Effective Talent Management Flashcards
BOARD TALENT MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW
What is talent management?
What are the 5 elements to talent management?
= the systematic attraction, identification, development, engagement/ retention and deployment of those individuals with high potential who are of particular value to an organisation
(1) board director recruitment
(2) board director induction
(3) board director learning and development
(4) board director performance management
(5) board director succession
BOARD COMPETENCIES
What 7 questions require answering before a board can begin to look at individual competencies and talent?
- What are the requirements for electing/appointing directors? = governance requirements in country, sector, or industry
- What should the size and composition of the board be? = NED:ED ratio, represent stakeholders, etc.
- Do the board and its committee have mandates or charters = defines the scope of tasks expected of directors as a whole
- Has the board established position descriptors for board roles? = a clear description of role so fully understand what is expected of them in their role
- What skills and experiences does the board need in its directors? = based on current and future strategy and needs voiced by management/staff
- What personal qualities and behavioural skills does the board need in its directors?
- What skills experience, and personal qualities should board and committee chairs have?
BOARD COMPETENCIES - CEO & OTHER ED COMPETENCIES
Name 3 conclusions that were drawn from the CEO Genome Project.
What are the 4 behaviours that, if a person was to excel in 2 or more, seemed to distinguish higher-performing chief executives from weaker candidates?
(1) introverts are found to be slightly more successful at the role than extroverts
(2) a chief executive’s educational background was not correlated to performance
(3) highly confident as a trait has little connection to their future success
(A) decisiveness
(B) the ability to engage stakeholders
(C) adaptability
(D) reliability
BOARD COMPETENCIES - NED COMPETENCIES
What were the 4 competencies that Dulewicz and Gay (1997) rated highly in their study?
Ingley and Van der Walt (2001) noted the importance of which 2 factors in their study?
Wong (2011) suggests that great directors are all able to exhibit what 6 mindsets and behaviours?
‘integrity’, ‘change-orientated’, ‘listening’ and ‘judgment’
‘strategic vision’ and ‘leadership’
- Think like an owner
- Know their companies
- Be prepared to ‘roll up their sleeves’
- Take charge of their priorities
- Hire a collaborative CEO
- Protect their authority and independence
BOARD COMPETENCIES - CHAIR ROLE COMPETENTCIES
The chair, as leader of the board, has the most opportunity to influence the dynamics that are key to the board’s effectiveness.
Dulewicz and colleagues found that outstanding chairs what? (7)
An ineffective chair can be marked out by attributes such as what? (5)
Outstanding chairs:
(1) have a high level of integrity
(2) show high ethical standards
(3) spend significant time mentoring, developing and advising their colleagues
(4) are team builders
(5) are empathetic
(6) encourage contributions and achieve consensus, yet they challenge and probe colleagues
(7) have critical-thinking ability
such as (1) a tendency to dominate their board with a confrontational style, (2) a failure to keep the board on course to make decisions, (3) limited articulation and listening skills, (4) insufficient interest or involvement in the business and (5) poor leadership abilities
BOARD COMPETENCIES - SID COMPETENTCIES
What is the role of a senior independent director?
When is their role most vital?
What are the key role specific behavioural competencies? (3)
Provision 12 = provide a sounding board for the chair and serve as an intermediary for the other directors and shareholders
during times of disruption, when the board is undergoing signs of stress either externally or internally
(1) broad leadership skills
(2) relationship-building skills (such as empathy)
(3) the ability to show personal resilience to manage calmly stressful situations
BOARD COMPETENCIES - GENERAL DIRECTOR COMPETENTCIES
All directors will ideally need to show the range of evidence-based leadership attributes.
What 5 things does this include?
include the general leadership competencies of:
(1) emotional intelligence
(2) a humble leadership style
(3) future-thinking 21st-century attributes of agility, cultural and digital intelligence, and personal resilience
(4) commitment
(5) a strong ethical character
BOARD RECRUITMENT
Explain the prevailing talent management perspective to board recruitment. (5) (how is director talent identified?)
However, if broader stakeholder considerations have not been taken into account in relation to the director’s appointment, they may lack what?
The 2017 ICSA report entitled ‘The stakeholder voice in board decision-making’ suggests what 2 broad approaches that a board could consider to take the stakeholder perspective into account when deciding on the recruitment process and the selection criteria?
