CPO at TVNZ: 'I don't think it's getting any easier to be a leader at all'
“The only constant in life is change,” said Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, a philosophy many kiwi leaders likely empathise with right now. From pandemics to talent shortages to unprecedented weather events, Kiwi organisations have been going through a period of reacting and refocusing.
“I don’t think it’s getting easier to be a leader at all. I think the sort of things that are highly valued in leaders now are resilience and change, being able to take people and help lead people through times of uncertainty,” said Nicola Simpson, CPO at TVNZ, who will be speaking at the HRD National HR Summit in Auckland on April 27.
When the pressure is on, the propensity is for leaders to take more control, she says, but after recently redesigning TVNZ’s leadership development program, “More often than not, the answer is having less control and enabling your people to come up with the ideas and be prepared to see what happens.”
Developing leaders is crucial to combating the skills gap and retaining employees, says Simpson.
“What type of leaders they are, what they value, how they behave, how they treat people — that’s what people choose to invest their time in. The culture of an organisation is directly affected by the leadership you've got and so this is where HR has got a big role to play in terms of ‘How do we really set the tone and help create the energy?’”
At TVNZ, it all comes back to change. “How do we build that change muscle within our leaders? How do we make them open to change, able to manage change, but also lead people through it?” she sas.
“When I think of leadership, it changes all the time, so from a development perspective, we’re constantly going what is a leader now? What are the new things that are happening that we need to be open to.”
Leadership development panel at HR Summit
Moderated by the director of LinkedIn talent solutions, David Bella, Simpson’s panel includes Andrea Duncan, GM culture, capability & performance at Kiwibank, and Simon Fenwick, director, talent & future capabilities at Fonterra, in a discussion on accelerating leadership development for succession planning.
The panel will discuss; refining leadership capabilities by using a skills-first approach and how to build leadership soft skills, such as communication strategies, empathy and mental health understanding and present examples of redesigned leadership development programs.
“These events are great because you can share and learn,” said Simpson. “I don’t think there’s any IP in HR. There’s always new, great ideas and some organisations have the bandwidth to be able to get things in place, so if we can share our learnings and continue to improve standards and ways of working then that creates great places to work in New Zealand and that’s good for business, it’s good for our communities, and it’s good for society.
Learn more about the HRD National HR Summit
