The Evolution of Talent Development Part 2

Talent Development & What To Know About People

In the last post I defined Talent Development as “The process of building the team you need with the people you have for the growth you want.” The basic premise of that definition is “start with who you have.” There’s a subtle but very intentional implication about people in “start with who you have.”

Most people have the capability and capacity to perform at higher levels than they currently do. This is a fact, not a judgement about people.  If you said today, “We need to increase our performance by X%,” most of your team would go where you need them to go. We have observed this over and over as we built high performing work teams over the past 30 years.

What is says about people is that most people are adapters. They adapt to the environment in which they find themselves. They can rise to greatness or be content with average based on how they are trained, developed, and led. This is especially true with those entering the workforce today.

The secret to Talent Development is knowing how to access those higher levels of performance through training, development, and leadership. This is why Talent Development is so important. You have superstars waiting to be developed. Your job is to create the experience that helps them access those higher levels of performance.

That leads to the BIG TRUTH you must embrace to transform where you are now into the organization you want to be.

There is always some assembly required.

Even if their resume, interview, and referrals are great, there is some assembly required. A strong Talent Development process enables you to assess their current skillsets and mindset, identify where they need development, and create a path for growth to happen.  You can decrease the amount of assembly required by creating a stronger hiring process and onboarding process, but you can’t eliminate it. There will always be some assembly required.

That assembly begins with how people think.

What people do is directly connected to how people think. The only way to know if someone can be successful in their role is to know how they think -  how they process information and the assumptions that inform their actions. Building a common problem solving and decision-making process within the whole organization helps. Learning to observe, ask, and explore is essential.