DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP AND TALENT FOR ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE

Title: Developing Leadership and Talent for

Organizational Performance

Author: Melinda Irene Netto

Affiliation: Student- MBA 2nd Year, St. Joseph’s P.G.

College, King-Koti Hyderabad.

E-mail ID: [email protected]

Mobile: +919502282706

ABSTRACT

Leadership and talent development are without doubt two

of the most critical issues in the field of Human Resources

these days. As Jack Welch famously quoted, “the team with the

best players wins.” As a business leader, you are only as good

as the team you lead. Hiring the right people can make the

difference between success and failure, and between mediocrity

and greatness. Talent builders identify the organizational

capabilities and talent that organization need to perform at a

high level in today’s environment. Leaders need to assess

their talent against present and future projected

requirements. Leaders who address succession, career planning,

and talent mobility with information and foresight have a

ready supply of successors groomed by strong talent

development efforts. Such leaders contribute talent across

departments and geographies, enabling the organization to more

rapidly fill business needs. Business leaders who can

effectively balance business objectives with talent mobility

strategies are more highly regarded both by senior executives

and peers. When done right, these talent management strategies

can have a dramatic impact on revenue. The main tools for

talent management development and success are talent

intelligence- data, insight, and decision support at the point

of action. Hence this paper focuses on strategies and tools

required for developing leadership and talent for the

organization performance.

Keywords

1. Leadership

2. Talent development

3. Strategies, Tools

4. Talent management

DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP AND TALENT FOR ORGANISATIONAL

PERFORMANCE

In order to understand what a leadership strategy is, we

first have to be clear about what we mean by leadership.

Leadership begins with individuals in leadership positions,

but it does not end there. The ability of an organization to

accomplish its goals does not depend solely on the force of

will of a single great leader, or even upon the effectiveness

of the organization’s chain of command. These things are

important, but don’t in and of themselves help us understand

why some organizations succeed where others fail. The changing

nature of the workforce and the dramatic rise in

organizational complexity (with many organizations shifting to

matrix management and other more organic configurations) has

necessitated a more collaborative outlook vis-à-vis

organizational leadership. Moreover the greater dependency on

technologies and the rise of distributed work arrangements

have placed new demands on how leaders interact with their

people. A distributed view of leadership is now on the rise,

shifting the focus from the traditional single leader to an

intricate and complex web of leaders who possess a range of

abilities and experiences necessary to ensure that the

leadership function is carried out to the benefit of the wider

organization.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that the key to

successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

Leadership is defined not by what a single leader does but as

the ability to collaborate, motivate and to manage networks.

Today hierarchy is out and influencing skills are in.

Contemporary leaders don’t force people to follow-they invite

people on a journey.

In order to have an empowering influence on their people, a

new set of qualities, going beyond traditional managerial

skills and knowledge, is needed. 21st century leadership

requires a deep understanding of the nature of influence

processes, an understanding of the forces of cooperation, and

the ability to build collaborative cultures. These leaders

must also lead by pathos through the creation of a shared

understanding, engaging and inspiring their people, and paying

attention to their professional and personal growth. Hence,

leadership is becoming more enabling, participative and

distributive in nature as opposed to remaining directive and

performing.

DEVELOPMENT OF LEADERSHIP

Most organizations will not need the “Lone Ranger” type

of leader as much as a leader who can motivate and coordinate

a team-based approach. Today, effective leadership is commonly

viewed as central to organizational success, and more

importance is placed on leadership development than ever

before. Developing “more and better” individual leaders is no

longer the sole focus of leadership development, although it

remains a critical aspect. Increasingly, leadership is defined

not as what the leader does but rather as a process that

engenders and is the result of relationships—relationships

that focus on the interactions of both leaders and

collaborators instead of focusing on only the competencies of

the leaders. Leadership development practices based on this

paradigm are more difficult to design and implement than those

that have been popular for the last several decades in which

the objective was to train leaders to be good managers.

Development today means providing people opportunities to

learn from their work rather than taking them away from their

work to learn. A growing recognition that leadership

development involves more than just developing individual

leaders has now led to a greater focus on the context in which

leadership is developed, thoughtful consideration about how to

best use leadership competencies, and work/life balance

issues. Future trends include exciting potential advances in

globalization, technology, return on investment (ROI), and new

ways of thinking about the nature of leadership and leadership

development.

