Talent Management - What Every Manager Needs To Know About Talent Before They Manage It!
Copyright (c) 2010 Shona Garner
There's much talk of talent management in organisations these days, and HR and L & D departments wrestle with the most effective way of developing a talent management programme which truly delivers the required outcomes.
One frequent question managers ask me is: "How do I manage someone who is just not the right "fit" for the role?"
Getting square pegs into square holes is always a challenge - even for the greatest managers - but there are some things you absolutely must do and understand, and some things you absolutely should avoid!
Some of the most exciting and robust research of the last three decades I believe has come from Gallup, who have made it their focus to study excellence in organisations; where it exists; how it manifests and what we can learn from it. After years of research and study into peak performance some interesting ideas have emerged which perhaps challenge some of our perceptions and beliefs about human talent and ability.
Their work helps explain why, in order to develop any truly effective talent management programme, two key things need to happen:
Everyone needs to understand some basic principles about what talent is exactly, and why some of our most common assumptions about talent are fundamentally flawed.
Managers need to learn how to effectively recognise and manage talent to maximise overall organisational performance.
So if you're a manager, and you want to develop and encourage excellence in performance, where do you start?
Step 1: Understand two of our most common assumptions about excellence are fundamentally flawed.
Assumption 1: Each person can learn to be competent in almost anything.
Assumption 2: Each person has greatest room for growth in his or her area of greatest weakness.
It's often easier to identify and describe poor performance than it is excellence. We can all describe, often in great detail, what someone's weaknesses are, and from our early experiences as children in school, we learn to focus on those weaknesses with the intent of trying to improve them. Reports tell us to "try harder" or "concentrate more" at those subjects in which we display weakness.
When we move into the world of work, that same approach to personal development and our career path continues: we learn to identify the weaknesses and then somehow help people overcome those weaknesses by some form of development in that area.
All the focus and intention is on making us "more well-rounded" individuals - to bring our weaknesses up to the level of our strengths.
But excellence in any field of human endeavour you choose simply doesn't work like that!
If you told Roger Federer he was good enough at tennis when he was young, and asked him to improve his golf, would he become a Tiger Woods?
If you asked a young lawyer who seems naturally gifted at criminal law to improve at corporate law, would this make him a better lawyer?
If you had to have heart surgery, would you rather it was from someone who had spent years perfecting and specialising in this field, or have a General Practioner look after you?
And when you were at school, did you focus hardest, work hardest and concentrate most on the subjects you weren't good at, or the ones you loved, and which came easiest to you?
WHAT WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT TALENT
Every one of us has natural talents: things we seem "hard-wired" to do; which come easy to us and which we enjoy doing.
And the more we focus on and work on those areas, the closer we can get to excellence.
It's easier to make a grade A an A star, than it is to make a grade E into an A star. At best, you'll make an E into a C, and you'll probably meet with a lot of resistance and unhappiness along the way!
Focusing on improving weaknesses results in mediocre performance.
Focusing on improving natural talents and strengths results in excellence.
TALENT IN ORGANISATIONS - SOME FACTS
Gallup interview over 1.7 million employees and found:
20% feel their strengths are in play every day 8 out of 10 feel "miscast" in their role They also found there was a direct correlation between staff being able to do what they do best every day and customer satisfaction, profitability and staff turnover.
EFFECTIVE TALENT MANAGEMENT SUGGESTS WE ESTABLISH SOME NEW ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT TALENT
Assumption 1: Each person's talents are enduring and unique Assumption 2: Each person's greatest room for growth is in the area of his or her greatest strength.
Outstanding managers know:
Every role, performed at excellence, requires talent. Excellence is impossible without talent. You cannot teach talent. Experience, brain power and will power are secondary for excellent performance. So these managers select and place individuals based on talent first.
They know the rest can be developed through coaching, training and practise.
Step 2: "Become as articulate about describing excellence as you are about describing failure."
Disney We are all quite good at describing what someone is not doing well, or the behaviours we don't want to see! We are perhaps less well practised in describing what we really need to see if we are to encourage excellence!
The critical key to effective talent management is matching the right talent with the right role. We need, as managers, to understand specifically what makes our star performers in any role as good as they are. What exactly is it that they are doing, or thinking or feeling which is different to your average performers in that role?
What is interesting is that, if you study your stars, you will find there are similarities in their answers, and these give you clues about what you need to see in anyone else you recruit into this position, or place in a particular project.
Gallup suggests managers:
Study your stars in a particular role. What do they feel are the most challenging aspects of their role? What do they seem to do, think or feel about the different aspects of their job, particularly the most challenging aspects?
Draw up a role profile based on the answers your stars give you.
Create questions you can ask in a "talent interview". As long as organisations and managers believe we can learn to be competent in almost anything, and that we can grow most in our areas of weakness, we will continue to promote people to management who shouldn't be there; to re-shuffle people in a restructure without really paying attention to whether this role will play to their natural talents or not, and to suffer the consequences of square pegs in round holes.
