Stalin is credited with asking, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" as a way of dismissing any form of pressure or negotiation not based on the use or threat of force. In most organizations, the HR director Nor can it resort to force, except for very specific matters such as, for example, maintaining salary discipline or hiring practices. Even this limited power is not available in all companies.
The rise of social media has also stripped away another of its remaining powers: the ability to filter who enters the organization and who doesn't. Many line managers can maintain their own professional networks on platforms like LinkedIn and, when a vacancy arises, simply tell Human Resources who they want to fill it, including their full name.
A Human Resources Director is not someone who can engage in displays of power, and this already excludes from the profession anyone who makes explicit or veiled threats their way of working. On a Management Committee, their expertise, along with that of Marketing, may be the least based on technical knowledge and the most based on common sense and anticipating people's reactions. The technical tools used in the role are few and easy to understand—salary surveys, selection tests, job analysis and evaluation systems, competency-based management systems—but, along with knowledge of these tools, there is a principle that the Human Resources Director must be especially clear about: "The relationship between a company and a person is economic, but it is a profound mistake to think that it is exclusively economic." It is possible that at some point, the Human Resources Director will have to make or participate in difficult decisions, and they are not expected to do so with a smile, but rather with the utmost respect for the people affected, both those who remain with the organization and those who may eventually have to leave.
You need to be able to anticipate the future of your organization, know how long it really takes to have someone fully prepared to fill each position, have replacements for those positions where a vacancy is more difficult to fill and could cause serious problems for the organization, have identified the people who could occupy more important positions and start preparing them, know with absolute clarity what differentiates in each position someone we want to keep at all costs versus someone we would prefer to leave or who should be asked to do so…
It's not easy. In short, it's someone who has to be able to translate the organization's expected future into people's needs, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and that has a further implication: The Human Resources Director cannot be a kind of foreman who doles out threats and praise, but rather has to speak the language of the business fluently and understand it to the same degree as any other manager at their level: They don't have to know as much about finance as the Finance Director or about production as the Production Director, but they are required to know as much about finance as the Production Director or about production as the Finance Director.
If, in addition, they possess sufficient negotiation and influence skills to achieve their objectives in areas where they lack formal authority, then we have an ideal candidate. On this point—negotiation and influence skills—it's worth highlighting one final detail that could be discussed in several more profiles: Some people develop negotiation and influence skills only after becoming well-known, while others develop them precisely because they are well-known. It goes without saying that a Human Resources Director must fall into the latter category.
Despite the direct access between professionals that the web allows, the Human Resources Director still has a place in medium and large organizations, but let's not get confused: Before anything else, the Human Resources Director must be an executive and understand the business they are in. It's that simple.