Let’s Make Talent Development Our Priority

Many companies are appreciating the importance of talent development and now have the position of Director of Talent Management. Let’s give this person a budget which will help maximize the learning and development of our people – and their success.

We, as leaders, absolutely have a responsibility to help our people. There is a very true principle that a highly effective leader is not about being great our self, it’s about helping others be great.

This principle too often gets lost in the busyness of our world today, and also in the seemingly unwavering drive to maximize profits and control expenses. 

Sure, we have to control unwarranted expenses. However, investing in our people is investing in our company’s success.  Everyone wants to do a good job and to be successful, and we must provide the opportunities for our people to learn, grow and succeed to their best of their abilities. The more they develop, the greater their potential and their likelihood for successful contributions.  

Let’s focus talent management on motivating, engaging, educating, mentoring and coaching our people – and as many as possible. I recently read an article which professes that talent management is about helping their high potential performers. I do not agree with this. As stated above, everyone wants to do a good job and be successful.

The greater our people feel about themselves and have a will to learn, grow, and be great teammates, the better our organizational culture will be. If we have a culture throughout our company of positive energy, enthusiasm, collaboration, and a resolve to continue to strive to improve, to be better than before, our company will have favorable results year after year.

Happy employees do better work.

Technical knowledge is critically important of course, and relational (people) skills are even more important. Whatever our field, we are in a people business. We want to assure that our people are given opportunities to grow, for example in:

• effective listening 
• leadership presence 
• leadership skills
• productive working relationships, “up”, “down”, and “across” 
• teamwork
• asking questions to clarify what is needed and what success looks like
• abilities to connect with one another 
• timely responsiveness
• being early, and why it matters
• asking for help and feedback are strengths, not weaknesses
• being likeable
• clarity is a strength
• addressing problems on a timely basis
• and certainly other relational competencies

Everyone has the potential for leadership. Leadership does not come from our position, it comes from our ability to influence, support, coach, offer helpful feedback, to help another team member do good work, to step up to a challenge.

I encourage funding talent development – investing in our people – and the good news is that this not be a major expense. Not at all.

When thinking about investing in the development of our people, many senior executives think that means sending people to programs at Harvard, Wharton, Northwestern, Stanford,  Georgetown, and the like, and at a significant tuition and time investment. 

In the past, I’ve been to programs at Harvard, Yale, Northwestern, and Georgetown, and yes, they have required a significant investment. However, since then I have learned that the very best development programs can be inhouse, right in our own conference rooms. The most effective learning is participative discussion. I have personally experienced great success facilitating inhouse discussions with groups of eight to twenty or so around a table or in a semi-circle, and these discussions can be two hours or so. Everyone participates, contributes, may ask questions, raise issues, and discuss challenges.  Participants have expressed genuine appreciation.

An outside coach or consultant can successfully facilitate effective development programs – and so can our companies’ own executives and our other capable, enthusiastic people. These inhouse sessions will lead to growth, engagement, collaboration, and appreciation, and at little expense.

If our talent development is widespread, very likely we will gain a sense of looking to promote from within, and this generally makes for a better culture.

Also, if our talent development is widespread, we are more likely to create a culture that encourages everyone to contribute ideas, and this is what we want. We want to always strive to improve, and if we want to know how we can, ask the people who are actually doing that work.

They’ll know.

This short article does not begin to do justice to the importance of developing the talent of our people, I just hope it triggers the realization that this need not be an expensive investment. Lots of great progress can be made inhouse, e.g., in our conference rooms with robust, participative, and intentional discussions. 

Invest in the development of our people. They are our internal clients!