One thing I learned about HR: being liked is not the job

Some of the most important things I have said in my career were the things people did not particularly want to hear. Not because I enjoyed being difficult. Not because HR should automatically take the opposite position. But because there are moments when agreeing is simply the easier option and not necessarily the right one.

Over the years, I have sat in many rooms where important decisions had to be made. About leaders. About people. About performance. About remuneration. About restructuring. About the future direction of an organisation. And in those moments, I have always believed HR has a particular responsibility.

We are not there to be liked. We are there to add value.

Sometimes that means supporting a decision. Sometimes it means strengthening it. And sometimes it means having the courage to challenge it.

Agreement is comfortable

Most of us like harmony. It is human to want to belong, to avoid unnecessary conflict and to maintain good relationships with the people around us. That does not suddenly disappear when we enter the boardroom. In fact, the more senior the room, the harder disagreement can sometimes become. When a CEO has a strong view, challenging it takes confidence. When everyone around the table appears to be moving in the same direction, asking whether we have considered another perspective can feel uncomfortable. When there is enormous pressure to deliver results, raising a concern about culture, leadership behaviour or long-term consequences may not be particularly popular.

It is tempting to think: Perhaps this is not the right moment. Maybe someone else will say it. Maybe it is better to support the decision and move on.

Sometimes that is exactly the right judgement. But sometimes it is simply the easier one.

HR has a unique position

A strong HR leader operates at an interesting intersection. We need to understand the business. We need to understand people. We need to understand leadership, culture, incentives, performance and organisational dynamics. And we need to understand how decisions that may look perfectly logical on a spreadsheet will actually play out when thousands of human beings are expected to execute them.

That perspective gives HR a responsibility that goes beyond processes and policies. I have always thought of HR as part of the conscience of an organisation. Not the conscience; no function should claim ownership of morality or good judgement.

But certainly one of the voices that should be asking: What are we trying to achieve? What behaviour are we encouraging? What are the unintended consequences? Are we treating people consistently? Are we solving today’s problem while creating tomorrow’s? And perhaps most importantly:

Are we saying the same things when the people affected are not in the room?

Those questions are not always comfortable. But they matter

Challenge without credibility is just noise

There is another side to this. Being willing to challenge does not mean HR should become the department that always says no. There is nothing particularly courageous about disagreeing with everything. Good challenge requires credibility. You need to understand the commercial reality. You need to know the numbers. You need to understand the pressure the CEO and the business are under. You need to recognise that sometimes difficult decisions really are necessary.

Rightsizing an organisation can be necessary. Changing leadership can be necessary. Holding someone accountable for poor performance can be necessary. Changing remuneration can be necessary.

Transformations almost always require decisions that not everyone will welcome. The role of HR is not to protect an organisation from every difficult decision. It is to help make those decisions better. That means combining business judgement with an understanding of people and organisational consequences. t also means knowing when to challenge and when to support.

Trust matters more than popularity

There is a distinction I have come to value enormously throughout my career:

Being liked and being trusted are not the same thing.

If people know that you will always tell them what they want to hear, the relationship may be pleasant. But is it valuable? Real trust develops when people know that your advice is thoughtful, that your intentions are good and that you are prepared to say what you genuinely believe even when it would be easier not to.

That does not give anyone permission to be rude. Directness without empathy quickly becomes arrogance. Challenge without listening becomes confrontation. And constantly reminding people that you are “the one who tells the truth” can become its own form of ego. The best challenge is rarely theatrical. Often, it is simply a well-timed question.

What makes us so certain? What are we not seeing? What behaviour will this decision createIf this person were not one of our strongest performers, would we tolerate the same behaviour? What will we think about this decision twelve months from now?

Questions create space. And sometimes that space changes the decision.

The higher you go, the more important this becomes

Senior leaders are surrounded by smart people. But seniority also changes relationships. People may become more cautious about disagreeing. Information gets filtered. Bad news can become slightly less bad by the time it reaches the top. People learn what the leader likes to hear. That makes trusted challenge increasingly important.

A strong CHRO should therefore be more than the executive responsible for the people agenda. They should be someone the CEO can use as a sounding board. Someone who can recognise when the problem presented as a “people issue” is actually a leadership issue. Someone who is willing to distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. And someone who can walk into a difficult conversation with enough confidence to challenge, but enough humility to know they may also be wrong.

That last part matters. The purpose of challenge is not to prove that HR is right. The purpose is to improve the quality of the conversation and ultimately the quality of the decision.

This applies far beyond HR

The same principle applies to leadership teams. The strongest teams I have worked with were not the teams that agreed on everything. They were the teams where disagreement was possible without damaging the relationship. Where people could say:

I see this differently. I think we are missing something. I don’t agree, and here is why.

And then continue working together. That kind of environment does not happen automatically. Leaders create it through their own behaviour. If every challenge is interpreted as disloyalty, people quickly stop challenging. If difficult messages are punished, difficult messages disappear. If the leader always needs to have the final word, eventually everyone learns to wait for that word before forming their own opinion.

And then you may have agreement. But you no longer have a high-performing team.

So, should HR care about being liked?

Of course. Relationships matter. Empathy matters. Being approachable matters. I have never believed that toughness and humanity are opposites. But being liked cannot become the goal. Because there will be moments when doing your job well means saying something that is uncomfortable. The question is whether you have built enough credibility and trust for people to know why you are saying it.

After more than 25 years working with executives, leadership teams and organisations across different countries and cultures, that remains one of my strongest beliefs about HR and leadership:

Respect matters more than popularity.

And trust is not created by always agreeing. It is created when people know that, when it really matters, you will say what needs to be said — and that you will do it in service of the organisation, the people in it and the decision that needs to be made.