What Have I Learned

What is my most significant learning point?

The David Ulrich's article "Do You Want to Be More Effective as an HR Professional? Here's How" contained my most critical learning point regarding managing people for competitive advantage. I discovered the following concept in week three of the course, "Simplifying complexities for your employees is the first step in being an effective leader." Ulrich did not directly make this statement. I extracted it from his work that shares simplifying complexities is at the core of human resource competencies and aligned it with a current career struggle of mine.  

My VP needs to help simplify the complexities around my role. While I am achieving my key performance metrics and attaining quota within our focus products, I am not able to work efficiently, perceive that I do not have a work-life balance, and am resentful of him. I have asked for specific help with inefficiencies and provided ideas and research, but I am quickly dismissed. These past eleven months working with this individual, so many minor issues have accumulated to a tremendous amount of stress and struggle in both my work and personal life. This learned concept allows me to organize my thoughts and provide clear feedback on why I am leaving the organization- I will provide my resignation within the week. I understand why I want to leave, but having an easy-to-share statement encompassing most of the individual issues will make this conversation go more smoothly.

This is a critical conversation because I want to leave on a good note. I have made a noteworthy impact on our startup and have forged strong relationships. I respect our founders and truly enjoy my colleagues. I even like my VP, as a person, of course, and not as a leader. Something I need help with is that I can be very literal. I developed this communication style while speaking with doctors and healthcare staff in surgical settings. When talking with leadership, I can speak in that same manner which is not socially intelligent because there is no urgency, and they are people with emotions. No patient is on a table, so the setting does not warrant complete literalness. 

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I would share my eventual resignation with my VP, and every time I began thinking, I went down a rabbit hole of all the things I needed to share. I created a note that has accumulated a long list of specific issues, but I understood that stating the list's contents was poor form. I couldn't find the correct theme to be the umbrella for all the nonsense, but now I have it. "I realized that I put a lot of value in my leader making it their top priority to simplify complexities for me and my team." After sharing this, I can offer more insights if he asks, but I am not sure he will because he has a strong ego. My VP would be an ideal client for Professor Setzer.

What was the most important learning from my classmates?

"Being an educator is more than making sure people know things, but it is providing a holistic knowledge base that allows people to grow in many ways." Our classmate Hayden shared this insight in response to my discussion post on My People Competencies. I appreciated reading this as it establishes/reinforces a vague idea I hold about education. Concepts we learn in school or at work are almost always directly relatable to other aspects of academia, business, and even our personal lives. The reason why I began my master's program was to set myself up for a future hobby- to become a professor. Admittedly, I have no formal training in education, but I have always enjoyed training, teaching, and mentoring folks in the roles (professional, athletic, volunteer, extra-curricular) I have taken on. This learning is not only a good point, reminding me that education is holistic, but it also serves as a reminder that I need to take on some formal training within education before pursuing opportunities as an adjunct professor.  

What was the greatest learning from my Instructor?

In his feedback presentation, Professor Setzer gave me a few ah-ha moments. The most impactful was to eliminate the use of should, why, but, always, and never to improve our conversational intelligence. Admittedly, this is a blind spot for me. I use these words with the regularity of likely the average person. These last seven weeks, I have caught myself writing those words for papers, discussion posts, texts, and emails. I would then stop, realize that language could be improved (usually), and then edit the content. From now on, I will consider this teaching in my professional and personal life.

What have I learned regarding the value of people and organizational health?

An organization is not tangible. It does not breathe or have feelings or even have a "culture" - I understand that could be a comment that folks disagree with. An organization is merely paperwork, a compliance-related filing that government is aware exists. It may have assets, liabilities, policies, social media accounts, a logo, and a myriad of other "things" associated with it. However, it cannot achieve goals, help people, or provide goods or services to anyone. Then who does these things? People. People are the organization. Their shared actions and value systems are the "company culture." Simply put, they are the business, and managing people for competitive advantage will drive businesses toward success (if that is what the people are aiming for). 

A final note- I recently spoke with the individual in charge of human resources at the Denver start-up AMP Robotics—her title is VP of People. 

What am I taking away from our course that will have the greatest latest impact on my future success?

I just recognized that I have been long-winded with my answers to these questions. And with that, I will merely add to my response to the first question, "What is my most significant learning point?" There, I shared that simplifying complexity is the first step in becoming a good people leader. While that teaching immediately applies to the current career situation I described, it will also impact my future success. In the future, I will remember the feeling of not receiving enablement nor empowerment from this VP and understand that for the future teams I lead, simplifying complexity is the baseline I must provide each of my employees. This knowledge is timely because the role I'm moving into will open up the opportunity for me to lead within the next 12-14 months.