The concept “leadership” cannot be achieved through small achievements, you should be willing to go beyond your limits.
Most HR professionals fear to stretch goals or accept challenges in their career.
Zenger Folkman, a leadership consulting firm identified"establishing stretch goals” to be the number one competency gap amongst HR leaders. This was the outcome of the survey conducted on 2,187 business leaders and CEOs.
As said by Steve Rice, CHRO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, “human resource leaders can be overly risk-averse to their detriment. Fear drives mediocrity. It's necessary to take risks to move forward.”
Forward-thinking HR professionals must embrace a passive wait-and-see approach rather than to live in fear and contemplate the risks. Demonstrating a no-fear attitude leads to accepting the willingness to embrace challenges.
To excel in the world of the HR industry, you need to refine your leadership skills.
Building leadership skills to climb the HR career
Regardless of where you are in your HR career, it is crucial to hone your qualities by developing leadership skills. Start developing skills and become the leader you always wanted to be, the following traits are critical to becoming a successful HR leader.
Leadership skills – you can be the most talented and efficient worker in your team and yet not be a leader. Leadership skills often involve the individual to oversee beyond the primary function of the team. Most importantly, be in constant contact with others in the managerial posts.
Decision-making skills – it takes great courage to make decisions and take the blame for it when things go haywire. As a leader, you need to possess the capability to balance the strengths and weaknesses of different situations, one of the major skills a leader must possess.
Organizational skills – being a leader of an organization, you need to possess the ability to manage multiple projects and ensure all the tasks have been prioritized.
Interpersonal skills – if you’re a part of the management team, you would need to possess interpersonal skills. Such skill builds the foundation of the human resources career.
Speaking of communication skills – HR managers need to communicate with the employees, team members, and those in managerial positions. You must possess strong communication skills so that you can deliver messages.
Other core skills to become a fearless HR leader
HR leadership is more than just the skills mentioned above. If you want to get ahead, you might want to consider these standout traits that the present leaders have in common.
Developing emotional intelligence
A 2018 Harvard Business Review (HBR) Analytic Services study defines emotional intelligence (EI) as a critical factor in transforming the corporate culture. According to HBR, emotional intelligence is also defined as a combination of factors like empathy, social skills, self-control, and self-awareness.
The survey conducted by HBR included 599 respondents from companies that had more than 250 employees. Wherein 34 percent were senior management professionals and19 percent were either board members or executive managers. The job functions of the surveyed respondents were from operations (13 percent) and HR and training (10 percent).
As a result of the survey, only a few of the respondents felt that EI is being fully utilized or implemented in the company culture.
• Nearly 70 percent of the companies measured to have employee satisfaction.
• Around 64 percent of the EI companies possessed high tolerance for risk and empowerment.
• While 34 percent versus 8 percent of the EI companies reported having a much stronger customer experience with a higher level of customer loyalty (40 percent versus 12 percent) and customer advocacy (31 percent versus 8 percent).
• And only 18 percent strongly agreed to state companies have implemented EI within their work culture.
When situations get challenging, decisions need to be made instantly. At times, you do not even have much time to wait for instructions from the upper management. This is when EI plays a major role, you need to come up with the right decision and build your solutions.
Demonstrate empathy
Besides EI, communication skills, and organizational skills, empathy plays a critical role in the role of an HR leader.
Job roles like HR leaders require the individual to have the willingness to understand the need of the employees.
Besides strengthening leadership qualities in leaders, it also helps in assisting HR professionals to assist employees who face crises. For instance, the death of a family member. As a leader, you need to know the right kind of support that the employee needs during such situations. Empathy plays a significant role in human resources.
To move ahead as a leader of an organization, you should be ready to take up challenges, be the type of breed any organization wishes to have. You can never exactly predict the skills different organizations might prefer you to have, but you can at least try and make efforts in honing the skills that can make you the leader of tomorrow’s future.
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