One of the critical issues that HR can impact businesses is by building the leadership pipeline and developing them to take on further roles within the organization.
However, very often HR groups fail to effectively partner with business leaders to make this a reality.
What are the reasons?
First and foremost, the way HR is structured ensures that it approaches the critical issue in a functional silo mode. Very often Leadership Development is seen as "only" a learning issue and handed over to the training department.
However, to actually make it a success, assessing leaders should be handled by recruitment, development in the classroom by training, and business HR should help translate that learning into the job.
HR also needs to monitor the kind of assignments these future leaders are getting by the business and whether senior leader is actively mentoring them to make the transition from functional to business leadership.
Good points, GG. Another problem with leadership development is how companies define who is a "leader" and where leaders may be found (and developed) within the organization. The pitfall is to focus only on an elite strata and ignore the leaders at lower levels.
ReplyDeleteOne company that successfully avoids this trap is Becton Dickinson which seeks and develops leadership at all levels.
Great thoughts... one area which I believe encourages leadership development into a training environment is that often the CEO mdoes not have as one of his/her key objectives the development of talent - which is a mistake. Too often it is delegated to HR and although HR is an enabler it cannot alone develop leadership. INstead of owning it I believe HR should be an enabler, a nurturer and the eyes and ears for the CEO. Hears a thought....the leadership pipeline is completely distinct to the "old HR dept". HR to concentrate on the process, the management of the people and the CEO to be responsible for talent with internal consultants i.e. thought leader in HR to help him/her ? Any thoughts?
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