Most Impactful Leaders Are Hungry To Learn And Adapt To Today’s World: Jonathan Vehar, VP, Product at Dale Carnegie & Associates
.jpg)
Jonathan Vehar, Vice President, Product at Dale Carnegie & Associates, who is responsible for designing innovative content and course structure of the Dale Carnegie programs globally shares some insights with BW Businessworld into Indian scenario of the business and the industry. Edited Excerpts:
Tell us a few anecdotes about employee work culture across the globe, and what can be done to utilise the full potential of an employee?
The best example of stellar workplace culture is Alan Mulally’s complete turnaround of Ford Motors. When he took over as CEO in 2006, He pioneered a culture change at Ford that led to a complete transformation from the inside-out.
To illustrate with an example, Mulally’s new model linked employees to customers, sowing the seeds for creative innovation and paving the way toward delivering complete customer delight.
Mulally also encouraged honest and transparent reporting, building up a culture of ‘One Ford’, in an organization previously riddled with bureaucracy. As important to the process as the relentless focus on the metrics was the focus on the culture. Mulally says that the Dale Carnegie principles are critical to shaping a culture of “people first,” without which a candid and collaborative meeting to improve the metrics each week couldn’t happen.
How has the role of HR evolved over the years?
About a decade ago, the term HR denoted a role relating to regulation and administration, with little room for innovation. They were seen as a cost center that provided benefits and dealt with grievances. Over the years, the function has matured into a collaborator with almost every company department; a key differentiator of an organization’s ability to attract high-performing talent, a vital custodian of its brand, and a potentially strong influencer of organisation-wide change. In leading organizations, HR and Learning and Development can provide the kind of ROI that sees them as a profit center.
Today, HR outlines organisation architecture in terms of culture, competencies, growth-paths, rewards and governance. Ideally the organization’s business model is employed to further goals through HR-specific channels like talent retention, employee engagement and experience, employee branding, learning and development and workplace culture.
What do leaders need to do to drive the business forward?
Leaders need to keep their workforce inspired and aligned with organisation goals in order to continually guarantee customer delight. Leaders help people connect the organisation’s mission with the individual mission so that they see their work not just as a job, but as a way of living their purpose. High levels of customer happiness and employee engagement are tightly linked, with companies that master it outperforming the rest. Today, the conceptions of traditional leadership hierarchies are being challenged by empowering specifically those leaders who can thrive in rapidly-changing environments. Knowledge is power, and the greatest leaders are those that never forget this piece of advice and never stop learning. Reading, listening, engaging and asking questions are the foundations for success. The most impactful, influential and successful leaders are the ones hungry to learn and expand their knowledge in order to adapt to today’s world.
What is the role of technology in HR practices?
Technology will make learning & development a more important agenda for organisations, making it easier to identify the L&D initiatives that are really contributing to the picture. This will hopefully make upskilling more of a priority for organisations. The gap between the skills performed by people and those by machines is narrower today than ever before. As technology and robotics gather momentum, almost every job profile is being reimagined, which will also affect how jobs are designed, work is structured and the future is forecasted. Smart HR leaders are looking at new technologies and constantly asking themselves “in what ways can I use this to deliver value to the organization.” Whether the tech is Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, big data, mobile apps or whatever, we need to imagine how they can benefit our work.
What are the challenges in the HR industry?
Attracting and retaining talent is a major challenge today, so it’s up to HR to ensure a strong employer brand to get over the competition. It’s a difficult task to ensure that you hire the right people at the right time, and be sure about the candidate fitting into the organisation’s culture. Employee turnover is expensive and really has the potential to impact your business negatively. Increased globalisation, technology, access to data and political unease in some regions of the world could lead to economic uncertainty, which maybe detrimental for HR hiring strategies, compensation policies and other HR decisions.
A smart HR professional would identify and take notes from those cultures that incorporate the fundamentals of a great place to work, focusing on people first, getting input from everyone, corporate social responsibility initiatives and opportunities for employee’s L&D that directly tie to the work.
What can be done to bring parity in employee appreciation and make them feel comfortable in the workplace?
Employees want to be treated with respect and appreciation for their efforts towards the organization. Every employee wants to contribute, and effective leaders enable that and help them out. Leadership is the key and it’s crucial that managers and high level executives inspire trust and cooperation within their teams. The Dale Carnegie 2016 Global Leadership Study, based on a survey completed by over 3,300 full-time employees across 14 countries, found that:
1. 76 percent said a leader who gives praise and honest appreciation would be more likely to inspire them than someone more focused on getting the job done.
2. 74 percent of employees are more motivated by a leader who “encourages them and makes them believe in their ability to improve”
3. 57 percent said that leaders who praised them for improvements in performance are more likely to inspire them, compared to a leader who recognized employees with only tangible rewards.
Two of the outcomes of effective leadership are employee job satisfaction and a keenness to remain with an employer. Employees who are satisfied with their job are more engaged overall, as well as more committed professionally and emotionally to their employer. They perform better, exercise discretionary effort, and are the eventual drivers of company performance.
_20240428181258original_image_40.webp)
