Talent Talk

We’re asked a number of times about how to create a talent management strategy. While this is often left to external consultants to help implement, we think it’s helpful to include some of the main components for a good Talent Management Strategy (TMS) for those interested here.

The times when people spoke about jobs for life may be back. Old-fashioned as this may sound, we have been coming around to this conclusion for some time now. What’s driving our belief in this sea-change are the convergence of three key forces:

If this post sounds like news, you may be forgiven for thinking so. Because it is now over forty years since Peter Drucker wrote ‘The Effective Executive’ yet, in that time, we have seen very little movement away from the ‘weakness-based’ approach still practised in many schools (’you are strong at something, so that is fine; you are weak at something, therefore focus your energy on fixing that weakness’), and which stay with us as we move into adult life.

Drucker, of course, urged us to move away from that flawed paradigm.

This recent review of Joseph Nye’s latest book by The Economist reopens the debate about the nature of leadership. To us, it sums up the problem people face when they ask ‘how do I become a better leader?’ Or even, ‘can I really become a better leader?’ The problem isn’t in the discussion of the use of hard power or soft power, but in the conceptual approach taken by the author.

An interesting article here gives a useful insight in the effects of different types of motivation in the world of sport.

It’s fascinating to see the approaches sports coaches use to gain great performance from their charges and there are certainly more than a couple of ideas here that can be applied to the world of the arts and business.

It would be equally fascinating to hear from our readers what approaches you find effective in your own field - or whether you subscribe to such approaches at all!

From the article: ‘I figured that, if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.’ Mohammed Ali

A 2007 study carried out by the Corporate Leadership Council has spelt out what for a long time we’ve already known - that line managers in companies globally think HR is largely ineffective at many aspects of their job.

While they scored 3 and above on the Lickert scale for ‘legal requirements’, HR was regarded poorly by their colleagues in areas such as Workforce Planning, Employee Retention, Employee Engagement and Succession Planning - all areas where they scored 2 or less on the ratings scale.

Recent research by Dr Roy Baumeister at the Florida State University has concluded that willpower is a finite resource and that it needs to be replenished and refocused in order to maintain its efficacy.

For our part, we find this fascinating as it seems to back up research in other fields of psychology that indicates that a close connection between our talents (natural abilities) and tasks is the fundamental driver to performance. Do our talents (hardwiring) explain our ability to thrive and excel at jobs that others may find simply mundane or frustrating? Are these the explanation for what Keats called ‘negative capability’?