IN THIS CHAPTER

Staying connected to the business

Developing your leadership skills

HR leadership is business leadership because the talent in your business makes the business what it is. And because of the shifting expectations of the workforce, the remote nature of work, and the complexities of the always evolving legislative environment, strong HR leadership has never been more important. Amid the changes and challenges, which are likely to only accelerate, you need to keep certain principles in mind. This chapter covers best practices for HR and Talent leaders in any organization. Across each of these principles is a theme of staying connected to the business while continuing to grow as a leader.

Know Your Business

Leading HR professionals know the ins and outs of their business — their why, their mission, how they make money, how they do what they do, and so on. The best HR leaders also stay connected to what’s happening in the industries they are a part of. Because of this, they’re keenly aware of the ways in which their work fits into their organization’s overall business and the organization’s differentiators within its space. They do this by understanding the complexities and operating challenges that set their companies apart from their competitors.

An understanding of business finance is helpful. (Quick test: Can you read a P&L statement?) Even more important, the best HR leaders have an in-depth understanding of their company’s products and services, the competitive challenges it faces, and the strategic initiatives that are underway to meet those challenges. The best way to gain this knowledge is to participate in as many meetings and discussions involving these initiatives as possible. Set up meetings with line managers or other colleagues to find out about their strategic goals. Ask questions and pay attention to the challenges and opportunities that are getting the most attention in the business — what are leaders talking about and struggling with? Engaging in these conversations puts you in a position to lead business challenges with the right people and talent strategies.

In addition, as your business acumen increases, you will naturally provide more insight into the bottom-line implications of any HR initiative that you recommend — everything from learning and development programs to hiring practices and, difficult as it often is, employee termination procedures. Create simple spreadsheets that show the before-and-after scenarios or work with the finance leaders in your company to establish some concrete ways to attach a dollar value to the contributions your HR efforts are making to the company’s bottom line.

Develop a Marketing Mindset

The best HR leaders are good marketers and are effective at making a case for new HR initiatives to all segments of your internal customer base: senior management, supervisors, and staff-level employees. The key is to focus your communication efforts on the benefits these projects deliver. As you’re selling HR initiatives to senior management, stress competitive advantage. If your audience is made up of supervisors, stress the operational advantages — how a program can ease their day-to-day burdens.

As with any marketing initiative, you need to know your audience and base your approach on their needs and concerns. Remember: Whenever you’re introducing a new initiative to a group of employees who are already under tremendous time pressures, anticipate resistance — even though the new program may be designed to ease those pressures in the long run.

Know Yourself

Self-awareness is the first chapter in the book of leadership. The best HR leaders know who they are and who they are not. They recognize their strengths, their weaknesses, what gives them energy, and what drains their energy.

Often leaders overcompensate for or deny their weaknesses only to lose credibility with others. When leaders show up authentically with humility (acknowledging areas that are challenging for them), they build trust and connection with others.

Knowing what you excel at and what you don’t also allows you to plug in and support projects in a way that is most energizing for you (and ultimately the business). And when you acknowledge that you don’t have the strengths or expertise needed, you can bring in other leaders, team members, and/or external partners to supplement your strengths. HR (like any business discipline) is multifaceted and ever evolving, so you aren’t going to be an expert in all areas. Give yourself grace and never set the unrealistic standard that you know all there is to know.

Adopt a Growth Mindset

As research shows, your mindset drives your behavior, so it’s important to pay attention to how you’re thinking about and approaching all aspects of your leadership. A growth mindset is open and curious. It’s a learning mindset, and instead of getting derailed by failures or setbacks, a growth mindset focuses on what there is to learn in challenging situations. Throughout my career, I’ve seen HR leaders quickly fall on their sword when senior leadership didn’t agree with their approach or perspective, saying things like “I don’t get HR.” This fixed mindset isn’t conducive to growth. In those situations, instead of getting angry, get curious. Identify what you can learn from the situation to improve the next recommendation.

Nurture Your Tribe/Network

HR leadership can often feel lonely — it’s not helpful or healthy to vent and talk through sensitive and/or confidential business challenges with internal leaders. An external network or peer group of HR leaders is incredibly valuable to serve as a sounding board and offer thought partnership for leading through challenging situations (although you want to be careful not to share confidential information and instead generalize your challenges it makes sense to do so). Most challenges that HR leaders are faced with are normal, and by talking through them with other HR leaders, you recognize that you aren’t alone and that others have navigated similar ground. You can learn from each other’s challenges.

