On Appreciating Yourself

It’s so amazing to me how some wonderfully spectacular people have absolutely no appreciation of how special they are. Seems to me that all we do with long lists of “required competencies” – most of which have little or nothing to do with how you actually need to interact with others to accomplish the goal – is make people feel inadequate. So I hope you will understand how proud I was of Kevin, our fabulous VP of Sales, the other day.

Seems he sent an HR leader her own hiring report. Now usually we don’t do this, since who wants to read things that might be negative – things you don’t even want to change about yourself, even if, magically, you could. Apparently the HR leader read it and was not happy. (No one ever is, really, and mea cupla - it is we dumb “experts” who have caused it with our overemphasis on impossible generic “perfection”.)

But Kevin rose to the occasion and went through it with her, bit by bit, making sure she understood that for what she was expected to do there could not be a better fit – even though there are lots of jobs for which she would be a much less than perfect fit. Not that she would actually want to do any of them…

I know he must have done a great job. He shared this comment she sent him:

“I read this report again and was surprised to find that it really wasn’t that “bad.” I think I can live with this assessment! I intend to share it with my boss and see how useful he thinks it is considering what he knows about me from having worked with me for several years and/or whether he thinks it would be useful in making a hiring decision.”

What I love about this is how she moved from fear to appreciating how truly excellent she is for what she does, just by having some real feedback from a real person.

I hope you are appreciating yourself today!

Keeping the Human in HR

I was the dinner speaker at a SHRM group just before Memorial Day weekend, which was also the beginning of our move to our new office space – a week long project involving more technology than I ever want to think about again! So while my dear management team was directing furniture placement and dealing with phone issues, I was getting to talk about my favorite subject, talent management and development across the generations and, more important, their Roles. It wasn’t a huge crowd, but I met a real HR star.

As the dinner conversation went around, someone at my table had a sad story of a plant closing, a large plant employing many people for whom that’s been their only job.  Interesting, in the light of statistics that show length of tenure for most populations is decreasing.  There was no budget for outplacement services but she did the most amazing things to help people find new jobs, people who’d never had a resume and had language and social barriers to overcome in the process.  She saw nothing special in what she was doing or what her efforts were accomplishing, not just for the people but for their community and in a broader perspective, for our economy.  She just did it because it was the right thing to do.

We chatted a bit about her own career aspirations and I gave her my card.  I just read this email from her:

“I wanted to take a moment and share with you something that happened this morning. We spoke briefly last night after the meeting regarding my own situation and challenges with our plant closing and my search for the “right” position.

“This morning I was working on yet another resume for a plant employee and one of the employees came to my office. He is an assistant supervisor, union position, very conscientious and respectful. He is an amateur baker on the side and makes beautiful cakes for all different types of occasions. He came to me this morning and said “I have something for you” (in very broken English). He was grinning ear to ear and I said “You have something for me?” and then he said, “I really appreciate you and what you’re doing for us and I baked you a cake”. Well, it was 20 minutes before I quit crying. The icing was purple, my favorite color and the only thing I could do was hug him because I couldn’t talk. He then invited me to a picnic he is having at his house for the employees in a couple of weeks and he left.

“Right now I have to focus on my current activities here and not be sidetracked by my own job search. I think it would be very selfish of me especially after this morning. Thanks again for your very informative presentation last night. I look forward to speaking with you soon.”

Just a nice reminder that whatever you do, ultimately it’s the relationships that are the most gratifying.  If you’re a recruiter reading this and want to connect to this star, just contact me.  No cake needed.