One of the most challenging aspects at times of the Business Partner role is knowing whether you are adding value and how you measure it.
What I mean by this is that you’ll definitely know if you are doing a poor job. But if you are doing a good job, it’s hard to measure the impact. Largely because it’s subjective and because the impact of your advice may not be seen immediately.
If you have a good level of trust in your relationships, genuine conversations and feedback hopefully are part of your ways of working. These are great ways to measure your value.
Another way is through empathy mapping. Really being able to understand your client’s expectations and discussing this with them get to the core of what value means for them.
Establishing your client’s needs is the key ingredient and first step of understanding what value you can bring. Secondly, it’s knowing how they define value. Talk to them about the expectations of your role. This will give you a sense of how they like to work with their team and those who support the team.
In the absence of information we make stuff up- it’s what humans do as we make sense of the world. This can be dangerous as it leads to assumptions, but it is what occurs. So, it’s always beneficial to test the assumptions. How we apply that to measuring your value as a Business Partner is about having open and genuine conversations about expectations. You will then know where you stand, and so will your client.
