The purpose of the research paper is to coin talent leadership to promote it as a discipline in the future as there is a pressing need to develop talent leaders who can manage talent from recruitment to retirement successfully. It differentiates between talent leadership and talent management. It unveils various constituents of talent leadership. It demarcates recruiting the talent and buying the talent. It emphasizes that although companies intend to recruit talent initially they end up buying talent finally. It presents the qualities and roles of talented leaders. It provides a new perception of talent management and outlines from a leadership perspective. It outlines the reasons for the sinking morale of employees after joining the organization. It emphasizes the need to develop leaders at all levels within the organization for excellence and effectiveness. It unfolds that the current global crisis is due to a dearth of talented leadership. It calls upon researchers, intellectuals, practitioners, and experts in human resources, talent management, and leadership to come forward to address several current leadership challenges and set the discussion for a new discipline—talent leadership.
Introduction
“Leaders who tend only to business often end up losing the people and the business. But leaders who tend to the people usually build up the people—and the business” — John C. Maxwell
The war for talent is back on track. The companies that fired their employees due to the economic downturn are currently searching for talent to take their companies forward. However, the companies that did not downsize and retain their leadership talent are not in a worry in any way. Currently, only the companies that are concerned are the ones that neglected to strengthen their leadership talent during recessionary periods.
In the 1990s organizations emphasized talent management for recruiting, honing, and retaining the talent for organizational excellence and effectiveness. However, with the prevailing dynamic business environment globally the organizations hereafter must focus on talent leadership to lead the pool of talent successfully to greater heights. In addition, the growing number of knowledge workers and the great demand for new products and services globally make it necessary to coin and promote the concept of talent leadership.
What is Talent Leadership?
Talent leadership not only involves training their existing leadership material but also inviting potential leadership talent to be included in their organizational pool. It should not be confused with the leadership pipeline alone. It includes various aspects of recruitment, retention strategies, training and development, succession planning and management, and leadership pipeline.
Talent leadership can be defined as the process of spotting and recruiting the potential talent with the right attitude, developing and grooming their talents, skills, competencies, and capabilities in tune with the changing times and technologies to ensure a seamless supply of talent to pass on the leadership baton to successors for taking leadership challenges at the corporate world. It includes spotting, training, grooming, and molding the leadership material as per the organizational culture and climate and values and principles. It enhances organizational excellence and effectiveness. It sounds like succession planning and management and leadership development and leadership pipeline. But in fact, talent leadership is an extension of all these things.
What does Talent Leadership Constitute?
It is a blend of various disciplines and areas such as human resources, talent management, succession planning, performance appraisals, learning and development, leadership pipeline, organizational excellence, and above all it revolves around psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Besides the below aspects:
- Recruitment,
- Spotting the leadership material,
- Retention strategies,
- Training and grooming,
- Seamless succession planning and management,
- Leadership pipeline and
- Passing on the leadership baton to successors successfully.
Talent Leadership versus Talent Management
Both talent leadership and talent management are different. Talent management is about developing and grooming existing employees apart from adding up new talent. Talent management is a strategy and process of recruitment and retention of precious human resources. It emphasizes recruiting the right leadership talent, training, grooming, and retaining them in the leadership pipeline to ensure a seamless supply of leadership talent to take on corporate challenges with confidence and mettle. Talent leadership is the lifeblood of an organization. It will not only keep the bench strength-ready but also make organizations productive and competitive.
Talent leadership involves picking up the particular people for particular positions through a thorough short listing of the potential performers, training and grooming them as per organizational standards, handling the underperformers, reviewing them periodically through performance appraisals, and keeping them ready in the leadership pipeline.
Talent leadership is a learnable skill any individual can hone. It is all about managing talent effectively and efficiently with leadership skills and abilities. It deals with recruitment to retaining through the leadership pipeline. It is the role of talent leaders to make sure that the right talent is hired initially and retained through training, grooming, motivating, correcting, improving, and bringing as per the benchmarked standards.
Talent leadership starts with recruiting the right talent. Once this is done meticulously most of the job is done. The battle is won twice—first in reel life and second in real life. Similarly, when you want to win the race of talent leadership it is a must to spend maximum time spotting the right people for the right post. Nobody would like to have a round peg in a square hole or a square peg in a round hole. Everybody would like to have a round peg in a round hole and a square peg in a square hole. So is the case with talent leadership. In this context, it is relevant to mention a story where two persons have been provided with axes and are instructed to chop the tree within one hour. The first person began hitting the trunk of the tree very hard continuously. However, the second person took some time to grind the axe and sharpen it. Subsequently, the second person chopped the tree much before the fixed time frame of one hour through smart work while the first person took more than one hour without grinding the axe for chopping the tree through hard work. Therefore, talent management involves smart work rather than hard work. However, when we talk of talent leadership, it is much beyond smart work and that includes wise work where there is a need for vision.
