The Role Not Taken: Of Buzzwords and Battle scars

It's Mental Health Awareness Month and yesterday, we celebrated International HR Day! A perfect convergence to talk about #careeranxiety. From as long as I can remember, I have been wracked by career anxiety. Am I on the right track? Am I utilizing my strengths? Am I living up to my potential? etc. etc. etc.?

Interestingly, after moving to consulting close to two months ago, for the first time in my career, I am suddenly not in the HR function of an organization anymore...and the distance helps somewhat to reflect on my internal churn over many years. My career anxiety arose largely from the fact that I was a 'reluctant' entrant into HR, as I suspect are many others.?Never thought I was 'cut out' for it. Absolutely hated what others had to say about the function and tried my best initially to dissociate myself from it. It wasn't until it came to a point of deciding between pursuing research full-time vs continuing in my organization that I realized I could not, would not tear myself away from this - this world of practice... of making decisions with large-scale impact seeing the internal workings of an organization from up close, the mental agility you build out of making judgment calls with limited information, the joy of seeing behaviour change in front of your eyes, the pain of running difficult but necessary conversations over and over again in your mind before having them, the muscle you build from taking a stand... the battle scars that are the privilege of being in HR.

With this month's edition of #theCafeNervosaBlog, we are starting a series called "The Role Not Taken". Just think about this: Our CVs and LinkedIn profiles are manifestations of the roles we chose. And yet our careers are outlined just as much by the roles that we did not choose. But we don't talk about them. What did we learn from the roles we chose not to take??Here is my story...

I think, as an HR leader, I can sum up my own journey as well as those of some others I have observed in the form of three phases: dissociation (I'm not cut out for this, this is temporary, I'm moving to something else in a few years), intellectualization (this is where we get fascinated with AI in HR and suchlike) and finally immersion (where we realize that we did not even realize we were learning all along by immersing ourselves in the messy reality of organizations and the importance of learning in the moment while learning new concepts). There were several alternate roles I had wanted to take up, prominent among them being those of linguist, writer, researcher. And yet, I've spent 11 years in a function I thought was so unlike me.

My learnings from these phases in my journey apply not only to those in HR, but across functions, especially those who work on unstructured, ill-defined problems.

1. Approach any new role with a statement of purpose: Do not let any role (taken or not taken) define you. Approach any new opportunity with your own 'statement of purpose'. For me, this meant carving out my role in a way that brought my strengths to the fore. Pursuing research alongside a full-time job was perennially nerve-wracking, but the mode of thinking helped me bring an important to shift in my early years in the HR Business Partner role - moving from primarily problem-solving to problem-finding... diagnosing real, contextual issues, connecting the threads from various conversations to define your own priorities and bring a data-driven approach to any decision. And so, while interviewing anyone for an HR role, I always asked them not just about how they solved a problem, but about how they spotted a problem in the first place.
2. Generalize enough before you specialize: If there was one lesson I could share with my younger self, it would be that expertise is far less important than learning. Early in my HR career, I gravitated to CoE (centre of excellence) or 'specialist' roles because of my unconscious need to be the expert in the room. But some of my biggest learnings, the high points in my experience ultimately came synthesizing rather than creating knowledge, co-creating with business leaders, learning to integrate and form a narrative from multiple fragments of knowledge, to translate hazy and complex issues into an operating framework. These experiences helped me build a backdrop in my mind against which I could develop new ideas and they made subsequent specialist roles I took so much richer and contextualized!
3. Discover your style along the way: An obvious enough but important point to remember. I was so busy telling myself that I was not cut out for this or that, that I did not notice myself evolve. There will always be those who hasten to ascribe a category or a label to you, but don't let that define you. Thrive on proving everyone else and yourself wrong all the time. And there is no better way to do that than to find organizations and mentors that help you thrive.

So, on this International HR Day, my entirely unsolicited message to anyone building a career in HR or simply anyone who needed to hear this (as I did many years ago) is to forget about seats-at-the-table and strategic partnership and all such buzzwords. Forget about the creative titles HR people are going to assume in the future; it doesn't matter what you call them. Forget all the buzzwords, but embrace your battle scars and wear them with pride. Do not let what anyone else says about this function bring you down. Do not fear the lack of definition, the vaguer, the better. There is nothing commonsensical and yet as utterly complex as HR.