I am not fascinated by traditional “Best Employer” models that, at best, measure an organization’s ability to engage top talent. Many factors included in such studies have limited play in supporting career realization opportunities and in turn, superior business outcomes. Top talent, irrespective of geography, are naturally curious, consistent in their delivery, ingenuously innovative, resourceful, solution oriented and sometimes, attention seeking (irrespective of how they express it). If not managed optimally, these stars quickly regress into a world of organizational narcissists and over a period of time de-couple from existing loyalties – a regrettable outcome for all.
Effectiveness in enabling top talent development (and therefore retention) lies in the simplicity of the quality and transparency of leadership engagement in as much if not more than process and architecture of programs. While such talent is some of the smartest people in the areas that they operate in, they are, usually, no more armed than any other employee on how to build their own career – personal career planning to them is a big need but rarely an investment that they think about. It is not surprising to eventually see that their careers are what happen to them!
Here are 6 simple actions – the first three on planning and the remaining three on execution that I believe can arm Leaders to engage top talent and drive superior talent outcomes.
1. Understand the annual talent calendar – Understanding your organization’s annual Talent management calendar helps you empower top talent to prepare for appropriate development and performance discussions/follow-ups. These opportunities to engage and plan purposeful career discussions are one of few available annually and not planning for them is akin to throwing good currency away. Make sure they make the best of these annual nodal opportunities that make or break careers over the mid to long term.
2. Engage them on their career aspiration – it is amazing how mid and senior level top talent find it difficult to make a choice on a 5-7 year career destination. Discuss using your organization’s career framework on what options are available and how they align to their strengths first, their aspiration next. If you don’t have a framework, encourage them to engage leaders who have succeeded internally and support them in framing the discussion. A clear outcome of this step should be an understanding of the experience, skill and relationship to be secured for success in the next potential assignment
3. Have them develop a blue-print – Help them establish the gap between the destination and the current reality. Break down the gap into a one year plan anchored around development experiences, skills to support delivery in the development experience and the relationships that are important to secure this learning (..and create visibility amongst the right group of internal stakeholders). Help them socialize the plan with stakeholders and open the doors for constructive challenge and alignment.
4. Get a combination of an external coach and an internal mentor – Irrespective of level, I am an absolute believer of a coach / mentor network. I also have a bias against internal coaches especially when it comes to shaping ‘new age’ leadership behaviours. I worry about in-breeding and a missed opportunity to build new skills that help Organizations get ahead of the vagaries of the market. However, getting a combination of an external to company view through a coach and the ‘networking, cultural do and don’ts, how to drive decisions internally, how to effect change and therefore how to succeed internally” in-company mentor has always been a powerful combination to blend the best of the outside and inside. Usually given the learning agility of such top talent, they are adept to harness learning from this dual support rather quickly and deploy the best of the outside world internally with a degree of judgment.
5. Timing of support and honesty is fundamental – Learning happens most when you need the skill / behavior to kick in. I always recommend the support of a coach / mentor combo to kick-start a new challenging assignment, especially in an area that is more alien or high risk to the leader. The learning and application cycle is tight and feedback is immediate. The other practice that I always encourage is to be transparent with such talent on progress being made, de-mystify the buzz about them and through this demonstrate that as an organization you are interested in their true development where honest and developmental feedback is at the core.
6. Balance their drive – Top Talent is only successful when they balance drive with collaboration. I am amazed by how many talented leaders are befuddled when they want to come in prepared to engage a team in a productive outcome driven discussion and yet walk out of the meeting with passive resistance in the room and lot more noise outside the room ….which in turn creates the organizational or external to company buzz that no one sees but always hears. More often than not, their intent is pure but their process is naive. We often see such talent often get caught in a “never seen but always felt” web of nebulous buzz just based on this one factor – work with the culture and shape its evolution, don’t fight it.
Knowing your top talent, their needs and fears and staging their progress will go a long way in building the talent pipeline that you are held accountable to. As markets & technologies consolidate and shift more rapidly, so will your talent. Use these levers to build the capability base you need to effectively deal with the new realities of our world economy.
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