How to Build A Great HR Team

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How to Build A GreatHR Team

• February 19, 2009
• Indianapolis, Indiana

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Why Build a Great HR Team?
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Agenda for today

• A team effectiveness model that has been
  developed through both research and practical
  application (the school of hard knocks!).
• A tool you can use to diagnose your HR team
• Challenge your thinking, plant some seeds, and
  put you on a path that will lead to good things

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Opening Thoughts about teams

• We need A Little Less Talk And A Lot More
  Action (with apologies to Toby Keith)
• I assume you want a highly effective HR team, not
  just compliant and cooperative employees.
• Teams provide a way to improve organizational
  effectiveness and job satisfaction
• This work is worth it!

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Team types

• Informal sense of team
• - We are all in this together
• Traditional work unit (Human Resources)
• Problem solving task forces
• Leadership teams, steering committees, councils
• Self-directed work teams

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Todays definition of team

• Two or more people
• Working together to accomplish a common goal

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The 7 Key Components of Effective Teams

• Clear sense of direction
• Talented members
• Clear and enticing responsibilities
• Good operating procedures
• Constructive interpersonal relationships
• Active reinforcement systems
• Constructive external relationships
• Source Tools for Team Excellence, by Greg
  Huszczo

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1. Clear Sense of Direction

• May be the most important of all 7 components.
• What is your HR dept. mission statement?
• Mission example To provide professional,
  proactive and practical Human Resource services
  to faculty and staff, their families, prospective
  employees, and the communities we serve.
• A team must have specific goals and targets.
• What is your teams vision of the future?

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The importance of team goals

• Provides motivation
• Determine if we have succeeded together or not.
• Focusing on the future enables us to handle the
  present.
• Establishes mutual accountability.

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Team Goal Setting

• Involvement commitment
• Goals become a basis for decision making
• Assignments, process and procedures, resource
  allocations should align with goals
• Feedback on goals is an opportunity to reinforce
  team-oriented behavior
• But how do I get the team to change?

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Creative Tension Change Model
Future Vision
Personal Variables
Situational Variables
Current Reality
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2. Talented Members

• Everyone on the team should inventory the
  strengths of your HR team members.
• Make certification a goal for all eligible HR
  professionals

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3. Clear enticing responsibilities

• Clarify who does what
• Have a conversation about primary and secondary
  contacts within HR.
• Balance fun with the mundane.
• For the HR leaders - what have you done lately to
  learn more about and improve your own leadership
  skills?

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4. Good operating procedures

• Two really important ones
• Creative Problem Solving
• Group Decision Making

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Group Decision Making Continuum
What style to use? Consider the Business
situation and Culture. 1) Highly divisive
decisions? 2) Requires energetic support? 3)
Team is relatively inexperienced? 4) You need to
establish your authority?
Unilateral
Consult and Decide
Build Consensus
Unanimous
More leader control
Less Leader Control
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5. Constructive interpersonal relationships

• Facilitated team retreats using the Myers-Briggs
  Type Indicator, or MBTI
• The MBTI is useful for leadership, decision
  making, interpersonal relations, communication,
  and how they relate to patterns we see at work
  and in our lives.
• Start a process to increase personal and team
  effectiveness.
• MBTI is a registered trademark of Consulting
  Psychologists Press

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Constructive interpersonal relationships

• Human Resources Team Assessment

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6. Active reinforcement systems

• Align your performance feedback to the team
  behaviors you want
• Is teamwork a core competency for feedback?
• Team appreciation for each other
• Recognition must be delivered in the form that is
  most meaningful to each person.
• Its the little things that make a big difference

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Little things that are BIG

• Celebrate birthdays, certifications
• Handwritten notes
• Be visible get to know people attend events
  sit in the break room say hello in the hall
• Get to know the whole person family, hopes, and
  dreams.
• Encourage people to pursue their career goals.

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More little things that are BIG

• Retreats
• Weekly staff meetings that celebrate the good
  work we have been doing
• Talk to people face to face more.
• Be a mentor
• Hold meetings in fun places off-site.

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7. Constructive external relationships

• The HR Team is a system within a larger system.
• What goes on in HR affects the organization, and
  what goes on in the organization affects HR.
• Assess the relationships that HR has now and
  wants in the future.

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Team meeting onexternal relationships

• Current Reality
• Make a list of the key people and groups that HR
  deals with regularly.
• What do people say about HR?

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Team meeting onexternal relationships

• Future Vision
• Which relationships should HR try to benefit
  from? Improve on?
• What can we do to improve our external
  relationships? Who will do it? How?
• Personal and situational variables to take into
  consideration.

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Action planning

• Now that you have a model and specific ideas to
  increase your HR team effectiveness.

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Where should I start?

• Start with what you can control Covey called
  that working in your own circle of influence.
• "You must be the change you wish to see in the
  world." -- Mahatma Gandhi

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How to get people to take action?

• Be disciplined in your approach
• Take baby steps
• Commitments in public
• Shared data collection diagnose first
• Leverage respected people
• Decide if this is a DIY project

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So what did you get out of today?

• A team effectiveness model that you and your
  co-workers can use to diagnose your HR team
• You have received some seeds, and it will be up
  to you to plant them, nurture them, and put your
  HR dept. on a path that will lead to good things.

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Recommended reading

• Tools for Team Excellence by Greg Huszczo
• HR from the Heart by Libby Sartain
• The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry
  Posner

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Thank you!

• Throughout the centuries there were men who took
  first steps down new roads armed with nothing but
  their own vision.
• From The Fountainhead by
  Ayn Rand

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Contact information

• Bill Hendry
• 418 W. 11th St
• Traverse City, MI 49684
• [phone] work [phone] mobile
• Email bill_at_billhendry.com
• Website www.billhendry.com