Stop Fixing and Start Collaborating

As a Human Resources (HR) or Support Services professional, we have expertise that is critical for the survival and growth of the organization.?Unfortunately, many of us find ourselves being underutilized, overworked with transactional tasks, and being asked to “fix” things and people.?

Do you find yourself frustrated when:

• Your leaders come to you at the last minute to implement something?
• You aren’t involved early enough in the process to influence decisions and share your ideas?
• Most of your day is spent putting out fires and not focusing on strategic issues?
• You have so much more expertise to offer the organization, but they don’t appreciate it or even ask for your expertise?
• You are asked to “handle” tough conversations, “problem” people, and fix them?

We want to have our expertise utilized and be treated as trusted advisors, but our clients don’t know how to utilize us or worse, they don’t want to utilize us this way.

The good news is that we can adjust our own approach and behavior to be better utilized.?Many times, with the best intentions, we have trained our leaders to treat us the way they do.?In the spirit of customer satisfaction and “the customer is always right” mentality, we end up agreeing to do what they ask, even when it’s not the best thing for them or the organization.?If we attempt to push back or disagree, they get upset with us and even go to our boss to complain.?Many of our leaders don’t know they can utilize us any other way than “fixing” things and implementing their ideas.

There is a better way.?We have the power and opportunity to change the conversations we are having with operational leaders and our own leadership.?We have found HR and Support Service professionals can fall into three distinct roles with leaders:

1. Expert Role – They count on us to fix things with our expertise, and they don’t want to be involved in the diagnosis or solution.?“Make it go away” is their mantra.
2. Pair of Hands Role – They come to us with their solution, and they want us to implement it.?“Don’t ask questions, just get it done for me.” We end up being order takers and implementing suboptimal solutions and sometimes solutions that can damage people and the organization.
3. Collaborative Role – We share the responsibility and accountability with the leaders to diagnose and develop solutions.?Our expertise is equally utilized along with their expertise.

If this intrigues you, I invite you to take a free Role Orientation Quiz. Find out what roles are you choosing to play. And, if you want to choose something different, click here to find out how.

Original article by Jeff Evans, Designed Learning