Magnetic leadership

Go back in time, maybe ten, twenty and certainly thirty years ago and you’d typically have found a bit of trend when examining the tenure of folk in different layers of seniority within an organisation.   If you imagine a bit of diamond shape it worked a bit like this.

People at the bottom of the organisation quickly learned their trade and then either stayed, got promoted or left for better opportunities.   People at the top of the organisation shifted across from other organisations or other disciplines and fields altogether as companies typically sought to gain competitive advantage by bringing in alternative sources of experience.

And then you’d have the big bulge in the middle comprised of:

-        Those who started at the bottom and worked their way up

-        Those who’d worked their way up until they started to hit a ceiling

-        Those who’d worked their way up to as far as they reasonably wanted to be

And generally that middle was filled with people who had a lot of knowledge of how the organisation worked and inevitably a fair few people who therefore would also see change as holding an element of disruption to the known order.

And communication across this organisation went point to point upwards in a series of levels.  And with that an element of message refinement so that those at the very top of the organisation were often relying on “staff satisfaction surveys” or stage managed “back to the floor” visits to have the faintest idea what was going on in their organisations, knowing deep inside that

a)      There was knowledge and insight in those ranks they needed access to but layers were getting in the way

b)     Messages reaching the top have been refined so many times that the radical essence of the raw commentary and source of insight had long since been refined out

Zip forward to today and a lot of organsations still work in this way.  There are though signs of change.  As technology and specialist knowledge becomes increasingly important, that refinement of messaging becomes harder for the middle to achieve without taking on some of the expertise themselves.

In the UK in the 1970s, just 14% of school leavers went on to study at university.  Now it’s around 40%.  An astounding leap but the rise in jobs that absolutely unequivocally require degree based education hasn’t grown, meaning the bottom of our diamond has a mix of highly qualified people in the right jobs and a highly qualified group of people doing jobs that aren’t using their knowledge and skillset.   Understandably for the individuals this is a matter sometimes of survival more than it is choice.  But for organisations it’s a source of talent and insight that’s often overlooked and not harnessed.

The rise of talent magnetism – the POSWAL framework

Much is made these days of Talent Magnetism and a desire in organisations to cultivate people to be “talent magnets”.   But what does this really mean?   In 2020, the OC Tanner Global Culture Report called on 20,000 leaders and workers around the world to try and decipher six critical elements of Talent Magnetism and here are those six:

Purpose

Opportunity

Success

Wellbeing

Appreciation

Leadership

In the faster shifting and moving organisation, the DNA that historically was just supplemented slowly and incrementally is in a constant state of flux with new employees and new ideas introduced all the time.   In our traditional organisations, the employee offer was highly geared towards the basic principle that people stayed around a long time.  

Particularly post-pandemic, tenure of employees has reduced considerably, though this does vary by age and generation.   That constant changover of employees means each worker has experienced different cultures and different leadership styles.  They may as well as working for you, be running a side hustle or supporting a not-for-profit and therefore they see multiple ways to lead and motivate an organisation.   Whether you like it or not, they’re constantly comparing you with what they’ve experienced before, what they are experiencing elsewhere and what they are seeing as great places where their talents are appreciated and rewarded.  

You may have been in the hiring seat during that job interview but once you’ve made the job offer, as the employer these days it’s as well to consider yourself as being in one long extended job interview, your worth as an employer for that talent to give its all and stay with you is constantly being tested.

Talent magnet is more than just hiring

Often the phrase Talent Magnet is thrown around in the context of attracting and finding new people to join the organisation and to an extent this is still of course true.  The OC Tanner report found more productive ground in how organisations can ensure that they are maximising the talents of those they already have.   And the brilliant bit about all this is that maximising talents is one of the core things on the wish list of lots of workers regardless of which generation they come from.

Research by the Association of Project Managers found three in ten workers to have “secret skills” that their employers never knew they had and as a consequence weren’t using them.  With the UK experiencing a prolonged period of low productivity, how amazing is it to find that in London 40% of workers feel their skills are not fully utilised in their jobs and shifting jobs to achieve more training and progression is the number 1 reason for people quitting.  

It's possible if we think of Talent Magnetism about bringing new people in, that as fast as we’re doing that organisations are seeing an outflow of skills from under their noses.

We need therefore to consider Talent Magnetism as more than just bringing in the new.  It has to be about bringing what lies beneath to the surface  - making more of what you have but didn’t realise you had.

Back to the OC Tanner report therefore and what can be done using the POSWAL framework.

