HRchat Podcast

Thriving in HR: Strategies and Thought Leadership with Dorie Clark

The HR Gazette Season 1 Episode 752

In this episode, Bob Goodwin talks with Dorie Clark, a renowned keynote speaker, best-selling author, and expert in leadership and strategy. If you’ve been on LinkedIn or read Harvard Business Review, you’ve likely come across her thought-provoking insights!

Dorie is a WSJ Bestselling Author, Duke University Fuqua School of Business Adjunct Professor, Ranked #1 Communication Coach and 3x Top 50 Business Thinker in World - Thinkers50.

Dorie shares her expertise on the evolving role of HR and the unique challenges faced by those in the field. Learn why HR professionals often put their own career development on the back burner and how the COVID-19 pandemic thrust them into the spotlight of strategic workforce planning and talent management.

Listen too, as Bob and Dorie discuss the role of political capital and thought leadership in bolstering your career stability. Dori delves into the art of connecting with colleagues, understanding organizational dynamics, and navigating complex relationships to become indispensable at your workplace. We'll also explore the power of thought leadership in crafting a strong personal brand. Creating and sharing content that highlights your expertise can earn you recognition and fortify your professional standing both within and outside your organization.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom and visit.

Speaker 2:

HRGazettecom. Hey everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, the president of Career Club, and I am so pleased to be guest hosting for my friend, bill Bannum, who is away on paternity leave your usual guest on HR Chat. So thank you so much for having me as part of your podcast family here for the next few episodes. Today I am so pleased to be joined by my friend, dori Clark. I'm going to read, dori, just a little bit about your background. I hope I don't chew up all 25 minutes of reading about this.

Speaker 2:

So Dori is a renowned keynote speaker, consultant and bestselling author, recognized globally for her expertise in leadership and strategy, named three times as one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers 50. She's also been honored as the number one communication coach by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards. Dori teaches executive education at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, as well as Columbia Business School, and her clients include industry giants like Google, microsoft and the World Bank. She's also the author of several influential books which I highly recommend, including the Long Game, entrepreneurial you, reinventing you and Standout, which was named the number one leadership book of the year by Inc Magazine. Dori's work focuses on helping individuals and companies get their best ideas heard in a crowded, noisy world. Her insights have been featured in Harvard Business Review, forbes and numerous other prestigious publications. Harvard Business Review, forbes and numerous other prestigious publications. She holds a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and, of course, has produced a Grammy-winning jazz album, dori welcome.

Speaker 3:

Hey Bob, thank you Great to be here.

Speaker 2:

No, this is great and I suspect that if anybody's on LinkedIn for more than a hot minute, they have seen some of the amazing posts that you do, you will be a familiar face. If they are HBR subscribers, they for sure know who you are. But again, just thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us today here on HR Chat.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, it's awesome and I look forward to diving in. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So I think the way that I kind of like to tee this up is HR professionals are very, very good at investing in other people's careers and helping other people do career maps and be successful in their careers often at the expense of their own professional careers and building their own brand. And I wonder if you could just kind of start to unpack that dilemma a little bit and how we might start thinking about that differently as HR folks.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think you raise a really important point, bob, because, in terms of the psychographics often of someone who works in HR, they are really interested in people and in helping other people and that is obviously a wonderful and important component of your job. But it's also true that we need to make sure that we are not neglecting our own career trajectories. As my colleague, marshall Goldsmith, and Sally Helgeson talked about in their book how Women Rise, there's a phenomenon of people putting their job ahead of their career, meaning that you're so fixated on doing a good job at your job and wanting to deliver for your colleagues and the people you're helping and your company that sometimes we tend to forget the overall arc of oh, have I kept up with my network? Have I kept up with building skills that might not be useful today but probably will be useful for me in a few years? And all of these things that can keep us current and, frankly, keep us protected in case there are any changes or downturns in the market.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so let's just kind of double click on that. You know HR is changing, so you know it's not just the hey, here's your benefits package or your onboarding thing. Hr really, particularly with COVID, you know, really leapt to the fore in terms of strategic workforce kinds of initiatives, work from home, hybrid work, things like that, and now, with AI coming into the picture and being able to, in some cases, automate some of those tasks, their role is really kind of being reinvented on the fly. And how do you speak to clients kind of broadly about that? And then maybe more specifically in an HR context, yeah, I mean, it's certainly true.

Speaker 3:

Probably more than in almost any other functional area, hr in the past few years has really taken center stage.

Speaker 3:

You know this is good news and bad news, right?

