A core focus of leadership is building relationships with people to influence and develop them. A manager creates tasks and promotes work ethic. A leader creates more leaders and promotes people. In leadership we can speak of raw talent—someone who has a giftedness in a particular and useful area, but lacks experience. They’re good at something because they were born good. But they don’t have the crucial skills to go along with their innate ability. How does one, then, develop talent?
Scripture speaks to this. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” A leader is an encourager. The instruction applies not only to a growing faith, but in every facet of life. Are your actions and words as a leader designed to build others up to be more effective in life and work?
Be a great agent. Each person has talents and abilities that are unique to them and possibly unique within your organization. A leader must have the observational skill to see talent in each person. Harvard Business Review suggests, “The ability to see talent before others see it (internally and externally), unlock human potential, and find not just the best employee for each role, but also the best role for each employee, is crucial to running a topnotch team. In short, great managers are also great talent agents. It requires us as leaders to be more open minded and to throw away outdated, albeit popular, hiring tactics.”[1]
Scripture says, “What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up” (1 Corinthians 14:26). The writer, the Apostle Paul, is saying here that each person comes to the body of Christ with their own giftedness—a musician, a teacher, one who discerns—and that all contribute their talents to the greater organization. Consider how this is also reflected within your organization.
You might consider developing a talent pool—a listing of people within your sphere and specific talents they possess. Perhaps your human resources department can test for this or make this a part of an employee’s personnel file. Or you might keep this more informally for your own reference. Look too at what individuals enjoy inside and outside of work. If you can identify ways for someone to pursue personal passions within their job role, you may receive a double effort on their part.
Challenge individuals in their talent area. People who have talent in a specific area generally know it, and gravitate toward it in life and work. When you do something well you will often have a passion for it and enjoy putting that talent to use. As a leader, if you want to challenge a person in your charge, you should try to challenge them in their talent area. You’ll find talented people rise to such a challenge because they genuinely love to grow along the lines of something they like.
A mistake would be to challenge someone in an area for which they show little aptitude or interest. This leads to frustration. A person who has a love of music and plays several instruments will not flourish if forced to balance spreadsheets all day. But they may excel at determining the musical flavor that will best communicate with customers in your next ad campaign.
Engage the talented with value. When you are speaking to someone’s talents, you must approach the conversation and instruction as one of value. No useful talent is a throw-away, and a person who is aware of their abilities will quickly recognize when they are being squandered. Instead, speak to their value they bring. For instance, “I can see you are excellent at numbers and spotting errors in our sales forecasts. I want to assign you to work on next month’s speadsheet which I think will bring additional value to the team.”
Lynn Azpeitia writes of gifted adults, “When the daily lives and relationships of gifted adults do not include enough opportunities for the utilization of their multidimensional gifts, talents and abilities, they will experience a variety of ongoing personal, relationship and career challenges, problems and difficulties. These include high levels of stress, anxiety, agitation, depression and depletion.”[2] Engage talented people with an eye toward helping them perform at a high level—in their area of expertise perhaps at a much higher level than you would expect of a normally-abled employee. In this way you are helping them use their talent, contributing positively to the organization, and increasing their overall satisfaction.
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