Is leadership a set of traits, skills or behaviour?

Along with this comes the argument of whether leadership is natural or trainable. BuildHr has a unique approach towards understanding leadership. We believe that leadership is learnt through experience. An individual’s first experience at assuming or declining leadership responsibility affects their attitude towards assuming leadership positions.

So a leader learns by ‘doing’ and then by further reflecting on his action.

Leadership Assessment

The attempt at understanding leadership assessment is always preceded by the understanding of leadership itself. Our approach aims to assess potential, personality, skills and behaviour of the individual to predict leadership ability. This includes:

• Psychometric testing to assess potential.
• Self-inventories to assess personality.
• Role-plays and case analysis to assess skills.
• 360-degree feedback to assess behaviour.

The assessment can be done either as part of an Assessment centre or a Development centre. In these centres, leaders are given the opportunity to experience, reflect, observe and experiment at the level of self, role and organization. The observations made are categorized in the form of leadership competencies that determine the ability to visualize, set direction, inspire and review.

Leadership Development

Leadership is an attitude that develops through experience and reflection. It manifests very early in life when one makes conscious choices to assume or reject leadership responsibility. It is further strengthened by the positive or negative impact of that choice. So deeply ingrained is leadership ability, that it cannot be developed through a single programme or by focusing on one aspect of leadership.

Leadership in organizations is a result of personality, skills, behaviour and potential. Leadership retention has been identified as the most significant challenge in the recent scenario across the sectors in Indian market. This is true of small and large corporates and the multi-nationals, but the lack of retention impacts the SME and FMB sectors more, as they are heavily dependent on this critical talent to sustain their business. This implies that a clear focus needs to be given on Sustained Leadership Development.

BuildHr’s Leadership Development focuses on developing the individual in three areas are:

• Organization Level
• Role Capability
• Self-Management

Manager Development

A successful manager’s skill comes under 3 core competencies– Leadership, Performance Management and Communication.

• Leadership Competencies helps a manager to lead people towards meeting the organization’s vision, mission, and goals.
• Performance Management skills enables her/him to communicate performance standards and expectations and give timely, constructive feedback on tasks and assignments.
• Communication Competencies leverages the manager to strategically use two way communication to generate enthusiasm and foster an atmosphere receptive to open exchange.

BuildHr understands the roles and responsibilities of a manager in general and studies the company closely to know the specific competencies required as well. We identify potential performers, enrich their roles, expand their scope by providing training and development and identify the right fit talents for succession planning.