Safely back on dry land after last week's Human Resources Forum on board the Oriana cruise liner and I've had a recurring thought in my head about the talks I went to at the floating conference.
The content of the conference was by and large very good - some interesting presentations, some good workshop sessions.
Sir Gerry Robinson's opening address was a clear, no-nonsense talk on how management should work. The closing address by Arctic adventurer Ben Saunders was equally inspired - far better than your average I'm-an-adventurer-and-you-can-learn-lessons-from-me-for-your-workplace presenter.
Saunders charmed the audience with his encounters with polar bears and his answer to the question, How do you wee when it's -48C?
But the keynote address on Thursday by futurist Anne Lise Kjaer struggled to match either of these.
It seems that HR conferences are increasingly susceptible to pseudo-scientific clap-trap.
Kjaer presented a model of the human brain, split into four quarters... On the left hand side was IQ and SQ (social intelligence). Okay, I think I'm with you Anne. On the right side there was EQ (emotional) and SQ number 2, wait for it, "spiritual intelligence".
I'm not going to pick Anne Lise's talk apart, it was basically a long list of trends that we should all look out for. It was a useful list but there weren't any huge revelations.
But what astonished me in other talks and in conversation with some of the speakers over dinner was how often spirituality kept coming up. At times I thought I must be at Glastonbury: "Skills, Confidence, Spiritual awareness"; "Mind, body and soul" said someone over dinner to me in a discussion about absence...
One of the speakers made a quip in what must have been the best session of the two-day event (I will fill their name in here when I have found out who it was as I report this to you secondhand). He made the connection between how many times HR delegates had heard the word spirituality at the HR Forum and how often they think spirituality gets mentioned in the boardroom. And HR want to get on the board!?
Spirituality has its place and for me it's not at an HR conference. I said this to another delegate and he made the sound point that it's important to have 'meaning' in your work. May be he's right, meaning in what you do drives motivation, it makes you fell you're achieving something. But it doesn't need to be packaged up as "spirituality" and put in a PowerPoint slide with apparently equal worth to IQ, EQ and the other SQ, I forget what that one was now.
Agree with me? Share your experiences of pseudo-scientific HR nonsense by commenting below...
Comments (1)
I'm right behind Sir Gerry - sadly the world of HR seems to contain more than its fair share of wafflers who spout no end of theories and concepts, but who have probably never dealt with a disgruntled employee or attended an ET hearing in their entire cosmic career.
The trouble is, most of us in the HR community are far too polite to point out to these so-called 'blue-sky thinkers' that most of what they say is actually plain rubbish; so we all sit there at conferences, nod sagely and of course pay their fees... it is the HR version of the Emperor's New Clothes, is it not?
There is one particular alleged HR guru - I won't mention her name but it's very similar to a well-known mail order catalogue - who is a favourite of mine for coming up with utter psycho-twaddle. Check out her website and make up your own mind.
Posted by Stephen W. | May 14, 2008 3:27 PM
Posted on May 14, 2008 15:27