Breckenridge Grand Vacations

Bring Every Voice to the Table

Growing my career through a traditional HR track gave me the foundation to understand early on that designing solutions and leading change are always better done outside of a silo. Give me cross-functional teams, varying perspectives and the naysayers. I want them all at the table.

HR can absolutely build and deliver solutions on its own. The question is whether those solutions will land the way they need to. Bring in leaders who understand their departments, see where change would help their people and are committed to carrying that message back to their teams and the outcome is always better.

Taking on broader responsibility across HR, compliance and L&D has exponentially deepened my understanding of how change lands differently across teams and individuals. That visibility has made me a better change leader, one who can acknowledge the difficulty different departments may face, highlight where change will genuinely support them and show up honestly and humanly throughout the process.

The Small Things Shape Everything

Shaping culture is one of the most daunting responsibilities an HR leader can take on. It feels enormous, especially in large or dispersed organizations. What I have come to realize is that it is far simpler than it appears.

Culture is built by the small things the people in your organization do every day. How they show up. How they treat people. The intentional interactions they choose to have and equally, what they let slide or avoid out of fear. In the pursuit of tackling the big, complicated challenges, do not lose sight of the small, simple ones. A kind word, a direct conversation, a leader who follows through on what they said they would do. That is what culture is made of. Everything else is decoration.

Culture is not static, as much as organizations with celebrated cultures would like to believe. It is organic and constantly evolving. The daily actions and values of your people today are actively shaping what your culture will be tomorrow.

Courage Shows Where the Gaps Are

Balancing shifting organizational priorities with employee needs leaves leadership nowhere to hide. When those needs are not being met, it becomes very clear, very quickly, where the gaps in leadership actually live. You cannot point to the organization or the employees as the problem. The mirror gets held up and a leader’s own shortcomings in courage, self-awareness and accountability become the story.

“The daily actions and values of your people today are actively shaping what your culture will be tomorrow.”

That is why the next decade of work will demand leaders who are both emotionally intelligent and genuinely brave. Balancing employee needs with evolving priorities requires the courage to be honest, with your team and with yourself and the humility to correct course when you get it wrong. The leaders who navigate this well are not the ones who have all the answers. They are the ones who stay in the room when it gets hard.

Talk Before You Have Every Answer

HR does not need to have every answer figured out before informing teams. Waiting until everything is perfectly resolved often does more damage than the uncertainty itself.

HR professionals are well-suited to living in the uncertain. Constantly shifting laws, evolving employee needs, changing leadership: we navigate change all the time. There is a real opportunity for HR to model that comfort for the broader organization and to remind leaders that they do not need to have all the answers either. Bring employees into the process. Understand their concerns and questions and let that guide the transformation. The people who help build the change become the ones who champion it.

Always Raise Your Hand for Hard Things

For HR professionals who want to grow into strategic leadership, my advice is simple: do not shy away from the hard things; lead them.

You will make mistakes along the way. That is the point. Nothing builds a fuller understanding of strategy than diving in, learning through collaboration, navigating failure and coming out the other side with perspective you could not have gained any other way. The HR leaders who grow into truly strategic roles are the ones who raised their hand for the difficult initiatives, kept going when it got uncomfortable and learned from it. Start there.