the last word
Focusing on People Skills
INNOVATION SPURS DEVELOPMENT OF SOFT SKILLS FOR CANADA’S
LEADING EXECUTIVES
The world of work is changing. Technology has eroded
borders and given small and medium sized companies a
chance to punch above their weight. Easy access to new
markets has increased competition, placing a greater em-phasis
on innovation and creating more pressure to meet deadlines
in increasingly complex business environments.
How have today’s business leaders responded? Of course they’ve
changed in lock-step with the times, but rather than augmenting
technical ability they’ve focused on developing the “softer skills”
associated with motivating high performance teams. Today’s de-cision
makers are juggling more than tech specs and data sets;
they’re focusing human capital on business goals.
Hays Canada recently released three reports as part of a “DNA
series” that examined the skills needed to become a CFO, CIO
and a vice president of construction in Canada to get a sense of
how the C-suite skillset is evolving. Successful professionals
that reached the top were frequently asked to stretch how
they defined their vocation to include less traditional qual-ities.
An ability to get along in an office setting, motivate
staff and communicate to both internal and external
parties formed the basis of how they were measured.
And while these are more subjective than other skills,
they should nonetheless act as a guiding light for employers
hiring C-suite executives.
Qualifications and technical expertise can be learned on
the job. What’s much harder to do is teach someone to live
and breathe a company’s core values. Leadership on
this front will create a trickledown effect that
will strengthen overall corporate culture –
vision, business acumen and emotional
intelligence play key roles at success-ful
companies. Despite the radical
changes in technology at work, it
is the performance of human be-ings
that continues to fuel overall
growth.
Of course, qualifications and
technical ability are essential, but
what gives an employee a compet-itive
advantage on his or her way
up the leadership ladder are the people skills that come naturally
or are acquired through experience and mentorship. At the upper
echelons of corporate Canada, technical ability is assumed. For ex-ample,
almost 60 per cent of CFOs in Canada don’t list technical
skills on their resumes. Greater emphasis is placed on overall lead-ership
and experience as a steward of business.
Perhaps that’s why CFOs and CIOs both rank operations as
the most important department to partner with, which speaks
volumes about where they believe they add the most value.
Furthermore, these roles believe networking is an extremely im-portant
contributing factor to their success. That draws a clear line
in the sand – the ability to form and manage personal relation-ships
at work and in the industry at large is what signals the arrival
of the modern executive.
As a result, HR managers should approach hiring for these
positions differently. If you’re looking externally, put pro-fessionals
with diverse backgrounds at the top of
your candidate list. Exposure to various business
departments sharpens communications skills
and fosters the ability to build consensus, which
form the basis of “soft skills.”
It’s also possible to groom an ideal candi-date
by implementing a succession plan that
includes an executive rotational program. This
approach has the advantage of ramping star perform-ers
up quickly in an environment that emphasizes the
company ethos.
Today’s business environment requires a
modern executive to provide vision and act
as a counterbalance to market uncer-tainty.
Technical ability alone might
have helped get an organization to
where they are, but it takes more
than that to help it get where
needs to go. ■
Rowan O’Grady is president of
Hays Canada.
By Rowan O’Grady
Lightspring & iluistrator/Shutterstock
48 ❚ NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL