HR leaders: If you truly want to help the C-Suite be more credible, don’t shy away from being totally honest with them.
So says Jenni Field, founder and CEO of Redefining Communications, a UK communication and leadership consulting firm that conducts online and in-person events in the UK, U.S. and Canada. Field shares key strategies for HR leaders to consider.
How can HR play a role in building credible leadership within a business?
With responsibility for leadership development, the role for HR here is huge as they’re often the team who highlight the cultural challenges, organizational chaos or simple skills gaps in leaders. They need to be able to have honest and open conversations with leaders and managers, to help them understand the impact and need.
In the modern organization, credible leadership—which includes having empathy, being trustworthy and having integrity—is non-negotiable.
I’ve worked in HR teams over the years, and their role as an advisor to the leadership team and a partner to the organization meant they were in the perfect position to support leadership credibility. It meant that the work I was doing with leaders to get them ready for employee conferences was easier; they understood that they needed to spend time on the script, what people were wearing was important, the stage design played another part it and all of it mattered to create a cohesive approach.
We communicate and demonstrate credibility through our words and our actions, so alignment is key.
How can HR leaders move beyond surface-level issues to create lasting cultural change?
This is all about making sure that leaders really are getting to the root cause of issues. I often talk about the need to understand, diagnose and fix issues, rather than just treating the symptoms.
If we take a medical analogy like a headache, we understand we have one and we often rush to fix with some sort of pain relief. If we were to diagnose the reason—like needing new glasses—the fix would be different, and longer term.
The same idea applies to lasting cultural change. What is the reason for the change and what is causing that reason and if we can explore what is going on by doing surveys, focus groups and one-on-one interviews we can fix the real issues for the longer term.
When working with a leader who was trying to bring teams together after merger and acquisition this is the framework we followed. It meant we could identify the real pain points for the teams, the individuals who were actively disengaged and how things needed to change.
What we needed to remember was they this wasn’t going to be the overnight fix, but the long-term outcome was significant cultural change that has led to global success for those who are still in the organization.
How can HR teams help leaders navigate the RTO mandate or implement cultural shifts for new ways of working?
While the RTO mandate is still coming out strongly from organizations, the data is telling us that hybrid is winning and has probably won. If you’re being asked to bring everyone back to the office, there has to be conversations about why, how and when.
Leaders need to make time for the conversation and HR teams need to have the right questions to ask. There has to be alignment to values and core purpose otherwise the performative request will be shunned by employees.
Make time for the conversation because it’s a big one. Rushing this and not having the time to discuss it openly and honestly as a leadership team with HR will mean it won’t work for the employees and culture isn’t something you can ignore anymore.
What lessons can HR professionals take from your experience helping organizations strengthen leaderships communications during restructures or crisis moments?
What’s in the bank? That’s where we start and by this, I mean, what has happened in the last year to build or chip away at trust? Once we know what’s in the bank of trust with employees we can start to move forwards. This is the foundation, but wherever you start, you want to make sure the communications is supportive, empathetic and trustworthy. The person delivering that message has to have integrity, be seen as capable and have a clear vision that looks forward.
If these things aren’t in place, now is the time to invest in communication and credibility skills for leaders so they’re ready for when the more negative stuff, inevitably, comes.
