In a business world where companies are moving from the classic local operation to global operations, it becomes increasingly important for managers to know not only what talents the company has, but also where they are, enabling executives to select the right people with the right talents for existing and newly created key positions among the entire organization as a basis for a successful business outcome across all business units operating on this local planet. This article will answer the questions what Talent is, the impact of different generations on talent management and how to manage talent.
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What is Talent?
Talent consists of three substrates. The first is Raw Talent.
Raw Talent is the basic talent one has in his or her blood. It is the gift that was given to you at birth. Some people have a natural talent for numbers; they can already tell you the result of an addition when you have not yet finished entering the numbers on your calculator. Every individual has some inborn raw talents he or she can build on later in his/her life.
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The second substrate is Passion.
Whether and how much you build and develop on one or many of your raw talents mainly depends on whether your raw talents were ever discovered and fostered during your childhood and on whether you really liked to build on a specific raw talent. For example, you can have a raw talent for numbers but for some reason find mathematics deadly boring, you will never become passionate about math then. So to capitalize on a raw talent, one needs first to know what raw talents he or she has, and second, which raw talents he or she is passionate about. Whether you do something just because you have to do it or whether you do it wholeheartedly is equal to whether you do it without passion or with passion. That said, passion is in your heart.
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The third substrate is Skills.
We like to believe that skills can be learnt. That is basically true. But don’t think that anybody can learn just about any skills. Skills are learnt, adopted and improved the most easily when one has the raw talent needed for those skills and the passion about doing the task that requires those skills. If one has the necessary raw talent but is lacking the passion, he or she still can learn and improve the skills. He or she will just not be very motivated, that’s all. But make no mistake, if the raw talent is missing, one can be the most passionate on earth, but will never develop satisfactory skills. Whether one develops and grows his/her skills lies in his/her own hands. But one shouldn’t waste his time trying to build and improve skills requiring a raw talent he or she clearly doesn’t have.
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Different Talent-Blends
As an employer, you need to know what talent blends you want, need, can afford, or definitely don’t want, respectively you should be aware of what talent blends you have among your employees, so to let them do jobs that fit their blend respectively to avoid giving them jobs in which they eventually have no option other than to fail. The chart shows five different talent blends.
The first one is the one who is lacking the raw talent for a specific job. Even though he/she is very passionate about the task, he/she will never reach a satisfactory level of skills. This employee was either looking for the wrong job or got assigned the wrong tasks at a later stage.
The second case shows an employee full of raw talent, but no passion. This employee can develop and improve his/her skills, even though he/she is doing the job without heart. You may think this is not a big problem as all that matters is that the job gets done well. This employee may have taken the job because it offered him/her a chance to learn skills that he/she wanted to learn, even though the job itself never made him/her catch fire. In this case, your company will just be a learning place. As soon as the employee has learnt the skills he/she wanted to learn, you will receive his/her notice.
The third blend is your ever loyal employee. Having some raw talent for a task he or she is full of passion about, you can expect a somehow acceptable level of skills, engagement and loyalty. This person fullheartedly likes what she is doing and if the skill level is acceptable for the company, both can live happily together forever.
The fourth blend at first sight looks better than the third. There is more raw talent available at the base and therefore the skills are better than in blend three. But be careful, if the passion pot is only half full, it means this person is only halfheartedly with your company, always looking left and right whether there is really not something more interesting out there.
The fifth blend is your outstanding, top performing executive that you are looking for to manage your newly established South East Asia operation or your European headquarters. No need to say, this blend, even though not only applicable to top executives, is scarce and that is the reason you need a decent talent management system, otherwise your human resource department won’t be able to identify and locate these exceptional individuals either within or outside your own organization.
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The Generation Challenge
While the basics of talent and its different blends are relatively straightforward, there is another component making talent management a bit more challenging: the fact that by now (2014), companies have to handle up to four generations of employees and managers with very different backgrounds and sometimes stark differences in mindset and expectations. These four generations just don’t tick the same way, but have to work together and the company needs different tools and approaches to reach out to all of them. If I told my mother to send me an SMS or “Line” message, I would have to wait forever as it just won’t happen. The same is true if I asked my nephew to send me a hand-written letter by mail – this piece of paper you slip into an envelope, put a stamp on it and then it gets delivered by the postman, remember that system? If you do, you are most likely part of the first of the generations we are going to look at a bit closer now.
