Move over MBAs: Professionals in helping fields make strong business leaders
There’s a vast, untapped pool of talent that’s extremely adept at running departments, divisions and whole companies
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When contemplating who to hire to a top leadership role within a service organization, it may be tempting to seek candidates with business backgrounds and degrees. However, there’s a vast, untapped pool of talent that’s extremely worthy of consideration to run departments, divisions, even whole companies. This is the many helping professionals out there who are improving lives and bettering society every day in a wide array of roles, some of whom may already be seasoned members of the company’s own team.
Helpers of all stripes – from the occupational therapist to the autism behavior technician to the star teacher, from the rehabilitation specialist to the social worker to the head nurse – are already committed to the mission and culture of service organizations. They’re already intimately familiar with both the services provided by helping organizations and the populations to whom they’re being provided. Moreover, they characteristically possess a particular skill set and specific personality traits that are both highly applicable to and highly advantageous in positions of leadership.
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Accordingly, helping professionals can be even better equipped for leadership than MBAs on the basis of the abilities and proficiencies they’ve acquired through both their formal education and on-the-job training.
Leadership skills that matter for organizational success
Business leadership is about far more than balance sheets and quarterly reports. It’s not that market shares and bottom lines don’t matter – of course they do. It’s just that there’s more than one path to organizational progress and growth, and so there’s more than one prototypical “leader type” who can achieve that.
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Fundamentally, leadership is about mentoring and motivating people. It’s about inspiring them to their best performance, which in turn leads to targeted results. Understanding what makes people tick and fires their engine is just one of the many crucial areas in which those in the helping fields excel. Here are some of the other aptitudes inherent to helpers, all of which enhance company culture, boost company morale and increase company profits.
- A built-in servant leader’s mentality: Helpers are hardwired to serve – it’s just in their DNA to put people first and guide them toward positive outcomes. Servant leaders are intrinsically empathetic, persuasive and collaborative. They’re adept communicators, highly attuned to the environments in which they interact and committed to integrity. Furthermore, they’re internally guided by an egalitarian worldview founded on justness and fairness. These are characteristics of the most uplifting leaders in history.
- Firsthand experience balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders: Any social service professional anywhere will tell you that their job is a juggling act that requires attending to the needs and fulfilling the expectations of several different populations at once. All the students, patients or clients they’re accountable to, the parents and families, the colleagues and supervisors, not to mention all the regulatory requirements that accompany the service sectors. Not only must all these interests be appealed to at the same time, but all have time limits in place. That’s what a business leader does, managing numerous cohorts while simultaneously being responsible for achieving team directives, company benchmarks, budgetary metrics and organizational goals.
- Thoughtful and informed decision-making in high-stress situations: Helpers are accustomed to high-pressure environments. A hospital ER. The back of an EMT van. Trauma response sites. Detention centers. A kindergarten classroom birthday party (with cake). Over time, helping professionals develop remarkable patience, mindfulness and level-headedness amid tension; they customarily have a calming presence and discerning judgment. These are extremely beneficial assets when making important business decisions during challenging times.
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- Expertise in defusing crises and formulating plans: Is there really much difference between arbitrating a spousal disagreement and mediating a workplace conflict? Between designing a year-long curriculum or staff schedule and drafting an annual business plan? Helpers are not only long-term thinkers habituated to step-by-step procedures that yield larger objectives, but their profession has exposed them to far more crisis situations than most. In the process, they’ve learned how to mitigate and deescalate them.
- Active listening mastery: A huge part of being a successful leader is really hearing the concerns of the people you work with and comprehending where they’re coming from. Helpers are trained to become active listeners with the people they serve; business majors are not. This skill is a game-changer in any workspace or marketplace, as it’s the cornerstone of having meaningful conversations and productive dialogues that generate mutual understanding and authentic connection.
- Deep perception and insight into human behavior: Academic knowledge and a head for business will never get in the way of a leader’s progress. However, emotional intelligence will pave that path with so much more power and wisdom. Helpers are innately emotionally intelligent – they wouldn’t have gone into their fields if they weren’t natural allies and coaches imbued with adaptability and resiliency who are fueled by galvanizing others, an ambition made all the more potent by their above-average self-awareness. All of these emotional intelligence attributes will serve them well as organizational leaders.
- A solution-focused management approach that prioritizes the good of the many: The majority of helpers are assigned caseloads and classes, client lists and age classifications. As such, they’re programmed to reach and represent a collective, which translates to knowing how to engage groups, consider diverse viewpoints and relate to people of all different ability levels, from all walks of life. As stewards of the greater good, they treat people with respect, incorporate differing perspectives into their thought processes and have the foresight to see the bigger picture for all involved parties – all necessary qualities that qualify leaders.
- A level of warmth and compassion too often missing from today’s workplaces: Essentially, leaders lead real-life people, not inanimate entities and corporations. To lead people well, they need to feel welcomed, appreciated, supported and valued. No other industry sector better understands the importance of displaying kindness, benevolence and sympathy in shepherding individuals to their best selves than the helping professions. Caring just runs in their veins, and compassion is their guiding star. They are not only the lifeblood of a magnanimous and equitable society, they embody the very essence of the true meaning of leadership.
All of this is not to say that a clinical coordinator or a humanitarian aid worker would shine at the helm of a widget plant. Indeed, an engineer or operations expert would likely be more apt for the job. However, it is to say that hiring committees are missing out on an incredible opportunity to advance the aims and colorize the vision of both non-profit and for-profit enterprises if they neglect to recognize the vital capacities and capabilities experienced helping professionals bring to the table.
When it comes to mission-driven, people-directed service organizations dedicated to engendering policy improvements and producing meaningful systemic change, give a helper a chance to rise to the top…then watch them fly.
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