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When you're an HR leader and your CEO doesn't trust you, you feel it before anyone says it. The meetings you weren't in. The decisions made without you. The growing sense that your title is bigger than your influence.

Johnny C. Taylor has been there. He's also been on the other side of it — as the CEO who didn't trust his own CHRO.

In this conversation with Anita Grantham, the President and CEO of SHRM unpacks the trust gap that quietly breaks the CEO–CHRO relationship at most companies. He shares the informal poll he ran in a room of 50 Fortune 250 CEOs (10% love their CHRO, 60% tolerate them, 30% actively avoid them), and the three brutal truths from the late Doug Lebda — former CEO of LendingTree — that turned a failing relationship into the most important one of Johnny's career.

In this episode:

• Why HR has no attorney-client privilege, and what that means for what your CEO will and won't tell you

• The "lockbox" moment: when the easy answer is to fire two people and the right answer is to change the policy

• The three things Johnny's CEO said over a three-hour dinner that changed his career: "you're too judgmental," "you don't know our business," "you're competing with your colleagues"

• Why Mike Milken believes the next generation of CEOs will come from the CHRO ranks

• The simplest act of servant leadership Johnny ever performed (it involved a massage)

• What nobody tells you about holding "the lives we insure"

Time Stamps:

00:00 Cold open

01:38 The room of 50 Fortune 250 CEOs

02:35 10% love. 60% tolerate. 30% avoid.

05:13 Misplaced, not bad: when a CHRO should leave 1

1:25 HR has no attorney-client privilege

13:47 Inside the lockbox: fire him or change the policy?

24:02 The three-hour dinner with Doug Lebda

28:23 "You're too judgmental."

29:49 "You don't know our business."

31:53 "You're competing with your colleagues"

33:50 Why CHROs are the next CEOs (per Mike Milken)

38:38 Why I booked my CEO a massage

40:14 "How many lives do you insure?"

49:08 The world of work is changing

53:46 One message — build mutual trust