Every field has its terms of art. So we talk about “acquiring talent” and “talent development” and “leadership development.” That’s fine when it’s shorthand that helps us communicate with other specialists more easily. It’s dangerous when it becomes a way of thinking.
Along the way we’ve adopted the language of procurement and used it to define what we do. So we “source talent” instead of hiring people. But there’s a difference between the bolts and purchasing agent buys and the people you hire. The bolts are all the same. Every person is unique.
That means that every development challenge is unique, too. Talent is not a disembodied entity to be managed and developed. If there’s talent in your company, it’s in and owned by individual people. When they go home or on vacation or out the door, they take their talent with them.
The talent development challenge is really a people development challenge. We’re not talking batch processing here. Talent development is a one person at a time proposition. That means there are three things we can do to make talent development better.
Talent development for everyone. Every human being has potential to do better. Part of our job should be helping that happen.
Individualized talent development. People are unique. Their development and development plans should be unique.
The supervisor is key. Select your supervisors wisely. Train them. Support them. And make people development an important part of their job.
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[…] This new business model encourages much more personal responsibility, and requires ongoing personal development. It means ongoing feedback and recognition, 360 degree reviews and self-evaluations become even more important. Goal setting and development planning need to be a collaborative, ongoing exercise. […]