Being a Credible Activist

As we discussed in our last newsletter, David Ulrich's fifth Human Resource Competency Study (HRCS) has just been published. Like previous editions, it lays out the different roles successful HR people need to master (have a look at January's newsletter for the full list) and concludes that the most important of these is the Credible Activist.

So what is a Credible Activist?
Ulrich states: The Credible Activist is listened to, respected and admired. They offer points of view, take a position and challenge assumptions by:

• Delivering results with integrity
• Sharing information
• Building relationships of trust
• Doing HR with an attitude

What does this mean in the real world?
It's not easy to look at these qualities and know exactly what they mean in real life situations. Because they are behaviours and attutudes, not specific skills, it's then even more difficult to know how to develop them yourself or teach them to others.

So can you help your team develop Credible Activist behaviours if they don't come naturally? Here at HR with Guts, we think the answer is yes - by nurturing the beliefs that lie behind these behaviours.

What are Credible Activist beliefs?
As we mentioned in our last newsletter, being a Credible Activist is about having belief in your contribution and the importance of your role, and knowing that HR can help your business achieve its goals. This means having the courage to challenge colleagues in the interest of these goals, having the independence to state your points of view even if other people disagree, and, most importantly, it's about having the conviction to influence people, so that your beliefs turn into actions.

Interestingly, these beliefs mirror the beliefs that our own research identified as common among successful HR BPs. So it's possible that the training we developed in response to our research could help you become a Credible Activist, too.

That's why we've written the following three articles - to provide a couple of example tips on these three key areas of Credible Activism - Courage, Independence and Influence. Some of the tips have been taken from our sets of playing cards (click here for more information about these), and some are based purely on the beliefs of the HR people we interviewed in our research.