John Blakey
HR must underline its importance now or risk being sidelined. And coaching skills will play a vtial role.
Henley Business School recently surveyed 2,500 HR and non-HR leaders from large private and public sector organisations. It found that only 3 per cent ranked developing their HR team as a first or second place priority for 2011, compared to 34 per cent in 20101.
Nick Kemsley, co-director at the Henley Centre for HR Excellence, said: “HR will need to live the values of the post-downturn world – speed, pragmatism, tangibility, impact – in its own evolution or else risk being isolated in a business world which has to get on with things with or without its help.”2
Kemsley’s comment reminds us that HR leaders hold a privileged position among management, one that needs to be earned, not taken for granted. HR leaders alone have the brief to focus on people across all functions and levels. They exercise this remit in many ways – including in their role as trusted adviser to board- level colleagues. In recent years many have trained in coaching skills to support this aspect of their role, but are these skills being used to maximise their personal impact and influence?
Many businesses have been fire fighting since the recession took hold. In this climate, an HR leader can use coaching to clarify ownership and accountability, to build confidence in handling uncertainty and to bring bigger picture perspectives to the table.
Now is the time for HR leaders to step into their coaching presence more fully and to role-model the organisational change they want to achieve through their own behaviour and day-to-day interactions.
They can take encouragement from chaos theory, which says that a small impact in a localised part of a complex system can result in a much larger impact on the wider whole. This ‘butterfly effect’ finding arose from the experiments of Edward Lorenz in 19633. Lorenz researched weather patterns and discovered that a change of only one part in a thousand to the set of numbers he typed into his weather simulation programmes could produce dramatically different weather patterns. Thus, his conclusion that, in theory, a butterfly flapping its wings in South America could trigger a tornado in Japan.
Likewise, HR leaders can practise this effect whenever they find themselves in a 10-minute conversation by the water cooler with their CEO. They can use their coaching to influence the CEO in a way that ultimately leads to a significant impact in the wider organisation.
This is not only an exciting prospect, but a serious responsibility.
Such an intervention may require the HR leader to be challenging and provocative – to be the person who is going to speak their truth.
To do this effectively requires courage and a firm foundation of trust that has been built into relationships over time. Many HR leaders have built this trust with their peers because they are often empathic, good listeners and are used to influencing others without having direct line authority over them. However, there is an opportunity for HR leaders to further leverage this trust to really challenge deeply and gain a new level of authority and respect within the leadership team.
So how can HR leaders use their coaching skills as a ‘butterfly effect’? The answer is surprisingly simple: think of the statement
or question that brings a lump to your throat – and then say it! Our bodily response is the real measure that we are taking the risk to be more courageous and to step into our full authority.
Trust this simple reality and you will not go wrong.
References
- 1 Corporate Learning Priorities 2011, Henley Business School
- 2 HR magazine, March 2011
- 3 Edward N Lorenz, ‘Determining nonperiodic flow’, in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, March 1963
John Blakey is managing partner of Full Potential Group (www.fullpotentialgroup.com) and author of Where Were All the Coaches When the Banks Went Down? www.amazon.co.uk/Where-Were-Coaches-When-Banks/dp/1445215977/
Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 5