Culture Creators

Nectar HR
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Culture Creators is a podcast for executives who own culture outcomes—engagement, performance, trust, and retention—featuring real leadership stories and practical playbooks you can apply immediately. Each episode unpacks a real culture challenge a leader faced, what was driving it beneath the surface, and the specific actions that helped them turn it around. Culture isn’t built with slogans. It’s built (and protected) through decisions: what leaders tolerate, what they reinforce, how they communicate, and how they respond when pressure of growth, change, conflict, or burnout hits

Episodes

  1. Why This $3.5B Founder Made His CHRO His Most Trusted Advisor

    4d ago

    Why This $3.5B Founder Made His CHRO His Most Trusted Advisor

    What does a CEO actually want from their CHRO? Aaron Skonnard, the founder and former CEO of Pluralsight, has a more specific answer than most. Aaron co-founded Pluralsight in 2004, scaled it past $600M in revenue, took it public on Nasdaq, and sold it to Vista Equity Partners in 2021 at a $3.5B valuation. He hired Anita Grantham as the company's first CHRO, and in this rare episode, the two of them sit on opposite sides of the table to break down the partnership that ran the business for the next decade. This is the only Culture Creators episode where Anita interviews a CEO she actually built something with. The conversation is candid, specific, and full of the kind of operating detail HR leaders rarely get on camera, including the interview question that filtered Aaron in, the weekly coaching commitment that reshaped the executive team, and the moment Aaron realized he was the bottleneck. What you'll learn: The interview question that tests whether a CEO is coachable (and whether they deserve a CHRO who tells them the truth) Why Aaron treats vision and culture as a sequence, not a stack, and how Pluralsight built a multi-page five-year picture The confidentiality contract that lets a CHRO be a peer to the C-suite and an advisor to the CEO at the same time How to get in front of an executive's exit before the resignation is already written Chapters: 0:00 Cold open 4:00 The "most trusted advisor" framing 8:15 The interview question: "Are you willing to be coached?" 12:00 Weekly coaching for every C-suite executive 18:00 Why a vision statement is not a vision 32:00 The arm's-length CHRO problem 35:15 The confidentiality contract 43:30 "I actually am the problem." 50:00 Get in before they quit 54:15 Aaron's biggest regret as a CEO

    1h 3m
  2. Why 30% of CEOs Avoid Their HR Leader with Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.

    May 13

    Why 30% of CEOs Avoid Their HR Leader with Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.

    🚨 Get your SHRM members-only resources for this episode here. 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

    58 min
  • 2 Episodes

About

Culture Creators is a podcast for executives who own culture outcomes—engagement, performance, trust, and retention—featuring real leadership stories and practical playbooks you can apply immediately. Each episode unpacks a real culture challenge a leader faced, what was driving it beneath the surface, and the specific actions that helped them turn it around. Culture isn’t built with slogans. It’s built (and protected) through decisions: what leaders tolerate, what they reinforce, how they communicate, and how they respond when pressure of growth, change, conflict, or burnout hits

Information

  • Creator
    Nectar HR
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    2
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Nectar HR
  • Show Website
    Culture Creators