How HR Gets Invited To The Table --- Become A Credible Activist

Note: This article is drawn from the book Victory Through Organization by Dave Ulrich, David Kryscynski, Michael Ulrich, Wayne Brockbank.

In our 30 years work on HR competencies, we suggest that less attention should be spent on the HR competencies and more on the outcomes they create. One of the critical outcomes of HR professionals demonstrating HR competencies is being seen as personally effective. When HR professionals are personally effective, they are “invited to the table.” 

In our recent research with 4,000 HR participants and 32,000 respondents, we analyzed the relationship between the nine HR competency domains (independent variables) to determine which HR competencies helped HR professionals be seen as more effective and get invited to business discussions. Table 1 (below) scales these findings to 100% to help illustrate the relative importance of each of the nine competencies for explaining individual effectiveness. These nine HR competency domains explain a remarkable 83% (overall R2 ) of the individual HR effectiveness score. While all nine competence domains impact HR’s personal effectiveness, Table 1 also reports that credible activist was by far the most important competence in determining HR overall personal effectiveness (19.3%).   

(Wondering which of the competencies you most identify with? Learn more about our leadership code assessment here.)

These data suggest that HR professionals need to have a minimum competency in many domains, but their overall personal effectiveness (and invitation to the table) comes mostly from their being a Credible Activist because they are both active and credible.

Credibility and Activism

It is the combination of credibility and activism that allows HR professionals to establish trusting relationships with those they support as well as their HR colleagues. They use the trust they have gained to influence others. Credible activists are respected and proactive. Credible individuals who are not activists may be respected for their insights or expertise, but have little impact. Activists who are not credible may have good ideas, but no one pays much attention to them. The following matrix illustrates this concept:

Credible Activists Influence and Relate to Others

Credible Activists are conscientious about their relationships with colleagues and business partners, and invest in these relationships. They build relationships up, down, and across the organization. They also look beyond the organization to develop relationships that will provide an outside-in perspective to help tackle challenges. From our work helping HR professionals build influence, we have found the following actions that help develop relationships and support the influence and relate to others subdomain of Credible Activist:

• They show a genuine interest in others
• They act with an appropriate balance of humility and confidence
• They seek to learn from both successes and failures
• They demonstrate personal integrity and ethics

Influence and relationship build trust, but ultimately professional effectiveness starts and ends with results.

Credible Activists Earn Trust through Results

Influence and relationship build trust, but ultimately professional effectiveness starts and ends with results. HR professionals earn trust by following through on commitments and delivering results, maintaining and building effective relationships. The following are attributes of the earning trust through results subdomain:

• Has earned trust with key internal and external stakeholders
• Frames complex ideas in simple and useful ways
• Persists through adverse circumstances
• Has history of delivering results

Credible Activist Assessment and Tools

As we have coached and trained 10,000’s of HR professionals, we have created an assessment of being a Credible Activist and identified practices and tools for improving as shown in Table 3:

Credible Activist Summary

HR professionals who want to add value to the business need to be involved in business discussions. To get invited to those discussions, HR professionals must first exhibit credible activist competency traits. They need to be credible and they need to have an opinion and be willing to voice that opinion. Credible Activists build credibility over time by delivering results, improving personal and professional performance, developing relationships of trust internally and externally, and utilizing the trust to influence others.

For data from our entire study and more ideas on becoming a credible activist in your organization, read our latest book, Victory Through Organization.