Eden Whitcomb is not just any tech recruiter in Berlin. In our new HR Matters podcast episode, Eden tells us how he started out with great sales skills (as you do, in recruitment) and then got curious to grow further. He started to work out the patterns and trends in the work that he’d been doing.

In one year, he recruited 97% men and 3% women. What was happening here, he wanted to figure out, and is that really what clients – and he himself – wanted?

Organisations that want to diversify ask for proper consulting. This is what we intend to do, can you help us get there?

Eden explains how figuring out what you’re doing, how, and why, helps you move forward with a clearer head.

Contributing to something bigger than yourself, and creating that for yourself, is Eden’s story. He is doing meaningful things, not just talking about them.

And he has some gems of tips of course.

“I guarantee you, at some point you can make a difference. Even if it’s just the one person, that person can speak to the right person, and that’s how things can evolve.”

Referenced by Eden in this episode (Berlin based and international):

· Women Techmakers  https://www.womentechmakers.com/

· Py Ladies https://pyladies.com/

· Berlin geekettes https://www.geekettes.io/

If you work in HR, you’ll recognise this. If you don’t, this may be an eye opener for you.

As HR professionals, we are the vault for a lot of secrets. We hold so much information for other people.

Life happens right in our workplaces, and HR professionals take on a big part of dealing with that. Hiring to firing – for right or wrong reasons. New life to health issues and death. Financial troubles. Harassment, discrimination. Politics.

Too often, we get little space to process that.

And it dramatically impacts the way we interact in the organisation. The way we authentically interact with other humans. Because when there’s no room to process, we feel the need to put up protective blockers that makes us more robotic; that dehumanise us.

Julie Turney, our new guest, cares for the people that care for our people every day. After a solid career in HR and corporate, she now is an HR for HR support coach: supporting the people who support the people.

Julie warmly recommends you to (re)familiarise yourself with who you are and why you entered into your HR career. To understand your HR voice. You are not defined by your organisation. You are so much more than that.

And you’re not a robot.

This is how we (re)humanise our workplaces.

Referenced:

Julie Turney’s podcast HR Sound-Off https://anchor.fm/hrsoundoff

Book: Confessions of an HR Pro (to pre-order now) https://hratheart.co/book/

When you’re wishing and actively aiming for big picture change around diversity, inclusion, equity, equality and justice, that means you’re making long-term behaviour change happen, from personal awareness to large systems. And you can’t fix that all with a snap of the finger.

The topic of our newest episode can play a vital role in your journey: communities. They’re the place where you can get support, offer support and boost each other keep making steps on a regular basis. This is where real resilience comes from.

What is more, we are social animals. By nature, we want to connect and belong, and that especially goes for people who understand the value of belonging from personal experience.

We talk about how to find and grow your communities:

By noticing opportunities to join, or create them.

By realising that it matters how you show up.

And by taking inventory of the communities you already are a part of, how they serve you, and what else you would wish for.

If you’re listening to this and feeling, ‘Oh I could use me some resilience and some community?’ feel free to check in with us. There are great communities in our HR Matters network and if we can make a connection for you, we’d be happy to do that.

The first thing we want to start off our brand-new season with is a tandem of two tools to help you feel lighter and see new possibilities.

Looking ahead at 2021, we are more than eager to go forward and get out of the heavy, sticky place that is right now. Logical problem solving doesn’t always get you there. In times like these, what you need is a deeper resourcefulness that we all have inside of us.

First:

Gratitude. Taking a pause and figuring out what is the gift in this moment, amongst all of the crap, the hard stuff, the weight, the challenges. What is the good that is also here? What am I gaining here?

Pausing and reflecting on that will give you space to breathe. It will make that which you can appreciate in your situation more tangible and real.

Please know that the practice of gratitude – it genuinely is a practice, not something that automatically happens – is not about bypassing the hard stuff. It’s perfectly ok not to be ok.

Let the things that you’re sad or frustrated about be a smaller part of what you spend your time thinking of by adding more thoughts on what you’re grateful for.

Second:

Looking at your situation from a totally different angle will help you spark new ideas. Shifting your perspective gives lightness. It brings your brain the freedom of creativity.

Learning how to deal with hard times will be helpful at any time and in any circumstance.

It makes so much more possible.

He was having a great life and career path, yet Garry Turner felt a heartache. So he got curious.

“This is not the whole of me,” he realised. “There are more sides to me that I want to bring out.”

Garry is an interpersonal catalyst who combines commercial expertise with a deep understanding of culture and people - and increasingly, inclusion.

