Identifying Talent in your Organisation

At Developing People Ltd, we help organisations to identify and assess their talented people. We believe that talent is a complex combination of an employee’s skills, knowledge, experience, behavior as well as other characteristics such as their personal preferences, values, and motivations. It is important to recognise that each organisation needs their own definition of what constitutes talent.

One way of thinking about talent is to consider it in terms of an individual’s potential. People with potential have by definition not reached their full potential. They have an ability to take on more complex, broader or senior roles to the one they are currently in. However, it is important to recognise that just because someone is currently a high performer they may or may not have potential. A high performer may consistently deliver results over time in relatively similar situations, but may struggle to deliver high performance under first-time, different, or non repeat situations. Such a person is clearly capable of fulfilling their current role effectively, but it is unlikely that they have the potential to fulfil a more complex or demanding role.

It is therefore important to clearly define the characteristics of someone with high potential. For example they may:

• Demonstrate superior leadership traits beyond their current work role.
• Learn very quickly and have the ability to change/modify their behaviour.
• Manage ambiguous circumstances extremely effectively.
• Have significant impact and influence outside of own work area.
• Think strategically across the whole of the business/organisation and not just about their own function
• Deliver superior performance under first-time, different, or not repeat situations with limited guidance.

We have worked with Agusta Westland, (part of the Finmechanica Group), to help them define what constitutes talent as well as independently assessing over 100 of their managers to identify and validate their potential, motivations, strengths as well as development needs.

We provided the business with a summary report detailing the outcomes from the process identifying the high potentials and key development needs across the group. We also provided a detailed report for each participant detailing an assessment of their competencies against the job profile requirements, likely potential, key development needs and their performance benchmarked against managers from other organisations.

Our work helped the organisation to minimise the risk to its long term business by ensuring that there is a pipeline of people with the right skills, experience and behaviours to fulfil key positions in the future.

Performance Management - Common Pitfalls to Avoid

The purpose of a performance management process is to optimize the success and contribution of each employee, team and ultimately the business/organisation. However, too often organizations do not get the full benefits from their performance management processes because they make one or more basic mistakes.

Here are just a few of the most common pitfalls to avoid.

1) Nobody is accountable for implementing the process. When implementing a performance management process, appoint a project manager to implement it. Make this part of their performance requirements for the year.

2) The Board think that performance management is ‘for everyone else’. For performance management to be successful it must be lead from the top and clearly linked to the business/organization’s strategies and goals.

3) Implementing a highly complex/comprehensive system. Start with the basics first. Use a simple paperwork system to record targets/objectives and an annual (or biannual) review of achievement. As managers and staff recognize the value of the process, more ‘features’ can be added (e.g. 360° appraisal).

4) Have a system that ranks staff. Ranking your staff can kill a performance management system if the only way that an individual can improve their ranking is to undermine the performance of others.

5) Setting vague or inappropriate targets. It is vital to set clear and realistic performance targets.

6) Having conflicting targets and measures. It is important to have congruent targets and measures across the organisation. For example, a target to reduce purchasing spend may seem an appropriate target for the purchasing manager. However, buying ‘cheap’ parts may conflict with an operation manager’s target to improve the reliability and output from his production equipment.

7) Reviewing performance inadequately, for example by focusing on one specific incident rather than reviewing the entire period which the review covers. Also avoid the "halo" and "horns" effects. Just because an employee performs badly in one area does not make his/her overall performance bad. The same goes for good performance. The key to successful reviews is factual data about an individual’s performance.

8) Not providing adequate development support for staff. One key aspect of the performance management process is the development of staff to provide them with the capabilities to achieve their targets. Do not ignore this aspect of performance management.

As stated above, the purpose of a performance management process is to optimize the success of each employee and ultimately the organisation. By taking steps to avoid the aforementioned performance management pitfalls, managers have every opportunity to realize this goal.

How does a person know who would make a good coach for them?

Firstly the personal chemistry between the two parties is key to establishing the right relationship. This is not about friendship (although it could be) but more about trust, empathy, rapport, respect and understanding.

