Author of Leadership Conversations: Challenging High Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders, Alan Berson, keynoted an interactive roundtable for the WashingtonExec Strategic Human Capital and Critical Talent Council.
The Council opened the discussion with critical talent representatives discussing the four main conversations highlighted in the book: building relationships, developing others, making decisions, and taking action. The assignment was to decipher how Leadership Conversations relates to the human capital position and to the overall government contracting community.
Attendees found that in a tight budget environment, company leaders may be tempted to lean more towards a management mindset of winning business and maintaining current customer relations, instead of the favorable leadership mindset of growing employees and creating an employee pipeline. It is the responsibility of the human capital team and leadership team to create a corporate culture that supports more than just a ‘transactional’ relationship with employees.
“In today’s sometimes hostile and always uncertain business environment, it is only natural that employees would fear change. However, leaders, especially in the human capital position, must realize that people do not fear change, they are just anxious about how the change will impact them. This requires that they have the type of open and transparent Leadership Conversations with their employees that you would have with any other important stakeholders like customers, your board of directors, etc. It is critical for an organization, when under pressure, to build the leaders who are able and willing to have the hard conversations that can maintain corporate growth and success,” said Alan Berson.
Peer mentorship and networking mentorship-where leaders within an organization share best practices and leverage current company resources was also a topic of discussion.
The Council is led by Co-Chairpersons Eleni Antoniou, VP of Human Capital of FCi Federal and Kay Curling, SVP and Chief HR Officer of Salient Federal Solutions.
Each participating government contracting company sponsors a human resource executive and nominates one critical talent individual for this WashingtonExec Council. This one-of-a-kind group allows the VP of HR the opportunity to help develop the next generation of HR leadership while building their own networks.
David Kriegman, Author of Zero to a Billion: 61 Rules Entrepreneurs Need to Know to Grow a Government Contracting Business, Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University’s (GMU) Center for Regional Analysis and Dr. Ginny Bianco-Mathis of Marymount University are all previous keynote speakers for the group. The Council had its first meeting in January of this year.The Council most recently hosted a C-Suite panel with Jodi Johnson, CEO of Titania Solutions Group, Anne Donohue, Senior Vice President & General Counsel at SRA International and Mark Serway, CFO of Govplace.