From his international sales job he upskilled to organisational development and added that to his role in the same organisation.

In this episode, Garry tells us that what made this happen was tuning in with the question ‘What is the impact I want to have right now?’

The offer he presented the organisation was: you’ll get 100% of me, and not just 55%.

He highlights the blend in that offer:

The next step on Garry’s horizon is to raise opportunities to increase diversity and inclusion in his organisation.

We look forward to this next iteration of Garry Turner.

And to the next iteration of you.

Where will you start?

More from Garry:

The Value Through Vulnerability Podcast, with Mike Vacanti & Garry Turner: https://anchor.fm/valuevulnerability

Cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Our new HR Matters podcast guest Maria Ross discovered how empathy is the superpower of marketers while working as a brand strategist, researched the competitive advantages of empathy to customers and employees, and poured it all into her book ‘The Empathy Edge’.

This episode is about putting empathy to work.

Empathy is a mindset, a method of perspective taking: seeing the world from another person’s point of view. It doesn’t mean you have to agree, but that you have an understanding of their context and see them as a whole human being.

It’s about gathering information from taking that other perspective and then using that insight to make informed decisions that are actually appreciated.

When you have happy, fulfilled employees who feel seen, heard and valued, they’re going to innovate more, collaborate better and deliver an amazing customer experience.

Your business practice can make empathy the default mode of operation when you build an environment where empathy is rewarded, modelled and acknowledged.

As humans, we are wired for empathy. It’s a muscle you can strengthen to get to ‘I want more of this, let’s keep going.’

This year’s been busy for remote working enthusiast – we’d say guru, really – Lisette Sutherland! She opens up her treasure chest to share her insights on how to keep this remote working adventure going well. Because it looks like we’ll be working from home for a longer time, both by necessity and choice.

Lisette’s first and biggest tip: get comfortable in your workspace.

Wherever you’re working, figure out what you (and your team) need to be productive and design your work around that.

Remote working and in-person office working are two different things and it works best to design them differently. It’s like radio vs tv: they both offer their own unique limits and opportunities.

Break up your 2D screen time overload and set up new routines for real connective human discussions.

“We really need to pay attention to each other, and reach out.”

Very few people want to go back to working in the office 100% of the time – or from home 100% of the time. We want the freedom to choose when and where we’re most productive.

So let’s set everything up and design it in the best possible way: what is going to work best for us?

Referenced:

Collaboration Superpowers: https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/

Lisette Sutherland, author: https://lisettesutherland.com/

Oatmeal cartoon: 'Why working from home is both awesome and horrible' https://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home

It is the only safe and solid ground for the diversity of thinking that is essential to create a solidly successful business:

Trust.

And yet, creating it is something that leaders tend to skip over.

We’ve seen that strong teams with a high level of trust are created after they have worked together for an extended time span, or gone through a galvanising crisis. Our guest Jason Treu talks us through how to replicate that creation of trust.

How do you build bridges with different people and competing interests?

Jason created the ‘Cards Against Mundanity’ game to bring connection and belonging through getting to know people on a Real level. Asking the questions prompted by these cards helps teams share personal experiences that wouldn’t otherwise come up in daily work convo.

Seeing how similar we really are, opens the door to celebrating each other and connecting.

And it rockets trust between people. Conversations that move things forward.

Open the door a little bit and then there’s a world of opportunity.

When you commit to being an ally at work and want to take meaningful antiracist action, there are various roles you can take on, to fit with who you are, where you are and what you are particularly good at.

We talk about some good examples of this in our new episode:

This is our invitation to you to make a well-informed choice on how you want to participate. Choose what is most resonant with who you are and what you have the opportunity to do. Understand the value that it provides. 

And keep it going. Working together, we’re moving the needle.

Referenced in this episode:

Viktória Pikovská, a professional photographer and art business owner, tells us her personal leadership story.

Viktória’s journey brought her from Slovakia, where she captured human emotion in photography, to the art scene in Rotterdam, where she started her own art business.

Starting a business that connects to her purpose, and providing a human-centred work environment for her own team, has proven as important as the purpose of the business itself:

Finding just the right piece of art for their clients that brings a positive, energising impulse to the people in the space.

Viktoria’s start-up Victory Art works with underrepresented artists from Eastern Europe to help them develop their voice and find a place on the global art market: they look for unique, powerful art where other people aren’t looking.

“This is what drives me forward,” Viktoria explains.

Because art creates connection between people. When people feel connected, they feel closer to each other, to work as a team and create something amazing.

It goes far beyond what hangs on your wall, it connects your whole team and builds your vision.