Developing the talent already present within your organization is arguably the highest ROI for your time as a leader. Such talent already represents a largely fixed cost but with variable output that you can influence. If you invest, say, ten hours a year on increasing the quality of each person’s skillset and capabilities, the returns can be dramatic.
I’m not talking about doing a better job of yearly performance reviews, but rather a completely separate process in which leaders and managers invest one-on-one time with each of their direct reports. Imagine an hour together every two months in a collaborative development process.
The stronger your team is, the better your business will perform. We all know that. But too many leaders expect their direct reports to innately understand what needs to be done and how to do it. That is simply unrealistic. In an organization that’s growing rapidly or facing a changing marketplace, there will always be new opportunities, unexpected challenges, and significant surprises.
Few of us truly excel at self-awareness. It is extremely difficult to judge what we need to do better, which habits no longer serve us well, and how best to focus our development. A collaborative dialogue with someone whose success is dependent on your success—your direct manager—makes a great deal of sense.
The more willing you are to make this sort of collaborative learning an essential part of your culture, the greater the dividends you will enjoy. The best leaders I know make this a top priority, helping their teams to grow.
There’s an additional benefit I haven’t mentioned. When you need someone to step up on your team, to replace a colleague who has left or to fill a new role, an effective talent development approach significantly increases the odds that you can make seamless transitions, including hopefully preparing your own successor.
In my next post, I’ll map out a concise overview of the best ways to implement such a talent development approach.