Speaker 3:

I mean the good news is that for years, hr professionals have dealt with sometimes very unfairly, being sidelined because it's seen as a cost center rather than a center of profit generation, and so, as a result, for a lot of companies that are short-sighted, you get less respect in that context.

Speaker 3:

But COVID upended all of that because all of a sudden, hr-related issues and talent retention and talent acquisition during the great resignation and things like that suddenly became priority number one, and so it was this moment where everyone realized, oh my God, hr is extremely important. And so this, on one hand, became this great moment to shine and to really show all the things that HR could be, all the things that all along we've been saying that it's not just managing payroll, it's the entire strategy of how we bring in and retain and train the people who are needed to execute the function of the organization. It's pretty enormous, and so that is exciting, but it also is sort of daunting in the sense that suddenly you really are center stage and it's this opportunity to redefine how other people view HR as a function and view you as a contributor and as a leader, and so it's kind of high stakes, and so it's kind of high stakes.

Speaker 2:

So if we were sitting at a round table, dory, you know of CHROs who are really trying to, as you say, kind of not lose the moment that they had and kind of level up now with the advent of AI or just maybe broadly, just, you know, being more of a strategic partner to the rest of the ELT, what kinds of things would you recommend to them?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So you're pointing at something really important, bob, with the use of the phrase strategic partner. I think that there is a tendency among people who don't understand HR or, you know, maybe we can say more aptly, don't want to understand it, don't want to take the time to understand it that it is about really tactical things. You know, get me, get me this headcount. Or you know, cut this headcount or whatever it is, and ultimately it is. It's just so fundamentally interwoven in terms of you know, where are we going as an organization? What kind of people and skills do we need? How do we find them? How do we make sure that we're the employer of choice? How do we get the message out to the right people? How do we ensure that they are happy enough that they're not immediately turning around and leaving for a competitor? These are fundamentally strategic concerns, and so we need to own and claim that strategy.

Speaker 3:

Now, I will admit I'm biased. I am a strategy fan. My most recent book is called the Long Game how to Be a Long-Term thinker in a short-term world. So I'm all in on it, but, I believe, with good reason, because in literally almost every study about leadership, what comes to the fore is that, when people think about the most critical components of leadership, strategy and strategic thinking is literally at the top of the list, and so if we want to own our place at the table, that is the ring that we've got to grab.

Speaker 2:

Yeah and I need to find a way of saying this tactfully that sometimes and again this may be more perception than reality is that HR is more kind of compliance and procedures and policies and stuff like that. It's somewhat disconnected from the actual business, of the business, and I believe that there's just this really kind of once in a career opportunity, maybe with COVID, twice in a career in a very short period of time, to really elevate the HR function. And that's fine if AI and tools. Ai and tools can, like, take care of some of these more perfunctory kinds of things that need to be done, but they're not particularly strategic, they're very tactical and allow HR to reposition itself. You know, as this strategic enabler because you know I'm very much in the Jim Collins, you know, get the right people on the bus, they'll help you figure out the right strategy right. That's really kind of job one. And so you know, if our mutual friend we were sort of talking about him before we pressed- record but Johnny Taylor at SHRM, right, you know their little

Speaker 2:

motto or whatever for this is AI plus HI. Human intelligence equals ROI, and I think it's really brilliant, because who should know the people, the culture of a company better than the HR leadership, the HR team? Right? So, as we become, particularly like with Gen Z, you know more. It's a real whole human being at work. It's just not a work producing unit, but it's a human being. Bring your whole self to work. You know somebody who really understands not just the X's and the O's of the business, but the people that make the X's and O's of the business actually operate, becomes invaluable, right? Otherwise you have high attrition, low productivity, right? You've got people who are burned out and leave. You've got higher healthcare costs because people are stressed out.

Speaker 2:

And you know HR people, hr professionals you know, leaning into the strategic part of the business can, just for their own careers, just make giant leaps along the way, enable their companies to succeed.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think that's so right and so true, bob, and I've been thinking a lot I'm sure it sounds like you have as well about this question of, in the age of AI, what is our competitive advantage, what are the things that we can hold on to? Because, interestingly enough, I mean, if you take the conversation back three years or five years, you know pre-chat GPT so often people were saying, well, you know, we need, you know the human skills. Ai can't ever touch us on creativity or empathy or blah, blah, blah, and it's like, well, sorry, now it can. So where did that leave us? And so we got to think of something else, honestly, and I have been asking myself what are the things that, structurally, it is unable to do?

Speaker 3:

And one of the things that that keeps coming up for me is questions of political capital and questions of really understanding for lack of a better term where the bodies are buried, just understanding the political landscape of an organization.

Speaker 3:

Those are things that, if you are building and I'm not saying this in a Machiavellian sense, I just mean literally over time, if you are someone who knows people, who is willing to be a kind and open connector, who is willing to do favors, who is, you know, somebody who remembers things and remembers oh, this person is really good at this.

Speaker 3:

Oh, this, this other person's really bad at this. Okay, I'm going to tap them for this and not for that. If, if you are doing that, if you are able to master the sort of back channel of the way that politics work in an organization sometimes people think that that's a loaded word or that that's a bad thing. I want to argue against that that ultimately, as humans, we can actually stake out turf that no other people and certainly no technology can contravene, because if you have enough people that like you, that owe you favors, and you have demonstrated a mastery of how this particular organization works, that is a way that you can actually make yourself extremely invaluable within the confines of that organization, regardless of what's happening in the broader marketplace and regardless of what's happening in technology.

Speaker 2:

What I love about it, it's sort of the corporate whisperer, like you really understand how this thing really really works. Because, again, I think that what to your earlier point about AI kind of looks past this. Human beings are incredibly complex, relationships are incredibly complex, the history and the context of those relationships is complex and I don't know what the data input system is that captures all that to do machine learning, modeling, ai, large language modeling. I don't know what the data input system is that captures all that to put to do machine learning modeling, ai, large language modeling. I don't know what that is.

Speaker 2:

People are really good at stuff like that. They're really uniquely, I think, to your point, good at stuff like that Related to all this and being strategic. When you teach people in your books about building a personal brand, one of the things that you talk a lot about is thought leadership, and again I think this is kind of converging of a couple of ideas here. How would you encourage an HR professional and this doesn't have to be at the executive level, this could be a director, senior manager, whatever to start to build thought leadership that enhances their brand and helps position them for a longer game?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I am a fan of creating thought leadership. I'll sort of put this in air quotes so I can explain what that means, because it's a term that gets confused sometimes or used in different ways, but ultimately, the way that I'm thinking about it is, if you are a professional that wants to be taken seriously, that hopefully wants to have you know, people know what you think and say, oh, he's, he's really sharp. Or you know, oh, she has great ideas. Yeah, she would be a great person for this position or for this committee or whatever. It is the way that we do that, aside from you know, literally having worked elbow to elbow with someone, and they see, oh, you know, they're good at what they do. The way that you can spread that at scale is by creating thought leadership material that enables your ideas to travel. Now, that could be writing articles for the HR journal, it could be presenting at a conference or speaking or conducting a workshop or something like that, but it's publicly airing your ideas in a way so that they are understandable and transmissible to an audience larger than the people who happen to have worked with you personally. And when you do that, it becomes really powerful, first of all, because you do in fact get known for those ideas.

Speaker 3:

But secondly, one of the phenomena that is important here is understanding that we're always you know it goes back to the Bible right, they say you're never a prophet in your homeland, and it's certainly true in corporate life. I mean, studies have backed up again and again that people kind of get taken for granted after a while in an organization, certainly in terms of their compensation. People who are coming in from outside often get paid more. This is just something we recognize is true. And so if we want to fight back against that, if we want to mitigate that threat, a way to do that is that if you can build up your reputation both internally and externally, so that people inside hear from people outside oh Bob works for you.

Speaker 3:

Oh, I saw Bob speak last year. That guy is really good. All of a sudden the people inside recognize oh, I better not take him for granted, I better start appreciating Bob and remunerating him and giving him the opportunities that he deserves so that he doesn't end up elsewhere, and that is I think I would call it a win-win. It's certainly a win-win, you know, a win for you, but it's also good for your organization, because they may not have been fully appreciating what they had, and now they do, and so they're going to be getting the best out of you.

Speaker 2:

I would say there's an additional dividend, which is it builds the employer brand right.

Speaker 1:

So wow, look at Dory.

Speaker 2:

She's with that company. That must be a really smart company if they've got people like Dory leading this function or talking on this topic. So and I think too about I just love what you write about Dory because in this context, say that I'm worried about getting laid off right To your earlier point. Like it's a cost center, it's pretty easy to cut, you know, would you really miss them? It's like I'm definitely gonna miss that person. Like no, she's a keeper, like Dory's going nowhere.

Speaker 2:

Bob might be finding a new role but we're keeping Dory, which kind of builds to another point. And you know I work a lot with people in job transition, whether it's individuals or throughout placement, and one of the things that we just find people struggling with I think HR is particularly in this realm is really being able to articulate their unique value proposition and how they contribute to the business. They'll talk about what they were responsible for, use your example earlier payroll or benefits or something, but like, how did you move the needle at the business? Hi everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president at Career Club. Imagine with me for a minute a workplace where leaders and employees are energized, engaged and operating at their very best. At Career Club, we work with both individuals and organizations to help combat stress and burnout that lead to attrition, disengagement and higher health care costs. We can help your organization and your workforce thrive, boosting both productivity and morale across the board. To learn more about how we might help you and your company, visit us at careerclub. How would you coach somebody in that context?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, it's always a little bit of a challenge because we sort of look with longing on things where it's this super direct one-to-one correlation. You know, if you're in sales, it's like, well, I sold 40% more. Okay, well, you know, that's very easy to compute, so that's great. And certainly whenever it comes to, you know, human relations of any kind and human resources, it's a little more indirect, and so that it becomes more complex. That doesn't mean it is, uh, impossible, and it certainly doesn't mean that the contributions are less meaningful. Sometimes they're more meaningful, but, um, it becomes a little less obvious how to make that argument. And so I think the important thing really is to take the step back and not fall victim to what is in front of you. You know it's very easy to say, well, I did this task, this task, this task, because of course, you remember it, you did it, you can quantify it, no one's going to argue with you, and that feels simple. But even if it feels like a little bit more of a stretch, I would argue it's valid and important to start with the corporate objectives and then work backwards from there in terms of, like, well, what is the contribution that you made there?

Speaker 3:

I mean, depending on what your role is and what you're doing, it could be anything from setting the strategy about you know what are the, what are the talent goals and you know, filling, filling these spots and recruiting it, which enables then the company to accomplish all of the things that the company needs to accomplish. It could be, you know, reducing attrition. You know you can certainly track all of these metrics. You can talk about employee engagement and you know, I mean these are things that that HR legitimately can claim credit for if we're doing our jobs well, that you know people are more active and engaged, they're doing better work and therefore it makes possible more sales, more revenue, more expansion, whatever it is. So I think it's really understanding. Okay, we created the conditions and because those conditions were met, it then enabled all the other really great things downstream that we can, at least in part, claim credit for as well.

Speaker 2:

I so appreciate what you're saying because I agree a million percent. So if the company was achieving double-digit revenue growth and I played a role in helping build out that sales team, or we were able to cut costs because I helped build out the supply chain team or the procurement team, you can legitimately take some credit for that. And, to your point, it's not one for one, and I think you know people do understand that. But at the same time we don't need to do ourselves harm by saying, well, I had nothing to do with that, like all I did was, you know, hire a bunch of great professionals who ended up, you know, doing these wonderful things for the company. So you know, for people who are listening, what I heard Dory say is start with a corporate objective and work backwards.

Speaker 2:

It's almost guaranteed that what you did led to either growth, so increased revenue, saving expenses in some form or fashion that could be direct, like you're saying, dory, time to hire, cost per hire, less attrition, whatever and then thirdly and this is a little murkier sometimes which is mitigated risk. So we created the conditions where employee satisfaction went up Right now hopefully there's the extension of that and, like you know, attrition went down or you know voluntary turnover went down or something like that. You know attrition went down, or you know voluntary turnover went down or something like that. But those are things that you're just again kind of thinking more in the language of the business and their work backwards to. How did the things the projects I worked on contribute to I love how you said this to create the conditions that allowed for those successes to happen?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think that's right on, bob. I mean, ultimately, I think sometimes people are afraid to claim even a piece of the credit because they're worried that it's going to sound like I invented the internet. We're not saying take credit for the internet. What we're saying, though, is that it's very legitimate to say you know, I passed a funding bill that led to an important bandwidth creation, that helped facilitate the rise of the internet. Whatever your equivalent is, do that, because the contribution is not nothing. There's a meaningful contribution, and I think it's worth. It's worth claiming, and also it helps actually convey something picture and the overall strategic thrust that what matters. Then people will begin to understand oh, this guy, this woman, could be a partner in that strategy and the implementation of it.

Speaker 2:

Yep yep, yep, yep, and related to all this is kind of we and me. So you're right. So often we see that people feel like they're bragging. You know they don't want to come off like that. And what was my role?

