Key Traits to Become a Successful HR Director

How do you know if you can become a great HR director? Do you possess the skills, talent and capacity to lead the organisational growth efforts by recruiting brightest talent on board? Heading the HR department would require you to support all line managers and work towards maximising the performance of individuals, teams and promote organisational growth.

Aspiring to become a HR director should be followed by realistic analysis of skills required to be an ace in the profession. You should be driven by passion to build outstanding HR leadership, by applying experiences to opportunity and bring in utmost value. Some of the key traits that set apart future HR leaders from key performers in a company are as:

1. You must be abreast of all the affairs within an organisation and current affairs that impact employee performance.
2. HR directors always look at 3D perspective on stories before making strategic business decisions – Mine, Yours and the Truth.
3. They are objective oriented towards achieving organisational goals but not at the price of employee happiness. HR directors should always hold unbiased approach without taking sides of any individual or a company.
4. More commonly faced challenges by HR directors revolve around budgetary constraints, bureaucracy, and recalcitrant managers. Chairing the HR team you should be able to find ways to tactfully handle situations and focus on constantly delivering innovation to thrive among competition.
5. Great HR Directors speak the language of every department within an organisation with a sincere approach to make complex things seem simple. Well, it is not important for you to be an extremely charismatic orator, but you need to ensure that every member of the team understands their value and contribution to the overall growth picture.

See: 6 Essential Characteristics of a HR Director

6. You need to elevate confidence levels of team members by bringing them at par with the vision of the company, through continuous learning and development programs and make them realise the sense of direction and purpose of their workings.
7. HR directors should not be bogged down by day-to-day activities and never attempt to implement 100% strategy. You should be able to marry day-to-day activities with strategies for enhancing productivity.
8. You need to be a cultural role model to represent the face of the organisation. This goes beyond just understanding the organisational framework.
9. Above all, you need to stay true to being a HR and not be lost in all theory, preaching, teaching staffers and no practice or implementation.

As a HR director you have four key levers to focus on:

• Recruiting and retaining the best talent – Enhancing abilities with motivation and encouragement to deliver best productive results in a team
• Enabling the right structure and processes to deliver maximum returns with minimal costs
• You should be able to foster a great workplace culture, wherein employees are motivated to work and deliver quality output. Focusing efforts on developing sustainable organisational capabilities that set your organisation a class apart from its competitors.
• Cultivating leadership – HR directors need to ensure that leaders across different business units do all it takes to deliver value to stakeholders.

Always think of HR from a stakeholder’s perspective, wherein you focus on future organisational trends, drivers of business growth and niche space in the market/ industry. Translate all HR activities into the financial returns that you can generate from the business, while pulling the above defined levers carefully, one at a time, to build successful organisational capabilities for tomorrow.

Also read: What HR Should Be Doing at the Moment

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