How do you find, manage and get the best out of really gifted people? Despite all the hype, the courses and the research-lite books, most organisations still struggle with the most fundamental of questions: what is talent? How do you define it and spot it? Can talent fade? Can ordinary people suddenly become talented?
It is good to be in the talented group because the philosophy of most organisations seems to be “to him who hath, shall more be given”. They receive more attention and more opportunities. More time and money are spent on them.
The talented also have one crucial advantage: a reputational head-start.
The fact that people know you are “one of the chosen” means they will attribute to you positive features that lesser mortals don’t receive.
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There are, however, lots of problems with having a talent group or talent policy. The first is what to call those who are not gifted, talented or special. Are they second-rate, talentless, ordinary? Of course not: but what then? That is why organisations choose colours or metaphors for the haloed ones. They are the Gold Group or the Eagles. This approach never quite overcomes the problem, though.
The second is the stability of talent: can it go away, get used up, burn out?
This might mean the chosen ones who were once classified as talented get downgraded. This is difficult for everybody because it could imply an error of classification in the first place. So it's rare. Once in, you stay there.
It is the third issue that is probably most problematic but not perceived to be so. Once the talented people have been found and deployed, the question then is about appraisal and promotion. What do you do with a talented engineer, finance manager or salesman? Maybe those whom the gods would destroy are first called talented.
The most common way of rating people is the nine-box category scheme. This is based on two ratings: one of performance and one of potential. The worst is 1-1 (Box 1) — low performance, low potential, and the best 3-3 (Box 9) — high on both.
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There are the mavericks of course: the 1-3s or the 3-1s. The former are low on performance but high on potential. But why? Lazy sods; badly managed; not found their feet? A desert plant waiting for the rainy season? Or what about great performance but no potential? Stuck in a rut, or have a skills set that we don’t need any more?
There are many problems with the deployment of the nine-box grid. But without a doubt the most important is who does the rating and on what the figures are based. For top people the scoring is usually carried out by a senior HR manager and some board-level managers who discuss the candidate’s merits. They may be well intentioned, but the problems are enormous.
Take the easier of the two ratings: performance. Performance on what? Delivering revenue targets, staff engagement or change management ability? All their competencies on a sort of aggregated score or just their targets for this year? And who does the rating: boss, peers, subordinates or the individuals themselves? The boss often has less information than the subordinates. Frequently, bosses have only two types of evidence: reputational data and productivity data. Staff know about competence, emotional intelligence and the like. Peers know about ambition, values and so on. So the question is, who rates performance? Easy, of course, if there is something measureable like money, but so much work is less tangible and team- based that it really is difficult to measure.
Performance ratings need to be conducted by people who have the information. They need to be trained in rating. And they need to be trained in giving feedback.
What about ratings of a person’s potential, though? Potential for what? The next level job? Strategic thinking? Ability to lead change? Innovation?
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What is a high potential person? There must be some simple, ubiquitous but fundamentally important criteria. Such people need to be bright enough to learn new things and master increasingly technical briefs. They need to be ambitious and confident enough to want promotion. They need to be tough and resilient enough to cope with the stress that this will bring. They need to be hard-working, conscientious and driven enough to take on the added burden. Perhaps they need to be persuasive, diplomatic and charming too.
At least the above unpacks the slippery “potential” category. It should encourage more reliable and more valid ratings, but again only by those who have all the information. The nine-box category system is crude and clumsy. As things operate at the moment it benefits those who spend more effort on “managing up” and “reputation management” than on doing a good job.
Adrian Furnham is professor of psychology at University College London