Last week while I was in a coaching session with a colleague who is trying to maneuver from his own consulting firm back into a corporate role, he talked about his ability to secure first interviews but his lack of success at getting asked back for a second date. 

I am writing this post today to share some of the content of that session by illustrating the single most important weapon in your fight to best your competition and win the job. This also holds true for consultants who are trying to get past the initial free consultation and secure a lucrative engagement with a prospective client. Get ready, because this will really rock your world:

              The interviewer has to like you.

What!? How can that be?? Isn’t it based on my outstanding credentials and practical experience? Why, I can go through the job description point-by-point and cite examples of my work; success metrics, references, and awards. I am PERFECT FOR THIS JOB, DAMMIT.

Yes, you are. But the screener – whether they are a Junior Mint HR intern or the head of Recruiting or the Hiring Manager – will not you move you to the next step in the process unless they like you.  And you can imagine how subjective that criteria is. But it’s such an essential component of standing out from the huge crowd of other candidates that I strongly suggest you start paying closer attention to it.

I cannot tell you how many times as the head of recruiting, I would deliver a slate of qualified candidates who all passed muster with me – including the general likability factor which might also be described in less subtle terms as having no visible signs of being a jerk - to a C-level hiring manager and had the following conversation:

Me: So, what did you think of So-and-So?

Them: Eh, okay I guess. I didn’t love him.

Me: Why not?

Them: I don’t know. Can’t put my finger on it. I liked Such-and-Such better.

Me: Why?

Them: Don’t know. I didn’t hit it off with So-and-So. Not a fit for me.

And that was the sum total of the complex decision process to extend an offer. I had already provided in-depth detail on both candidate’s credentials and alignment for the role – but the winner was Such-and-Such because of the likeability factor. Which is usually cleverly disguised as “fit” or “energy.”

Why is that? Well, for one, no one wants to work with someone they don’t connect with. Period. Oh, I know all you diversity experts will be screaming that people prefer to hire in their own image which is why corporate America is so white and male. Please know that I was a head of Diversity too, and while there is certainly some truth to that, I think it may have more to do with a visceral and personal connection than someone’s conscious or subconscious preference for a particular gender or color in a role.  Connections can be completely blocked by hateful bigotry, yes, but that’s not something a candidate can really battle against in any meaningful way nor would they want to. Who wants to work for someone like that anyway? 

This guidance is really meant to speak to the candidate who is always a bridesmaid. If you’re doing a lot of interviews and not getting called back the law of averages says it’s not your gender, ethnic origin or any other visible differentiator that you have no control over; it’s something else. And that something else could be the dirty-little secret: they’re just not that into you.

So when you know you’ve nailed down a date for the first screen or interview, and you know you want the job, remember that the interviewer wants to like you. Really and truly. They don’t want a long protracted process and they need to fill the position with the best possible person. And one of the key factors will be if you measure up when they ask themselves: Do I want to be working with this person every day? Do I like them enough?

To help your chances, think about the following tips. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but hopefully it will get you moving in the right direction.

1 – Ask questions. Right off the bat. Before they even take your resume out of the manila folder. Get the conversation started and be your genuinely pleasant self; smile and keep a calm but engaged demeanor.

2. Get them talking about themselves and listen for what’s important to them as a person.  It shouldn’t be deeply personal but with a little coaxing, most interviewers love to go off the reservation a bit to break up the monotony. And most people, when asked in the right manner, do love to talk about themselves. The more they do – the better chance you have of building that connection.

3. Eye contact is great but don’t stare like a robot. Blinking is encouraged as is the occassional lighthearted attempt at humor. Stiffness or appearing uncomfortable in your own skin is the kiss of death. So is trying too hard.

4. Get to their pain: what are the top things that this person cares about relative to filling the position. LISTEN. Listen and listen some more. Then ask more questions. By the end of the first five minutes you should know exactly which of your fabulous bullet points speaks to their pain; feed your targeted experience into your narrative and keep it conversational.

5. If they immediately start grilling you – resist the temptation to give rapid fire answers to keep up with them. They are probably just a bad interviewer or believe in that tough-love crap to see if they can throw you off your game. Don’t let it.  Reflect on one or two questions - tell them it’s a great question, and then ask a clarifying question to create a better balance to the meeting. But do not be defensive. Prepare for this.

