The Whys and Wherefores of Talent Management

The expression “war for talent” was coined in 1997 by Steven Hankin, to convey how hard it was for the employers of the most advanced economies to attract and retain talented individuals by reason of labour markets stiff competition.

Talent management emerged thus as a crucial component of HR strategy and practices, increasingly attracting HR professionals attention. Developing Talent Management practices, nevertheless, does by no means entail formulating on paper “nice to have” policies, just to show CEOs that the company’s HR practices are up to date and in line with those of the largest corporations. Do not having crystal clear the whys and wherefores of the talent management practices introduced into an organization, would just take employers nowhere and jeopardize the significant strategic role played by HR.

The ultimate purpose of Talent Management is enable employers to invariably have the right people, in the right place, at the right time to effectually pursue their strategy and withstand the challenges posed by the ever-changing external environment.

Talent Management should not be hence perceived by Managers and, worse still, CEOs as a “yet another HR thing,” but rather as a tangible, effective HR strategic contribution to the attainment of organizational success. As such, Talent Management should help to make, rather than break the strategic role played by HR.

The practical implications of wisely and accurately designed Talent Management practices should essentially be twofold:

• Ensure organizations can bank on a strong succession plan, enabling employers to constantly be in a position to replace key role holders in case of their departure;
• Make certain employees gain the skills, competencies and expertise not necessarily crucial to lead in the present, which will be indispensable to lead, and create and maintain competitive advantage in the future.

These objectives can essentially be regarded as the two sides of the same coin. Their simultaneous, combined attainment would enable employers to bank on the right people, in the right place, at the right time, despite the disruptive influence relentlessly exerted by the external environment, taking heed of the likely future developments.

The distinctive feature of this comprehensive approach is extend Talent Management focus of attention and interest to the external environment, as opposed to limit it to the internal context only.

Consistent Talent Management practices implementation should enable employers to be constantly ready to replace key role holders leaving the organization with skilled, talented individuals, both in leadership and technical roles. At the same time, employers should unremittingly investigate future market trends, the external environment, technological advances and future of work studies to analyse and assess the influence change occurring in the exogenous environment may have on their business.

 The timely identification and monitoring of these factors, and an accurate risk assessment of the impact these may have on their organization, would certainly put employers in a position not only to identify the new roles and skills the business may need, at any given time in the future, but also to anticipate and drive change and adapt its business strategy accordingly. Employers should proactively come up with new solutions and introduce change, rather than wait and reactively being suddenly forced to accelerate, to desperately try and catch up with change.

It can be argued that, to effectively help employers attain competitive edge, Talent Management practices should be developed in combination with environmental (e.g. PESTLE) and risk analyses.

HR initiatives should be tightly connected with, not disconnected from the external context reality and business strategy, and Talent Management makes no exception. Yet HR Professionals should never lose sight of the objectives they aim at attaining through the actions and initiatives they propose.

Talent Management practices should be developed duly taking into consideration:

• Internal environment needs, succession plan and role mapping;
• External environment ever-changing circumstances and developments;
• Company-specific business strategy;
• Corporate culture.

HR Professionals can develop effective, consistent, comprehensive Talent Management practices if and only if it is crystal clear to them their company business strategy, how Talent Management can effectually and practically help attain it, and the impact external pressures may make on their organization strategic human capital planning.

To avert this list of ingredients to show to be a recipe for disaster, rather than for success, an additional ingredient should be indeed necessarily added. People the business is keen and eager to devolve power and responsibility should first and foremost be those who, better and more than anyone else within the business, behave and do things strictly adhering to the organization values, norms and beliefs. Talent Management practices should thus be developed within the organization corporate culture framework.

Future leaders should naturally, spontaneously promote corporate culture and play the role of its strongest advocates. Their daily behaviour and actions, rather than their words, should be promptly identified by employees as a clear expression of corporate culture and easily associated with it.

