Connecting the natural talent in your team to sustainable profitability

In today's fast changing and extremely volatile trading environment, large and small organizations are experiencing challenges, the likes of which haven't been seen for over 50 years.

According to the recent report Creating People Advantage: Talent Management is the number one challenge for organisations in every region and industry today. Ensuring employees are performing at their best, increasing their productivity and occupying roles best fit for their strengths and talents is crucial for business sustainability and growth.

Absence from the workplace in the UK alone last year cost £11.6 billion! Low morale, cited as one of the primary causes of this dramatic increase in workplace absence, which often has a direct impact on the disruption in work flow.

According to the Training Journal - 50% of workers resign due to poor quality management and managers who are not sufficiently trusted or reliable in delivering the value they are expected to. By not having the right leadership and talent management in place, organizations are losing high-quality members of staff who have frankly 'had enough' to their great detriment.

Quality Graduates are now increasingly assessing potential employer's attractiveness by the values of the organization and its level of trust in the marketplace. In a complete recruitment turnaround, they are doing the choosing now.

Today, it is the trusted organizations and the trusted brands that find their products more and more attractive, their staff are shown to be more loyal and productive, and their market share is rising. They know that the key to their continued success is to nurture that trust from individual to individual, from team to team and from organization to customers and shareholder. They know that the way to build that trust at all levels is through increasing value, collaboration and flow.

This is the real basis of Talent Dynamics. What we do when we work with large teams is to directly connect the natural talents of the companies most important resource, its people, to high individual and team performance, resulting in sustainable profitability. We measure the level of trust and flow through the organisation at the scale of the individual, team and company and then deliver a series of tools that empowers each individual to increase their effectiveness within the corporation.

What can I do about it with my team?

Whatever size your organisation or team is, it's likely that some of what I've just shared will be landing home for you too. There are so many really important techniques that we use in Talent Dynamics, that I would love to share with you but for the purpose of this article, I'm going to share 3 very practical ones, that you can begin to work on with your team right now.

1. Ensure your team are connected to the Organisations Primary Purpose

One of the quickest and most effective ways to start to create a high performing team (and in my view, the most important one to get right from the start) is to have your team highly connected to the purpose of your organisation. Most organisations think their primary purpose is to make profit, when actually it is to add value: value to the market or community it serves and then to leverage that value profitably. High performing teams understand, that when an organisations fails to add value, it soon loses its place. The more value it adds, the greater its place. When an organisation fails to leverage effectively, the cost of its resources exceeds its output and it soon loses profitability. The more effectively it leverages, the greater its profit.

This is a critical first step in building a high performing team, so please give it the attention it deserves.

2. Know your individual and Teams Natural Talents

Discover what it is that makes you and your team members 'tick'. Then, align your organisations accountabilities with peoples talents and preferences and you will see how everything changes. A recent client told me that "Talent Dynamics… has greatly accelerated both our learning and ability to put in place the vision for the substantial growth we are in the process of achieving" Imagine working in a team, where everyone gets to do the stuff they are really good at and really enjoy and through doing this, everything gets done by the best person. How much more fun can you have when this happens? When you understand the natural talents of individuals, you will also very quickly find out if you have the right balance of profiles in your team and who you could be missing just now to really accelerate your business success!

3. Create an environment where collaboration and value exchange is part of your daily routine

We call this PSR (Personal Social Responsibility) We help organisations and teams to actually measure the level of trust and flow at individual, team and organisation and look at specific ways of increasing those scores. A key to getting into flow, is that you can only get into it by getting others into it. This calls for understanding step 2 really well first. Once you know what makes the team members tick you can help them to get into flow much more quickly.

The level of Flow in your organisation is determined by the personal effectiveness and fulfilment of each employee. Having employees in Flow, results directly in the attraction and retention of your staff and ultimately, your customers. As employees get into flow, so does the whole team and so onto the Organisation.

