What HR leaders really want from a great CEO

Most CEOs are evaluated on earnings, strategy, and shareholder returns. But ask the HR leaders who work closest with them, and a different scorecard emerges — one built on trust, empathy, and the willingness to treat people strategy as seriously as financial targets.

HRD Canada spoke with six senior HR professionals across Canada to find out exactly what separates the executives who work well with HR from those who fall short.

For Sonja Nelsen, Vice-President of HR at Peak Products, great CEOs are defined by a cluster of qualities that, taken together, create the conditions for genuine employee engagement.

“Number one is vision and number two is building trust among the executive team, which will then filter down to the rest of the organization,” says Nelsen. “Number three is transparency, and number four is the ability to connect at all levels and be genuine while doing so.”

Consistency in executive leadership is also a non-negotiable, according to Nelsen. “If you say, ‘We're people first,’ then that accountability is with the CEO to truly lead that way, consistently — and that’s where your people will be excited to follow you.”

Ineffective leadership has organizational costs

If leadership at the top falls short, then there are organizational costs, says Nelsen. “We know it's real, this lack of engagement through organizations — people are in the office, but they're not all in, they've got one foot out the door,” she says. “It starts at the top — I've seen that my entire career, and I stand by it.”

Ashlee Langlois, CEO and Registrar of CPHR Saskatchewan, echoes the importance of tone from the top, and she ties it directly to how leaders handle difficult moments. “The CEO is really the person who sets the tone for how the organization operates and how people work together, collaborate, and treat one another,” says Langlois. “As a CEO, I think you need to lead from a place of care, compassion, and kindness.”

That doesn't mean avoiding hard calls, adds Langlois. “Sometimes caring, compassion, and kindness is when you have to make the difficult decisions,” she says. “It doesn't mean don't make the unpopular decision, but it’s how you communicate it — be really clear and transparent, and do it from a place with heart.”

A people-first mindset — and the leaders who model it

Tanya Sinclair, Chief People Officer for Canada at Save the Children, is direct about what she needs most from a CEO. “While CEOs have to focus on the deliverables and the numbers, focusing on people impacts and asking us about how does that affect our people — that mindset is very helpful.”

It's a quality Sinclair sees modelled in leadership in her own organization, she says. “I work for a leader right now who is very people-first — we have conversations beyond the numbers, asking ‘What are some of these impacts that might not be apparent to me?'” she says. “When you work with a CEO who is people-first, it just makes HR's life so much easier because they get it.”

That kind of engagement, Sinclair believes, signals something more fundamental than good instincts. A CEO who asks about the human story behind the numbers is one who understands that people aren’t a line item — they’re the strategy, she says.

Matthew Clarke, Vice-President of Learning and Development at FGF Brands, believes that a critical quality for the top leader in an organization is the ability to hold both the strategic view and the human one simultaneously.

“People who are successful leaders are those who really understand the big picture and have taken the time to understand the situation and collect the data for whatever conversation that we’re having,” says Clarke. "You get into leaders who are so strategically and long-term focused that they might miss the impact that some of these decisions will have on people in the trenches doing the work.”

Strategic partnership — and what gets in the way

For HR executives, that gap can carry real organizational risk. When senior leaders arrive at the table focused solely on efficiency or revenue targets, HR is left managing the downstream consequences — retention issues, morale erosion, change fatigue, according to Clarke. “As a senior leader, we're thinking about profit, revenue, growth, scale, efficiencies — but we're asking people to do it,” he says. “And so when you come to HR, we're often advocating for the people and want to make sure that [the CEO] understands that, and that they've already thought it through with empathy.”

Christine Barwell, Senior Vice-President of HR at Wesdome Gold Mines, describs great CEOs as fundamentally inspirational — not just to the workforce at large, but to the executive team closest to them. "They need to be a team-builder with their executives, a confidant, and a problem solver,” says Barwell. “They need to be very aware and sensitive to the work dynamic — and I would just say the successful ones are quite kind.”

On the question of CEO-HR partnership, Barwell believes that direct employee connection is a key differentiator. "There needs to be real interest in the people and the work experience for employees,” she says. “If they're touring any of the facilities — in our case, the mines — just talk to the employees, they'd be thrilled.”

Including people in the long-term, strategic vision

Andrew Gilchrist, CHRO for Wealth and Asset Management at BMO Financial Group, brings an enterprise-level perspective to what great leadership looks like at the top. "Being very thoughtful on the long-term vision and strategy, being close to clients and understanding what is really important to them, and making sure you're adept and agile from an external environment perspective — the world changes very rapidly, and the faster you can change and adapt, the better,” says Gilchrist. “And being a very empathetic leader who understands the employee base and what it is that they need.”

For the CEO-HR relationship specifically, Gilchrist points to inclusion and communication as critical. “Make sure HR is at the table — not only to understand what the business strategy is, but to enable the people strategy,” he says. “Having an open and clear dialogue with leadership to understand what's happening, both within the teams and within the client base, and being a very clear communicator to their team of where they need to pivot and grow.”

For Langlois, the most common failure point for CEOs is “a complete disregard for employee well-being and organizational culture,” which she says employees feel down through the organization. “If the CEO doesn't have the capability to work with their direct reports — if it's just very directional and authoritative — I've seen that not work very well.”

The consensus is that most effective HR-CEO relationships are built on a foundation of trust, open communication, and a shared understanding that people strategy isn’t separate from business strategy — it enables it.

“In organizations that I've been a part of, where the CEO and HR work really well together, the CEO has a clear understanding of the value that HR brings, and the importance of people practices, policies, and programs to the organization,” says Langlois.