1. Title: Developing Leadership and Talent for Organizational Performance
Author: Melinda Irene Netto
Affiliation: Student- MBA 2nd Year, St. Joseph’s P.G. College, King-Koti Hyderabad.
E-mail ID: melindanetto09@gmail.com
Mobile: +919502282706
ABSTRACT
Leadership and talent development are without doubt two of the most critical issues in
the field of Human Resources these days. As Jack Welch famously quoted, “the team with
the best players wins.” As a business leader, you are only as good as the team you lead.
Hiring the right people can make the difference between success and failure, and between
mediocrity and greatness. Talent builders identify the organizational capabilities and talent
that organization need to perform at a high level in today’s environment. Leaders need to
assess their talent against present and future projected requirements. Leaders who address
succession, career planning, and talent mobility with information and foresight have a ready
supply of successors groomed by strong talent development efforts. Such leaders contribute
talent across departments and geographies, enabling the organization to more rapidly fill
business needs. Business leaders who can effectively balance business objectives with talent
mobility strategies are more highly regarded both by senior executives and peers. When done
right, these talent management strategies can have a dramatic impact on revenue. The main
tools for talent management development and success are talent intelligence- data, insight,
and decision support at the point of action. Hence this paper focuses on strategies and tools
required for developing leadership and talent for the organization performance.
Keywords
1. Leadership
2. Talent development
3. Strategies, Tools
4. Talent management

2. DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP AND TALENT FOR ORGANISATIONAL
PERFORMANCE
In order to understand what a leadership strategy is, we first have to be clear about
what we mean by leadership. Leadership begins with individuals in leadership positions, but
it does not end there. The ability of an organization to accomplish its goals does not depend
solely on the force of will of a single great leader, or even upon the effectiveness of the
organization’s chain of command. These things are important, but don’t in and of themselves
help us understand why some organizations succeed where others fail. The changing nature
of the workforce and the dramatic rise in organizational complexity (with many organizations
shifting to matrix management and other more organic configurations) has necessitated a
more collaborative outlook vis-à-vis organizational leadership. Moreover the greater
dependency on technologies and the rise of distributed work arrangements have placed new
demands on how leaders interact with their people. A distributed view of leadership is now
on the rise, shifting the focus from the traditional single leader to an intricate and complex
web of leaders who possess a range of abilities and experiences necessary to ensure that the
leadership function is carried out to the benefit of the wider organization.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that the key to successful leadership today is
influence, not authority. Leadership is defined not by what a single leader does but as the
ability to collaborate, motivate and to manage networks. Today hierarchy is out and
influencing skills are in. Contemporary leaders don’t force people to follow-they invite
people on a journey.
In order to have an empowering influence on their people, a new set of qualities, going
beyond traditional managerial skills and knowledge, is needed. 21st century leadership
requires a deep understanding of the nature of influence processes, an understanding of the
forces of cooperation, and the ability to build collaborative cultures. These leaders must also
lead by pathos through the creation of a shared understanding, engaging and inspiring their
people, and paying attention to their professional and personal growth. Hence, leadership is
becoming more enabling, participative and distributive in nature as opposed to remaining
directive and performing.

3. DEVELOPMENT OF LEADERSHIP
Most organizations will not need the “Lone Ranger” type of leader as much as a
leader who can motivate and coordinate a team-based approach. Today, effective leadership
is commonly viewed as central to organizational success, and more importance is placed on
leadership development than ever before. Developing “more and better” individual leaders is
no longer the sole focus of leadership development, although it remains a critical aspect.
Increasingly, leadership is defined not as what the leader does but rather as a process that
engenders and is the result of relationships—relationships that focus on the interactions of
both leaders and collaborators instead of focusing on only the competencies of the leaders.
Leadership development practices based on this paradigm are more difficult to design and
implement than those that have been popular for the last several decades in which the
objective was to train leaders to be good managers.
Development today means providing people opportunities to learn from their work rather
than taking them away from their work to learn. A growing recognition that leadership
development involves more than just developing individual leaders has now led to a greater
focus on the context in which leadership is developed, thoughtful consideration about how to
best use leadership competencies, and work/life balance issues. Future trends include exciting
potential advances in globalization, technology, return on investment (ROI), and new ways of
thinking about the nature of leadership and leadership development.
Leadership development initiatives today typically offer performance support and real world
application of skills through such methods as training programs, coaching and mentoring,
action learning, and developmental assignments. Combining instruction with a real business
setting helps people gain crucial skills and allows the organizations to attack relevant, crucial,
real-time issues. The goal of leadership development ultimately involves action not
knowledge. State of the art leadership development now occurs in the context of ongoing
work initiatives that are tied to strategic business imperatives (Dotlich & Noel, 1998; Moxley
& O’Connnor Wison, 1998).

