So a little bit about me and what I'm all about. I'm currently an HR Director for a family-owned, privately-held distributor of wine, beer and spirits based in Dallas, Texas. I've been an HR guy for more than 15 years now, working for companies such as Halliburton, AT&T and Pizza Hut. You may have heard of them. My career started in Houston, moved me to Chicago, moved me to Seattle, moved me to Denver and has led me back to the great state of Texas. Most of my HR career has been spent in an HR Generalist/HR Business Partner capacity, which means that I know enough about stuff like benefits, recruiting, compensation and OD to be dangerous. It also means that I've got some really great employee relations stories and a couple battle scars to show off. You can learn more about my professional background here. On a personal note, I married my high school sweetheart/best friend and we've been blessed with a beautiful, smart and talented daughter who is my pride and joy. She's almost nine-years old and never ceases to amaze me day in and day out. I'm a loud and proud Texas Ex, so there's bound to be some stories I'll share related to the University of Texas. Hook 'em Horns!
I've been noodling the idea of creating my own blog for quite some time now. With the prodding and encouragement of some great people and fellow HR colleagues I finally decided to stop thinking about it and do something about it. Not sure where or how to begin, I began poking around with various blogging tools and finally landed on Blogger. Then I got all wrapped up in formatting, fonts, backgrounds and all of the other stuff that really inhibit the actual work of blogging. Yesterday I had breakfast with a fellow HR blogger (feels good to say that!) and he told me that the only barrier between me and creating my own blog is the work of actually writing the blog post. Profound! Admittedly, I'm one of those people who can get easily hung up on the trivial details at times because I want it to look perfect, sound perfect, be perfect. I need to channel my inner Phil Knight and "just do it"!
So why "Lessons in Leadership"? Here's the deal. I'm a sucker for a great story. Regardless of medium, I am so easily drawn into a good story and I enjoy sharing a good story. There is no shortage of great HR blogs today (you'll see some of my favorites on the right side of the screen here), so I decided to take a little bit different approach to an HR blog. I intend to share real stories of real people facing real challenges, examine them through the lens of an HR pro and explain the WIIFM (What's In It For Me?) with questions like:
How does this apply to me and my work? What can my business leaders learn from this? What kind of an impact would this have on my employees?
Make sense? Over time, it would be great to have enough people reading this and engaged in the discussion that they will send me their stories. I can become a curator of leadership lessons, if you will. Please understand, in no way, shape or form am I professing to be a great leader myself. I am just as fallible as the next guy, but I am fascinated by great leaders, their stories, their life experiences, what makes them tick and most importantly, what I can learn from them.
In closing, I'm a big believer in transparency. I have no idea what this blog will look like next week. I'm sure that it's going to morph, change and hopefully get better with each and every post. I know I'm going to make mistakes, so please bear with me. I have no idea where this journey is going to take me, but I'm buckling up for the ride. I couldn't help but think of the famous line from The Untouchables (great movie, by the way) as I sign off from my first post.
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