The Calmest Person in Your Company Should Be Running HR

At Same Page, we have a saying that keeps threatening to become an official core value: Practice contagious calm. It’s the idea that real leadership isn’t just about keeping your own head straight—it’s about making sure everyone else doesn’t lose theirs.

And no role needs this more than HR.

HR is where the messiest, most emotionally charged problems in your company land. Terminations. Conflict. Bad hires. Harassment. When things threaten to explode, HR is often the first call.

Yet so many companies put people in charge of HR who either feed off the mess and amplify the drama, or try to control it with suffocating rules.

The person running HR should be the calmest person in your company. They should walk into a room and immediately lower the temperature. They should make people feel they're in capable hands—even if everything else is on fire. If your HR leader isn’t like that, you have the wrong person in the role.

Chaos Magnets vs. Chaos Dampeners

Companies tend to make two mistakes with HR:

They put the nicest person in charge—someone friendly, warm, and endlessly accommodating. A “people person”. But being endlessly accommodating just teaches people they can get away with anything. Before long, the team loses trust in HR’s ability to lead.

Or they put the rule enforcer in charge—someone who thrives on compliance, policy, and enforcement. They believe HR is a legal shield, and that bureaucracy will protect the company from lawsuits. But people don’t trust enforcers, either. And because they assume the system is stacked against them, they don't come to HR until it's too late.

Both approaches turn HR into chaos magnets, just through opposite paths. The overly nice HR person creates chaos through permissiveness—when there are no real boundaries, problems multiply. The enforcer creates chaos through rigidity—when people fear bringing up issues, small problems grow in the dark until they're unmanageable. In both cases, the result is the same: preventable problems become full-blown crises.

Great HR professionals absorb chaos and diffuse it, like a heat sink. While others might amplify workplace friction, they systematically draw out the heat and restore equilibrium. They project a grounded, unshakable confidence—the kind that maintains stability when problems arise.

What “Contagious Calm” Looks Like

The right person for HR is calm in a useful way. Not passive. Not indifferent. Not detached.

Contagious calm in an HR pro looks like this:

They think clearly under pressure. Some HR issues carry serious legal and financial stakes. These are "red alert" situations—and the best HR leaders actually get calmer and more focused as the stakes rise. Whether they're executing a termination, investigating a claim, or sending an employment agreement, their steadiness increases in proportion to the gravity of the moment. You need someone who can see through the noise and make level-headed decisions.

They don’t get pulled into drama. Business can be messy. Office politics are inevitable. (And let's be honest—when there's juicy workplace drama unfolding, it's incredibly tempting to get pulled in.) But great HR leaders don’t feed the chaos. They don’t pick sides or escalate tensions. And while they treat people with empathy, they stay focused on resolving workplace issues, not counseling personal problems.

They don’t make decisions out of fear. When HR operates from fear, you see it everywhere: overly restrictive handbooks, knee-jerk responses to isolated incidents, the way small problems trigger massive policy changes. Fear makes HR play defense when they should be playing offense. A calm HR leader operates from principles, not panic.

They create stability, even in uncertainty. People look to HR for a sense of safety—whether it's in hiring, firing, conflict resolution, or career development. A steady hand in HR doesn't just process these moments efficiently, they create psychological safety throughout the employee lifecycle. They reassure everyone that even when things are hard, the company is handling it with integrity.

HR Sets the Tone

Your business will go through rough patches. There will be firings, layoffs, conflicts, and existential moments where it feels like everything is on the line. And in those moments, people will look to HR for guidance. If HR is rattled, everyone will be rattled.

If, on the other hand, HR exudes confidence and calmness, that tone will ripple across the company. People will trust that decisions are being made thoughtfully. They’ll believe in the process. They’ll stay engaged, even when things get tough.

That's why the calmest person in your company should be running HR. That way, you're not just getting someone who can handle chaos—you're getting someone who prevents it.