If I am lucky I get to attend five or six HR events per year. As a relative newcomer to HR I am really fortunate to have some brilliant conversations with people that open up a whole new way of looking at the same old problems that most HR people are trying to address. The problem of late that shocks me is that many of these conversations are not coming from HR Executives; they are coming from outside the PHR and SPHR realm.
Case in point: some extremely passionate conversations I was privileged to at our recent HR.com event in Phoenix. Here I spent an entire evening listening to two professionals divulge their passion for their corporate leadership programming, performance management programs, succession planning, talent acquisition plans, corporate culture, their overall people strategy and even compensation policies! When I was drained by their superior knowledge of these topics, I asked them how they got to know so much about HR. The startling reality was that one was an engineer for the company and the other came from a customer service background: I don´t think either of them knew what the initials SPHR meant.
After recovering from this heart-breaking twist in our conversation I had to analyze why these people were so good at what they had done; after all, they were invited to this conference to give a workshop on best practices and had a very compelling case to examine. It took some time to digest and the common element that kept creeping into the mental equations I was trying to formulate was passion, passion and again more passion. Eventually I had ruled out most other elements such as planning, research, C level buy in, extremely innovative ideas, costly use of technology, alignment of the planets and all other acts of serendipity. The bottom line was they believed so much in what they were doing and why it was important to the company that everyone along the way gained their momentum and the projects were a success.
This is the essence of leadership, not to be confused with creating ideas and telling people to get them done for you. Leadership is a ground swell movement that becomes your purpose and consumes you, forcing you to practice what you preach. When employees, colleagues, even bosses see this passion, they ultimately have two labels to offer: fanatic or leader. If you are waving your hands and trying to get noticed for what you do consider yourself a fanatic; if not, congratulations may be in order as you may be a leader and not even know it. If your enthusiasm is driven by a passion for making things better within your organization, you are an HR Leader.
My applause to those I spoke with, I hope you realize your accomplishments.