Like every HR initiative, Talent Management should not be regarded as a per se, standalone programme, but as a significant component of a bundle of initiatives supporting one another so as to create a synergic, multiplicative effect. Talent Management is indeed used in combination with development opportunities enabling employees to join different teams, at times in different countries. These individuals may be regarded in many ways like company ambassadors and models for the other employees, as such, their contribution to promote corporate culture, genuinely expressing it with their actions and behaviour, is of paramount importance.

Talent Management does not represent an end in itself, but a means to an end. Programmes should also be developed with the aim of stressing the significance of the direct link existing between corporate culture and business strategy. Inasmuch as organizations can hardly achieve competitive edge without a clear, effective strategy, businesses cannot successfully pursue their strategy without the support of a consistent, properly developed corporate culture, on the basis of which employees shape their behaviour and actions.

Talent Management programmes should be clearly tailored to each organization distinctive features and peculiarities. Slavishly introducing programmes developed by other companies, just because these have worked well under certain circumstances, is highly unlikely to produce the same exceptional results under different circumstances and hence in other organizations: different people, different culture, different strategy and different circumstances. Organizations are different one another so that despite the ingredients of the recipe may apparently seem to be the same, the recipe varies from business to business.

The objectives employers aim at attaining on the other hand are unchanged, to wit: successfully pursue organizational strategy, achieve sustainable competitive edge and secure a future to their organization and people. Achieving these objectives nevertheless is increasingly proving to be a herculean task for employers.

Once formulated, practises also need to be properly, consistently executed. Practices and policies development is indeed sorely vain if not followed by appropriate implementation. Are not indeed rare the cases in which the same practices have worked well in some branches of a company and have ended in a dismal failure in other branches of the same company, under similar circumstances, due to implementation.

As usual, Line Managers play a crucial role in the execution of an organization practices. Rather than believing that Talent Management and other HR activities are “just another HR thing,” Line Managers should think over the fact that the real challenge is not completing a given task by the end of the day or of the week. The real challenge is developing and scheduling, in time, a plan of action securing them and their team significant tasks to complete also for the years and decades to come.

It clearly depends on HR; to gain credibility and the management genuine commitment to Talent Management programmes, HR Professionals need to gain management trust. They should show to be well acquainted with their organization strategy and challenges, be genuinely able to understand how HR can help the business factually achieve its objectives and take the time to discuss with managers the benefits of Talent Management initiatives, which sometimes may not be immediately obvious to the managers who are struggling with their daily duties, projects and management tasks.

Longo, R., (2020), The Whys and Wherefores of Talent Management; Luxembourg: HR Professionals, [online].

How Situational is Situational Leadership?

It is an axiomatic fact that the way leaders make decisions, behave and lead in the workplace has a powerful impact on employee engagement, motivation and ultimately retention. Leadership, by common consent, also considerably exerts a tremendous influence on business performance. The style leaders adopt to manage their teams should be hence regarded as a business issue, rather than as an HR whim; an organizational subject which HR, as it occurs in every people-related matter, should take charge of.

Albeit countless definitions of leadership have been provided over the years, the number of approaches developed to effectively and consistently manage it has been considerably smaller to date. Based on the findings of a number of studies conducted between 1911 and 1966, and on the widely-held belief that each individual is different from others, Hersey and Blanchard developed, in the late 1960s, the Situational Leadership model, also known as “organized common sense” (Leadership Studies, 2017). A flexible framework whose main aim is enable leaders to influence individual behaviour and motivate their followers, adopting a different approach according to each individual level of “performance readiness.”

The underpinning tenet, at the basis of the development of this framework, is that it does not indeed exist a wrong leadership style in that the right style, or rather, the most suitable approach, actually depends on the circumstances. Also in leadership thus the one size does not fit all. The model intends to help leaders assess every occurrence so as to identify the specific, proper amount of guidance to give each of their followers and of communication to establish with each of them, according to their “performance readiness”, that is, the combination of capability, eagerness and keenness expressed by each individual, under the specific environmental circumstances. The approach a leader must adopt should be hence matched up with each individual development level (Table 1).

  Table 1

This simple framework, essentially based on common sense, may appear extremely straightforward to apply and implement, but it actually requires leaders’ constant, careful attention.

