Category: Critical Thinking

From Surviving to Thriving in HR: How to Pave Your Way to Leadership Buy-In

As HR professionals, we’ve heard the phrase “find your seat at the table” ad nauseam. To take it a step further, we’ve rallied not only to sit at the table with our organizations’ leadership, but to stand and model what we want to see – and rightly so (#HROnPurpose shout-out)! But for many HR team members, especially those on both ends of the spectrum in departments of one or the more oversaturated teams, often HR is left out of the collaborative party altogether. Not only do we not know that a change or update is about to occur, but we didn’t know that a roundtable discussion happened in the first place. So, what now? How do you get to the table when you aren’t even asked to be in the room? How do you support a united front if other members of your company’s leadership team don’t share the information or access you need to succeed and drive results? What if it isn’t intentional, but stems from a lack of organizational cohesion? & finally, how can you fix something that nobody else thinks is broken, or trusts you to “fix?”

It isn’t easy, and it requires patience. But in many cases, it can be done if you take a step back, temper your ego, identify your allies, and assess the situation. If this is new territory for you, or if you’re going through it now, you can start with the below!

When you need to earn trust and show your value add:

  • First, identify the true problems, not just the symptoms. If we’re honest with ourselves, HR has a reputation for not being business-savvy. Whether it’s true or not, we’re seen as policy pushers, and haven’t always been as analytical or business-driven as we are today. To bust past stereotypes and to show your skills to your current leaders, start with a fresh perspective. Take a few days or weeks, depending on the scenario, to see where the company’s pain points are actually coming from. Is it hard to access information due to system or software restrictions? Are the gaps limited to a specific department, or departments, not sharing information? Are you in the middle of a cultural shift and unable to navigate the winds of change? Whatever is going on, you can’t fix anything until you have your problem statement, so take some time to observe and chat with trusted stakeholders to understand 2-3 opportunities you really need to address, and why you need to address them.
  • Next, figure out what your solutions look like. Assuming you’ve pinpointed a few key areas for improvement, pretend the status quo and your current limitations don’t exist. If you could wave a magic wand and emerge in a productive, engaging environment where you’re able to thrive, what would that look like in these key areas? Is it simply attending a weekly meeting or getting copied into emails a few days before fresh content goes to constituents? Is it a more elaborate removal of silos across teams? Can you create a collaborative communication plan and flow for future updates or program implementations? Whatever it is, figure out what success looks like, why you don’t have it, and work backwards from there to identify at least 2 proposed “fixes” for every challenge. Jot them down into crisp notes or a couple of slides, as these will become the basis for a proposal you can share with the right people, at the right time. (The rationale behind more than 1 “fix” and this proposal will be elaborated upon below!)
  • Run your initial thoughts by a trusted advisor. Whether it’s an external mentor or your go-to within your company, it never hurts to have an extra set of eyes and ears on your proposed challenges and solutions. Can they help you? Can they provide more information or networking know-how that will eliminate or support some of your ideas? Take some time to hear from them, gain valuable context, and adjust your proposal as necessary.
  • Polish your thoughts into a proposal to share with your leadership team. Rule of thumb when presenting to people with limited time and a lot on their plates: keep it crisp and relevant to the bigger picture. Pop your concerns and solutions into a few slides or an executive summary. Stick to a synopsis of the challenges and their cost/people/morale/efficiency impact, varying ways they can be resolved, the  potential positive impact of their resolution, and recommended next steps + collaborators. This illustrates thoughtfulness in your problem-solving and connects the dots for them, which removes the burden that they have to think through “your” problem for you.
  • Follow through with what you say you’re going to do, and track the results. Your results should speak for themselves, and in healthy environments, or environments that are on their way to a healthier state, data and transparency earn trust among leaders. Moving forward, you should find yourself better equipped to strategically engage in your role, and to collaborate with leadership and others in your organization.

“. . .Sure,” you say. “The above is all well and good if the people we partner with are pragmatic and open to change. What if my office just isn’t ready?”

Here’s where it can get tricky, but it’s still salveageable – for you, at least.

