Is HR equipped to lead on leadership? The CIPD’s recent Learning and talent development survey finds that 72 percent of organisations report a deficit of leadership and management skills - but how much does HR as a profession really know about the subject, for example, what leadership really means in a modern workplace, how to identify skills deficits and what development interventions actually embed behaviour change?

Is HR equipped to lead on leadership issues?  In my view the answer should be an unequivocal  ‘yes’.  If not, the HR team is failing their organisation.  Today’s business leaders understand, more than ever before, the value of their people.  What they now need from HR is an even stronger focus on the interventions that will make a difference to organisational health and performance.  Any business strategy is driven by a number of dynamic factors, one of which is the organisation’s ability to hire, develop and retain talent.  Leadership talent should be of particular focus to any HR team, whose role is critical in assessing leadership strengths and designing interventions to improve leadership capability.   As a function we are uniquely positioned to understand the important of the potent mix of strategy, culture and leadership.  We are the champions of organisational values and understand the relationship between how people lead and how people perform.  No other function is so well positioned to have such critical insight into an organisation.       

There remains a lot of finger pointing at senior managers within financial services in particular but at leaders in general. Employees question their integrity and benevolence towards others within and outside organisations. The consequence is low trust in senior leaders. These themes ran throughout the research we published with the CIPD in March on Trust and its Repair following the financial crisis. The people we interviewed wanted leaders with more humility, more “humanity”, less “spin”, and leaders willing to admit mistakes, share authority and the benefits of success with local managers. But how can we as an HR community help create this new generation of leaders? For twenty years there has been significant money spent on leadership education whether e-learning, in-house or off-site programmes, mentoring or coaching. So, it’s not for want of trying that we have ended up where we are. We can certainly change the tone of learning interventions and put greater emphasis on what I call ISR - Individual Social Responsibility – in addition to CSR. Our week long South African based courses "Leading through Complex Change" address that issue. My worry is that this will be insufficient on its own. We’re going to have to look at the decision making processes used at the point of appointment. These L’Oreal type leaders (the “Because I’m Worth It!” class) emerged from within our business communities. We chose them - they are not aliens invading from another planet. Thus we need to make changes at the point of selection. But even if we promote a new generation of benevolent “servant leaders”, without a corresponding change in the day to day behaviours and values within organisations, this next generation of leaders will be eaten alive and spat out by the prevailing cultures of individualism and short termism. Change of this degree is a challenge but one that the HR profession must address if we are to be anything more than finger pointers ourselves.