4. DEVELOPMENT OF TALENT
“It’s very odd to me. The assets walk home at night. If the people are your most
important asset, you ought to develop them. It’s Goldman’s philosophy that not only do
people have to be developed, it ends up being a huge competitive advantage.”
Steve Kerr
Chief Learning Officer
Goldman Sachs
The following statement captures the underpinning of any effective talent strategy:
“What’s needed is a deep-rooted conviction, among business unit heads and line leaders, that
people really matter — that leaders must develop the capabilities of employees, nurture their
careers, and manage the performance of individuals and teams.”
Simply put, leaders are responsible for developing the talent in their organizations. Yet, while
many acknowledge its importance, few deliver the coaching and training at scale to develop
their people.
Talent has become extremely popular in recent years. There are a growing number of talent
shows on television showcasing the incredible artistic performances of sometimes extremely
unlikely candidates. Talent in this regard appears to be seen as an exemplary skill that some
people possess: something Ericsson and Smith (1991) researched and concluded in the early
1990s. Malcolm Gladwell (2010) popularized his findings: talent is equal to ten years or
10,000 hours invested in a specific field. Consequently, you could rephrase the individual
definition of talent to be about focus, attention and dedication: ‘‘Choose any area (Sitskoorn,
2008) in which you want to increase your talent, invest at least 10 years, and ‘presto’, you’re
a talent!’’
Management science takes another perspective on talent. For both profit and non-profit
organizations talent has become ‘‘serious business’’, because talent is imperative for the
livelihood of organizations (Lawler, 2008). Optimizing talent determines whether the
organization in question grows, diverges or reorganizes. From this perspective, quite a
narrow view of talent is born, one where regular and careful talent reviews will yield an ever
increasingly accurate definition of ‘‘the right stuff’’. Especially when those in executive

5. positions within a company are about to vacate their jobs – for whatever reason – there will
be a substantial investment to find just the right successor, within or beyond the organization.
Create a culture of talent development
The most important competencies of leaders are their ability to build talent. In order to create
a culture of talent development an effective leader should:
Figure 1.1: Creating a culture for Developing Talent in an Organization
1. Act as a role model. Be transparent about your own need to learn and develop and
share how you are able to do it. Embrace vulnerability: leaders are never more
powerful than when they are shown to be learning.
2. Reinforce the value of learning. Go beyond the baseline conversation about goals.
Ask about what they want to accomplish and what they feel their gaps are. When
someone completes an assignment, celebrate both the outcome and the learning,
especially if the assignment wasn’t completed as smoothly as everyone would’ve
liked.
3. Build sustainable processes to support development. Managers should be expected
to coach and develop their people. At a minimum, everyone knows what areas need to
improve, and for those with particularly high potential, career tracks are developed
that give them a sense of where they can go inside the organization.
Talent
Development
Act as a role
model
Reinforce the
value of
learning
Build
sustainable
processes to
support
development
Reinforce
shared values
Leverage
problems as
opportunities