The first pitfall leaders should definitely avoid to fall into is thinking to well know each member of their team and regard their level of performance readiness as invariably the same, regardless of the specific assignment or task they intend to assign them.

One of the most crucial phases for the identification of the suitable leadership style is “diagnosing.” This step is concerned with the assessment of the competencies an individual has already gained and his/her likely commitment to achieve that specific objective. Leaders should not be hence influenced by the level of commitment shown by their followers under other circumstances or by their skills at large, but focus on the competencies and eagerness these may have to perform that specific activity. Diagnosing is hence not about an overall assessment; it aims at determining an individual fit for a specific task.

The adoption of this approach may lead leaders to believe that they can assign an individual a project only and only whether this has already successfully managed and gained previous experience with similar projects. In this way, nevertheless, leaders would jeopardize individual growth and development, and would not put themselves in a position to assess their followers learning agility.

Diagnosing should not be used to prevent individual growth but to favour and sustain it over time. Understanding what a team member needs to properly perform a task or effectually contribute to a project, is necessary to make decisions on the type of support, guidance and direction an individual needs so as to take appropriate action to bridge the identified gap.

The pace change occurs nowadays is increasingly quickening and more often than not organizations and their leaders are prompted to take action as swiftly as they can. The fact an individual has not gained yet the full set of competencies this needs to carry out a given task, regardless of his/her eagerness and motivation to perform it, may prompt a leader to assign the activity to a different individual, who already has what it takes to effectually perform the task. Yet by reason of the lack of time to direct, support or coach their followers and of the typically strict projects timeline, leaders may find it preferable to assigning challenging tasks to more experienced individuals. Such an arguably justified leader behaviour, under the circumstances, would nonetheless fetter rather than favour individual growth. Worse still, whether a leader should not timely plan for their followers to gain the skills and experience necessary to properly perform more challenging tasks, before these have the chance to use these skills in a project, individuals would never be put in a position to develop, and will thus inexorably leave the organization, not to mention that they may stay and underperform.

Serious problems may also arise when leaders consider to assign a follower a project or task based on their willingness to perform it. A leader can ill afford to assign a follower a task only and only whether this is keen and eager to perform it. Genuine leaders should be able to motivate their followers to carry out tasks these may not be completely happy to perform, but that are important for the organization success. Henry S. Truman (US President 1945 – 1953) defined leadership as the “ability to get others to do what they don’t want to do and like it.” Good leaders should be able to provide their followers a clear-sighted vision of their company’s and of their own future, but also enthusiasm and sense of belonging so as to self-motivation and self-fulfilment to build up. Whether individuals have the competencies and skills to perform a task, conceivably just because their employer has heavily invested in their development and banks on them, leaders cannot fail to influence and persuade their followers of the importance of their contribution. It is hardly thinkable the paradigm “no willingness, no task performed.”

There are indeed some additional risks associated with an inappropriate, rigid implementation of Situational Leadership. If leaders do not adopt it adding a further degree of flexibility, that is to say without adding flexibility to flexibility, these may hamper their followers learning agility and by showing a high degree of intolerance towards failure, prevent innovation to spread and flourish within the organization.

Whether leaders have no time to provide their followers the direction, support and coaching they need, and would be willing to assign individuals only the tasks these are confidently able to face, they will never be able to identify and sustain their learning agility level and development. In turn, individuals for fear of disappointing their leader by making mistakes, would invariably avert to innovate and change methods, processes and procedures, albeit this may be one of the objectives Situational Leadership would actually aim at achieving.

As Hamlet said (Act 5, Scene 2), referring to well different circumstances, “the readiness is all”, but readiness should be properly and consistently assessed. It is not only a matter of properly interpreting what should be meant by readiness from the leader point of view, but also to ascertain whether leader and follower agree on it. The risk being that rather than favouring people development and sustaining the pursuance of organizational strategy, Situational Leadership may cause some undesirable drawbacks and counter-effects.

