“To be successful businesses have to deliver financial results. Leaders at all levels need to be commercially aware and capable of making good decisions that impact the performance of their teams and the wider business”.

I started my earlier article on great leadership by saying that”

• “Without great leadership you wont have a culture that attracts, retains and gets the best out of your talent and you certainly won’t be successful executing your organisation’s strategy and delivering on the performance goals”.
• “The leaders you hire and promote internally must be able to engage and inspire the best from their employees, while making the right decisions to successfully compete in the ever increasing complexity of today’s dynamic business environment”.

While every organisation is different the areas of greatest importance in any leadership development strategy don’t (in my view) differ very much. So, previously and today, what I emphasise to leaders is the importance of developing:

•       Organisational awareness, commercial acumen and strategic thinking to be more effective decision makers.

•       People leadership qualities to be better at influencing, engaging and developing their employees, building trust and capability and driving performance improvement.

Both are essential to executing your organisation’s strategy and delivering on performance goals and both are critical components of any leadership development strategy.

Below are four sources of leadership insight I rate highly in developing the people leadership qualities in leaders and which I’ve shared with leaders at every opportunity.

Following this are four high-impact business relevant leadership development activities I’ve implemented and seen be effective in practice within an organisation.

There are four focus areas essential in developing people leadership qualities. Whether at leadership induction or during future ongoing leadership development, the focus must be on helping leaders become better at:

•       building trust, influence and credibility across working relationships;

•       driving high levels of employee engagement;

•       maximising the capability of the talent in their team; and

•       growing their own levels of emotional intelligence.

The principles and practical guidance from the sources I highlight below are just as valuable and relevant to helping leaders engage talent and drive business performance today as they were when they were first published.  They come from white papers and business books written by respected leadership educators, business consultants and researchers, some of whom I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and learn from during my career.

There are numerous other great sources to learn from and I read excellent articles and research papers every week, but as I would say to leaders I present to and coach:

“Always keep learning, but focus on learning the principles from these people leadership insights, and apply them as a leader in your work environment and you will be a better leader of people and be more successful”.

1. The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey

The practical advice Stephen M.R. Covey shared in his book ‘The Speed of Trust’ on building and developing trust are fundamental to great leadership and employee engagement. Without trust there can’t be engagement and certainly the business performance will be impacted. As Stephen Covey highlights, “simply put trust means confidence”

Doing what you’ll say you’ll do and doing it well builds trust and credibility as does open honest communication.

Whether it is with employees, peers, stakeholders or the CEO and the Board, delivering on what you commit to is essential in great leadership. 

• Trust matters internally when it comes to the provision of business or operational support and service delivery. 
• This impacts the engagement and performance across teams and externally affects customers and market competitiveness.

Having led HR supporting offices located in different continents I’ve seen first-hand the importance of trust in the speed and quality of communications and decision making. Having collaborative communication practices built on trust, commitment and credibility is critical across organisational teams. This is more acute for global teams based in different geographies as they rely directly on each other to operate efficiently in the delivery of services to customers and the winning of new business. With time-zones at play the commitment to delivering information, services and support across international teams has to be an organisational priority. If delivery is late and communication is poor, trust disappears quickly and with that so does organisational agility and performance.

The insights outlined in The Speed of Trust are a great resource for all leaders to reflect on and apply practically. It encourages leaders to work hard at building credibility through their integrity to deliver and their honesty when dealing with others. Building trust is also vital to be an effective influencer, an essential quality in any great leader. 

2. The 5 Drivers of Engagement, Juice Inc.

Of all the articles and research papers I’ve read on engagement the Juice Inc White Paper on The 5 Drivers of Engagement is the most easy to follow and practical for leaders to understand and apply. It’s a great meta-analysis that pulls together and articulates the essence of what employee engagement is, both simply and effectively. It references numerous well respected research studies on employee engagement conducted across businesses globally.

The five drivers of engagement as outlined by Juice Inc. tap into the emotional priorities of employees working within an organisation, namely: I fit, I’m clear, I’m supported, I’m valued and I’m inspired. These translate to employees having a sense of belonging, security, freedom, significance and purpose. The Juice Inc white paper intelligently demonstrates that the five drivers referenced are critical in harnessing each employee’s willingness to offer their discretionary effort.  It also outlines how leaders can build on each of these emotional drivers with their employees as a means to creating a culture of high performance and engagement.

