Just like the proverbial cobblers’ shoes or dentists’ teeth, HR can often be guilty of not looking after its own career or developmental needs. For example, you may be too busy running leadership development programmes for other executives to have the time to get any training for yourself.
HR often regards itself as lower down the business pecking order than, say, sales or finance – evidenced by the fact that only one-third of employers invest in leadership training for HR. Our cover feature this week (page 22) argues that these priorities are all wrong. If your job is to develop people, you’ll need the training and support to do this well; to ensure that you’re ‘leading’, not just ‘managing’, and that you’re proving the value of the investment by measuring its impact on the bottom line.
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As businesses expect more strategic input from HR, it is vital you have the skills to influence other leaders in the organisation. That means ditching the traditional mindset of ‘supporter’ and thinking like a ‘leader’.
It is no longer enough to be content to stay behind the scenes while others get to play all the leading roles. HR has to come out of the wings and take to the leadership stage.
