Master Ceremony, SACHRA President, Council members, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak at this prestigious occasion. It is indeed a great privilege. I would also like to thank you for your hospitality during last night’s boma braai and today during the gholf.
I was asked to talk about leadership and the role of the Human Resource practitioners. Leadership is the one element that differentiates average performing company from excellent performing company.
During the last couple of months we did an in-depth study to determine what are those leadership competencies that companies need, not only to become an excellent performing company, but also to sustain it in the future.
A three prong research approach was followed to establish best practices in leadership development.
Companies: - General Electric
- Colgate Palmolive
- BP Amoco
- Smith Kline Beechham
- Abbot Laboratories
Institutions / Organisations:
- Andrews University
- South African qualification authority
- British Columbia Public Services
Leadership authors / academics:- John Kotler, Kets de Vries, John Maxwell, Daniel Goleman, Jim Kouzes, Barry Posner and Stephen Drotter were used to establish a framework of leadership competencies needed for a excellent performing company.
A leadership framework was developed consisting of three areas namely: organizational competencies, team competencies and individual competencies.
1. Organisational competencies
a. Strategic orientation
A person that is forward looking will be able to establish a sound vision and strategy for the company.
b. Innovation and change
The environment around us is changing dramatically. The Rand has strengthened significantly against the dollar and for the first time in history we saw a negative PPI.
c. Service orientation
Frederic Donner, Chairman and Chief Executive officer of General Motors between 1958 and 1967 expressed attitude towards goals.
To meet the challenge of the market place, we must recognize changes in the customer’s needs and desires far enough ahead to have the right products in the right places at the right time.
d. Result Focus
The whole focus changes from a work ethic to performance ethic. We know the environment will change and therefore we need to timeously do something about it.
e. Business focus
Understand all the mechanics of business and how to address challenges facing the business.
2. Team Competencies
a. Leading others
Need supervisors to take charge in his area of responsibility. Every supervisor must do whatever is necessary to ensure that his team will reach their targets.
b. Empowerment
Allowing people to reach their full potential within policy guidelines.
c. Developing others
Identify talent, recruit new talent, talent retention performance management, mentor ship, consequence management.
d. Teamwork and co-operation
Jack Welsh the previous CEO of General Electric talked about boundarylessness in a company. We need teamwork in an area, but also between different disciplines, departments and mines.
3. Individual Competencies
a. Emotional Intelligence
Daniel Goleman brought the term emotional intelligence to a wide audience with his book in 1995. Goleman found that while qualities such as intelligence, toughness, determination and vision are required for success they are insufficient. Truly effective leaders are also distinguished by a high degree of emotional intelligence such as self awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.
Can emotional intelligence be learned?
For ages people have debated if leaders are born or made. So too goes the debate about emotional intelligence. Are people born with certain levels of empathy, or do they acquire empathy as a result of life’s experience? According to Goleman the answer is both. Scientific studies strongly suggest that there is a genetic component to emotional intelligence. Psychological and developmental research indicates that nurture plays a role aswell.
b. Integrity and courage
After the Enron and Tyco International debacle ethics and integrity became more prominent and will remain there for quite some time to come.
Courage is needed to set stretch targets and implement the necessary processes to meet those targets.
c. Communication
Any leader must also be a good communicator. First to communicate his vision and strategy in such a way that he will get buy-in, but then to give performance feedback on a regular basis.
d. Interpersonal and intrapersonal
Both these are important in dealing with people. Stephen Covey said in his book Seven Habits for Highly effective people that you must first focus on private victories which will focus on intrapersonal skills, before one can focus on public victories which will focus on interpersonal skills.
In practical terms it means that you must take responsibility for your own life before you can establish win-win agreements with other people.
e. Analytical thinking
Identify opportunities and determine possible action plans.
HR PRACTITIONERS ROLE
1. Matching people and job’s
Various techniques are available to evaluate people in terms of their current performance and future potential and then to match that with job requirements. (CPA, Drotter)
2. People management agenda
- Values, culture and strategy alignment.
- Appointment for fit
- Investing in people (building human capital)
- Caring for people (employee assistance programme)
- Widespread information sharing
- Team based systems.
3. HR enablement
a. Rewards and benefits
Jobs accountability and performance enhancement.
b. Business partnering
Optimize and align HR processes to achieve business objective for eg. Merit appraisal systems.
c. Learning and development
Continuous diagnosis and planning of interventions to increase people and organizations effectiveness.
d. Diversity Management
Although it is required by the Mining Charter we also know that it is the right thing to do.
e. Transformation and change
Develop and implement methodology to assess change readiness during implementation of transformation process.
PEOPLE DEFINTION OF VICTORY (PDOV)
Acquire talent
Improving the talent base (index)
Develop people
Gaps between job and people profile shrinking.
Reward and recognize achievement
Return on investment in human capital exceeds “hurdle rate”.
Retain talent
Our talented people improve their competencies continuously – succession plans.
Continuously improve people productivity
Real added value per individual increase annually in money terms
Diversity management
Consistent growth of leadership, group ratios every year.
CONCLUSION
In the context of the leadership competencies that I’ve discussed today the role of the Human Resources therefore is to empower their organization with the means to align employees with their leaders and the business objectives.