Leadership development is all about people and the future. Anne Fulton outlined some of the challenges in her excellent post. “It’s High Time We Start Redefining Talent for the 22nd Century.” One observation caught my eye.
“Astonishingly, only 5 percent of organizations attempted to adjust their conception of what ‘talent’ meant for their organization to align with strategic aims and coming business challenges.”
Really? That means we’ve got two problems. Language is one.
One word, many definitions
We use the word “talent” for too many things. It can mean “potential” or “ability.” We even use “talent” instead of “people.”
Leadership development is about people
There is no talent without people. And people are complex, emotional creatures, not pegs that fit into pre-defined holes.
Talent is situation specific
There is no generic “talent.” Whether a person will do great work for you depends on a lot of things. One is the specific job to be done. Then there’s the company culture and the boss. None of that stands still.
Change is the reality
People and organizations change. You’re not the same person you were yesterday, let alone five years ago. The place where you work is changing, too. So is the competitive environment. And new technology is showing up by the hour.
Moving targets everywhere
Leadership development happens in the midst of the complex realities we call life and business. We have to meet the twin challenges of helping people use their skills well today and develop so they can handle tomorrow’s different work well.
We’ll do that better if we concentrate on helping and developing people. And we’ll do that better if we eliminate the word “talent” from our leadership development vocabulary.
