Quarterly

... and Beyond

2019

PREVIEW

ISSUE

127 Talent Management Trends and Challenges That Will Shape Your Business Next Year...

2019 PREVIEW ISSUE | Q 1

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PLUS EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: NOW IT’S PERSONAL. WHY EMPLOYEE SURVEY PROGRAMS HAVE BEEN FAILING FOR YEARS. PAGE 60

FEATURES

32Where Does

Talent Play in the Transformation

Game?

Massive organizational change requires a crack

talent management team.

BY AARON SORENSEN, PH.D.

40Can’t We All Just Belong?

How do you boost employee sentiment? By meeting

people’s personal needs. Lead the way and reap the rewards.

BY DAVE ULRICH

48#MeToo =

#ListenNowIn an increasingly divisive

workplace, do you have the resources to hear what your

people are trying to say?

BY KEVIN OAKES

54Where Has All

the Feedback Gone?As organizations must tackle

more hot-button social issues, feedback has never

mattered more.BY ANGELA LANE AND

SERGEY GORBATOV

66The Charismatic

CEO Is DeadBrash bigwigs used to get the

glory. Then they started cratering companies.

BY ROBERT HOGAN, PH.D., RYNE SHERMAN, PH.D.,

AND SCOTT GREGORY, PH.D.

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TQ NEWS

5 How Slack Is Killing Your Team

6 Not Everyone Is Cut Out for the Corner Home Office

7 Where Have All the Leaders Gone? Into Their Inboxes

7 3 Talent Books You Must Read

8 Ask HR Harry: How Can I Get More Out of My Employees?

8 Let There Be Light

8 Say This, Sound Smart

9 Test Your TQ: How Well Do You Know the Latest Talent Trends?

9 Bad Boss Habit #37: Procrastination

10 Smile for the Camera

DEPARTMENTS

12 The Algorithm in the Corner Office Don’t look now, but robots are rapidly learning how to become better bosses. BY PETER D. HARMS, PH.D.

15 Your Workplace Is Toxic. Literally. Harmful office practices promote employee stress. But workers aren’t the only ones who lose when they’re grinded into the ground. BY JEFFREY PFEFFER, PH.D.

19 How to Build a Better IDP With a few upgrades, the old individual development plan could help your talent and organization soar. BY BEVERLY KAYE AND LINDY WILLIAMS

22 The New Way to Listen to Employees If you really want to learn about your people, you’ll need to start monitoring them—with their permission. BY BRIAN KROPP, PH.D.

26 You’re Growing Your Organization All Wrong Developing high-potentials isn’t a bad strategy for success—unless you do it at the expense of your other employees. BY JACK ZENGER

AND JOE FOLKMAN

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29 Nonsense Is the New Normal Your organization is crazy. But if you bust through the B.S., you can focus on what matters. BY GEORGE BINNEY, PHILIP GLANFIELD, AND GERHARD WILKE

10

ABOUT TALENT QUARTERLYOur mission is to make organizations more successful by providing their leaders with the science-based, insightful, and practical information to make critical talent decisions. We accomplish that mission by publishing serious, provocative, and practical articles and interviews that raise the quality of dialogue about talent. We believe the current dialogue on talent issues provides few insights and little guidance to senior-level lead-ers. We believe that an honest broker is needed to adjudicate the claims made by consultants and academics about the effectiveness of talent management practices and products. We also believe that serious dialogue on this topic requires more than 500-word stories. Print and digital subscriptions, issues, and articles are all available at www.talent-quarterly.com.

Managing Editor: Bill Phillips Creative Director Patty Alvarez Executive Editor: Andrew Daniels

There are no flying briefcases in this issue. Nor will you read about self-filling coffee cups, VR conference calls, or robot admins that read your thoughts. And no one is opening a Mars location anytime soon. Get over it, Elon.

The future, it turns out, will look a lot like the present—on the surface any-way. Leaders will succeed by creating a diverse, inclusive culture. Employees

will do their best work when they feel engaged and appreciated. Your top talent will drive world-class results.But dig a little deeper into the issue you hold in your hands—our 2019 Preview Issue—and you’ll see that it

won’t be business as usual. Talent management is changing every day. New challenges, new opportunities, new reasons to bang your head on your desk (yes, you’ll still have a desk). Consider the following:

• Executives are bracing for failure. Only 8 percent of leaders say their business model will remain viable at the current rate of change. Gulp. In “Where Does Talent Play in the Transformation Game?” on page 32, Aaron Sorensen explains why your talent is the key to making reinvention happen.

