Organizational Leadership is a concept that is often banded around without really being understood. This type of leadership works for both the individual and the organization at the same time in order to maximize a company’s potential. The question for those who work in HR is how can we relate organizational leadership with the HR concepts we already know?
In a previous HR Jazzy article, we talked about how leadership is the ability to influence a group of people to follow you. We argued that a good leader requires a lot of charisma and articulation. Dana Griffin defines organizational leadership as “the ability to influence an entire organization to move in the direction of its goals”. Good leadership is about bringing a firm or team closer towards a defined set of objectives.
Aside from that, organizational leadership also looks at personal employee growth and wellbeing, which are both key parts of HR. You can’t be an effective leader if you don’t properly communicate with the people in your team. Being a good manager means you know how to capitalize on your team’s strengths and manage their weaknesses. It is about knowing when to be firm and when to offer support and guidance.
BizFluent states that organizational leadership has three components: direction setting, performance management, and change management. Direction setting is being able to have strategic planning sessions where employees are involved in the development of a strategy to achieve the company’s goals. Performance management involves continually monitoring a company’s overall performance. Change management on the other hand is knowing how and when to change processes when they aren’t working towards a company’s goals. The most important skill of an organizational leader is to understand how you can “manage change within the system without disrupting it”.
Many people often interchange organizational leadership with HR. Although they do go hand-in-hand, they are two different concepts. Organizational leadership looks at the management of the whole firm, while human resources relate more to human capital strategy. Human capital strategy is defined as the administrative tasks related to employee recruitment and retention such as hiring, training and mentoring.
While HR and organizational leadership are different, they go together in making sure that the people in a company are working at their best. For example, organizational leadership helps you in understanding how your company works, which will help decide the best type of person to hire in order to complement your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Often an employee who is performing poorly shouldn’t have been hired in the first place.
Organizational leaders are able to bring out the human side of companies by merging traditional HR, leadership, and business functions with modern leadership trends learnt at university and business schools. This is having a knock-on effect on where graduates who specialize in this type of leadership work. Maryville University detail how the job prospects for organizational leadership graduates going into HR is experiencing a growth of 9%. This shows how companies are reacting to the demand for leaders who can lead at both an individual and company level. Organizational leaders are able to fulfill different roles within HR departments, and can become management analysts, training and development managers, and even compensation and benefits managers — all very useful and lucrative roles that will help a business thrive.
Being an organizational leader in the HR field will help in understanding how traditional HR processes contribute to overall company goals. Whether you are a recruiter or a compensation analyst, organizational leadership is a skill essential to succeeding in any HR role.
Article exclusively written for hrjazzy.blog
By Maggie Grace
All Images from Pixabay
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