As an HR professional, what is your sphere of influence?

This was one of the conversations I witnessed this past weekend as I took part in an event called HRevolution. It was an amazing event that gathered fifty HR professionals together for a closer look at social media, HR\’s role in the workplace, networking, and more. The question above was dropped during the session where the participants discussed the best ways for HR professionals to make a difference in their organizations.

Spinning wheels

For some of the participants, I got the impression that they were working furiously just to stay afloat. When you\’re spinning your wheels on a daily basis, it\’s quite difficult to see where your efforts are actually making a difference. From personal experience, I can tell you that I know what it\’s like. It can be disheartening. If you are focusing your efforts on changing a large group of people, most of them will never get enough guidance or attention to actually make a change.

Take three

One of the participants at the event, Paul Hebert of Incentive Intelligence (a brilliant writer whose work you should be reading!), gave a relatively simple answer to this problem. His solution was for HR professionals to target a small handful of people to influence. Spend your time developing and mentoring three of the best managers you have. When you have done what you can with those managers, help them to do the same for three more supervisors. You can continually focus on your core group of leaders and they can each spread that knowledge and expertise much farther than you could have if you were trying to go solo.

In an ironic sort of way, the smaller the area where you focus your efforts, the more impact you can have on your organization.

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