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We're in it Now
The national conference for the Society of Human Resource Management was last week. Thirteen thousand HR types descended on Orlando for a few days of education, bonding and booze. Because that’s what conferences are for. That and the recertification credits.
Not all HR people like this conference. Some think it is just too big. Too big to network and too expensive to be practical. I love it, and I am extremely grateful to my awesome employer for continuing to send me. Truth be told, I don’t do enough networking. I jam in as many sessions as possible, have dinner with a colleague and then fall into bed exhausted. I can’t imagine anything more boring than having to listen to someone talk about all the great stuff she learned at a conference, but there are a few things I want to note, for myself, for future reference:
First, Cy Wakeman. The author of Reality Based Leadership, which I have not yet read, did a great session on the theme of Ditching the Drama. Which, hello. I need to keep top of mind. There were two thoughts so poignant that I tweeted them.
Stop judging, start helping.
Sooooo hard to stop judging. But I am working on it. The “start helping” makes it a better mantra. At the same time, my job makes me a sort of professional coach and I have to balance the validation of feelings with the Reality. “Stop judging, start helping” is a phrase I might be able to adopt.
Would you rather be right or be happy?
If my damage as a human being could be summed up in one line, that might be it. I should have this tattooed on my wrist.
It’s not that I make a ton of poor decisions. I am a completely functional person and I don’t create a whole lot of drama myself. I absolutely get impatient, but I don’t look for things to get upset about – particularly at work. However. I am very easily sucked into other people’s drama and if my head is not in the game I am liable to express every feeling that I have right in the moment I am having it. Bad form.
Another thing about conferences is the BOOKS. I read Social Gravity, by Joe Gerstandt and Jason Lauritsen. The piece of advice they gave that resonated with me was to start answering those phone calls that I don’t want to answer. Start taking the meetings. It is not a crime to try to sell something, and sometimes those calls turn into contacts and those contacts turn into relationships. Investing some more time isn’t going to kill me.
Then I came home, filed my application to renew my certification, and got back to work. I remember seeing a statistic once about how very little is retained from the average training/development session. Maybe blogging it will help this year.
The Next Dark Age 