Could the HR profession have imposter syndrome?

Great HR adds value to the bottom line.

Why don’t most business leaders see that? Why don’t HR leaders MAKE them see that? Could this be caused by imposter syndrome?

If we could break through that barrier, could the HR profession deliver far more value?

‘Imposter syndrome’ is a snappy phrase that reveals a common condition. Like all syndromes, it is a set of symptoms. Those symptoms may have different causes in different people and organisations, but whatever the cause the condition can be debilitating. It undermines the ability of talented people to give of their best and feel good about that.

Imposter syndrome can be treated. We want to understand this better, and help HR to tackle the causes and to rise up.

What is imposter syndrome?

We all know the anxiety we feel when we have to make a presentation to key senior people. We’ve spent ages preparing, the slides look great, we have a deep understanding of our subject – and yet – we have feelings of dread that our audience will see through us and realise that we’re not actually very good.

This anxiety can become a constant feeling, at varying intensities during the week, year or career. It can become a negative cycle. When our behaviour is subdued by lack of confidence, this discomfort can then be fuelled by the way we are treated by others which can lead to negative perceptions of how others see us.

This graphic is called ‘the self-fulfilling prophecy’ and shows how a negative cycle can be created. This cycle can be turned around to become positive.

Imposter syndrome can affect people anywhere on the career ladder, including the most senior and most successful people. It can include feeling that:

You’re not as good as someone else would be in your role;
You’re not as good as other people think you are;
You’ll get caught out, e.g. When asked a difficult question;
You have low self-worth compared to other people.

It has nothing to do with competence or ability. In my experience, it can be the most effective people who suffer from these feelings, and it may be because they have been striving for so long. From a young age, conscientious and ambitious people work hard constantly to improve, to get the next promotion, to play a strong role in their team and deliver results that have real value. It can be driven by self-talk like ‘I need to be better’. This makes it difficult to stop striving, to accept that they are now good enough, and have achieved what they set out to achieve.

Neuroscience tells us that these feelings of anxiety inhibit the brain’s performance. Therefore, this is not only an issue of mental wellbeing, it is also one of enabling talent to deliver optimum value.

Why are we talking about imposter syndrome?

Confidence is critical to success – as humans, we all know that. It is only with confidence that we do our best work and transmit our talents, ideas and intellectual power into the outside world so that everyone can benefit. Self-doubt stunts our capabilities. When you apply this to a whole function, it undermines the outcomes it can deliver. When that function is responsible for optimising the most expensive and valuable resources that the organisation has, it becomes a critical issue.

Smart organisations promote the people agenda – and therefore the HR function.

The HR functions in many mature organisations don’t suffer from this – they’re often large, global, established – and do indeed give HR real status and influence. Smart, mature leaders do understand the complexity of organisations and the critical importance of talent within that. In recent years, these organisations have promoted proactive talent management, high levels of engagement, positive behaviours and a supportive culture.

These organisations understand the connections between culture, engagement, productivity, performance and profit. They know the value of creating the conditions in which people can do their best work.

Our challenge is to bring every organisation up to that level.

What has led HR to become a function of low confidence?

For centuries, people were seen as a cost that needs to be reduced. Employees were not seen as a strategic factor – they were workhorses. Creating a good environment for employees was not seen as important – the belief was that you can just go out and get more people to replace anyone who leaves.

Source: https://www.historycrunch.com/working-conditions-in-the-industrial-revolution.html#/

There may be positive messages, e.g. in recruitment literature that says ‘we put people first’ that are not lived in reality. For example, millions can be spent on tech in order to achieve business transformation, without investing in support and development for the people doing their best to implement the changes.

Within this environment, leaders and managers got away with focusing on the delivery of results without recognising their responsibility to create the best conditions for their people. Losing key talent was tolerated, and the true financial cost of attrition was not appreciated.

Technology has changed but attitudes towards workers may not have changed as much as we think.

Research shows that HR as a profession feels undervalued

Source: https://www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/knowledge/knowledge-hub/reports/2023-pdfs/2023-people-profession-report-international.pdf

Those figures should, quite simply, be far higher.

What are the challenges faced by HR people that lead to those perceptions?

Our own research gives some insight into what makes it hard to raise the level at which they operate:

All of these challenges can and must be tackled, and we will come back to that.

Many HR people still operate in an immature environment despite a dynamic world of work.

The world is changing and employees are gaining more power. Companies now realise that there is particular talent that they can’t do without. They are realising that it is their people who deliver the results they need. In turn, talent recognises its own value. It is no longer a buyer’s market. Younger generations will not tolerate poor treatment or lack of flexibility, respect or consideration. Flexible working has blown open recruitment pools, with huge implications for retention. Local talent pools are sometimes now global oceans where the choicest fish can go where they like.

Therefore, we now have a much stronger business case for leading, managing and developing human capabilities well.

This realisation – that people are the drivers of value – should put HR in a position of far greater power than before.

But it’s taking time for the HR function to be given, or to grasp, this power.

Why is that?

The business’s perception of HR

HR’s legacy is that they have been seen as an admin function. The CEO often just wants HR to sort out problems, and it’s very convenient for any leader or manager to be able to pass their people issues over for HR to handle, even (or especially) when they’ve caused them.

HR have been left out of strategic decisions, because employee capabilities were simply not recognised as having strategic relevance.

