 |
|||
|
|||
| |
|||
| My Blog |  |
||
RETAINING YOUNG TALENT WITHOUT DESTROYING YOUR COMPANY!
Your company’s workforce is aging fast and it’s hard to attract new, young talent. Yet you know that they are not ready for the promotion. They are unseasoned and full of themselves. Despite their ability to dazzle their superiors with talent, intellect and hard work, their peers and subordinates see them as self-promoting, intolerant and not concerned about working towards team goals. Perhaps worse, they are not aware of how others perceive them, or if they are, they don’t care. And why should they? All of the feedback that they have received so far has been nothing but great, with nary a hint of any developmental issues. You know that they lack the emotional competencies and sophistication needed to give them a good chance of success at the next level. Their bosses acknowledged this when you spoke with them but they are willing to overlook this lack of people skills because they have faith that these young, talented professionals will find a way to work through this problem. They have fixed everything before. These executives want smart, aggressive people and so they focus more on accomplishments rather than lack of emotional maturity. They promise to be extra vigilant if you allow the promotions to happen, but you know that events will get in the way of their good intentions. Statistically, you know that about a least one third of those who are promoted ultimately fail in their new assignment and many of the remaining only succeed marginally well. You do think that it is better to delay the promotions or give them lateral assignments in other departments for a year or two that will help round them out. Their bosses seem to have unwittingly compromised their careers by promoting them too quickly before they could develop the collaborating, consensus building, persuasive and general relationship skills that are needed to succeed at a leadership level. Yet you believe that they will view a delayed promotion or lateral assignment as a lack of faith in their abilities or recognition of past contributions. No matter what is said to them or by whom, they will simply not accept that delaying the promotions is in their best interests. They believe that they have been ready for more responsibility yesterday! And you know that they have options. Despite their protests of loyalty, to the contrary, they will surely be receptive to the overtures of others. Why lose any of them to a competitor and let others benefit from the huge investment that the company has made over the years? What happens if the turn out to be great at a competitor and raid promising young talent? SO YOU ALLOW THE PROMOTION TO HAPPEN AND YOU CROSS YOUR FINGERS. Twelve months later you are regretting want you did. They have been like a bull in a china closet. Their peers dislike them even more. They believe that it’s your fault for not taking their recommendations seriously and respect your judgment and leadership capabilities less. Moreover, the individuals that you promoted blame you for their lack of success because you haven’t provided them with the support that they need. They have not learned anything from this experience. And to add insult to injury, none of the important initiatives that you expected to be completed had been done. Valuable time has been lost at great expense. Now you don’t really care if any of them leave; in fact, you sort of hope that they do before you have to fire them. Unfortunately, this scenario happens all too often in corporate life. We have all been confronted with decisions and outcomes similar to this. And as the supply of good talent continues to decline because of the shrinking workforce due to retirement and if the economy continues to be strong, situations like this will become more frequent. Competition for young talent will become fiercer. The pressures to fill a need, retain young talent, and meet the generational expectations of an individual who has grown up in a world of immediate rewards and consistent praise will almost always win out over better judgment. These opportunities will invariably come about before the individual has the benefit of sufficient time and experience to adequately prepare for success. Managers and Human Resources professionals will simply have to better and more rapidly prepare young talent for higher level of assignments. Yet sending them to more group training courses won’t be enough to provide your young prospects with the individual insight and guidance that is required. These training courses and seminars are far too general to provide them with the specific and relevant information that they need and can not offer them the required individual attention to prepare them for more demanding assignments in their world. And, of course, pledging that you or an inside mentor will be able to devote the time and energy needed for adequate tutoring may work for awhile, but the constant unexpected demands and emergences of normal corporate life will invariably get in the way and prevent it from happening on a sustained basis. Providing all of your young talent who might have the potential for growth with full-blown, outside executive coaching and all the trimmings that come with it will be too cost prohibitive. To address this all too critical problem, Gateway International Group has developed a set of products specifically designed for the needs of your young talent. These products offer the advantages of:
To learn more about how these products might be just the right solution to the rapid and effective development needs of your young talent, please call Joseph Kran at 800-376-8176.
|
|||
| |
|
||
