HR Leadership & Greatness

Great HR people embody great human relations skills.  They use these skills to maintain leadership effectiveness with their key stakeholders.  The word leadership is key.  It is also not common.  Too often, HR people position themselves as helpers.  They are listeners and solution finders for difficult situations, and they bring technical expertise to a variety of HR functions.  But, the competencies listed in the previous sentence are not enough to lead to true HR effectiveness.  HR leaders are required.  HR leaders are impressive.  They exercise the following qualities:

• Personal mastery of themselves and their situation. 
• They know themselves unusually well and have become aware of their blindsides, their tendencies for avoiding or over-doing, and they are accomplished objective problem solvers. 
• In addition, they have the interpersonal skills, courage, and determination to do what needs to be done and know how to take the necessary steps when the inevitable mistakes are made.
• Being exceptionally well grounded, they are positioned to raise the difficult issues and to sell the tough programs and proposals to stakeholders who themselves may look much like them but whose vantage point and expertise is quite different from that of the HR leader. 

How does one become such an HR leader?  Subject matter mastery is only part of the journey; it is certainly helpful if not a necessity for an HR leader to have mastery of one or more of the subdisciplines of human resources.  But that is just foundational, not sufficient for success.  What else is required?  The following qualities and characteristics will get you there:

• Personal growth that leads to a superior level of self-awareness, self-insight, and objective awareness of and insight into people.
• Personal knowledge and behavioral competence of effective leadership practices.  This knowledge and awareness enables HR leaders to lead in the variety of circumstances in which they find themselves.  Note that the word here is lead; they do not act just as followers, but they are able to lead with their superiors, peers and others, to bring HR expertise to the people challenges of the enterprise.
• Persuasion and and influence skills; they know how to deliver their expertise for the good of the enterprise and they successfully do so.  They know how to expect, prepare for and overcome objections; they can influence at the highest levels.
• Objective problem solving and perception skills.  They have excellent skills for getting to the most useful root issues.  They know their own biases and how to avoid them.  They seek input from a wide range of sources and they put it use.  They recognize that there are multiple ways most situations can be perceived; they seek the objective viewpoints that can best assist the enterprise in problem solving and decision making efforts.
• They exercise courage.  For HR Leaders, here are many difficult decisions to make and actions to take, and often there are situations in which they can raise difficult questions or provide useful yet provocative observations; they do not shy away from doing so.  In these and in other ways, they display courage.

How does an HR person become great and a leader?  Peter Rock Consulting Inc. has the resources to help make the journey.