  • If you don’t have another HR pro or leader to lean on, seek external support. You can do this through professional organizations like SHRM, mentors or previous managers and leaders from your past, and even HRNet and LinkedIn connections, where countless, passionate experts volunteer their time to provide on-the-fly guidance and ideas to those who seek it. Your growth doesn’t ALL have to come from within your own organization; in fact, it’s beneficial to shake it up!
  • Identify your allies. Should HR be “friends” with non-HR coworkers? The short answer is: yes. Just be selective. You are a person and can seek sanity and solace with other people, as long as you don’t violate your responsibilities of course. If you find a peer or person willing to support you, hear you out, and help you remove obstacles, it’s more than OK to let them in!
  • Pick your battles. The important stuff involves integrity, our people, and our business. When you’re trying to build trust, it’s important not to “culture shock” everyone by unleashing your ideas like a firehose. Sit back, observe what small steps will make the largest impact for the most people, and start there. It can start to give you motivation and confidence as you cultivate relationships. Those little wins are important!
  • Assess what you’re up against and whether or not it’s a fit for you. If you reflect and you find you’re consistently people and business-driven, and are simultaneously going nowhere despite your most logical and earnest efforts over appropriate lengths of time, ask yourself, “Do I want to be here?” An environment that wants nothing to do with HR, or intentionally disregards any functional department, could be a symptom of toxicity issues that are out of your hands. Organizations are made of people, and people – as we all know – can’t change unless they really want to. Don’t forget that you can thrive in or out of your current organization, and if you need help updating your resume, many of us are here for you! Myself, @HRJazzy, and @_strclaire will be happy to start you off on the right foot, for starters 🙂

Obviously the scenarios and environments are endless, and there are many more solutions than what were summarized above! On that note, what are your thoughts, fellow #HR pros and #HRTribe? How have you earned trust and your place among leadership, if you weren’t in a leadership position? What worked, what crashed and burned? When did you decide it was time to leave, if it got to that point?

Until next time, stay true to yourself and you can’t go wrong! Can’t wait to hear from you!

Cultivating Dream Teams of Confident Decision-Makers: An Exercise in Trust

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There’s no secret agenda: in an ever-changing economy, we all want to scale up and improve capabilities, and promote joint accountability, across our organizations. We need ourselves, our own HR teams, leaders, and employees to glide our companies through global disruptions and beyond, but time and again we see confidence slip away, and analysis paralysis take over in the face of transition. Why does this keep happening, and why does it seem to grow more prevalent? There isn’t an easy or a one-size-fits-all answer to this, but we can dive into two common causes that we can swiftly and positively impact.

First, we have a web of pooled knowledge at our fingertips. Our laptops, tablets, and phones bring endless answers to our questions at any moment. When faced with too many options and a lack of hands-on experience, many fear they’ll never know which solution is the “right” one for their situation, and they tend to lock up or slip back into the status quo.  

Next, we have companies that wobble at tipping points with policies and processes that haven’t caught up with the modern workforce and/or their rapid growth. Established companies also tend to be ripe with lingering, inherent “right” and “wrong” ways to handle different scenarios. Existing leaders who are too engrossed in the culture sometimes can’t see the need or path for change, and new leaders and employees are focused on learning the ropes or trying to climb the ladder. It’s easier and more palatable to put out the fires than to push the norms, so again, long-term problem-solving takes a back seat. 

Now, why is this particularly relevant to the HR field? To start, whether our employees freeze and reach out to us for proactive guidance or for reactive course correction, HR remains in the crosshairs of cultural change and strategic decision-making. This fly-by-the-seat approach is not sustainable, and we all know this. But as HR, how can we be our peers’ trusted advisors, instead of their band-aids and policy pushers after the problems have already emerged? How can we move away from “right” and “wrong,” to foster a company of people who are comfortable with change, on-the-spot decisions, and scale without our guidance every step of the way? It’s a long journey, but we can start by implementing 3 practices. Hint: each of them are related to trust!