“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people areemotionally invested, they want to contribute.” – Simon Sinek

As leaders, new or experienced, we all need reminding that as human beings feelings and emotions are important in the engagement of our people. Mary Angelou, voted one of the most powerful women in the USA in 2001, said “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

So it is with employees too. Only with mutual respect and trust will high levels of engagement be reached and employees care and act on what you tell them, leading to better business performance.

As higher percentages of millennials take leadership roles in the workplace we know from research they will be placing greater priority on workplace culture, diversity, flexibility, teamwork and a sense of community, while seeking greater purpose in their work contribution. Trust, collaboration and engagement within the organisation will clearly be key factors in retaining them as leaders along with other individual contributors who are holding critical roles.

In the 2015 McKinsey research on leadership, one the four key differentiating qualities held by high performing leadership teams was supporting others.This was defined in the research as:

“Leaders who are supportive understand and sense how other people feel. By showing authenticity and a sincere interest in those around them, they build trust and inspire and help colleagues to overcome challenges”.

Whether it‘s millennials or any other generation in the team, the research findings and insights shared in the 5 Drivers of Engagement white paper are congruent with McKinsey’s more recent research on the qualities of those in high performing leadership teams.

What’s is clear is that for leaders to engage talent they need to be supportive, showing they value their employees’ diversity and contribution, creating a safe and encouraging culture for all employees to work in and inspiring their people to give their best efforts.

3. Multipliers, Liz Wiseman.

Liz Wiseman, a former VP at Oracle, researched the positive and negative (multiplying and diminishing) behaviours of leaders across many global organisations, including Google, Disney, Apple, Nike and Facebook.

The research from her and her co-author Greg McKeown’s’ book called Multipliers, centred on ‘How the best leaders make everyone smarter’. The book identified the behaviours that great leaders had in contrast to the behaviours of those leaders who were seen as poor leaders.

Importantly, few leaders want to be talent diminishers but some are. These leaders are called accidental diminishers and they have behaviours that they don’t recognise are accidentally limiting the contribution of their teams.  The insights in Multipliers points out some key behaviours that disengage the contribution, motivation and performance of employees. It’s important for all of us to be aware of these behaviours when reflecting on our own leadership style.

“It isn’t how much you know that matters. What matters is how much access you have to what other people know. It isn’t just how intelligent your team members are; it is how much of that intelligence you can draw out and put to use.” – Liz Wiseman.

4. Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman; Emotional Capitalists, Dr Martyn Newman.

Every week we see references to emotional intelligence (EQ) and it’s importance in our lives, whether at home or at work.

For those leading people having high levels of EQ is essential for achieving high levels of employee engagement and improved organisational performance. 

Daniel Goleman’s pioneering book, Emotional Intelligence, is a great resource to use in the development of EQ in leadership at all levels. It emphasisies the importance of: Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Empathy, Motivation and Social Skills.

Dr Martyn Newman’s research on EQ highlights the importance of developing seven critical EQ skills to become a great leader at engaging both customers and employees. Based on 10 years of global research looking at successful business leaders, Dr Newman’s insights show leaders how they can drive productivity, increases resilience, build their EQ and grow their leadership skills.

The seven critical EQ skills identified are: Self-Reliance, Assertiveness, Optimism, Self-Actualization, Self-Confidence, Relationship Skills, and Empathy. 

While there are countless articles out there referencing EQ, both Daniel Goleman and Dr Martyn Newman are highly respected for their respective contributions to the field of EQ. The following link is a great discussion between the two of them in June 2017. It’s well worth the read. Interview with the Godfather of Emotional Intelligence – Dan Goleman.

• The important link here to engagement and performance is research shows that leaders who can best manage their own emotions and the emotions of others have the greatest impact on engaging with their employees. 
• Having an understanding of EQ is also a pre-requisite today for all leaders if they want to be effective influencers.

Research on neuro-leadershipalso confirms the impact that engagement has on an employee’s ability to solve problems, make decisions, stay cool under pressure, collaborate with others and deal with change.  We all want our employees to be good at these things!

A great read is David Rock’s book titled ‘Quiet leadership’ if you get the time. Another great read is an article by Andrea McEvoy published this month in Forbes Magazine ‘An agile leader is a self-aware leader’.

Leaders need to reflect on their own self-awareness and be aware of how others see and judge them. 

This is particularly important as they commence in new leadership roles. In a new role leaders are being observed and judged more acutely by their employees and peers. Bringing this to the attention of new leaders when they join your organisation or when they’re promoted into leadership, and reminding them through future leadership development opportunities, is important in setting them, their people and the business up for success.

