Stop Chasing a Seat at the Table: Building Strategic Influence as a Culture, EVP or Talent Professional

I wince a bit when I hear culture, EVP and Talent professionals say we need "a seat at the table." Without wanting to offend, I think it's become shorthand for feeling undervalued, unheard, or strategically marginalised.

I get the frustration. But if your organisation has a Chief People Officer (or equivalent), you already have a seat at the table. It's just not yours personally, and that's entirely fine.

The real issue isn't about access. It's about influence.

I'm not sure what it is. Perhaps there's this persistent belief that strategic impact requires physical presence in leadership meetings. It doesn't. Your CPO is there representing people matters, including employee experience. That's their job.

What you need isn't proximity to the CEO. You need your CPO to walk into those meetings armed with compelling evidence about what you're doing and why it matters.

That's a fundamentally different challenge.

When I hear culture, EVP and talent practitioners say they want "a seat at the table," I think they're usually expressing one of three frustrations:

1. Leadership doesn't understand our work.

2. Our initiatives aren't taken seriously.

3. We're not consulted on decisions that affect the employee experience.

All valid. But the solution isn't getting yourself invited to more meetings. It's making your work so clearly valuable that it becomes central to strategic conversations whether you're in the room or not.

Your CPO needs you to deliver:

Data they can use. Not vanity metrics ("we had 500 people at the town hall!" / "Our career site got a million visits!" / Our socials got a gazillion impressions!) but genuine insight into what's shifting sentiment, retention, or attraction. Link your EVP work to business outcomes leadership cares about.

Clear recommendations. Don't just present problems. Come with options, trade-offs, and a perspective on what you'd do if the decision were yours. Make it easy for them to champion your work.

Commercial awareness. Understand the business context your CPO is operating in. What's keeping the CFO awake? What's the growth strategy? How does employee experience enable or hinder those priorities?

Influence isn't about being in the room sat around a table. It's about shaping what happens in the room before you get there and after everyone leaves.

Some of the most strategically influential people I've worked aren't always the ones attended leadership meetings. But their analysis, insights, and recommendations were constantly referenced in those meetings because they'd made themselves indispensable.

They built credibility through:

- Consistently delivering what they promised.

- Speaking the language of business impact - culturally, operationally and financially.

- Understanding strategic priorities and connecting their work to them.

- Being honest about what was and wasn't working.

Stop lobbying for meeting invitations. Start building the evidence base that makes your work impossible to ignore. Aim for impact over credit - Quality work over ego.

Invest time in understanding what your CPO is trying to achieve and how you can support that. Ask them directly: "What would make your life easier? What evidence or insight would be most valuable?" Make your reporting so clear and business-focused that your CPO naturally references it in strategic discussions.

That's how you influence strategy. Not by sitting at a table, but by becoming valuable enough that leadership seeks your input for when they're there themselves.