Stop Advising, Start Leading

In many organizations, the role of human resources leaders has been to advise and counsel other business leaders. Relationships of deep trust and open communication are built over years of working together, where the HR person and the business person both benefit: The business leader benefits from having a safe place in which to wrestle with leadership challenges and decisions, and the HR person benefits from being a valued confidante, mentor, and coach. It’s often mutually fulfilling. The relationship deepens, and both parties may grow significantly in the process. Some of my most treasured professional and personal relationships have been born of this dynamic, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

It can also be a very limiting model for the business and for HR professionals. Being in service is comfortable, and gratifying. You feel good at the end of the day for having helped your partner work through a difficult situation or decision. Yet the decision is ultimately someone else’s. The HR leader is absolved of accountability. In what other leadership role is this the norm or acceptable? 

For many HR leaders, achieving a seat at the table is the primary goal. From this seat, we can be heard, or offer an opinion. Too often, however, that opinion is on what other leaders should do, rather than a point of view on what’s right for the business—one that we can own and where we can be accountable for the outcome. We must shift our thinking from having earned the right to be at the table to having earned the right, and the responsibility, to lead. 

LEADERS SET STRATEGY
It starts with a deep understanding of the competitive landscape and how your organization differentiates itself. Shop the competition. Get feedback from people outside your industry and outside your functional expertise as input to the strategy-setting soup. Pull a diverse team together to stimulate the best thinking. Strategy development is a highly collaborative process that undulates between exploring a wide range of possibilities and making surgical decisions. It requires us to look at the business as a whole system within the context of competitive, regulatory, technological, and social trends. Staying in your functional lane prevents the best thinking from emerging.

At the same time, as an HR leader you have a unique role to play in developing your organization’s strategic focus. The culture and vision of your organization serve as the decision-making, go/no go criteria that act as guardrails on your growth strategy. Be willing to challenge your peers when strategic choices bump up against those guardrails. Be willing to test assumptions. Be willing to highlight the impact on people and culture that your strategic choices will have.

LEADERS DRIVE VALUE CREATION
Your company’s people practices are core business processes, just as essential as product development, go-to-market pathways, operations, or distribution channels. Who you hire defines your capabilities. How quickly you develop them meters the pace of your growth. How you do business defines who will do business with you. All of these choices and processes are building blocks to your business model and determine whether your organization’s people will be a core differentiator or a constraint.

Having a clear assessment of your people and practices gives you a platform from which to innovate. Where can you take low-value work out of the system and focus people on what matters most to customers? How can cost savings be turned into growth-generating investments? One of my favorite tools for this is the Business Model Canvas developed by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur and shared in their book “Business Model Generation.”

The Business Model Canvas enables you to work with the variables that create customer value, play up your differentiators, and reframe the competitive context. With a clear and engaging strategy, and a business model that aligns the organization to deliver, your next step is to develop and enable people to act.

LEADERS DEVELOP AND INSPIRE PEOPLE
This should be our sweet spot. We know how to hire, onboard, train, manage performance, and develop careers. Others come to us for those services. Unfortunately, the flipside of our service orientation is that we often put the HR team at the back of the line and focus on other parts of the organization first. Is the HR team getting the best of what we have to offer? Are we hiring innovators or administrators? Are we developing the next generation of versatile business leaders? Where does an HR career go?

Make your department a magnet for talent from other parts of the business, a fun place to work, and great team to be a part of. Be the best boss your folks have ever worked with. That means being present and patient. Teach, coach, mentor. When you focus your attention on the executive team, the board, or other business units, your team feels it. One simple step is to pilot career development programs with your own team first so that they know you are investing in their growth, and so that they can be advocates for the process in other parts of the company. Go first, and set the pace.

LEADERS MODEL THE WAY
If you don’t wholeheartedly believe in the vision, mission, and values of your organization, work somewhere else. As HR leaders, people in our companies watch our actions and decisions closely and expect that we will embody what the company stands for. Yes, that’s a high bar. It’s a role with symbolic weight. And it’s fun to show people that it can be real. It’s fun to watch the skepticism dissolve when people see that the company really does make decisions based on its values.

While the CEO is often the one to make the inspiring speech or kick off the big company event, your personal leadership style says volumes about what the company rewards and tolerates. There are certain messages that can only come from you. There are times when the organization needs to hear your voice, when they need to see your face, when your leadership presence (or absence) sends a clear signal about what the company really holds dear. Step out from the behind-closed-doors advisor role, and lead.

To learn more about how to start leading, read the full article at www.riseofHR.com.