When individuals are in their Flow and the whole team has a balanced dynamic - each member contributing to the overall Flow of the team - levels of innovation, creativity and effective action soar. Absenteeism, inertia, procrastination and negative attitudes disappear By implementing just these 3 steps in your organisation, you can start to build your 'dream high performing team' or to really increase the current levels of your teams effectiveness.

Meeting Lord Sebastian Coe and discussing Primary Purpose of Organisations

Engaging the Team with Hearts and Minds
It was very exciting to have Lord Sebastian Coe as the keynote speaker at the recent People Development Summit in Barcelona. His opening speech for the Summit focused at why London won the Olympic bid – I said why and not how, as this was one of the reasons London won. Lord Coe focused his team on the why and not the how!

Just minutes before, I had been discussing over dinner, with some of the UK’s leading Learning and Development Managers and some of the most respected and competent Training Suppliers, about how Talent Dynamics always begins by focusing teams and organisations at their Primary Purpose and how that links to value and leverage… we had been discussing this as the theme at the table was ‘thoroughly engaging the team with hearts and minds’ and being careful not to run employee engagement as a process.

We all smiled then when Lord Coe backed up everything we had just been discussing in his opening speech!

“Rarely are there only 2 horses in any race. The markets keep moving”

Lord Coe told us how the Olympic bid was being viewed as a “2 horse race” but in his experience there was no such thing – indeed the 1978 European Championships in Prague had been labelled a 2 horse race, between Seb and Steve Ovett. As it turned out… Neither of these 2 horses won!

“The perception was we wouldn’t win it: we would get to a worthy semi final only”

Lord Coe went on to explain that London was so far behind the other cities in approval points to win the bid it didn’t seem possible they could win. He knew why he was leading the bid and it was his passion for connecting young people to sport. He knew the impact the Olympics could have on young people entering both professional sports and sport for fun and could see that the Olympics was an enormous opportunity for young people in Britain.

“If you can get young people to see something different and extraordinary, you can give them a ticket to set them off…”

Now his job was to turn the focus of his team away from ‘how’ they would deliver the Olympics safely, securely, on time and on budget (which everyone knew they could focus at later) and shifted the team to why they were part of the Olympic Bid team. Why London should host the Olympics. Why they were giving up their time and leaving well paid jobs to be a part of this…

“A generation of Youngsters who may now be moved to take up a sport…”

Changing the focus of his team led to London gaining 30 approval points in 6 months taking then to 60 points! He asked them all to understand internally why they were a part of this bid and why London should be picked and then he asked them to externalise that to others.

“ It happened as a result of a more compelling story and narrative”

London won the Olympic bid – it was a surprise to many people but not to Lord Coe and his team who were dedicated and passionate about the difference they were about to make to millions of young people across the UK!

So perhaps this week you can take some time out with the team from the how and the process improvements and refocus everyone on your Primary Purpose:

Why your organisation is here… Why you are here?

Helen Urwin Founder of The Halthean Corporation shares the impact of a recent Talent Dynamics Programme

Testimonial from Helen Althea Urwin – founder of the Halthean Corporation – Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

March 2010

I decided to take part in a Pilot Talent Dynamics Programme in November as being a consultant in the field specialising in Full Potential Branding, I work with leadership Teams regularly to help them get the maximum out of their people and I saw this as a great opportunity to be able to participate in a programme with my entire team, as opposed to facilitating it, which is my traditional role.

What was fascinating for me to understand was how to increase the trust and flow in the team given that this was already very high. However having briefed Michelle and Jan, of the plan to double in turnover this year, we discussed the impact this could have on the team and how they would need to quickly raise their personal levels of performance to meet a challenging year of growth, along with the need for the entire team to be functioning much more in flow and quickly.

The Talent Dynamics team facilitated a fun, engaging and thought provoking 2 days. I witnessed changes in members of the team over this time as they grew to understand their profiles, their natural talents, the reasons why they had easy or challenging relationships with one another and more importantly what it would take for the organisation to experience more trust and flow, resulting in more clients, new products and sustainable profit.

