Earlier this year, I wrote an article about the impact that Gen AI is (already) having on the HR industry, and while the article was aimed at highlighting the positive impact Gen AI can and does have, it also shed light on the fact that the HR function cannot be replaced by a bot, no matter how clever, because the inherent component of efficient and effective HRM is people relations.
Over the last two decades, I have been fortunate to invest time and effort into my own personal and professional development and through this I have learned a lot about myself and people in general. Perhaps one of my biggest learnings has been that my way of doing things is not the only way, and that’s all right. A big part of this lesson has been accepting that not everyone will have the same work ethic as me, the same attitude as me, the same values as me, or the same views as me, and not only does this make for an interesting life and career when working with people, but it also provides an opportunity to observe and learn daily.
How to meet people where they are and foster a learning culture
A year or so ago I came across the concept of meeting people where they are instead of where I want or expect them to be. Being a parent to a grade 0 child at the time was perhaps the catalyst for this life lesson, because nothing humbles you faster than watching a little human learn and grow in their own time and at their own pace. Until this point, I had grouped everyone together in categories like maturity (adult vs teen vs child) or experience (fresh out of school vs decades of work experience) or with profiling tools like Enneagram (can I get a shout out from all the Type 2s!) or GC Index (strategists unite!). This kind of people profiling can be helpful in general terms, and it serves a purpose in the work environment, but there is a glaring omission from this type of profiling.
No personality profile or psychometric assessment can tell us where people are right now and so we often don’t consider this when engaging with people. I am specifically talking about their mental and emotional state, not necessarily their physical state, although the last four years have altered this so drastically that it is worth including a person’s physical status as well. Meeting people where they are requires us to one, understand where they are with compassion, and two, accept where they are without justification.
Let me use a practical example. In all companies, communication is an Achilles heel – we have enough tools and mediums to communicate but there will always be a handful of employees who miss the mail or don’t check their Teams notifications. I even use yellow highlighter to make my emails pop, as my colleagues will attest to, so that I ensure clearer communication. And yet, in all our employee experience surveys communication comes out as a pain point. This used to frustrate me endlessly. How can I communicate better when I am consistently keeping the organization informed on various platforms all the time? The answer was quite simple – meet them where they’re at.
So, for example, I introduced a short, virtual bi-monthly meeting with our middle management leaders who work closely with our employees daily. We use this meeting to discuss pressing items and people risks and items of interest, and I am able to engage with more people about important things while taking into consideration their schedules and priorities.
Another example was introducing different time slots for mandatory workshops around HR-themes like performance management or EX survey feedback, instead of just having one fixed timeslot. Providing the extended leadership team with morning, midday, and afternoon options meant they were able to manage their schedule better and be present in the workshop without having conflicting requirements competing for their attention.
A final example is learning and career development plans. At Mint, we pride ourselves on a robust learning culture, and providing our employees with more options to access learning content improved our mandatory certification achievement stats and increased our content engagement. Not everyone enjoys participating in live webinars or can make the scheduled time. Recording the training and putting the content in our learning repository means it is accessible for people who want to or need to learn later and having the transcripts available means people who learn better by reading can do so.
And so, I encourage you to meet people where they are instead of trying to pull everyone to where you are. It will make your job a lot less contentious if you adopt this approach to people management and as leaders it is important to recognize that everyone is not the same and if we want the best from people, we need to meet them where they are and support them there.