Secondly and most importantly, successful coaching depends mainly on the attitude; willingness, circumstances, timing and desire of the coaching subject themselves. They may not have all of these factors in place and proactively know that coaching is what they want and need right from the start. People don’t just wake up one morning and think “Ah, what I need now is a series of coaching sessions/good dose of coaching”! It usually takes some other form of stimulus to bring coaching forward in their consciousness as a potential development solution for them.

Other factors that are sometimes important factors for the coachee when making their choice of coach can be:- gender – do they want a person of the same or opposite sex, age – do they want a person who is older, the same age or younger than them, (although this would be an unusual choice), experience – do they want someone with experience from their type of organisation, functional specialism, marketplace, or approach –do they want someone who is more or less directive, conventional or unconventional, or who has specialist skills e.g. NLP Practitioner, acting & drama, psychotherapy, occupational psychology, or specialist knowledge eg Finance, Marketing, Education, H.R. etc.

In practice and in my experience most new coachees are not provided with and don’t seek out a long or broad list of potential coaches to choose from. More often they meet or talk with their sponsor who has some personal knowledge of me or one of my colleague coaches and who recommends that they might like to meet with me to discuss the prospect of them being coached. They may be given a choice of two or three coaches known to sponsor but this usually comes with a personal recommendation. In my organisation, we would usually offer potential new coachees a choice of coach, unless we have been recommended individually. If we are asked by a coachee about who else we have who might be able to coach them and do they have a choice in this then we will offer them one or two alternative coaches. In practice this matter of choice rarely occurs. Quite often the sponsor or coachee themselves suggests to us that we will know best who is likely to be the best fit coach for the new coachee. This choice of coachee is largely based on trust, judgement and respect – initially from the sponsor that it is the right timing and circumstance for the potential coachee to be coached. Then that I or we are the right coaches for them. Then from the new coachee that they feel that they can trust us and that we can probably be the right coach for them. This decision is established and confirmed or not at the first meeting and initial coaching sessions.

So is there a coach out there for everyone? Maybe yes in theory – but only if they are WILLING, as a coachee, to take responsibility, are open minded, able to be honest with themselves and with their coach – and are prepared to search for their answers largely from inside – from their own resources.

Some people are not interested in the concept of opening up their minds to new possibilities and options and do not want to disclose and share their circumstances, thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, issues and plans with a relative stranger working as a new coach with them. Some people are not ready for this yet. Some people don’t have the desire and motivation to put themselves into this coaching relationship. Some doubt or mistrust the process or worry about confidentiality leaks.
For many people they have never had the coaching process suggested to them as a possible option, or haven’t reached the stage in their personal or career development when it felt appropriate for them.

The Role of Leadership Assessment

How can an organisation identify its future leaders today?

Identifying future leadership potential is a complex issue; however there are a number of steps an organisation can take to improve its ability to identify its future leaders. The first step in the process is to define the characteristics needed by future successful leaders.

Some of this information may be collected by looking at the characteristics of successful leaders in the organisation. These characteristics may include:

- Thinking style, capability and intelligence

- Personality trails

- Behaviour and interactions with others

- Experience

- Self motivation

- Ability to learn.

Once the characteristics have been identified a number of different techniques and activities can subsequently be used to assess them, for example:

- Critical thinking, numerical and verbal reasoning tests can be used to ascertain an individuals thinking capability and potential. The results from these tests can be benchmarked against other successful leaders.

- Psychometric profiling instruments can identify an individual’s personality traits, likely communicating and leadership styles. How do these fit with what the organisation needs?

- 360° feedback tools are valuable for assessing an individual’s performance and behaviour in the workplace. While not a guarantee, historic performance behaviour will be a guide to how the individual is likely to perform in the future.

- Assessment Centres during which an individual undertakes a range of group and individual leadership tasks can provide a good deal of information about an individual’s personal motivation and how they lead themselves.

- Personal challenges, for example by leading a business improvement project or charity/fund raising activity that will take the individual outside of their comfort zone and give the organisation a view of how they handle new and unfamiliar challenges.

While the above techniques will not guarantee identification of the leaders with the greatest potential, they will provide the organisation with a good deal of objective information on which decisions about leadership potential and leadership training and development can be based.

Management Training Course, Leadership Development, Executive Coaching
Developing People offer first class management training and development, with a business training course for every level of personnel, helping you increase productivity through employee training, leadership training