You have more talent in your team than you think!

This article is written by Paul Boston, Leadership & Organisational Development Adviser at Ontario Public Service.

• The problem: Organisations are creating diverse workplaces, but struggle to draw on the diverse skills, knowledge and insights people have.
• Why it matters: Unused talent will start to create a workplace of employee disengagement and high employee turnover.
• The solution: Leaders need to start to discover the full range of skills and talents their diverse teams have, and use those unique skills and talents.

Over the last five years, there has been a focus on building diverse workplace cultures. However, the problem a lot of organisations are facing is the inability to properly draw on their team’s diverse skills, talents and insights. This can lead to a perceived talent shortage, employee disengagement and silent quitting.

By starting to use some of these leadership skills to discover and benefit from unseen talent, you will witness a transformation within your organisation.

In our ever-changing workplace, organisations need to move from just hiring diverse people to developing and making the most of people’s diverse skills, talents and career ambitions.

Looking at the world of high-performing sports, we can learn a lot of leadership lessons on how to accomplish this through creating a coaching culture, providing resources for continuous learning and development and using people’s diverse talents and experiences, along with giving space for high-performance collaboration.

Discovering unseen talents

It is all about understanding the iceberg – I often use this analogy with leaders – we only see the tip of ‘people’s iceberg’ and miss everything under the surface. So, how do leaders start discovering the unseen talents of their team members? Step one, getting to know your team members beyond their job titles, roles and responsibilities. This type of awareness starts right at the hiring process, allowing leaders to start discovering the hidden talents people have. Leaders who are experienced with this type of conversation can identify a potential candidate’s hidden skills that don’t appear on their resume.

Why is this important for leaders? Hiring people to “do the job” is a must, however, the pace of change in the workplace is faster than ever and leaders need to know what other talents and experiences people bring to the table and how that talent can be used down the road.

Developing the talent

Recognising the untapped talent is step one, after this, creating an environment that allows people to develop their talents is the next step. This might be simply letting people have a few hours a week to focus on their continuous learning or something more formal, such as helping them enrol in a professional development programme which could be self-directed learning, 1:1 coaching or mentoring – the list is endless. The key for leaders is creating an environment where your team members feel empowered to take ownership of their development, knowing they have your support and backing.

Building a coaching culture

There are lots of elements that go into building a coaching culture. However, as a high-performance athlete, I was always surrounded by team members, coaches, trainers and even some sponsors who always asked great coaching questions. Along with asking those coaching questions, there were also athlete-to-athlete (i.e. peer-to-peer) coaching conversations, creating a very rich coaching and performance culture allowing me the ability to use my strengths and discover areas for personal improvement.

So being mindful and intentional about using even just one coaching skill will help to start a coaching culture that uses people’s skills.

Allowing people to continuously develop

Building on creating a coaching culture, you are going to actively look for opportunities for your teams to continuously develop their unique skills. For some members who might never have experienced this leadership style, you may need to be a little directive and responsive at first, giving people the opportunity to “dip their toes” into the world of continuous development and performance improvement. As a former elite-level triathlete, this is how I progressed from being overweight, unable to swim, bike or run very well, to an athlete competing at the world level.

Bring it all together

By starting to use some of these leadership skills to discover and benefit from unseen talent, you will witness a transformation within your organisation. People will become more intrinsically motivated, team members will be stronger collaborators and you will see a significant improvement in engagement as well as a reduction in people turnover.

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