Ernest Marshall, Jr., is not one to panic.
“I don’t have a lot of my anxiety in my system,” says Marshall, executive vice president and CHRO of global power management company Eaton. The commitment to calm has been critical for a career in HR, a profession that is increasingly getting more “chaotic,” he says, as people leaders are tasked with caring for employees in a landscape where jobs, work and the global factors influencing them are being redefined seemingly daily.
Marshall, one of the recently inducted National Academy of Human Resources Fellows, says his even-keeled approach to leadership was built in part by early-career circumstances.
He spent more than 20 years with GE, including as vice president of HR for nearly five years, before joining Eaton in 2018. Marshall, who holds a law degree and an MBA in marketing and HR from Indiana University Bloomington, says his early foray into HR included significant involvement in national labor negotiations, alongside critical work on integrations and acquisitions.
Those experiences provided the insight that “any problem can be figured out,” knowledge that proved pivotal as he navigated through global crises like Sept. 11, the 2003 SARS epidemic, the Great Recession and, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic.
Marshall says his reputation as “calm at the helm, straightforward and honest” has helped him develop the key relationships needed to drive HR progress throughout his career.
“I have very high standards and am strategic in terms of how I think about organizations and issues,” he says. “That helps me work with just about anybody—and be influential in those relationships to move the agenda forward.”
Those capabilities will be central to HR in the coming years, Marshall says, as the “strategic issues facing HR are going to be massive”—from upticks in labor activity to employee activism and the rise of AI use. In addition to leading with calm and cultivating strategic relationships, Marshall says, HR will need to ensure both employees and leaders are keyed into decision-making processes.
The accelerated pace of HR transformation requires decisions that are quick but deliberate.
“In our haste to be fast and decisive, we can’t forget to bring our people with us—to help them understand who we are, what we’re doing for the greater good of the organization,” he says. “Sometimes, you have to go slow to move fast.”
Defining the leading edge of HR excellence
For him, that isn’t always second nature, he says.
“Early in life, I had to seize every opportunity quickly because I didn’t have as many as others; that was just the nature of how I grew up. It was all about, if you see something, go do it. Be deliberate,” he says.
That drive helped propel him into the top levels of leadership, Marshall says. It was a journey that was aided by a career at GE during which he was encouraged to “set a high performance bar”—individually and collectively.
“I worked with incredibly smart people, who are very innovative and in a company that mandated you push the boundaries of your thinking,” he says. “By doing so, you enrich the collective intellect of the whole organization. That always stuck with me—to push for excellence for myself, my teams, the business.”
That has carried through to his work at Eaton, which employs more than 100,000 people worldwide.
He often talks to his team about HR excellence—what it means today, how to be on the leading edge—and welcomes “spirited debate.”
“It’s about not just accepting the status quo—to move our organizations forward and our HR teams forward, we have to continually every year set a bar that’s higher than we think we can reach,” he says. “We may land somewhere near it, but everyone gets better that way.”
That mentality of lifting up the entire HR function, Marshall says, is core to how he defines exemplary HR leadership.
Marshall strives to be a leader whose teams pursue HR and organizational goals for the good of themselves, their colleagues and the company.
“I don’t ever want to be in a position where I feel like the people on my team are getting work done just to be compliant,” he says. “I want people to get the work done that’s fulfilling for them, to be challenged, to be rewarded for great work. That’s the secret sauce to great leadership.”
It’s a recipe validated by NAHR’s inclusion of Eaton as a Fellow.
Last month’s gala induction, he says, was a highlight of his career.
“It touched my heart in an immeasurable way, especially to have my family there and colleagues, our new CEO and great friends who are peers,” Marshall says. “It’s one of those things that will hit me at some later point when I finally catch my breath. The enormity of that moment was something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.”
Related: Learn more from the 2024 Fellows of the National Academy of Human Resources.
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