Sharing Talent

Sharing Talent
by Kevin Wilde

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Kay, gave me my first performance appraisal. She told my parents I was a bright, energetic 5-year-old who didn't sleep at nap time and had trouble sharing. While I've overcome the inability to nap during the day, I still have to remind myself to share my best toys.

Similarly, Mrs. Kay might give today's business leaders low marks for sharing high-potential leadership talent. Of course it's a challenge to convince executives to move their most promising personnel to some other part of the enterprise. Great talent produces great results. Why would a leader give up a valued producer, someone with the promise to deliver even greater results in the future?

Executives invest in high-potential talent and deserve to reap the benefits. Any rational business leader would be unwilling to give up his or her best in exchange for someone else's so-called high potential. Faced with the risk of the unknown, it is common for a leader to dig in his or her heels and not share. Worse, leaders sometimes hide their best talent, lest corporate finds out about the rising star.

Share to Gain
There is much to be gained by sharing. Any business unit can offer job growth and stretch assignments. New business circumstances, geography and challenges broaden leadership capabilities. Fresh high-potential leaders moving into a new group often raise performance standards and promote recalibrating expectations to higher levels. Mixing the best talent will bring new thinking and best-practice sharing with accelerated application because these folks are change agents by nature. It makes sense to free the best developing leaders to move across business units. It is hard work, but there are a number of enablers to better talent sharing.

Corporate Ownership
Declare that above a certain level, the leadership group is "owned" by the corporation and is not the sole property of the individual business units. Everyone has a notion of the top 100, 500 or 1,000 leaders throughout the enterprise. Establish that the career development of this cadre will have a company point of view. It may not be a popular message, but it makes sense to consider leaders beyond a certain level as corporate assets who are currently "on loan" to a division.

Talent Identification
Build into any succession roll-up a robust process to identify and track the best talent. The CEO and senior team should know the up-and-comers, first through this annual HR system and by personally building relationships with each division's high potentials to facilitate movement. I've seen development- oriented CEOs personally intervene to break free emerging executives that are being held hostage in a greedy division.

Pocketbook Management
A natural way organizations manage the top group of leaders is through direct ownership of its compensation such as merit pay, stock options, incentive pay and other rewards. This practice can be useful in cross-division talent movement by reinforcing the belief that the corporation has a say in the treatment of these leaders, and reviews can be useful assessment and tracking practices to know where the best talent is located in divisions.

Recruiting Events
Training also can help identify and enable cross-business, high-potential talent movement. Filling a corporate leadership development program with high potentials from all corners of the organization is a smart way to identify the best divisional talent. Networking from this mixture can help open up possible cross-unit movement. Add in direct and meaningful contact with the CEO and other corporate leaders to reinforce the visibility and relationship. Finish by sending the message that the leadership development path to the top will be built with cross-business, broadening executive moves. 

Slate Setting
Once you establish that the corporate office will be involved in filling division leadership jobs, the role can vary, from helping assemble the slate of candidates to reviewing the finalists. This is the critical time to nudge a division executive to consider a high potential from another unit or "recruit" talent from another division to interview for the opening.

Leadership development research reminds us that challenging assignments are accelerators of growth. At some point in a leader's journey, challenges are to be found in crossing divisions. It is hard work, but it has huge payoffs for the individual and organization. Speaking of hard work, it's time for my nap.


[About the Author: Kevin Wilde is the vice president and chief learning officer at General Mills.]