Talent Lab: A promising tool for talent development
Prof. Dr. Lidewey van der Sluis, professor of Strategic Talent Management and director and founder of the Nyenrode Powerhouse Competing for Talent, has set up the Talent Lab in cooperation with Vitae. The Talent Lab is a promising instrument for developing the talents of working people who want to improve their personal and professional effectiveness.
Background
Talent forms the basis for the movements and motivations of people in the labor market. The rapid changes and developments in our economy and society require organizations, employers and employees to continuously adapt and shift the boundaries. Participation in the labor market calls for lifelong learning; more than ever before, standing still means falling behind. Individual workers as well as organizations must continually move forward if they are to prevent themselves from fossilizing.
The Talent Lab
The movement and development of individuals form the basis for developing the concept of the Talent Lab. The target group consists of people who are, or wish to be, in the labor market and want to receive guidance on this over a certain period. Two experts deliver the guidance, each drawing on his or her specific background. One of those providing guidance is an accredited coach. This coach may be from the same organization as the coachee, but can also be an external coach. The other element of the guidance is given by a practically-oriented academic with experience of coaching professionals. This academic not only focuses on the development and guidance of the coachee, he or she also uses the guidance program as an experimental, applied research project. For this supervisor, several guidance programs together form the study material for research into how individual learning processes can be optimized in a limited time period.
Scientific instrument
The involvement of an academic as supervisor and researcher makes it possible for him or her to supervise and intervene in the individual learning process on the basis of current academic knowledge and insights. This provides an academic foundation for the practical goal: getting people who are (prospectively) in the labor market on the road or steering them in the right direction. As a result, the Talent Lab concept is a scientific instrument that aims for practical returns on investment in HRD and MD. However, the emphasis in the Talent Lab does not lie on the individual alone. The working environment is also emphatically taken into consideration, with attention paid to learning barriers and opportunities for development.
Approach
The Talent Lab program takes from three to six months, depending on the client’s wishes. It incorporates a major individual component together with a modest group component. The individual component consists of individual development programs that run in parallel. The individual component has monthly coaching sessions attended by the coachee, the academic coach from Nyenrode and the practical coach. During the coaching sessions, the coaches have an active and interventionary role and are available to answer questions and act as a sounding board during the entire program. The group component consists of two group meetings, respectively inaugurating and concluding the development programs.
The Talent Lab can be deployed in one specific organization for several existing talents, but individuals from a variety of organizations can also participate.
The Talent Lab is staged over three periods per year:
(1) January, February and March
(2) April, May and June
(3) September, October and November.
Application
Thanks to the business partnership of Vitae and the Nyenrode Powerhouse Competing for Talent (CfT), there is long-term, intensive cooperation between an academic supervisory group (steered by Powerhouse CfT) and a practice-oriented supervisory group (steered by Vitae). This has led to the implementation of the Talent Lab concept in the Vitae organization. In close consultation with professional service providers, the Talent Lab concept has been elaborated to become a real-life learning instrument for this organization. The number of applications was overwhelming.
Results
The first group has now completed the program and the direct effects can be seen. In addition, the outlines of longer-term effects are taking shape. It is becoming clear that talent development and the ability of a talent to exist depend, as expected, on a match between the person’s knowledge, know-how and character, and on the working and learning climate. During the lab coaching sessions, these four pillars are minutely examined for each person, and any mismatches are identified. The participants discuss what interventions are necessary and desirable, and the outcomes of these investigations serve as the basis for the participants’ ‘homework’ assignments. During the process of seeking optimization, ‘sensitive spots’ are identified among the participants and, in some cases, among the people who form part of the candidate’s working and learning environment.
The results are clearly visible. Many participants have since changed or influenced his or her working environment in such a way that he or she flourishes better in it. These real-life interventions in talent development are proving to contribute not only to the better exploitation of existing competencies, but also to the discovery of unsuspected strengths within the participants. We are also seeing that the participants learn to better interpret their working environment as a learning environment. Learning opportunities become visible and development possibilities are created.
Reflection
Competencies can be developed by turning the two dials on the dashboard of talent development:
• The characteristics of the working environment
• Personal characteristics.
During the Talent Lab this is done constantly in consultation with the participant (the talent). The proper coordination of both strengths in the talent development process is essential. This calls for sound guidance based on knowledge and understanding of, and attention to, individuals with the will, daring, opportunity and ability to develop themselves. The Talent Lab combines the required success factors for talent development: learning while working and working while learning.
The Talent Lab results in better performance and improved productivity and effectiveness. How does it work? Talent development leads to behavioral change in a specific context, and that behavioral change results in new and different competencies appearing in specific situations. Competencies in this respect are developed talents that employees effectively deploy in a certain context.
Participants particularly value the individual guidance in their talent development. This fulfils their need for ‘vitamin A’ – with the ‘A’ standing for ‘Attention’. The current generation of professionals and highly-educated experts has particular need of this. The Talent Lab is therefore remarkably suited to workers of this type. Although the approach demands a considerable investment in time and energy, this investment is repaid in the form of many aspects of high performance. For example, participants become more aware of how they deal with situations and they take more effective action on the basis of increased self-knowledge and self-awareness, especially if they recognize that things can (or need) to be done differently. This creates the space for their talent development and allows their talent to grow and flourish. In turn, this increases their productivity and, in a wider sense, their employability and opportunities for participation in the labor market. This underlines once again the insight that learning and development result from the interplay between the person and the environment. Moreover, the Talent Lab shows that the chosen setup of measurable coordinates of talent development and tailor-made learning interventions offer a unique and profitable investment in talent development, which can be carefully and effectively underpinned by such learning processes as HRD and MD.
Appendices:
Appendix 1: Basic premises of the Talent Lab Concept
Appendix 2: Triggers for participants
Further reading:
Van der Sluis (2000), Management Learning and Development. Doctoral Thesis, Tinbergen Institute, Erasmus University Rotterdam. ISBN 9051708009
Van der Sluis (2008), Talent Management in Strategisch Perspectief (Talent Management in the Strategic Perspective). Inaugural speech, Nyenrode Business Universiteit. ISBN 9789089800107
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