6. Don’t be cheesy and don’t suck up. Practice your “genuine interest” face in the mirror and bring it with you on game day. Not everyone will like you and that’s okay. But don’t give the interviewer a reason to suspect you might, deep down, be a jerk who just happens to interview well.

7. And last but not least, remember this lesson I learned from my acting days: the most powerful person in the theater is not the director or the producer; it’s the stage manager. If you are not kind and professional and engaging right through to the lowest level person you encounter in the process, you are shooting yourself in your loafers. When interviewing  I would typically ask the receptionist or administrative person what they thought of the candidate. If they were rude or condescending to anyone in the interview chain – they didn’t get the offer. I mean really, can you imagine what they’re like on a bad day?

So there you have it. I hope the next time you interview you remember to bring your best, most engaging, honest and groovy self to the meeting.  You’re already marketable and smart – now go work on being likable. And get the offer.

If anyone is interested in hearing more on this topic – please leave a comment and I’ll respond here on judesthinkin’ or to your personal email if you prefer.

On Saturday night I was at a very white-table-cloth, trendy farm-to-table, Chef has her own book, kind of restaurant. It was my first visit to the place and it was over an hour from where I live.  While waiting in the drafty foyer – for longer than we should have – our party was treated to one of the most shocking displays of rudeness I’ve seen in quite some time. The chef’s brother, who I recognized from the eatery’s website, came out of the kitchen or somewhere else that caused him to sweat profusely, and began yelling at the elderly hostess who was trying to get all her cold and hungry patrons seated. Yelling. “I TOLD you, the group in the BAR was supposed to be SEATED at the FOUR TOP. Didn’t I TELL YOU?!!” The woman he was screaming at inches away from us was not only in her seventies or better, I later found out, was his mother. His mother.

He saw us standing there. He did not apologize to her or to us. This Neanderthal just stormed back to the hell-hole from which he sprang and left us staring at our shoes. The poor woman was so deflated; she had a look on her face that could only be described as pure humiliation.  This was my first impression of the place and I was tempted to leave except I was with my husband and guests who very much wanted us to try one of their “favorite places.”

In my heart of hearts, I wanted to follow this guy back down the hall, tap him on the shoulder and explain that his outburst was not only the opposite of customer service, it was customer death. I will not go back there. I don’t want him touching anything I will eat.

Two nights later on Valentine’s Day, my tres romantique husband made reservations at our favorite restaurant, another farm-to-table, ultra-fresh and always unique eatery that is a high-rent treat for special occasions. It’s a small place and there is really nowhere for staff to hide other than the kitchen.  I was dropped off at the front door while my husband parked the car, and walked into the very small foyer where there is usually someone to take your coat. There was a young lady I had never seen before with a very surly look on her face and I was not sure if she worked for them or was a patron, but she was standing in front of the coats. I didn’t do anything until she looked at me and said, “name of party?” with all the enthusiasm of a drive-thru attendant asking me if I want fries with my filet-o-fish.  I gave her my name as a very harried looking waiter walked past her as she yelled at him, “I don’t even have their menus ready, so don’t look at me!”

This was about me. And I was standing right there. This place gives you personalized menus to remind you how attentive they are and take the sting out of the gigantic bill when it comes. However, this young lady was clearly of the same mind as the jerk in the other restaurant, and assumed that I was either deaf, stupid or so excited by the privilege of paying their chef to cook for me that I would overlook her open-air venting.

I know people have bad days. I have them. And I don’t mind if someone loses it; there is no crazier business than running a restaurant. But when you do lose it, acknowledge it. Apologize. You are not screaming into a mobile phone - I can see who you are yelling at and I can hear every, insensitive word. This is what’s known as a lose/lose.

Sadly, this happens in the workplace all the time. We hear about “screamers” and in Human Resources it’s usually our job to “coach” these people and let them know how their actions impact everyone around them. Someone who yells because they are at the end of their rope probably has a few threads of justification somewhere – but it is still over the line when they do it and apologies, as well as improved coping skills, had better be forthcoming.  Someone who yells because they believe it is an effective way to communicate or to get things done,  should be fired.  There is no place for that kind of disruption and incivility – unless you work for Fox News.

Upon reflection, I might give both of these restaurants another chance because the food was truly outstanding. But if I am ever subject to open-air rudeness on the part of their employees again I will walk up to them and say, “We can hear you. And I’m not sure if it was your intention, but you sound like a jerk. I’m going to get a pizza at Pepe’s – please give my table to someone else.”

