THE PROCESS

As I've said, the purpose of talent management and leadership development is to make sure every single person in the organization is being developed to his or her full potential. Development needs to occur on a continuous basis—not just when it comes time to fill out the annual performance review forms that get processed by some computer someplace. People should know what they do well and what they don't do well, and a developmental plan should be in place to help them improve over time.

As a leader, you need to be highly involved in this process, while making sure that your team members are engaged and empowered to advocate for themselves. Unfortunately, this is not the case in many companies, for all the reasons we've already discussed. Leaders are focused on the plan, running the operations and tracking results. Occasionally they will look at the development plan and performance reviews, but not very often. However, if the key to a values-based organization is really the people, then leaders need to spend a lot more time developing the team than analyzing the numbers. After all, the numbers aren't going to generate themselves. You need to have the right people in place in order to reach the performance targets.

As your team develops, it is only natural that some people will be brought in from the outside. When your team members are promoted to other positions or transfer to different departments or business units, there will be vacancies to be filled with external candidates as well as internal people. In addition, as the organization grows, there will be new positions created. No matter how much you reduce turnover and develop internal talent, there is always a need for people to come in from the outside to infuse fresh ideas and new perspectives. (Remember, balance is crucial.)

Talent management and leadership development is not a yearly or even a quarterly process. It happens continuously, with honest feedback that lets people know how they are doing, what needs to improve, and where they stand. Feedback is one of the most important yet difficult parts of the process.

Openness and transparency are vital if you want to develop the best team. The test that I use follows this scenario: I am with a colleague on a flight to Japan. My colleague tells me that she is thinking of hiring someone from my team for a position in her department. As we discuss this candidate's qualifications and contributions, I am going to be incredibly open with her. I am going to tell her everything I know about that person's capabilities. There is nothing that I would not tell her about this individual. Now here's the test: if my organization has a culture of open and honest communication and feedback, everything that I tell this colleague would have been discussed several times already with the job candidate.

If someone works for me, I believe I have a moral obligation to let him know exactly where he stands. I will do so in a very respectful way, whether in my office with the door closed, over a breakfast meeting, or even while taking a walk around the grounds. I would probably preface my remarks by saying something like, “If you were not doing a lot of things really well, you would not be with the company. However, I am going to focus my attention on what needs to be addressed so that you can become a better leader in the organization and reach your full potential.” Because this person reports to me, it is my duty to provide this feedback.

Even if a person does not report directly to me, I still feel strongly about the need to provide feedback. I will find an appropriate way to deliver it, although I will be more careful because this is not a person for whom I am responsible. Nonetheless, the message I deliver is that I am willing to provide feedback, if this person is open to it, to help him or her improve. As long as I have the right attitude, motivated by no agenda other than trying to be helpful and do the right thing, chances are my feedback will be welcomed in that spirit. Even now, I am fortunate to receive feedback that is delivered to me in this manner on an ongoing basis.

Delivering honest feedback is challenging for many managers. Maybe they are afraid of hurting someone's feelings, or perhaps they had bad experiences delivering (or receiving) feedback earlier in their careers. What I do know from personal experience is that most people really want meaningful, open, and honest feedback. As you develop a trusting environment with people on your team, you may find that they will ask you for feedback so that they can see how they are progressing toward their development goals.

People are sometimes surprised by some piece of feedback from the boss, feeling as if the comments came with no warning. In these cases, they probably work for a boss who gives infrequent feedback or who makes comments that are so subtle that they are easy to miss or even ignore. One significant benefit of giving continuous feedback is that it should minimize and, one hopes, eliminate surprises among your team members. As a leader, you will probably find this to be the case even when someone is not measuring up to expectations or is simply in the wrong job. Because that person has received open, honest, and direct feedback on an ongoing basis, she knows that the job isn't working out. In many cases, she will leave the organization before she is fired. In my experience, 90 percent of the people I would have had to ask to leave actually left before I had to fire them. The reason was simply that everyone on my team understood the expectations and knew where they stood.

Concurrent with the feedback process is letting your team know when there are open positions in the company for which they might be well suited. At Baxter, we called this the “slating process,” meaning that managers were able to slate internal candidates for a particular job. On the basis of managers' recommendations, four or five people would be interviewed for the position, and if the right candidate was found, one would be hired.

A problem at many companies, however, is that a job opening is filled before most managers across various units of the company even know the opportunity exists. Here's how something like that might occur. Let's say a position as director of marketing based in Belgium opens up. As soon as the vacancy is known, the vice president or director of the unit has someone in mind. The person may already be in the unit or posted somewhere in Europe. The person is interviewed and hired.

Although the job was filled by an internal candidate, the process excluded a host of other people from within the organization. A manager in, say, California couldn't slate someone for the job in Belgium because he didn't even know about the opening until the announcement of the new replacement. This is hardly the ideal situation from a talent management and leadership development perspective. Candidates should be considered from across the entire organization, from all functions and geographies. Otherwise, the entire organization is not being optimized. If leaders are really focused on talent management and leadership development, they need to make sure that people across every business unit, department, and geography are being developed to their full potential.