In the latest edition of the CHRO Association’s Chair’s Forum series, Association Chair Tim Richmond and CEO Tim Bartl sat down with Monique Herena, Chief Colleague Experience Officer, American Express Company, for a discussion on establishing values-based leadership across the organization and developing a pipeline of leaders for the next generation.
“Trust, integrity, and agitation for change:” Ms. Herena discussed her own approach to leadership, which includes a combination of coming from the heart to establish relationships built on trust and acting as an “agitator” for change.
- “You need leaders at every level of the organization agitating for change and challenging the status quo to drive the business forward," said Ms. Herena.
- Ms. Herena further emphasized the importance of providing an environment that encourages bold ideas while having a framework and/or guideposts that anchors people in times of constant change. She noted that American Express has led through many phases of change and continued to innovate and thrive for 175 years.
- She noted that providing a great colleague (employee) experience is an important aspect of the American Express company culture, and core to the company’s growth and success.
- The focus on colleague and customer experience remains a constant during times of change and American Express took a long-term view through the COVID-19 pandemic, and remained grounded in its core “Blue Box Values”, and continued to invest in colleagues and customers despite the financial uncertainty at the time, which they believe led to a strong recovery coming out of the pandemic.
Creating leadership accountability: American Express ties enterprise performance to leadership accountability to ensure all senior leaders are working together with shared responsibility. Reviews focus on both the “what” and the “how” of performance.
- The company has one enterprise performance rating for senior management (in addition to individual leadership ratings) to drive collective accountability.
- “Everyone has to be collaborative and demonstrate an enterprise-first mindset, we have a set of ten leadership behaviors that we hold ourselves to,” said Ms. Herena. “This allows us to make investment decisions and tradeoffs across the entire portfolio.”
Constant focus on developing a leadership pipeline: American Express’s senior leadership team meets six times a year to discuss its top 150 leaders to ensure the company is always preparing the next generation of leaders.
- The leadership review cascades from there: the team also discusses the pipeline of talent beyond the initial group of 150 and leverages data to assess potential leadership capabilities far deeper in the organization.
- Ms. Herena and the American Express Chairman and CEO, Steve Squeri, are also in constant conversations with the Board of Directors about the leadership pipeline and skills needed for the future.
- “We spend way more time on business strategy, culture, and talent than we have before as a senior leadership team. For us, it is a critical business process, and it is key to sustaining our growth,” said Ms. Herena. “We are focused on long-term growth and leading through change together as a team.”
Our Chair’s Forum Series will continue in Q2 2026! More details are coming soon.
