5 Ways to Be a Credible CHRO Today

Being a CHRO must feel good, right? The boardroom, the C-suite talks, and the position, they all make you feel the most powerful and reliable person in your company—the caterer to your people’s concerns.

Table of Content

• Create Your Personal Philosophy
• Practice & Connect with Storytelling
• Walk the Talk (Align Your Actions with What You Say)
• Balance Confidentiality with Transparency
• Worship Integrity

And while you think your employees trust you, wait until you leave the room.

Yes, building credibility isn’t a joke!

It doesn’t come with your designation but with your presence and how you make people feel.

It takes persistence, integrity, and a strong will to gain people’s respect. And while as a CHRO, you are busy following HR handbooks, policies, guidelines, company regulations, and what not, you might not realize your credibility starts sulking in the corner.

In our recent podcast episode of The CHRO Mindset Podcast, Yogesh Patgaonkar, a Master Certified Coach (MCC) with 25K+ hours of coaching, and a CHRO with 25 years of industry experience just decoded what it takes to be credible and trustworthy in the eyes of the C-suite and your employees.

And guess what, the tips might be already known to you. But let’s recite them once more.

Create Your Personal Philosophy

Personal philosophy helps you find direction in chaos. It’s nothing but a belief that defogs your mind and tells you what to do…almost always.

If you look back, history is full of legends who had their philosophies and ethical leadership which still echo and inspire.

From the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius’s philosophy of controlling your mind rather than external outcomes to the Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, who taught to have a purpose to live life in any circumstances, great people have had their mental formula to overcome chaos.

So, as a CHRO, a personal philosophy helps you because it:

• Brings clarity in decision-making
• Builds emotional resilience
• Creates a consistent leadership
• Makes you highly reliable among peers

If you are ready to have your personal philosophy today, use this tip!

Sit with yourself and ask, what ‘If I lose everything today, how would I feel and what would be my next step and why?’

The answer would be your personal philosophy.

Practice & Connect with Storytelling

Storytelling has power. It not only brings people close to you but helps them relate to your struggles, success, and resilient abilities.

But if you don’t know how to tell a story, how would you do that?

Let’s begin storytelling with this:

• Maintain a journal of transforming experiences and revisit it often
• Have a monthly connect with your people and share your personal experience and
• Observe and note stories from your team’s successes, challenges, and growth.

• Incorporate emotion: highlight struggles, triumphs, or learning moments.
• Tie every story to a clear takeaway or lesson for your audience.

Stories help listeners feel, ‘They are not alone and someone else has been in the same place before’ that builds security and inclusion, bridging gaps and rectifying misconceptions.

And that goes for the C-suite also. When you start telling experiences in the boardroom on bold decisions, and how other companies achieved their goals, you are not sharing a story but building authority that will make you look more informed, interested, and invested in business decisions.

Here’s one tip for you: Read 1 case study in your niche every day.

Walk the Talk (Align Your Actions with What You Say)

Ever seen a credible person saying something and doing something else? Never. They don’t do that and that’s what makes them credible.

But in the cosmos of corporates where some things are meant for rulebooks, how would you do that?

Well, walking the talk is deeply tied to integrity, but it’s broader in action.

For example, integrity is doing what you preach whether someone validates or not but walking the talk includes acting on what you propose, like:

• Mold your behavior for your words.

Don’t just say you value people, make them feel valued by listening to them.

• Toss out the delays in your actions.

If you assured something in the morning, ensure it’s in action by the evening.

• Stay consistent (A must for credibility in CHROs)

Accidental alignment of words with actions is nothing but a once in a million years-shooting comet. Real credibility is built with consistent behavior.

Once you start practicing these daily, your credibility will shoot up in the sky seamlessly.

Balance Confidentiality with Transparency

It’s a dicey game.

To be transparent and stay confidential at the same time! But you must because how to create that balance tells how credible you are. Want to know the tactics to beat the confusion?

• Be straightforward. Just say ‘I can’t disclose it.’ Simply say it.
• Stay transparent. Never hold information that belongs to people. It cuts down their trust in you.
• Communicate to answer lurking questions. Have the courage to reply to the ‘why.’
• Don’t overshare. You need not expose sensitive information like legal and compliance issues, confidential leadership plans, strategic business moves like mergers and acquisitions, or brand reputation-related issues to be credible.

When you examine the situations closely, you will learn that a credible CHRO knows exactly how much to share, with whom, and when.

Worship Integrity at Workplace

According to SHRM article, ‘The CHRO of the Future,’ speaking truth is one of the 4 core habits, next-gen HR executives must adapt to lead the future of work and sway CEOs.

But wait, integrity is a bit different from telling the truth. It’s something that happens behind the walls.

It shows when you:

• Talk about CXOs and employees the way you would to their faces.
• Do the right thing even when no one’s watching.
• Report issues as they are, not sugar-coated.
• Accept mistakes and take action to correct them.

So, now the question is how to have more integrity than yesterday?

It’s simple and doable. Get started with these.

• Dive deeper into ethical leadership and its principles
• Practice courage to have accountability (It will be hard in the beginning!)
• Make conscious choices. Ensure the actions you take align with your personal philosophy.
• Drop overconfidence. Start learning with reads to change your perspective.

Quick Takeaways for You!

If you are in a hurry, you have stumbled to the right section. Here are your clear tips and actions to kick in more credibility in CHROs like you.