Talent Management creates a healthy leadership pipeline

There is hardly a document in the last 5 years that hasn’t indicated that executive boards have a primary focus on the area of talent management and thus succession planning.

As an executive coach I often work with a business to enable the development and release of talent, though what is often clear is that whilst most senior managers understand the need for talent, they often are unaware of the dangers of not valuing talent as a primary business focus.

1. Succession planning should be done at every level, not just at the senior tier:

• This enables the business as a whole to feel this isn’t just an elitist activity
• Educates people to a process that will enable them to contribute as opposed to just be told
• Gives new team members a sense they are entering a transparent environment

2. It is also key to build an executive’s reward around their capability in locating, developing and promoting talent:

• This in itself promotes a culture of sustainability and legacy
• Starts to address the “I’m in it for the short term” mentality that many executives have cultivated over the last decade
• Breeds behaviour that is geared to a learning organisation that achieves through the development of its people

3. Talent Management should be reviewed twice a year

• Of course the a persons development should be continually reviewed, but twice a year it should be a board review
• Executives should feel comfortable talking about success and failure in terms of developing their team, to learn from each other
• “How often, if ever, is someone maneuvered around the organisation in order to grow them?”
• It is key that people are not owned by a Director, but seen as  business resource

Talent management has become a high profile concept, though it should be an easy process. Sometimes the documentation looks great when you consider just one person, but when you are generating these things at a business level it can be very labour intensive:

Top Talent Management Tips:

1. Let the individuals own their profile, they keep it up to date
2. Use a simple 4-9 box grid.
3. Ask people where they see themselves on that grid and discuss the fact you agree or disagree
4. Make it an open and transparent process
5. Consider do you want your potential career value to be a secret: No! So make it an open process
6. Have the painful conversations, the business will only have to do it once, then it’s done
7. Do this process at the same time as Reviews, so it’s seen as one activity
8. Don’t make out it’s a grind, this is someones career you are talking about

In the end, remember that Talent Management is part process and part culture, it demonstrates that as a business leader you understand the difference between the short term and the long term.