Want your team to actually tell you the truth?

In the Army, Roxanne Petraeus watched senior officers announce an open-door policy and then act like the door was shut. So she stopped trusting what leaders say and started trusting only what they do.

"I only believed what I saw."

Today, Roxanne is the co-founder and CEO of Ethena, and she runs the company on the opposite of what she saw back then: never say a thing you aren't willing to back with action.

We get into how that one commitment builds a culture people actually believe — and who owns it when the CEO and the head of people disagree.

(If you’ve ever experienced the frustration of working with a “do what I say, not what I do” leader — or you don’t want to become one yourself — this episode is for you.)

👀 Here's what you get in today's edition of the Culture Creators:

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 The CEO–people leader relationship

02:00 Why hiring is everything

05:00 "Maybe is not our standard"

08:15 Hiring against your values

11:15 Making every employee AI-native

14:30 Building a cult-like culture

17:00 Athlete hires & embracing feedback

23:00 Leading with "it's my fault"

26:00 Disagree, commit, back your people

32:45 Compliance is culture with documentation

44:15 Feedback Fridays

54:15 Walking the talk

When Populus Group hit about 100 employees and was growing fast, founder and CEO Bobby Herrera did something his team revolted against: he intentionally slowed the company down.

They came at him "with pitchforks," asking why he was hitting the brakes mid-growth. His answer was that they had been building on a shallow foundation, and to build something that lasts, they first had to dig deep into culture, purpose, and values.

Herrera, a U.S. Army veteran, former Disney cast member, and author of The Gift of Struggle, runs his business on one belief: trust is the single most important asset a company owns, and the more of it you have, the faster things move and the less they cost.

This episode is his playbook for how a CEO and an HR leader build a healthy culture together, and the consistency that makes it stick.

What you'll learn:

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. [GAP — episode links]
📕 Bobby's book, The Gift of Struggle: https://a.co/d/0hcdz9bd

Culture Creators is produced by Nectar in partnership with SHRM.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

04:38 The "era of slow": why he slowed a growing company on purpose

07:00 Consistency, trust, and the chaos at 100 employees

10:15 "We select, we don't hire": select, welcome, develop

12:55 "One day to be new": the first-week welcome

23:00 Why the HR leader is the unsung hero

32:00 The first-week ROI argument (50% lower attrition, 3x NPS)

44:30 Selling the ROI of culture to a CFO

49:15 Culture Crush, and offering people back to the marketplace

Derrick Hall has spent 35 years in baseball, more than two decades of it running the Arizona Diamondbacks. He’s managed to produce incredible results in one of the most competitive industries on earth — and the most important ones aren’t on the field:

Multiple Top Workplaces awards under his tenure
→ $100 million in community giving since 1998
→ Roughly 70% of the front office staying 10 to 15 years
→ United Nations “Most Positive Team In The World” award
→ A 2023 National League Pennant

So when he says something that breaks what some would view as a basic rule of business, it's worth slowing down to take a listen.

🕐 TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Welcome to Chase Field
02:00 $100M in community giving since 1998
05:30 BUILD: the 5-letter values acronym
10:30 The First Impression Specialist and the hallway walls
12:45 70% retention: the path from intern to VP
14:30 His father's advice at 24 and the Vero Beach years
21:30 The 2020 furlough decision he openly regrets
24:15 Why the customer doesn't come first
25:30 The Leadership Academy + Nectar
29:15 Going public about his cancer
34:15 What he expects from his head of People
37:00 Culture Crush: His father and Peter O'Malley
38:30 The 2023 NLCS trophy moment
42:45 The President's Council

📈 Find out how top leaders create high-performance company culture: http://culturecreators.show

🚨 Take a virtual demo of Nectar, and see how we can help you bring out your team's best work by bringing out the best in your people: https://bit.ly/4nTYLSu

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: 

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

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:

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