Three Ways to Elevate Talent
Your organization can’t outperform its talent. As you grow and your organization becomes more complex, it becomes necessary to level up your talent. Current employees may need to step up into new responsibilities and new hires with different skills will be required. There are essentially three ways to elevate your team:
Hire Better Talent
Simple enough, right!? Hire talent that is better than the current talent. The challenge is that recruiting, hiring, and training new people takes a lot of skill, effort and organizational capacity. We advocate doing the hard work on the front end to save a lot of heartache and headache on the back end. Here’s what we mean by hard work on the front end…
Know thyself. Be really clear on your organization’s identity. Understand your culture (who you are) and your vision and strategy (where you want to go). Once you’re clear on these, you can readily identify those who have the skills you need, are aligned with your culture, and will thrive in your organization.
Get the role right. Never dust off the job description from the last search and use it. Each time you go to market you have an opportunity. Ask questions about what has changed since the last person was hired. What skills would be helpful? Is there a skills gap on the team that this role might provide an opportunity to fill? Does the role need to be split – did the last person do the work of 2 people?
Spend the time on the front end to work with key stakeholders to develop the position. We advocate building a scorecard with key objectives for the role to accomplish. Enlisting the help of key stakeholders who will work closely with this role aligns everyone around the same set of expectations which is critical. You’ll want everyone singing from the same hymnbook in front of the candidate. Plus, a scorecard helps you to set clear expectations with the new employee when they start.
Develop the Talent You Have
A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. If you have people who have passed that culture hurdle, who are bought into your vision, and have potential, then by all means, invest in them! Help them to move up and contribute more value to the organization.
Training and development comes in many forms:
Functional training (what I need to know to do my job, ie, software, safety, process, ops)
Employee development (optimizing my skills and strengths so can I do my job better)
Leadership training (learning how to lead myself and others at the company)
Mentoring/Coaching (learning from those ahead of me)
Professional certifications (external courses that contribute to building my skillset)
Each of these has an important role to play in helping employees up their game. Certainly, the more knowledge and experience an employee has, the more value they are likely to add. But there’s another benefit of investing in training and development – retention. Employees who are learning and who feel like the company is investing in them are more likely to stick around longer which increases your ROI on the training investment and contributes to organizational stability.
Liberate Poor Performers
“Hire slow and fire fast” is the goal. Performance management processes are critical to setting clear expectations and identifying poor performers early. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone who regretted terminating an employee – only how long it took to make the decision.
Poor performers generally fall into two buckets: coachable and not coachable. Those who are coachable are those who may lack the skills or experience to execute on a certain task, but can, with training or mentorship, get there. Those who are not coachable are those who violate the culture and the general rules of work. For example, a toxic employee might meet all of her goals, but leave the team demoralized and unproductive. Behavioral issues are difficult to coach and require a licensed therapist which managers are not. For this reason, we believe that any scorecard or job description should set forth not only the specific work goals to accomplish, but also the cultural expectations of the role. Most any hiring manager will tell you that the most challenging people they have terminated are those who were out of step with the culture.
I cannot emphasize enough that liberating talent isn’t just about the poor performer. Poor performers are a drag on the entire organization. Their inability to pull their weight and/or their negative behaviors put extra pressure on the top performers. Those who perform well often resent the poor performers and morale suffers. The most common emotion people report after someone on their team has been terminated is relief.
My sincere belief is that everyone deserves to find a place where they can thrive – where they can add value and be valued. When people are not positioned (for any number of reasons) to thrive, then it is profoundly important to set them free.
For more information on how we can help you elevate your talent, visit our website at www.PeopleCap.com.
