Tag Archives: Leadership

Top 5 Senior HR Competencies

Today I’m kicking off a video series on the Top Five Senior HR Competencies. I recently found a white paper that listed the top competencies for senior HR leaders, and I knew I wanted to delve into each of them and give a few thoughts on all five. Below you’ll find the intro video and links to the other 4 videos. Hope it’s beneficial to you!

Email subscribers click through to see the intro video below.

Management blog reviews

Recently John Hunter reached out to me to participate in the 2010 Year in Review Carnival. Being one of those people who says “yes” to everything, I jumped in and chose three different blogs to review. All three of them are new to me, but there is some great content! Let’s get rolling. I’ll link to the blog and then provide links to my four favorite posts by them in the previous year. If you see something you like, feel free to click through. Each link opens in a new web browser window so you don’t lose track of this page.

Making IT Clear

Two Questions to Ask After Each Project is Completed-want to do better next time? Look at these two critical questions to help you improve.
Which Do You Have? A Job, a Profession, a Career, or a Passion? I love the breakdown on these terms. Sometimes it’s tough to admit we have a “job,” but maybe that admission is necessary to help lead us toward our own passion?
6 Things I\’d Like to Tell Your Boss about IT-Love the down-to-earth points in this one. Great overview of where tech stands today.
The 7 Biggest Challenges of a Manager-I enjoy writing about managing people, and this post outlines some of the most critical points for managers to understand. Fantastic stuff.

Lean Leaders Blog

Connecting is at the Heart of Developing People: Relationships-This post brings us back to the fact that any organizational changes, mentoring, or engagement is useless without first forming a personal connection with the receiver.
Your Culture is Your Brand-Best quote from this post: “Successful people and organizations work on culture and then work on it some more and never take it for granted.“
Thanks Chief, but you really aren’t in charge…The talk that has to happen-It’s always tough telling a superior or senior leader that they can’t do something, but sometimes that talk just has to happen. This is a great explanation of how to make that conversation less painful.
Know the Goal…Are you being productive, or are you just busy? This post kicks off with a quote by Heinlein and frames the whole idea nicely. “In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.“

Girl’s Guide to Project Management

Get Started Using Social Media on Your Projects: Take the free course! I love finding great, free stuff. If you click Â this link you can find out how to get a free email course on using social media for project management. Neat stuff!
Zombie Project Management-I am a fan of zombies here (as long-time readers know), and this post is just another example of how zombies are destroying our organizations from the inside out. Check it out!
Scope creep, shopping-style! We’ve all had scope creep knock us on the back of the head while we are hip deep in a project. This is a little personal story about how Elizabeth realizes her project is out of control.
Project Management Book Reviews-This one isn’t a post. It links to a category about book reviews, because as I scanned the archives of 2010, there were more than a dozen of them in there, and I think they are valuable tools to help people read more. If you’re looking for books on project management, this is the link for you!

And just like that, we are finished! I had a lot of fun checking out the great posts and hope you find something valuable in there. Like what you see? You can find more at theÂ Curious Cat Management Carnival 2010 post.

SHRM Leadership Conference

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. In a week I’ll be venturing to Washington, DC in order to attend the SHRM Leadership Conference. It’s geared towards SHRM Volunteer Leaders, and I definitely have an interest in becoming one. Much of what I do now isn’t exactly in the spotlight when it comes to helping SHRM leaders learn and grow. Things like the SHRM chapter leadership guide are pretty unobtrusive, but they can really help chapter leaders to think about things critically instead of running their chapter “the way it’s always been done.”

I pushed hard to attend, talking with my local chapter, reading up on the requirements, and even going so far as to pitch the idea to SHRM to help me get there (yeah, right, but I still had to try). In the end my local chapter backed me up (as they always seem to) and the big boys at SHRM didn’t (as they always seem to). I thought the pitch was a good one. I’ve included the text of it below.

I have heard so many great things about the leadership conference, but the problem is that it has all been from word of mouth. I’ve never read another blogger really dig deep into what happens there and how they benefited from attending the event. While I spend a considerable amount of time volunteering withÂ myÂ local chapter, my position as webmaster/social media coordinator doesn’t qualify me for a ticket to the event. Bottom line: I would love to have the opportunity to share about the event and promote it to my audience and network.

I know it is more of a niche event, but I believe it has the potential to radically change how SHRM reaches and guides its volunteer leaders. I so strongly believe in the idea of bringing volunteer leaders together that I have created a LinkedIn group to gather feedback and form some close ties to the SHRM leaders in the field.

Because I’m also involved with the HRYP committee with Chuck, I’d love to find a way to help reach the young volunteers and help bring them into the leadership conference experience. WIthout them seeing the value in attending, the event will be losing a lot of attendees in the coming years.

I’d like to write about the leadership conference from several angles:

First, from that of a first-time attendee.Â What’s it all about and is it even worth the trip?

Second, from the young volunteer leader’s perspective.Â Is this a tool that can provide me and my chapter with value?

Third, from my blogging persona. This event really is where a lot of connections and changes are made that other people never even have the opportunity to observe. I want to push bloggers to learn more about SHRM and share how their experiences have influenced their careers and organizations, because this is where the magic happens.