Baby Boomers – The Builders
Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. Assuming that they started work at the age of 20 and retire at 60, they would be part of the active work-force since 1966 and disappear from the company’s payroll system by 2024. In other words the company has to deal with them for another 10 years; respectively younger generations have to deal with them since today Baby Boomers are often found in leading positions, the youngest Baby Boomers being 50 as of today. Baby Boomers are children of re-builders. Practically all Baby Boomer parents are born before or during the Second World War. Baby Boomer parents know hardship and hard work as they had to re-build their countries. The Baby Boomer’s parents’ experience was the base molding the mind-set of Baby Boomers who believe that “hard work brings rewards”. Baby Boomers want meaningful work. They like socially and environmentally conscious companies. Late Baby Boomers are increasingly motivated by money, status symbols and titles. Baby Boomers believe that money and comfort are the reward for hard work. They are willing to be working up the ladder and value experience more than degrees. Baby Boomers are no job hoppers. They are loyal to the company they work for and organize life around work. The Baby Boomer’s target is a meaningful and secure job, allowing him to be secure in his daily life and procure him a somehow comfortable retirement.
How to manage BB’s: Baby Boomers are quite easy to manage. Compliment them for their achievements and their job’s done; that’s basically all you need to do to keep them happy and engaged.
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Generation X – The Responsibles
Generation X followed the Baby Boomers. Born between 1965 – 1976 these were kids of two working parents and/or often divorced families. They were sometimes called “latchkey kids” as many of them had the key to their house hanging on a necklace to ensure they didn’t lose it. When they came home after school, they found empty houses and apartments and had to deal with themselves - they were on their own for many hours of the day. No surprise then that Generation X-ers value freedom and responsibility and often prefer to work alone rather than in teams. They like to set their own time table and working hours. This generation thrives on diversity, challenge, responsibility and creative input. Generation X-ers are resourceful and self-sufficient people and often leading edge, especially with technology. They have a high degree on global awareness, are ambitious and hard working. But make no mistake; in contrast to the Baby Boomer who has arranged his life around work, Generation X gives premium importance to family and home, therefore Generation X values work/life balance. Generation X started work around 1985 and will be part of the active workforce until 2036. Today (2014) they are of an age between 38 and 49.
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How to manage this generation: Generation X is still quite easy to manage. First of all, if possible grant them flexible work hours. Make feedback regular and specific. Coach but don’t lecture them, remember they became grown-up’s long before others.
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Generation Y – The Easy Goers
This is the first generation free of all war-burdens. Other than the X-ers, this generation didn’t hear phrases from their parents like ‘old bread is not hard, no bread is hard’ as their parents never had that experience themselves either. Born between 1977 and 1994, the Generation Y’s Rucksack (back-pack) was light if not empty and could be filled along their way into the future. Travelling long distances got easier and the rise of the internet let the planet shrink even further. Opportunities and activities were abundantly available. This generation grew up in a cultural diverse and a playful environment. They are tech-savvy, enthusiastic, self-centered, confident and well networked. Similar to Generation X parents, mom and dad of this generation did not always have time to be available, but they had the technical means to monitor the whereabouts of their kids from almost anywhere having led to the Generation Y being called children of helicopter parents somehow hovering over them all the time. Generation Y youngsters had a tight schedule of activities in addition to the usual school curriculum such as sports, music, arts, etc. They are used to be praised and rewarded for almost anything they accomplished. They like to work in teams and accept new ideas and
situations as a constant opportunity to learn. They want the company they work for to be socially responsible and they want to be coached, mentored and - rewarded. Generation Y employees are loyal to their employers as long as their personal interest and career needs are being met and those change frequently. Generation Y joined the working world in 1997 and unless retirement age will change dramatically, they will stay there until 2054. Today Generation Y’s are aged 20 to 37.
