Get the Edge

When HR is Seen as the Enemy

silviathecoach — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:01:34 +0000

What do you do when HR is seen as the Enemy? When, try as you might, the leaders of the organization want nothing to do with HR because all they want to do is put up barriers to getting things done? Many of us have been there, and sometimes if feels like doing the impossible. Although there are many variables, here are a few tips on what to do when you are stuck in that type of situation:

1. Spend time finding out what’s important to the leader(s).
2. Befriend thought-leaders and key influencers.
3. Determine what their ultimate goal is and negotiate from that position.
4. Put yourself in their shoes and in the shoes of an observer and “watch” an interaction between you and the leader in question.
5. Use any new insights you get from this to inform how you might influence the leader.

It isn’t a fun place to be, but it is possible to make strides towards influencing your leaders, it just takes a little creative work.

Life Happens

silviathecoach — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:55:00 +0000

Have you ever noticed that no matter how well things are going, life just happens? A few weeks back I was basking in the glow of my life – my marriage was strong as ever, I was connecting with friends and family and business was great (Yes, business is great, despite the economy). As I continued to stroll along through life, grateful for every day and opportunity that came my way, I received one of those dreaded phone calls ….

I was in the middle of a coaching session with a new client, helping him to get clarity about what he wanted to do in life. He had recently been laid off and was uncertain he wanted to keep on the same career path. About halfway through the coaching session, I could hear my home phone ringing. This in and of itself was not a problem, given that I work from home and handle my coaching mostly over the phone. Then my cell phone started ringing. “Hmmmmm”, I thought, “That’s odd, someone must really want to talk to me.” I was grateful my cell phone was in the other room, helping to minimize the distraction. So, I continued coaching my client, as we were making some amazing progress and I needed to stay focused. Then, a couple of minutes later, I received another call, and then another. I wondered if they had called my office line. As all my calls go straight into voicemail when I have a client, I glanced over at my phone, but the voicemail light was not on. Now I was distracted, but forced myself to focus, as I was almost done and would be able to attend to the pestering caller soon enough.

I got off the phone, pleased with the coaching call and happy that my client, for the first time in his 20 year career, was going to be pursuing something he truly had a passion for, rather than just doing a job he had landed in. As I stretched and started getting ready for my next client, my home phone range again. I leaped to get it and on the other end of the line was my brother-in-law. He was the one trying to get a hold of me and was the one with the task of sharing the “bad news” that my dad had a stroke. After asking all the key questions – “Is he lucid?”, “What hospital is he in?”, “Who’s with him?”, I got my stuff together, canceled my meetings and was off.

The good news is, my dad is doing quite well, and lucky for him, my mom noticed things were not right and immediately took him to the emergency room.

Although at that moment, when I first received the news, my world turned upside down, I did not let it derail me. I had my moments of feeling overwhelmed, but instead of wallowing, I stopped to think about what I needed to let go of in order to cope. I reached out to friends and colleagues and rearranged my schedule on a daily basis to accommodate spending time at the hospital. For two weeks I stretched my flexibility muscles, riding the wave of the moment, and I’m here to say, it is possible.

As layoffs continue to happen, as we are faced with more work to do with less resources, it is possible to ride this wave and survive. The key here is to allow yourself to ride the wave, to step back and let go of the things that aren’t helping, to ask others for support, and more importantly, to not lose sight of your goal, thus making it to the shore safely.

Obama & Leadership

silviathecoach — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:51:45 +0000

As the world tuned in to see Barack Obama become the 44th President of the United States, and marveled at this moment in history, I spent time reveling in his great leadership style.

As I see it, the President is well versed in the art of leadership. His consistent and transparent messages and ability to motivate and mobilize people is significant. Just listening to his inaugural address you can hear how he weaves his message in such a way – where messages that had once been off-putting, when delivered by the previous administration, became compelling and digestible.