6. 4. Reinforce shared values. Employees should be able to link their everyday tasks and
responsibilities to the values in the organization. People need to understand why what
they do is important.
5. Leverage problems as opportunities for real world learning and development.
What’s an acceptable failure needs to be clarified and that way, by incorporating
stretch assignments, employees can seek out challenges where they can develop
without feeling like mistakes will set them back in their career or jeopardize their job.
Learning organizations see problems as opportunities.
STRATEGIES AND TOOLS TO DEVELOP LEADERSHIP TALENT
If the objective of talent management is to ensure that organizations have the right leaders
in the right roles when they need them, then it is probably safe to say that for many the
process is falling short. Recent research by Hay Group and the Management Consultancies
Association revealed that less than a quarter of business leaders believed their organization’s
talent management processes would deliver the leaders they need. In fact, as many as 70 per
cent felt that their talent management needed a change.
For many organizations the problem lies in taking a tactical rather than strategic
approach, often because they lack the dedicated resources to develop a thorough
understanding of what their organization will demand from its people in the future. Instead of
identifying – and delivering – exactly what the business actually needs, they focus on
generically enhancing the overall supply of talent in the hope that this will meet future
demand. A strategic approach to talent management judges activities across several factors.
Figure 1.2: Strategy and Tools to Develop Leadership Talent across organizations.
Developing
Leadership
Talent
Key
Elements
Business
Strategy
Talent
Pool
Talent
Growth
Talent
Flow
Focus

7. 1. Understand the key elements. You should consider four questions. How is the
business likely to be structured in future – will there be a change in strategic direction,
new operating models or new routes to market? What impact will this have on the
shape and number of roles required? What type of leaders will the business therefore
require to deliver future strategic objectives? How does this match up against the
company’s current supply of talent, and is there a gap between supply and demand?
2. Ask yourself: ‘So what?’ Companies need to understand exactly what they are
developing talent for, by decoding their business strategy as described in step one – a
task rarely addressed when strategic goals are being set. Once strategy is defined in
terms of the people needed to deliver it, the stage is set for defining the
accountabilities, the behavioral expectations, the interdependencies and the number
and type of leaders required. Yet most organizations fail to carry out this critical step
or pay inadequate attention to it.
3. Know your talent pool. To understand the people you have and the people you need,
an organization talent review (OTR) is crucial. Many organizations are familiar with
this stage of the talent management process, but tend to contract out this assessment to
third parties. Assessment centers and externally benchmarked OTRs can provide an
objective view. However, using these can hinder ownership of, and action on, the
results. With this in mind, we are seeing more and more examples of “talent
benchmarking forums”. These entail analysis of externally benchmarked data from
direct reports and peers on competencies, leadership styles and the climate a leader
creates, alongside what the organization already knows about its leaders. They
consider performance, functional and technical competencies, career track record,
ambition, mobility, learning agility, adaptability and potential career derailers.
Through debating and challenging diverse viewpoints on these aspects of an
organization’s leaders, you can make more robust judgments about talent. This, in
turn, will lead you to become more willing to act on the findings. You will be more
likely to take risks to place people with high potential in “stretch” roles.
4. Grow your talent. The next step is to close the gap between demand and supply. You
should buy in talent only where absolutely necessary. The best organizations enhance
their ability to meet future role demands through leadership development and careful,
supported placements. They invest heavily and regularly in growing talent from

8. within and developing people for the long term. They work hard to avoid the risk of
“tissue rejection” inherent in imported leaders. You should aim to grow talent using
role moves across business units, so that people with high potential experience the
challenge of delivering beyond their technical comfort zones before earning
promotion. This forces them to fall back on – and therefore build – their innate
leadership skills, before larger roles prevent them from taking such risks.
5. Make talent flow. By optimizing the deployment of talent across the organization,
you will enable future leaders to make the greatest possible impact. You can achieve
this through talent benchmarking forums, cross-divisional brokerage of talent and
action-orientated succession planning. You should be aiming to ensure that talent
flows to where it is most needed and where it can best grow. Successful organizations
give accountability for talent management jointly to line managers and HR. They
encourage action rather than merely analysis, through upward reporting on what has
been done to improve the stock of talent and how leaders intend to enhance their
supply to meet changing business demands. Critically, they also ensure that other HR
levers, such as reward and performance management, are all pulling in the same
direction. Getting this flow right requires an effective talent infrastructure. Secretive
line manager nominations, outsourced assessment centers where little is known about
an individual’s day-to-day performance, talent-hoarding by business units and “tick-
the-box” succession planning are not helpful.
6. Don’t lose focus. We typically find that most organizations are comfortable with the
“know” and “grow” stages of the talent management process, but fall down when it
comes to decoding strategy – the “so what?” step – and creating a “flow” of talent
around the organization. Addressing these issues allows talent management to evolve
so that it becomes more strategic and a real source of competitive advantage.
Key points
• Many organizations focus on generally enhancing talent supply without having a clear
definition of their future demand needs.
• When these are clear, review your workforce, organizational needs and structure to
identify talent gaps.

