Speaking at the CIPD Conference and Exhibition in Harrogate, Annie McKee, managing director of Teleos Leadership Institute and a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, told delegates: "In your HR roles, you are incredibly powerful. You touch managers, you reach out and touch staff - you move people. You can make hope take the place of pessimism."
McKee called for more values driven leadership from HR and urged delegates to use emotions to draw people to them. She said: "Intellect is important, but it is baseline. Emotions come with us - they are contagious and they are what get staff engaged, excited, optimistic and ready to move [forward]."
She added that HR can often find itself acting as a "buffer" between managers and staff. And this can cause HR leaders to become dissonant. She said: "The minute you become a victim, you cease to be a leader. It's resonance or dissonance - your choice."
In the same keynote session, Richard Boyatzis, professor of behavioural and cognitive science at Cape Western University, explained: "Constructive criticism is still criticism. And 80% of managers say that between 70 and 80% of managers are not functioning properly in their roles."
He quoted Gandhi, saying that before HR professionals could be successful in their roles, they had to "be the change [they] wanted to see".
McKee summed up: "Most stories about great leaders involve their followers and how people are moved by what leaders say. That resonant style of leadership lies within you. Tap it, find it and then use it."
