Starting from June 2016, Mag. Anita Berger – HR expert with long-time experience both within organisations and as a trainer and coach – offers the new workshop “The leader as a former”. To summarize, the workshop is about using strategic human resource planning as a leadership tool for long-term success as a team. In a short interview she reveals which topics she’ll treat in detail and how leaders and organisations can benefit from this approach.

Leaders as the first instance influencing employees’ development

The leader as a former: Which leadership challenges does this approach face?

Anita Berger: The workshop is based on the idea that leaders and managers are the first instance having influence on their employees’ development. Because in the end it is your goal as a leader to form a team creating results and reaching goals. It starts with the configuration of a team and continues with their development as well as the development of individuals. In my view that’s a core task of successful leaders. Of course you won’t be an expert in the end because the expert positions in an organisation are covered with the recruiting managers and HR managers. Therefore, as a leader you don’t have to know the best online recruiting platforms or how to create a job advertisement reaching qualified employees. But what you should know is: Which qualifications and competencies does my team need in order that we reach our goals?

When it comes to strategic human capital management – which is the sub title of the workshop – that means for leaders, for instance: How many people do I need in my team having which qualifications and skills? How long will actual positions stay occupied? How do I create effective processes? How can succession planning look like? All those are core topics you should consider as a successful leader. Therefore my intention is to provide HR knowledge which is tailor-made for the chances and challenges of leaders and managers within organisations.

Preconditions in teams and organisations

Is the workshop appropriate only for leaders creating new teams or can you also give input for leaders and managers of existing teams?

It’s also useful for existing team structures! If we are talking about strategic human resource planning and talent management, a big questions can be: How does reasonable succession planning look like? As a leader or manager of an existing team you may reflect how your key positions are engaged at the moment and how long you think they will stay engaged. Linked is the questions: Do any of my employees show the tendency to change their job or life in the near future? You can also ask yourself, how satisfied you yourself are with the performance and attitude of the employees. And so on.

Having considered all these questions you are able to derive a plan showing where you have need for action – in a proactive way! That’s the huge advantage because therefore you avoid being surprised from an employee quitting all at once. Instead you recognise potential change in advance and can prepare yourself for a probable exit by training and encouraging a successor early.

Starting from which team size these considerations make sense?

I’d say it starts from two or three employees. If you have only one member in your team the topic may also be interesting and enriching but your own possible leverage is not that big. In the workshop we treat topics like: What is the strategy of my organisation? What is the strategy of my team? How can we contribute to reaching company goals?

We aren’t working on that in detail but these facts are the base for things like: Which competencies do I need in my team to be able to follow these strategies and to reach predetermined goals? How are my employees and I positioned and which role do we play? If you’ve got a team with three or more employees, normally your scope of action and influence is bigger.

Do one need any previous knowledge to work on that topic?

No, there is no previous knowledge needed. But what you need is the willingness and openness to take this role as important as challenging and to say: Yes, I do want to shape the development of my team actively.

Plan of action for leaders

Last question: When the workshop is done, what do you want participants to have learned?

From the first minute of the workshop we’ll work on a concrete plan which is deduced from the organisation’s and the team’s strategy showing needed competencies compared to the current situation in the team. Based on that everyone should go home with a plan of action knowing the necessary short- and medium-term development actions for the own team.