‘Nurture the people; protect the business’

Why the chief human resources officer’s double bind is every leader’s problem—and what to do about it.

Upwards of 80% of HR professionals are women. When I first came across that number, what unsettled me wasn’t the stat—it was how quickly my brain accepted it. Of course HR is mostly women. That’s the department where “people” and “culture” live. Where feelings are attended to. The nurturing department.

The moment I noticed I’d reached for that word, I realized the number wasn’t showing me a labor-market pattern but, instead, my bias—about which work is considered feminine, and which workers get feminized in the process.

The chief human resources officer holds one of the most impossible jobs in the C-suite. They’re asked to be the company’s emotional infrastructure (protecting the........

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