A Little About Humanity and HR: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor at TED

I’m going to TED someday. Happily, since I couldn’t go this year, there is video. This one by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor doesn’t have a lot to do with HR per se, but it has a lot to do with humanity…and isn’t that why we do all of this?

Here’s the description from the TED site:

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

Dunning-Krueger Effect and HR

Wikipedia defines an effect we too often see in HR:

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.

I sometimes refer to the Dunning-Kruger Effect as “Everyone with a pen thinks he’s a communicator,” or, “Everyone is a compensation professional.” In HR we face this a lot — people who think they know more than they do.

Here’s what Wiki says about DKE:

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,

  1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
  2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
  3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
  4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

Since performance review season is over, this article might be good to put away until next year. I’ll bring it out again. Ever try to talk to someone who thinks he’s fully competent when he’s barely adequate? That’s always a trick.

Want a 3-Minute Master’s Degree in Communication?

Hook, by Blues Traveler, is one of my favorite songs all time. I like the tune, but the hook…brings me back. It’s a 3-minute master’s degree in communication.

In HR communication, getting the hook right makes the difference between mediocre communication and great communication. And as I’ve mentioned a few times lately, it’s not about the single words, it’s about the essence, or the “hook.”

Check out these lyrics:

It doesn’t matter what I say
So long as I sing with inflection
That makes you feel I’ll convey
Some inner truth or vast reflection
But I’ve said nothing so far
And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
And it don’t matter who you are
If I’m doing my job then it’s your resolve that breaks

Because the hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely

There is something amiss
I am being insincere
In fact I don’t mean any of this
Still my confession draws you near
To confuse the issue I refer
To familiar heroes from long ago
No matter how much Peter loved her
What made the Pan refuse to grow

Was that the hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely

[For RSS readers, click here if you can't see the embedded video.]

Want Them to Learn Quickly? Let Them Make Mistakes

Failure is a great teacher.

That’s the summary of recent research by scientists at the University of Exeter. That has some interesting implications in this “self esteem movement” era, when people are not allowed to fail. If you want people to learn something quickly, let them fail quickly. Then get on with it.

What Everybody in HR Ought to Know About Blogs and How to Read them Fast

I’ll make this quick, I know you don’t have much time. None of us do.

If you clicked to get here or typed in the URL for this…stop it. No, don’t stop reading KnowHR Blog, just be more efficient. Here’s how:

  1. Sign up for Google Reader. Sure, there are a hundred RSS readers out there. Don’t bother. Use Google Reader. Give them an e-mail address and you’re on your way.
  2. Right click on that orange thingy on blogs that you like. That orange button with the radio waves on it is an RSS button. That’s how you subscribe to the blog. Like magic, you copy the feed location, add the feed into your Google Reader, categorize it, and then each time your favorite blogs are updated…voila! they’re in your Reader.
  3. Find some really great blogs and online magazines to read. If you follow this Human Resources search on Technorati, you’ll see that there are 709 HR-related blogs listed. (Including KnowHR Blog on the first page.) If you click on the “Download OPML” file on the upper right, you can download the feeds for all of them…and then import them into your Google Reader. I’d suggest you start smaller. Click on a few that look interesting. If they are, click on that little orange thingy and add them to your RSS reader.

Okay, that’s it. You can read a lot of material fast by following steps 1-3 here. And as a bonus, I’ve added some links for you for HR specialty areas (just download OPML and import that into your Google Reader - under Settings-Import/Export - it’s really that simple.):

Okay, get your RSS on. Here’s a starter for you…the RSS feed for KnowHR Blog is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KnowhrBlog. Just copy that bad boy into your Google Reader using the “Add Subscription” button. It’ll just get added…and you can put in a category if you like (believe me, starting out with categories early is the right approach).

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