Nurturing talent from within

Nature v/s nurture debate in psychology has a significant influence on human behaviour. In the context of the nature vs. nurture debate, “nature” refers to biological/genetic predispositions’ impact on human traits, and nurture describes the influence of learning and other influences from one’s environment. 

While in an organisation we hire the employee based on the ‘nature’ - skill set, experience, and other relevant areas it is the ‘nurturing’ that retains and grows the talent from within. While nature is inherent beliefs or values, an individual can acquire behaviour through nurturing.

The need for survival, recognition, and now to find meaning and purpose in one’s life and the job is the shift we perceive in today’s workforce.  

Though many organisations encourage IJPs (internal Job applications), upskilling, and reskilling, by conducting formal and informal stay interviews and appreciative inquiry to understand the current engagement level of employees, we can nurture them into their future roles. When employees feel that they are reaching a threshold, we can encourage them to take up a completely different profile post understanding their potential and aspirations which have been in alignment with their overall schema. 

The pandemic has taught us to do things ‘in the Now’ and reflect if time permits! Many businesses adopted and stood tall to create pathways for employees to scale up and take up broader and higher responsibilities instantly. It is now the time to provide them nuggets to tread along and groom them while they are already in their new roles/assignments. Human or employee satisfaction/happiness needs attunement to oneself. 

Self attunement is the first step to inspire self and others. All learning modules can have a linked session on attunement to self that helps the employees to embrace other learnings and behaviours. Ensuring self-discovery and self-acceptance before polishing leadership skills leads to true learning and transformation.

While we all have policies that govern organisations, we should adopt a customized problem understanding approach that strengthens the process of employee connect and enables authentic conversations.

Not only that, empathetic leadership is a much-needed trait to drive people. Right mentoring at the various stages of both personal and professional life goes a long way in building the talent pool. Having honest conversation by providing and receiving feedback through active listening provides a channel to align organisation essential behaviour and obviously impacts productivity and performance in due course. And although we are living in a new normal, we all are experiencing a cultural shift in the corporate ecosystem by nurturing talent on the go.

This article was first published in October 2021.