Don't Should on Me: Peace, Love and Social Media

"As an HR Professional, you are called to provide leadership to your organization.

Whether you are developing an employer branding campaign or evaluating recruitment sources, you are going to bump up against (or into) social media. What is it, what is right for your organization, and how do you know?

There are far too many experts out there with their opinions of what’s best for you and your organization. Don’t take their word for it. You owe it to yourself, and your organization, to know what you are talking about.

Learn all you can about social media so you are able to make informed choices about what is right for you and your organization."

And with that (or something close to it), I kicked off a presentation to CMSHRM as part of our quarterly Caffeinated Learning series this morning. And, as a good friend said to me recently, "We're planting seeds. Just planting seeds."

Bottom line: you will never know social media until you do social media and until you know social media, you cannot effectively advise or lead others.

So because I am a tech savvy pro-blogger (!), I was able to schedule this post to go live after the presentation so no one would be tempted to read ahead. Here's hoping I served the chapter, our HR professionals and the social media community well.

Peace Out.

Why You Should Hire Your Replacement

Let's face it, we are all going to leave our jobs one day. Hopefully by choice but one way or another, it will happen.

Who will fill your shoes when you do?

The November 2010 issue of Healthcare Leadership Review provided an excerpt from the article, "Hiring Your Replacement," where author Tim Tolan wrote, "Although hiring your replacement might seem counterintuitive, doing so will help secure your organization's succession planning and business continuity." And, he provided a few steps for doing so which included: hiring smart people, measuring cultural fit, letting them succeed and losing you ego.

The part about losing your ego really rang true to me as I looked back through my career to supervisors, managers, and leaders blue in the face and fingers holding tight to "their" people, processes, and paper. They were hurting everyone - and themselves. Get a life outside of work comes to mind, but I digress.

As a developing workforce succession planner, I appreciate it when successors are available for our key positions. Having done replacement planning for more than a few years because succession pipelines were not in place, I know that having successors makes sense all around.

But if doing it for the company is not what gets you going, how about doing it for you? There are a few selfish reasons for hiring your replacement (and I ask readers to join in with some of their own) and here thoughts on what's in it for you (WIIFY):

• More noodle time (great ideas)
• 2 heads are better than 1 (better ideas)
• Benefit of another's perspective (well rounded thoughts)
• Get to develop potential in another (leader who cares)
• Ability to fill in knowledge, skill and experience gaps (better performance=better reviews)
• Opportunity to do the things you never seem to get to (no to-do list=peace of mind)
• Real-time chance to refine your coaching and mentoring skills (leader who can be trusted)

Not your thing? Then how about your own personal minion, someone to do the things you really don't like to do, a new Sunshine Fund owner, and someone to route annoying sales and data collection calls to?

Listen, hiring a replacement who shares your vision and can deliver on your goals will make your life easier and will make everyone, especially you, look that much better. Dio this one thing right and you'll continue to look good even after you're gone.

What ever your reason, whatever your motivtation - just do it. Hire your replacement and be sure she is ready to step in when the needs arises. 

It is the right thing to do.

Photo credit iStock Photo