THE DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM

One of the most fascinating behaviors around human development is the intrinsic contradiction between the reasons we hire and the way we plan development and career paths.

Recruiters are tasked to find candidates with two important characteristics: knowledge and potential. The first one measures the ability of the individual to DO what the job takes and the other one refers to the CAPABILITY to learn and progress within different roles, apart from the normal vertical growth.

In summary, we hire people based on their STRENGTHS, which is the natural and obvious thing to do. The recruitment process, therefore, by nature excludes the weaker candidates; under the supposition that conscious and unconscious biases are not present.

There is nothing new about this, and it has been the way Talent Attraction has operated for many years.

DEVELOPMENT AND SOME OF ITS APPROACHES

What is significantly different is the way we DEVELOP the talent within the organization, and here the approaches have different variants.

A few successful organizations have understood their talent and career path process as something that they do "from within": injecting talent at the bottom of the pyramid and develop it to grow from inside into the top-level roles. This model was very successful for a long time and a definite competitive advantage, but it showed significant weaknesses when the world turned to different capabilities — digital and artificial intelligence, for example— and they were not prepared, so they were forced to go to the market, henceforth eroding the basic principles of the “within” model.

In some cases, however, the model did work, but only when through centers of disruption or excellence the corporations were able to understand and predict trends and quickly develop and evolve towards new capabilities within their own talent base. The rule, in general, can be called the “Military Principle” by which progression is done from inside — I have never yet seen an ad or a job posting for army generals, they will rely on the capability of their colonels to grow into military leaders.

Some other organizations have been more progressive and taken risks of finding talent in the outside market, buying capabilities instead of having to develop them. This tends to be very cost-effective and allows fast change through investment in talent but does take a toll on internal employees, that find themselves unable to grow into the top positions, given to outsiders. The other difficulty of this “buy” method is cultural integration; talent from outside may have difficulties in blending into the way of working and taking decisions, which becomes challenging both for the individuals and the teams.

Today we can see that, in general, successful corporations blend these two models, that David Ulrich calls the “buy” and the “build” strategies (he also adds “borrow” and “bounce” but that I’ll leave for a different discussion).

Whatever model you may use, or whatever blend of both is chosen, the underlying strategy will always be DEVELOPMENT. And development refers both to the organization and to the individuals.

THE CONUNDRUM OF ATTRACTION AND DEVELOPMENT

As stated, Talent Attraction professionals basically look for experienced individuals that can “hit the ground running” and for those that have a learning ability that can take them quickly to learn, adapt and bring results at an accelerated pace if the learning curves can serve as leverage. The first approach, is EXPERIENCE-based recruitment, and the other is POTENTIAL. The golden spot, of course on obtaining BOTH, a proper combination that will do the job now and will be able to naturally grow into bigger or different roles.

How can something so obvious be then titled as a “conundrum”? Well, because most organizations choose people because of their strengths and potential and happen to develop them around their opportunity or improvement areas. A common, and sometimes mistaken, approach to “round out the person”; we give so much importance to opportunity areas that we sometimes even get to the point of looking for external talent because we forget the potential and focus on the defects. A very admired colleague of mine, an expert in talent, once candidly said, in a recent meeting, that organizations forget internal talent “because we know all their warts” and focus solely on fixing them.

The first approach, as stated, is EXPERIENCE-based recruitment and the other is POTENTIAL. The golden spot, of course on obtaining BOTH, a proper combination that will do the job now and will be able to naturally grow into bigger or different roles.

While there is no right or wrong approach, there is a moment for everything and for everyone, regardless of age or stage in the career.

DEVELOPMENT BASED ON OPPORTUNITIES

First of all, let’s state the truth, Human Resources professionals have during the past decades shifted away from the term “weaknesses” to the softer and less aggressive approach of “opportunities”. We do prefer to accept that we have areas to improve than to say we are weak.

The base of this strategy on development approaches what the individual misses, while skills are solved by learning, competencies are developed through critical experiences, different jobs or job environments and, in general, by putting the employee out of his or her comfort zone. This “rounding up” approach is generally used while someone is at the beginning or middle of their career or when we want to adapt someone to the needs of the corporation.

The most dangerous aspect of this approach is putting aside the strengths and making the person something that they are not. Turning a great football player into a decent baseball player, or said simply “trying to teach an elephant to climb a tree”. Sometimes we even disregard what the person wants and likes to do, and what he or she are good at, to try and turn them into what we want them to be.

The base of this strategy on development approaches what the individual misses, while skills are solved by learning, competencies are developed through critical experiences.

Many, too many, times have I seen people who are great at something been moved out of organizations because — under the excuse of development — they were placed in the wrong job and they failed, while they could have continued to succeed in what they were good at.

The positive aspect, especially when you are early in your career, is that it involves genuine growth when it works right and when it’s timely. Most of all when we believe in certain aspects of the potential and the individual agrees on the need to develop it to go further up in the organizational chart.

DEVELOPMENT BASED ON STRENGTHS

This, I believe, is the most efficient approach to development and it is the one that is more consistent with the reason we hire.

In war and business, you send your strongest people to the battle, the ones that know what they are doing and have done it before. This allows to make the individuals stronger and, in the process, adapt the strengths to make themselves even better.

This way of developing people, however, implies very acute choices. It basically means that you need, as an organization, to understand what is needed and to take the person to that specific battle. Harvard Business Review recently published an interesting article by Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries who very simply describes the eight archetypes of leadership, it shows who is good for what, and implicitly invites organizations to leverage on these characteristics to choose the right people for the job based on their innate characteristics, rather than trying to create people who are good for everything.

In war and business, you send your strongest people to the battle, the ones that know what they are doing and have done it before.

The danger of this approach is to limit and tag employees into a certain set of business environments and can sometimes generate an organizational blind spot into other capabilities that can be easily developed through the same strengths that are already there.

Having said that, I do believe that it is the most effective approach to development and the one that brings more satisfaction to the person and results for the organization.

A MIXED APPROACH

The proper use of the Lominger Method has proven to be a good tool to balance out these two ways of seeing development. When applied in the right way, it can allow understanding when full potential and full execution are achieved and at the same time understand which, and not all, can be taken to the next step. It allows, visually, calibration by comparison and it gives the organization a talent map that helps understand who, when, how and for what.

Regardless of the methodology, a proper blend needs to be achieved by properly mixing the right approaches guided by business, strategic and succession needs, but ensuring that the true interest and purpose of the individual is the foundation of the talent development.

A FEW CONCLUSIONS

• We need to connect our Talent Attraction process with our development process. This is a very common mistake that can be easily solved if everyone is clear on business strategy and such is consistent.
• As the third chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes states, there is a time for everything, and leaders need to be aware that timing and cadence are everything when we make decisions on talent attraction and development.
• When time and career allow, prioritize on building new strengths, not in fixing weaknesses. It can be frustrating for everyone and in reality, we can only expect a few tweaks that could be very effective and amazingly positive.
• In any case, prefer strengths. This is what people are made of and where they achieve, not their comfort zone, but their peak performance, and that is when true learning also happens.
• Be very careful with career paths, as they create a false sense of security. Return the original principle that great work is always rewarded.

Talent management is all about having the right people tagged with the right challenges. In the end, it is nothing else than recognizing what our team is strong at and using that for the common good... when that happens, it unleashes the true power of humankind to levels that we sometimes cannot imagine.