To enable leaders to become more effective decision makers in your organisation you need to focus on high-impact business relevant leadership development activities. These will help leaders to:

•      Understand the organisation’s financial and other performance metrics;

•      Know the measures of success across the wider business functions;

•      Appreciate what the organisation’s strategy is and why certain decisions have been made to follow that strategy;

•      Know how to present a business cases to influence business decisions and lead change initiatives;

•      Develop an entrepreneurial mindset that seeks innovation and creative solutions to opportunities and organisational challenges.

Below are four high-impact leadership development initiatives I’ve implemented and seen be successful in developing the above knowledge and capabilities in leaders.

1. Encourage collaborative learning across your organisation with learning given by your leaders to your leaders.

Encourage and co-ordinate opportunities for leaders in different functions in your organisation to give short presentations on their business areas.

By presenting to their leadership peers leaders can educate each other on the functions, operational and commercial business drivers, financial and non-financial measures, key stakeholder relationships, current challenges, new opportunities, market dynamics and key customer requirements (internal and external) etc.

These presentations can be done periodically to new leaders with feedback and questioning and they can be streamed live or recorded as needed.

The benefits of growing cross functional understanding and building collaboration across your organisation helps break silo thinking, it builds trust and it improves decision making. A side benefit is it gives opportunity for leaders to present and build their credibility.

2. Connect senior executives with your leadership talent.

Creating opportunities for senior executive interaction by having interactive strategy discussion forums delivered great value. Leaders would come and listen to a small panel of invited senior executives talking about the organisation’s strategies, challenges ahead, new initiatives planned and answering any questions.  The need for the forums to be commercial-in-confidence and the trust displayed through the discussions also built engagement with the leaders present.

The opportunity for leaders to engage with senior leaders from across the organisation was invaluable in not only building networks, but it also helped grow strategic thinking and business awareness by giving insights into executive decision making.

It also helped leaders more fully understand the direction of the organisation. This had the affect of lifting their own engagement levels and helped them see the importance of their leadership contribution going forward.

Leaders who attended the sessions (they ran quarterly) returned to their business functions with a better understanding of how best to communicate back with their teams on the strategy and actions being taken at a higher level.

This helped ensure that at all levels, the link between what teams were contributing to the organisation’s vision, strategy and future success was better understood. This built confidence in the teams and greater engagement to the organisation.

3. Involve your leaders in the generation of innovative solutions through strategic challenge workshops and projects.

Diversity brings great value to an organisation, particularly when it comes to diverse thinking. In fact, the ability of your workforce to creatively find solutions that resolve problems and best exploit opportunities is one of your greatest competitive advantages. For this reason diversity and inclusion are areas I’m very passionate about.

So one powerful leadership development initiative for your organisation is to bring this leadership diversity together in small groups, from different functions and have them collaborate on identifying creative solutions to real business challenges and opportunities.

These can be on shorter time-frame workshops through to longer projects over a period of months. Having leaders work together identifying options for the organisation, linked to strategy and execution, capitalises on their diverse thinking and presents new solutions to improve organisational performance.

The best example I recall of this was a group of leaders with no cargo or aircraft technical experience who, after a project spanning months, made recommendations that influenced the head of the Cargo division’s decision (changed his then current thinking) on the planned aircraft type acquisition strategy. This changed the divisions investment in the future fleet, impacting the division’s performance for many years to come.

The leadership teams by presenting back their ideas and solutions to senior executives become more connected to the organisation and its future success. Leaders, through their participation, build credibility and stronger networks at peer level, building trust and stretching themselves to grow their strategic thinking capability.

4. Have short high-impact leadership development workshops.

Leaders have busy roles with accountability for delivering results. They can also be more cynical when it comes to leadership development, so you have to ensure they see value in giving time to keep developing. Leaders want to know “what’s in it for me”.

With this in mind, psychologically, leaders are going to be more open to a half day development workshop or a one-two hour update/learning session so they can, if needed, still invest some time back into their functional role later in the day. Yes morning is best and have some ‘teasers’ already communicated so leaders attending come open-minded to what they will get out of the time. If you can, for a workshop, have a senior executive come open the day with a short informal message to those attending, this also helps ensure everyone makes the start time.

Earlier I mentioned focusing on resources that I believe are great to help develop leaders in inspiring trust, driving engagement, maximising capability and growing their emotional intelligence. So these should be prioritised for workshops.

