What separates great HR leaders from the rest? Well this month I wanted to share with you an article from Harvard Business Review Magazine first published on 17th August 2015 by Jack Zeneger & Joseph Folkman.

HR seems to have become every manager and employee’s favourite corporate punching bag, vying with IT for the dubious title of most irritating function. We have seen a parade of articles recently calling for HR to be blown up, split in two, or at the very least, re-designed.

Perhaps this is a good moment to evaluate what it is we really want from our HR leaders—and what we don’t. Over the last five years, Zenger Folkman has collected 360-degree feedback data on 2,187 HR leaders. These leaders are spread across hundreds of different organizations with 68% of those leaders located in the US, 11% in Asia, 8% in Europe, 7% in Latin America, 4% in Canada, and 1% in Africa. Comparing assessments of leaders in the HR function with those of leaders in other functions, our data suggest that the typical HR leader is seen as six percentile points below average...

Click here to read the rest of the article.