The Zen of Leadership and HR

Author: Dave Crisp

17 Mar

Sometimes it pays to take some time off. In the Internet blogging world, that’s easy to do. All you need to do is lose focus a bit and ‘zip’ you’ve let the weeks go by without a post.

I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. We’re so overloaded that just skimming the regular newsletters, ads and emails from sites I’ve joined takes more time than I care to think about. Sometimes taking a break allows for a re-orientation of your thinking. That’s why Google encourages their people do take a day a week or so to spend on their own projects exclusively.

In the last few weeks, I’ve developed some new insights (new for me at least) into leadership and HR and what’s really happening with them. First I realize that I’m intrigued to continue working in the area because it poses Zen-like paradoxes – so simple, yet so frustratingly difficult to coach people in. I was getting down about this without stopping to define what it really was. The fact is this is the intrigue and the frustration simultaneously – the two aren’t separable. It’s reassuring to know that leadership and HR are developing on their own without depending solely on me to show the changes and the benefits. But that, too, can be frustrating. We never want to be left behind or bypassed. Ego!

I realized also that one way to think about HR is as Human Relations instead of Human Resources. I’ve always avoided that terminology, thinking it was really a mistake people were making, like the difference between ‘moot’ and ‘mute,’ which are often confused. Now I’m coming to believe that if we called what we do in organizations ‘human relations’ or ‘human relations management practices’ we’d actually get ourselves closer to being understood. I’m going to explore this in further posts.

In the mean time I’ve gone back to reading (and now writing) in these areas with renewed energy to pursue them from a Zen-paradox point of view that I’d lost touch with. This link will be one I’ll pursue and comment on, mentioned in Workforce Management today, now that I’m back scanning again: it’s at Compensation Force.