The Advisors' Blog

This Spencer Stuart blog discusses the “often-delicate dynamics” that HR professionals need to navigate to succeed in their roles. I think folks on the legal side will agree that the recommendations in the blog’s “navigation checklist” are equally applicable to legal and compliance teams, especially General Counsels. Here are the top four skills that are critical to success, according to the blog:

Business partnership. Do you understand your business and its leaders at a deep strategic and personal level? Do you know the business goals, challenges, strengths and preferences to provide effective and tailored HR solutions?

Trust. Trust is your influence capital. You need to build and maintain trust with your stakeholders, both internally and externally. Trust is the foundation of your credibility, influence and impact as an HR business partner.

Relationships. Your peer relationships are every bit as important as your relationship with the CEO. Your ability to collaborate and coordinate with other HR business partners, specialists and leaders to ensure alignment and consistency of HR policies and practices across the organization is critical. When the going gets tough (and it will), the strength of your relationships is “money in the bank” that you can tap into when you need to deal with difficult or sensitive issues.

Aligning the strategic HR agenda. How well do you communicate and cascade the HR vision, strategy and priorities to your business units? Are you ensuring they are aligned with the organizational goals and values?

I can attest to the importance of these skills from my own experiences with clients. IMHO whether or not HR and in-house legal teams work collaboratively — recognizing the importance of these success factors — is what makes proxy season either (relatively) seamless and productive or a long, hard slog.

– Meredith Ervine