9. • Grow talent by identifying suitable role moves across business units that will challenge
people with high potential beyond their comfort zones.
• Talent should both grow and be deployed most effectively in areas where it can make
the most difference.
TALENT MANAGEMENT
Talent Management is a natural evolution of HR. It is a series of business processes --
not a "product" or "solution" you can buy. Organizations we speak to are focused on different
elements -- driven by their maturity and the urgent business problems they face today. While
a few mature organizations have dealt with most of the processes above, most organizations
focus on several of the key elements and build an integrated approach over time.
Additionally, Talent Management is a "forward-looking" function. Not only should talent
management improve your organization's flexibility and performance, it should give you the
information and tools to plan for growth, change, acquisitions, and critical new product and
service initiatives.
Organizations are made up of people: people creating value through proven business
processes, innovation, customer service, sales, and many other important activities. As an
organization strives to meet its business goals, it must make sure that it has a continuous and
integrated process for recruiting, training, managing, supporting, and compensating these
people. The following chart shows the complete process:

10. Figure 1.3: Talent Management- A Process
1. Workforce Planning: Integrated with the business plan, this process establishes
workforce plans, hiring plans, compensation budgets, and hiring targets for the year.
2. Recruiting: Through an integrated process of recruiting, assessment, evaluation, and
hiring the business brings people into the organization.
3. Onboarding: The organization must train and enable employees to become
productive and integrated into the company more quickly.
4. Performance Management: By using the business plan, the organization establishes
processes to measure and manage employees. This is a complex process in itself.
5. Training and Performance Support: Of course this is a critically important
function. Here we provide learning and development programs to all levels of the
organization. This function itself is evolving into a continuous support function.
Job roles
Job descriptions
Competency
Models
Workforce
Planning
Recruiting
Onboarding
Performance
Management
Training and
Performance
support
Succession
Planning
Compensation
and Benefits
Critical skills
Gap analysis

11. 6. Succession Planning: As the organization evolves and changes, there is a continuous
need to move people into new positions. Succession planning, a very important
function, enables managers and individuals to identify the right candidates for a
position. This function also must be aligned with the business plan to understand and
meet requirements for key positions 3-5 years out. While this is often a process
reserved for managers and executives, it is more commonly applied across the
organization.
7. Compensation and Benefits: Clearly this is an integral part of people management.
Here organizations try to tie the compensation plan directly to performance
management so that compensation, incentives, and benefits align with business goals
and business execution.
8. Critical Skills Gap Analysis: This is a process we identify as an important, often
overlooked function in many industries and organizations. While often done on a
project basis, it can be "business-critical." For example, today industries like the
Federal Government, Utilities, Telecommunications, and Energy are facing large
populations which are retiring. How do you identify the roles, individuals, and
competencies which are leaving? What should you do to fill these gaps? We call this
"critical talent management" and many organizations are going through this now.
IMPACT OF LEADERSHIP AND TALENT ON ORGANIZATIONAL
PERFORMANCE
Impact of Leadership on Organizational Performance
Former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy and management guru Ram Charan have identified
seven key leadership behaviors that have direct and measurable impact on organizational
performance. By practicing these critical behaviors, leaders can foster effective execution in
their organizations while avoiding the trap of micromanagement.
1. Know Your People and Your Business
Leaders should not only know their business, they should live it. They must be
engaged in the day-to-day realities of the business. This means having a personal
connection with the business and with the people in it. Detailed business reviews

