LEADING THE HR FUNCTION
Influence: Grasping the intangible
34 HUMAN RESOURCES | SUMMER 2023/24
Laura Warren, People and Culture Director at Te Pūkenga, shares her personal insights into influencing and provides pointers on how HR professionals can ‘do’ influence well.
I
interviewed someone recently for a role in HR and asked them a question about influence; trying to understand their approach to influencing colleagues and senior stakeholders. Their response was to turn the question around. They spoke about how they don’t like using the term ‘influence’ and prefer to focus on collaboration and partnership to achieve shared outcomes. Although they didn’t say it quite this way, they were rejecting the idea of influence because it infers one person exerting power over the other.
