Purposeful Talent Development: Use Data to Hit Bullseyes

The leaders of most organizations that I’ve worked with in my career don’t really know what they need from their talent. They might know what tasks need to be accomplished to keep the business running. But they typically don’t know which competencies are the ones their team members leverage to drive the business success.

Why Clarify Your Organization’s Unique Talent Needs

There are lots of good reasons to find out. Once you clarify your teams’ success profiles, you can drive your organizational success by developing people in ways that help them do their current jobs better—and prepare them to move into managerial and leadership roles.

In other words, by articulating the unique combination of knowledge, skills and abilities that works best for your credit union, you can build a successful, research-based talent development program and create a solid succession plan that has the backing of deeper bench strength.

Said another way, once you know what your targets are for knowledge, skills and abilities at each level in your organization, you will be able to identify where the skills gaps are. This makes it easier to develop your team to fill those gaps.

All in all, understanding the specific competencies your team uses (and ultimately needs) means you won’t just be throwing darts at the wall but actually hitting the bullseye of more effective talent development.

How to Identify Your Organization’s Unique Talent Needs

Interestingly, your organization has already selected the knowledge, skills and abilities that matter most. They are the key competencies that your leaders and staffers are using to effectively serve members every day. They are the skills that help people be successful and get promoted.

Over the last 50 years, behavioral researchers have been identifying the set of possible knowledge, skills and abilities from which your organization has made its choices. To set up your credit union for success with talent management, you’ll ask leaders, managers and individual contributors to identify and prioritize which skills identified by the researchers are in play within your credit union.

Potential, Realized

There’s a lot of unharnessed potential out there, since most credit unions haven’t prioritized the competencies that their leaders, managers and staffers use to do their best work.

You’re probably already paying for your team members’ learning. Imagine getting a fuller return on that investment by knowing your organization’s foundational skills for success and targeting the development of the knowledge, skills and abilities for each of them.

CUES Consulting helps credit unions of all sizes identify areas of opportunity, starting with a plan tailor-made to your needs. I’d love to talk with you about what is possible for your credit union.

Stepping in the gap between corporate complacency and organizational excellence is where Lesley Sears strives to be. Now VP/talent development consulting for CUES, Lesley is passionate about helping leaders find their company’s superpowers in talent development through a wholistic approach: identify–develop–document-repeat. She’s a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, a certified executive leadership coach and has over 20 years of experience consulting with organizations across many industries to strategically develop their talent’s best selves. When she’s not working to help organizations maximize their potential, you can find her digging in her flower beds, reading or watching classic movies. Maybe, on a good morning in the spring and fall, you’ll find her running—really slowly.