Working close to organizational power but not always yielding it directly, human resources professionals have a unique perspective on organizational talent at the higher levels of the business enterprise.  In a study of global leaders and HR professionals by the talent management firm, Development Dimensions International (DDI), approximately 1,897 HR professionals from different countries were surveyed.  Several key findings of the study from the HR professional perspective include the following:

* Only 25% of HR professionals rate the quality of their leadership highly;
* Only 18 percent of HR professionals feel their organizations have a strong bench of leadership talent to meet future business needs; and
*Only one-third of HR professionals rate their organization’s leadership development efforts as effective.

These results show that many HR professionals do not believe their organizational leadership has the critical requisite skills to lead the organization effectively.  In their study, DDI asked HR professionals to identify the most common personality shortcomings of leaders in their organization. According to these HR respondents, common leadership shortcomings are risk aversion, distrust, and approval dependence. (The study defines risk aversion as leaders who play it safe in their decisions and actions.  Approval dependence is the tendency of leaders to look to their bosses or peers for permission to act.)

The design of the study went beyond just identifying leadership gaps, however.  It also identified the leadership development strategies of organizations with effective programs. Organizations with effective leadership development programs generally used  formal workshops and three types of coaching (manager, internal, and external) to bridge the skills gap. These are strategies other organizations can adopt to address any of their own leadership gaps.

Leaders should resist the temptation to dismiss these perspectives of HR professionals with the classic “line management versus staff management” arguments.  While it is true that the HR function does have a supportive and advisory role to the business enterprise, HR professionals work at a critical intersecting junction of the organization between management and employees.  In their critical role, where they must continually find the balance between various competing stakeholder interests, there is much that HR professionals see and hear that makes their perspectives worthy of serious consideration.