Developing Leadership Talent

The top echelon leadership of a company usually doesn’t have much time for much else other than the bigger picture and the bottom-lines.  Numbers and figures — conversions, revenues, turnovers, profits, etc — are of paramount importance to every business organization; indeed, the very reason for its existence. No business entity can survive if the required ‘numbers’, especially profits and revenue, are not up to the mark.

Role of Leadership in Identifying Talent

However, it is no secret that it is human element of the organization which delivers the numbers. If you have the right set of people, adequately motivated and under a manager whose leadership skills can effectively channelize the collective energies of the group, the numbers will happen. Which brings us to the operative phrase in this scenario: the right set of people. Even exceptional leadership qualities would go down the drain without a team with specific talents that complement each other. That does not mean that leadership and the talent being managed are independent of each other or that any leader has to make do with the talent he sees in a given team. To the contrary, spotting and managing talent effectively are two abilities that a good leader must have in his skill-set.

As your role in a given organization grows to a point where you lead a team, there is a certain shift in focus. When we talk of being in charge of a group, we have already established that they have a common objective that somehow is a vital part of the larger picture of what the organization does. Your team has a collective target to meet, which means that all individuals must do their bit, while you ensure that everything flows smoothly.

The Human Side to Business Leadership

Effectively, your target is to ensure that the right persons get assigned to the right tasks such that the needful is done most effectively in the least possible time. Getting the right talent is only half the job: people are not equipment. They must be nurtured and groomed to perform and grow in their roles for the organization so they may perform to the fullest potential of their talents. You, the leader, must get to know every team member as far as possible and try to gauge what makes each one tick. You don’t want your best team members coming down with a bad case of workplace blues just due to lack of motivation. Good leaders are also a great talent master because they can determine a person’s abilities more precisely simply because they’re great at observing and listening. Once they institutionalize these skills, they help shape an organizational doctrine that translates into good employee practices, enriching the company culture.

Going further up, developing talent is a continuous process for the organization at large, and this process must be a part of the organizational culture; this has to be believed and made a priority from top down, starting right from the CEO.

It’s not just about short-term goals. Any business organization that is looking at the future must also plan to get the people with the talent to get it there. Talent masters spend at least a quarter of their time spotting and grooming leadership potential in others; it is closer to 40% in Fortune companies.

Some Guiding Principles

The guiding principles that the top leadership in a company follow in order to identify and nurture talent are as follows:

1. Achieve quality through effective delineation of talent. Have a standard mechanism of quantifying performance and assign leadership roles on that basis rather than rough approximations, hunches or personal preferences. Square pegs may fit into round holes at times, but it’s too much of a trial and error process to be used consistently.
2. Establish an atmosphere of easygoing trust. Developing talent and grooming future leadership needs an atmosphere of trust. You cannot assess your people without proper information about them. It not only helps you know more about the people working in the organization, but also helps camaraderie. Ask anybody who’s part of the top leadership in a company and they’d tell you this is the hardest part: encouraging people to get along while keeping the professionalism intact. Ensuring that nothing gets discussed out of turn and that confidentiality is respected takes a careful system of checks and balances that has to be there and yet be unobtrusive.
3. Be unforgiving, impartial and regular in assessing talent. Your must have a regular system in place that is as robust and comprehensive as any used for finance or operations or sales forecasts. And these assessments should be carried out regularly, no less so thatn any other assessment reviews that are done for operations or sales etc.
4. Give importance to Training & Development. The hours that go into T&D aren’t just a waste-of-time activity done by HR that eats into productive times: done right, it would enhance productivity. Keeping pace with the rapidly changing business environment is paramount to maintaining that extra edge you need and to grooming leadership for the future.

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