Qualities of Talent Leaders
Talent leaders must have four ingredients such as competence, credibility, commitment, and contribution. The leaders must be competent in their area of interest to have an impact on others. They must have credibility wherein there must be synchronization between theory and practice. It results in winning the confidence and trust of others. They must be committed and dedicated to honing talent. Finally, there must be meaningful takeaways from their contribution.
Talent leaders are continuous learners. They go by the road less traveled. They look at the similarities, but not differences. They have a global mindset with knowledge of others’ cultures. They know something of everything and everything of something. They are happy to serve others and continuously strive to get the best out of others. They are highly passionate and don’t mind who takes credit for their contribution. They take feedback from others for continuous improvement. They are good at giving praise and articulate at giving constructive criticism to others. They have unique mindsets, tool sets, and skill sets. Above all, they want to make a difference in the lives of others.
The Role of Talent Leaders
They must design the right methodology of recruitment based on psychometric instruments. It helps get the right talent for the right posts. They must be involved in the process of induction programs that enable the talent to maintain enthusiasm toward the organization. Usually, employees have higher motivation levels when they join afresh into the organizations and the same fades away gradually. It is basically because of the gap between the expectations of the employees and the realities they encounter after they get inside the organization. The talent leaders’ role is to make sure that the new talent maintains the same level of enthusiasm from recruitment to retirement. After induction, the employees must be put into the right teams and posts to leverage their competencies and capabilities and also to promote their interest in work and organization. Adopting appropriate performance appraisals where the performance of the employees is evaluated helps in finding out the best talent from the rest. It helps in encouraging the real talent and also helps in counseling the talent that doesn’t do well. It is beneficial for those who perform well and bad. These people can be put into suitable training programs for grooming them appropriately. After completion of the training of the talent, the talent leaders must put them in the leadership pipeline as a reserve so that they can occupy positions as and when the need arises. Therefore, talent leaders have a vital role to play from recruitment to retirement of the talent.
To go deeper, the role of talent leaders is to pull up the underperformers and reward the achievers both financially and non-financially. They also give more challenging roles and responsibilities to the achievers to enter into effective zones further. They provide constructive feedback to underperformers for their improvement. They motivate them so that they can come up to the expected standards and grow.
Although the hire-and-fire concept is widely practiced globally, it is desirable to avoid firing people as far as possible. Besides, it is essential to take extra care at the time of recruitment by interviewing the candidates for their suitability, capability, and eligibility.
Challenges
There are two challenges currently in the corporate world. First is to attract the best talent into the organization and second is to retain and reward them. Attracting talent requires a scientific approach to shortlisting resumes and recruiting the right people for the right post. Once this is done, companies must put serious efforts into retaining them rather than the practice of gazing at the glittering birds outside and neglecting the people within their organizations.
There is a slogan in HR ‘Recruit for Attitude and Train for Skill’. Therefore, recruit the talent based on attitude. If the attitude is positive, right, and strong the material is fit for training and grooming with a long-term perspective. In addition, there are several other challenges for organizations presently such as grooming and retaining the right talent. There is also an apprehension in organizations for losing their precious talent to their competitors. Here comes the significance and importance of talent management. Another bigger challenge is the retention of the top leadership. The top leadership quits the organization either for better opportunities elsewhere or to set up their enterprises. Besides, the attitudes of the employees are changing rapidly due to the unpredictable changes in technology. Employees, no longer like to be influenced and managed. In contrast, they like to be led, motivated, and inspired. These days, employees resign from jobs on petty issues because of a lack of compatibility with others and better career opportunities elsewhere. Therefore, managing leadership talent has become a Herculean task globally.
The Potential for Leadership Talent
There is huge potential in the domain of leadership development as companies are craving for leadership talent to tide over the economic downturn. The current global crisis is due to a dearth of leadership talent and talent leadership. It calls for training and grooming the leadership material to meet any kind of eventualities.
Besides, there is huge potential in the domain of leadership in educational institutions. The educational institutions don’t get the right talent who can teach leadership concepts with industrial experience and perspective. Therefore, there is huge potential for both educators and trainers in the area of leadership development.
Do You Buy the Talent or Recruit the Talent?
