What makes a great HR leader? Understanding the business, Booking Holdings HR chief says

Welcome to the first installment of Tips from the Top, a series featuring HR leaders’ career advice for people professionals with big aspirations. Have insights you want to share? Get in touch here.

If you ask Paulo Pisano, the best way for HR professionals to develop themselves as leaders is by getting to know their organization beyond their HR remit.

“Learning the business and understanding the agenda of your business stakeholders is a critical way to get people out of the HR shell into being a business person first, HR second,” the CHRO of Booking Holdings told HR Brew.

Pisano said that people pros often get caught up in the day-to-day, preventing them from looking outside the HR bubble. Many also become attached to their tools and processes, he said, hindering their leadership development. He recalled a recent conversation with a fellow HR executive, who said they were struggling to engage their company’s leadership team in succession planning discussions.

“I couldn’t help but ask, ‘First help me understand what is the problem you’re trying to solve for that company, and in the CEO’s mind?’ And they couldn’t respond,” Pisano said. While HR leaders understand succession planning’s importance, other executives may not consider it a top priority, he explained. “You gain the trust and the credibility and the understanding by first going to, What is it that’s true for them in the business?”

HR professionals can start by building relationships with others throughout the business, and figuring out how their functions add value to the company.

“I think that’s extremely powerful, and I’d say it’s the area where I see the greatest gap is folks investing time on that part of it,” he said.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us about an early career experience that helped shape the HR leader you are today.

During university, I worked for an NGO, AIESEC, and eventually ran a local chapter, leading a team of volunteers. Working in an environment that doesn’t rely on hierarchy or a paycheck taught me something very early about what it really means to lead and motivate people. You have to genuinely engage people, understand what motivates them, create a sense of shared purpose, and build an environment where they want to contribute. That lesson has stayed with me throughout my career. Leadership is ultimately about creating the conditions for people to want to do their best work.

What is one skill that you think every HR leader should develop early in their career?

Discernment. HR has an incredibly broad remit, and there will always be more worthwhile things to do than there is capacity to do them. Learning to distinguish between activity and impact is an enormously valuable skill. It means understanding what the business and its people need most, making thoughtful trade-offs, and having the discipline to focus your energy where it can make the biggest difference.

How can early career HR professionals find a good mentor or sponsor?

I’d encourage HR professionals to build relationships beyond HR. The profession is increasingly embedded in the business, and exposure to commercial, operational, technology, and other perspectives can make you a stronger leader and better positioned to support the totality of the business. Be curious, ask thoughtful questions, seek out people whose perspective challenges or expands your own, and invest genuinely in those relationships. Mentorship and sponsorship often grow organically from there.

What professional development opportunities do you think future HR leaders should pursue?

Finding mentorship and advice and coaching from people outside the HR function. Sometimes folks get too focused on learning the HR trade. Of course, you’ve got to do that too, but I think to develop an outside-in perspective of HR is often missing or sometimes takes a while. To look for opportunities for informal learning with folks who are executives in other areas, I think that can be a powerful development.

What is the best advice you’ve received in your HR career?

I heard this very early on in my career and I still say it to my team all the time: Lead by example. That doesn’t mean you have to be perfect at everything. It means being willing to put the effort into new things, experiment, learn, and grow—and letting people see you do it. If something doesn’t work, take learnings. As leaders, we have to model the curiosity and willingness to change that we ask of others.

What is the worst advice you’ve received in your HR career?

I’m not sure it is one specific piece of advice, but I’d challenge the idea that being a strong HR partner means being super responsive to every request the business asks of you. The best HR partners bring judgment to the table. They help simplify the problem, challenge assumptions, clarify what really matters, and find the solution that best serves both the business and its people. Sometimes that means reframing the original question entirely.

These views do not necessarily speak for the company, but instead are the personal responses from individuals.