I have a wonderful dog. I have had pets my entire life. My step-daughter is at university in a pre-vet program and has an astoundingly cute puppy - so try as I may I could never fit all the love we have for our dogs into this post.

So when my dog Sophie started to pack on a few extra pounds around the middle, I asked my vet for appropriate proportions for a dog her size and she helpfully told me I was probably feeding her double what she needed. OK. Bad mother. I backed her off and her waistline re-appeared in just a few weeks. If I didn’t have the resources to afford that visit to the vet I would have just reduced her intake anyway. It’s really not a complicated equation. Had it been a more sudden onset, or if the new portion regimen didn’t work – then I would have sought out medical attention for her to make sure it wasn’t something more serious  than food-intake causing her weight gain, which is a responsiblity I gratefully took on when I brought her home from the shelter.

Although Sophie is the first to lunge at any bonus food that hits the floor while I’m cooking, and occasionally will be rewarded with a piece of cheese for chasing the deer and turkey away from the garden, she is now enjoying a level of dietary control that has not only put a spring back in her step but earned her all sorts of accolades at the vet recently. However if she could reach her own food, she would keep eating until she exploded; probably right in the middle of the living room rug. She is a dog, after all.

Therefore, I am glad that I am clever enough to keep the food out of her reach. That’s my job. It’s not my job to give her whatever she wants, or she would get sick and prematurely die. That would be the opposite of doing my job.

The idea that this campaign for pets gets any airtime at all is not only pathetic but surprisingly mirrors the same grass-roots campaign aimed at parents who feed their kids sugar-bombs and fat crisps while they expand to cartoon-like shapes before entering the second grade.  Of course the ubiquitous campaign to remind adults to keep portions, calories, fat, salt and sugar in check has made similar and obvious points for as far back as I can remember; as adults though, in my opinion, you’re on your own. If you ”want that” and you know you “shouldn’t have that” and you eat it anyway, it’s your life.  Even when your eating habits move you from overweight to obese and you drive up my medical insurance premiums with your ill-health and cause me claustrophobic distress on public transportation; have at it; this is a free country; you are free to get as huge as you like. There’s nobody standing in your kitchen with a measuring cup, or next to you in the grocery store with a calorie counter, or helping you choose from the menu at Blimpie. These are choices you alone make every day; explode on your living room rug for all I care. And if your unwanted size is caused by something truly beyond your control I pray with all my heart that you have adequate health insurance. However your kids and your pets are another matter. That’s all you. And it shouldn’t require reality shows (although big props to Jamie Oliver), or our First Lady or Oprah, or a Facebook awareness campaign to remind you of that responsibility - or the fact that if you do choose to eat large quantities of stuff that is known to be bad for you, just because you want it, that is what your children will most likely do when you no longer control the food supply. It is also the mindset with which you will feed your pets. And odds are by doing so, you’re sentencing them all to a lifetime of health issues and an explosion on your living room rug.

You want that?

At first, this “giving of the animals” concept really didn’t resonate with the rest of us because this was Pre-Economic Meltdown when the struggles of others less fortunate were only marginally visible in our own neighborhoods or workplaces, therefore “poor” and “hungry” or “in need of shelter” were words that applied mostly to people in far away places. Yes, I knew there were those who struggled in my own state and country but the lack of intimate knowledge of these people, these other families, helped to preserve my ability to stay comfortably at arm’s length until I was stopped in front of Macy’s and guiltily emptied my pockets into the Salvation Army kettle. 

So as luck would have it, the first few years into this new Christmas tradition (my mom would randomly draw names on Thanksgiving to decide who Christmas shopped for whom), Vic was my Secret Santa four years in a row. We used to joke about the fact that I kept drawing the ”short straw” because while others were leaving the Christmas Soiree with their new top-rated-electronic-wine-de-corker-gizmo or the latest tome by James Patterson, I had a note in my purse with a picture of a farm animal and the name of an unpronounceable country or village where it would soon be deployed in my name. No gift receipt required. It was fine of course, but I suddenly started to understand how my Jewish friends must have felt when I was a kid and would invite them over to show them my piles Christmas loot. Charlie Brown’s Halloween lament, “I got a rock” also springs to mind.