There is a thin line that separates buying talent and recruiting talent. Formally the companies recruit talent and during this process, they end up buying the talent because the talent comes at a premium. As there is no free lunch in this world, there is no free talent in this world. However, people might work for other motivational factors and reasons and that depends on person to person. Some people work for pride as money alone does not motivate them. If there is no respect people will leave the organization. As per Abraham Maslow’s theory, the needs of people change once they reach a particular level.
Currently, there is a gap between the number of old people leaving and the number of young people entering the organizations. The gap is so wide it is difficult to bridge the gap. Therefore, companies buy talent to fill this gap.
Why does the Motivation of the Employees Sink after some Time?
When employees join the organization afresh, they have higher expectations. They want to prove themselves and make a difference for the organization. However, the enthusiasm fades away for a few employees after some time when they find the gap between their expectations and realities. As people have so many expectations about their life in the initial stage of life to prove themselves during the rest of life, gradually they change themselves during their life journey as they encounter several challenges that are unpredictable. It results in losing focus and interest in their goals. However, few people stick and fight the challenges squarely and come out with flying colors. Similarly, at the workplace, few employees get dejected during their tenure and search elsewhere for employment. In some cases, the organizations might be at fault as they don’t deliver their promises. In some cases, the expectations of the employees are far higher than their capabilities and competencies. Therefore, the solution lies with the employer and employees to strike a balance so that both can gel well for organizational excellence and effectiveness. As you cannot clap with one hand, you need to have two hands to clap, that is from both the employer and employees.
Good leaders motivate and keep people within the company while bad leaders lose good people. It is rightly said that people don’t leave organizations but leave their bad bosses. Sometimes there may not be proper chemistry between the boss and subordinate due to various reasons such as egoism or incompatibility in mindset with each other in terms of behavior and approach resulting in organizational politics. In such a scenario, a third-party team must intervene to change the subordinate to work under some other boss and assess the performance. If things go well, the talented subordinate can be retained as it becomes very clear that the subordinate does not gel with the previous boss. Therefore, there is no quick-fix solution to retain and maintain the motivation levels of the people. It depends on the situation, individual, and case to case. The bottom line is that it is the role of the talent leaders to retain and motivate the talent from beginning to end.
Tools to Retain Top Talent
When trained people leave, they take away clients and trade secrets and it is a big loss for companies. Therefore, it is essential to retain the talent not only to avoid these problems but also to avert any kind of organizational eventualities.
As long as human beings are there, the war for talent will remain. With the growing complexity and uncertainty in the world, it has become a Herculean task to spot the right talent and retain it. It has become very difficult to gauge the expectations of the employees as well.
Leadership at All Levels
We need to focus on leadership development at all levels. There is a myth that organizations must develop leaders at the top level only. The truth is that organizations must develop leaders at all levels. Hence, the onus lies with them to spot the spark of leadership among the people at the initial stage and groom them as leaders gradually.
To develop leaders at all levels, create a leadership framework. Assess people as per the framework. Assessment doesn’t include only performance but behavior as well. After evaluating their performance train them for leadership positions with a long view.
Conclusion
The durability of the organization depends on the ability of the leaders to develop and hone leadership talent and to sustain seamless succession. There is an urgent need for talent leadership at the global level to manage the current complexity and predict the unbridled technology. The researchers, intellectuals, practitioners, and experts in human resources, talent management, and leadership must come forward to address these requirements and promote a new discipline—talent leadership.
About the Author
Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D. is the Father of “Soft Leadership” and the Founder of MSR Leadership Consultants, India. He is an International Leadership Guru with forty-three years of experience and the author of fifty-two books including the award-winning ‘See the Light in You’ URL: https://www.amazon.com/See-Light-You-Spiritual-Mindfulness/dp/1949003132. He has published over 300 papers and articles in prestigious international publications including Leader to Leader, Thunderbird International Business Review, Strategic HR Review, Development and Learning in Organizations, Industrial and Commercial Training, On the Horizon, and Entrepreneur magazine. He is a soldier, entrepreneur, editor, educator, author, explorer, enlightener, researcher, mentor, and philosopher. He is a C-Suite advisor and global keynote speaker. He brings a strategic eye and long-range vision given his multifaceted professional experience including military, teaching, training, research, consultancy, and philosophy. He is passionate about serving and making a difference in the lives of others. He trains a new generation of leaders through leadership education and publications. His vision is to build one million students as global leaders by 2030 URL: http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com/2014/12/professor-m-s-raos-vision-2030-one_31.html. He advocates gender equality globally (#HeForShe). He invests his time in authoring books and blogging on executive education, learning, and leadership. Most of his work is available free of charge on his four blogs including http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com. He is a prolific author and a dynamic, energetic, and inspirational leadership speaker. He can be reached at msrlctrg@gmail.com.
