Three Years; Three Lessons in Executive Leadership: A Human Resources Leadership Perspective

It’s been three years since I took on my first executive role and I wanted to share some of the key experiences and insights from these pivotal first three years that have led to success. Knowing there are many people that have joining the C-Suite as a career goal, I wanted to offer the top three lessons I’ve learned along the way regarding human resources leadership.

1. Embrace Empathy: Creating a Culture of Inclusion

As an executive leader, I want to highlight the significance of embracing empathy in the workplace. When I joined Entelo, I recognized the challenges my global Customer Success team faced, including the impact of the pandemic, the BLM Movement, and organizational transitions. Acknowledging the mental and emotional well-being of my team, I made it a priority to create an inclusive environment.

From an HR perspective, this is a crucial lesson for all executives. By openly acknowledging and addressing the personal struggles and concerns of employees, leaders foster a supportive culture that values each individual’s well-being. Listening to their experiences, HR departments can work with executives to implement employee support programs, flexible work arrangements, and resources for emotional and mental health.

 

2. Speak Directly to Your Customers (and then speak to them again)

Customer feedback is invaluable for any business. My decision to have strategic discussions with the company’s top enterprise customers allowed me to understand their pain points and build strong partnerships. This approach led to a remarkable improvement in customer satisfaction and retention.

From a human resources leadership perspective, engaging with customers should extend beyond the executive level. HR teams can facilitate customer feedback sessions, conduct satisfaction surveys, and collaborate with customer-facing departments to gather insights. These valuable inputs can be used to enhance products, services, and customer experiences, ensuring a customer-centric approach across the organization

3. Have a (Project) Plan

Effective project planning is crucial for executives facing significant challenges. My experience in creating and executing scalable project plans helped my team navigate obstacles successfully. From restructuring the Customer Success Model to launching new services and migrating customers to different software, each initiative required a well-thought-out project plan.

HR can play a pivotal role in supporting executives with project management skills and tools. By providing training programs, resources, and mentoring opportunities, HR can empower executives to lead their teams with precision and effectiveness. Moreover, HR professionals can contribute directly to strategic planning by aligning HR initiatives with the organization’s overall goals.

Ultimately, our collective success led to our acquisition by Rival, formerly SilkRoad Technologies almost a year ago which shook up the talent acquisition technology space and is shaping the future of how companies source, engage, hire and retain their employees. In the past year, I’ve had the immense fortune to join a new executive team surrounded with even larger challenges but also larger opportunities to learn and make a difference. For me personally, there’s no way this kind of success happens without embracing these three core lessons.

If you’d like to learn more, I’ll be leading an upcoming webinar with CEO Elaine Davidson where we’ll be covering many of the lessons learned above and how they can be applied to your company’s talent acquisition. We hope to see hundreds of executives (and aspiring executives) joining the audience of hundreds of recruiting and HR professionals for our webinar.

 

Andre J. Boulais
VP of Recruiting and Sourcing Solutions
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrejboulais/