Please Treat Others With Respect and Empathy!

He called up and desperately, requesting me to look for an immediate placement for him as he has already been serving the notice period. He is the same person whom I have been repeatedly calling up for past several months, but in vein. He never bothered to pick up my calls, neither called back. Simply put, he refused to a decade old relationship while riding the success wave.

Another professional, who would always give me an appointment, but would refuse to meet at the last moment, not once but several times, demonstrates a weird behavior that needs detailed analysis to identify the root cause of such an irrational approach. 

Ideally, when you're not interested to meet someone, the best way is to let him know it outright instead of agreeing first and then aborting it at the last moment.

Both of them belong to HR fraternity! 

Well, I don't expect this type of behavior to be HR's exclusive rights, as you would find such personalities in all other functions and in all domains of life. However, being into the business relationship management, dealing with dozens of HR Heads, I'm slightly inclined towards watching their behavior more than I do with others.

Let's look at the other side of the coin now: A HR Head, much more prominent than the above ones, both in terms of reputation and level of operation, is completely opposite in his approach. Interaction with him, either on phone or across the table, is a delightful experience. And, it's not person-specific, as many others have confirmed the same. Fortunately, I'm associated with quite a few like him.

Now, coming back to the issue, what amuses me, and confuses as well, is, why some of the most prominent HR professionals fail to understand the essence and usefulness of long term relationship in professional domain of life. 

And this lack of realization that HR is more about establishing an emotional connectivity with employees for taking them into confidence - which is essential to bring about the desired cultural change - is gradually eroding the credibility of HR as a function as such.

If HR Heads, like the ones I mentioned in the beginning, are so weak in managing long a term relationship with external agencies, how can you expect them to deliver results while dealing with internal agencies/people in terms of effective talent management?

Alan Zorfas and Daniel Leemon, explaining the importance of establishing an Emotional Connectivity with specific reference to customers, through an interesting article in Harvard Business Review, highlight:

"Our research across hundreds of brands in dozens of categories shows that the most effective way to maximize customer value is to move beyond mere customer satisfaction and connect with customers at an emotional level – tapping into their fundamental motivations and fulfilling their deep, often unspoken emotional needs  (for details, see our HBR article “The New Science of Customer Emotions”). That means appealing to any of dozens of “emotional motivators” such as a desire to feel a sense of belonging, to succeed in life, or to feel secure."

Why don't they realize that managing talent is more about mapping others' ego and synchronizing and aligning them towards achieving both micro and macro business goals of the organization than of inflating their own? 

Athanasios Drigas and Chara Papoutsi, through a publication on Research Gate, describing the models of EI and review the findings to show the positive correlations between EI, leaders and employees, points out:

"Emotional intelligence (EI) is related to emotions and emotional information. It has attracted great attention among researchers and Human Resource (HR) practitioners because of its input for leaders and employees and its key role in organizational effectiveness and excellence."

They should also understand that the ability to connect with people within their sphere of influence - a decisive criteria for effective talent management in particular - is a matter of habit, and, it should be independent of the level or identity of the person on the other side of the table.

Highlighting the four basic foundations of Social/Emotional Intellience Skils,  Amy Morin, through an article published in VeryWellMind, suggests how to increase your social intelligence skills:

"Individuals with social intelligence can sense how other people feel, know intuitively what to say in social situations, and seem self-assured, even in a larger crowd. You might think of these folk as having “people skills,” but what they truly possess is social intelligence."

So let us treat others with respect and empathy!

Photo by Moose Photos from Pexels

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