The Jedi Mind Trick of HR Leadership

You don’t need to be a?Star Wars?fan to have heard reference to?Jedi mind tricks?– the telepathic influence of others’ thoughts and actions through use of the invisible “Force” that surrounds everything in the universe.

Among the many supernatural (and super-cool) feats a Jedi can conjure with The Force, these mind tricks come in handy for things like persuading surly guards to open locked doors and diverting the attention of hostile enemies. A simple wave of the hand or voice intonation penetrates the victim’s psyche, and the Jedi achieves brief mind control.

I’m convinced that part of what keeps?Star Wars?geeks like me coming back is our secret desire for this power to be real. Imagine in your next salary negotiation, you skip the dialogue and simply wave your hand in a slow arc, speaking coolly to your boss, “You seem to feel I’m terribly underpaid.”

Then think of the satisfaction when your boss blinks, agrees, and leaves to go speak to Payroll.

Yeah, that would be handy.

But while we wait for someone to actually discover The Force (Hey, it could happen!), we don’t have to settle for nothing. It turns out there is at least one reliable mind trick that works like a charm in the C-suite, and all HR Jedis should learn to use it.

Mastery of this trick begins with four facts:

• Fact 1: All leaders must adapt and learn in order to maintain their effectiveness through change.
• Fact 2: Leading change is difficult and gets ever more challenging with each step up.
• Fact 3: Many leaders, especially executives, are caught unprepared for change.
• Fact 4: Most executives do not ask for, or feel they need help preparing for change.

The Jedi must reconcile the disconnect between Fact 1 and Fact 4 by prompting executives who outrank them to engage in the learning and skill acquisition they so clearly and often need.

But this must be done in the face of considerable disadvantages, including a lack of influence, access, and authority to recommend or install interventions. The Jedi may have very little power among executives, but must somehow cause them to look inward, and feel the need to learn. (See also, Fact 4.)

Conjuring this trick requires a venue in which the executive or even better, team of executives, is invited to articulate the most significant challenges the business will face in the near future. (Most executives have well-informed perspectives and enjoy sharing them.)

The Jedi probes into emerging business forces and resulting challenges to draw out how this will impact the roles of executives, and what will be required for leaders to create the needed changes.

And this is where HR Jedi Masters are made. It is crucial for the Jedi to assertively pursue specifics:

• Can you tell me, more specifically, how you see leadership demands changing? Examples are helpful.
• How might this affect the major initiatives that you are leading now?
• How will you need to adjust expectations for leaders on your team?
• Against these new demands, what do leaders in this organization currently do well? Where do we have gaps? Why do those gaps exist?

As the Jedi’s curiosity leads executives into deeper exploration, a moment occurs.

Each executive, one by one, discovers one or more emerging leadership demands that they find daunting. And it is in that moment, when they can glimpse the limitations of their own capabilities, that they begin to self-reflect. Learning, development, skill building, and personal growth suddenly have more value than they did just moments ago.

And the Jedi mind trick is complete.

But of course, this is no trick. It is the simple result of rigorous analysis of a changing leadership context, which most executives are too busy to consider deeply. But when they have the chance, remarks about their own capabilities quickly surface:

• “If I’m honest, I have to acknowledge that I’m going to need to do some things differently.”
• “I’m good at describing these characteristics but I’m not good at doing them.”
• “There are a lot of leaders, myself included, who are going to need help.”
• “We’re going to need to think about our talent strategy.”

I have seen this happen countless times. HR pros who exercise deep curiosity and trigger their executives to make the link between changing business demands and changing leadership demands are likely to garner more support among executives in closing critical gaps and investing in efforts that build stronger, more capable leaders.

Some will request help for themselves. Others for leaders in their organizations. A few will ask for both. But regardless of the starting point, this HR Jedi mind trick makes a connection that most senior executives don’t make on their own:

Leaders won’t succeed in making change happen if they haven’t prepared to lead differently.

May The Force of HR leadership be with you.