How HR Gathers Influence

03/05/07

“Nobody cares how well you dance,” humorist Dave Barry said once. “Just get out and dance.”

And that’s one of the keys to becoming a successful HR person, according to Dan Carricato, HR vice president for Hilton Grand Vacations. “You don’t have to be great—just get out there and do things,” he told an audience at the Society for Human Resource Management convention. “People will notice you adding value to the organization. And the more you dance, the better you get.”

Speak Foreign Languages
Knowing the business you’re in is essential to becoming an effective—and respected—HR professional, said Carricato. “If you don’t know the business, you’re never going to get a seat at the table, because they [senior managers] won’t trust you.”

That’s why, he said, it’s important “to speak languages foreign to HR.” Carricato, for instance, subscribes to CFO, a journal for chief financial officers, comptrollers, and people in other financial positions. “I want to be talking their business and knowing their games.”

Carricato learned to read income statements and balance sheets, he said, to understand how profit and loss interact with the business and the decisions that get made. He encouraged the group to do the same, as well as to “Make the CFO your friend. He holds the purse strings.”

Recognize the Real Client
Another way to get ahead in your career is having a good sense of who your client is. “This shifts with the project,” Carricato said. It could be the employee, management, shareholders, or the company’s customers.

Once you know the client, know where the value in the situation is. And don’t forget, he said, “Value is based on the receiver’s needs, not the giver’s.”

Help Line Managers
To get more done, get line managers thinking and doing HR, Carricato advised. That means doing things like helping them understand good recruiting and interviewing techniques, harassment laws, and so forth. The more routine things they can do themselves, the more you can focus on adding value in more important areas.

You also want to give line managers “the best expertise possible, so they make good decisions.” Carricato told of a Hilton project in Hawaii in which the company would have to ferry employees over from another island every morning and then home at night. He was the only manager who saw the expense and trouble involved. Once he made his views known, management took his advice and solved the problem another way.

“The tendency is for an organization to forget there’s an HR person who can add value,” Carricato pointed out. Don’t let them forget.

How to Develop People
Most HR people try to turn a person’s weaknesses into strengths through counseling, appraisals, and discipline. That’s the wrong approach, Carricato maintained. Instead, “Build on people’s strengths, not their weaknesses.”

Observing that a poll showed that only 20 percent of employees worldwide felt they could do their best work on a daily basis, Carricato advised HR pros to “Find ways to let people do what they do best. Manage away the weaknesses.” Do that, for example, by reconfiguring jobs and letting others cover the weak areas.

Don’t Say No
“Don’t be the HR police,” Carricato told his audience bluntly, or you’ll never gain influence. “If you’re the HR police, get out of human resources.”

Instead of saying “no,” or “we can’t do that,” be diplomatic. “Ask the person,” Carricato said, “What’s the end result? What’s your goal? Let’s look at some different ways of accomplishing that.”