• Employees are pissed. The American workplace is reflective of American culture: more divisive than ever. For that reason, understanding employee senti-ment has never been more critical to productivity and shareholder value, explains Kevin Oakes in “#MeToo = #ListenNow” on page 48.

• Feedback is on life support. Speaking of hot-button social issues, today’s lead-ers are at greater risk than ever of saying too little. This is a problem, because hard conversations have never mattered more. In “Where Has All the Feedback Gone?” on page 54, Angela Lane and Sergey Gorbatov reveal the biggest gaps—and risks.

• Leaders look different. Brash bigwigs used to get the glory, but then they started cratering companies. Future leaders look more selfless, say Robert Hogan and his colleagues at Hogan Assessments. In “The Charismatic CEO Is Dead” (page 66), they explain the qualities that matter in the c-suite of tomorrow.

And there’s plenty more. Hope you enjoy this sneak peek at the future. As always, let me know how we’re doing by emailing me at marc@talent-quarterly.com.

Marc Effron Founder & Publisher, Talent Quarterly

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

WE CAN SEE YOUR FUTURE

Quarterly

... and Beyond

2019

PREVIEW

ISSUE

127 Talent Management Trends and Challenges That Will Shape Your Business Next Year...

Talent Quarterly is published by The Talent Strategy Group, LLC, One Penn Plaza, 36th Floor, New York, NY 10119. Talent Quarterly is protected by copyright and no part of it may be reproduced in part or in whole without the express permission of The Talent Strategy Group, LLC. All opinions are those of the article authors and do not indicate endorsement by Talent Quarterly or its publisher.

2019 PREVIEW ISSUE | Q 3

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2019 PREVIEW ISSUE | Q 19

IN A MAGAZINE ISSUE about the future, the last thing you’d expect to read about is something that ’s existed since the Eisenhower administration. But in this age of reboots, it’s time to breathe new life into one of the oldest tools in the book: the individual development plan (IDP).

The IDP emerged in the 1950s and became an HR staple. Often tucked into a slot just after the performance review

discussion, the IDP usually came with a set of instructions outlining the focus and scope of the plan and tips for having a con-versation about the skills the employee should work on in the coming year.

Forms were completed. Boxes were checked. All was done until the next year.

There were a few small shifts along the way. Some practitioners encouraged the separation of the performance discussion

and the development conversation, allow-ing time to elapse between the two meet-ings in the hope that one wouldn’t dimin-ish the value of the other.

Eventually, a fill-in box emerged in some IDPs that called for a longer-term goal or career aspiration.

In some cases, calendars were adjusted to accommodate these tweaks, but that was it. The two pieces of the process and their associated meetings marched along together with the IDP sitting (un)com-fortably in the shadow of the performance evaluation process for several decades.

The IDP sat quietly, promising to promote growth and fuel development-focused conversations. And it sat … and it sat … and it sat. Still, that’s some tremen-dous staying power. So there’s definitely something there.

As we look toward 2019, it ’s time to identify the there and untangle the IDP

D E P A R T M E N T S

HOW TO BUILD A BETTER IDPThe individual development plan has been collecting dust for decades. But with a few upgrades, it can help your talent soar. BY BEVERLY KAYE AND LINDY WILLIAMS

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from the performance management pro-cess. It’s time to shake off the dust and let it walk on its own.

You’re Busy. Why Bother?Why take the time to spend precious hours bringing the IDP out into the light? Let’s start with two related and very im-portant factors: the talent you attract and keep, and the competition for your cus-tomers and clients.

We know that employees want to learn, grow, and be successful. Research has long shown that people who see a future inside the organization are more engaged, productive, and committed to their work and their teams. That’s not new.

What is new, though, is that more or-ganizations are working to create employ-ee experiences that deliver on the promise of development and growth. The talent you need to meet your objectives might just envision their future with a competi-tor if you won’t help them see it with you.

What makes the issue even more ur-gent is the need to remain visible in your industry. Effective development and meaningful growth plans open the door to the ideas and innovations that will be critical to building and maintaining a loyal customer and client base.

So aside from development being the right thing to do, it’s also essential to your organization’s very survival.

