Curiosity did NOT Kill the (HR Lady’s) Cat

One tip I regularly give HR professionals is “be wildly curious about EVERYTHING.” I would put that on a tshirt or maybe even embroider it on pillow if I could sew.

I want HR pros to listen. I want them to read and pay attention. I want them to think.

When explaining away our lack of awareness on any-given-issue we quickly say “I’m too busy.” “I don’t have time.” “I have to get up at 6 AM before I walk the dog and get the kids ready before I even head to the office. I don’t have time to read or stay on top of things.”

BS.

Granted, my child is grown (although I do have four dogs) and I have the luxury of working from home now BUT I still maintain the same habits I have for years. I’ve loaded my RSS reader (I’ve used Feedly ever since the demise of Google Reader) and the content comes right to me; I check everything out first thing in the morning (about 6:30 AM), check for updates at lunchtime and then, when slagged out on the couch watching HGTV after dinner, I scroll through more news in the evening. When I’m sitting at the dentist’s office, the DMV, or waiting for a colleague to meet me at the local coffee shop…I read.

Easy peasy – and certainly much more productive than wasting another 15 minutes on a round of Cookie Jam which is, let me admit, my new jam. Sigh.

Here’s the deal…don’t wait for your monthly copy of HR Magazine to come in the mail. Don’t decide you’ll hang on to your questions or conundrums until you toddle off to the monthly SHRM chapter meeting and figure you can ask Trixie from ABC Company who happens to sit at your table about HER ‘best practice’ (kill me now) for Topic A. Wait too long and the stuff you want to talk about will be out of date. Or, needless to say, you could have followed the well-heeded advice to “GTS” and found your damn answer in a flash.

Be proactive and your developed awareness will serve you well.

So where to start? What to dive into? Here are just a few suggestions to load into your ‘must read list” (NOT all inclusive):

• Fast Company
• Forbes
• Harvard Business Review
• HR Executive
• Wall Street Journal
• The Conference Board
• Human Capital Institute
• Psychology Today
• Mashable
• Popular Science
• Rolling Stone (really…)
• Huffington Post (really…)
• Recruiting Daily
• Employee Benefit News
• TLNT
• Fistful of Talent
• Performance I Create
• HR Examiner
• World at Work
• HR blogs (just s sampling)

Over on Twitter I want you to follow #HRTechConf #nextchat #tchat #rdaily and #omcchat to name just a few.

Yes; it takes a few minutes to load this stuff into your reader (or subscribe via email if that’s your preferred medium) but reading this content will become as natural to you as it did when your grandpa sat at the breakfast table and read the morning paper. I bet he did that; mine did it every morning.

Curiosity is critical for HR professionals and I think that’s the #1 competency despite what SHRM might say.

Be curious.

Be smart.

Be interested.

Be “interesting.”