Speaker 2:

I didn't invent the internet. I mean, I did some things, but it's so they take no credit for what their contribution was. So when you can identify, I was on a team that did this. My role on the team was X, so then it's like no, as part of the team. I'm not saying I'm amazing by team was X, so then it's like no, as part of the team. I'm not saying I'm amazing by the way. I'm also saying I work well with others and I can collaborate, work cross-functionally and good things. So sometimes it's yes, and, but we're certainly not trying to take credit for everything. One other thing that I think this sort of touches on really quickly is start making a record now of ways that you're contributing. The worst time to try and recreate history is when your memory is foggy in its heart. Document it now. Just create a Google Doc on your personal computer and just start tracking ways that you contributed.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's so wise. It doesn't take long. It takes 30 seconds to write the thing down, to save the emailacking your head to come up with things and then being mad at yourself because three days later it all comes back and you forgot half of it.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. One last question, then I'll let you go. Is this is such a tricky topic for people and you're so good at this, which is networking, and how do we do networking in a way that's not gross?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, this is the important question, right? I mean, what holds people back is oftentimes probably two main things. One is, people have sometimes a version of a script of well, I'm an introvert, or I'm shy, I don't like this, and my response to that is you know, I'm actually an introvert. You know, I mean, it doesn't excuse us from the responsibility of meeting people and making connections. What it means, though, is that we just have to be smart about finding a way that works for us, and so, in my case, as an introvert, I don't really love flinging myself into large groups. What I've discovered is that I like small group events much better, and so, if I have a choice between something with 500 people or something with five people, I will pick the one with five, and, in fact, even better, I will often organize the one with five, so that they are the right five people, and that actually can become a really nice, fun thing. So I think it's about picking where you network and how, and it can be much more pleasurable in that way. The second reason that people hold off from networking to your point, pop is about this perception that you'll be viewed as kind of gross or needy in some way, or something like that, and I think that the easy response to that is okay, don't need anything. This is, you know, my very clear rejoinder is, of course, you're going to feel weird and lousy if you're like well, I really need to make a sale. Who can I target tonight? You know, I mean, that's horrifying, like you know. Nobody should do that.

Speaker 3:

I actually, in my most recent book, the Long Game, I have a chapter about this and I have a principle that whatever, for at least a year, like, just hold off, even if you think that they could really help you. You know what? Let the relationship build. Don't make that the first thing, because if I meet you, you know, on Tuesday and by Thursday I'm like oh, hey, bob, I see on LinkedIn you're connected to this and this famous person, hey, would you connect us?

Speaker 3:

You know Bob is immediately going to think oh my gosh, that's the only reason that she's interested in talking with me is just what I can get her, and that's a gross feeling. So concentrate on building a real relationship, do not worry, do not even think about what this other person can do for you. And then later, if you're still friends a year later, then God bless, if you're actually going to be friends and so at that point you can do things for them, they can do things for you and it's great, but it's no longer this kind of nasty. Oh, what's in it for me?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, weird transactional thing, and maybe we can start to put a bow on it with this which is you know, you've got your new book, the Long Game, and there's a version of this or something, dory, that people can get.

Speaker 3:

You were telling me a little bit about it. Yeah, yeah. So the new book is called the Long Game how to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World, and if folks are interested in this question of strategic thinking, there's a free resource which is the Long Game Strategic Thinking Self-Assessment. It helps you become a better long-term thinker and folks can download it for free at doryclarkcom. Slash the long game.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. So we will make sure we put that in the show notes and hopefully even here on the video portion of this. But I so appreciate this last bit on networking, because the worst time to start networking is when you really really need it. And this notion of the long game and what was implied in what you said is build real relationships. Otherwise these are just transactions and that's the part that I think is a turnoff for people. And building these real relationships is generally like building a bank account, right, and on another day you've earned the right to make a withdrawal. But I kind of emphasize, earned the right to make a withdrawal. And the idea of waiting for a year is brilliant. I love that.

Speaker 2:

I probably should go back on a couple, but honestly that's such good advice, but it's that just reinforces the point. Build these relationships now. Build them now because the principle we're going to do the Bible, I guess of sowing and reaping is real If you sow into relationships. That's not Machiavellian, to use your term from earlier. It's not manipulative. That's not Machiavellian, to use your term from earlier. It's not manipulative, it's just a principle. It is a life principle that if you sow into other people, you will raise a crop up of people that want to sow back into you. It's just the way that it works. Any parting bits of advice, dory, before I let you go?

Speaker 3:

Bob, this is phenomenal. I think we've covered all the good stuff thanks to your skills as an interlocutor, so thank you for having me. I can't even say that.

Speaker 2:

So thank you very much, dory. Again, go to doryclarkcom, slash the long game. You got it, yep, and we can get that assessment. That would be amazing. I just really encourage you to go to Amazon and get her book, because Dory's a phenomenal writer Tons of stories, anecdotes. This isn't a dry academic read, it's really engaging. I would encourage folks to do that.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for investing a few minutes of your day here on HR Chat, and thank you again, bill, for allowing me to guest host for a couple episodes. And, dory, I wish you well. Thank you so much. Thank you, I'll see you next time.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.

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