We can never stop talking about leadership because it is so important to anything that succeeds and there are so many aspects to it. But most of all — you have to get it right in the context of where you are and what you have set out to accomplish.
A colleague recently shared the research he had done for his master’s thesis that focused on an approach to reduce the dramatically high failure rates most companies experience with large-scale change implementations.
His premise is that people represent the one consistent element in all change, and trust plays a critical role encouraging people to embrace and support change, including support for those who lead it. The relationships between these elements (people, leaders and trust) tend not to be very strong in many companies, however, which is not a good report on leadership.
It is clear that in trusting environments, committed people generate collective energy, and working together they spawn collaboration, innovation and problem solving — powerful behaviors and results that are needed when introducing and implementing change for sure.
But whether attempting to improve the odds of success and reduce the costs of change implementations or striving to run a successful business, relationships and earned trust are equally critical to success, and that requires leadership.
Organizations and society in general are growing much more complex and the rate and amount of change involved has reached historic levels. The world is moving so fast that great leaders constantly have to change course and figure out how to keep their teams with them to help solve critical problems as they go. This calls for strong relationships and earned trust to enable the unity and flexibility to win together. This also calls for a special type of leadership that is based on trust, which as my colleague’s research pointed out is the opposite of control.
System efficiencies, expense control, innovation and profitability are but a few of the attributes successful companies point to as leading to their positive results. These same organizations rarely view their overall success as being attributed to any one individual’s performance. Most of their successful experiences come from creating trusting environments where leadership and relationships thrive at many different levels. It is simply the way these companies do business. Some might refer to that as culture.
HR plays a significant role in helping businesses create these environments through talent sourcing and developing individual and leadership team capabilities. To do this effectively of course HR has to be staffed properly and capable of role modeling the approaches, attributes and skills leaders throughout the company must have to create trusting work environments.
We’ve been developing relationships in the HR community in the greater Bay Area since 1989. Our clients trust us to connect them with the best HR talent available for their HR contract staffing, HR consulting and HR search needs because we know HR and are the local market leader that has been focused on it since day one.
Contact us if we can assist you in any of these areas and strengthen your support to your company clients. If you possibly are considering a career move in HR we should also talk about that. Let’s get a conversation started and begin building a trusted relationship if we haven’t already.
We can never stop talking about leadership — and HR leadership in particular.
Best regards,
Rod
Rod Hanna
Principal
Merit Resource Group