50. Leading Top Talent in the Workplace

In the twenty-first century, certainly in organizations, one has to be the best at something; it is no longer enough to be good—or pretty good—at a number of things. For decades, organizations felt comfortable with policies, strategies, structures, systems, and business processes that kept them in the middle of the road—it made sense: after all, that is where clients stood or sat.

These days, however, the middle of the road is the road to nowhere: there is so much change; there is so much pressure. There are so many different ways of doing everything that business-as-usual is dead. Notions of being an honest broker, a family doctor, or a “Really Useful Engine,” pace Thomas and Friends, are antiquated.

It is time to rediscover the power of work and forge better ways to lead or compete—but in both instances succeed—with those who, typically with creativity and innovation or, some prefer, imagination and invention, do the intellectual work that matters most. Excellence is impossible without top talent, aka chief possibility officers.

Talent is a marked innate ability, aptitude, or faculty for achievement.¹ Since there is a myriad of possible productive applications,² organizations will find greater value if they formulate their own definitions of what talent and talent management are.³

On the other hand, top talent begs no interpretation (even if it too cannot be perfectly identified): it is the natural hallmark of the “clevers,” high flyers, mavericks, prima donnas, and superstars whose recurring individuality—honed and fortified by application and practice—infuses performance with a distinctive (and not infrequently disruptive) dimension.⁴ Borrowing from Goffee and Jones (2009), top talent is those individuals who have the potential to create and deliver disproportionate amounts of value from the resources made available to them and are therefore of most value to an organization. If intellectual capital drives today’s knowledge economies, this brings with it an increased dependence on the highly talented people who generate it.

Research shows that superior talent does not just happen ab ovo: it is a combination of our genes and our physical and social development that imposes boundary conditions on what we can do easily or not.⁵ Top performers come into being because, to a very high degree, they (i) study and understand what their talents are, this being distinct from what they can learn; (ii) make resolutions and set goals to strengthen themselves; (iii) implement talent development projects and mark out daily, weekly, and monthly indicators of progress; (iv) re-strategize based on emergent learning; and (v) take time to salute their own efforts, steps, and attainments.

Smart people are the motive power of the knowledge economy and every organization faces challenges in managing⁶ and leading them. Most people look up to their leaders; top talent knows its deeply embedded life interests⁷ and, through the organization, focuses on what value it can bring to the equation. Therefore, leading top talent in the workplace begins with the understanding that a rapport with them must be an association of interdependent equals,⁸ over whom leaders have limited real authority. It takes relationship, discernment, and deep conversation to get to the heart of top talent and use it organizationally. Why? First, as Salacuse (2006) explains pithily, the talent of mavericks always means that they have options outside the organization; those options give them a strong sense of independence. Second, top talent has a formal or informal proprietary interest in the organization (and may have played a role in selecting its management); in consequence, they can think that the leaders are beholden to them, not the other way around. Third, top talent has its own followers and constituencies, whose loyalties and respect powerfully influence their behavior. Fourth, top talent often has loyalties to institutions outside the organization they work in; the signals they receive from these usually influence them more than anything the leaders can say or do. Fifth, top talent does not conceive of itself as a follower; it sees itself as a leader and wants to be treated as such. Last, because of its special value to the organization, top talent usually feels entitled to special access, benefits, and privileges (and constantly negotiates for that).

When there is no choice but to explore and exploit opportunity, organizations must unleash their full creative and innovative potential. To imagine without limits answers to the question “What if …?” they must use tools, methods, and approaches that both empower and nurture possibility and reveal the immediate significance and potentiality of what is then found. Heeding Manu (2007), this is not about how one should fit imagination to business; conversely, it is about how one can fit business to imagination.

One might think that is easier said than done. But there are good examples of successful renegade thinking to invent the future of management.⁹ There is also much open and fertile ground in top talent. Paraphrasing Alexander Manu, they, more than anyone else, intuitively understand that before one learns to manage the “how,” the “what” needs to be conceived. What is more, they have the ability to reveal the “why,” thereby joining the “how” and the “what,” that is, the means and the meaning.¹⁰ To develop distinctive ideas about their objectives, their clients, what their clients value, their results, and their plans, organizations need top talent. To solve wicked problems,¹¹ they must recreate themselves as organizations of choice for mavericks, not merely make adaptations of no great shakes to existing setups. Albert Einstein said it well: no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. And who better to resolve wicked problems than mavericks?

Wicked problems in urgent need of solution call for new ways in the workplace. For sure, human resources divisions must shift the focus of what they do, e.g., measuring cost per hire, or the impact of initiatives on skills and attitudes, to the quality of the talent decisions they support.¹² How can you lead people who know their worth, are organizationally savvy, ignore corporate hierarchy, expect instant access, are well connected, have a low boredom threshold, and most likely will not thank you? Above all, since first-level managers (not to excuse top- and middle-level managers) are primordial to engagement, a new type of leader, one that neither lacks self-confidence nor imagination,¹³ must emerge. He or she will

Of course, then, one cannot exactly lead top talent hands on. But one can be a guiding force in their lives. Your job is not to be smarter than them, for they will almost always know their specific domains better than you; rather, it is to make sure you provide sociability, infrastructure, credibility, resources, and rewards. Your job is also to remove what obstacles stand in the way of their doing their best. The advice Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones proffer is to lead with a light touch, listen to the silences, tune into leadership, explain and persuade, use expertise, give space and resources, tell them what but not how, provide boundaries, give people time for questioning, offer recognition and amplify achievements, encourage failure to maximize learning, protect clever people from the rain, assign real-world challenges with constraints, talk straight, conduct and connect, and recruit more talent. If, some will say, this should apply to any segment of personnel, the fact that it still does not underscores how far we have to go before we can talk about leading in clever organizations.