There are many lessons that business leaders can take from President Obama. I for one will look more closely at his strategies for leading and organizing (national) change so that I can better help my leaders. Leaders everywhere are faced with needing to make changes during these difficult economic times, and it is time to start modeling his best practices wherever you can. Already there are books and articles cropping up that I will research and make reference to as appropriate. One I just heard of is Barack Inc., a book that discusses the President’s strategies for using social media to mobilize change and I hope that it is full of insights and lessons learned.

What will you take away from your leaders? How will you coach them to help them get through these times?

Leave comments, especially as they pertain to best practices, good articles, blogs, and books about Barack Obama and Leadership!

HR Heal Thyself

silviathecoach — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:54:17 +0000

Often times as HR practitioners, we fail to stop and ask for help because we are going 90 miles an hour. When we’re going that fast we feel that if we stop to even raise our hand we’ll lose all our momentum, or worse yet, need to actually spend time collecting our thoughts enough to hand something off to someone else.

If you are in this precarious position, I ask you – what’s really stopping you? What would you tell one of the leaders you support when they find themselves in a similar situation? In essence, we are telling leaders and employees “Do as I say, not as I do”. Now how often does that work in the corporate setting? Hmm? Be honest.

I recently started a consulting project where one of the HR Managers was in the predicament above and worst of all, she had a couple of people that were begging to help her out. My advice, take 1 hour to jot down all your projects and prioritize them based on deadlines.

As you do this, note which ones you can hand off either completely or partially. If there is someone to help you out, I would suggest having them with you as you prioritize and talk it out together. If you have no one to hand things off to, by the end of that hour you will be able to determine which things you can negotiate deadline extensions on or push back on.

Happy prioritizing.

New Year, New Outlook

silviathecoach — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:40:01 +0000

Although it may feel that this new year is bringing us a world of possibilities, it is still tinged with many of the hardships brought about from a floundering economy. This mixture of feelings seems to leave people in a whirl wind unable to do much more than their daily to dos. However, if you are centered and astute, you can use this time to really determine how you can contribute in a way that adds true value to your organization. You have the opportunity to think creatively in your approach and make the tough decisions that you’ve been wanting to make.

For the human resource function, this is the perfect opportunity to show the business how you can add value. To show them, that because you understand the business you can help them optimize the workforce in ways never explored. This is also a time to truly cut back and focus on the critical few, without allowing for scope creep. It’s the perfect opportunity to clean up processes in addition to cleaning up performance.

Have you taken the time to step back and see what’s possible and great about this new year? I’m sure as you start to think about it, you’ll think of many ways to impact your organization and your role for the better.

The Economy: a Blessing in Disguise

silviathecoach — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 01:47:15 +0000

I’d like to put a stake in the ground and say that this economy is a great blessing for many. How can I say that knowing people are losing their jobs and even their homes? By virtue of this economic crisis, people are stopping (sometimes by force) and assessing their lives. They are thinking about whether or not their life has meaning and whether or not they are in the right roles. During times of trouble people become much more refelctive and as HR professionals it’s a great time to coach others around this topic and even assess whether or not you are in the right role.

I have often said that the human resource function has a great mixture of people who landed there for a variety of reasons. Sometimes this is great, as people bring in different perspectives united by the desire to help a business through it’s people. Other times, people landed there because it seemed like a “good opportunity” at the time. You may have made your choice because you thought of yourself as a “people person” or because you thought HR was “less stressful” or dare I say “easier” than other jobs. Regardless of why you landed in human resources, this is a great time to determine if you are in the right place.

Questions to ask yourself or others about where they would like to be:

What would you do if you could do anything at all?
What would you do if money wasn’t an issue?
What would you do if it didn’t mean anything?
What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about failing?
What would you do if it didn’t matter if you were hugely successful?

If you are in the right career, other things to ask yourself are:

Is my current job aligned with my values?
Am I able to be authentic in the work I do?
Is this work environment ideal for me?
Does my current job bring me joy?
Am I contributing to the best of my abilities?

