I was going over possible articles for my weekly pointers to “Top Talent Development Posts” when it hit me. There were posts about programs and trends and technology, but one thing was missing. It’s perhaps the most important thing: judgement. Without good judgement, all the supporting systems in the world are pretty useless.
We say that judgement is important, but too often we don’t act like it. Managers leave “talent development” to HR. Cultures glorify operational success but not talent development success.
Here’s your wake-up call. People, complete with their knowledge and relationships, are the prime source of sustainable competitive advantage, so making good judgements about people is vital if you want to prosper. The stumbling block is that developing good people judgement takes time and work and discipline. You may not be able to change your company, but there’s no reason why you can’t become a top-drawer talent developer.
Start with self-evaluation. In organizations who do talent development really well, managers at all levels devote between ten and thirty percent of their time to talent management. How do you measure up? There are no shortcuts to good judgement.
Gather impressions while ye may. Observe how people perform. Talk with them about that performance. There’s no shortcut to this, either. You have to go and observe. A lot. With time, you’ll develop a sense of how your team members are doing and what the future might hold for them.
Express your impressions in whole sentences and ruthlessly root out the buzzwords. You can’t make a good judgement based on buzzwords or any single word descriptor. Don’t say that Tom is “innovative” or that Janet has a lot of emotional intelligence. Instead, describe what they say and do and how it affects the team and the work.
Test your impressions. Discuss them with the person involved and with other managers. Usually judgements get sharper when you hone them in conversation with others.
The bottom line is that good judgement about people takes time effort to develop and to get right. It’s not easy or quick, but it’s amazingly powerful.
I was just thinking the other day that good judgment is one of the most important attributes a manager can have, although not specifically in relation to talent management – I was thinking more along the lines of knowing who to listen to. But it’s all the same thing, good managers have to be good judges of people.
Making a good judgment is when we are able to exclude stereotypes and self-centric interests. When a person’s home-county values influence the assessment of a foreign culture or a coworker, the self-reference criterion (SRC) is at work. Culture in developed countries might perceive other societies to be unmotivated because they fail to adopt new technologies or social customs. Here is where a discussion with other involved people might pour light to a right and good judgment about another person’s talents. For me being from a different culture and going thru an American University helped me to understand more about different cultures and personality types.