In today’s competitive world organisations cannot just recruit a manager who will simply ‘fit the job’ and leave them to it.  Business and organisations have to continually change and develop and their managers need to change, grow and ‘move with the times’ as well.

To make the most out of your new recruits and burgeoning talent, follow these key steps.

  1. Make talent development a key issue for the Board.  The Board should be able to clearly articulate the strategy of the organisation, where it is going and therefore the types of skills and behaviours its managers will need in the future.
  2. Set up a mechanism to identify the potential future leaders of the organisation in the next 5-10 years. Set out the leadership training and development that will be provided to support your in house talent?
  3. Be clear with your managers and staff what it is they need to learn, (don’t just assume that they should work on their weaknesses), identify what it is that will add the greatest value to their performance.
  4. Provide challenging work as assignments for your talent to grow.  Generally people will raise their performance to what is being requested of them.  This type of assignment will help you identify the true high flyers.
  5. Don’t assume that management training is the answer to all your development needs.  Provide a range of options to help managers and staff learn, such as coaching and mentoring.
  6. Provide opportunities for self direction and self learning to encourage talent to take responsibility for their own development.
  7. Ensure that there is a business case for the talent development programme. Ultimately the organisation should ask ‘What is it that we want to see differently from this person or group of people?’ In this way it is possible to monitor the impact of development on individual performance and also on the company’s bottom line.

Ultimately the long term success of an organisation resides with the abilities of their staff, managers and leaders.  Surely, talent development programmes are far too an important business issue to be left to the training and HR specialists?