Developing Emerging Talent
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The people you’d consider “emerging talent” can often be quite difficult to manage and develop. They’re often very keen, have lots of potential, are very willing – but are also often very inexperienced. They’re people in your team who, while they have a bright future, are quite often not showing their full potential right now, and or delivering in the way that you would like them to.
This presents a real conundrum. On one level you want to encourage them, but on another you want to make sure they don’t get ahead of themselves.
Emerging talent people often pick up things very quickly, and there’s a temptation to give them lots of interesting work, projects, and secondments to help them progress. This creates challenges, however! You may find yourself managing misplaced confidence or a burgeoning ego; or provoking jealousy in your team; or possibly having to convince others that you haven’t taken leave of your senses by giving such a big task to a youngster!
You won’t want to think of yourself as a curmudgeonly manager who has to have it done “their way” and who holds people back. But you don’t have to fast track everyone either (in fact, some things can’t be fast tracked – good judgment, for example, is often acquired by bitter experience).
Here are three great ways to get started with helping emerging talent develop:
- Focus on performance. Make it clear that if they want to build credibility and be respected in the team, they need to be seen to deliver at a good level of performance. Let them know they need to do this to be taken seriously as a candidate for a bigger job. Once they’re delivering it’s much safer to give them extra opportunities – people in your team are less likely to begrudge them because they can see that they have ‘earned the right’.
- Help them understand their strengths and develop their experience. Take your time to observe them in action and work out what they’re good at. This helps you to work out their best contribution to your team. It will also help them start to get a sense of direction in their career. Yes, they do need to develop their weaknesses as well – but focusing on getting them using their strengths to good effect will allow them to progress that little bit quicker. They will build up experience, confidence and get a track record of success to back up those early signs of potential.
- Help them understand the bigger picture. They may have tunnel vision, focusing only on moving into the next role very quickly. If they don’t lift their eyes from this track, in their next job (or the one after) they may find themselves out of their depth and jerking to a halt. Get them to think several years ahead, and consider the broad base of experience they’ll need. Encourage them to take the time to look around for additional experience, to have the humility to gain knowledge and experience from others, and to build strong relationships with these skilled people, to give them a stronger foundation in the long term.
Don’t let emerging talent people get fixated on the immediate prize – they are driving a 40-year career! Get them to build foundations of a track record of high performance, plus the learning and relationships that will be a solid launch pad for their career.