6 Tips to Get Your Talent Pool Flowing
If people are your most valuable asset then succession planning is important and your ‘high potential employees’ will help to provide certainty of the organisation’s success into the future. If any organisation is serious about retaining and developing high potentials then it must have some form of formal or informal talent management system. There are 5 common talent management traps that CEOs or Executive General Managers can fall into:
1. Over-focusing too much on short-term issues versus succession management (a long term one).
It is true that if the organisation does not do well “this quarter”, there might not be a future, but doing well in the quarter without considering the long term may make sure there is no future either!" There are tough calls to make, and the pressure to shortcut or postpone can be immense. But succession management is a key long term focus and it seems that the stock market is increasingly concerned about the depth of talent in publicly held companies and is taking this into consideration when evaluating companies. Boards are also realising the importance of effective succession management strategies for a company’s long term success and so are getting more involved.
Tip. Prioritise the succession management system within the organisation.
2. Assuming that all high performers are high potentials.
It is easy to assume, or even hope, that a “high-performer” is a “high-potential” employee (often called HiPos). Yet some research indicates that in organisations, only one in seven high performers are high potentials. HiPos must have both ability and motivation. A high potential may lack ability, for instance an employee in a job which requires good operational management can be very effective yet fail if they get promoted to the next level which requires strategic management skills. Or they may lack motivation, for instance they may be able to manage others but not want to. In the extreme it leads to choosing people who can only handle last year's problems….
Tip. Use professional assessments or good psychometric instruments which evaluate future capability (potential) and assess motivation. We can help with Pario Professional - click here for more information or contact us.
3. Thinking that they know who all the high-potential people are.
Not only can this arise because of the confusion outlined in the last serial but also;
i) There is a natural tendency to be biased towards those we have personally observed one way or another.
ii) It is easy to make firm judgements subjectively (from our own judgements or from the Performance Management System – assuming that is also subjective.) While it is very important to include subjective assessments, it is also critical to balance them with objective ones. MarkTwo saved one client from making a very big hiring mistake - at the last minute they decided to use the Pario Professional. It saved them about $750,000!
Tip. Use a good psychometric (objective) evaluation to balance the subjective ones.
4. Filling the Talent Pool with the same type of “CEO Material”.
We are all biased and none of us can eliminate our biases, we can only minimise them by becoming more aware of them. One key bias is the “similarity bias” – we all tend to prefer and rate more highly people who are like us. In fact we tend to “like people who are like us”. This is not only about similarity in gender or race, for instance a CEO with an engineering background might tend to favour engineers.
Tip. Include someone outside your organisation on the talent pool selection board. Also putting the CEO and their team through some in depth workshop on personality difference can bring many benefits, not only in getting diversity into the Talent pool.
5. Thinking that a good succession-management system will lead to success.
In many ways a well-designed succession management system is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. Many companies breathe an understandable sigh of relief after they implement a new system but then do not follow up, and the pool stagnates.
Tip. Make someone accountable for the succession management system and its performance. It is important to set measurable goals for the system and monitor its effectiveness through periodic reports.
6. Not getting to know people in the Talent Pool.
The CEO needs to be intimately involved in decisions about Talent Pool members' promotion and development if the pool is to be successful. It is important that the CEO “swims” around the pool and knows the people whose future he or she is affecting. For instance, one CEO we know of tries to have a one-on-one dinner with a pool member in each town that he visits.
Tip. When visiting regional or overseas offices, make a point to talk to pool members and to see them in presentations and in other situations.
Mark Two provides expert advice and assessment tools for talent management strategies. Click here for more information on what to use for good assessment, and Contact us if you would like to arrange a complimentary talent assessment consultation.
For the Principles of setting up a Talent pool see the article Diving in deep to get the right staff in the right place at the right time.
Want to pick the right staff for your company?
BEI Interviewer Training - Public Workshop
This 1-day worskhop will provide you with practical skills to select the right people for your organisation. About 1-in-3 hiring decisions are wrong according to the research and the financial cost of getting it wrong is often quoted as over a year's salary, and then there are the other costs... This workshop is an in-depth advanced behavioural interviewer training where you can hone your skills to have a much higher accuracy for picking the right applicants through interviews, whether they are internal or external. It also helps with your coaching which can help you dramatically in both your professional and personal life.
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Quote of the Month
Use those talents you have. You will make it. You will give joy to the world. Take this tip from nature: The woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except those who sang best - Bernard Meltzer, American law professor
TED Talk - the importance of motivation in personal and professional success
When it comes to performance capability is important but the right motivation is more important (as that is what determines what capability is released). But there are so many misconceptions about motivation for instance that "money motivates". This TED talk provides some key understandings.
MarkTwo's Month
Back from India
India was another fascinating trip last month to see potenital clients, it was also intense flying to a new city every morning. In Trivandrum, I was invited to speak on Authentic Leadership at a gathering of Senior Executives and high potential staff of Allianz Cornhill and the session was well received. I look forward to further visits to India later this year.
Executive Coaching and Manager Mentoring
Clients are still seeing the importance of coaching and Mark Oliver has been coaching five executives and senior managers over the last two months, with more asking about coming on board. MarkTwo has also been informally mentoring as well as providing in depth and critical feedback to about 15 other managers over the last month.
Off to Indonesia and London
Mark Oliver is heading to Jakarta in to facilitate a transformational Leadership course for the Indonesian management team of one of Italy's largest companies. Afterwards he is off to London to meet with a leading psychologist and a senior staff at one of the premier Business Schools to discuss providing public events in UK.
We are running a range of public programs due to the intense demand arising from the impact of our corporate programs. We are also looking at running a public course in London, United Kingdom.
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