Diagnosing is unquestionably a crucial stage of Situational Leadership implementation; leaders should invariably ensure to discuss openly and thoroughly with their followers their level of development and readiness to take a new challenge up.

Whether followers should disagree with their leaders on their readiness level, consequences can prove to be particularly detrimental. If followers, differently from their leaders, believe to be ready to perform a task, the circumstance their leader would not assign them that task would generate disappointment, distrust, dissatisfaction and a plunge in self-confidence. In the case of leaders overestimating their followers level of readiness, deeming their followers ready to face the new challenge, whereas these do not actually feel to be, the fact followers would not recognize to be unprepared so as not to disappoint their leader, is likely to produce negative effects upon both the successful completion of the project and the individual career.

The practical implementation of Situational Leadership should be hence preceded by the introduction of an objective, agreed “readiness” assessment method and some tailored tools. Both leaders and followers should be made aware of the procedure, variables and assessment methods used to identify each individual readiness level. A transparent, objectively supportable approach and a structured methodology would definitely ensure leaders avoid bias and enable them to properly assess their followers’ skills, based on specific values and competencies. A transparent method would also reassure followers that their level of readiness will be assessed objectively and consistently across the organization.

Despite the Situational Leadership model only refers to followers’ readiness, it may be argued that the difficult execution of this approach and the thorny issues it involves imply a high level of leaders’ readiness, too. Like their followers, leaders should indeed be eager and prepared to, and skilled at adopting this approach. The inconsistent, inappropriate implementation of Situational Leadership can in fact break rather than make employee engagement and performance, and hence organizational success. Employers aiming at introducing this approach should be aware of the drawbacks and threats it can potentially pose.

Situational Leadership can be regarded as an organization strategy to leadership, as such implementation may prove to be much more important than strategy itself. The distinctive features of Situational Leadership: flexibility, simplicity and the case-by-case consideration of individual development, account for this model to be relevant and useful. On the flip side, it does not appear to be far-sighted and neglects some significant factors which deserve more attention and consideration. It can be thus regarded as a basic, broad framework; to be implemented, nonetheless, the model should be complemented with several activities, tools and assessment methods, which may in some ways alter the model itself.

The conscious decision to adopt a specific leadership style, cannot be made disregarding the values and beliefs underpinning an organization culture.

Whether corporate culture should foster individual development, innovation and learning agility, for instance, situational leadership might be deemed by staff as inconsistent and unfit. Individual development would be only secured to those employees who have already gained a certain level of autonomy and expertise. Projects and significant tasks would be assigned to a limited number of individuals, whereas the others would be basically refused access to the opportunities enabling them to broaden their experience and reach higher level of competence. Not be put in a position to grow and develop, these individuals would consequently feel their job to essentially be a dead-end job and will either underperform or leave their employer. Ensure the cultural fit of a leadership approach is hence of paramount importance.

The concept of employee “readiness” is indeed very interesting, but more than a leadership style, it may show to better suit people development and succession planning practices. Whether employers identify the set of skills individuals should master, and the type of experience they must gain, to fill leadership and key roles within their organization, being able to assess individual readiness to fill those positions, would clearly enable them to confidently face the future organizational challenges.

Employee readiness should not represent the end itself, but the means to an end. Once employees have reached the professional and moral standards required by the organization to take up any given position, also by virtue of their learning agility, these should be able to confidently face all the challenges posed by these roles.

Individual readiness to fill leadership and key roles within an organization should clearly be professionally assessed adopting tried and tested, trusted methodologies and not exclusively relying on the leaders’ assessment of their followers.

Whereas it is broadly recognized that one of the distinctive characteristics of Situational Leadership is flexibility, its strict implementation may turn this approach into an extremely rigid one. The idea of “readiness” should be therefore interpreted with extreme care and regarded as a method to assess individual development in a much far-sighted, pragmatic fashion; not to make short-term decisions, but to make informed choices enabling employers to reap the benefits and attain tangible results both presently and in the future.

Longo, R., (2019), How Situational is Situational Leadership?; Milan: HR Professionals [online].