If HR did dance movements…

Yes it is the carnival time once again, arribaaaa!!!!!!!!!

Excuse me but this is a carnival of HR if you don’t mind, so please calm down before we proceed. For this months theme we have been asked to think about how organisations or people are represented or influenced by different styles of dance.

('Carnival of what?!' I hear you cry - Carnival of HR. For more details check this out)

It made me think of how most dances are pretty structured in that there might be certain moves that you need to include, which seems to be especially the case in ballroom dancing (I never thought I would say it but thank you to Strictly Come Dancing for providing an education in this regard). On the other hand you have the likes of break dancing which are very abstract and much more off the cuff.

However, racking my brain for what to come up with for the carnival I felt that in the cases of the examples above they were either to restrictive or too abstract to be representative of the work HR professionals have to undertake. For example, one would not expect a dancer to win plaudits in a ballroom competition from ceasing a fox trot to start spinning on their head as it would not match up - though I am sure we would all love to see what Craig and Len made of that (US readers this is another Strictly reference - last one I promise).

Yet in HR you are expected to take on roles which create amusing contradictions and often put us in these difficult situations. We are the people employees turn to when they have a problem whilst at the same time acting as a wing of management and progressing the interests of the organisation. It is expected that we take on both a strategic and operational function.

We coach and help staff look for means of improvement and development opportunities, yet also get involved with representing/acting as an authority or adjudicator when people have not met the standards expected of them - such as instances of disciplinary and grievance, performance management cases and so on.

You might be reading this and thinking ‘What is he talking about? That is not my reality of HR!’ and you would be correct – I have no idea what your experience in the field is and how that contrasts with mine, either as a custome of HR or participant in the industry.

This, in some ways, proves my point – HR is, to go back to our carnival premise, a circus with a very big tent and one in which we all bring our own definitions and expectations of what the function should do and how its place in the organisation.

A combination of the abstract and the logical; a function that is able to provide an approachable and human element to what it does, whilst being a source of legislative, procedural and strategic information on which an organisation can depend.

How best to represent this in a dance? I think this guys version of the robot does it the most justice

Disagree that this is representative of HR? I would love to hear your thoughts – in the interim I hope you enjoy the video!

(NB – forget the two guys dancing at the beginning – it is when the orange jumper starts moving that the real fun starts)

Hanging Tough

I am reading Jason Selk's '10 Minute Toughness' at the moment and really enjoying it, being a sucker for any self improvement texts, especially if they are able to throw in some sports references along the way.

(I now know what people from the States are referring to when they mention 'bottom of the 9th' - previously I wondered what the big draw was to the 9th as everyone seemed to end up there at some point)

Anyways the general theme of the book was doing all you can to be at ease prior to competition or an event - with sports people this makes perfect sense in the context of practice sessions or routines you need to create on the day of competition, a good universal example (he said after bracketing Baseball as a US sport though it is big in Japan) being the different events you gymnasts have e.g the horse, the vault... the rope thingy with the hoops.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

It is all good stuff which can be applied to professional lives also but I wondered if there were two areas that could be used in the context of the corporate world. Thinking about it I have been inspired by Selk to come up with this - T and T: Technique and Temperament

Technique - so this is all about the skills you have at your disposal to do the job. In doubt about  your technique? Then like Selk says you need to get practiced and versed in your discipline so competition comes easy as the practice has been where you have grafted and tested yourself.

But how do you get 'match-fit' (so to speak) from a career perspective? You need to get involved at work and outside of it with events and opportunities to get exposure to areas that are alien to you but you will need to progress and move forward. 

Selk also talks about having public announcements of the changes you wish to make so others hold you to account - idea being you might be happy to let yourself down but you nearest and dearest will pull you up for progress updates etc. 

Perhaps not best to let clients know they are an experiment in your professional development but might be an idea to let friends know of your big ideas - they are more likely to have supportive suggestions and pull you up when you are not being honest ("Patrick stop making excuses - that red wine stain did not end up on the carpet by itself"). Also when people realise you are looking to develop skills in a certain area they might know of someone in their network who might be able to assist/advice.

Temperament - I think this is the tougher of the two to maintain and, in some ways, the more fragile as it can be a little bit more subject to the actions of others. For example, you can develop a wealth of knowledge on how to coach and mentor but there is no guaranteeing the type of questions that will be thrown at you during a session.

In some ways this is when technique comes in to its own - at least you can relax knowing you have practised your skills, it is just a case of using your judgement as to how to apply them and when.

Discretion and judgement is arguably something that can only be obtained through experience - which can be quite exciting in some ways, as at least with every step you have the opportunity to develop your skill set.

Check out Selk for more positive suggestions of ways forward. In the meantime I hope you find my T and T a dynamite piece of advice!

Resisting the temptation to add 'boom boom' for that pun... probably best to draw it to a close here for the moment.

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You say it best when you say nothing at all

Miscommunication can occur in so many different ways, with so much of our communication being non verbal. Go to any casino in Vegas and you will see whole tables of people keeping a grip on their ‘tells’ and what they might give away. If you need an example of how it can go wrong on a day to day professional level, ask Jackie Orme how she feels after being quango’d.

Going back to the non verbal means of communication and looking at this from an L and D perspective, how is this addressed in webinars?


I say this as someone who has yet to experience one, so apologies in advance if it is just my ignorance shining through! My understanding is that it is delivered via a link online to multiple users, with the trainer /module leader providing instructions and feeding back as the webinar develops.


There was a recent article in HR Zone suggesting this might be the wave of the future – but how does it function in a way that works and allows for free flowing communication?


My understanding of delivering a training session was that elements of the session would require you to ‘think on your feet’, reacting to how the session develops in order to facilitate the learning of the group - and yourself in doing so.


Is this perhaps a naïve vision and how does your experience of webinars fit in with the perceptions mentioned above? Is it the case that moves in L and D towards more remote learning are inevitable, especially in light of these lean economic times?


Or perhaps, in the words of the Springsteen, we need a little more of that human touch?

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A slice of the big Apple

Following on from my post about missing (still cannot believe I am saying this) the CIPD due to the structure that it provided in terms of learning and development, I was pointed in the direction of a speech by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple to graduates at Stanford University.

If you have a spare ten/fifteen minutes I strongly recommended you watch this – you will need sound on your machine or headphones as I am not sure if watching him mime the speech will have any affect otherwise.

The general gist is to, as he put it, ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’ and not to become bogged down in narrow linear thinking in terms of your career, as well as life in general, and to try new and exciting things. I found it really uplifting stuff, especially when he speaks about his own childhood and educational experiences as a young adult. I loved how he said ‘how all of the dots eventually join together’ – so although you might think there is something you are doing at the moment which makes sense in your career, it could end up having productive uses at a later date.

In short everyday is a learning day I suppose – including weekends!