Talent Development

In last few weeks, I have been in midst of some ‘talent development’ work.

A few thoughts have been running through my mind.

Someone is identified as ‘talent’ because s/he will be demonstrating differentiated performance consistently, behaviors/abilities that company is betting on in future, and/or demonstrating behaviors/abilities for higher order/critical roles for company.

Development options charted out for a 'talent' have to reflect atleast last two of above.

These options again can be in form of classroom trainings, development experiences (e.g: projects), and/or learning for leaders/coaching/mentoring.

What we attempted, as a first step, was learning from leaders.

We had 3 leaders speaking to ‘talent’ and what they left them with were clarity, inspiration, motivation, and reflection. Additionally having all ‘talent’ in one room provided them an opportunity to ‘extend personal networks’.

Question I am left with is ‘what’s next’.

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Sourav

 

Mentoring and Coaching

What feels more empowering - being told the answer or being told how to find the answer?

I will go for the ´how´. My natural inclination is go to for the ´how´. Knowing the how increases my capability to deal with similar situations in the future.

What's the flip side of this approach? It usually takes longer to find the solution and usually involves repetitions/ iterations.


What do you do when there is a time crunch (need for quick action) or when cost of failure is high or when ecosystem is such that a lot of pre-knowledge is required to figure out how things work?

I think a combination of the answer and how to find the answer, in the future, might be beneficial in such cases.

Hence both mentoring and coaching have their place in organizations. 

I don´t think it´s a question of which approach is better.  Rather the question is 'which approach is more appropriate in a particular situation'.

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Sourav