Three months on from the programme and we now have a unique language which we use with one another. As a result of the 2 days, we were able to discover new areas of value that could be created by allowing others to get into flow, doing what they love and what they are naturally talented at. We now have new members of the team, working on innovative new areas of the business, adding flow and value to our current offerings for our clients.

We have a new rhythm and routine, thanks to our understanding and implementation of the Talent Dynamics Pentagram process, which gives us our daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual flow. This has enabled us to focus on what matters, when it matters and has given clarity to all the team.

Members of the team know who to pass the ball to with confidence, trust and certainty now. This has resulted in an opportunity for me to take much less of an operational role day to day and to really focus on the strategic, business building side of our brands and has created the space for all of us to raise our game and step up into our natural talents to perform even more confidently.

I would sum up Talent Dynamics saying that it has greatly accelerated both our learning and ability to put in place the vision for the substantial growth we are in the process of achieving. I will definitely be working with the Talent Dynamics team again in the future and have been very happy to highly recommend them to add value to my clients.

When was the last time you got naked with your team?

Why is getting naked good for business?

Ok, so this blog might not be quite what you expected it to be...

but it's a serious question for leaders and I've been giving it a lot of thought as we launch the Talent Dynamics Super Flow Roundtable this week, helping leaders achieve the results they desire with their businesses, by getting naked and really working together on solutions...

Now what I mean by getting naked with the team is this - sharing the business results honestly, looking at business performance, warts and all - an opportunity to air the dirty and clean washing with utter transparency. Comparing estimates against actuals. Combing through the P&L, sales targets, productivity of individuals, customer complaints, systems and processes, what the competition is doing etc...

If you want to make a difference, solve that sales issue, work out why the latest promotion hasn't had the results you expected, you are going to need to take a closer look at it, maybe take it apart and put it back together again and the best way to do this, is with someone else, who can give you an expert opinion but they are going to need to look at the whole picture to be able to help. That's the whole point of getting naked in the first place...

But I don't want the team to see how it looks Naked!

If you had a problem with your car, you would of course take it to the mechanic and say "its got a juddering problem" or whatever the problem is, you wouldn't then stop the mechanic looking under the bonnet because you know the engines a mess and you are embarrassed...how can he fix the car?

If you were feeling sick and you went to the Dr and said, "I've got this really itchy rash and I want some cream to clear it up please" and the Dr asked you to take your clothes off so he could take a look, you wouldn't say. "oh no, it looks too nasty, can you just give me a solution without looking at it please?" How can he possibly know what prescription to write?

Its the same with your business. Getting seriously naked is the best way to view the problem and then figure out the solution! Its when you involve the team with the whole picture and allow them to add value in the way that comes most naturally to them, that you will find their commitment to the business increases and the quality of the solutions roll in so much faster!

Once you have seen it all... You can start to focus on solutions!

Its like this - Those of you that know me, know that I'm a big fan of transparency in business and leadership. Its my experience that when you share with the team what's really going on, they have an opportunity to step up and take some action.

I worked with a business recently that was under performing quite seriously and it wasn't their normal policy to involve the operating team in all the detail, in fact they felt that keeping the information from them was the best course of action and that the leadership team would figure it all out - it wasn't the best course of action of course. The team knew things weren't going well and as no one involved them, they made up what they didn't know - gossip was rife! Once the leadership shared the issues, the team were more confident and able to step up, as they knew the whole picture. They were now able to contribute ideas and more importantly solutions that really made a difference to the business performance.

Best of all they really owned both the problems and the solutions together.

So why not strip off...

I urge you in the next few weeks to try it - get naked - and see what new ideas and fresh inspiration you can come up with together in your business!

Getting naked with the team, doesn't necessitate taking off your clothes, although i've heard some training organisations employ this method! That's perhaps a future Talent Dynamics programme...

Being focused on what matters in 2010

New years eve, sat round the fire with a glass of champagne. My friends and family are discussing their resolutions for New Year. Some have been really diligent and written them down, others are making them up on the spot... So I suggested before we set the 2010 ones, that we take some time to look back at the 2009 ones to review: which had worked best and which hadn't...

