Embrace your inner weird
Eugenio Pirri: We're never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy
I’m just going to throw it out there: in order to be a successful HR director you have to be more than just a little bit crazy.
There, I’ve said it.
HR directors have to be emotional
Emotion and the workplace. Like religion and politics, the twain should never meet, should they? But they do.
The ivory tower dwelling leaders with a purely profit driven mind-set will see employees bringing their emotions into the workplace as ‘unprofessional’ or weak.
But in linking employee engagement to sustainable productivity, it’s vital to understand why some employees are engaged and productive and others are less so.
People are more than numbers and figures on a spreadsheet. They are complicated. The growing trend of work/life integration, where people invest so much of their time, energy and thought into their work, means that emotion will occasionally spill out.
It takes an empathetic and understanding people champion to understand what issues lead to loss of productivity in order to rectify them. If an employee cries at his desk, that doesn’t make him incapable. It exposes a problem that needs to be addressed with sensitivity.
An emotionally intelligent HR director is more likely to be able to manage these challenges.
Emotional intelligence equates to a ‘soft skill’ missing from the job descriptions of many HRDs. This type of emotion is not ‘unprofessional’ but a core strategic imperative in directing the intangible and unpredictable feelings of the workforce. It renders HR directors not over-emotional – but effective.
When outlining workplace strengths, rather than ‘emotion’ Gallup describes people with a sense of ‘harmony’ as those who will enhance collaboration. This is a key facet of HR.
People with strong harmony talents believe little can be gained from conflict and friction, so they seek to hold these to a minimum. Those with strong harmony see what people have in common, even during conflict. They try to steer others away from confrontation and toward reconciliation.
HR pros must know the time to be assertive and the time to bring reconciliation.
HR directors have to be able to embrace their inner psychopath
At the other end of the emotional spectrum, according to Forbes at least, some of the world’s best leaders are psychopaths.
Forbes explains this as follows: “The psychopathic personality involves egocentric, grandiose behavior, completely lacking empathy and conscience. Psychopaths may be charismatic, charming and adept at manipulating one-on-one interactions.
“Unfortunately, certain of these psychopathic qualities – in particular charm, charisma, grandiosity (which can be mistaken for vision or confidence) – are also qualities that can help one get ahead in business.”
If this is to be believed – along with the stat that 3% of CEOs are in fact psychopaths – then HR directors wishing to have the ear of the CEO need to masquerade as the charming, non-empathetic, nonthreatening colleague with whom they like to be surrounded.
These are not the people centric CEOs we aspire to work for. But they do walk among us, and we have to interact with and influence other business leaders on their level.
Impersonal psychopaths need figures and proof of the success of HR strategy and, to impress these leaders, HRDs must be able to prove their worth in a tangible sense and show that the results of talent, engagement and other HR strategies directly impact the bottom line.
(And a word of warning: keep an eye on the talent and succession pipelines in your business for when the time comes to position future leaders in role. Make sure these high potentials understand the value of people early in their career journey.)
HR directors have to be creative
Disruptive, innovative HR strategies – those that will shake up businesses and position them in a sustainable growth trajectory – come from a mixture of common sense and ‘uncommon’ sense.
Innovation by its very definition brings together ideas that no one has thought of before, so be prepared to come up with suggestions that will raise more than a few eyebrows in your business. And have the confidence (and background research) in your plan to push forward with it.
This creativity, married with a healthy dose of pragmatism, is the winning combination to truly innovative HR practices.
HR directors have to be ‘a bit up and down’
Emotional and soft yet a strategic hardliner; creative yet pragmatic; managing the books and the board, yet raising the bar with surprising ideas.
One could argue the HR director of the 21st century has to be more than a bit ‘up and down’, switching mindsets, empathising with and influencing every facet of the business where people operate.
I don’t mean HR pros have to be crazy in the sense of ‘you’d have to be insane to take up the mantle of HR director’. I mean crazy in the sense that the more ‘mentally interesting’ among us are the ones that will thrive in this role.
In another sense, HR directors have to act as therapists to the rest of the organisation – so they also have to understand the ‘mentally interesting’ traits that make it tick.
My advice: celebrate and embrace the things that make you and your role ‘weird’. Because essentially these authentic qualities are what will differentiate you from the crowd when the time comes to prove your worth.
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