HR lessons from Walter Cronkite
Every industry and profession has its giants. CEOs have Jack Welch. Actors have the likes of Marlon Brando and Meryl Streep. HR doesn’t have that one legendary giant — yet. (Go ahead and Google “legendary HR professional.” Keep the quotation marks in and you’ll get zero hits.) But there are some serious heavyweights in the profession.
My profession recently lost one of its biggest giants south of the border. Walter Cronkite, legendary anchor of CBS News and the “most trusted man in America,” passed away last month at the age of 92. He spent decades on the airwaves, ending his newscasts with his immortal line: “And that’s the way it is.” The characteristics that made Cronkite a legend can be admired, and emulated, by journalists and HR professionals alike.
Take a brief look at his career. Cronkite started out as a print journalist and, like most serious journalists of the time, had nothing but disdain for television news when it was invented. TV, after all, was for actors and comedians, not serious news folks. But when he made the reluctant jump to TV in the early 1950s after much prodding, he brought credibility to the airwaves.
There’s a significant parallel here to the HR world. HR was to business what TV was to journalism. The old personnel department wasn’t respected nor was it taken seriously. More established professions viewed HR as the place where the “actors and comedians” of the business world ended up — not a serious business partner.
HR didn’t have that single legendary person to cross over and bring credibility, but every professional reading this paper is part of the wave of “Cronkiters” that are doing for HR what he did for television news.
Cronkite took his job very seriously but wasn’t afraid to show compassion. The footage of Cronkite breaking the news to the public of the death of President Kennedy in 1963 — slowly removing his glasses to double-check the time and blinking back tears while his voice cracked — is an iconic moment.
HR professionals have that same kind of moxie. They have to deliver tough news on a regular basis, while showing compassion.
Cronkite was impartial, delivering the news as it was without interjecting opinion. But he broke from that on one memorable occasion. In 1968, he returned from a trip to Vietnam and told the country the war was, in his opinion, an unwinnable stalemate. President Lyndon Johnson, on hearing that, reportedly said: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America.”
HR is arguably the most impartial department in the company. They’re level-headed and never react in a knee-jerk fashion. A CEO who “loses” HR on business issues should be very concerned indeed, because he’s probably on the wrong track.
Cronkite set a very high standard for journalistic integrity, one that we work hard to emulate at Canadian HR Reporter. We strive to ensure all the information we present to you is accurate and unbiased. Our reporters don’t approach issues or stories with agendas — they go in with open minds, trying to identify the issues, trends and great ideas from across Canada that will help you at work and in your career.
That’s the way it is and the way it should be.
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Strategic HR: In partnership with the Strategic Capability Network, this blog focuses on HR from a strategic and business viewpoint. Recent topics include preparing for the next business crisis, why business people should think more like HR and managing talent in tough economic times.
Employment law: Jeffrey R. Smith, our employment law editor, is blogging about some of the more interesting and unusual cases he runs across while leafing through court decisions for Canadian Employment Law Today. Recent topics include whether or not employers should be providing reference letters, romance in the workplace and whether addiction to marijuana is a disability employers should be accommodating.
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