In Human Resources there are days when many people are waiting for an answer you can’t give yet.
It can be a doubt about a process, a decision that isn’t closed yet or an action that’s been set in motion and still needs time to show whether it works.
And although that’s part of the job, it isn’t always easy to hold it internally.
I’m Nara, the mascot of HR professionals, and today I want to talk to you about a skill that maybe isn’t so visible from the outside, but that greatly influences how you experience your day to day: staying calm when answers are missing.
In HR you don’t always have absolute clarity. Often you have to support, decide and keep moving forward while things are still open.
That’s where the mind can start filling up with noise.
Here are three skills that can help you work more calmly when you don’t yet have all the answers.
Skill 1
When everyone expects you to have the answer
In HR it’s common for many people to come to you.
And although you know you can’t have all the answers at all times, when someone asks you and you still don’t know what to say, an uncomfortable feeling can appear, as if not having the answer left you a little exposed.
This happens because the mind tends to associate authority with an immediate answer.
But in a human environment, where many decisions depend on people, conversations and timelines still in progress, authority isn’t always in answering fast. Sometimes it’s in knowing how to hold the question without filling it with certainties that don’t yet exist.
A simple way to recover calm is to change your internal question.
Instead of thinking “what do I have to answer now”, you can ask yourself: “what can I clarify now without inventing a certainty”.
Maybe you can’t give the final answer, but you can explain what’s known, what remains to be confirmed or when the topic can be picked up again.
That helps your mind stop experiencing “I don’t know yet” as a failure, because not having an immediate answer doesn’t take away your professionalism. What builds trust is being able to hold the question with calm, clarity and honesty until the answer arrives.
Skill 2
The vertigo of betting on an action
In HR there are many actions that don’t show their impact right away. You can launch a training program or an initiative to improve the work climate and need time to know whether it will work as you hope.
That wait can create vertigo, because when you work with people there’s almost never an absolute guarantee before acting. You can have data, listening, experience and judgment, but there will always be a part that’s only discovered once the action starts to happen.
The problem appears when the mind interprets that lack of certainty as a danger signal. Then a decision made with good judgment can start to feel like too big a bet.
A simple way to recover calm is to swap the demand for certainty for a logic of follow-up.
Instead of asking yourself “what if it doesn’t work?”, you can ask: “what do I need to observe to know whether we’re on track or whether something needs adjusting?”
That question changes the place you decide from, because you no longer need everything to turn out perfect from the start. You need to be clear about what you’re going to watch, when you’ll review it and what signals will tell you whether it’s worth adjusting.
In HR, many actions aren’t sustained by having absolute certainty from the start, but by moving forward with judgment and keeping the ability to listen to what happens afterward.
Skill 3
The mental noise of what’s still pending
In HR there are matters that don’t end when a meeting is over and keep taking up mental space for hours.
This happens because the mind tends to return to whatever it perceives as incomplete. It tries to close it, anticipate scenarios or prepare answers before there’s enough information to do so.
And that effort consumes energy, even though it isn’t visible from the outside.
A simple way to reduce that noise is to give what’s pending a specific place, instead of leaving it spinning in the background all day.
You can ask yourself: “when does it make sense to look at this again?”
Sometimes it will be after a meeting, when a piece of data arrives, at the end of the week or when someone else confirms some information. What matters is that the mind stops treating that matter as something it has to resolve all the time.
The fact that something is still open doesn’t mean you have to live inside it.
Sometimes staying calm starts right there, in knowing how to leave a question on pause without turning it into noise all day long.
Humántica®
At Imantia we don’t only think about the experience of those who take part in a training program.
We also think about the person who coordinates it from Human Resources.
Because behind every training initiative there are decisions, doubts, timelines, expectations and many small uncertainties that aren’t always visible.
That’s why, in our C.A.R.E. method, we try to make each process clearer, more cared for and easier to sustain for HR.
Supporting also means reducing noise, anticipating needs and making the path simpler for the person who has to drive it from within.
I’ll still be around here, watching closely how you work… and learning too from everything you hold up each day.
And who knows, maybe at some point we’ll cross paths at the office. I almost always go with Berta to her meetings with HR.
— Nara
P.S.: What helps you most when you have many things open and answers are still missing?
