Be Visionary, Be Visible, Be Vocal & Add Value
10 Strategies for Getting a Seat at the Leadership Table By Dr. Shirley Davis, SPHR As the global workforce becomes more complex and competitive, the demand for HR professionals to be strategic and business-focused is no longer an option. It is a necessity. By doing so, HR professionals are not only providing leadership and strategic guidance, but they are also positioning themselves for a seat at the leadership table that so many covet. However, in order to achieve that coveted seat, I believe that you must be a visionary,be visible,be vocal, and you must add value(what I’ve coined as my 4 V’s to Career Success). With that in mind, I have outlined a set of strategies to help HR professionals and other business leaders get that seat at the table with senior leadership. Earn it. Don’t just expect to get invited. This first strategy is earning that seat. HR professionals, diversity and inclusion practitioners, and other business leaders have to be able to show worth and value. We cannot assume that we should get the seat just because we have a senior title or position. We have to drive results, build trust, demonstrate credibility and high levels of competence, and show that the business really should not make a decision without HR’s participation. At the core, the HR professional is responsible for ensuring that the organization has the right talent in the right areas, doing the right kind of work that’s going in the right direction. Remember that people don’t leave organizations; they leave bad leaders. Know your organization’s business. Human Resources is considered the “people side of the business” but that doesn’t diminish the fact that it is still a business-within-a-business. And that meansthat HR must spend time outside of the HR department as often as possible getting to know the business. It’s important to learn about the key areas of the business such as Communications, Finance, Sales, Operations, Production, Quality, Supply Chain and others. Understand the construct, the infrastructure and what the business objectives of each division are. Understand what the employees do and how they get their work done. In addition to knowing what’s going on in different divisions, learn about the customers, competitors, and marketplace trends that have an impact on your organization. All these things will inform how you build your HR strategy and how you can make valuable contributions to enabling the business’ success. Know your leaders. Meet and build relationships with the organization’s leaders —at all levels. Spend time with them; find out what’s important to them. Find out how they perceive you as an HR leader, how they perceive the role of HR and the work that you do. Discover their sweet spots and their pain points, meaning, what are they most passionate about, what’s keeping them up at night, and where are some of their business gaps and weaknesses. Also explore where are they most successful and why. Learn where you can make offers to assist in closing their gaps and solving their business challenges. Once they see you as invested in their business, and as a strategic partner, coach and advocate, they then will invite you to the table. Be/become a subject-matter expert. As HR or diversity and inclusion professionals, we must be knowledgeable and serve as trusted advisers and thought leaders to the other leaders in the business. Leaders — at all levels and in all business units and divisions — have a responsibility for some HR functions in the organization. As HR professionals, we have to help leaders hire great talent; coach, develop and manage performance; build great teams; create inclusive, respectful work environments; and adhere to state and federal laws. Just as other leaders in the company are experts in their areas of the business and know how to drive operational goals, HR professionals must demonstrate their expertise and drive HR results in the operation. Sometimes that means not always speaking in HR terminology. We must learn to speak the language of business such as understanding customer service terminology, knowing the products and services, understanding the metrics, and so on. Let that knowledge inform how you may need to shift, adjust or enhance your approach, so that your organization is able to be proactive in the marketplace. Lastly, understand what the future looks like for your business and industry and be able to offer solutions in a proactive versus reactive way. Be a partner/collaborator across the organization. Many organizations have transitioned their HR professionals into HR Business Partner (HRBP) roles in which they are located and embedded into the business units both physically and functionally. It allows for better collaboration among the business leaders and HR; it enables HR to experience firsthand how the business operates on a daily basis; and it provides opportunities where human resources can offer more integrated solutions. By doing this, the strategic business partner model is showing great results and successes for the organization. For those HR departments that have not moved to this model, it’s still critical for HR to partner and collaborate across the organization and to be viewed by leaders as accessible and invested in their business units. At the same time, employees appreciate seeing HR as a visible entity understand the unique complexities and challenges that they face each day. Additionally, they expect that HR will be their advocates and champions and to solve these challenges and to make the work environment more inclusive, respectful, and a great place to work. Our profession has gotten a bad rap for being too much in the weeds, too tactical and administrative—focusing on putting out fires, being hall monitors, completing stacks of paperwork, and organizing company picnics and holiday parties and not having time to be strategic. Demonstrate strong leadership skills. People want to follow leaders who have a vision, are transformational, are problem-solvers, are creative, are great coaches and mentors, and have integrity and conviction for what they do. Moreover, executives want to know how you get results and how you work with people at all levels.
