Sustain Your Flame!

Keep Alive the Mission and Meaning of Your HR Career

A special program for HR groups

By Martha Finney

Martha@marthafinney.com

It's not only possible to love your work in HR – it's essential. No other profession demands such a rigorous balancing act of passion with business-oriented practicality and strategy. As we move into new economic changes, the demands on HR to be ever more creative and knowledgeable business partners will usher practitioners into a whole new adventure of endurance and courage.

With such increasing pressure from business interests, how will you keep personally inspired and dedicated to the mission and ideals that attracted you to HR in the first place? It can be done. It must be done. You can have a fulfilling HR career that challenges you to express your full potential and grow as a respected partner in the future of your business and your people. You just have to keep your passion alive – your passion for HR, for people, for business, and for the vision you cherish for your life.

Sustain Your Flame!, a special program designed to reignite, re-inspire, recharge, and re-empower HR practitioners, is offered by Martha Finney, long-time HR journalist and co-author of HR From the Heart: Inspiring Stories and Strategies for Building the People Side of Great Business (with Libby Sartain, Amacom, 2003). Available in a variety of formats (see below), and incorporating the principles of Practical Passion ™, Sustain Your Flame! invites participants to:

• Believe it's possible to build the career of their dreams
• Cultivate powerful relationships that will help build their careers over time
• Claim that leadership role – the seat at the table – no matter where they are in their organization
• Identify the six essential ingredients to a successful HR career and how to build them into any resume
• Understand how the three core economic engines drive their life's career path – not by money but by meaning
• Appreciate the nature of a legacy of hope and inspiration and what HR practitioners can do to build that tradition –within both their organization and their own lives

Sustain Your Flame! is offered in a variety of formats:

Keynote: This moderately interactive presentation can be customized to fit pre-established time frames. While it is primarily a speech, the audience will be invited to answer core questions. And, time allowing, there will be an opportunity at the end of the presentation for Q&A and audience contribution.

Moderated meeting: In this format, Martha moderates a panel discussion among HR leaders who lend their own experiences, learnings and success stories to the main message of how the audience members can stay passionate about their HR calling. Length is typically 1.5 hours, with three or four panelists chosen by the sponsoring organization. If desired, a second session of audience Q&A can be offered after a short break. This is a rare opportunity for audience members to ask HR leaders important career management questions.

Seminar: This highly interactive long program is a wonderful opportunity for participants to explore important questions about their life's work in a supportive environment. As a celebration of the meaning behind the HR profession, the Sustain Your Flame! seminar is an excellent choice to kick-off an HR retreat or offer as a concurrent conference session.

An option available with all three formats: If the client or sponsoring organization desires, Martha will help build an ongoing conversation among the HR groups that will continue long after the session itself. This is most likely to take the form of an Intranet tab or blog in which participants can voluntarily contribute their insights and thoughts about developing a passionate HR career.

Dates and rates: Call 408-355-4223 or write Martha@marthafinney.com for more details about this inspiring program for your HR department or professional group meeting.