Guest Post: Eat Grandpa…and Other HR No Noes | HR Fishbowl

I love a good TrenchHR professional. Especially one who is also an aspiring blogger and St. Louis Cardinals fanatic. Adam C. Dennis fits this bill. He’s married to Sarah and father to Abigail, Amelia, & Baby #3 (any name suggestions?) due in August 2012. You can connect with him on his blog (adamcdennis.com), Twitter (@adamcdennis) or LinkedIn. We all need a good reality check every now and then. The C-Suite always has something to say about HR. It’s not always the most relevant, useful, or interesting. But it’s an important perspective. Today, Adam shares some of the stuff he picked up from a local CEO. 

I went to a luncheon for my HR network where a local CEO spoke on the qualities needed in human resources professionals. Here’s what I walked away with…

  • Know when to say ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. Can you image how effective we would be as HR professionals if we could learn to say those two little words – at the right time – with good reason and support? Image how many situations we could avoid or opportunities could create.
  • Be a problem solver. Let’s be the ones that the C-Suite can go to in order to get things done. Business is changing and we need to have the acumen to change with it. Start by figuring out how something can get done rather than why it can’t.
  • Articulate. When we deliver news – good or bad – let’s do it with confidence and clarity. As with punctuation, learning to communicate based on situational dynamics can save someone.
  • Empathize with employee needs. So often we become the last hope for employees. They may be facing a first offense or a final warning, but either way we should be sensitive to their needs.
  • Protect the company from harm, but stretch it just the right amount. Know your organization’s limits and make sure its always pushing up against them. Otherwise, performance is sub-optimal.
  • Over deliver. This doesn’t mean sandbagging. It means giving not only what’s expected, but also offering up just a little bit more. That ‘little bit more’ is what will make us exceptional.

I believe any combination of these 6 simply intuitive qualities will make us greater assets to our organizations, our customers, and our employees. What say you?

Image Credit: Caption of the Day

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