HR Business Partner - fact, fiction and attitude

We’ve been here before; you know the world of ‘HR Business Partner’ is a confusing one and you know that until we get a general consensus on HRs fundamental building blocks then we’ll continue to flummox both ourselves and our internal customers about our potential value (see the blogs HR Business Partner – fact, fiction and .... series).

One thing we do know however is that our attitude has to change.

We like to think that when we ran HR or L&D teams, our customers liked what we did (although many of our HR bosses didn’t seem to – how strange?). The greatest complement they could pay us was “you’re not like other HR/training people”. Now we know some of our HR skills were lacking (just ask our HR bosses!) but we had one thing going for us – a different attitude to most of our peers.

None of us stop learning but when we were in corporate life with those blue chip companies, we believed that it was our right and obligation to be involved in everything our businesses did. We knew we had information about the company and its competitors that no one else had, that we had skills and knowledge around how to use HR levers to motivate and engage employees (we didn’t call it that back then) and had a deeper understanding of the risks involved in the various employee activities that managers got involved in. We knew that if we didn’t get involved, our businesses were not able to perform as well as if we did.

But we had to be able to communicate that knowledge and skill in a way that our business managers understood. That ability to communicate was therefore always our first priority.

Time, the chance to use that understanding in different organisations as interim managers and consultants, and the opportunity to meet hundreds of fellow HR professionals at all levels has given CourageousHR an even deeper perspective.

For CourageousHR, attitude is so important we even make it our core competency. We call it ‘courageous leadership’ and define it as; “You have a clear sense of what you stand for. You have a passion for what you can contribute and a willingness to consistently live this out. You actively and publicly demonstrate personal leadership and embrace uncertainty.”

What will you do courageously today?

Want to know more?

Take this link HR Competency Framework.