Objective vs. subjective talent spotting
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Talent Manager, our programme that turns line managers into talent managers has been implemented in multiple organisations. The more we work alongside line managers to teach them the principles of talent management, and introduce them to our tools, the more we gain insights into why line managers can be notoriously difficult to engage in the talent agenda.
One of the key insights from countless line managers is that they don’t like assessing potential because it is so subjective. They see performance as being easy to measure objectively so they are happy to do it, but see potential as something which can only be subjectively assessed and so it is unfair and inaccurate.
The interesting question is why do they feel like this?
When you delve into the conversation, often this belief has arisen because “potential” has been poorly defined or, if there’s a model in place, that it is too complicated and the managers don’t understand it well enough to use it. As a result, they’re forced to create their own definition of what constitutes talent and consequently, because they’ve made it up themselves, it gives rise to the belief that measuring potential “must be subjective”.
So what can you do to foster a correct understanding of exactly what ‘potential’ means?
- Have a purpose. When developing a talent programme, ask “talent for what?” – i.e. why are we putting this in place – what kind of people are we trying to identify and how are we going to use them? If the managers know why the programme is being run and what they can achieve from it, they’ll begin to match people in the right way. For example, if the programme is trying to grow more project managers they know what specific “potential” to be looking for to fill these roles.
- Make sure you have a potential model and keep it really simple. It’s tempting to add lots of complexity and bells and whistles to your potential model, but the truth is that the simpler it is the easier it will be to communicate and get a broad understanding across your organisation.
- Educate your managers. At the moment, for a lot of managers, talent comes but once a year – they’re asked to do an annual talent review but they then forget about it until the next year. The best talent cultures have managers using talent management principles all year round to get the best out of people. It becomes an intrinsic part of how they think about and work with their people. What education could you put in place to support them to think about the talent in their team and how they could get the best from them? If they can see how they will benefit from it, they will engage.
Be really clear about what talent looks like in your organisation. If you want help read more or contact us.