SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 160,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.
Last week, we asked: How do leaders in your organization handle the movement of talent in the company?
- We’re talent hoarders. We make it hard for people to move to new roles: 31%
- We allow people to move if they really want to change roles: 30%
- We encourage people to move and take on new challenging roles: 25%
- We actively manage movement of talent through a proactive process: 13%
There’s a lot of talent hoarding going on. While those people are valuable members of your team, when you hoard them or make it hard for them to move to new roles, including forcing them to ask for reassignment rather than offering it proactively, you can frustrate and demotivate them. People want to grow. As a leader, one job you have is to be a net exporter of talent. Bring people in without skills, build their skills, then send them off to bigger and better roles. Repeat. If you do this, you’ll make your people and your organization stronger. You’ll also build your personal leadership skills along the way.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of ThoughtLeaders and author of “One Piece of Paper.”