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Making the Most of Your Talent

With the globalisation of markets and businesses, coupled with changing demographics, competition for high quality talent is set to increase. It’s not enough to simply find someone who has the potential and then just leave them to get on with it in the hope that everything will be ok. Your talent needs to be nurtured and their careers and expectations managed if you want them to stay committed to your organisation and add real long term value to it.

In addition, there is the added complication that markets, businesses and organisations are continually changing and evolving, which means that your talent, however good they may be will also need to change, develop and ‘move with the times’ as well.

So what should you do as an employer? Here’s a guide to making the most out of your talent.

• Make talent management and development and issue for the Board. The Board should be able to clearly articulate the strategy of the business and where it is going, and therefore define the types of skills, behaviours and people the business will need in the future.

• Who are the potential leaders of the business in the next 5, 10 or 15 years? Has the business a mechanism to identify the leaders of tomorrow? What are the key criteria that the business is looking for? How will the criteria be measured and assessed?

• Make sure that your talent knows they are ‘talent’, and continually check their expectations and yours. At 27 an aspiring manager may be willing to travel the world. At 37 and with a young family, their priorities may have changed.

• Be clear with your high potentials what it is they need to learn. What is it that will add the greatest value to their performance and careers?

• Don’t assume that management training is the answer to all your talent development needs. Ask yourself - would development activities will they benefit most from - coaching, mentoring, project work or a secondment?

• Provide ‘on and off the job’ opportunities for your talent to flourish. Can they lead a local community or charity project? Generally people will raise their performance to what is being requested of them. If you never ask someone to step outside their comfort zone you will never find out!

• Make sure that you are focussing on the individual’s ‘development’, and therefore provide opportunities for self direction and self learning as well.

Ultimately the competitive edge of your business and its long term success resides with the abilities of your future key managers and leaders. Surely the nurturing and development of your talent is far too an important business issue to be left to chance?