Talent Management – How Managers can Master the Art of Placing Square Pegs in Square Holes
Have you ever managed someone who you felt was in the wrong job?
What sort of problems did that cause for you? What sort of problems do you think the “miscast” individual was experiencing?
Have you ever been in a role where:
- You feel you’re simply not utilising the abilities and strengths you really have?
- You spend too much of your time doing tasks you don’t enjoy or which frustrate you?
- You took promotion for that pay rise and the status, but now find the job you do has taken you away from the stuff you really loved and enjoyed doing before you were promoted?
- You feel undervalued?
- You feel out of your depth, or find yourself having to learn in new areas which actually, don’t excite you that much?
- You feel little incentive to do anything other than the minimum required of you?
If you have, then you’ll know it adversely affects performance, not to mention the fact that all parties, the manager, team colleagues and the individual themselves, will be feeling frustration, tension or stress and even discomfort and unhappiness.
In the rest of this article
For me, the most unfortunate aspect of people being “miscast” is we are missing the potential “brilliance” if that individual were in the right place, using their natural talents more fully.
Being a square peg in a round hole is just darned uncomfortable.
DOING WHAT YOU DO BEST – EVERY DAY
Gallup, in its rigorous research over 25 years and literally millions of employees, hundreds of organisations and across more than 60 countries, found there were 12 key questions which, if answered positively, would correlate directly with performance in all of the most important measures within a business: turnover; profit; customer satisfaction; staff turnover and attendance – as well as many of the more subjective measures such as employee engagement, creativity and motivation.
One question Gallup asks within those 12 is:
AT WORK, DO I HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO WHAT I DO BEST EVERY DAY?
This question was shown to have a direct correlation to customer satisfaction, to profitability and to staff turnover.
Of course, what is behind this question is the whole issue of talent – how do you recognise it? Which talents do you need for a specific role? How can you develop talent? How can ensure you have the right talent match for the specific role?
I was at a recent Chartered Management Institute meeting where the speaker described it really well I thought. Imagine a bus. You’ve decided where the bus is going (the strategy), but now you need:
The right people on the bus.
The right people in the right seats.
The wrong people off the bus.
We can all agree with that I guess. It sounds so simple and so obvious. The problem is, while we know what we should be aiming for, how to do that so we get it right more often than we get it wrong, is sometimes a lot less clear!
EFFECTIVE RECRUITMENT – THE MANAGER’S ROLE IS CRITICAL
So – when it comes to recruitment, what do you do? What sort of processes do you have in place? Do you have a recruitment agency? Does HR do most of the work? How much should you, the manager, be involved? What could or should you be doing to ensure you get it right more often than you get it wrong?
Even if you have an HR department which has already devised processes to support selection and recruitment you must still have a significant involvement in the process to ensure your specific requirements are being met and that together you really do match the right talents with the role. Do not abdicate responsibility here. A mistake can be extremely costly and can cause you problems for an extremely long time, so give this task the absolute attention it needs.
A THREE STEP APPROACH TO MORE EFFECTIVE TALENT MANAGEMENT
Try this 3 step approach to help you place people in a position where they will play to their strengths more than their weaknesses.
- Study your “stars”.
Find the staff who are performing the best in the particular role you are studying. Ask them some key questions to help you understand and identify the natural talents these top performers display. (If you want to know more about the right kinds of questions to ask, contact us direct at www.increasingmanagerialsuccess.com/contact ) - 2. Draw up a role profile.
Draw up a list/profile of the things your “best performers” tell you they think, feel and do – instinctively and naturally, particularly in the most challenging and critical parts of their jobs. - Set up a “talent interview “ as part of your process.
Whatever process you already employ, if you don’t already do this, try including a “talent interview” in your selection process. Taking the answers your “stars” have already given you, create questions you can ask of the potential recruit which will help give you a better feel for how this individual will respond to some of the key competencies for the role. What questions could you ask which would help you see if the candidate responds the same as your “stars”?
This whole process will help you as a manager, not just to position people more accurately, it will improve relationships with your staff, and the overall performance of your team.
———————————————————————
For more information to help you with the people side of management,
including how to improve employee motivation and get the best out of your team, take a look at these great resources:
 |
 |
 |
———————————————————————
Related posts:
Loading ...
The “talent interview” may confirm what you notice as your people’s potential.
It is often said, may be too many times, that it is necessary to recruit the right people for the right jobs. However, you often find people employed for the wrong jobs. Apart from this, the responsibilities of a certain job may change over time.
Talent management means that employees are transferred to equivalent jobs within the department or organization.
It can also involve movement up and down the hierarchical ladder. Promoted people who cannot perform have no choice but to return to their former jobs or equivalent ones.
An organization may promote the wrong person based on many reasons. The “who you know” plays a part. I had personally experienced serious problems resulting from the promotion of an officer did not know much about the new job. Everybody suffered and he became a joke in the organization.
Drawing up a plan is important. More importantly, the people who manage systems, departments and employees play a more crucial role.