See? Not really a hard sell, but it has a lot of potential if they want to prove the value to the young HR professionals and other new and future SHRM volunteer leaders around the country (world?). Anyway, like I said, my local SHRM chapter made it happen for me, so I’ll be going and focusing on ideas to really help them in the coming year. I have a lot of ideas on my mind already, and I’ll be traveling with our president-elect, so there will be some deep discussions on chapter strategy on the trip to DC. If you’re going, shoot me an email. I’d love to meet you there!

By the way, my friend Dave Ryan did a little survey and realized that only 1.57% of the attendees for the event are active on Twitter. Not sure if that’s above or below the average, but I’m interested to see what happens when we get together.

SHRM Leaders-Be one!

Next week brings with it the 2010 SHRM Leadership Conference, and I am thrilled to be able to say that I am attending this event. So, what is it? Well, it’s an event geared toward the volunteer leaders that make things happen in the HR space. SHRM chapters and state councils send their leaders to the conference to learn how to manage their chapters better and provide more value for members. Why do I care to attend?

Better leaders make better organizations.

And because I believe that, I’m going to keep doing two things: encouraging our current leaders to get better/smarter/faster and pushing new people to volunteer for my local SHRM chapter. My time as a volunteer has greatly enhanced my network of local HR pros I can call on if I have questions, and it lets me keep my fingers on the pulse of what is current in the HR space.

You can do it, too!

Did you know you can be a leader, too? It’s really not as difficult to get started as you might imagine. All you have to do is complete a short form in order to volunteer with NASHRM. If you don’t like forms, shoot me an email and I can help you to find the area you’d like to help with. There are multiple areas you can help with, so there’s a good chance that something will be a good fit for you.

Step up. Be a leader. We need good ones now more than ever.

A Leader’s Heart: 365 Day Devotional (Book Review)

When I ordered A Leader’s Heart by John Maxwell to review from BookSneeze, I was really excited. I’ve heard for some time that John Maxwell is an amazing writer in the leadership space, but I kept putting off reading one of his books (until now). My loss.

He writes well, and A Leader’s Heart is full of amazing leadership tenets delivered in bite sized pieces.

I’ll go ahead and admit that I haven’t finished reading the book. It wouldn’t make sense to read it all before reviewing, because it’s a devotional. That means you read a short passage every day for a year. The purpose of the devotional format is to continually immerse yourself in a subject to keep yourself focused and on track.

I gave it two weeks, and I’ve already seen opportunities arise for me to utilize an idea or action I read about in the book.Â I recommend it for people looking for growth in their leadership skills.

My favorite part so far Continue reading →

SHRM Volunteer Leaders-New LinkedIn Group

Back when I surveyed SHRM volunteer leaders about what really frustrated them, one of the most common responses was a lack of interaction among leadership. Another big issue was a sense of being the only one out there. So from that point on I resolved to help remedy that.

The long story

Interesting story… I usually take it easy on Friday nights and coast through the weekend, then pick up steam on Sunday night to get back into the week at full speed. Well, I had about half an hour of free time last Friday night. Melanie had the girls, and I felt like I needed to get something done before they got home.

Of course I had to write a post about the new social media mentoring project I’m working on, and I also went through cleaning up my email. One in particular struck me.

I had talked to a few people a while back about creating a resource to help SHRM chapter and state council leaders connect and collaborate with each other. Then the email conversation stalled out. Everyone was positive about the idea, and they all agreed it needed to happen, but that’s where it ended.

Let’s make it happen

So, if you know anything at all about me, I’m a doer. I need some action, baby. :-) So I created a LinkedIn group called SHRM Chapter and State Council Leadership.

Fair warning: It’s not for everyone. I don’t want everyone joining.

No, I’m not being a snob, it’s just that I want the conversation to be highly targeted to topics that would be beneficial for chapter and state council leaders. They need this kind of thing.

Leader? Don’t look at me!

I’m way new to this SHRM stuff. I’m not even in a leadership role in my own chapter really (unless webmaster/social media coordinator counts!). But I know that there are amazing people out there who have the knowledge and abilities to help fill this group with helpful ideas and other information. My goal is for this thing to be the resource that SHRM volunteer leaders turn to in order to network and learn how to do their job the very best they can. Just a few ideas for conversations I’d like to see crop up:

How can we attract and retain members in our local chapter?
What are some of the big steps in planning a statewide conference?
Is there a good way to develop a chapter succession plan?
How can we jump into social media as a chapter?
Who can share some tips for finding compelling speakers?

Heck, those are just off the top of my head. And like I said, those people who are already in there know more about this stuff than I could cram into my noggin in a year. It’s a brain trust, and it’s going to change how SHRM volunteer leaders do what they do. If you are in a leadership role or you know someone who is, please send them the link to the group (or to this post for more info). I’d really appreciate it!

Talent Selection and Depth Leadership

Wow. That’s all I can say about the recent NASHRM September workshop event. Doctor Daniel Crosby shared some amazing insights based on his background in both clinical psychology and business consulting.