Welcome to episode 179 of The Executive Edge. The guest on this week’s podcast is Doug Betts.

Doug runs a business of his own (Sure Betts HR Solutions), helping organisations to build skill at managerial and leadership level. I am passionate about this myself as I regularly work in business and find many people struggle with some aspect of their role. Often its handling conflict, or people who are under-performing, or it can be getting the right person in the job in the first place.

There are many aspects to the role which feel tricky and rely on experience both situation at hand, and of the process, system or skill involved. Far from it being an ‘easy’ thing to learn, appreciating what needs doing, and how best to do it, are abilities that can take years to acquire.

If you’re new to the role, or haven’t yet come across a multitude of situations, it can be difficult to feel equipped.  Then it becomes easy to lose confidence in yourself or your judgement. I’m a strong believer ‘you can’t know what you don’t know’ so I’m an equally strong believer that reaching out for help is often a quicker fix. Coaching in a specific situation saves you time, and energy!

What else did we discuss?

Doug is very skilled with a long history of working in HR and his starting point is another passion of mine.  That HR is not just about employment records and holiday allowance! It’s more complicated than that and experts like him are often very skilled at ‘all things people’. So, what we found ourselves discussing initially, had a lot to do with misconceptions about the role and Doug’s efforts to demystify what it is he does.

HR is a pivotal conduit between what employees need and how managers handle them. Some of it can be about providing relevant information and keeping records but the equally valuable bit is the role they play in guiding senior people to do the most effective and efficient thing at the time.

You can find out more about Doug on LinkedIn here and he’s written an excellent book: ‘From new line manager to great people leader’, available on his site and on Amazon.

I hope you find this episode as informative as I did and my thanks to Doug for coming on the show