‘Nurture the people; protect the business’

Upwards of 80% of HR professionals are women. When I first came across that number, what unsettled me wasn’t the stat—it was how quickly my brain accepted it. Of course HR is mostly women. That’s the department where “people” and “culture” live. Where feelings are attended to. The nurturing department. The moment I noticed I’d reached for that word, I realized the number wasn’t showing me a labor-market pattern but, instead, my bias—about which...