12. allow the leader to understand the fundamentals of daily operations, uncover
problems, capitalize on strengths and truly get to know the people. In addition, it
affords employees the opportunity to get to know the leader and understand the
direction the organization is taking.
2. Insist on Realism
Leaders often are blind to the weaknesses of their organizations. They tend to
understand the strengths, but are reluctant to find out what could be improved.
Moreover, subordinates tend to stress the positive in communications with higher-ups.
To overcome this, leaders must be relentless in understanding how to improve their
organizations and in learning how they stack up against competitors.
3. Set Clear Goals And Priorities
Successful leaders focus on a few key priorities–the “Critical Few”–that everyone can
understand and pursue. Too many organizations have long lists of priorities that never
get accomplished. Success comes from execution of three or four high-impact goals.
4. Follow Through
Many organizations perform poorly because of lack of follow through. Successful
leaders make clear assignments, hold people accountable and establish regular review
processes to track progress.
5. Reward Doers
People perform well when they are rewarded for their efforts. Yet many organizations
do a poor job of linking rewards to performance. They make too little differentiation
in salary increases, bonuses and stock options between super stars and those who are
not. Successful leaders reward top performers for their achievements and ensure that
there is a clear connection between performance and compensation throughout the
organization.
6. Expand Your People’s Capabilities
Leaders who want their organizations to be successful spend considerable time and
effort in expanding the capabilities of their people, and coaching is their single most
effective method. Effective coaching involves watching people in action and

13. providing specific feedback. Feedback should include examples of behaviors that are
good as well as examples of behaviors that need to be changed. Skillful coaches ask
questions that cause people to think and to discover.
7. Know Yourself
Leaders of high-performing organizations have emotional fortitude. They are able to
be honest with themselves, they deal honestly with business and organizational
realities, and they give people candid feedback. They possess the confidence to accept
points of view that are different from their own and to deal with conflict. Leaders with
emotional fortitude practice self-mastery. In addition, they are authentic, self-aware
and humble.
Therefore successful organizational performance relies on the proper behavior from managers
and employees. Leadership can be an evolutionary process in companies. Business owners
who provide leadership can transform an employee from a worker completing tasks to a
valuable team member. Leadership skills can help change an employee’s mentality by
instilling an ownership mindset. Employees who believe they have a direct owner-style
relationship with the organization often find ways to improve their attitude and productivity.
Leadership can help a business maintain singular focus on its operations. Larger business
organizations can suffer from too many individuals attempting to make business decisions.
Business owners can use leadership skills to get managers and employees on the same page
and refocus on the original goal. Leadership skills can also help correct poor business
practices or internal conflicts between employees.
Impact of Talent on Organizational Performance
Managing talent is a powerful and important trend across the field of Human Resources and
Learning and Development. It changes the way you are organized, how you use technology,
how your resources are allocated, and how you measure what you do. If you are a training
manager, director, or CLO, talent management will impact your role. You may be asked to
integrate your learning programs with the company's performance management initiative.
Many organizations have a new job: The VP of Talent Management. This role typically
includes Learning & Development, Performance and Competency Management, and

14. Succession Planning functions. This is believed that this integrated “HRD” function is an
important evolution in the way HR organizations are run.
CONCLUSION
A deep capacity for leadership can be a source of competitive advantage and can help an
organization achieve its strategic goals and realize its mission. This paper has addressed the
aspects of leadership development, talent development, the various strategic tools that helps
developing leadership talent in an organization and the process of talent management. It is
important to reiterate that there is no one best way to plan for change or to develop a
workforce. Those decisions need to be made in the context of the organization’s strategy,
mission and culture. A clarification of what “talent” means in your organization by
formulating a crystal clear policy fulfills talent development efforts. Talent management
should be perceived as an integrated process and start organizing it as a coherent effort: from
strategic resource planning, to recruitment and assessment, pipelining, career planning, career
development, engagement, mentoring and coaching and (last but not least) learning and
development. Effective leadership is necessary in order to build a scenario wherein the
leaders are looked upon as role models and through this the organizational know-how of
talent is enhanced and business insight and accelerate their development. Leadership talent
harnesses the power of the talent pool, because talents working in teams under an effective
leadership could offer the company a huge and largely untapped cognitive surplus that could
aid organizational development.
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