How HR Can Help Managers to Become Better Leaders

Managers typically land their roles for a very good reason; because they’re highly skilled at what they do. A manager makes strategic decisions, assigns tasks to the most suitable team members and takes responsibility to ensure objectives are achieved. But as you’ll know – there’s a whole lot more to true leadership than just ticking off a bunch of KPIs.

Managing vs leading: what’s the difference?

While a manager ensures a team or individual accomplishes a goal, a leader empowers and inspires employees to work together towards that goal as well as an overarching vision. In other words – people will simply work for a manager, but they’ll actively follow and engage with a true leader. Who would you prefer leading you in a battle or a boardroom?

HR professionals can provide the unique perspective and the tools to help managers to become genuine leaders within an organisation. Modern leadership can involve an intuitive and often complex balance of collaboration, clarity, communication skills, active listening, strategic thinking and a practical understanding of the tasks at hand. And although the key principles are timeless, the most effective leadership practices can evolve over time with the workforce and culture.

Often, it can be helpful to gain insight from a party who’s on the outside looking in, as well as the appropriate structures to help a manager grow their skills, capabilities, and mindset. Provide the right HR leadership and coaching support, and you’ll see your leaders, teams and organisation thrive.

It’s vital that this Human Resource coaching and mentoring is tailored to the unique workflows and culture of an organisation, to the different levels of management, and to the skills and knowledge of the manager themselves.

The value of IMPACT coaching

At performHR we develop leadership development training and coaching to suit each organisation’s objectives and environment. For example, we developed a bespoke program for a SaaS firm who had several managers stepping into senior leadership roles. This program focused on and achieved the following outcomes:

• Greater role clarity
• Ownership of business deliverables, and
• Balancing strategic thinking with tactical operational needs.

In another example, a mining company engaged us to provide emerging leadership coaching for managers who were moving from unit leadership to executive leadership. These coaching sessions were focused and achieved results in:

• Confidence and communication skills
• Business development skills to grow and expand the pipeline of clients and relationships, and
• The principle of mutual exchange.

Your next generation of inspiring, empowering and modern leaders is most probably within your organisation already – why not invest in them and bring out their full potential?

For professional coaching and training programs that are tailored to your needs in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth or Newcastle, let’s start the conversation today.