Shortly after we started getting used to Vic’s annual water buffalos he then declared that he wouldn’t accept any more birthday presents so if we felt compelled to give him something, we should donate time or money to a charity of his choosing. Now this didn’t go down very well at first either, but we eventually got used to it and aside from a few good-natured eye-rolls and shoulder shrugs, we didn’t give Vic a hard time about depriving us of the joy of buying and wrapping something he would inevitably exchange for a dozen golf balls anyway. It was Victor; we thought: he just thinks differently about these things.

Then suddenly the universe decided it was going to rain sheets of pure hell down upon our healthy and unsuspecting family with a cataclysmic storm that changed the course of how we all give; and what it means to give.

In the space of just three years we were unceremoniously slammed with four incurable diagnoses; my mother, my father, my sister-in-law and me. Both my mother and I were diagnosed with breast cancer exactly one year apart, and my father was told he had Lewy Body Dementia, which brutally takes down its victims in just a few short years and he was already showing moderate to advanced symptoms.  My sister-in-law, Vic’s wife, was hit with Type I Diabetes. It was chaos.

My sisters, niece, nephew and cousin set the pace for what can only be called heroic fundraising efforts for Susan B. Komen for the Cure not to mention enlisting teams (including my wildly supportive husband) to walk 60 miles in the 3-day events each year. The Lewy Body Dementia Foundation, The American Diabetes Association, and Breastcancer.org were where we spent our on-line research and donation time now instead of cruising for coupons for Borders and The Gap. We were fighting for our lives and despite the fact that we had decent jobs, medical insurance (thank god) and in dad’s case, veteran status, we were forever changed by the obvious need to give something else: support, encouragement, and hope.

Dad passed away two years ago just before Christmas and left us quite simply wondering how we would get through the rest of our lives without him. We all assembled for the funeral services and stayed together through the holidays. It was then that mom and the siblings decided we would all give to charities instead of each other on Christmas going forward. The kids, of course, would continue to get cool gifts and a minimum of one farm animal until they turned 18. And let me tell you, it feels better. It feels right. Pretty darn sure the old man would be proud, too.

After reading Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s brilliant book, Half The Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide during Thanksgiving last year, I decided to sponsor a woman in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a Christmas present to myself and in honor of my dad. Instead of trips to the mall praying for a parking space and four weeks of unpleasant list-making and gift stress, I spent about $350.00 so Safi Kanyere Sibomana could go through a program coordinated by Women for Women International whereby she would learn skills allowing her to earn an income, read and write. We exchanged letters and pictures throughout the year and her last note was about her new job selling salted fish at the local market. Her first job ever. She is 35 and graduates from the program next week with her husband and children cheering her on. I just mailed her a little silver heart-shaped necklace from Target that cost $9.00 with one word inscribed on it: Courage.

It takes courage to do things differently. Challenge the status quo or yourself. Or even get your family on the path to recognizing their true riches every now and then. Thanks to my brother, my sisters, my parents, my husband and my extended family and friends for everyday acts of courage and giving, large and small.

And a happy and healthy Thanksgiving to you.

The Metro was jammed; ten deep waiting for trains. The Mall was a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare with people literally squeezing past each other mashing body parts together that under other circumstances would have been unthinkable. This huge wide open space was so populated that rally-goers retreated to the trees; perched like birds or dangling like monkeys to get a better view of the stage or even just the jumbo-trons.  Interestingly in four hours I didn’t see one security person, badge or uniform. Just a lot of people saying, “excuse me, pardon me” as they pushed past in search of their fellow rally-dudes.

The parade of signage was absolutely astounding and ranged from the political, to the philosphical, to just plain silly. For the life of me I can’t recall another time when so many grown-ups felt compelled to have their own personal displays of cleverness scribbled on poster boards. It was as if Stewart had marshalled us to tap into our inner grade-school psyches and forget all about that whole, “judgement thing” that usually prevents most of us from even wearing witty messages on our t-shirts. We bought our poster-boards, stole magic markers from the kids and went at it as if it was finally OK to break away from the constant barrage of media noise and group-think to find our own words for once.

It was not a Democratic rally as some pundits have been quick to assign to the legion of people who attended. I saw the Green Party, Independents, Republicans, and kids not old enough to vote. There were people from all over the country who had made the trip, the mystery trip because of one thing and one thing only: a dose of sanity. It’s gotten that bad, folks.

