Leadership Lens & Role - HR

Human Resource professionals are tasked with viewing the organization through the leadership lens that employees are the most valuable organizational asset. Employees, if led properly, will create a competitive advantage and appreciate in value to the organization. Leadership change theories are plentiful that can be deployed to create an environment and develop leadership skills where the human resource asset appreciates and contributes to that competitive advantage. Appreciative Inquiry provides a complementary and powerful change tool to today's lean organizations, as an example, that seeks to find the best of what exists, imagine what could be, formulate a plan to achieve what should be, and then live out that new vision. Leaders are seen as not relying solely on position power rather build relationships by empowering and engaging the individual employees and work teams in the common mission.

The role of the Human Resource professional is complex seeing the organization through this Leadership lens. The effective Human Resource professional in facts takes on three distinct roles:

• Employee advocate 
• Supervisor / Manager supporter 
• Organization advocate & protector 

The HR professional as an employee advocate looking through the leadership lens that the employees are the most valuable organizational advocate stands up for those employees when they are seen as being a cost and a waste as organizations deploy lean concepts without the partnership with AI. Pressure on organizations to constantly reduce cost place the HR professional acting as an employee advocate in direct conflict with operations and financial management unless handled properly. The HR resource must argue for the concept that employees appreciate in value and offer a competitive advantage or they can become cynical and numb to the impact on the organization of poorly treated employees. The economy, the move to distance/part-time workers, and merging of companies have led to this becoming an increasingly rare effective role for the HR professional.

The HR professional as a supervisor/manager supporter is one of advisor and partner who helps the supervisor get the most out of their employees. Equipping the supervisor/manager with mangement and leadership skills to empower and encourage their employees to achieve improvements in output or reduction of costs. Pressure comes from the employees who sees the supervisor/manager as not supporting them and from poor performing employees who weigh down the performance of the units. At the same time the company needs to be protected from the impact of failure to follow the employment laws. The HR professional instead of acting as a partner with the front line manager and supervisor often seems to be the chief critic of the supervisor/ manager obsessed with protecting the company and abandoning the supervisor/manager.

The HR professional as the organization advocate & protector can become so focused on that protection that the most valuable asset - the organization's employees - are not uniquely encouraged and empowered for success, rather all employees are treated the same as to not create the environment to excel. Creativity and initiative are crushed under the heavy weight of conformity.

HR professionals need to find a effective balance between these three roles. Appreciative inquiry as a change model values employees by finding the best in them, sets free the supervisor/manager to encourage and empower their employees, and develop a plan that protects and advocate for the organization through a vision of what could be...