E44: Skateboarding is to Open Source as Redefining HR is to People with Lars Schmidt

Lars Schmidt is the Founder of Amplify, an HR executive search and consulting firm that helps companies build progressive people teams and capabilities. He's spent over 20 years in the industry working in and alongside a range of leading global companies. In 2015, Lars co-founded a not-for-profit aimed at democratizing access to modern HR practices - HR Open Source, a free global community of practitioners who collaborate and share learnings to prepare themselves, and their organizations, for the future of work. Part of his foundation is being centered on the employee experience and the impact on employees. This is the lens through which he sees decision-making in HR is done. Here are some power takeaways from today’s conversation: Lars’ career background in recruiting How his mentor has paved his way to success What planted the seeds towards his embrace of open source Dealing with imposter syndrome Understanding the culture of skateboarding Skateboarding is an individualistic sport within a collaborative community The biggest challenges in HR today His thoughts on emotional optimism Episode Highlights: Dealing with Imposter Syndrome People look at imposter syndrome as being lacking confidence. But you can be supremely confident in your ability, and still feel imposter syndrome at the same time. You just have to believe in yourself even though you're questioning your competence. And the lack of fear of failure is the antidote to imposter syndrome. You're going to take some risks, and you know you're going to do some things that are not going to work out. But you also know you will learn from that. And you're not going to beat yourself up by that. Just chalk it up as a lesson and incorporate your learnings the next time you try something similar. You're going to fail a lot before you get it right. The Culture of Skateboarding Analogy In the culture of skateboarding, unless you're in an actual contest, but for the most part, you're competing with yourself. It's more of individual individualistic support, but everybody is supportive of everybody else. Everybody rallies around everybody else. Nobody wants to be proprietary about their tricks and approaches. They want to help each other up because you elevate everybody together. Translating this into the field of HR is why Lars got so passionate about open source projects. The Biggest Challenges in HR Today Most HR leaders are burned out at this moment in time but they're massively in demand because companies are realizing the value of HR now. As an HR leader, you have to understand the financials of the business and understand the market positioning strategic roadmap. You have to design a custom people strategy that moves all of those things forward. You're overseeing and supporting the most volatile asset that the business has, which is their people. And people have been through a lot in the past year. And so, this puts HR leaders in an incredibly difficult position. On Emotional Optimism Optimism is a choice although, for some people, it comes very naturally. And for other people, they have to work to be a bit more of an optimist. In emotional optimism, your default is assuming good intent. It's a belief in the good in people. It's a belief in humanity and human nature. And you trust that positivity is going to be more of a default for people than mistrust or that they're here to do harm to you.