I’ve been reading a lot this week about the job market and hiring practices and how to pick the best employees and avoid the worst. And all of this has got me thinking about gifts.
Not the gifts that you get for birthdays and special holidays, but the gifts you’re born with — like mathematical gifts, or the gift of gab, or the gift of intellect, or what have you.
And the reason I’ve been thinking about gifts and the workplace is that it seems to me that sometimes we are reluctant to recognize gifts and their importance in doing a bang-up job.
Not anyone can do HR
Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, authors of Now, Discover Your Strengths (an oldie but goodie) get the idea of gifts. They call them “talents,” but the idea is the same. The point is that all of us have the ability to naturally do some things better than some other things, and these abilities are ours to discover and develop, but we can’t manufacture them.
In particular, I’ve been thinking about this concept in relation to HR, because I’m of the opinion that there are still far too many people who think that anybody can do HR, and it’s just not true.
I know because I went through a string of HR personnel who were terrible at it. They either lacked the detail orientation, or the critical thinking skills, or the analytical skills, or the head for employment law concepts, or something. And these were smart people.
It wasn’t until I started complaining to a wiser friend of mine about some task the most-recent hire had been unable to perform — “I don’t understand why _____ can’t get this right. It’s so simple!” — and my friend saying, “I don’t know Crystal, it sounds complicated to me,” (and this man was a veteran leadership trainer studying for his Ph.D) that the light bulb went off. Yes, the task was easy for me, because of my abilities. Oh …
That’s when I started paying real close attention to traits, even testing for them during the hiring process. After that, I started hiring people who were right for HR.
Doing it right takes a lot of gifts
So what am I saying? Two things: First, I completely agree with Buckingham and Clifton when they write that it is not true that anyone can learn to be competent in anything. Second, if you’re in HR and do it well, don’t let anyone tell you that it’s an accident. It’s not.
Which isn’t to say that people who try their hand at HR and aren’t very good at it can’t do other things fabulously well. They probably can. As I said, everyone has abilities.
But it’s completely false to assert that because way too many people fall into HR and do “OK,” anybody can do it really well. Nope. As with most anything, those who do HR really well just make it look easy.
So here’s my question: If you’re responsible for hiring and developing HR folks, are you doing so with an eye toward the gifts needed for the job? Actually, let me back that up a bit — do you even believe in the concept?
If not, I urge you to revisit your thinking, because the type of HR that we all say we want to practice — that is, the kind that goes beyond the transactional — requires a whole lotta gifts. I’m talking things like empathy, courage, humility, wisdom, and the ability to be comfortable with and effective despite a certain degree of change.
And again, while many HR professionals do “OK,” I think the profession, as well as the organizations and employees we serve, deserve a lot better than that.