Talent Talk I: Intro to Talent Talk

Posted on July 18, 2015August 18, 2015 by spherionutah

by Ron Zarbock, owner

Over the past 4+ years, I have been writing the “Staffing Matters” column. In the earlier years, I received quite a bit of feedback, but lately the column doesn’t seem as engaging to readers. Therefore, it’s time for a refresh! Welcome to Talent Talk!

This “not engaged” idea seems to be spreading when it comes to the workplace. In fact, according to Gallup, only 29% of domestic workers (and only worldwide 13%– roughly one in eight) are “engaged”.  Most are not engaged, meaning they lack motivation and are less likely to invest discretionary effort in organizational goals or outcomes.

In our rapidly innovative age where traditional methods, systems, and organizational structures and processes are being disrupted and transformed into fresh and new ideas, we need more “engaged”. Today, resourcefulness is proven more important than resources. Don’t we want our teams’ imagination, ingenuity, and passion? Don’t we want the “discretionary effort” from our teams? As organizational leaders, why don’t we have this “efforting” from our teams? I need a minute. This information makes me feel “a little verklempt; talk amongst yourselves”.

With the Talent Talk column, we will discuss how to build and lead talented teams and get more engagement, i.e. ingenuity, imagination, and passion from our talent while providing team members more opportunity and recognition. Human Resources, our talent, is the only resource that can choose to be resourceful and in today’s climate, resourcefulness is where the value is.

According to Marcus Buckingham, author of the book, “Standout: the groundbreaking new strengths assessment for the leader for the strengths revolution” among other performance and engagement writings, the team, or more accurately, the team leader, is the determining factor of the success of a profit center. Successful team leaders know who their team members are, what they are doing, and how they feel. Understanding and managing these three elements is key in determining the engagement and performance of a team and the sucess of a profit center.

As in any effective team, members have complementary strengths. The team leader must know how to engage team members to understand and want to engage their strengths with the organization. There are a number of team assessment tools used to understand team member strengths – DISC, Predictive Index, and Strength Principles are just a few. Further, their strengths must work harmoniously with those of other team members.

An example of this is in a book I love, Boys in the Boat.  This is a true story about how a young group of college boys worked together to win the 8-man crew gold medal in front of a dismayed Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

There is a term in crew called “swing”. Swing is team rowing at its highest form and only occurs when each team member is perfectly balanced between performing their personal best while operating in complete unison with each teammate and the coxswain’s call (a team member that strategically manages the race). When this happens, the boat will “swing” or gently compress when all rowers pull their oars through the water, then bursts forward as they draw back for the next stroke. “Swing” would only occur if each team member is fully engaged.

Hopefully your organization is engaged in working to differentiate itself in the marketplace. Leaning on the strengths of your fully engaged talent team members has proven to be the most effective way of doing this. In Marcus Buckingham’s research, the most important factor in creating a fully engaged team member is “seeing” that member. Seeing in this sense means understanding and implementing the team member‘s strengths within the team, recognizing contributions and, allowing the team member to authentically contribute to the organization. As team leaders within organizations are able to perform these tasks with their team, “non-engaged” members will become engaged and employ their passion to create innovation within our organization!

About Ron Zarbock: Ron has been with Spherion for more than eight years and owns offices in Utah that provide staffing services along the Wasatch Front and Wasatch Back– from Logan to Nephi, Heber City to Tooele. He is also the director of Tifie Humanitarian, a nonprofit organization committed to finding and creating jobs for those in need. Additionally, Ron is active in the local chambers of commerce, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) chapters, the Wasatch Employers Network, the Utah Manufacturers Association, and other community organizations.