The H.R. Doctor is In - July 25, 2016

Breakfast — Shelter Before the Storm

Time for my favorite meal of the day — breakfast. Time to hop into my very cute yellow Jeep and drive a few miles to a diner that I frequent. When I walk into Darrell’s Doggone Good Diner, staff members like AJ, Susan, and Katie invite me to sit anywhere. They greet me by saying, “Hi Phil" and automatically start my IV drip of coffee. They ask how my beautiful wife Charlotte is if she isn’t already sitting with me and ask if I will have my “usual." The place has photos of customer canines all over the walls, including of course, photos of my two handsome K9s.

Darrell’s is a place to feel comfortable and safe while enjoying a good meal most efficiently served. After paying the bill, sometimes without even waiting for the check, I’m ready to start the rest of a busy, productive, and enjoyable day. I do not, of course, ever forget a generous tip. It is very unlikely that my friends at Darrell’s have a defined benefit pension plan, a wide array of paid time off benefits, automatic step increases, and a package of insurance benefits — things which a great many public employees too often take for granted.

Darrell’s offers a form of a respite from what for many can be a daily grind of meetings, deadline pressures, decisions that will not please everyone — or for that matter sometimes anyone — and perhaps having to give difficult news to stakeholders like fellow employees and citizens. In Human Resources especially there may be thousands of job applicants each year if not tens of thousands. Only several score or even hundreds in a large organization, however, may actually be hired. That means that the huge majority of applicants think you’re dumb and make bad decisions.

Unfortunately, sometimes those who actually get hired reach similar conclusions if they start work only to find that their hopes and expectations have not been met, perhaps at the hands of “Godzilla, the Supervisor.” They may find that they’ve just entered a labyrinth of bureaucratic restrictions which prevents them from innovating and makes them feel like crash test dummies – strapped in and ready to bang into some wall only to be strapped in again as the process repeats.

It is essential for the best and the smartest employees to enjoy the work environment and, strange as it may seem, to actually look forward to going to work and doing things they love to do. The very best employees want to make a difference. They want their decisions to be understood and appreciated. They want their team members to grow and develop on the job and they want to have a role in helping them grow. It is the critical role of the manager and an executive to create and encourage that kind of environment — one that is a form of safe haven for innovation and inspiration.

The HR Doctor has long studied the role of the “sanctuary” in making our lives complete. A prior HR Doctor article focused on that subject, noting that for the very fortunate, the sanctuary may be a beautiful physical property such as Camp David or Winston Churchill’s “Checkers.” For many others the sanctuary may be as simple as their own room at home or their own apartment. The Beach Boys were helpful in noting this phenomenon when they wrote and played “In My Room” decades ago — a song I remember listening to in my own room in a six-story tenement apartment building in Brooklyn. I often think of that environment when I look out my expanse of windows onto the beautiful pastures, treesand observatory of my home in Central Florida.

Some, like Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela or Steven Hawking may have spent years in a concentration camp, in prison, or confined to a wheelchair. Nonetheless, they too found the amazing beauty of a sanctuary in their own mind. Theirs is a sanctuary of spirit and imagination.

We all need a sanctuary, perhaps more than one. Our homes, our relationships with those whom we love, and a work environment can all be sanctuaries we enjoy in our lives. The wise manager, elected official and appointed director will seek out such sanctuary-opportunities and create more of them for others. Tough decisions are better made when balanced by the knowledge that we have found havens to re-energize our bodies, minds and spirits.

Take time to think about the concept of sanctuary in your life. Take time to develop one at work as well as at home. Take time to find one in seemingly unexpected places — like a diner.