In addition, having specialists in your organisation or external guests share updates on global and market trends, customer and technology innovations, new software packages and Apps and any other updates or research potentially valuable in the workplace will all help your leaders be more agile, aware and contribute to improved decision making.

Mix attendees up from different parts of your organisation to capitalise on the benefits of diverse thinking and experiences. Always allow time for interaction between the leaders attending so they can build their collaborative networks and establish relationships leading to greater trust. 

Importantly, use technology smartly, to deliver, capture and share content and use physical and on-line collaboration tools to cascade the learning gained across all leaders.

Key Takeaways

• Focus must be on developing people leadership qualities so leaders can better influence, engage and develop their employees.
• Hand-in-hand, leaders must grow their organisational awareness, commercial acumen and strategic thinking to strengthen their decision-making.
• Both are critical components in any leadership development strategy to continually improve organisational performance.
• There are four essential people leadership qualities that must be developed. These are: building trust, influence and credibility across all working relationships; driving high levels of employee engagement; maximising the capability of the talent in teams; and growing leaders’ levels of emotional intelligence.
• Organisations can use their own resources supplemented by external input to deliver high-impact business relevant leadership development initiatives. Focus on encouraging collaborative learning across your organisation with learning given by your leaders to your leaders. Connect senior executives with your leadership talent and involve your diverse cadre of leaders in the generation of innovative solutions through strategic challenge workshops and projects.
• Have short high-impact leadership development workshops and use technology, physical and on-line collaboration tools to share and cascade the learning gained across all leaders in your organisation.

To achieve sustained organisational performance, prioritise the recruitment and promotion of high potential leaders who fit your culture. Inspire and develop them on what’s important for success and retain them. Investing in these strategic imperatives will deliver the highest ROI to your organisation.

The mandate for any new Head of Human Resources is to lead strategies and actions that lift work force capability, increase productivity, build employee engagement and support the organisation in achieving its strategic goals and objectives.

As the newly appointed Head of Human Resources (HR), your success in delivering against this mandate will depend on your ability to:

1. Listen, learn and understand your new organisation and the industry it competes in, so the right strategies are put in place and the right decisions are taken.
2. Build your personal credibility, engagement and trust, so you can lead through influence as you drive positive organisational changes that will improve performance.

Clearly it’s important you gain as much understanding of the market you compete in and the dynamics of your new organisation before you take your seat at the executive table. Ways you can do this before you commence the new role are: gaining insights into the company history, future vision, customer markets, industry trends, online articles, website information and social media posts.

You can also explore the backgrounds and experience of the executives in the team you’ll be joining and the people you’ll be leading in your new role (thanks FaceBook, Google and LinkedIn).

But the real learning starts when you walk in the door.  

There’s great advice online for new Heads of HR on how to approach the first 100 days when commencing in a new organisation.

But my advice is invest time listening and learning what the executive team, your HR team and your employees’ think. 

By investing time listening and learning and establishing relationships, you will increase your understanding and build your credibility and trust. This will help you successfully engage, influence and lead as you make decisions.

 

Three actions any new HR leader should prioritise are:

·    Listening and learning what the executive team thinks.

·     Meeting with different employees and hearing what they say.

·     Having your team share their views on current HR strategies.

One of your key accountabilities as the Head of HR will be aligning the organisation’s vision, strategy and objectives with the human resources people and performance strategy. You’ll also need to make decisions on the priorities for HR to deliver the agenda successfully.

By taking the above actions early in your role, you can accelerate your learning and understanding of the organisation, the culture and the bench strength. This is pivotal to ensuring your organisational people and performance strategy is in alignment. Even if you bring great experience from another HR leadership role, every organisation is different and your previous strategy will almost certainly need some adjustment.

It’s expected that all three actions, i.e. the meetings to listen and learn from executives, employees and your HR team will happen in parallel. However, the learning journey will never end and the importance of regular engagement and communication will be essential.

1. Listen and learn what your executive team thinks.

With the CEO’s support and having had time to talk with him/her, prioritise time to spend a number of quality one on one sessions with each member on the executive team. By meeting one on one you can immediately start establishing the collaborative trust that will assist you in your decision-making and as an influencer going forward.

 

These meetings shouldn’t be rushed, so ensure your executive colleagues have uninterrupted time to reflect and share their thoughts. Learning about your new colleagues and getting them talking about their career steps will provide insights into their personalities, motivators and values.

