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How far can one go in HR if you cannot 'do' people management?

Andre

This question is in terms of not an unwillingness to do it, but you either can't get such a role or more to the point, you essentially lack the right type of personality, personal qualities, people, soft skills and other emotional subtleties and social nuances to take and deal with employees in the right way.

Similarly, certain skills you are either born with and hence have or not, and although one can be taught certain learned behaviours, you also can’t spend a lifetime trying to learn skills which just don’t come, flow naturally, struggle or have difficulties to come out or which you don’t automatically pick up on.

At a certain stage of your career you know that you have what it takes or not. 

Can a career in HR academia and research offer a way out?

Parents

  • Hi Andre

    Whilst everyone is different and I can only talk about my own experience, I can say that I've had to treat learning soft skills as an intellectual exercise - it absolutely doesn't come naturally to me and each time I approach anything in HR, I have to plan in advance and think scenarios through to understand how people may react and how to deal with that reaction or even to pre-empt it. So I am at my best when I have time to work things through in my head. Doing things on the fly isn't easy for me. And when I am tired or overloaded with work, I tend to forget to take the emotional side into account at all and can put my foot in it.

    What has helped me enormously is recognising that it's an intellectual exercise for me and doing things to help improve my understanding. Spending a lot of time on the Communities and hearing how other people deal with real life situations has been invaluable - this is where I've learned most of my people skills! That and discussing cases with colleagues and getting their take on how to approach my casework. My boss and I still do that now - but I've managed to hone my skills to the extent that she thinks I'm better than her at dealing with people! However it still doesn't come naturally to me and I find it tiring - probably more so than someone who finds easy. However I find data analysis and spreadsheets and maths incredibly easy and someone else would probably find those things very tiring. So I would say that I have spent a lifetime (or at least my career so far) learning these soft skills and using them every day and I continue to learn and (hopefully) improve. I refuse to believe there isn't a place for my in HR just because I have to work harder at the people skills.

    We are all good at different things in life and our challenges come from finding the best way to use our strengths and compensate for our weaknesses.

    I hope sharing my perspective gives you a bit of hope that you can develop these skills - only you can decide is the value you gain by doing so (i.e. developing your career in the HR Advisor direction) is worth the effort you need to put in.

    Kind regards

    Jackie

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  • Hi Andre

    Whilst everyone is different and I can only talk about my own experience, I can say that I've had to treat learning soft skills as an intellectual exercise - it absolutely doesn't come naturally to me and each time I approach anything in HR, I have to plan in advance and think scenarios through to understand how people may react and how to deal with that reaction or even to pre-empt it. So I am at my best when I have time to work things through in my head. Doing things on the fly isn't easy for me. And when I am tired or overloaded with work, I tend to forget to take the emotional side into account at all and can put my foot in it.

    What has helped me enormously is recognising that it's an intellectual exercise for me and doing things to help improve my understanding. Spending a lot of time on the Communities and hearing how other people deal with real life situations has been invaluable - this is where I've learned most of my people skills! That and discussing cases with colleagues and getting their take on how to approach my casework. My boss and I still do that now - but I've managed to hone my skills to the extent that she thinks I'm better than her at dealing with people! However it still doesn't come naturally to me and I find it tiring - probably more so than someone who finds easy. However I find data analysis and spreadsheets and maths incredibly easy and someone else would probably find those things very tiring. So I would say that I have spent a lifetime (or at least my career so far) learning these soft skills and using them every day and I continue to learn and (hopefully) improve. I refuse to believe there isn't a place for my in HR just because I have to work harder at the people skills.

    We are all good at different things in life and our challenges come from finding the best way to use our strengths and compensate for our weaknesses.

    I hope sharing my perspective gives you a bit of hope that you can develop these skills - only you can decide is the value you gain by doing so (i.e. developing your career in the HR Advisor direction) is worth the effort you need to put in.

    Kind regards

    Jackie

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