Leadership development initiatives today typically offer

performance support and real world application of skills

through such methods as training programs, coaching and

mentoring, action learning, and developmental assignments.

Combining instruction with a real business setting helps

people gain crucial skills and allows the organizations to

attack relevant, crucial, real-time issues. The goal of

leadership development ultimately involves action not

knowledge. State of the art leadership development now occurs

in the context of ongoing work initiatives that are tied to

strategic business imperatives (Dotlich & Noel, 1998; Moxley &

O’Connnor Wison, 1998).

DEVELOPMENT OF TALENT

“It’s very odd to me. The assets walk home at night. If

the people are your most important asset, you ought to develop

them. It’s Goldman’s philosophy that not only do people have

to be developed, it ends up being a huge competitive

advantage.”

Steve Kerr

Chief Learning

Officer

Goldman Sachs

The following statement captures the underpinning of any

effective talent strategy:

“What’s needed is a deep-rooted conviction, among business

unit heads and line leaders, that people really matter — that

leaders must develop the capabilities of employees, nurture

their careers, and manage the performance of individuals and

teams.”

Simply put, leaders are responsible for developing the talent

in their organizations. Yet, while many acknowledge its

importance, few deliver the coaching and training at scale to

develop their people.

Talent has become extremely popular in recent years. There are

a growing number of talent shows on television showcasing the

incredible artistic performances of sometimes extremely

unlikely candidates. Talent in this regard appears to be seen

as an exemplary skill that some people possess: something

Ericsson and Smith (1991) researched and concluded in the

early 1990s. Malcolm Gladwell (2010) popularized his findings:

talent is equal to ten years or 10,000 hours invested in a

specific field. Consequently, you could rephrase the

individual definition of talent to be about focus, attention

and dedication: ‘‘Choose any area (Sitskoorn, 2008) in which

you want to increase your talent, invest at least 10 years,

and ‘presto’, you’re a talent!’’

Management science takes another perspective on talent. For

both profit and non-profit organizations talent has become

‘‘serious business’’, because talent is imperative for the

livelihood of organizations (Lawler, 2008). Optimizing talent

determines whether the organization in question grows,

diverges or reorganizes. From this perspective, quite a narrow

view of talent is born, one where regular and careful talent

reviews will yield an ever increasingly accurate definition of

‘‘the right stuff’’. Especially when those in executive

positions within a company are about to vacate their jobs –

for whatever reason – there will be a substantial investment

to find just the right successor, within or beyond the

organization.

Create a culture of talent development

The most important competencies of leaders are their ability

to build talent. In order to create a culture of talent

development an effective leader should:

Figure 1.1: Creating a culture for Developing Talent in an

Organization

1. Act as a role model. Be transparent about your own need

to learn and develop and share how you are able to do it.

Embrace vulnerability: leaders are never more powerful

than when they are shown to be learning.

2. Reinforce the value of learning. Go beyond the baseline

conversation about goals. Ask about what they want to

accomplish and what they feel their gaps are. When

Talent Developme

nt

Act as a role model

Reinforce the value

of learning

Build sustainabl

e processes to support developmen

t

Reinforce shared values

Leverage problems

as opportunit

ies

someone completes an assignment, celebrate both the

outcome and the learning, especially if the assignment

wasn’t completed as smoothly as everyone would’ve liked.

3. Build sustainable processes to support development.

Managers should be expected to coach and develop their

people. At a minimum, everyone knows what areas need to

improve, and for those with particularly high potential,

career tracks are developed that give them a sense of

where they can go inside the organization.

4. Reinforce shared values. Employees should be able to link

their everyday tasks and responsibilities to the values

in the organization. People need to understand why what

they do is important.

5. Leverage problems as opportunities for real world

learning and development. What’s an acceptable failure

needs to be clarified and that way, by incorporating

stretch assignments, employees can seek out challenges

where they can develop without feeling like mistakes will

set them back in their career or jeopardize their job.

Learning organizations see problems as opportunities.