A Board may be making multi-million-dollar decisions about premises, machines or supply chain, but will leave human capability decisions to be sorted out later. HR find themselves endlessly on the back foot, being regarded as slow or unresponsive despite the fact that they have been given inadequate notice. Some skill requirements may simply be impossible to fill within the constraints given, and this can derail the business strategy. Had they involved HR, this could have been taken into account.

We cannot ignore the impact of gender

Most HR people are female, and this can compound the impression that people issues are soft. Add to this how long it has taken to achieve gender equality in organisations, and it is clear that many HR people have had to put up with being undermined, patronised and not taken seriously for many years.

As a function, and as an individual leader or professional, what impact can that have on whether or not you have the confidence, courage and determination to fight for the standing you deserve?

At the core of HR’s challenge is perception – stakeholders’ perception of the value that HR add as a function and as individuals. That in turn impacts on HR’s perception of themselves – and in turn that impacts on the value they can deliver.

In order to shift the perceptions of stakeholders, HR needs first to take an honest look at the perceptions they hold of their own function.

HR’s perception of themselves

As a function
HR has been chronically under-resourced for all time. There are so many day-to-day demands that cannot be put off – performance issues, sickness, urgent hiring requests – that HR gets pulled into a reactive cycle. Most people outside HR do not understand the complexity of the function. They only see what shows up at the surface, and do not appreciate the deeper implications of every decision and action.

HR tech is far more difficult for HR to adopt than should be the case. HR have built discrete systems for different activities, e.g. L&D and recruitment, which work but don’t deliver the benefits of an integrated system. Making the business case for a complete overhaul, together with the extra resources to ensure a successful implementation, is tough – if HR have the energy to build the case in the first place. If business leaders don’t have the maturity to understand the connection between HR’s resources and employee productivity, then this narrative has to be created.

As individual leaders and professionals
When anyone has been side-lined, patronised and undermined for many years, it’s easy to take on board the message that’s implicit – you are less important. When you’re left out of strategic decisions, the message is that your input does not matter.

In HR, you know that sometimes this omission is because HR can make things more complicated. People are complicated, and you can’t acquire them (or dispense with them) as easily as you can acquire other resources. Business leaders don’t want to hear that there are difficulties associated with their grand vision.

There is much that is obvious to an HR person that is not obvious to a business person. HR need to explain and advocate. There is an over-arching narrative that can be built that makes the connections clear and logical between necessary complications and business outcomes.

How do we build the stature and confidence of a function that’s so critical in today’s world?

In our research, HR leaders identified these as their top two issues, and we will explore these in order to narrow down some actions (both of which can be fixed):

Ensuring that the HR function is seen to add real business value, not just a support function
Being involved earlier in decision making to better influence strategic decisions

How to transform the HR function into a confident, business-driven team who are valued by the whole organisation

1. Prove HR’s value

Alongside these contextual changes, we have seen the rise of people analytics. It is now possible to identify and measure the factors that drive performance and productivity, and therefore profit. It is recognised that engagement is a key driver of productivity. Once the relationship between engagement and profit is proven, business leaders have to get on side.

A bespoke dashboard can be easily created, using the data you have right now and evolving into a full people analytics platform as more data becomes available.

2. Build a powerful narrative to demonstrate how HR can deliver more value through partnering

There is some clear logic that can be applied here:

The strategic rationale for transforming HR
The business case for how HR needs to change
The business case for how HR will operate
What this will look like in practice for stakeholders
What this will deliver. Examples of potential financial impact that will convince business leaders
Agree clear, strong messaging that inspires HR and business leaders.

Effective strategic HR Business Partnering is the key to ensuring that HR is involved early in decision-making.

3. Engage stakeholders in identifying HR’s priorities

Another legacy from the mutual illiteracy that has tended to develop between HR and business is that HR can isolate itself in a silo. HR can draw a line beneath this by collaborating with business leaders to agree what will most help the business to succeed.

We have developed a simple tool to facilitate this process that’s called a Business and HR Strategic Roadmap. This provides a structure for dynamic and positive collaboration between HR and its client groups that delivers a clear plan that everyone buys into.

Business partnering then creates and maintains an ongoing dialogue with stakeholders that keeps everyone on track with their commitments.

Imposter syndrome is about the relationship we have with ourselves

As individual professionals, and as a function, we all have to believe in ourselves. Highly intelligent and successful people continually strive to be better, and it’s easy to keep looking upwards at the next peak and the next challenge. We are very good at moving the goalposts for ourselves so that we never feel that we’ve achieved them.

It’s important to take a breath, turn around and look at how far we have come.

HR’s ability to fulfil its potential is also about its relationship with the business

This is the key. HR will be measured on its ability to add value to the organisation and all its stakeholders. Becoming confident in the value HR adds will, in turn, build HR’s confidence in itself. In building the data that proves HR’s value to the organisation, the HR team also prove it to themselves and provide evidence of results that can be celebrated.

HR’s journey as a function has been an impressive one. Let’s take that journey to the next stage.

Services

Upcoming workshops & webinars

How to build HR’s strategic influence in today’s landscape

Date: Tuesday 17th September 2024

How to build One HR Team

Date: Recording from 21st August 2024 webinar

How to increase your HRBPs’ impact in HR Business Partnering

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Confidence in HR Study

Confidence matters. When we’ve got it, we’re unstoppable. When we don’t have it, we lose our mojo and deliver less impact. We are currently undertaking a study on ‘Confidence in HR‘. The more people that take part, the more compelling our results will be. If you’re in HR, we would be grateful if you would please complete our survey.

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