Author: Mary Ila Ward

Weekly 2 Mileage: 24 miles (with 6 on the elliptical for cross training)

Long run distance: 9 miles

“Tell me why again y’all are running hills in August? The marathon is in Philadelphia (in other words, flat) in November (in other words, cold),” asked my training partner’s husband.

My first thought was, good question, smart man that he is, why are we putting ourselves through this?  Why did we pick the training plan that involves hills in the heat?  There are many more to choose from that don’t involve this weekly ritual for the first half of the training calendar.

My second thought was, well because that is the way we did it last time (New York Marathon training in 2009). Which I then followed-up in my thought process as- and it worked. The hills in New York- and you haven’t seen a hill until you realize what hell, I mean hill, it is running over two long bridges and taking a jog on the “rolling hills” in Central Park after already running 23 miles.  The conditioning we did on hills in August paid off on these hills the first Sunday in November.

But even with Philly having a very minuscule elevation change throughout the course, running hills in the heat builds strength.

It strengthens your legs better than running a flat route, which gives you stamina when you ask your legs to go much further than they are used to going.

The heat (it was 78 when we ran our last set of 6 miles hills at 5:15 in the morning) gives you stamina to go the distance cardiovascularly, and when it lessens, gives you a new found energy of running through the first days of crisp, fall air.  Which, by the way, probably won’t hit until October here.

Hills in the heat are the hard stuff that makes all the other work 1. Easier and 2. More enjoyable.

There are hills in the heat in leadership too.  They come in the form of things like:

• Giving honest feedback
• Coaching someone through a performance issue
• Coaching someone up for a challenging assignment
• Firing someone because it is best for your team, your organization, and ultimately the one you are letting go
• Asking for honest feedback for yourself
• Changing your behavior based on feedback you receive on yourself

It really isn’t leadership if you are avoiding these hard things, and a lot less rewarding in the long run if you aren’t.  Just like skipping the hills in August is tempting in the short run, but invaluable come November 20^th.   My dad would tell you, it isn’t marathon training if you aren’t doing hills in the heat.

 

What hills are you running today to build strength for tomorrow?

 

August has been a month of milestones at our house. First born off to kindergarten and the celebration of 10 years of marriage.

We decided to celebrate our marital bliss (of course it hasn’t been all roses, but it has been a fun ride so far) with training for a marathon together and a trip to the Dominican Republic. Just us. No kids. Thank goodness for wonderful in-laws and parents.

While we’re away, I thought it would be nice to honor the man that makes me a better person everyday with the blog posts he’s inspired over the years.

Most are about sports, including this series on leadership lessons learned from college football:

Leadership lessons from college football

Leadership Lessons from Football – Maximize & Recognize Your Rudys

Leadership Lesson from Football – The “Mediocre” & Team Success

Do you have a better half?

And the one he wrote:  Talent Management Lessons Learned from T-Ball

And for the ones that may not have been as obvious to the reader that he inspired…

Each of these posts tie back to how he teaches me each day that avoiding judgment leads to better leadership:

4 Tips for the C- Level Executive to Empower the Middle Manager

3 Tips for Checking your Facts: Leaders know things aren’t always what the seem

Leading through Expectations and Empathy

 

What leadership lessons has your spouse taught you?

 

“The best people and HR leaders I know have been labeled maverick at one time or another because they build something that goes against the norm, they challenge the status quo, and they see beyond the perceived limitations of their function and therefore extend well beyond it. They bring meaning to the workplace and it runs through everything that affects people.”   Ben Whitter

Maverick.  Pirate.  Experimenter.   Words to describe HR?   Doubt you’ve heard HR people being called these things regularly.  I think it is why, in many ways, people are commenting that HR is dead or changing its name entirely to things like “People Operations”,  “Talent Operations” and a recent development, “Workplace or Employee Experience Creator”.

Another thing I’m seeing people point to as to why HR doesn’t deserve a seat at the company leadership table is because they don’t contribute to impacting the business bottom line.  Really?  What is more important that the human resources that make up your business?   I think the real reason for this is because HR typically doesn’t use data to PROVE impact and chooses to own the transactional instead of the transformational.  Impact is there, it just isn’t proven or chosen as a place to focus.

So I propose HR leaders need to combine two things to give HR legitimacy and therefore the title of “People Innovators”, which is my personal favorite label.  We need to tie HR to creating value and innovation in the way this is done.

Scientist/Practitioner Model

The model I was taught in graduate school was to be a “scientist/ practitioner.”  This is why I had to write a thesis, pass the PHR and work for an I/O consulting firm in order to graduate.

It doesn’t sound synonymous with “maverick” at first glance, but when you think about the fact that the majority of HR pros aren’t backing up their actions with sound science, you realize this truly is novel.

As a scientist/practitioner you:

1. Use research
2. Understand research
3. Experiment, in other words, do the research
4. Apply the learning to solve real word people challenges

Although I’ll admit I haven’t always done this, I now realize this is how innovation happens.    So to help other HR pros do this, here are two tips:

1. I’ve compiled a list of research covering key HR topics (thank you Org Psychology Syllabus- I knew there was a reason to keep you!) Check it out here. Before you tackle a people problem or challenge, identify its source then go to the research to see what has been proven to impact this area.
2. Test the heck out of things. Do A/B tests (sometimes called split tests) and 1% testing (testing something on 1% or a small percentage of your workforce). Over and over again, innovation comes through trial and error that arises from risk taking and experimenting.  These processes come out of testing to see what customers want or like, but can also be applied to people issues. After all, employees are HR’s customers. This helps you do the research on your own turf, giving you more specific details as to what works in the context of your environment.