STRATEGIES AND TOOLS TO DEVELOP LEADERSHIP TALENT

If the objective of talent management is to ensure that

organizations have the right leaders in the right roles when

they need them, then it is probably safe to say that for many

the process is falling short. Recent research by Hay Group and

the Management Consultancies Association revealed that less

than a quarter of business leaders believed their

organization’s talent management processes would deliver the

leaders they need. In fact, as many as 70 per cent felt that

their talent management needed a change.

For many organizations the problem lies in taking a tactical

rather than strategic approach, often because they lack the

dedicated resources to develop a thorough understanding of

what their organization will demand from its people in the

future. Instead of identifying – and delivering – exactly what

the business actually needs, they focus on generically

enhancing the overall supply of talent in the hope that this

will meet future demand. A strategic approach to talent

management judges activities across several factors.

Figure 1.2: Strategy and Tools to Develop Leadership Talent

across organizations.

1. Understand the key elements. You should consider four

questions. How is the business likely to be structured in

future – will there be a change in strategic direction,

new operating models or new routes to market? What impact

Developing

Leadership

Talent

Key Elements

Business

Strategy

Talent Pool

Talent Growth

Talent Flow

Focus

will this have on the shape and number of roles required?

What type of leaders will the business therefore require

to deliver future strategic objectives? How does this

match up against the company’s current supply of talent,

and is there a gap between supply and demand?

2. Ask yourself: ‘So what?’ Companies need to understand

exactly what they are developing talent for, by decoding

their business strategy as described in step one – a task

rarely addressed when strategic goals are being set. Once

strategy is defined in terms of the people needed to

deliver it, the stage is set for defining the

accountabilities, the behavioral expectations, the

interdependencies and the number and type of leaders

required. Yet most organizations fail to carry out this

critical step or pay inadequate attention to it.

3. Know your talent pool. To understand the people you have

and the people you need, an organization talent review

(OTR) is crucial. Many organizations are familiar with

this stage of the talent management process, but tend to

contract out this assessment to third parties. Assessment

centers and externally benchmarked OTRs can provide an

objective view. However, using these can hinder ownership

of, and action on, the results. With this in mind, we are

seeing more and more examples of “talent benchmarking

forums”. These entail analysis of externally benchmarked

data from direct reports and peers on competencies,

leadership styles and the climate a leader creates,

alongside what the organization already knows about its

leaders. They consider performance, functional and

technical competencies, career track record, ambition,

mobility, learning agility, adaptability and potential

career derailers. Through debating and challenging

diverse viewpoints on these aspects of an organization’s

leaders, you can make more robust judgments about talent.

This, in turn, will lead you to become more willing to

act on the findings. You will be more likely to take

risks to place people with high potential in “stretch”

roles.

4. Grow your talent. The next step is to close the gap

between demand and supply. You should buy in talent only

where absolutely necessary. The best organizations

enhance their ability to meet future role demands through

leadership development and careful, supported placements.

They invest heavily and regularly in growing talent from

within and developing people for the long term. They work

hard to avoid the risk of “tissue rejection” inherent in

imported leaders. You should aim to grow talent using

role moves across business units, so that people with

high potential experience the challenge of delivering

beyond their technical comfort zones before earning

promotion. This forces them to fall back on – and

therefore build – their innate leadership skills, before

larger roles prevent them from taking such risks.

5. Make talent flow. By optimizing the deployment of talent

across the organization, you will enable future leaders

to make the greatest possible impact. You can achieve

this through talent benchmarking forums, cross-divisional

brokerage of talent and action-orientated succession

planning. You should be aiming to ensure that talent

flows to where it is most needed and where it can best

grow. Successful organizations give accountability for

talent management jointly to line managers and HR. They

encourage action rather than merely analysis, through

upward reporting on what has been done to improve the

stock of talent and how leaders intend to enhance their

supply to meet changing business demands. Critically,

they also ensure that other HR levers, such as reward and

performance management, are all pulling in the same

direction. Getting this flow right requires an effective

talent infrastructure. Secretive line manager

nominations, outsourced assessment centers where little

is known about an individual’s day-to-day performance,

talent-hoarding by business units and “tick-the-box”

succession planning are not helpful.

