I meet with the Senior Leaders that I’m aligned to once a month. Today I had my first session with someone based in Europe. I am currently working in a global business but the approach is always the same regardless of where they are based. I started out by making small talk, telling them about my beach walk I’d just come back from, how I felt all windswept. They were smiling and we started chatting away. Building relationships is really important to me, and also showing that I’m just a normal human being.

I asked them if they’d had these sessions with my predecessor (knowing full well they had), what kind of things they used to cover off and what they wanted from these sessions moving forward. I shared my perspective, that it was an opportunity every month for them to sit and think about the people element of their role. To share any challenges, to talk about performance concerns, promotions, to think about the capabilities and training needs in the function, to talk about org design, future plans etc.

When we started to get into the detail they actually had a fair few things to talk about including a new policy they wanted to introduce, what the induction was going to look like going forward in their country and setting up car allowance for an individual in Italy. They wanted to know what HR could help with going forward and where they should go for other things. I added her to the line manager Slack Channel and we talked about how her part of the business would become more integrated (they were a recent acquisition).

It felt like the conversation went all round the houses, but when the conversation ended I had answered all her questions, she felt supported, I had lots of actions and I had done a good job.