When I was about ten years old, I decided I was going to make cookies. Not just any cookies, mind you, but my mom’s famous butterscotch chip cookies.
They are absolute perfection—crunchy on the outside, chewy in the middle, and those butterscotch chips just melt in your mouth.
Now, my mom was the expert baker, and I was just a kid. But that didn’t stop me from thinking I could totally pull it off.
I knew that the secret to her cookies, was she used an oatmeal cookie recipe and then added butterscotch chips.
So I got out the recipe and all of the ingredients. As I started to combine the ingredients, my ten-year-old mind told me, ‘If I’m making butterscotch chip cookies, I should replace the oatmeal in the recipe with the butterscotch chips.’
After all, I was making butterscotch cookies, not oatmeal cookies, right?
Well, let me tell you—big mistake. Those cookies came out flat—like, really flat. They didn’t have the texture or the structure they were supposed to.
The butterscotch chips didn’t hold it together. Something was definitely missing. Sure, the chips were sweet, but without that hearty base from the oatmeal, they just didn’t work.
Now, you might be asking, ‘What does this have to do with my journey as an HR professional working toward the executive level?’ Let’s dive in.
Leadership in HR Requires More Than Just Technical Skills
In HR, much like in baking, it’s not enough to just focus on one thing or one skill set. You can’t leave out the key ingredients that hold everything together.
Yes, technical expertise and operational know-how are important.
But the real secret to reaching the executive level is making sure you’re developing and honing the right mix of leadership skills. And leadership, my friends, is the oatmeal.
Why Leadership Skills Are Essential for HR Professionals
Now, I know what you might be thinking: ‘But I’m already great at the tactical side of HR! I’ve mastered recruitment, employee relations, compensation, all of that.’
And that’s fantastic—those skills are absolutely crucial, and they’re like the butterscotch chips in the recipe.
But here’s the thing: without leadership, those technical skills are only part of the equation. Leadership is the thing that holds everything together, that makes you more than just a practitioner of HR and transforms you into a true HR executive.
What Does Leadership Really Look Like in HR?
So, what do I mean by leadership? Let’s break it down.
First, leadership is about having a clear vision—knowing where you’re heading and aligning your team with that vision.
As an HR executive, you need to have a strategic mindset. You’re not just implementing policies or filling positions; you’re shaping the future of the organization through talent management, culture development, and employee engagement.
That’s where leadership comes in. It’s about connecting the dots between your day-to-day work and the larger organizational goals. It’s about driving change.
The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in HR Leadership
Second, leadership is emotional intelligence.
Can you read a room? Do you know how to manage difficult conversations with empathy, but also with authority?
As you rise in the ranks, your ability to connect with people, understand their needs, and motivate them becomes even more important.
This is where many HR professionals fall short on their path to executive roles. They excel at the technical tasks but haven’t fully developed the emotional intelligence required to lead at the highest levels.
Developing Leadership Skills Beyond Technical Expertise
So how do you begin developing these leadership skills?
Well, just like baking, it’s not something you can skip over. You have to be intentional about it. A great place to start is by expanding your influence beyond your immediate team.
As an HR professional, are you having conversations with C-suite leaders about the company’s strategic direction? Are you building relationships with key stakeholders across departments to influence and drive change?
These are the conversations and skills you need to be cultivating now.
Self-Reflection: What’s Missing from Your Leadership Ingredients?
And here’s the big question I want you to ask yourself today: What’s missing from your leadership ingredients?
Are you so focused on executing the technical aspects of HR that you’ve neglected the emotional and strategic side of leadership? Are you building your executive presence, or are you still operating in a tactical mode?”
A Leadership Challenge to Move Forward
To help you get started with this shift, I want to leave you with a challenge for the week.
I want you to identify one area of leadership where you know you could grow. Maybe it’s emotional intelligence, maybe it’s strategic thinking, or maybe it’s executive presence.
Once you’ve chosen your area, I want you to find one opportunity this week—just one—to practice it in a real-world setting.
It could be a meeting with your team, a conversation with a colleague in another department, or even a presentation to a senior leader. Find that opportunity and use it to stretch your leadership muscles.
And here’s the important part: after that interaction, take a moment to reflect.
What went well? What could you improve? What did you learn?
Leadership development isn’t something that happens overnight, but by taking small, intentional actions every day, you’ll start to build the right ingredients for your future as an HR executive.
