The Value of Partnership Between CEO and Chief People Officer with Eventbrite’s Julia Hartz and David Hanrahan
Welcome to a very special episode of Redefining HR. I’ve wanted to record a podcast episode with a CEO and chief people officer for a few seasons now to talk about the dynamics of that working relationship, how they collaborate, partner, overcome disagreements and much more.
And in this episode, I get to do exactly that! I’m excited to sit down with Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz and Chief Human Resources Officer David Hanrahan to discuss their relationship at work, how they collaborate with and support each other, and more.
Julia is the co-founder and current CEO of Eventbrite, which she founded with her husband and another co-founder. And for the last 15 years, she has dedicated her time to building a great company and culture.
David is the CHRO, aka the chief people officer, at Eventbrite, and has been in the HR industry for about 20 years. He has always been attracted to progressive cultures, and Eventbrite has been a career culmination through the culture that Julia has built for the company.
You can also listen/share the episode directly syndicated on any of these channels: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcast | Stitcher | TuneIn
The CEO & CPO Relationship: CEO Perspective
The relationship between a CEO and chief people officer has always been a vital connection for the state of the company culture. But this relationship has risen in importance over the past few years as society and businesses have gone through significant changes due to COVID-19.
Dealing with these changes and guiding people through comes back to how the CEO and HR executives work together in these situations. For Julia, the pandemic’s start was pivotal in establishing a great connection.
Like most companies at the start of the pandemic, Eventbrite was heavily affected, and David was only a few months into his role when the crisis hit. Julia didn’t know a lot about David to that point, but problems have a way of speeding up the “getting to know you process” and showing you who a person is. “He’s the guy you want in your corner during massive chaos,” Julia shares.
Julia describes David as being unflappable in the face of adversity and thoughtful about what they needed to do to “rearchitect and build back up a company that was really disrupted during such an acute crisis,” which was an inspiring thing to notice as a CEO.
The CEO & CPO Relationship: CPO Perspective
For David, one thing was clear when he began working with Julia: She leads with compassion and trust. And trust has been a concept that has fascinated David, whether it’s how to earn it or how to build it up within relationships.
He explains, “Nowadays, I’ve heard of trust described as the only legal performance-enhancing drug. And over the years, the partnership I felt with Julia is one of trust.” That’s also the core description of their working relationship with each other. However, it takes time and moments of genuine vulnerability to build that trust and maintain it.
CEOs always have a lot going on, and depending on the situation, that trust can be fleeting, creating a sense of unease. But to David, Julia’s leadership style instills a different sense of trust that not many CEOs and CPOs have. That trust has created a collaborative culture where David feels that he can express his ideas in the moment and not dance around them.
“I feel very comfortable talking to Julia, for example, just about moments when I think the exec team needs to step forward on owning a people topic versus being an HR thing,” he shares. “ And I trust Julia to also sanity-check with me that ‘yes, David, and here’s where we need you.’ So I feel a trust from her. I feel like I can be my authentic self.”
Holding Each Other Accountable
Trust and compassion are key components within the working relationship between CEOs and CPOs, especially when you don’t agree or have moments of miscommunication. Some pushback or miscommunication is typical in any working relationship, and most times it can lead to learning more about each other.
For example, Julia decided to institute a daylong break policy, called a “Brite Break,” one Friday every month. It was a way for everyone to take a break, catch their breath, and recharge together to impact the overall morale better. However, when Julia communicated this new policy to David, he heard her say, “let’s take every Friday as a ‘Brite Break,’” causing confusion and miscommunication.
However, that miscommunication turned out to be a great opportunity to test out the idea of a four-day workweek with the company. “I think it’s a place where maybe there’s a part of me that knows that he has a good point, but I’m not yet ready to go there to drive that amount of radical change. And he’s very patient with me on that,” Julia explains.
David admits letting his creative side and ideas run free, especially when he sees the potential in a great initiative like the four-day workweek. Sometimes, those ideas can lead to disagreements where they both don’t see eye to eye. One example is when David suggested working five hours a day for only 40 weeks a year.
Julia did not interrupt his explanation; rather, she let him freely express what he was thinking. “Julia just considers it for a moment and is kind of listening,” he says, “She said, ‘I’m not going to interrupt what’s going on here; I’m going to listen before I weigh in and let you know.’”
The idea did not come to fruition, but creating a space for ideas to flow amid healthy conflict is essential to the CEO and CPO relationship. In the case of Julia and David, they’ve created an environment that allows David to express his ideas, no matter how radical they seem at first. In response, Julia thinks through the ideas and works to find common ground.
“Great ideas and off-the-wall ideas and different ways of working in creative ways that you can maybe change the way we work and the relationship with work and the relationship with each other,” Julia says. “I just always tend to think that there are people out there, particularly people like David, who have great ideas that haven’t been launched into orbit because somebody wasn’t brave enough.”
“And so it's always in my head that, you know, even if it's a kind of a laughable concept at first, those people who get laughed at are always the ones who are making the greatest change in the world.”
People in This Episode
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