(1) Director talent is identified through showing competence in current best-practice knowledge, skills and personal attributes
(2) The NC’s awareness of these competencies enables them to establish new director profiles and search for prospective candidates e.g., agencies and formal advertising
(3) After identifying and shortlisting potential directors, the NC will engage in a due diligence process, which may involve matching a candidate’s competencies against the director profile competency matrix
(4) Candidates will then be approached and asked to complete a competency-based interview and undergo a vetting process
(5) Once candidate suitability is confirmed, they can then be nominated for election and appointed
lack wider perspectives and so could unwittingly promote groupthink and decision-making bias
either to (1) reserve one or more board positions for directors drawn from a stakeholder group, such as the workforce, and/or to (2) extend the selection criteria and search methods for NEDs to identify individuals with relevant experience or understanding of one or more stakeholder groups
BOARD INDUCTION
Often the induction is the responsibility of the company secretary to organise.
Formal board inductions will typically include sharing what 6 things?
Beyond this, a more systemically orientated induction will include what?
FRC’s Guidance on Board Effectiveness suggests what method for doing this?
How long does the 2017 ICSA report ‘The stakeholder voice in board decision-making’ state an induction should be?
(1) the director role descriptions
(2) the board and committee mandates/charters
(3) the directors’ fiduciary responsibilities
(4) the organisation’s key governance information
(5) relevant overview details of the organisation and its past and current main activities, customers, projects and strategic priorities
(6) behaviourally and psychologically focused information = personalities and current cultural patterns that exist in the boardroom
include a focus on building relationships with key board stakeholders
Partnering a NED with an executive board member
10 days
BOARD LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT - APPROACHES TO LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
What is Jennings 70/20/10 model for structuring board learning and development?
What is the emerging systemic approach to effective board learning and development?
70% = on-the-job experiential learning (informal learning)
20% = mentoring and coaching conversations (informal learning)
10% = formal learning (done in a classroom setting or as part of the academic course, and may involve set texts and recommended reading)
Real-world experience, supported by a company secretary and other experts acting as coaches/mentors
BOARD LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT - BOARD DEVELOPMENT
Henley Business School 2006’s report, entitled ‘Tomorrow’s leadership: the necessary revolution in today’s leadership development’ found that the majority of leadership development was not fit for purpose. Name 3 examples of why?
The report also suggests ‘green shoots’ of tomorrow’s leadership development. Name 4 examples.
(1) not aligned enough to the strategic agenda of the organisation
(2) not evaluating leadership development in terms of the impact it has on creating value for organisation/ stakeholders;
(3) not focused enough on collective leadership
(1) deep immersion training
(2) systemic team coaching
(3) shadowing
(4) self system awareness = developing agility and resilience
BOARD PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT - PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW
What is performance management?
What is currently the standard practice approach?
What are the 3 problems with the approach?
performance management = how organisations set goals, evaluate work and determine development needs
(performance measurement or assessment on the one hand, and performance development on the other)
yearly or half-yearly competency-based assessment, often completed as a 360-degree feedback exercise by one’s line manager, one’s peers and one’s direct reports, and also through self-report
(1) in its attempt to be rigorous, the practice often becomes an onerous and both time- and cost-heavy tick-box paper process
(2) performance ratings typically reveal significantly more about a rater’s biases than they do about the ratee’s actual performance
(3) the whole performance-management process conflates what should essentially be separate activities
BOARD PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT - ASSESSMENT
The assessment of board directors can be done what?
individual directors may be assessed on what? (3)
What method may be used? Why?
either as a whole or individually, and is often delivered as part of the annual board evaluation
on (1) the fulfilment of their role description, (2) the contribution of specific skills and a diverse outlook, and (3) their personal attributes
a ‘performance snapshot’ = much simpler and potentially more effective assessment
process than competency-based methodology
BOARD PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT - DEVELOPMENT
Best practice in the development aspect of performance management is defined as what?
What are the 2 key skills of a coaching approach?
a very frequent (approximately every two weeks) ‘check-in’ conversation that is mainly appreciative, strengths-based, career-focused and delivered in a coaching style
(1) supporting great goal-setting = helping someone make SMART (specific, measurable, achievable or agreed, realistic and time-based) goals can increase their performance
Define the ‘what’ using SMART goals, define the ‘why’ using outcome goals as motivation, and provide clarity, belief and a focus on ‘how’
(2) delivering effective and actionable feedback
BOARD PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT - DEVELOPMENT
What are 6 best-practice feedback recommendations?
(1) provide examples
(2) don’t do the ‘feedback sandwich’ (the message gets confused)
(3) instead, give motivational feedback immediately after the event, and developmental feedback once emotion has reduced and in time ready for next event
(4) re-label ‘positive’ feedback as ‘motivational’ (for confidence) and
‘negative’ feedback as ‘developmental’ (for competence)
(5) role-model feedback good practice by asking for and giving feedback regularly
(6) Provide feedback on specific behaviours (‘When you said/did x…’) rather than identity (‘You are really good/bad at…’)