6. Don’t lose focus. We typically find that most

organizations are comfortable with the “know” and “grow”

stages of the talent management process, but fall down

when it comes to decoding strategy – the “so what?” step

– and creating a “flow” of talent around the

organization. Addressing these issues allows talent

management to evolve so that it becomes more strategic

and a real source of competitive advantage.

Key points

• Many organizations focus on generally enhancing talent

supply without having a clear definition of their future

demand needs.

• When these are clear, review your workforce,

organizational needs and structure to identify talent gaps.

• Grow talent by identifying suitable role moves across

business units that will challenge people with high

potential beyond their comfort zones.

• Talent should both grow and be deployed most effectively

in areas where it can make the most difference.

TALENT MANAGEMENT

Talent Management is a natural evolution of HR. It is a

series of business processes -- not a "product" or "solution"

you can buy. Organizations we speak to are focused on

different elements -- driven by their maturity and the urgent

business problems they face today. While a few mature

organizations have dealt with most of the processes above,

most organizations focus on several of the key elements and

build an integrated approach over time.

Additionally, Talent Management is a "forward-looking"

function. Not only should talent management improve your

organization's flexibility and performance, it should give you

the information and tools to plan for growth, change,

acquisitions, and critical new product and service

initiatives.

Organizations are made up of people: people creating value

through proven business processes, innovation, customer

service, sales, and many other important activities. As an

organization strives to meet its business goals, it must make

sure that it has a continuous and integrated process for

recruiting, training, managing, supporting, and compensating

these people. The following chart shows the complete process:

Figure 1.3: Talent Management- A Process

1. Workforce Planning: Integrated with the business plan,

this process establishes workforce plans, hiring plans,

compensation budgets, and hiring targets for the year.

2. Recruiting: Through an integrated process of recruiting,

assessment, evaluation, and hiring the business brings

people into the organization.

3. Onboarding: The organization must train and enable

employees to become productive and integrated into the

company more quickly.

Job rolesJob

descriptions

Competency Models

Workforce Planning

Recruiting

Onboarding

Performance

Management

Training and

Performance support

Succession Planning

Compensation and

Benefits

Critical skills Gap analysis

4. Performance Management: By using the business plan, the

organization establishes processes to measure and manage

employees. This is a complex process in itself.

5. Training and Performance Support: Of course this is a

critically important function. Here we provide learning

and development programs to all levels of the

organization. This function itself is evolving into a

continuous support function.

6. Succession Planning: As the organization evolves and

changes, there is a continuous need to move people into

new positions. Succession planning, a very important

function, enables managers and individuals to identify

the right candidates for a position. This function also

must be aligned with the business plan to understand and

meet requirements for key positions 3-5 years out. While

this is often a process reserved for managers and

executives, it is more commonly applied across the

organization.

7. Compensation and Benefits: Clearly this is an integral

part of people management. Here organizations try to tie

the compensation plan directly to performance management

so that compensation, incentives, and benefits align with

business goals and business execution.

8. Critical Skills Gap Analysis: This is a process we

identify as an important, often overlooked function in

many industries and organizations. While often done on a

project basis, it can be "business-critical." For

example, today industries like the Federal Government,

Utilities, Telecommunications, and Energy are facing

large populations which are retiring. How do you identify

the roles, individuals, and competencies which are

leaving? What should you do to fill these gaps? We call

this "critical talent management" and many organizations

are going through this now.

IMPACT OF LEADERSHIP AND TALENT ON ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE

Impact of Leadership on Organizational Performance

Former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy and management guru Ram

Charan have identified seven key leadership behaviors that

have direct and measurable impact on organizational

performance. By practicing these critical behaviors, leaders

can foster effective execution in their organizations while

avoiding the trap of micromanagement.

1. Know Your People and Your Business

Leaders should not only know their business, they should

live it. They must be engaged in the day-to-day realities

of the business. This means having a personal connection

with the business and with the people in it. Detailed

business reviews allow the leader to understand the

fundamentals of daily operations, uncover problems,

capitalize on strengths and truly get to know the people.

In addition, it affords employees the opportunity to get

to know the leader and understand the direction the

organization is taking.

