Saturday, September 8, 2012

Talent And Leadership Development In A New World

By Kerri Turner


A phrase like talent and leadership development echoes mainly in private schools, in business schools and in international organizations. Teachers and human resource managers may imagine that they are working with elite groups in such institutions but they are mistaken. More probably they are working with mediocrities who have been selected by the lottery of life, as was the case in the days of monarchs and emperors.

In 1751 Thomas Gray wrote an elegy lamenting the fact that the worth of a poor countryman had never been fully realized in the course of his life. In 2012 the situation has not improved to any great extent because millions of people still pass through life with their abilities and aptitudes entirely unrecognized whilst others with limited abilities lead the world. Watching our planet from afar puzzled aliens might hold their breaths as they see humanity still being led around in circles.

Efforts to educate everyone equally cannot be said to have succeeded. Free compulsory education for all has simply demonstrated that what happens in the home is a great deal more influential than what happens in a public classroom. This does little for the problem of determining real ability. It remains a matter of chance who the influential attachment figure turns out to be. Criminal families, in the main, produce criminal offspring and poverty is passed on from one generation to the next.

Early in the twenty-first century the western world population was reminded that their leaders were just as fallible as their predecessors. Suddenly, banks ran out of money. It transpired that their managers and employees had been paying themselves huge emoluments irrespective of how well their enterprises were doing. They were dismissed with golden handshakes and new people were employed at even greater expense to clean up messes. Poor people, politely termed taxpayers, could be forgiven for thinking themselves tricked.

In 2012 it is apparent the the economy of the western world has been brought close to ruin. The looming threats of resource depletion and sustainable development are forgotten as leaders struggle to create short term jobs in their own countries, topple the governments of their enemies and come to terms with new technology that is somehow exposing whole countries and their conventions as absurd.

What were once quite distinct political approaches known as socialism and capitalism have become entangled in the twenty-first century. Where capitalists once believed that rewards were earned through risk and competence it now transpires that socialists have have become turncoats. In return for support for big businesses they sit on the boards of international organizations and become very rich, without taking any risks at all or even exercising any business skills.

There is an obvious shift of power and wealth from the West to the East in contemporary times. Caste systems have suppressed people for centuries in India and in recent time Chinese people were the victims of political dictators. It seems that technological advances are liberating people globally and that the worth of individuals can now be expressed outside social constraints that formerly suppressed them.

In extreme adversity cultural values and beliefs were passed on from attachment figures to upcoming generations within families. This is the level at which talent and leadership development has taken place whilst family values in the West were eroded or compromised. Now there is a vast lake of human potential in the East. Human resource managers may yet find ways to tap into this treasure of human resources to supply the needs of global businesses and politics.




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