The show itself had its ups and downs and it took the techies a while to figure out that with people backed up to the Monument they might have wanted to crank the volume a bit earlier in the show - so some of the dialog was difficult to hear at times. But my favorite moments were in the music; the ever-evocative sound of Yusuf Islam’s gentle baritone and sad guitar when he began his poignant anthem ”Peace Train”, the rockin’ Roots who managed to get the old, white “I hate rap” contingent to head bob and foot tap in spite of themselves, and the wonderful and beyond comparable Tony Bennett singing bravely acapella, “America the Beautiful” and moving anyone with a beating heart to tears.

The montage media-slam was absolutely on target, overdue, and well-placed. Stewart and Colbert used their considerable clout and risked their media-darling embraces to try to articulate through humor how the partisan shouting and fear-mongering that has replaced journalism and honest debate in this country is slowly choking off intelligent discourse. One brilliant sign-maker underscored the sound-bite-mentality disease with a poster that read, “If your beliefs fit on a sign, you need to think harder.”

Stewart and Colbert also put their stars and stripes on the line by declaring that no one group can or should declare they are “the true patriots” or “more American” than any other, taking care to specifically include the American Muslim community in this narrative.  In several instances on that sunny afternoon with the Capitol looming in the background, Stewart managed to do what no other politician, pundit, or journalist has been able to accomplish in recent memory: champion civility, respect and truth-telling on the national stage, risking his own celebrity to do it.

He’s a brave and very smart man. I’m glad I went to his Rally.

I have a daughter through marriage and a niece who are both 18 and I shudder to think that I will still be attending these events when they are within strike range of this horrible disease.

I could write for days about the experience of going through a diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer. But as last night so helpfully reminded me, I’m just not that interesting or different from so many others who have been through it, except of course that I’m still here. Which is never taken for granted.

When survivors get together, we talk a strange language of drugs, side effects, surgeries, cancer centers, and hair loss. And we do it like we’re talking about a grocery list because sadly, it’s become so commonplace in our lives. Sometimes we venture off into the real fear-factors: survival rates and staging. And talking about that aspect is good for some and very hard for others, but we always try to leave each other with a sense of hope or encouragement to “get through” whatever phase of the disease we are in. I marvel at how consistently this happens.

Meanwhile – Komen, Avon and all the rest of these incredible organizations need to take all this “event energy” and “supporter cash” and get to finding a cure. I will wear my sparkly pink pin for as long as I have to; but the pink in my heart fades a little every time I have to pop another very expensive pill to try to keep my risk of recurrence at bay, or wait patiently for blood test results every three months.  

Now that we’re all so “aware” I don’t know anyone on the planet who is not on board with the mission and the goal, but dammit who is in charge? I honestly don’t need a pink ribbon on every item in the grocery store or NFL player’s shoes. I need to hear it accomplished something more tangible than awareness. And I need to hear it soon.

My husband and my step-daughter love forensic shows. If there are murders to be solved, bodies to be recovered, and bad guys to be caught; they are INTO IT.  Now that my SD is away at school, my husband watches them alone. I will occasionally watch NCIS with him but it’s more to have some time together than it is about the show or plot lines.

But there are other shows out there like Criminal Minds, that I swear to you, give me nightmares. And I don’t even watch them. I can hear them through the wall of the TV room in my bedroom and there are always women screaming. Begging for their lives or their virtue, and it’s horrific. I believe people become de-sensitized to the violence after a while because he can sit there and veg out and get a good night’s sleep after one of these horror shows.

I, on the other hand, having weaned myself off daily doses of television am tossing and turning and having nightmares. Just from the screaming. Why are they always screaming?

There is art, there is entertainment, and then there is pornographic violence.  And dare I say it, it’s usually against attractive women. I am not de-sensitized. I am saddened that there are so many people who can watch this crap and lose an hour of their lives by voyeuristically watching someone else lose theirs.

When looking at HR in the C-suite or in small to mid-size companies where HR plays a role but is typically not at the executive table, I see a tremendous amount of ineffectiveness and misguided self-importance. The footprint of what Human Resources is responsible for or likes to be responsible for, is large. And make no mistake, it’s impactful when done right. Game changing.

