Strategic CHRO
“You’ve Got To Be Comfortable With Ambiguity And Change. You Have To Be A Learner.”
Strategic CHRO
Stephanie Fehr, Chief People Officer at UnitedHealthcare, emphasizes the importance of being comfortable with ambiguity and change, embracing conflict, and how to be a learner in this Strategic CHRO interview with The ExCo Group CEO David Reimer and Senior Managing Director and Partner Adam Bryant.
Reimer: What big changes have you seen in the CHRO role?
Fehr: It’s a very different landscape in many ways. The complexities of the job are very broad. We’re dealing with five different generations in the workforce. We’re dealing with an aging demographic. And we’re dealing with global issues that are very sensitive and personal to people, like the Middle East conflict.
So, there are many variables that create a more challenging landscape when creating an employer-employee value proposition today. I don’t think it was that complicated when I started in HR. People have much greater expectations of their companies now than they did even ten years ago.
Bryant: How did you get into the field in the first place?
Fehr: I discovered it along the way. I was a 16th-century literature major—Shakespeare, to be exact—and wanted to be a professor. I was planning to get a PhD, but I worked for Pan Am right out of college as a purser on international routes. I did that for three years and experienced a difficult environment at the company because of the unions.
I’m not anti-union, but I was struck at a young age by how much easier and better it would be if we could create a proactive strategy where people felt like they were owners of the business and have a chance to work directly with leadership. I became intrigued by the question of how you create an environment where people feel really cherished and valued while also balancing that with the needs of the business.
Reimer: Your role requires a lot of resilience, comfort in uncertainty, and a willingness to always be learning. Where does that come from for you?
Fehr: I get bored with the status quo. I like a lot of movement and change. When I was seven, my parents were divorced, and that was transformational for me because our family unit was suddenly turned on its head. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, and she was caught flat-footed.
She returned to school to become a registered nurse while raising my brother and me. I learned from her the importance of being self-sufficient, really on the balls of my feet, and ready for change. At a young age, I recognized that continuous learning was going to be critical to my survival and flourishing. That was always at the forefront of my mind—how do I keep growing, learning, and acquiring new skill sets?
Bryant: How do you hire? What qualities do you look for, and what questions do you ask in a job interview?
Fehr: Authenticity is so important—somebody who feels really comfortable in their own skin. People need integrity and transparency from their leaders, and you can only get that from people who feel comfortable with who they are. So, I look for authenticity. I look for resiliency. I look for people who are comfortable with ambiguity.
To get at those qualities, I like to ask about when they have faced adversity in their life, how they dealt with it, and what they learned from it. You would think that everyone would learn from their experiences, but most don’t. There is this special quality that a minority of people have of taking an experience and sucking the marrow out of it, and applying those lessons to new behaviors. That’s what I look for and listen for in an interview.
Reimer: Most assessments and 360s use benchmarks and archetypes for a world that no longer exists. How do you cast forward to understand whether someone will succeed in a leadership role now and in the future?
Fehr: I agree that many assessments have not been very predictive of success. There is less structure today and more velocity. The problems are harder to solve. You have new technology, like AI, that everyone is still working to understand in terms of its role and potential.
So, you’ve got to be comfortable with ambiguity and change. You have to be a learner. You have to be okay with conflict. These skills are in short supply, frankly. Human beings are drawn to comfort and safety. If you want to be a learner, you have to be able to lean into discomfort and be out on that hairy edge of taking risks. Those qualities are still important despite all that’s unknown about the future.
Bryant: Let’s shift the timeline to earlier in your career. What was a leadership lesson you learned from a particularly bad boss?
Fehr: Some of your worst leaders are your best teachers. You can see certain behaviors and decide that you don’t want to be seen that way. That’s helped me a lot. I treat people the way I want to be treated. Just because I’m sitting in a leadership chair doesn’t mean that there aren’t smarter people who work for me, so I really want to make sure I create environments where everybody feels like we’re on equal footing.
I saw people who did the opposite. Early in my career, I saw a leader of a very large organization come in with a lot of position power and arrogance. That immediately shuts down the organization, and I’ve seen that happen more than once. There’s just something about being authentic and humble that goes a long way as a leader.
Reimer: What career advice do you give to college students?
Fehr: You spend an awful lot of time at work, and it has to be meaningful to have a meaningful life. You have to gravitate toward things that you care about. You have to have a reason for doing what you are doing.
I also tell people to keep learning. It’s easy to say and harder to do. It’s a practice, and it’s something I say to my kids all the time. When you go to bed at night, what did you learn today? Do some reflection. You need to develop that active muscle to work on reflection and self-awareness.
This interview with Stephanie Fehr, Chief People Officer at UnitedHealthcare is part of our Strategic CHRO interview series with transformational HR leaders. Subscribe for future interviews.