2. Insist on Realism

Leaders often are blind to the weaknesses of their

organizations. They tend to understand the strengths, but

are reluctant to find out what could be improved.

Moreover, subordinates tend to stress the positive in

communications with higher-ups. To overcome this, leaders

must be relentless in understanding how to improve their

organizations and in learning how they stack up against

competitors.

3. Set Clear Goals And Priorities

Successful leaders focus on a few key priorities–the

“Critical Few”–that everyone can understand and pursue.

Too many organizations have long lists of priorities that

never get accomplished. Success comes from execution of

three or four high-impact goals.

4. Follow Through

Many organizations perform poorly because of lack of

follow through. Successful leaders make clear

assignments, hold people accountable and establish

regular review processes to track progress.

5. Reward Doers

People perform well when they are rewarded for their

efforts. Yet many organizations do a poor job of linking

rewards to performance. They make too little

differentiation in salary increases, bonuses and stock

options between super stars and those who are not.

Successful leaders reward top performers for their

achievements and ensure that there is a clear connection

between performance and compensation throughout the

organization.

6. Expand Your People’s Capabilities

Leaders who want their organizations to be successful

spend considerable time and effort in expanding the

capabilities of their people, and coaching is their

single most effective method. Effective coaching involves

watching people in action and providing specific

feedback. Feedback should include examples of behaviors

that are good as well as examples of behaviors that need

to be changed. Skillful coaches ask questions that cause

people to think and to discover.

7. Know Yourself

Leaders of high-performing organizations have emotional

fortitude. They are able to be honest with themselves,

they deal honestly with business and organizational

realities, and they give people candid feedback. They

possess the confidence to accept points of view that are

different from their own and to deal with conflict.

Leaders with emotional fortitude practice self-mastery.

In addition, they are authentic, self-aware and humble.

Therefore successful organizational performance relies on the

proper behavior from managers and employees. Leadership can be

an evolutionary process in companies. Business owners who

provide leadership can transform an employee from a worker

completing tasks to a valuable team member. Leadership skills

can help change an employee’s mentality by instilling an

ownership mindset. Employees who believe they have a direct

owner-style relationship with the organization often find ways

to improve their attitude and productivity.

Leadership can help a business maintain singular focus on its

operations. Larger business organizations can suffer from too

many individuals attempting to make business decisions.

Business owners can use leadership skills to get managers and

employees on the same page and refocus on the original goal.

Leadership skills can also help correct poor business

practices or internal conflicts between employees.

Impact of Talent on Organizational Performance

Managing talent is a powerful and important trend across the

field of Human Resources and Learning and Development. It

changes the way you are organized, how you use technology, how

your resources are allocated, and how you measure what you do.

If you are a training manager, director, or CLO, talent

management will impact your role. You may be asked to

integrate your learning programs with the company's

performance management initiative.

Many organizations have a new job: The VP of Talent

Management. This role typically includes Learning &

Development, Performance and Competency Management, and

Succession Planning functions. This is believed that this

integrated “HRD” function is an important evolution in the way

HR organizations are run.

CONCLUSION

A deep capacity for leadership can be a source of competitive

advantage and can help an organization achieve its strategic

goals and realize its mission. This paper has addressed the

aspects of leadership development, talent development, the

various strategic tools that helps developing leadership

talent in an organization and the process of talent

management. It is important to reiterate that there is no one

best way to plan for change or to develop a workforce. Those

decisions need to be made in the context of the organization’s

strategy, mission and culture. A clarification of what

“talent” means in your organization by formulating a crystal

clear policy fulfills talent development efforts. Talent

management should be perceived as an integrated process and

start organizing it as a coherent effort: from strategic

resource planning, to recruitment and assessment, pipelining,

career planning, career development, engagement, mentoring and

coaching and (last but not least) learning and development.

Effective leadership is necessary in order to build a scenario

wherein the leaders are looked upon as role models and through

this the organizational know-how of talent is enhanced and

business insight and accelerate their development. Leadership

talent harnesses the power of the talent pool, because talents

working in teams under an effective leadership could offer the

company a huge and largely untapped cognitive surplus that

could aid organizational development.

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