Leadership is simply complex. As is being a successful leader. Without negating the role and high importance of technical and professional expertise, emotional intelligence, and many other core leadership competencies, the ultimate success of leadership is to influence people to execute the goals and objectives of the organization so profits are realized for maximized sustainability.
The moment a person enters into a leadership position, a cultural "big-bang" effect occurs. The impact of being human enters the culture. Whether it's an internal promotion, an external hire, a positive or a negative, the impact of humanity creates change.
According to a recent Human Capital Institute study, the top five workforce challenges — attracting and retaining skilled professional workers, developing capability, retaining performers, developing succession depth and shortages of leadership talent — are critical to “address talent issues promptly” but also to “do it right the first time.” Experiencing leadership excellence requires a culture of intentional cognition, coaching and learning, as well as a unified organizational and stakeholder effort to support, develop, and nurture leaders in their journey to successfully achieve their goals and continue to be competent and effective leaders for the organization.
The investment in executive and leadership development is critical in keeping pace with the change that innovation and disruption bring to organizations. Without this investment, organizations experience low engagement, decreased productivity, lower profits, customer dissatisfaction and brand erosion. Lack of intentional investment also fosters stagnant work cultures, where employees experience status quo, distrust, micromanagement and high operational costs, which lead to churn and stakeholder dissatisfaction.
Just like any organizational strategy, talent management programs are specifically curated to maximize leadership effectiveness and business success. Coaching, development, workforce planning and organizational effectiveness programs nurture, infuse and thread the human factor into the key roles and responsibilities that create value, growth and opportunity for each leader throughout the organization.
As organizations continue to transform their systems and processes to keep pace with existing disruption and innovation, the future state of their workforce has become a state of mind. Individuals are seeking to be hired into companies that afford them continuous learning, empowerment, and more purposeful and collaborative experiences. Developing talent management programs that foster and develop leadership and workforce talent, and support and enhance the culture of this futuristic organization, requires key competencies from existing leadership. This connectivity in the human age approach is requiring organizations to be hyper-focused on developing innovative and competitive solutions for acquiring and retaining top talent.
Here are 11 talent management trends that feed the capability of great leadership and thriving organizations.
1. Have organizational character. Reference and align the corporate vision, values and mission. Know and understand the current/future state of the organization and industry. Integrate strategy and aspirations for any innovation, disruption and digital strategies. Be prepared and flexible as the progression of transformation takes place and begins to thrive.
2. Adopt a growth mindset. A scalable and expanding customer and values-driven mindset is a living, breathing thing. It begins with the existing leadership of the organization and permeates throughout the organization, its functions, and its stakeholders. It is not only led but managed and habitually normal; it is culture. This mindset connects the organization to the people who matter.
3. Have ethics. Good business practices create good business value.
4. Rethink the HR lifecycle. Address the future of automation and technology, analytics, service models, governance, etc. to ensure it is affording the organization value — now and in the future. The future of talent management strategies are flexible, people-oriented and reliable.
5. Embrace technology. Digital, automation and self-service technologies are creating change in talent management services.
6. Champion the strategy. Existing leadership teams should collaborate to prioritize, support and lead the success of the organization’s talent management strategy.
7. Conduct assessments. Align talent to future value. Develop individual career frameworks and leadership plans for effective insight, growth and success.
8. Assess and redesign talent management programs to support all levels of leadership in the organization. Keep them people-centric through experiential learning to ensure they are ready to lead. These programs should support and measure cultural diversity, creativity and legacy, leadership and team excellence, brand equity, employee engagement and productivity, and revenue prosperity.
9. Develop your workforce. With scarcity in talent and the ever-growing desire for job security, it is critical organizations provide professional development programs to up-skill and reskill their workforce. Enabling the workforce to thrive ensures positive and lasting employee experience and engagement, resulting in positive productivity and profitability.
10. Redefine metrics. Redefine traditional performance management to a coaching culture. Align metrics to mirror the organization's mission, vision, strategic initiatives, transformational goals and milestones, all while streamlining incentives and rewards accordingly.
11. Create a brain trust. Develop an internal and external data source that attracts social interaction from employees, stakeholders and suppliers. Utilize the data to analyze, validate and identify innovation, disruption and key business information to support leadership decisions and corporate strategy.
These talent management trends fuel human connectivity into organizational strategies, systems and processes. They exponentially offer effective platforms for connecting the most vital resources of business success: people, systems and process (people being No. 1). The organizational culture will strengthen, leaders will excel, and authentic leaders will be more easily identified and recruited. They will flock to join an organization with a strong culture, customer loyalty and brand equity. The environment will afford leaders the opportunity to create value, growth and be a part of the organization’s legacy. Employee experience and engagement will provide higher levels of contentment and will benefit from the agile approach to productivity and work-life balance. The organization will realize customer loyalty, superior talent, higher productivity and profitability, sustainability and stakeholder satisfaction.
Knowing simply that change is constant and complex, organizations need strong leaders to sustain their ability to be profitable over long periods of time, and talent management is critical to culture, strategy and profitability, answer this question: Are you ready to maximize leadership effectiveness and drive positive and lasting business success for you, your team and your organization?
