SAN DIEGO — Remember their birthdays.
President Joe Biden told a packed room of human resources professionals on the final day of SHRM 2025 that being a great leader means getting to know workers and colleagues.
“You know better than anyone, the strength of a team comes down to the individual people on that team, whether they feel valued, whether they feel supported,” said Biden, who quipped that being the country’s chief executive is essentially being the ultimate chief people officer.
He urged the HR leaders in attendance to make time for human connections and to lead by example.
“Too often we try to separate people into categories: They’re work, or they’re family. We say it's business; it's not personal,” Biden said. “Real leadership is all about getting personal… It's about connecting. It means having empathy.”
It means remembering their birthdays, he said.
An unwritten rule during his time in office was that any member of his family would be put through immediately when they called — unless they specified that it wasn’t important.
On the day of an important vote in Congress that he couldn’t miss, Biden took the train back home to Delaware, watched his daughter blow out candles on the platform for her eighth birthday and jumped back on a train southbound to the nation’s capitol.
“We tell ourselves, ‘I have to be at that meeting, have to get that report done. I have to take that trip.’ Then, we tell ourselves, ‘My wife will understand, my kids will understand. We can make it up later,’” Biden said. “But deep down, we know we're killing ourselves. It does matter for moments you'll never get back. You might never know how much it mattered to your loved one.”
Efforts like that, or commuting two hours home every day showed his staff that he wanted them to put their life, their family first, he said.
After becoming vice president, Biden sent a memo to his team that said: “I do not want you to miss important family obligations for work. These include, but are not limited to birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, religious ceremonies, graduations, times of need, such as illness and loss. This is very important to me. In fact, I'll go so far as I say, ‘If I find out you are working with me while missing an important family responsibility, it will disappoint me greatly.’”
Workers will give their all, he said, when they know you care not just about them but about their families, too.