But when and how often is it done right? And why when I tell people that I’m in HR do they immediately feel compelled to tell me their own personal “HR horror stories”? I kid you not I’ve been in situations where people have cried while re-living their worst encounters. Or laughed while commenting on the ineptness of their own HR department. Here’s my personal favorite, “You’re so smart, what are you doing in HR?” It’s not good. It’s worse than being a dentist.

It’s frustrating to me because I’ve been in professional situations when HR was game changing. Appreciated. Still not paid at the level of peers, but that’s another blog.

Business has changed and is undergoing massive amounts of cultural upheaval due to the economy, social networking and media, and the wide range of generational differences in an international workforce.  So what do I read in my latest HR trade magazine: Policies for Social Networking. POLICIES. Not a conversation about where it can take a business, how it can help the bottom line, etc., but rules and compliance issues.

Yes, those things are important. But let’s say for a moment that HR let the legal department do the heavy lifting incorporating HR’s counsel. Better to be consulting with the executive team as a peer, on whether the flow of social traffic adds value to the business and long-term culture and how the business should support or regulate it. Use Legal for their expertise and then let one of the line leaders roll out the rule book. Then get out of the way.

I use that as an example because so many of the HR people I’ve worked with live to control. They love to “own” pieces of the business and trot out their latest treasure trove of buzzwords at meetings until my eyes are rolling to the back of my head. It’s like they go into meetings assuming they’ll be under-appreciated or ignored so they come across as being the insecure kid in school who is trying to get invited to the cool table at lunch. And is usually trying too hard.

HR is not a magnet for attracting retaining superstars and that has to change.

Why? Because the nature of business is changing and will require very different skills from it’s leadership. HR, or whatever it should be called must to be populated by individuals who are brilliant advisors, tactitions, mediators, and visionaries. At every level. Does that describe your HR department? Or your expectations of them?

Let’s pick a task like Benefits Administration. Really? You still want to “own” that? Outsource it. Don’t even think twice about it. Payroll? Outsource it or give it to Finance or Accounting if they don’t want to pay a vendor. Event planning? I hope its in Marketing where it belongs. See where I’m going with this? HR has accumulated a host of tasks that are usually better done elsewhere. And don’t get your pants in a twist over the “confidentiality” of every iota of information; everyone knows everything and pretends they don’t.

Let’s switch gears: Recruiting, which is near and dear to my heart, is a profession in and of itself. Anyone who thinks its an activity that HR should do in their spare time not only doesn’t understand what good recruiting is, but probably spends a lot of time bitching about HR not gettting it done. I’ve made that argument at every place I’ve worked and won. It’s a numbers game and if you don’t have the metrics to prove it, you’re just whining. So I don’t care where it goes but it’s not a “back-office, unskilled labor” function as I’ve heard it described so many times. Companies that get it right and pay close attention to recruiting, win every time.  

Compensation, Training, Rewards, Performance Management and Career Development guidance are all important. And yes, Compliance and Risk Assessment is up there. So is Employee Engagement and Communications. But Employee Relations is where the really bad HR people spend their time lingering far beyond their usefulness. Give the guidance to the manager and move on! It’s his or her issue if they fail to execute. Get out of the way and go do something useful.

So what’s left? Usually, an executive team that doesn’t know how to communicate with eachother; a CEO who is surrounded by  advisors each with their own personal agendas and an employee population that desperately needs to be heard and responded to even if the answer is no. If the business is out of sync its because the leadership is out of sync. And there is no better person than a leader who’s job it is to (drumroll please) KNOW PEOPLE to earnestly illuminate the hard facts to the executives and get people back to doing their best work or into a job that better suits them. 

This courageous leader needs to blow past the sycophants surrounding the key leadership and play the most difficult and critical role in the business: the one who tells the CEO the truth.

That’s not to say that there aren’t fantastic leaders out there in every functional area doing just that (you know who you are) but it’s a small number. Maybe eleven.  It’s a form of risk that most in the C-suite or VP ranks are not prepared to take. They may hint, infer, or in most cases, scream to their partners about it when they get home, but truth telling in its most vital form is usually absent from most CEO-bound communications.

Note: A leader has to INVITE it. And then they have to LISTEN to it. And the reaction and response must be clear. But if you punish your leadership team for telling the truth they will stop doing it.