This will help build a genuine connection and a deeper appreciation of them as people, along with an understanding of the collective executive team dynamic.

Take time to explore each executive’s understanding of the organisation’s purpose, vision, strategies and what the organisation’s cultural values mean to them.

This will tell you if there’s existing alignment across the senior leadership team and if there’s consistency in the messages being communicated down and across the organisation. Obviously this is important for employee engagement and trust in both the vision and the strategy being communicated.

Ask each executive:

1. “How would you describe the culture of the organisation?
2. “If there’s things needing to change in the culture, how would you want it described in 12 months time after the changes?
3. “What needs to change internally in the organisation to get there?”

Then ask each executive to also share:

1. “What are the success drivers and business measures in the areas you’re accountable for, and how do these drivers and measures contribute to the organisation’s strategy and objectives?”
2. “Where do you see the greatest internal challenges within your area and across the wider organisation?”
3. “What are the greatest challenges we have as an organisation to deliver for customers in the market and to be competitive?”
4. “Where do you see the greatest opportunities to make positive changes internally to lift our organisational agility and performance?”   
5. “What must we in your view do differently within our organisation to drive more customer value and achieve greater market success?”
6. “Where do you believe too much cost is being spent and how can the organisation achieve greater agility, productivity and profitability?”

The responses you get from the executives will accelerate both your organisational and commercial awareness and it will present you with different perspectives, interpretations and priorities as you chart your HR people and performance strategy.

To understand the talent map and bench strength across the organisation have each executive draw out their team structure.

Ask each executive to:

• Tell you about each of their team leaders as people, outlining their performance, their development needs and their potential to take on more senior roles in the organisation.
• Discuss the succession plan for them as an executive and for each direct report. Do they have a succession plan and if so what are the timeframes?

• Have them outline any talent challenges they have with respect to individuals, teams or general capability areas.
• Ask them what needs immediate action and what needs investment?  Where can you support them with their team to build capability?
• Ask them about critical roles and business continuity risks if team members with certain unique skills were to resign. Do they have a plan in place?

There are various other questions you can ask as you spend time one on one with each of the executives. Once you’ve captured their thoughts, ideas and understand their priorities you’ll have a good source of knowledge to help you start forming the building blocks of your HR people and performance strategy.

2. Meet with your employees and hear what they say.

As the internal communications go out to employees across the organisation they will know there’s a new HR leader joining the executive team. They’ll be aware that this person will have a potentially significant impact on the organisation’s culture and their working environment, including their engagement and well-being.

So the jury will be out for most employees on you and the impact you will have, particularly if it’s a newly created role or if the organisation is going through a cultural change.

This presents an opportunity for you as the new Head of HR to influence their perceptions, open future doorways of communication and build bridges to achieve improved employee engagement and trust.

Trust won’t happen without evidence of action but by arranging opportunities to meet and talk with employees informally the first steps to building trust will have been taken.

 

‘Coffee with Rick’ – I can’t claim the title or the concept as both were used by a President in an organisation where I previously worked. This President, someone I admired had the Socratic approach to decision making. He would always ask questions and engage with staff to help him get the best information and viewpoints so he could in turn make the best decisions possible.

He also had a great saying when he spoke at leadership training events,“it’s not good enough to just be right”, meaning that if you can’t lead change and decisions through influencing others in the organisation then being right counts for zero.

Like many great ideas and initiatives we come across, I’ve applied this one in my roles to interact informally with small groups of staff from different parts of the organisation.

How it worked:

• I’d let the Reception team know of one or two time slots each week where employees could book a seat in our café to come meet and talk with me in small groups of 6-8 people.
• I’d ask the Reception team to book people from different parts of the organisation to make up the group so they could also meet new faces, learn about their colleagues’ departments and hear others’ views.

Bringing people together is a great way of building trust, collaboration and engagement. It’s also important for connecting senior executives with employees from all across the organisation and it’s not just the Head of HR who can have these meetings.

I’d pitched to all employees in a corporate message that they could:

• Use the opportunity to come meet me informally and be introduced as I was very interested in learning about the business, the various departments and what they did, and I wanted to meet employees from across the organisation.
• Help me learn more about the culture, the organisational values and their understanding of our vision and strategies for success, given their importance (as employees) in making success happen.
• Get a free coffee on me and meet some of their fellow colleagues working in other parts of the organisation.