A New Meaning to IDPWhat if IDP in your organization stood for “igniting development potential”? We think the process could do just that.

Consider the following ideas. Think about your current process and how each suggestion could position your IDP to promote growth, initiate development-focused conversations, and prepare indi-viduals for the future.

Choose one. Choose several. Complete all of them. It’s your choice based on what your IDP needs.

1. MARKET IT There’s no time for lengthy communica-tions about anything, including the IDP, so simplify the message. Answer the ba-sics and spread the word far and wide.

→ What’s the IDP here? Clarify or re-inforce the organization’s point of view about development. If the explanation takes more than a few sentences, rethink it, revisit it, and refine it. One example we’ve recently seen simply says, “We be-lieve every employee—at every level—is learning every day. Our IDP is a chance to hear about what you’re learning.”→ What’s it used for? State how the em-ployee’s plan will be used, who will see it, what will be shared and with whom, and how the content will feed into other pro-cesses. When employees know the reach of the IDP, they’re better positioned to invest time and thought into creating the most meaningful plans.→ Who has answers? A simple one-stop call here, text here, or email here can eliminate the need for lengthy FAQs, documents, or wordy websites.

2. READY THE RESOURCESThink carefully about who should be in-volved in your IDP process. Sure, the au-thor of the IDP (the employee) is involved, but when? We’re asking you to back up a bit. Back up to before the writing of the plan. Back up to the design phase.

Technology provides an opportunity to crowdsource the design of both the process of the IDP and the plan itself. If an IDP is intended to inspire an employee to learn and grow, who would be better at designing it than the recipient of the learning and the growing? The employee.

We hear from employees that they want the IDP to be flexible, simple, rep-resentative of their needs, and most im-portantly, used. Here’s how we’d attack it:→ First, ask all employees what they need and want from the IDP. Their an-swers will differ. Ownership and buy-in come from involvement, and development isn’t something you can do to someone.

When employees participate in the

design process and the conversations that go with it, it results in an experience that’s more than user-friendly. It’s user-useful.→ Second, keep it simple. Don’t include more than a few questions to answer, because no one has time for lengthy in-structions and narratives. Let employees choose what interests them most and what development areas are most mean-ingful for them and for their futures.

And keep it f lexible: If an employee wants to plan for three months or three years, encourage them. Remember, the plan belongs primarily to the employee. →Finally, make it actionable. A plan without action is a waste of time. A few simple, but focused action steps with completion dates will help. But taking those steps just a bit further can breathe life into the plan.

Include a commitment to action to be shared with others—a mentor, coach, manager, or peer group—to increase the “stickiness” of the plan and potentially garner support for the effort.

3. TAP TALENTIDPs can take the talent search wider and deeper. Hidden talent can be discovered when the content from IDPs is shared broadly. We know this may be a detour from your normal practice, but the time is right to try something new.→ Socialize the content. This offers hiring managers a wider lens for viewing existing talent. Communicating employ-ees’ development needs, wants, and aspi-rations leverages technology features as well as the willingness of many individu-als to share what they know, what they need, and what they want to know.→ Add a learner seat to every project team. Consider housing content like “What I am learning this month (or year)” in an easily searchable location and set a goal for project managers to include at

D E P A R T M E N T S

20 Q | TALENT-QUARTERLY.COM

Taking time to consider the future is a powerful and personal force

in an overwhelmed working world.

2019 PREVIEW ISSUE | Q 21

least one learner in each of their initiatives. Project selection templates could

prompt leaders to pull in members from areas and expertise that reach beyond the usual suspects and, in the process, build inclusive teams.→ Create internal internships to cross-train employees based on interests they identify in their IDPs. When you demon-strate a commitment to growing your own, you send two important messages: We heard you, and we support you.→ Assign in-house recruiters to focus solely on finding talent wherever it sits inside the organization. Don’t forget to publicly applaud and recognize managers and leaders who partner with these talent miners to encourage sharing of resources and create networks of development.

