Don't Always Mind the Talent Gap

In identifying high-potential employees and leaders, the HR world tends to prefer “all-rounders,” meaning individuals who score well across a range of competencies deemed necessary to lead and grow businesses. As a result, many HR departments focus executive development plans on individuals with limited weaknesses — weaknesses that can be fairly easily “rounded off” or trained away. The logic behind this appears sound. But this reasoning can eliminate leadership candidates with one or two significant soft spots even when they are outsized talents in other areas. And that’s not something that everyone on the executive floor accepts. Indeed, to many members of the C-suite, clear gaps in competencies are seen as the price that must be paid for an individual’s clear strengths — especially when those strengths are in areas that drive business performance. <br><br> An emerging body of evidence suggests that managers who are exceptional in key areas and weak in others have a much greater impact on corporate performance than individuals who are exceptionally well rounded. While more work needs to be done in this area, the existing work indicates that having an executive team with some distinct capability “spikes” rather than smooth across-the-board capabilities can make a significant difference to business performance. Thus, when selecting leaders, the HR world should not discount individuals with a distinctly uneven capability profile, especially when those distinctive capabilities are likely to be key performance drivers. In other words, mind the spikes, don’t mind the gaps.

• Executive development
• competencies
• corporate performance
• hiring
• human resources