Transformation Framework Part V: Organization & Individual Level - Select for Talent

Selecting for talent shows the most striking break from conventional wisdom.?We tend to idealize, for example, great athletes like Michael Jordan.[1] We believe they are “not like us.” We suppose they have superior determination and training of some kind. Great managers do not agree with this supposition. Great managers understand every role, performed at excellence, requires talent, which is defined as “a recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied,” manifesting itself often, even daily, as an inherent part of an individual’s mental filter.[2]

Talent is more important than experience, brainpower, and will power, and is quite common.[3]?This contrasts conventional wisdom, and pervasive corporate and government hiring, placement, and selection procedures, which suggest performance is generally is a function of experience, will, and IQ. Work history, resumes, and ratings typically drive internal and external interviews, and there is relatively strong faith that a high IQ make’s one able to figure out most any problem.?However, these sentiments do not to take into account the effect of placing individuals more precisely, based on their unique talents.[4]

Selecting and placing based on talent is the central and largest lesson of Gallup’s research regarding organizational performance. Talent cannot be taught. Yet talents are actually the driving force behind performance. “It’s not that experience, brainpower, and willpower are unimportant. It’s just that an employees full compliment of talents – what drives her, how she thinks, how she builds relationships – is more important.”[5] No matter how an organization selects employees it ends up with a range of performance. In fact, the variation of employees is quite wide. To that end, selecting for talent both improves the performance of the organization’s workforce overall and reduces its variation in performance.

Talent and Neuroscience

Understanding how our brains work helps understand why Gallup could have found what they did. At birth we have over one hundred billion neurons.[6] By the time we are three years old, up to fifteen thousand synaptic connections exist between those one hundred billion.[7] So many connections is simply too much. It is information overload.[8] These connections are continually refined until, in our early teens, we all have some “wide interstate highways” and some “dead spots” in our brain.[9] We have areas characterized by effortless efficiency, and some areas in which we are, and always will be largely undeveloped. This biological carving of character and talents is not easily changed. We can get new skills, new values, and greater self awareness. However, the best return will be from those areas where we are already talented. Similarly, high performing individuals confine themselves to areas where talent is apparent, as do their managers. In contrast, average managers believe everyone has the same amount of potential and, in believing this, they tend to only get average performance.[10]?The best managers know you have to focus on what was “left in” and unleash much better performance.[11]

Skills, Knowledge, and Talent

???????????Since talent is so crucial we need to understand the difference between talent and skills and knowledge. If we cannot appreciably change talent it provides a new perspective regarding how managers should use skills, knowledge, and the training that supports them both. First, skills and knowledge are not the foundation of superior performance.[12] Second, we should train an employee only in those skills and knowledge that directly align to their underlying talents.[13]?Here the role of a manager is clear: they make sure their employees are trained to knowledge and skills that align to their talents and that the employee’s talents and strengths align to organizational needs.

???????????Skills are the “how-tos” of a role.[14] Most skills can be transferred, broken down into steps, and reassembled by an employee.[15] For example, using Microsoft Word or Power Point for the first time can be done with a sort of procedural blindness until a sequence or process is no longer necessary. There are two types of knowledge. Factual knowledge is the information we know such as regulations and product features.[16] Experiential knowledge is the understanding we obtain as a result of contextualization and reflection.[17] Experiential knowledge can be practical (e.g. what products to sell at Christmas) or conceptual (e.g. intuition about the relative importance of something to different individuals).[18]

Talents are wholly different. “Talents are the four-lane highways in your mind, those that carve your recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior.”[19] To that end there are three kinds of talents: striving, thinking, and relating.[20] Striving talents explain the “why’s” of a person: how do they define themselves (e.g. altruistic, competitive). Thinking talents explains the “how”. For example is an employee structured, disciplined, or do they prefer surprise. Finally, relating talents explains who.[21] For example do they love strangers or tend to develop close friends.

???????????In order to clarify these definitions, Gallup offers some examples of comparatively “careless” definitions.[22] In particular, the competencies so common to many training and performance evaluation schemas are “part skills, part knowledge, and part talent. They lump together, haphazardly, some characteristics that can be taught with others that cannot. Consequently, even though designed with clarity in mind, competencies can wind up confusing everybody.”[23] For example, strategic thinking can’t be taught. An employee either does it or not. Here, we should not confuse a strategic planning process with a talent of strategic thought.[24] The first is something an individual might be able to follow. The latter manifests automatically, without prompting.?Therefore, the best arrangement would be characterized by someone with strategic thought who used a strategic planning process as a queue until they did not need to reference the process or who followed a process for the benefit of communicating to colleagues who do not share their talent. Understanding talent in this context also underscores the importance of fit. For example, we should not see a cynic as right or wrong.[25] We should just make sure they are a lawyer not a nurse, where healthy suspicion is warranted and, at least in relative terms, empathy is less a concern.

Despite the primacy of talent, it is not enough. It must be used and developed to maximize performance.[26] We must also realize talents are not rare and special. Everyone has several talents. The trick is to figure out what those are and be apply the employee to it. This is the challenge of all managers and the distinguishing strength great managers.[27]?More specifically, since the barriers of scouting for talent are a fact of life (people always struggle to know themselves) great managers are commonly characterized by strengths like Individualization and Realtor.

Since this is the case it is important to define what an organization’s desired outcomes are and what talents it requires in key roles. In order for an organization to do this it should think about how expectations will be set and how closely the person will be supervised.[28] Think about the other people on the team and about the total environment in which they will operate.[29]?But above all ensure that everything is placed in context of a desired performance outcome not merely the current state of a particular manner of doing things.?An organization may find its very best are different than its current pervading conditions and culture.

One illustration of how two corporations hire dramatically different talent profiles for roles that have identical performance criteria (investment advisor) is helpful. One organization uses a structural mentorship model. This company’s advisors receive a fair amount of guidance and training that leverages their independence and discipline.[30] In contrast, a separate firm provides little guidance or training instead hiring highly entrepreneurial, focused, relating advisors.[31] The lessons there might be more than one kind of talent profile that results in conspicuous performance.

This results in an action item for organizations that desire to get the most out of their employees: study your best.[32] Be sure you have the right talents in mind by figuring out which strengths your best employees have, in each role. Conventional wisdom suggesting ‘good is the opposite of bad’ is not correct.[33] In actuality, society tends to be more articulate about failure than it is success.[34] As such, high performance necessitates an organization rejects a focus on pathology. Everyone has weaknesses but focusing on them and trying to fix them does not compel high performance.[35]?Similarly, there are some weaknesses that everyone in a particular role has. For example, Gallup found that virtually all sales people fear making cold calls, each time such a call was made.[36] The difference is that the most successful sales people had the capacity to get beyond that initial fear.[37]

[1] First, 71.

[2] First, 71.

[3] First, 72.

[4] First, 73.

[5] First, 73.

[6] First, 80.

[7] First, 80.

[8] First, 81.

[9] First, 81.

[10] First, 79.

[11] First, 79.

[12] First, 83.

[13] First, 83.

[14] First, 83.

[15] First, 83.

[16] First, 83.

[17] First, 83.

[18] First, 84.

[19] First, 84.

[20] First, 85.

[21] First, 85.

[22] First, 88.

[23] First, 89.

[24] First, 89.

[25] First, 90.

[26] First, 91.

[27] First, 95.

[28] First, 101.

[29] First, 101.

[30] First, 100.

[31] First, 100.

[32] First, 102.

[33] First, 102.

[34] First, 102.

[35] First, 102.

[36] First, 103.

[37] First, 103.