95% of my job revolves around talent management. Since the term talent management is overused, my definition of talent management includes:
- Ensuring Talent is available
- Ensuring Talent is given rewarding career opportunities
- Ensuring Talent is in the right place at the right time
In order to achieve those three things, I spend a lot of time sharing my opinions, including business opinions, education opinions, personal opinions and gut opinions. HR leadership roles demand giving opinions on so many levels that it is easy to fall into a very bad trap: Giving opinions when they are not asked for.
What brought this topic to mind was a special I saw on PBS a few days back. The series is called Forgiveness: A time to love, a time to hate. This was a graphic and intense look at the concept of forgiveness from some of the most personal, intimate places: forgiving the apartheid regime for atrocities against your family, forgiving the radical protester for shooting your father who is a police officer, forgiving your wife for leaving you and the kids.
A point was made that resonated with me profoundly. Simply put, forgiveness was almost impossible to grant if the person seeking forgiveness did not ask for it. Those wronged could in their mind (and with time) justify wrongful actions, could feel less intense anger, and could even empathize with the person who wronged them. But they could not complete the cycle of forgiveness until the one seeking forgiveness acknowledged the hurt and asked for forgiveness.
So what is the HR takeaway? Employees are well intended. Employees are also in need of much help and advice from HR. But for an employee to be really ready to heed the advice—they need to ask for it. More importantly they need to be open to it. The cycle of learning (as in the cycle of forgiving) cannot really begin until the “student” asks for it.
How do you navigate this with employees?
- Be a knowledge leader in your HR discipline, so when someone asks for advice, you are ready.
- Continually work on building trust within your organization, so employees will feel comfortable reaching out. This is HUGE.
- If you feel you must give advice when it is not asked for, have a really good reason. Like to mitigate an illegal action.
- Know that it is always OK to give un-asked for advice in authentic conversations, but don’t get frustrated if your advice is not considered gospel.
And if you do get frustrated… you can always ask for forgiveness later.
Dawn Burke, Sr. Consultant for Recruiting Toolbox and founder/advisor for Dawn Burke HR, is an HR leader, speaker, and writer specializing in new HR practices, engagement and workplace culture. Her HR/recruiting/leadership career has spanned the last 20 years, with past gigs including a foundational role as VP of People for Birmingham, AL’s award-winning technology company, Daxko (And yes, Kris Dunn and Dawn are making Bham the HR capital of the world! Who knew?). You can also check her out at DawnHBurke.com and a variety of other interesting places. Google her, it’ll keep you posted on what she is up to.
Most importantly: She is addicted to TV, knows most of the lyrics to Hamilton and West Side Story, loves to cry at movies (check out Cinema Paradiso for a cry fest!), thinks wine, a wheel of Brie and Milk Duds make a well-balanced dinner, and sings in her car daily. Her husband and cat are the Yin to her Yang.