I read a really interesting piece referencing work by Fariborz Ghadar, director of Penn State’s Center for Global Business Studies. He makes the case for sourcing and nurturing talent from different talent pools. From broadening outreach efforts and relationship to find top candidates across all dimensions of diversity, to training for managers in inclusiveness and objectivity to ensure they expose new talent to a full array of experience and opportunities, Ghadar argues that companies that fail to leverage and nurture diversity in their employee base: “will find themselves poaching talent to offset scarcities in the quantity and quality of talent in their narrow pipelines.”
Many of us often pride themselves on our ability to think outside the box.
But does this extend to how we think about talent within our workforce? When we make assessments about who is suitable for a role, do we consider the full array of functions where talented people with transferable skills could bring value and difference to our teams, regardless of whether they might take a little longer to come up to speed? Or do we simply look for people who are an easy fit?
Or to put in another way: when you make decisions or assessments of others, are you aware of your biases or of the filters you might be applying? And do you ever challenge them?
To put it simply, continuing to do the same thing with the same people might well see us miss out on new and different results.
