Adele Clarke: Confidence inspires resilience
As this year's Ambassador for the dss+ Women Making a Difference initiative, Adele Clarke, Head of Human Resources for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at dss+, discusses how human compassion, leveraging shared experiences and taking personal ownership can enrich and elevate career aspirations.
Adele Clarke
Head of Human Resources for Europe, Middle East and Africa at dss+
Q.
This is the third year dss+ has celebrated the professional achievements of women in business in honour of International Women’s Day on March 8th 2023. What motivated you to champion this year's initiative?
For me, the opportunity to offer support and encouragement to others was a big motivator. At some point, we all end up in similar situations in our careers. Yet, we don’t always realise that there are a lot of similarities and overlapping trends and experiences we can all learn from by sharing. So I think it’s important to emphasise that we’re not alone and that when you scratch the surface, we can learn together and leverage many shared experiences to grow professionally.
"Looking back on my career, I’ve always had a passion for the human element and how people come together in different business environments."
- Adele Clarke, Head of Human Resources for Europe, Middle East and Africa at dss+
Q.
Tell us about your professional journey that led you into human resources (HR) and how your role has developed.
Looking back on my career, I’ve always had a passion for the human element and how people come together in different business environments. My career has spanned various sectors and roles, including operations, development, talent acquisition, as well as running my own business. I also developed a core interest in business partnering. So I had the opportunity to leverage that cross-functional exposure before I made a conscious choice to step into the HR space. At the time, I had little functional HR experience. Still, I was fortunate to work for a wonderful blue-chip multinational organisation that encouraged me to stretch my potential and step into human resources. While I had to start from the bottom, I could leverage the skills I had gained in previous roles and my entrepreneurial experience. My initial exposure to HR was within the organisation design function, which, while it didn’t feel like HR, was an excellent grounding for deepening my understanding of how structure supported strategy. I used this understanding to expand my role both geographically and generally across the core pillars of HR. I then explored more specialist areas, including my passion for talent management and development, including the integration of talent acquisition and reward and recognition programmes. Also, my strong interest in the commercial side of business gave me a further opportunity to leverage HR across the broader organisational ecosystem.
Q.
To what extent can such a multidisciplinary approach help career progression?
For me, using the experiences I have gained has helped facilitate not only my operational understanding of HR but ultimately helped build a structure that supports strategic capabilities. Equally, it is beneficial to have had exposure to key stakeholder needs as this broadens the idea that HR does not work in a vacuum but is a critical business function that should be integrated across the business ecosystem. I’ve also been very fortunate to work with organisations that have gone through and driven a lot of growth, evolution and continuous change. Exposure to those fast-paced environments has bolstered my personal agility and resilience that I can draw on from a business perspective. This kind of knowledge and experience has become more critical post-Covid, particularly in the current commercial climate, where agility to respond to change is an advantage. While all this experience has been invaluable, solidifying that expertise through further qualifications wasn’t something I thought would have a significant impact. However, when I attained my MBA I realised the benefit of taking qualifications later in life. It allowed me to draw on the experience I’d gained and critically assess my thinking around certain things I’ve learned that have helped me make more conscious choices.
Q.
We often look to our professional achievements as signs of success. Is this still relevant, and how do we adjust to career disappointments?
I would say that measuring success isn’t necessarily tied to one particular outcome. I think there’s more to be said about personal growth, building confidence and developing your own capabilities to influence progression. Perhaps a better way of assessing professional achievements is learning to flex your style and develop your knowledge and understanding of how to drive change through some of those exposures. Then it’s about using that experience to build on what you’ve learned. We must accept that there’s not always a plug-and-play solution. It’s sometimes about how to fit a square peg in a round hole by identifying how you can adapt to the situation. So when we talk about achievements, in my case I recognise how personal style and communication skills have positively impacted corporate culture. For example, through well-being initiatives, investment in growth and development opportunities for individuals, and promoting an open, caring, and trusting culture. I consider these achievements to be important measures of success. Although it’s essential to add that achievements need support, strong alignment and a working partnership with senior leadership, which I’m lucky to have had. In terms of disappointments, I’ve found it healthier and more productive to look at them as something that fuels me forward rather than holds me back. It’s easy to lose confidence when an important decision doesn’t go your way. However, I’m a big believer in moving on and not letting disappointments define me, particularly when it’s outside my control. Equally, it’s important to understand and know your personal value to an organisation. We need to encourage more confidence and belief in ourselves to inspire such resilience.
"We must accept that there’s not always a plug-and-play solution. It’s sometimes about how to fit a square peg in a round hole by identifying how you can adapt to the situation."
- Adele Clarke, Head of Human Resources for Europe, Middle East and Africa at dss+
Q.
You clearly demonstrate a passion for creating a caring and trusting culture. What is the best way to embed these ideas within an organisation?
The impact of leadership on how individuals in an organisation behave is critical. For me, good business culture is very much demonstrated by actions and tangible outcomes achieved collectively. At the same time, we all have an individual responsibility to contribute to business culture. Importantly, we must incorporate a human element in choices and behaviours that include a strong sense of personal values and how those align with the organisation. If we look at that in the context of HR’s role, strength in diversity, inclusion, capabilities and skills is vital when hiring. Still, ultimately it’s about ensuring alignment with similar values that positively impact the business. It’s also about creating pathways so that people have the confidence to reach out for the support that they need to grow and develop. This could be giving access to formal or informal mentor schemes or exploring training and coaching programmes that help people expand their professional horizons. Nor should coaching be necessarily linked directly to a current role or a business skill. From my own experience, coaching that encourages personal growth has excellent benefits in a professional environment, as the ability to rationalise our thoughts and challenge our thinking is increasingly vital to business and personal success. We often undervalue the criticality of personal choice, which fuels everything else connected to our world and is essential to our effectiveness in the workplace.
Q.
What would be your three core messages to support and encourage women to reach their professional potential?
I think it’s important not to overlook the need for a support network within and outside your profession. Outside support can help you balance your work and home environment, whether that’s helping with childcare or developing other interests that improve your wellbeing. In terms of developing your professional potential, my first core message would be to become familiar with your personal leadership style. Being conscious of who you are and your values help define a personal brand that can be leveraged more effectively. It’s also about taking ownership of successes and the mistakes that often provide our greatest learning opportunities. Secondly, consciously recognise the impact of being human; it’s essential to show empathy and compassion in all business decisions. Sometimes this point gets lost in translation because we’re so busy focusing on results. Finally, I think it’s important to tap into your personal power and energy and step forward to take a seat at the table. Life is too short to wait for an invitation.