I love this wonderful quote from author Eric Barker:
“Being a manager is like being the parent of a very large, very dysfunctional family where everyone is going through puberty at the same time. But people are the job. A manager’s role is to unleash an employee’s unique talents to increase performance.”
How do we unleash talent well?
The first thing we must do is select people for their talent. This means understanding the characteristics, skills, and abilities necessary to perform well in a role. It means clear job descriptions and responsibilities. It means strong selection tools to determine the reasoning, decision-making abilities, and overall skills of each of the candidates. And it means choosing the person who has the greatest abilities to contribute to the role and the team every time.
The next thing to do is to double (or triple) down on your investment in and time spent with top team members. This doesn’t mean neglecting the rest of the team, but we don’t keep underperforming stocks with no potential for growth in our investment portfolios. Instead, we reallocate those resources to the top performers to get the greatest return for the longest time. The same is true for the investment in our top talent. Where do they see their goals? Where do they want to go in their careers? What are their underdeveloped skills and interests? Where do they think they can make greater contributions? What do they need to do their jobs better?
Third, we must adapt our leadership and management styles to the different team members. No two team members are the same, so managing them the same way is silly. Learn their styles…what motivates them, what do they respond to, how do they handle constructive feedback? Then, adapt the way you work with them and lead them to the answers to those questions.
Finally, build on strengths and choose other talent to offset weaknesses. We spend a lot of time trying to manage and correct team members’ weaknesses. A better approach is to invest in maximizing the return on their strengths, and choosing other talent around them to fill out the team that is strong where they are weak. This is a somewhat ideal and not-always-possible solution, but striving for it is likely to get us much closer. Select and manage strengths, not weaknesses.
Unleashing talent takes time, investment, and focused effort from the leader. But the ability to work through that team to literally multiply what the leader can do and accomplish is always worth it.
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