How Do We Recognize Talent?

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To develop a talent, you must first acknowledge it, know what it is, and understand how it can serve organizational growth. Activities like skills assessments to evaluate employees’ proficiency, knowledge, and abilities related to a predefined skills inventory can help build a comprehensive map of the talent available to the organization.

However, leaders are critical in recognizing, nurturing, and allocating company talent. They make a difference in the company’s ability to use its resources productively. In fact, authentic leaders are those who can recognize people’s potential and use it for the greater good.

But how can they make this happen?

Let’s start by saying that recognizing talent in others requires leaders to have a strategic and open-minded view of their teams: their people are not just resources to use to achieve their goals but carriers of passions, interests, and ambitions that, if properly harnessed, can generate unexpected results.

So, the first thing is to approach knowing the people who work with you with curiosity, going beyond their resume or specific abilities to accomplish the assigned tasks. After all, in ancient Greek and Latin cultures, the word “talent” referred to precious coins held by only a few and not easy to find.

Similarly, leaders must spend time getting to know their people and have a genuine attitude toward discovering their potential. This might sound obvious, but it is not.

Think about how many people unexpectedly thrived when they changed the leader they worked for. They would probably tell you that the new leader put them in a condition to do better, but they first felt seen and heard.

One common challenge hindering talent development is the fear of managers being outshone by their employees. Sometimes, leaders don’t want to recognize their people’s talent, although they see it, because they fear losing their prestige and authority.

From an employee’s perspective, this is one of the most discouraging situations to live in, and it often leads to disengagement and a lack of trust in the organization. A leader who clips the wings of their employees because they fear their talent or don’t know what to do with it lacks a strategic view. Most importantly, such leaders operate from a position of self-interest rather than prioritizing the organization’s success.

A strategic mindset also acknowledges that our resources might perform better in a different role or position than expected.

Leaders who care about organizational growth focus on finding positions for each resource where they can thrive, even outside their department or business area. Again, this behavior stems from a deep belief that individuals are organizational assets, not merely “personal property or tools.”

However, it also originates from the leader’s ability to understand the big picture, where the organization is going, and what it needs, and look at their people’s growth from that perspective. How can they serve the organization at their best?

Leaders can only demonstrate their ability to empower others by answering this question and making decisions about their talent accordingly.

Lastly, leaders are responsible for creating a work environment where people can experiment and challenge themselves in new opportunities and venues.

Allowing your employees to prove themselves without fearing others’ judgment or failure is essential for uncovering and nurturing their talent. Committing to developing your people’s talent starts with creating the psychological and operative conditions to make it happen.

There is much more to say about the importance of corporate culture in developing and engaging talents, and I also wrote about this topic in this blog.

I want to close this article with a famous quote by Alexander Den Heijer, which summarizes leaders’ ability to operate to nurture their people’s talent “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”

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