“Are you different? Better? Both?”

This spring Mae Brooks, MA, SPHR gave HR professionals a masterclass in building a workplace culture where employees can be honest, use their superpowers, and do great work.

Mae Brooks has more than 20 years in human resources operations and racial equity work. Read on to learn how Mae does business differently than from 95% of her colleagues.

• Expect greatness. “I only want to hire people who … bring their best selves and bring their best work.” Mae “would rather have nobody than the wrong somebody.” She doesn’t “hire just to hire.”
• See and cultivate superpowers. When Mae welcomes a new employee, she lets the person know that she believes, “We have the best and brightest here.” According to Mae, “You have to believe that you have a superpower and everybody you hire has a superpower. And those superpowers are going to come together and create a new and wonderful product.”
• “Steel sharpens steel.” Mae tells new employees: * “My job is to give you the resources that you need to succeed.” * “I will give you the opportunity as much as you want it, but your job is to soak me for everything I’m worth. Get all the training you can.” * “My job is to make sure you remain competitive.”

• Lease employees.* “I tell my hiring managers all the time, you are not buying, you are leasing.”* “I want an ‘A’ game every day. And if I get that for three years, oh God has been so good to me. Yay! Three years. Because I would rather have ‘A’ work for three years than ‘C’ work for five.”
• Embrace mistakes. “Mistakes are great learning opportunities, but it’s how you rebound from the mistakes that lets me know what type of person you are and what type of professional you are.”

• Set people up for success.* “My job is to push you and make you better. My job is to give you honest feedback.”* “We don’t give people enough honest feedback.”* “My job is to set you up for success and then my job is to stay out of your way when you are doing all of those things.“
• Get to know people. “You can have whatever kind of feelings you want within our group but how we present as a team – we make that decision and we stick to it. We built a commonality and a trust with each other. We have a rule about let’s be honest in here– say what you mean.”