Perspective on Talent and Leadership Responsibility – Part 1

In the previous articles I have spent a lot of time talking about what they can do for their own growth and success. The limitation with this focus, whilst good enabling the individual to develop self, is that it may ignore the role of the leadership. The reason I focus on that aspect here is to share what I think is one of the most critical leadership, not management, responsibilities: developing talent. It will also enable us to think questions to ask in order to see if an organisation has the culture and leaders with an affinity for this aspect.

One of the major flaws with the creation of layers of management in organisations is that a lot of managers start to believe that they “own” the people who are in the units or divisions. Through this thinking, they see themselves as having the ultimate responsibility for these people’s careers and growth. Negatively, they also think, when they may not work well with someone, they have the right to stunt their growth. In an era where organisations rely so much on the talent of individuals, I see these behaviours as some that have such a negative impact on the life of an organisation and its ability to compete. In many organisations’ architecture, this problem gets super-reinforced by the general reliance of HR Talent-management specialists on the feedback of the line manager. This thinking is so flawed also because an organisation thinks it promotes people into being managers on the basis of their ability to do so.  Although many organisations profess to use  360⁰ feedback, often it is infused with such levels of subjectivity as to be no worth the paper it is written on. What most organisations tend to suffers from is no different from what they tend to with their own customers, which is not being able to analyse and connect the multiplicity of data that they may have about their customer. This often results in a customer being framed in such a way that the organisations’ solutions never address the core issues the customer faces.

To illustrate the challenge and responsibility, I use football, which is a matter very close to my heart. Most successful football clubs will have a coach or manager with the ultimate responsibility of selecting the team, and designing tactical and strategic approaches for games and tournaments as relevant. This manager will have assistants, who, because of their specific skills and experience, will play a particular role to enable the manager to arrive at the best strategic and tactical decisions. This manager will also rely on a system of talent scouts that the club will have, to identify talent that may be coming from the club’s development structures, or to analyse potential players from other teams that could add value to the club’s objectives. It never is the case that they will rely on only one person to be able to that, and they also put in place the infrastructure that will enable them to have this continuous flow of talent. Whilst the manager would have been appointed by such a club for his / her competence and ability, the said club would not simply place reliance on this one person to deliver talent in such a competitive environment. If they get this wrong, it may years later come back to bite them with such talent being used by competing clubs against them.

To illustrate this, I will use a recent case that involves a manager, who is renowned for his talent identification and nurturing skills, Arsene Wenger of Arsenal Football Club.  In 2003, he had the opportunity to sign the midfielder Yaya Toure together with his brother Kolo, who was already at the club. Due to administrative delays with his work permit, Arsenal was not able to convince him to wait and he went on to play for other clubs before joining Manchester City. Ten years from the time Wenger nearly signed him, Yaya participated in a game that led to one of Arsenal’s heaviest defeats ever. Wenger has admitted that missing out on signing Yaya was one of his biggest regrets in football. And the competition has now used Yaya against Arsenal, denying them the opportunity of being title contenders ten years after a fateful administrative delay.

The example used is unfortunate, as Wenger is one manager whose heart is generally in the right place on this issue, and he was not entirely responsible for it. But I think it illustrates more than anything that organisations have to think beyond the narrow view of the manager, and become very jealous about their people. It is not unusual that managers will participate in a deliberate process of destroying someone’s career if they feel that person is a threat or potentially may overtake them in the organisation that they work for. It is funny how people can frame their thinking and decision on the basis of the narrow world they see, and never have a broader view which enables them to give up talent that they do not have a use for.

It is here that the responsibility of leaders becomes more critical. And they will only be effective by being able to do a combination of the following things: 1) Being in touch with the most junior person in their areas of responsibility; 2) Having a cynical view when they receive feedback that one of their employees’ ‘wants too much”, “is ambitious”, “does not behave like others”; 3) Related to the above, seek to understand whether these employees may not need to be placed in different environments and given a different set of challenges. They must ask themselves what is wrong with an employee that wants to do more for his / her employer, if that leads to better returns for the shareholders; 4) Think about how they would feel with a particular employee being on the opposite side. How would it affect their competitive position and would they have an Wenger-type regret years later; 5) Reflect on the managers’ own ability to deal with talent, and maybe focus solutions on the manager being better at this, as many other employees will work with this manager in future; 6) Focus on the organisational culture, and whether it enables these hungry employees to have a voice without being judged; 7) Continuously assert the organisation’s “ownership’ of every employee, and that the manager only has a “custodial” responsibility whilst those employees are working for them.

After all, if people are some of the best assets for organisations, they cannot afford to leave focus on them only to managers who may be unable to enhance talent. The leadership responsibility is to go beyond the management layer and continuously find the diamonds that will make the organisation shine in future. Those organisations who do this well are set for a successful and sustainable future.