Brené Brown says HR’s value becomes harder to replace when people pros are the company’s bridge

If there’s one person on staff who ought to have a solid understanding of what everyone inside the company is thinking, it’s the HR pro, according to author, researcher, and vulnerability and leadership expert Brené Brown.

“The irreducible partner, the impact player,” Brown told HR leaders gathered at LinkedIn’s Talent Connect customer event in New York last week, “would be the HR leader.”

Becoming “irreducible” in HR starts with becoming indispensable to the business’s performance and its outcomes. The HR pro is able to understand what’s on the “hearts and minds” of the people in the company and its leadership better than nearly anyone else, and that’s a critical job, especially amid so much change and uncertainty across the broader world, she said.

If “the CEO doesn’t see the HR or CHRO as a performance partner, I’m not interested because we will accomplish nothing without people,” Brown said, adding she won’t work with companies unless their CEO and CHRO are “absolutely in lock step.”

For HR leaders, that means knowing what is happening across the organization.

“I think you have the hardest job on that because you have to understand what’s on the hearts and minds of the system, and you have to understand what’s on the hearts and minds of the organization,” Brown said. “And you are the only bridge between those hearts and those minds.”

Irreducible HR leaders connect those threads inside the system—draw the lines between the needs of the business and what its people need to accomplish it.

Current events, geopolitical uncertainty, and rapid technological change can all affect employees, Brown said. Sometimes, she noted, things aren’t work-related but are still work-relevant, pointing to the week’s current events, and the many global and national crises in the news as examples. (No need for a refresher on that, we’ve got a fresh crop of new headlines to fret over this week.)

“We are not going to build on dysfunction,” Brown told HR leaders. “People are not okay…People have to believe it’s happening for them, not for them.”

Brown suggested HR pros look to “change fitness,” an apt exercise routine people pros can work on without ever leaving their ergonomic office chair.

Brown to HR pros: Have a plan for deliberate recovery, develop a learning agility in the age of AI, and make time “where none exists.”

“I wish you deep deliberate recovery because we need you now more than we ever need,” Brown told the audience.