Some examples of this may be:
• Recruiting: Need to post a job and you’re having trouble figuring out how to get the posting to draw the best talent. A few experiments:    Simply post it on two different sites and see which site yields better results in terms of both volume and quality.  2. Take it a step further by writing two different job descriptions with two different types of language.  Same job, same responsibilities, just make one a run of the mill job posting and make one fun and edgy.  Post them both on the same site.  Which posting yields better results?
• Employee Benefits: Say you are considering a shift to a la carte benefits in order to increase employee satisfaction and retention while at the same time controlling benefit costs. But you aren’t sure this route will accomplish either of these goals.  Roll it out to a small group (1% testing) of employees first.   Measure this group compared to the other in terms of satisfaction, retention and cost.   Will this method meet your goals?  If not, try another route on a small group.  In doing this, though, make sure you explain to everyone why you are trying the change with a small group first.

3. Teach company leaders how to understand the research, do the experimenting and apply it. HR makes the biggest impact when it creates an exponential effect in its impact. This is done not by doing everything in a silo or on your own, but by teaching people leaders to be innovators themselves.  This brings the “meaning to the workplace” ripple to reality.   HR can create a Moore’s Law situation for itself by teaching others, improving exponentially over time.  What is more innovative than that?

 

What label would you use to describe the most innovative HR practitioner you know?

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Bye Human Resources

Week 1

Week 1 mileage: 22 miles

Long run distance: 9 miles

I’ve set out with my husband, my bestie, my dad and his bestie (my dad and I don’t actually call them our “bestie”, but it has a nice ring to it) to run the Philadelphia marathon in November.  All five of us just completed the first official week of training.  Fifteen more to go.

Except for two brief hiatuses when I was too big and too pregnant to run, running has been a part of my regular routine for about ten years. It’s my sanity; it keeps me from having to take a crazy pill.

As I reflect on running and look forward to this training season, I realize there are so many parallels found in the lessons of running and leading.  So with this, I’ll be writing each week for sixteen weeks about the parallels of learning, enjoying and struggling as a runner and as someone who works to build leadership in the workplace.

First, before embarking on any endeavor, motivation has to be present.  Running and leading are no different.  And although I will honestly say that part of my motivation to run has always come from thinking I might be able to eat (and drink- I love a good glass of wine… or two) more of whatever I want, I’ve found these four motivating techniques help me with the follow-through to learn and grow as a runner and leader:

1.Reading about running and leading can help put fuel in the tank to then do both. And to do both better.

For running motivation check out these reads:

Runner’s World

What I Talk about When I Talk About Running

Running: A Love Story

First Marathons

And for leading, check out the top 10 leadership books.

 

2. Podcasts have become something that is easy to tune in to in the car and on a run or during any activity where you want to engage your brain in some learning but can’t actually be reading.  Here are some of my favorites that provide ideas on running and on leading and workplace engagement:

HR Happy Hour

EntreLeadership

Smart Passive Income

And I’ve just added Innovation and Leadership to this line up

For running:

The Runner’s World Show

Marathon Training Academy

The Human Race

And we are fortunate to have the Olympics on as our training starts. Actually watching world-class athletes perform can be extremely motivating (or maybe terribly demotivating depending on how you look at it).  Tune into the women’s marathon Sunday morning (August 14) and the men’s marathon the next Sunday morning (August 21).

 

3. Visualize and Track. Silly as it may be (and you better believe my husband has told me how “stupid” it is several times- yet he does it- go figure) we have a calendar with our training schedule and smiley face stickers we use to indicate if we have accomplished the prescribed run that day or not.

 

I’m on a four day a week plan with one or two cross training days and, Drew, my husband, is on a three day a week running and one to two days of a strength training routine.

I’ve found that the smiley faces can provide motivation beyond the running very quickly.  Our five year old has a “chore” to feed the dog each morning and evening.  If he does it without being asked, a quarter goes in his savings jar.  With the stickers on the fridge, he now asks for a sticker on the outside of his jar instead of a quarter.   Trade your cash in for stickers, parents and leaders.  They actually work.

Have you created a visual workplace?  What “smiley faces” do you need to hang in your office or workplace to motivate yourself and your people towards positive results?  Can you see your progress and can your team?

 

4. At the end of the day, you just gotta run and you just got to lead to get better through learning and experience.  You’ll hate some days and love some days, but the doing is where most of the results come.

If you are saying to yourself that aren’t in a formal leadership role at work, seek out opportunities to lead informally at work, in your home and in the community.  We can be and are all leaders.  Most of the people I see that are promoted into formal leadership roles have indicated through their doing that they had the skill and the will to lead long before given the title.  Where can you step up today to do so?

What gives you the motivation to challenge yourself in whatever it is you are pursuing now?

 

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My baby started kindergarten yesterday.   Actually, he’s not the baby, he’s the oldest. But sending the first one off to “real” school, though exciting, causes a momma to reflect on how quickly the first five years of his life have gone.

And I realized that many of those first five years have been captured in the inspiration he has created in the way of blog posts.  So here’s to Andrew and all the lessons he helped inspire before he even launched his formal school learning….

Do you want to go to timeout?

M&Ms or Timeout?

Leadership Lessons from a 4 year old

Flexibility to Reduce Workplace Stressors

Where have all the Good Boys Gone?

 

What lessons have your kids taught you?