If your answers are such that the role or the career isn’t right for you, what are you willing to do to change your situation? You always have a choice in what you do and how you show up, if you think otherwise it is just a story you are telling yourself to prevent you from attaining all you dream. If that’s the case, ask yourself: What is the secondary gain from holding myself back? and answer this from the most authentic place possible and you might be surprised with what you find.

HR as Strategic Partner

silviathecoach — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:16:48 +0000

This short week, my post is of a new slidecast that I put together on what being a strategic partner means for HR. In this slidecast you will get learn the 4 areas that you must focus on to stay ahead of the game. Enjoy and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Building Trust in Tough Times

silviathecoach — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:45:19 +0000

I’ve been asked a number of times, “Silvia, how do I maintain trust with someone when we are in a difficult conversation about _________” fill in the blank with: performance, layoffs, budget, etc.

First, you need to ask yourself are you building trust or as we coaches call it, rapport, with this individual from the start? How do you know if you are in rapport? Think of a time when you have been in great rapport with someone. What made that time so easy?

Chances are you were doing the following:

Physically matching and mirroring their posture and movements
Matching the tone and tempo of their speech patterns
Using the same representational systems in dialogue (e.g visual, auditory or kinesthetic)

How does this translate to conversation in tough times? To start, you should make every effort to do all 3 things bulleted above. This doesn’t imply you should be mimicking them, if you are you may just confound the situation. The most important thing is to match the key words they are using, especially those that are of their representational system.

For example, if someone tells me:

“I’m feeling really bad about the layoffs”

My response might be:

“What specifically are you feeling bad about?”or “I’m feeling bad as well.”

The key is to match their experience verbally and non verbally. The more you do this, the more you will gain and keep trust with the individual. Know that it might be awkward at first and therefore I suggest you practice these techniques with someone you trust. The more you practice, the more natural it will be for you and for the recipient.

The Economy and HR

silviathecoach — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 01:26:56 +0000

As I continue doing research for the new HR development program I’m launching in January, I see a greater and greater need for strengthening key HR skills. As Helstein Moerk, EVP of HR for Nokia said in his interview with HR Magazine (August 2008), ” Understanding the business and the numbers gives you a lot of credibility. These things may not have been important years ago, but these days they are critical skills”. And, with the changing economic times, in addition to becoming more savvy in business, there will be a greater emphasis placed on strategic thinking and even more on change leadership.

In reading The Necessary Revolution, by Peter Senge, I am increasingly convinced, that it is the companies who think about the full impact (present and future) of the decisions they make that are the ones that will survive through this economic crisis. But, this isn’t just a mindset shift on how companies operate, it is a monolithic paradigm shift of how we fundamentally operate at a global level – economically, socially, environmentally and industrially.

What then is the impact on HR? As the day to day HR tasks continue to be outsourced, it will be the HR professionals that can stand side by side with their leaders and come up with a workforce strategy that will be viable in light of this shift that will get the edge and weather the storm. We are beyond the days of transactional HR, we are at key tipping point where strategic thinking is no longer a nice to have, but a must have; and the HR professionals that can be strategic will keep their jobs and be the ones recruited for the new emerging HR jobs. So ask yourself, Do I have what it takes? If not, how do I develop the skills that I need to help my company be successful through this time.

Future Challenges for HR

silviathecoach — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:47:31 +0000

I received the following link in today’s McKinsey Quarterly:

Interview with Eric Schmidt

As I watched through the various parts of this interview with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, I was struck by the ever changing landscape of our technological world, and with it the companies that create the technology. If we want to keep up and help our companies evolve, it is clear that the business models will need to evolve with them.

What does this mean as HR Professionals? It means not only understanding where we are going, but devising solutions (including transitions) that will help us get there. It also means we do not have the luxury of dragging our feet, and waiting for strategic planning to make big decisions. We need to be the first to role model adaptability and truly embrace change. The question is are you and your HR department up for the challenge?