't get any, the return you [00:58:00] want outta diversity. And thirdly, it's gotta be business accretive. We have tested this, this framing with every CEO and even the ones who don't actually aren't totally committed to this whole concept of diversity, equity, or inclusion.

Have said, if you can give me stuff that is legal. That unifies my workplace and helps me in my business, it'd be hard for me to argue with it. So it's a reframing, it's not a retrenchment. Our leaders are here to say, we're gonna do this, right? But what it starts with is an ability to sit down and talk with people who see the world differently than you.

After all, that is the definition of diversity. So I hope you all will support us. Think about it. We're gonna have all of the right people in place. This morning. I'm getting notes from Van Jones on one hand, another from Robbie and Uck. We're getting 'em all together and we're gonna get in, and it's not just gonna be on political ideology, it's gonna talk about all of the forms of diversity, the 33 or so dimensions that we know exist, but.

Your [00:59:00] professional association, Sharon, is committed to doing this. The easiest thing we could do, and believe me, I will have his head, head of hair if I keep doing this, is to run away from this. I like your hair, by the way. I do. You have no idea how much money I save in shampoo. No, Jim. But seriously, we need you all to help us.

We need you to, you don't, we won't always get it right, but we're trying, we're coming from a place, a good place, which is we want, we know the commitment and the importance of diverse workforces and people who feel included at work. So if you could help us spread the word, this isn't provocative. For the sake of provocative, there are far more provocative things I can do.

Um, but this is about saving this work no matter what words we use to describe it. So thank you all. Please think about it.

Mo Fathelbab: Come on.

And that's where we'll end it for this episode of People and Strategy. To learn more about the Visionaries conference visit, [01:00:00] SH rm.org/ian Events