How do HR professionals demonstrate the kind of leadership they promote?
When teaching HR professionals how to implement competency-based leadership development, we start by asking them to turn the spotlight on themselves to assess their own competencies. It always produces a few wry smiles when the collective results reflect high drive and strong interpersonal skills at the expense of hardcore business skills.
No surprises here though, these people came to their profession because they enjoy working with people and take pride in their ability to build good relationships. They want to add value and believe they can deliver it by partnering with business managers to provide great HR practices. So far, so good. But the challenging business environment of the last few years has meant that business leaders are asking for more.
This means a world of opportunity has opened up to HR professionals who are prepared to contribute a unique offering to the business in the same way as operations, finance and legal specialists do. But it requires a level of skill and leadership that must be consciously worked at.
Firstly, a high level of functional expertise must be carefully aligned to the needs of the business. What does it take? Well, answering some fundamental business questions is a good start:
• How is our business performing - revenues, costs and profit?
• What are the drivers and impediments of revenue and value?
• Who are our customers and why do they buy from us?
• Which jobs/people have a direct impact on our business results?
• What changes are needed to ensure our organisation’s future success?
• What roles must people play in these changes?
The next step is to acquire the competencies needed to integrate this knowledge into solid HR practices. Actually, they are not so different to those we expect from business leaders – take accountability for achieving results, have a great set of metrics in place to monitor progress towards those results, communicate a purpose and rally people around it and design support structures to help people work effectively.
Finally, HR professionals must build personal credibility by displaying the wisdom and self-confidence to speak as an expert and courageously take a stand or challenge conventional wisdom when necessary.