philosophy with someone. Tell him or her what you want to be known for. Check for reactions. Ask the person for feedback and suggestions. Have the person ask questions about what you are trying to say and why these particular things are important to you. Tweak your personal leadership philosophy based on the input. Then share your profile again, with the same person or with someone else. After that, share it with your team and others with whom you work. Try it.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
After practice and refinement, you will find your personal leadership philosophy becomes more natural to you and a useful tool to articulate who you are as a leader and a person. Then, when you are working with others to develop them as leaders, be a teacher and a coach. Help others better describe who they are as leaders by showing them how to create and communicate their own personal leadership philosophies. What a great way to serve others while taking a leadership role in so doing!
Whenever I work with leaders on their personal leadership philosophies, the discussion almost invariably turns to me at some point. They ask me about my personal leadership philosophy. Often, they don’t have to ask. After all, if I am going to convince them about the benefits of having and sharing a personal leadership philosophy, I should be practicing what I preach and sharing it with them, right?
So here it goes, with one important caveat. I share my personal leadership philosophy with you here as an example, to help you think through what yours might look and sound like. I do not share it to suggest that your personal leadership philosophy should be the same as mine, nor that the principles upon which it is based are appropriate for you. If there is something in here that works for you, feel free to steal shamelessly. If not, create your own. There are only two important things I want you to remember about your personal leadership philosophy. First, have one. Second, tell people who are important to you what it is.
The 4 Cs
I have used one version or another of my personal leadership philosophy for more than twenty years. I call it “The 4 Cs,” shown in Figure 1.1. It’s about Credibility, Collaboration, Courage, and Competence.
Figure 1.1 The Four Cs
Credibility involves doing what you say you will do and keeping confidential information confidential. I can’t tell you how many smart and experienced HR people I have seen implode because they couldn’t deliver on their commitments, and/or because they failed to keep their mouths shut about important and confidential things. Once people figure out that they can’t trust you to deliver and that they can’t rely on you to keep confidential things to yourself, you are done as an HR leader. Period.
There is always a fine line between being truthful and transparent, and keeping confidences. The best way I know to strike the right balance in this dichotomy is to accept that the truth has a time and place. The truth is always important, it is paramount. But, it doesn’t always have to be shared in this precise moment in this particular setting, in front of these particular people. Think about context. Think about the audience. Think about the information that needs to be shared. Think about the person who shared it with you and whose confidence you promised to keep. And then use common sense and your best judgment.
Share what needs to be shared, when it needs to be shared, with whom it needs to be shared – without violating the confidentiality expected by the person who is relying on your good judgment and without violating the commitment you may have made to keep what he or she told you in confidence.
Collaboration entails sharing resources, information, and talent – especially when it is not convenient to do so. It also implies an understanding of a counterintuitive fact about collaboration – that it does not occur without a healthy respect for constructive conflict and debate.
Collaboration is nearly impossible to promote if you are unwilling and unable to accept divergent points of view that enable the real issues to be surfaced and highlighted for discussion. As Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera and film and co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation, once said, “Politeness is the poison of collaboration.”
Courage relies on the willingness to push back on things that don’t make sense – and to push forward on things that do make sense. Do you have the guts to stand up against things that are illegal, immoral, unethical, just plain dumb, and/or bad business? Likewise, do you have the conviction to fight for ideas, ideals, and people you believe in, even – and especially – when they are unpopular or defy conventional wisdom? I am not talking about being a perpetual contrarian. I am talking about picking your spots and standing up for or against something important.
Competence implies taking responsibility for your own development, knowing what you don’t know, and surrounding yourself with the very best people who are better than you at important things. It’s about updating and sharpening the tools in your personal tool kit and being confident and comfortable enough to ask for help from others who know more about, or are better at, certain things than you are.
I want to be known for Credibility, Collaboration, Courage, and Competence. These are the components of my personal leadership philosophy that are most important to me. They are not all-encompassing. They are not the only things. But they are the most important things to me. What is most important to you?
CHAPTER 2
Balance the Triangle
What? Who? When? Development
One of my favorite sayings is from Lily Tomlin, the actress and comedienne: “I’ve always wanted to be somebody, but now I see I should have been more specific.” HR leaders have been fighting to “be somebody” for as long as I can remember, but the specifics have been all over the place and somewhat out of balance. We talk about having a seat at the table, being business partners, and becoming more strategic and less transactional. At various points along the way, perspectives from “Why We Hate HR” in Fast Company magazine (Fast Company Staff, 2005) to “It’s Time to Split HR,” by Ram Charan in Harvard Business Review (Charan, 2014) have suggested why we should hate, eliminate, split, or otherwise restructure HR to somehow fix it.
Some people think it is fashionable to bash HR as a means of making the case that it can and should be better as a profession. We already know and accept that it can be better. But we don’t need to bash the function. We need to simultaneously love and improve it.
HR doesn’t need to be fixed any more than Finance or Marketing do. Just like most other professions, HR is an amalgamation of great people and practices, along with those we would just as soon forget. Are there areas where we can improve? Absolutely. Do we need to be apologetic for bringing humanity and sanity to organizations that are badly in need of both these days? Absolutely not. Don’t play second fiddle to anyone or feel sorry for yourself; you are better than that. Collectively, we are better than that. And HR leaders are better than Finance, Marketing, or others at making people and organizations more effective. That’s what we do.
You can also make sure you take responsibility for developing yourself to be ready and relevant for what organizations most need from HR leaders – strong business acumen, a broad base of experience, an ability to capitalize on relationships and networks that span organizational boundaries, and a keen awareness of how to take full advantage of your own developmental inflection points in the moment they are happening. Oh, and you need to be able to accomplish things and deliver results that have a profound impact on business performance. If you cannot or do not want to do these things, you may deserve the criticism that HR people sometimes receive. Or perhaps you should find another profession. If you are already doing them, thanks! Now,
