This is critical for any business, to both succession plan and also to better understand individuals career aspirations.
Clearly performance is a clear metric but think of…
- Who consistently delivers high quality performance?
- Who handles challenges well?
- Who helps to improve others, simply by being there?
- Who can be trusted with increasingly complex issues?
Top talent often shows…
- Strong judgment when working alone
- Learning speed across a range of tasks
- Ownership of problems
- Consistency under pressure
But...Be careful not to confuse, visibility with impact…confidence with competence…busyness with effectiveness. When identifying talent, remember that future potential matters as much as current performance.
Pay attention to people who…
- Learn quickly from mistakes
- Ask unusually thoughtful questions
- Absorb feedback without defensiveness
- Adapt to new ways of working, faster than their colleagues.
Some of the best talent improves everyone around them, which means their ability to…
- Raise standards informally
- Make collaboration easier
- Mentor others naturally
- Bring calm during uncertainty
- Volunteers for additional opportunities
- Creates solutions without being told
- Thinks outside of job descriptions
While all of this is important, rapid improvement is often a stronger predictor than current excellence. Someone at 80% capability improving rapidly may surpass someone stable at 95%. Tenure and talent are not the same thing. Talent is a natural aptitude, an inner quality that emerges effortlessly.
“Unused talents gives you no advantage over someone who has no talent at all”
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
