Human Centered Talent Management

I listened to a wonderful podcast this morning by an ex-colleague and good friend Antoinette Oglethorpe, in conversation with members of the Association of Coaching Supervisors.  It was a wide-ranging discussion about talent management, and how coaching supports succession planning through the discovery of an individual’s aspirations, support for their development and help through transitions into new roles.

One of the aspects of Antoinette’s work that really differentiates her is the premise that talent teams should be focused not only on the business needs, but also on the individual employees’ needs.  It is only by bringing the two together that you get engaged individuals in the right roles that match their aspirations and talents.

It reminded me of the work I did in my previous role, around human centred design (HCD).  The idea of HCD is that you ask the employees about their needs and desires in relation to the career story that they want to tell with their lives; and you create performance support mechanisms to enable them to achieve those needs and desires.

At the end of almost every interview, individuals would say words to the effect of: “that was so useful to me – you really helped me to articulate what is important to me, and now I have information I can share with my boss about what I want from my career”.  It turned out that these conversations were mining for gold.  They were very coach-like.

The idea of having conversations like this with all employees might seem unattainable – it’s such a big scope.  As Antoinette says in the podcast, we give managers lots of training on how to do performance management; but we rarely help them to have these kinds of career development conversations, covering aspirations, development and transitions.  It seems to me that’s it’s about time we did!  If you want help with that, Antoinette would be a great person to support your organisation: antoinette@antoinetteoglethorpe.com.