PD SPOTLIGHT DEBBIE DAWSON
Thinking is the ultimate human resource Debbie presents various courses and webinars as part of the HRNZ PD Programme. Here she shares her thoughts and insights into the precious human resource of thinking.
I
have been presenting the threeday HR Foundations courses and one-day HR 101 for Non-HR People since 2015. HR Foundations has been designed primarily for recent graduates or those in full-time HR roles and provides participants with a look into all the main functions of everyday HR. The one-day HR 101 for Non-HR People is for those who have HR responsibilities as part of a wider role and focuses on a few main functions, including resourcing, performance management, employment relations and change management. When we study HR, we learn about concepts, theories and models. I remind participants in HRNZ courses that life does not always follow the flow chart. HR situations tend to be complex because human beings are complex, and this is why a formulaic approach does not work. In my
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HUMAN RESOURCES
SUMMER 2020
teaching, I focus on principles or core beliefs, such as ‘good faith’, because our actions are always the result of our thoughts. Our ability to think is what makes us human, and when participants say, “Oh, I never thought about it like that”, I feel particularly satisfied because it is evidence I have triggered their thinking.
The prefrontal cortex has our long-term interests at heart… it can plan, and it can exercise delayed gratification. My fascination with the human ability to think is long-standing. In 2001, I had the good fortune to attend a public lecture with Edward de Bono in the Christchurch Town Hall. At the time, I was working in the corporate world, and de Bono was best known for inventing the phrase ‘lateral thinking’ and his team collaboration tool – The Six Thinking Hats. The three things I particularly remember from that event were his incredibly silky and velvet-like voice (he was born in Malta and tertiary educated in Britain), that he scribbled on a piece of acetate continuously while he spoke, and he charged the audience with designing an upside-
down umbrella! During the mid1990s, it was fashionable to include a pithy quote at the bottom of email footers, and I remember that, for a long time, I used the tagline ‘Thinking is the ultimate resource’ without realising who had coined this phrase. Now that I look more closely at the de Bono quote, I see he includes the word ‘human’ so the quote reads “Thinking is the ultimate human resource”. This distinction is particularly significant to me now because I use the Self Coaching Model with all my clients, and an important feature of this model is the power of our thoughts to create the results we want. This ability is critical for HR professionals who need to understand how human beings work, to provide the best workplace environment. It is worth noting here that humans are the only animal species with the ability to think. We are privileged to have a prefrontal cortex that is an add-on to our reptilian brain, yet many of us do not make full use of this wonderful gift. It is the prefrontal cortex that allows us to experience life beyond the present – we can think about our past and we can think about our future.
