Talent Management Monthly Brief: See Through Talent from Different Angles V March. 2016

People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person for the right position at the right time,” is the mantra of many forward-thinking organizations. The question is how would you define the right people? How do you define wrong, average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person? Or put simply, for what should they be right? Traditional Performance Management focusing on measuring what an employee does (mainly being told to do) in a quantitative way is not sufficient to identify high performance or high potential, should we see through talent from different angles?
See Through Talent from Different Angles Three Questions to Assess a Person's Critical Thinking Skills  Critical Thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion. There is only a very small fraction of true Critical Thinker because Critical Thinking is complex. So what are the characteristics of Critical Thinking, or how to think critically? And how do you assess a person's critical thinking skills?
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Intuition The word intuition comes from Latin verb “intueri” which is usually translated as to look inside or to contemplate. Intuition is thus often conceived as a kind of inner perception, the gut feeling, sometimes regarded as lucidity or understanding. Digital professionals have to leverage both their intuition skills and analytics ability to make either business or personal decisions every day, from talent management perspective, how to evaluate a person’s intuition or “gut feeling”?
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Intellectual Curiosity: Innovation is the light every organization is pursuing, and creativity becomes #1 most wanted skill for digital professionals. Creativity is an innate ability to create novel ideas. Would you consider that creativity is a response to a stimulus and that individuals will manifest different thought processes and behavioral responses to that stimulus depending on their individual cognition and experiences? What are the personality traits or working environment which decide how creative the individual or team could be?  If creativity is like a plant, perhaps curiosity is like the seed, so how to assess a person’s intellectual curiosity, and further evaluate his/her creativity potential and problem-solving capability?
Three Questions to Assess an Employee’ “Big Picture” Business Acumen: Today's organizations have a big disconnect between talent performance management and business strategies. Often the front line employees or even middle-level management do not have a lot of clue about the “big picture” of their business, there is a lack of clear two-way (both top down and bottom up) communication and lack of clear mapping between the business's strategic goal and employees daily responsibility and their career goals. In order to bridge the gap between the strategy and execution and build purpose-driven and business savvy workforce, how to assess an employee’s “big picture” business acumen regardless of his/her specific job responsibility?
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Empathy? Many say digital is the age of empathy, to simply put, empathy is the ability to understand others from their perspectives. Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others. Now the physical barriers such as oceans or mountains can not stop people from communicating with each other, there are still walls built in people’s minds and there are knots tiered in their hearts. Empathy is an important leadership trait and a crucial quality for today’s multigenerational and multicultural digital professionals as well. So which questions shall you ask to assess a person’s empathy?
Three Questions to Assess Whether You have a “Simplicity” Mind. We live in a complex and complicated world, complexity is somehow necessary because of interconnectivity and interdependence of nature elements and things. However, the complication often means redundancy, duplication, outdated burdens, or generally speaking, unnecessary complexity, it is the opposite of simplicity. Getting to simple is not easy for most people because they often rather follow the outdated traditions and rules. They don't bother to remove the dust around them, or want to question the unknown, or challenge the status quo, out of fear. Which questions shall you ask to assess whether a person has a “simplicity” genius? The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3+million page views with about #2500+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
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