Very few people in the room could even remember what they had expressed last year. I could remember all of mine. I was asked how I even remembered what they were, when they were set so long ago and so I shared this with everyone and if it works for you too, then I'd love to hear back.

Goals or Resolutions?

First of all I never set a resolution, for me it feels less likely to really happen than a Goal. A resolution conjures up the need to resolve to change and usually incites the: lose weight, stop smoking, be nicer, blah blah blah... whereas a goal for me feels like it has more substance and i take more time to word it carefully in order to achieve it. A Goal feels much more action orientated for me

Set enough to Stretch but not too many to overface

You can easily over face yourself with far too many or not stretch yourself with too few. My suggestion is at any one time have between 3 and 7 goals on the go. If you have 3, then they are likely to be very big demanding goals. If you have the maximum of 7, allow some smaller, more achieveable ones. During the year, when you achieve a goal, you can replace it with another so that over the course of the year, you can achieve much more than 7.

Focus on getting better at what you are already good at

Those of you familiar with Talent Dynamics already know that you have certain skills and talents that you are much better at and enjoy more. A suggestion of mine, to make your goals more achievable, is to have at least 50% of your goals as things that you are already good at and that you want to get even better at in 2010 - BTW, you are much more likely to achieve those ones and quicker. Its more fun to have those kinds of goals and they help to keep us in flow.

Keep them visible

I can remember mine because I keep them on my desk in front of me and read them often. Ask yourself when you go to bed at night 'how did i do today?' and when you wake up 'whats my focus for today?' These 2 questions can serve as your daily review on your goals. If they are visible you will always have them in your mind to achieve

Share them with others

If you have a Coach or Mentor, then you can share your goals with them and they can help monitor your progress and motivate you to keep achieving. If you dont have a coach (apart from maybe adding that to your goals list!) then you can share them with friends and family. Its amazing how others want to support you and you never know who in your immediate network may be able to help you out immediately (as I found with one of mine that I shared on New Years Day!)

Check how compelled you are to achieve them

There are 2 ways I do this for myself. Firstly, I read what I have written and notice how I feel about it. My gut feeling always tells me if I even want to achieve the goal - sometimes I can tell I have written a goal because I should do it and not because I wanted to. The 2nd way is to score each goal as to how motivated you are to achieve it out of 10. Be honest with yourself, if your motivation is less than 8, again, review this goal. Do you really want to achieve it? Are you even going to try?

and finally and in my opinion most importantly...

Focus and take some action every day

Focus is so important to achieve your goals. Whatever you and your team focus on is what will get done. Fact.

Each day decide what action you will take towards your goals and spend some time reviewing what worked and what didnt and how you can improve it for tomorrow. Sometimes its just taking that very first step thats the hardest, so make it a baby step and keeping taking baby steps until you feel ready to take a slightly bigger step. Rome wasnt built in a day remember...

Best of luck to you for achieving your goals this year. Have a fabulous 2010!

Are you solving problems or co-creating flow?

The 'Problem'



Recently, I was working with a client, when they admitted to having a dispute with another colleague over a number of work related issues. This person, lets call them Manager A was really struggling to see eye to eye with Manager B, who worked in the same department. The matters were of real importance to the organisation and they had attempted several times to discuss and resolve them. The boss had noticed the relationship differences and wasnt sure how to resolve this either.


I wondered if part of the 'problem' was the level of trust between the 2 Managers and if, as a result of this, the level of flow being created by each of them for the other one was not being maximised. Both were attempting to get an outcome that worked for them and hadn't thought of the 'problem' as an opportunity to actually create flow for one another in a really effective way that would benefit the team and the Organisation at a much higher level.



Measuring Trust and Flow



Having both already completed their Talent Dynamics Profile tests (and being almost opposites on the profile square) I now asked Manager A to complete the diagnostic tool I use to measure PSR: Personal Social Responsibility and asked Manager B to do the same. Once they had both completed their assessment, I asked them to share their responses with one another.


The PSR scores show individuals very clearly where they create the highest amount of Trust and Flow and both were quite suprised at the low scores they recieved from the other Manager!