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How to manage generation Y: Give them detailed instructions or information about what you want, but let them determine how to get there. Make the work relevant to them. Praise them often and don’t forget to coach them. Always keep a door open so they can ask questions.
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Generation Z – The Butterflies
If you want to know how the adjective ‘prehistoric’ feels, then take one of your vinyl gramophone records you listened to in your youth and show it to a youngster of generation Z. He will look at you as if you came from a distant planet and eventually ask how you managed to survive so many centuries without having more wrinkles in your face than those actually visible. These complete digital natives are born between 1995, today and beyond. They are just about to enter the workforce this or next year and they will be there long after their grandparents described above have left work and life in 2073. This generation grew up in a fast pacing world of digital tools and gadgets. Most of them won’t even know what a pager is – do you?
We don’t really know yet how Generation Z will do in the corporate world of work. Based on some studies with an “older” sample of Generation Z, it was found that they are likely to have an entrepreneurial mindset and that for them, development and work/life balance might be more important than financial reward. They might be more result driven, managing output rather than time. Having grown up almost online, the internet probably laid the foundation for a kind of an “instant-mentality” where everything is available “now” where everything goes much faster than what it did for previous generations. Generation Z members are prone to expect rapid career progression. They are not seeking jobs for life and they may have less concern for responsibility, accountability and understanding of consequences. For Generation Z diversity and equality is taken as the norm and they dare to challenge conservative authority.
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How to manage generation Z: They probably need a lot of freedom in their jobs and want to be measured based on the results they deliver rather than on red-tape compliance as they don’t know what a tape is anyhow, no matter what color.
What does it all mean for the business?
Based on their different mindsets, the different generations are likely to have different management styles embedded in their souls. Given that each manager needs to manage or coach people from more than just one generation and certainly not only from his own, opportunities for conflict or struggles are almost guaranteed and can only be resolved if each generation knows how the others function so they can adapt and adjust or at least understand. To illustrate this further, I generated the below table 1 listing the generations, their type and a statement I would expect from them if asked about their attitude.
Table 1: Generation Types and Attitudes
It is a human trait to believe that others function the way oneself does. Managers therefore are likely to manage the way they themselves would prefer to be managed. This is not likely to work well across all the generation constellations. Imagine a Responsible (Generation X) just tells an Easy Goer (Generation Y) what the job is, and then leaves him alone without supervision and regular praise. That is not what the Easy Goer wants or needs, and when the job isn’t done well at the end and/or not the way the manager expected, the X-manager will say something like “I thought I told you…”. Well, he did, but not “exactly”. The problems in the opposite direction won’t be any lighter in weight. If the Easy Goer tells the Responsible exactly to the micro level what he wants and then keeps following up (hovering) on every possible and impossible occasion, the Responsible will likely be bothered to a considerable extent.
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The next table illustrates the estimated degree of a possible match or mismatch of management style and subordinate style where green represents a match, yellow a moderate mismatch and red a considerable mismatch.
Table 2: Match/Mismatch of manager’s style and subordinate’s style
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While each individual is different and people will never perfectly fit into general descriptions as made above, it is important for business leaders to know that there are differences and that those differences need their attention.
It is not possible to classify people into a predefined mindset based on their birth date and this article is not attempting to give you a tool to do so. It rather should work the other way round. The knowledge you hopefully gained from this article about generations and the way they tick should facilitate three things:
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Enable you to locate your employees and co-workers on the generation timeline based on their actual way of working, their response to challenges, their interactions etc. A late Baby Boomer by his birth date could very well behave like a Generation X born.
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Give you an initial hint where on the generation timeline a new employee, your new manager or anybody you just start to deal with is most likely located. This might allow you to better tune-in yourself or at least be aware what might come your way. But stay open minded as each model has exceptions and the Easy Goer you expected might not need as much supervision as you thought.
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Enable you to foresee situations of conflicts due to a generation mismatch, identify the generation mismatch as root cause of existing conflicts and successfully address and resolve them.
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Bangkok, May 2014
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