  • When someone approaches you for advice, ask them how they think they should handle the situation before you offer your input. This is crucial because when a person comes to us to guide them through a simple question or a crisis, our urge to manage kicks in. More often than not, we want to listen to the scenario, and share our view on how they can address it effectively. It can be instantly gratifying and eliminate stress for both parties, especially when it comes to the policy or process-related scenarios we face in HR each day, where methods are important. The problem with this quick fix is that our views were formed over time and are based on our experiences, and our experiences – both the great and the painful – are what helped us grow. If we tell a leader, manager, or otherwise how we’d handle their plight, we not only become their crutch, but we hinder them from thinking through the challenge themselves. To help them build confidence and capabilities moving forward, be their trusted advisor and allow them to start to form that same trust within themselves: hear them out, support their thought process, and then coach them along as needed so they arrive at an appropriate solution on their own. 
  • Encourage people to accomplish mutual goals as they see fit. From collaborating with another team to revamp an operational process, or partnering with your company’s leaders on a crucial employee program, it’s tempting to micromanage how and when ideas we’re passionate about are met. It can feel like the success of the team and initiative reflect on us and our department: why would we just let it go and hope for the best? Well, there are actually two good reasons to do just that: 1) To build trust in and out of HR. Trust is a give and take, and if we show another person or their team that we trust their expertise to accomplish what they set out to do, it’ll boost their confidence and esteem for us, as well. They’ll return that trust to us in this exercise and, likely, going forward; and 2) To encourage creativity and diverse perspectives throughout our organizations. Periods of ambiguity paired with a sense of mutual purpose across teams are great times to promote innovative and thoughtful solutions to company challenges. So next time, when the situation permits, why not set the goals together and let everyone soar toward the finish line as they want? More often than not, we’ll be pleasantly surprised by some new ideas along the way! & how great does it feel to celebrate a success everyone has a stake in?
  • Embrace failures as a chance to improve. Some of us follow the above tips more often than not! We stay optimistic, we trust our leaders and team members, and we wait for fresh ideas, collaborative efforts, and trust to come right back to us in abundance! & then we are flicked in the face by the harsh reality that will never leave us: the “H” in “HR!” Our interactions humbly remind us we are all just human beings, working with other human beings.  We all make mistakes and we all misstep for too many reasons to count, excuse, or deny in one swoop. When we’re let down in a big or small way, especially with our livelihoods or professional brand on the line, it’s easy to want to finger point, send a scathing email, remove initiatives from someone’s plate, the list goes on. Not only is this not recommended from a professionalism and relationship-building standpoint, but it will also do no good for any of us long-term. Dwelling on the failures of someone else or ourselves once the moment has passed only has toxic effects. It stifles innovation, lowers individual and group confidence, and allows fear of future failures to permeate. Who feels encouraged to critically think or ideate when they are scared of repercussions to come? Nobody. They will seek “approved” answers from other people and departments to avoid accountability, and we, our people, and our companies will suffer as we slip back into “the way we’ve always done it.” Instead of sinking too deep in the face of our next failure, let’s seek to elevate! Elevate others, ourselves, and the situation. Proactively set aside time to focus on what we learned, where we went wrong, and how we can all work together to avoid this happening again moving forward. & then do just that: move forward together.

If none of the above resonated with you, that’s OK! If you’d like, just remember this key takeaway and address it however you want: the more we model trust in others, the more they learn to trust themselves, their decisions, and eventually, their peers. It enables trust to flow throughout an entire organization. (Sound absurd? Picture a company with a distrustful culture. How do you think they got there? Why can’t the opposite work, too?) Putting the effort into building a climate of trust will allow for risk-taking and innovation, and will cultivate stronger decision-making skills and collaborative efforts across all teams and departments. It takes time, but it will do more good than harm, and really, we have nothing to lose! 

Will these strategies solve all of our workforce challenges in one get-go? Of course not. Can they help us start to chip away at it, step-by-step, if we all actively do our part to model what we want to see? I’m a firm believer!

What about you? I’d love to hear each of your ideas, too. How do you increase the confidence in your peers and collaborative partners who rely on you? What has worked? What hasn’t? Share away, #HRTribe! & Happy Sunday, in the meantime!