If you don’t already have a network of strong HR and Talent leaders, build one. Start locally with online HR groups and pay attention to leaders who are like-minded and/or in a similar business or interest. Ask others to meet for coffee to network and get to know each other. Attend conferences or HR-related seminars and connect with other HR leaders in the process.

After you have a network, nurture it. Take time to meet with members of your network monthly or quarterly to stay connected to best practices and what others are doing.

Build Your Team

HR leadership is business leadership, so whether you’re a one-person HR department or leading a team of HR professionals, you’re always building HR and talent capability within your organization.

To ensure you’re leading with a team mindset, be cognizant of the following:

• Aligning to a vision: The definition of a team is a group of people working together to accomplish something. Shared values, the organization’s mission, and the company’s vision all provide a common place of focus for you and your team. With these in mind, the best HR leaders have a clear mission/vision for their HR teams and know what it is they’re trying to create. Amidst a challenging situation, having a bigger picture to rally around keeps the conversation focused on where you’re going and what the team is working toward.
• Engaging in healthy conflict: Doing so is a valuable part of working within a team environment. Create an environment in which team members feel comfortable sharing a different perspective. Where there’s psychological safety and a shared vision, conflict moves the team forward.
• Building trust: This is an ongoing process. Never take trust for granted. It’s the key to an open, transparent relationship and takes time to establish.
• Building diversity into the team: Create a team that reflects the people you serve to ensure differences in thought and experience within the team.

Provide Coaching and Focused Feedback to Peers and Leaders

Because of an HR leader’s business acumen — understanding the business and having strong relationships — HR leaders are in the best position to coach and provide focused feedback to leaders within the business. Strong HR leaders listen to recommendations and ask questions to make decisions that are best for the business. But in many instances, the role of HR is not to be the decision maker, but rather to provide guidance. Many times other leaders in the business will lean on HR to make a difficult decision for them, which prevents those leaders from growing and also owning some of the difficult decisions they need to make — for example, giving an underperforming team member a smaller bonus, taking more time to find a candidate that’s within their budget versus going over budget, and so on).

In addition, when colleagues don’t follow through on commitments and agreements, strong HR leaders acknowledge this — they hold them accountable for the agreements made. Not only does this establish trust and credibility, but it also supports commitment and getting results within the team.

When providing coaching and feedback to colleagues, remember to keep the focus on the behavior, not the person. Using this language is helpful: “I noticed that you didn’t follow through on… .” The key is to highlight the behavior in question without accusing your colleague — using these words allows you to simply state what didn’t happen and give your colleague an opportunity to respond.

Be Nimble and Willing to Flex

Flexible leadership is key for HR leaders. There are certainly legalities that require a hard stance, but more often than not, HR leaders are required to flex, see other perspectives, or adopt new perspectives because of the evolving business environment. Digging your heals in doesn’t help anyone when the business is trying to move forward. As a business leader, you want to move with the business and support business growth, which requires continually shifting and re-shifting.

One area that requires flexibility is working to achieve balance between understaffing and overstaffing as workloads ebb and flow. On one hand, you don’t want your company to be caught understaffed and unable to take advantage of growth opportunities. At the same time, you don’t want to over-hire. The answer is somewhere in between. Strive to adopt a flexible staffing strategy as your permanent business model. By augmenting the efforts of full-time employees with contingent professionals when workloads peak, you can better manage expenses, reduce the possibility of future layoffs (because you haven’t added full-time employees beyond your core team), and gain the flexibility to easily staff up or down as demand for your company’s services fluctuates.

Continue to Hone Your Craft

Dedicate a portion of your workweek — every week — to your growth and development to ensure you remain current on new developments in the field. Here are some ideas on how to stay ahead of the curve:

• Follow HR and Talent thought leaders on social media.
• Build and nurture a network on HR leaders.
• Attend seminars and conferences geared specifically for HR practitioners.
• Stay informed about legal issues that can affect your policies by monitoring news stories and legal cases that are likely to have HR implications. But don’t go too far — be sure to consult an attorney when you’re unclear on particular areas or when you’re making important employment decisions that may involve legal risk to the company.
• Pay close attention to your competitors’ HR practices — compensation and benefits, in particular. Remember: These differences may be giving them an edge in attracting high-performing employees.
• Take a line position or short-term role in another part of your business to deepen your understanding of the business or build skills outside of your current skill set.