How Real Leaders Identify and Develop Talent: Part 2

This was a typical response: "I take a very directive but guiding leadership style that quickly addresses the issue as soon as it develops. One should identify and mitigate the undesirable behavior by leveraging fact-based, first-hand, specific examples, and suggesting behavior that would be more appropriate."

Finally, we asked our role-model line leaders what thoughts or suggestions they had for us on the topic of identifying and developing leadership talent. Here's a sampling of their responses:

"Find ways to have multiple perspectives. If you're making an assessment of people, have two or three other people that you have confidence in also making assessments."

"I think it comes down to taking a risk. What I have found in a lot of cases is that people have never been pushed and they always had that ability, it had just never been tapped."

"If you give them feedback on where they need to improve, most really embrace that feedback, and when they get it they get it forever, so it's a lesson learned."

One final thought to contemplate: our line leaders were quite certain that high potentials place an increasing premium on the amount and quality of development they receive when deciding to remain in an organization. This is a key fact to remember given how critical it is today to retain top talent!