4. OPTIMIZE OPTIONSMost IDP conversations focus on develop-ment opportunities in the current role or the immediate next step. But people want to know about opportunities beyond that. Employees know things are changing—and we know they know. So let’s make the IDP flexible enough to accommodate changes as they occur.→ Personalize patterns to widen the lens of possibilities. If your IDP allows employees to identify different next steps based on their needs, you’re personaliz-ing the process and increasing the range of options. An IDP by its very label is in-tended to be personal. Ownership of the plan depends upon how well it meets what each employee needs.→ Ask for experiences, not roles, in a rapidly changing workplace. Experiences will outlive job titles. Shifting markets and customer base modifications make job titles and even specific roles uncer-tain. IDPs expand the horizon of choices when they not only allow for, but encour-age employees to identify the types of ex-periences they want versus a role or title.→ Accept “I don’t know” as an answer. One of the worst possible questions to ask many employees is, “Where do you see yourself in the future?” And yet, we do it all the time in many IDPs. The response is usually what the employee thinks is the appropriate and expected answer, but the

honest reply is most likely, “I don’t know.” Accepting that response and pointing em-ployees to resources that can help them explore possibilities demonstrates sup-port and encourages candor.→ Stop typing and start talking. Add “Stop here and talk” buttons in the IDP process. Conversations between employ-ees and managers are often focused on what needs to be done right now to meet a goal or deliver a product. Leveraging that immediacy to initiate conversations about development can raise the awareness of how important development really is to the individual and the organization.

C onver s at ion s don’ t h ave to b e lengthy. “What did you learn this week?” can reinforce a plan and refocus energy. Sprinkle short exchanges throughout the week, month, and year to build dialogue and keep development on track.

5. REAP THE REWARDSWhen an IDP process is alive, well, and working, the three stakeholders win big.→ Employees: Every engagement study and exit interview will tell you that people join organizations for opportunities to grow and leave if they don’t believe growth is possible. It’s also clear from employee surveys that development conversations don’t happen with the frequency employ-ees want. And even when they do, they often disappoint.

Successful IDP conversations do more for employees than identify next-step ac-tion plans and the resources needed to get there. IDPs boost an employee’s self-awareness, which is a crucial competency for success; strengthen the employee-manager connection; and reinforce the message that the employee is valued. When employees leave the IDP conversa-tion knowing how to grow in their current roles, they’re more alert to opportunities and ready to experience the future within the organization.→ Managers: Employees and managers often hold performance appraisals and related conversations separately. The IDP process and associated conversa-tions are the proactive and practical next step. The IDP is the incentive and catalyst for change, development, and growth,

and frequent conversations keep that mindset alive. Taking time to consider the future is a powerful and personal force in an overwhelmed working world. As com-munication improves and a develop-ment dialogue gains traction, the man-ager-employee relationship strengthens. Development-focused conversations also uncover information about what kinds of experiences employees want, which can be incredibly useful to the many projects that sit on a manager’s desk.→ Organizations: When the information from IDP conversations is shared with leaders, internal recruiters, and develop-ment specialists, talent can be used more effectively. Studies have shown that pro-moting from within (versus hiring exter-nally) often leads to more success, thanks to the internal employee’s connections and understanding of the culture. The IDP process can surface strong candi-dates who may otherwise be overlooked.

As organizations become more tech-equal, the differentiating force will be the talent they attract, develop, grow, and re-tain. Improved engagement results and reductions in unwanted turnover are sought-after indicators of healthy and growing organizations.

Employees who know they’re valued and feel they have growth possibilities are committed and ready to do what’s needed to meet objectives.

Employees who envision a future within the organization, plus managers who take talent development seriously, is the formula for the igniting development potential in 2019 ... and beyond.

D E P A R T M E N T S

BEVERLY KAYE is the re-

cipient of the 2018 Lifetime

Achievement Award from the

Association for Talent Devel-

opment. She is the coauthor of Love ’Em or

Lose ’Em, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go,

and Up is Not the Only Way.

LINDY WILLIAMS is a designer

and consultant for Talent

Dimensions. She’s the coau-

thor of Up Is Not the Only Way.

We can see your future.Read the entirety of our 2019 Preview Issue

for more practical, science-backed articles on

Talent for the year ahead. These world-class

authors and thought leaders cover 127 Talent

Management trends and challenges you should be

on the look out for in 2019 - available in both print

and e-book.

Talent Quarterly is published by The Talent Strategy Group, LLC, One Penn Plaza, 36th Floor, New York, NY 10119. Talent Quarterly is protected by copyright and no part of it may be reproduced in part or in whole without the express permission of The Talent Strategy Group, LLC. All opinions are those of the article authors and do not indicate endorsement by Talent Quarterly or its publisher.

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