Leaving SHRM & a Great Legacy-Launching a Full Time Venture
June 2014 Newsletter Please click on the link below to download/read the June 2014 The Success Doctor’s Digest. Dr. Shirley Davis outlines that she is leaving SHRM and Launching her own Full-Time Venture. { Success Doctor Blog & Newsletter }
Reassess Your Personal Vision & Purpose
The past few years have been wrought with the effects of a lingering recession: double digit unemployment, rising home foreclosures, overwhelming debt, and mental and emotional setbacks. Each year we engage in the age-old tradition of setting New Year’s Eve resolutions such as losing weight, working out, eating healthier, finding a new job, getting more organized, and spending more quality time with close family and friends. Unfortunately, according to research, by Valentine’s Day nearly 50% of those resolutions are broken and by the end of April nearly 90% of them are abandoned. Consider your resolutions now…..how many of them have you kept? Are you on track to accomplish what you set out to do in January? As a Success Coach, I advise clients that instead of creating New Year’s resolutions that are likely to be broken, to develop a Life Plan for Success and use each year as a check in for progress made and new actions to take. In this blog I share a few excerpts from my newly released audio book entitled, “Reinvent Yourself: Strategies for Achieving Success in Your Personal Life, Career, Relationships, and Finances.” Now that nearly half of this year is already behind us, I hope that you will take the time to do a mid year check in and consider how well you’re doing against the goals you’ve set towards accomplishing your Life Plan. The first step is to understand your WHY. REASSESS YOUR PERSONAL VISION AND PURPOSE One of the most basic questions in life to ask: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? When you start answering these questions, you’ll bring new meaning to every aspect of your life, to your career, to your relationships, and to your responses to life’s challenges. Too many people go through life frustrated because they have no idea what they want to become or why they were created. They spend years trying to find their purpose, yet so few of them are living a fulfilled and meaningful life. I’ve said this for many years, “many people die at age 30 but they don’t get buried until age 75.” Why? Because they don’t have meaning, significance, or a clear vision for their life. They go through life wandering and seeking direction, and by the time they get older, they’ve got more regrets then they have achievements. It’s been said that the poorest man in the world is the man without a dream or vision; the most frustrated man in the world is the man with the dream/vision that never becomes a reality. A vision is the promise of what you shall be one day—whether it’s becoming a senior executive in a corporation, achieving your MBA or Ph.D., running a successful business, getting better organized, or eating healthier. A vision is the blueprint for your life. It lays out what you’re aiming to be/become or to do in the future. It takes into account where you’ve been, where you are now, and what’s possible. It is a road map that guides and informs the choices and decisions you have to make on a daily basis. William Blake, famous painter and poet of the 18th century put it this way: “when people have no vision, development of the mind’s capacity to create is neglected and they fall prey to the human tendency towards victimization.” Similarly, purpose is what you’ve been created and born to do. It’s your WHY. It’s the reason why you’re wired the way you are. It’s the reason that you possess the kinds of skills and talents that you have. Purpose has to do with your destiny [or your destination]. It will drive you and make you want to get up out of bed every morning; it will give you a strong sense of self worth; it will give you a dose of energy and passion for life; it will guide your choices and decisions in life. We all have dreams, whether we know it or not. They are visual manifestations of our purpose and seeds of destiny planted in our hearts. What dreams and purpose do you have that you’ve yet to accomplish? If you don’t know, here’s a way to start to explore what it is. It’s the interest, hobby, or skill that has followed you from a young child; it keeps coming back to your mind year after year; the thing that you’ve always enjoyed doing and would do even if you didn’t get paid for it; the gift and talent that you have that comes easy for you; the thing that you would do if you knew you couldn’t fail and if you had all the necessary resources to implement. That’s your dream. And it’s tied directly to your purpose. Discipline is necessary if you plan to bring that purpose into reality. It is the positive conditioning and controlling of one’s mind, desires, actions, beliefs, words, and habits. In order to obtain your goals, you must have the discipline to go through whatever it takes to succeed. That means that when things get tough, you get tougher; when friends no longer stick by you, you stand your ground anyway; when you start to lose hope and confidence, you keep pressing towards the prize and never give up. To get you started in this journey of reinventing yourself first start with a few self-assessment questions and reflect on what you need to redefine, reassess, and reinvent in your life. I use these types of questions with my own clients as a success coach. They should spark some deep thought and introspection. Be as honest and as open with yourself as possible. This is a time for you to do your own self discovery and to be truthful with yourself. You may be experiencing a crisis at the crossroads, and in order to take your life to the next level, remember success starts with self. How do you define success? What does it look like for you?