I adored my dad, who left us about ten years ago.

My dad was a magazine publisher. He published business magazines for a huge publishing company, and when I was about ten years old he started telling me not to take the business world too seriously.

I have no idea why he thought I needed to know this. I certainly wasn’t planning to enter the business world.

I was an earnest kid, though. Maybe he worried that I would be overly impressed by all the trappings, or too easily intimidated.

He told me that just because somebody had a big title or a big office didn’t make them smart or wise.

“Listen to people,” he said. “Pay attention. Trust your gut.”

The Joke Was on Me

Sometimes Dad brought home the latest issue of one of his magazines and paid me some tiny amount to cut out the advertisements. Some of them were still in black and white then. I stapled each ad to a 3 x 5 card and wrote down the advertiser’s name and a few other details.

I have no idea what he did with those cards.

I sort of liked the work. I fell into that administrative rhythm anyone who has ever done repetitive clerical work knows. Your hands are busy and your mind is somewhere else, but you’re getting something done.

I never thought I was going to spend a day in the business world.

I thought I was going to perform.

The joke was on me. I was absolutely going to perform, just not the way I had anticipated.

How I Fell into HR

When I was 24, I was happily managing a department for a company in Chicago. I had never worked in HR and had never expressed interest in doing so.

Then I went on vacation.

I called the office to check on my team.

“There’s a rumor going around that you’re not our boss anymore,” somebody told me.

What?

I asked them to transfer the call to my boss, our VP of Operations.

“I’m really sorry,” my boss said. “Of course I wanted to tell you this in person when you got back, but I’m making you HR manager.”

I was horrified.

“What did I do to displease you?”

“Don’t be dramatic,” he said. “You’re going to like HR.”

“Well, what’s the mandate?”

“Two things. Make this an amazing place to work. And make our recruiting and our culture competitive advantages.”

Oh.

That sounded interesting. Create an uplifting environment? It sounds like theatre.

My Lunch with the HR Lady

I knew very little about HR as a profession. But I knew something about managing people, and I understood the assignment.

Not long afterward, my company sent me to New York on one of my first business trips.

I stayed with friends in the suburbs. My dad worked in Manhattan, and he invited me to have lunch with him.

Wonderful!

I hadn’t seen him in the better part of a year, and I was excited to have an hour with him.

I met him at his office. As we were getting ready to leave, a woman came over.

“Liz,” my dad said, “this is Sharon. She’s the HR manager here.”

“Nice to meet you, Sharon!”

Then Dad said, “I’ve invited Sharon to have lunch with us.”

Oh.

We walked several blocks to one of my dad’s favorite restaurants, Top of the Sixes. I’d been there with him before. It was high above Fifth Avenue, with spectacular views of Manhattan.

And I was steaming.

Dad! I haven’t seen you in almost a year. We have one hour together and you invited your HR manager?

Of course, none of this was Sharon’s fault.

She had been invited to lunch. She was trying to be helpful.

I Get Grilled Over Lunch

We sat down, and Sharon started asking me questions.

Not enough, undoubtedly.

I was 24 years old and brand new to HR. I had an enormous amount to learn.

But I remember sitting there thinking:

Is this the job?

Because the job Sharon was quizzing me about wasn’t the job my boss had described to me.

Of course I needed to know employment law. Of course I needed to understand benefits. I needed to learn all of it.

But those things were not the reason the company had an HR function.

Nobody defined Finance by the laws Finance had to obey. Nobody defined Sales that way.

Why would HR be different?

I wanted to find incredible people and bring them into the company. I wanted to help people do things they didn’t know they could do.

I wanted to make our company a fantastic place to work by avoiding the sludge of policies, rules, restrictions and penalties that make vibrant, creative people hate their jobs.

My boss hadn’t said, “Keep us from getting sued."

He said, “Make this an amazing place to work.”

That was the job I wanted to do.

I answered Sharon’s questions as best I could.

It was a long lunch.

Sometimes Learning Is Painful

We walked back to my dad’s office afterward. I was still annoyed with him. I didn’t even want to hug him goodbye in front of Sharon.

I took the bus back to the suburbs.

Later, Dad and I talked on the phone.

“Sharon says you have a lot to learn,” he told me.

“I’m sure I do,” I said. “But Dad, trust me on this one.”

I did have a lot to learn.

Just not what Dad thought I needed to learn that day.

Years later, I understood what had happened.

My dad, the guy who had spent years telling me not to get sucked into the machinery of the business world, had lost his nerve a little bit.

His 24-year-old daughter had somehow been put in charge of HR.

He freaked out.

I can imagine what went through his mind.

Does she know the laws? Does she know all the things you can get sued for? Does she know what she’s doing?

And suddenly the man who had spent years telling me, “Don’t be overly impressed by titles. Listen to people. Pay attention. Trust your gut,” thought:

I know! Sharon is an HR manager. Liz needs to talk to Sharon.

I understand it completely.

I’ve raised five kids. I’ve done my own version of the same thing.

You spend years telling your kids to trust themselves, and then they get themselves into some situation that scares you and suddenly you’re looking around for an expert.

Dad forgot his own mantra for an afternoon.

I didn’t.

From the minute Sharon started talking, I knew I didn’t want to practice HR the way she did.

I had already been to enough HR seminars to recognize the worldview.

Policies. Regulations. Procedures. Administration. Lines and rows. "We can’t make an exception."

God bless Sharon. That was her version of HR.

It wasn’t mine.

And that’s why, all these years later, I’m glad my dad invited her to lunch.

Sharon taught me something important that day.

She just didn’t teach me what she intended to teach me.

She showed me that there were people who had spent their whole careers in HR and saw the function very differently from the way I saw it.

If I were going to be an HR leader, I was going to run into a lot of them.

That didn’t make them stupid or bad at their jobs. It didn’t make me right.

It meant I was going to have to figure out what I believed.

I would have to listen to people who knew more than I did, learn what I could from them, notice what made sense to me and what didn’t, and gradually develop my own way of practicing HR.

Some people would think my ideas were ridiculous.

That was okay, too.

Not everybody has to resonate with your brand of jazz.

You don’t have to convince everybody.

You listen. You pay attention. You learn. You trust your gut.

Over time, you find people who share your perspective. They show you things you missed. Your ideas change and grow.

That’s how a point of view develops.

It takes time.

But when you’re 24 years old, you’ve got plenty of time.

My dad had been preparing me for that lunch since I was ten.

He just didn’t know it, and neither did I.