How to Foster Talent Management Champions

As leaders juggle increasingly complex and demanding responsibilities, they can substantially differ in their commitment and approach to managing talent. While some leaders proactively identify, develop, retain, and deploy talent, others neglect these activities. That can be detrimental for organizations amid ongoing skills shortages and rising employee expectations for career development, continuous learning, and recognition.

A strategic organizational talent management approach, bolstered by leader buy-in, is a powerful mechanism to develop greater operational agility by enabling more fluid and flexible workforces. Deliberate approaches and tools can facilitate talent mobility and enhance strategic deployment by dynamically matching employees’ skills with organizational needs.1 For example, research has found that internal talent markets can increase employee engagement and reduce turnover, but their effectiveness depends on collaboration beyond functional silos — a deep cultural shift for many organizations.2 Leadership commitment to managing talent is paramount.

Here, we will introduce the Talent Leadership Model, developed through our interviews with middle managers, which describes the varying roles and behaviors that leaders exhibit when managing talent. (See “Four Approaches to Talent Management.”) Senior executives can use this framework to better understand the talent leadership styles of their organization’s team leaders, as well as their own approaches, in order to help managers become more effective contributors to an enterprisewide talent strategy.

Our model describes four different talent management approaches along two key dimensions: leaders’ strategic depth (tactical or strategic) and scope of impact (across their own team or the whole organization).

1. The Bystander. These managers take a detached approach to managing talent, demonstrating little engagement in talent identification and development, or showing minimal commitment to the organization’s talent strategy. Bystanders often focus on short-term, operational needs, neglecting more long-term, strategic considerations, such as the development of a talent pipeline. Tending to focus on their own teams, bystanders make few efforts to engage in broader talent conversations.

In our research, we found three main reasons some managers have this attitude. Most commonly, these managers felt the need to focus on activities core to their own performance evaluations. This indicates that if talent management is not a factor in a manager’s evaluation, it can easily become a low priority for them. In addition, some managers reported having insufficient resources, training, or knowledge to properly manage talent. Finally, some managers simply couldn’t be bothered — they had no commitment to the organization’s talent strategy and considered talent management an unimportant matter that should be delegated to HR.

Bystanders’ limited involvement in talent development can cause employee disengagement and subsequent attrition. Their noncommittal approach to talent management can substantially weaken the leadership pipeline and lead to detrimental succession planning decisions.

2. The Protector. Protectors hoard talent. They understand the value of identifying and developing talent and have a long-term perspective. However, their focus is limited to their own team, and they try to keep talent under their control.

Leaders who adopted a protector role cited a variety of reasons for their approach. Many managers highlighted the need for team stability and considered talent mobility “counterproductive” and disruptive. If a manager relied on talented staff members to deliver result and those individuals moved to other opportunities within the organization, their mobility could negatively impact the team’s — and the manager’s — performance. Some managers who expended time and resources on employees’ growth and development expressed concern that they would lose returns on their investment if a team member subsequently moved to another department. A few managers resisted talent mobility due to a lack of clarity around how to replace employees lost to new assignments.

Protectors tend to have a narrow perspective and fear losing talent to other functions rather than to other organizations. They can stall individuals’ careers, leading to employee dissatisfaction due to limited growth opportunities. Protectors’ defensive approach may mean that they withhold information useful for dynamic skills matching, limiting an organization’s ability to adapt to changing environments.

3. The Connector. These managers engage in a sharing approach, facilitating rotations and transfers across functions, but are not strongly committed to the organization’s talent strategy. Despite frequently operating across functional boundaries, these leaders engage little in value-adding talent identification and development and instead take a short-term, operational perspective. We found that some managers acted as accommodating connectors to avoid being seen as blockers.

Across organizations, connectors were open to talent rotations but did not want to be involved in the details of talent management, considering it HR’s domain. They saw little incentive to align their own practices with broader organizational talent strategies. This is problematic because talent investments made through rotational or transfer programs may not yield the hoped for results if talent is not thoroughly evaluated in terms of suitability for the rotation or transfer. Connectors therefore accept the risk of talent mismatch, subsequent underperformance, and inefficient talent development investments.

4. The Captain. These leaders are willing to take the wheel and steer talent management efforts. They take a long-term, strategic, organizationwide perspective. Captains are aware of and committed to the organizational talent strategy and understand the importance of talent identification, development, and retention. They enable talent sharing across organizational units.

In our research, captains stood out for their proactive approaches. They considered themselves stewards cultivating future leaders for the entire organization. Leaders who had this perspective considered the organization to be an internal talent market where talent mobility, development, and retention can be fostered in a way that enables both employees and the organization to win in the long run. Once individuals were identified as talents, they were strategically deployed within the internal market. For instance, one manager regularly met with counterparts in other departments to discuss talent needs and potential moves aligned with the strategic priorities of the organization.

Captains skillfully deploy talent, strengthening the organization’s agile business operations, and can be considered ambassadors for managing talent companywide. However, these leaders must carefully manage relationships with other stakeholders to avoid perceptions of talent poaching. They must also minimize employees’ and managers’ concerns about high levels of internal talent mobility, which can affect team stability and operational effectiveness if not managed carefully.

Finding ways to communicate talent strategies succinctly but holistically to business leaders allows for greater consistency in decision-making and more effective implementation.

Some organizations have established more frequent mechanisms to communicate talent strategies and practices. For instance, a Swiss pharmaceutical company established 30-minute biweekly talent strategy sessions. The touchpoints allowed HR teams to share updates, market trends, and success stories. Since introducing the sessions, the company has reported a 35% increase in talent mobility across functions. A similar approach was adopted by a Swedish retailer, which introduced biweekly cross-functional meetings to exchange knowledge that led to innovative talent engagement practices. Focusing more on network-building, the U.K. consumer goods company created an internal talent management champions network — a community of practice to regularly share best practices and provide support.

Clear communication gives leaders the tools and context to act strategically rather than tactical and creates a mindset where talent is seen as a companywide asset.

Make talent management a core part of leaders’ roles. Talent management efforts are imperative to any leader’s role, not one-off exercises or tick-the-box compliance requirements. Managers must continuously engage in identifying high performers and high-potential employees and supporting their development, performance, and deployment — a responsibility that should be factored into the design of leadership roles.

Talent management efforts are imperative to any leader’s role, not one-off exercises or tick-the-box compliance requirements.

Recognize and reward talent management champions. Holding all leaders accountable for identifying, developing, retaining, and deploying talent requires a clear set of goals and metrics that can be measured regularly. Beyond operational KPIs, this may include talent retention rates, engagement scores, succession planning efforts, internal mobility, and learning and development activities.