Andre, I know many people who are in HR and lack the personal skills you mention. This is one reason why HR often gets a bad press from employees. When I did my CIPD at university there was not 'soft skills' training at all. When I asked why, the lead trainer said that they expected or assumed that people comingt into the HR field would already have these skills. Big assumption there!

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

Hi Andre, you do have quite a few posts along a similar line now. i did reply with a suggestion about academia or research in one of your previous threads which I'm not sure if you saw. I have copied and pasted it below in case you missed it:-

"Andre, i think you asked a very similar question recently and received a lot of advice at the time.

I didn't contribute at the time as you were getting some very good advice, but it is clear that you are very frustrated at your lack of progression.

If i recall correctly you have a neurodiverse condition which means that you sometimes have difficulty in picking up on social cues when communicating. As you progress up the HR ladder, the ability to pick up on social cues and small clues about people's emotions becomes more important. This can be when dealing with employee relations issues, such as disciplinary or grievance issues, interviewing, negotiating with Trade Unions, or coaching and mentoring managers through difficult situations.

It may therefore be that it is this that is holding you back from progressing up the 'traditional' HR route. People may have been unwilling to give you feedback along these lines, due to a fear of being seen as discriminating (I mean Andre's employers or potential employers rather than anyone on here by the way), however that is not helpful to you and there are a number of areas of HR where neurodiversity would be a considerable strength (HR Analytics for example).

I have previously worked in a research institute and a large proportion of scientists are neurodiverse. Within scientific research, you are often working on your own and need to be able to adopt a highly focused and methodical approach to the research you are carrying out- often repeating small actions continually, making only tiny changes each time. . People who are not neurodiverse can often find that quite difficult in the same way that you find reading social cues difficult. It is all about playing to our individual strengths

If you want to stay in HR practice, the growing area of HR Data and Analytics is an area where your strengths would be highly useful. Reward and benefits is another area that involves a considerable amount of research and methodical thinking to develop solutions.

However, as I remember from your previous post, you are also very academically gifted so you could consider moving into academia -- for example, carrying out research into people/organisational psychology. As an idea of the types of HR related research jobs this route could lead to, my local University is currently advertising for a Senior Research Associate to carry out a research project that " seeks to identify which combinations of workplace health and wellbeing practices reliably improve worker health, wellbeing, engagement and performance"

I hope this is useful and you are able to find a route that you find fulfilling"

In reply to Teresa:

Hi Teresa,

Many thanks for your reply.

If however I wanted to continue on the traditional pathway in HR, could one effective method just be to inform the meeting in advance by saying that I have very mild AS so don't automatically or always pick up so well on the so called unwritten rules of social communication and social interaction that non neurodiverse people may do. So, if my style comes across as a bit different, they know and understand it well.

It's more a difference in approach and style to the world than anything else.

Kind regards

Andre.