Role of HRM in Leadership Development

Leadership facilitates high performance, by enabling individuals to perform well within a defined playing field. Additionally, leadership can be further defined as organizational leadership-providing direction for the organization as a whole and personal leadership-providing direction to the employees through proper guidance and counseling with help of education consultant. A key role of HR is ensuring that the organization has the right people performing well in leadership roles at all levels. This means HR must focus attention in five key areas: job architecture, incumbent assessment, performance definition, recognition for success and building leadership capacity. It is likewise up to HR to scatter the thought that "soft skills" ought to be subordinate to "hard skills", which are often seen as more important. In fact, soft skills are usually more difficult to master and, in our opinion, are more important – they are what leaders need to maximize performance from others.
 

A good leadership begins with HR. As a department, they have a key role to play in helping the organization to avoid situation where leadership styles are isolating employees and are inefficient. The automation of things like Core HR payroll, salary records and benefits has taken away much of the work, and freed up HR pros to focus on more strategic initiatives and analytics and leadership.  To help achieve this, the following points are helpful for HR to consider:

• The different leadership styles within an organization and how these styles fit into and compliment the organization’s overall leadership. Keeping track of the synergy between the overall leadership style and individual styles is vital to ensure harmony.

• How each leadership style compliments and matches the organization’s culture. It’s important to also look at the bigger picture and think about what leadership styles are needed to create the culture you either want to maintain, or create.

• Which leadership style that each team requires. Every leadership style differs and it’s essential to avoid a situation where the leadership style alienates and divides a team.Creating effective leadership in organization is by no means a new topic, however it is a topic of increasing importance. While more and more research shows that leadership drives organizational performance, health and effectiveness, ensuring successful leadership has never been easy, as clearly seen in many previous failures. However today, organization are beginning to wake up to the fact that the modern fast-paced world makes more significant, and often unpredictable, demands on their leaders and therefore they need leaders who are capable of performing under these highly challenging circumstances. 
 

The ultimate goal of the Human Resource Management function is to help the organization achieve its goals by attracting the best people and motivating them to perform at their best. To fulfill this mission, HR must first focus on leadership development. This focus on developing effective and dynamic leadership provides an opportunity for HR to transition from only being administrative and functional departments to being proactive business partners that really make a difference within organizations.

A few key considerations HR must be mindful of when establishing effective leadership within their organization include the following:

• Defining what effective leadership is: HR needs to define what effective leadership means within their specific organizational context and should aim to create a standardized model of leadership across all regions the company operates within. This definition of what good leadership is can also clarify that leadership is not solely the responsibility of the executives but can be found across the entire organization. The leadership model must however be flexible enough to allow leaders in different regions to make adjustments based on cultural differences, different regulatory and economic environments, available talent, and other factors that may influence the way business is conducted in that region.

• Developing leadership skills: Another major problem with leadership is that people are often promoted into leadership roles but aren’t given the support and development they need to effectively fulfill their responsibilities as a leader. HR can address this leadership skills deficit by creating a leadership development program that builds the skills of people already in leadership roles as well as the future leaders of the organization. This means an in depth approach which includes mentorship, coaching and support over an extended time period will be required to ensure success. Companies in order to avoid complexities look out to top job placement agencies for HR services with updated skills as an organization’s workforce.

• Creating systems, processes and policies that support effective leadership: Learning and development is just one of the many systems that supports effective leadership within organization. HR Certification Courses needs to use processes such as recruitment, promotions and performance appraisals to embed positive leadership throughout the whole organization. For example, recruitment and promotion systems can ensure that only those employees with the capability/potential to be leaders are put into positions that involve leading others. Those who are more technically inclined, but don’t have the people skills required to become an effective leader can be given more technically inclined career paths within the organization so as not to compromise the organization’s leadership but still maintain the overall employee morale and job satisfaction.

• Internal, external and cultural alignment of the leadership model: Finally, HR must ensure that the organization’s leadership model is fully aligned with other internal HR processes, the organization’s overall strategy and goals, and the type of culture the organization values. For internal alignment it means that the organization’s leadership model must be designed in a way that supports the organization’s rewards and recognition program, the talent management strategy, and the HR training programs, for example. To ensure external alignment, HR should look at the organization’s strategy and make sure the leadership model works in conjunction with that strategy to ensure the organization’s long term health and success. 
 

When HR is successful in developing a strong leadership model, the results can be significant and HR suddenly becomes instrumental to securing the future of an effectively function workforce and a healthy organization. Leadership is a combination of natural abilities and the organizational nurturing of the employees with those skills. Hence, this interplay between nature and nurture is what determines the success or otherwise of the HRM function and the senior management efforts to develop leadership in these companies.