Five Reasons I Like Lance Haun

I met Lance Haun via phone about a year ago after reading his blog post Connecting in Person in the Digital Age. He said to his readers, ““If we haven’t connected yet, let’s make 2010 the year. Seriously”.  So I did. I sent him an email to see if he was interested in connecting and he was. Since that time, I’ve connected with Lance on a number of occasions and have really come to appreciate his unique, if irreverent, take on the Human Resources profession.

This week, Lance is curator for the HR Carnival over at his blog, Rehaul.com. I’m pleased to have a post included in this carnival, because Lance has written for and been featured in all sorts of publications. You might have heard of them— the Wall Street Journal and MSNBC.com to name a couple.

The blog carnivals offer a chance to highlight some of the best and brightest online thought-leaders in their respective communities. So, without further ado, I offer you my Five Reasons I like Lance Haun*

1. Self-referential Twitter handle. Gotta love a person who creates a third person reference to himself: @thelance.
2. A no-nonsense view of the world. This is what drew me to him in the first place. I read his post on the Tiger Woods mess and thought, here’s a person who can cut through all of the crap.
3. His tireless (and largely unpublicized) work on The Women of HR site. Lance has worked to help co-founders Lisa Rosendahl, Trish McFarlane and Shauna Moerke craft a highly professional, easy-to-navigate site for women in the workplace. As a featured contributor on the site, I appreciate his efforts immensely.
4. He sees the profession of Human Resources differently. When talking with Lance, I was shocked to hear how much he has accomplished in the relatively short amount of time he’s worked in the HR field. He brings a fresh perspective to a profession that isn’t always known for cutting-edge thinking.
5. He puts his money where his (social media) mouth is. When he says, “let’s connect”, he means it. However you should also know this: he has no problem calling you out on bad social media etiquette, so consider yourself forewarned.

Those are my reasons. If you know Lance, let me know your reasons for staying connected to him. Pop a comment in the comments box and we’ll get a little Lance Haun Appreciation going here.

* I read somewhere on Lance’s blog that he’s not a big fan of the “X Reasons Why. . .” blog title format. So, I’m taking a little poke at that with my blog title. Let’s see if Lance notices. All kidding aside, these reasons are genuine. He’s a good guy.