I have finally discovered the ONE SKILL every successful HR professional needs to have. It is not great IQ, EQ or LQ. However, before you bring on the drum rolls, I must digress to narrate two short bits.
#1 – The first time I heard the term LQ, I racked my brain for a while wondering what ‘L’ could stand for. The term was introduced to me without any context. The exact sentence my colleague used was – ‘We need to hire people with a strong LQ.’ After some thought, I decided that LQ must stand for ‘Leadership Quotient,’ given that leadership was the buzzword in those days. Imagine my dismay when my friend Google said I was wrong. I soon discovered that there were many more ‘Q’s’ that I needed brushing up on. Here’s a short list – CQ (curiosity quotient), MQ (motivational quotient), PQ (people quotient) and XQ (eXperience quotient). Whew! I believe there’s more out there but for now, I don’t want to know. Oh BTW, Jack Ma thinks LQ is love quotient. I’m not the only one who seems to have got it wrong. Which brings me to #2.
#2- I recently came across this quote – Parenting without a sense of humor is like being an accountant who is terrible at math. & I instantly thought to myself – Being an HR professional is much like being a parent in a madhouse. (I’m not a parent so I could be way off but bear with me.) A sense of humor has definitely got me through many moments where I’d rather throw a tantrum and walk out. A sense of humor is also the most predominant quality in the fantastic team I work with.
*drum roll*
If you hadn’t already guessed, the single most valuable skill a successful HR professional can have is a sense of humor. Sure, there are other skills you need in the mix. But hey! When you hire, you look for more than just LQ, don’t you?
How good is your sense of humor?
The HR Business Partner Story 