By Wendy Axelrod and Jeannie Coyle

Highly talented employees are the key to every organisation’s success. Yet despite their best intentions, for most managers growing talent while successfully doing their “day jobs” and staying on top of results seems like a pipe dream. But it doesn’t have to be.

Most organisations report that talent is the key to their success yet they struggle to develop their workforce. Wendy Axelrod and Jeannie Coyle show you how exceptional managers make this dream a reality. These managers go way beyond the usual coaching and performance management to integrate development into their everyday workflow rather than making it a separate “to do.” Axelrod and Coyle draw from their research with exceptional managers from companies like Corning, Microsoft, Siemens, Merck and many more to illustrate five powerful practices that can be used in any organisation, of any size, in any industry.
Axelrod and Coyle uncovered five practices that managers shared that go well beyond usual managerial coaching and performance management. These practices move the focus from performance to development of skills that truly “raise the game” of employees.

These skills include in-the-moment judgement, customer relationship building and collaborative decision-making. Managers who grow talent enhance their own reputations and get better results, retain people, attract talent and make their organisations more agile and capable to deal with future challenges.

About the authors
Wendy Axelrod is managing partner of Talent Savvy Manager, a consulting firm that helps managers and organisations drive substantial development of people to create real long-term winning performance. A long time board member and former president of the Philadelphia affiliate of the Human Resource People and Strategy organisation, Wendy has been one of two individuals to receive the organisation’s Lifetime Achievement Award (relatively early in her career!).

Jeannie Coyle founded her first consulting company in 1986. Early on, she became a strategic partner of the Tom Peters Group, implementing an innovative programme designed to create customer-responsive cultures. She has collaborated with many senior management executives to align the “people side” with business strategy execution through leadership coaching, design of leadership development systems, and tuning up organisational design and culture. She has been a board member of HR People and Strategy (HRPS) for two terms and a member of the executive committee for seven years.

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