Where an individual is not seen to be adding value or helping the team to leverage in an effective way, they will soon be rejected by the other team members and indeed ultimately by the organisation. Manager A and B recognised that this was happening to them, in the way they viewed each other and possibly the way other team mates viewed them also.

This created an open discussion on what could be done to increase both the Trust and Flow scores for one another. Both Managers realised the way that they could most successfully co-create flow was by taking specific actions that would enable the other person to increase the scores they had given them. To do that, the Managers created a plan both individually and together that they could implement.


Just last week I had a call from Manager A, to tell me that since they had this new level of understanding about how they can add most value to one another, their working relationship has improved dramatically. They actually now really appreciate the differences in one another and they value one anothers strengths and utilise them in a way that is much more effective for the Organisation. The boss has noticed the difference and commented on the improved outcomes that they are now creating together too!


Manager A said to me... 'I wish we'd known about this months ago!'

What is Talent Dynamics and what does it do?

Wow, so much has happened in the short space of 2 weeks, since Jan and I ran the first Talent Dynamics Pilot Workshop!! So many people have been asking me for more information, so over the next few days I will be sharing my experience of the past few weeks and answering some of those questions...

The main questions Im being asked are: What is Talent Dynamics and What are the Pilot Particpants saying about it?

What is Talent Dynamics?

Click here to see video on Talent Dynamics http://tinyurl.com/yz7gn2f

Talent Dynamics is the first ever integrated training system that actually links Team Performance to Company Profitability, Sustainability and also Corporate Social Responsibility. It actually has strategies to implement at an individual, team and at an organisational level to achieve those outcomes.

Talent Dymamics was created by Roger James Hamilton as an extension of his World Leading Wealth Dynamics System for Entrepreneurs. If you have utilised and leveraged Wealth Dynamics, you may be able to have a guess at what Talent Dynamics is and does. Otherwise, let me explain.

Through the Talent Dynamics system, Organisations can actually measure and track their current level of trust and flow. They are then given clear strategies and tools that empower individuals at every level of the organisation to increase their level of personal effectiveness, increasing results directly.

There are a number of steps that an Organisation can choose to go through with Talent Dynamics depending on what they are looking to achieve themselves.

1. Understanding Primary Purpose


2. Measuring and Building Flow in the Organisation


3. Meaningful, Measurable, Profitable Change

What are the Pilot Participants saying it did for them?

We ran the first Pilot with The Halthean Corporation - A team of extremely specialist Brand Consultants who work with some of the largest international Brands around. The second Pilot last week was with Cumbria University's Facilities Management Leadership Team. A team of 12 who line manage over 300 staff over multi site operations in the North.

When we go back in 3 and 6 months time and see what both organisations say they have achieved, I will let you know. For now, the immediate feedback was fantastic:

• 95% of the participants said they had learnt something completely new that had great applicability in their current role.


• 90% said they now had a clear understanding of the value as an individual they bring to the organisation that they didnt see before


• 90% can see clearly the value in their team members they didnt see before


• 90% can also now see how they can effectively leverage that value for business results in a way they didnt see before.

Some of the anecdotal feedback we recieved was

"I feel totally empowered to be me and that actually, by being me, I bring tremendous value to the team"

"I cant believe we have achieved all of this in just 2 days!"

"Being part of this programme has opened me up to infinite possibilities in my organisation"

"We have a whole new strategy for 2010, one that we wouldnt have even known was possible if we hadnt done this process, one that we all feel inspired by"

"I had a negative and sceptical view at the start of this programme, I thought it would be a waste of 2 days. Its actually been brilliant"

"Its totally explained why I didnt get on with 'Y' and now we have a language we can use to work together so much more effectively and deliver much better results"

If you have some specific questions on Talent Dynamics you would like me to answer, please post them here and I will get to them over the next few days.

We are working with Workshop Productions who are producing a short video from the second pilot and that will be ready by the end of next week to view and share, so you can see us in action and hear the testimonials direct!!