OC Tanner found perhaps unsurprisingly that people do their best work when they feel passionate about its meaning and its importance – critical discretionary effort comes from understanding the purpose for each worker.  There is however a canyon to be traversed between the purpose of an organisation and how that translates to what is asked of each worker.  Many people who forsake higher salaries to work in the not-for-profit sector will tolerate work conditions that others will not because they are deeply connected to a sense of purpose that’s within them.  

So crossing that canyon means going further than just getting the marketing department to come up with a slogan, logo and uniting purpose.   It has to get itself to the level where everyone can describe for themselves how their role anchors to something bigger than them.   Challenge number 1 for our Talent Magnets – what are you doing specifically to understand everyone’s role and to co-create that sense of purpose.  Taking the shortcut of telling people to come up with their own doesn’t really cut it.  Co-creation is critical for this to be shared.

O is for Opportunity.   Back to that APM study, 45% of those studied said they had not been offered any training, development or opportunities that would allow them upward progression or development.   The OC Tanner report showed positive effect when workers believed they were working towards their true potential, with success celebrated and calculated risk taking part of that positive culture.  

Lots of organisations have run talent management or accelerator programmes – a select number are cultivated for greatness and the rest are left to get on with things for themselves.  In the world of the talent magnet we’re after releasing all the smart in the room, so leaving it for employees to decide and run everything by themselves means a much slower and variable pace of progression and lots of skills and talents left untapped. 

The talent magnet needs to rise above special leadership programmes and celebrate discovery moments that sets a cultural tone in the organisation that bringing everything to the table is wanted, welcomed and appreciated. 

S is for success – this is about redefining success more broadly, not necessarily in terms of business outcomes but also moments of personal growth. 

W is for wellbeing.  The talent magnet needs to be mindful of overextraction of the smarts in the room.   If purpose and talent cultivation are high but wellbeing is not a consideration then the likely consequence is burnout.   Talent magnets need to get used to managing peaks and troughs of work – remembering that marathon training techniques include intervals not just endless sequences of sprints.  Downtime, pauses and changes of scenery are not wasted productivity but recharges of batteries for the next big push.  In that APM study of those looking for another job, a quarter said their priority was to achieve a better work-life balance – something that’s easily within the gift of existing employers to be able to offer.

A is for appreciation.   Workers who are pushing onwards, using all their smarts, anchored to their purpose also need to see that effort acknowledged, understood and appreciated.   Often when the word appreciation is concerned our thoughts can instantly leap to financial rewards but this restricts our thinking.   Appreciation can come in many forms but the core to appreciation is for the talent magnet to have an understanding of how the world works from that individual’s perspective, what they value and treasure and responding accordingly.   It can be as simple as a Talent Magnet saying “hey, I’ve heard good things about what you’re doing, I’d really like to shadow you for a few hours to see how you do it and learn more about your world”.   Being heard and understood can often be significantly more connecting than monetary rewards, particularly in a corporate world where the bonus being dispensed isn’t coming from the pockets of those giving out the cash.   Key thought – talent magnets tune in to what’s important to each person and they show their appreciation accordingly.

L is for leadership and in the sense of a talent magnet this is about affording individuals the right level of autonomy so that each person can feel that tangible space above and around them for their personal growth.  It also comes with an environment of support that encourages positive experimentation and exploration of that space.  And it comes with leaders giving less direction and providing more mentoring and coaching of individuals – after all what’s the point of bringing in all that specialist knowledge if you’re just going to tell them what you think?   Key thought – talent magnets create a growth layer around everyone’s role and the support to encourage people to grow within it.

Growth will inevitably mean people having a need to move on to another organisation that will benefit from their skills, knowledge and insight.   It’s a moment for teams to celebrate the individual growth and the good that’ll bring.   

Talent Magnets undoubtedly make for great leaders that are attractive to work for.   That could be attracting people from outside the organisation.  But the starting ground for a talent magnet to practice on and prove their credentials is getting this right on home turf.   Do that and the talent magnet has a whole cohort of disciples at their disposal who go out evangelising about how this place allows them to do their best work and feel valued.

So as I leave you with these parting thoughts, in your mind visualise the people in your team now and ask yourself the following questions:

a)      If I asked my team what percentage of their skills are they able to display and use in their current role, what numbers do I think I’ll find?

b)     If I asked each team member what skill or strength do they have that’s least used and called upon in their current role, how well do I think I can anticipate their answer?

c)      What do I do to uncover hidden skills in my team and bring them to the surface?

d)     If I look around at each person in my team, how does each like to receive appreciation?