At these sessions, I’d always make the attendees feel very welcome and genuinely thank them for helping me learn about the organisation, given my role was to help the organisation be successful through driving their (employee) engagement and performance. I’d also buy them their favourite coffee (or tea) which was always appreciated!

I’d spend a few minutes talking about what an engaged culture was and give a short introduction of my background and what attracted me to join their organisation. 

I’d also emphasise results, saying that “we have to be profitable, to return economic value to shareholders, have money to invest back into the business to innovate and sustain our market competitiveness, and importantly be able to reward you (our employees) through improved salaries and benefits”.

Before we got into the questions below, I’d ask each person around the table to introduce themselves, but just share their name, department, role, the main function of their role and how long they’d been in the business. I’d ask them to, after doing this, share two facts about themselves that they didn’t believe others would know. Maybe a life changing experience, a trip or an adventure they’d been on, a unique hobby or interest or a passion and talent outside of work that they enjoyed doing.

This not only helped us all learn more about our colleagues but it reflected the diversity of us all as individuals, and how we all had come together to enjoy our work, get a sense of achievement and feel valued for our contribution.

Organisations, at the end of the day, are made up of many unique people (AI hasn’t taken over yet).

Having done this we would have an open discussion about the organisation.

• I’d ask them all about the workplace culture and how they’d describe it, what the values were and if they felt these were true values lived and breathed across the organisation.
• We’d discuss their understanding of the organisation’s vision and strategy and I’d get a true sense of their awareness and interpretation of both, and how well they felt connected.
• I’d also ask them what we could be doing better as an organisational team, and what we should look to do going forward to lift engagement, improve performance and make the organisation more agile, productive and customer driven.

Great ideas come from talented employees, but you have to ask them and have a culture where they want to bring the great ideas to life.

Importantly, the focus was forward looking, and the language used in discussions was: “our”, “us” and “we”.

As the time together came to a close I’d open the doorway for any of the attendees to individually, or with others, come see me to discuss other ideas they had to lift performance, or if they had any particular concerns.

I’d always reinforce our common purpose moving forward, working together to empower a culture that raised engagement and improved organisational performance.  

In my last role I had over 30 of these sessions, and I conducted them in country offices in New Zealand, the U.S.A., Europe and the United Kingdom. These sessions not only helped me connect and meet many great people across the organisation, but it also helped me understand the synergy and disconnects between the executive leadership and the wider employee thinking.

Over one year we had employee engagement rise by 33%, and these discussions, along with other positive employee experience initiatives contributed to achieving this.

3. Have your team share their views on current strategies.

Clearly your team of human resource professionals will have great insights into the organisation and the people in it. These insights will be extremely valuable as a source of learning for you.

Discussing the people and performance strategy that exists already (if any) and how they see it supporting the organisational strategy and objectives will help you identify both opportunities and gaps that you and your team can focus on.

 

As each of them will have had different levels of exposure across the organisation, having a group session and asking them similar questions as those asked of the executive team (about the organisation) will most likely provide the best insights.

Early on it’s important to gain your team’s trust, encouraging them to be open so they can feel comfortable and safe contributing their ideas and views. Again listening carefully and learning about what HR strategy exists, any policies that are in place and the HR employee and business support service practices, will give you more valuable insights to guide your decision making.

Investing time with each of your team as individuals and exploring their backgrounds, their goals and their future aspirations is important to building trust and engagement. As with the executive team, it will also help you better understand their personalities, motivators and their values.

Knowing your team’s individual and collective strengths and their development areas will also enable you to allocate resources and assign projects appropriately to stretch and grow each member of your team as you execute the people and performance strategy.

Takeaways

As the new Head of Human Resources your role is to improve organisational success by having the right people and performance strategy.  This can only be done by understanding the organisation, it’s vision, strategy and the market, its measures of success, its culture and the attitudes and feelings of employees that impact engagement and overall performance.

By prioritising meetings with executives, wider group employees and your own HR team when you first join the organisation, listening to and absorbing what they share, you can accelerate your knowledge and learning.  As a result, you will be better placed to make the right decisions to align the organisation’s business strategy and objectives with the right HR strategy and priority initiatives.

Your employees will also have ideas, listen to them and inspire their energy and commitment to improving the organisation’s performance.

Learning about and gaining insights on the people in your organisation, understanding them as individuals and developing relationships built on trust, collaboration and shared purpose will also help you build your credibility to lead through influence.

This will help you be successful as you drive positive and impactful engagement and organisational performance changes.

Rick Helliwell, 17 October 2018