Most leaders start out with the best intentions supported by crystal clear thinking, then the layers of human insecurities, frailties, scars, desires, and ambitions form a slow growing algae that eventually obscures and blocks the thought processes and decision making. And a perfectly solid leader will start behaving badly. Thinking wrongly. Losing allies.

BECAUSE THEY’RE HUMAN. WE are human. We are not excel spreadsheets. So why on earth are we DE-VALUING ourselves by appointing underpaid stewards to positions where they are asked to “prove their value” or earn ”a seat at the table;” then give them all the managerial hot-potatoes so that no matter how well or badly they execute, they are still resented?  WHAT???

And can we please stop describing the function as ”warm and fuzzy”? For me, that would be a start because not only is it condescending, implying a less business-like skill set, but honestly: any high school math student can pull a spreadsheet together and crunch numbers but who are you putting across the table from a law-suit wielding underperformer to fire them?

It’s hard work. It’s difficult because it does not follow simple, metrics driven patterns; and we don’t have the best and brightest doing it because we don’t openly value it, or pay top dollar for it’s best practitioners and thinkers. Trying to make HR look and sound more like Finance or Marketing so as to build credibility (see endless reams of HR analytics that no one gives a hoot about) is like asking a successful opera singer why if they’re so good are they not on Broadway doing musicals. Go ahead. Try it sometime. Tell me how it goes.

It’s an Art. And it’s a Science. But since Science pays better in our society unless you’re Meryl Streep, maybe HR should be called People Science. Maybe I could be the Senior Vice President of People Science for some multi-bazzillion dollar corporation that pays me on par with the SVP of Sales or Marketing. That sounds imminently more impressive and effective than  Director of Human Resources. How sad is it that after 15 years of slinging hash for top companies, I’m really no longer proud to say I’m “in HR.”

Hopefully some clever branding guru can come up with something to get the ball rolling so real leaders can begin to turn the tide for this critical function.  And there’s no time like the present. Otherwise…got a match? Ka-BOOM.

The play is “Exit the King” by the late Eugene Ianesco and it tackles the thorny topic of accepting death with humor, poetry and a completely absurd set of circumstances. Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon revived it on Broadway last year and audiences were somewhat stupified by the play but applauded the performances. We can only hope to reach that level of appreciation tonight and through our month-long run.

I have not done a straight play (i.e., non-musical) in many years so this was a wonderful opportunity to delve into a character without the distraction of learning music, choreography, and endless costume changes. My character, Queen Marguerite opens and closes the play and frets upon the stage for an hour of uninterrupted acting alongside a terrific ensemble of quirky characters and of course, the King. The role terrified me at first but after spending a month with Marguerite, she is now like an old friend that I can’t wait to introduce at parties. And I’m becoming very accustomed to hearing the words, “Yes, your Majesty.”

But the theater for all its unbridled creativity is not a democracy. It posesses a necessary heirarchy that exists to ensure that the many talents of the cast and crew have a purpose; a true north, dare I say it, a vision to follow. The theater produces leaders. Not always great or likeable ones, but leaders nonetheless who are responsible for myriad production details, personalities, egos, budgets, and marketing to name a few. But most importantly the vision. And the crazy thing about that is …the vision can change. It’s not hard-wired into the production from the first read-through. A leader, a strong and talented director allows for change and movement and surprises but consistently communicates where he or she has moved to. It’s an art form in itself and a master-class for anyone trying to run a business. CEOs should take note: innovation is not something you can demand of your employees if you’re not willing to participate.

I have had the good fortune to work with my current director only once before as a fellow actor in a production of Cabaret many years ago. The idea that you have ”peers” that in the next breath can become your “leader” and vice-versa is another part of the theater that I believe strengthens the artistic community. The heirarchy is changeable. So everyone is viewed as having potential to do more. To stretch and learn and grow. To sit in the director’s chair.

I won’t draw the obvious business parallels but rather just point out that when I am ready to move back to the right side of my brain, I will have a renewed sense of how to produce something of value with disparate opinions and areas of talent. It’s about leadership that allows for change but communicates and stays in charge long enough to finish the job; then moves aside to let someone else take the helm.

My hat is off to our director Jane Farnol for pulling it all together, for communicating, and for being a tireless sounding board for everyone’s ideas. It’s opening night tonight and Jane gets to move aside and let us take the stage and do our thing. Directors don’t take bows. Leaders shouldn’t either.