David Clutterbuck led an excellent session on some upcoming research on the relationship between coaching, talent management and succession planning.

At the heart of the issue is what the talent is being developed for? And what do we mean by talent?

Interestingly the evidence would suggest that line managers are very poor at identifying talent and that direct reports are more effective at identifying talent. Even more useful is an approach that encourages people to put themselves forward and that perhaps coaching is best focussed around supporting this decision process for the individual.

Another observation was that traditional succession planning and talent management tended to perpetuate models of behaviour and performance relationships – and that there was a generational gap issue with baby boomers imprinting their own experience and expectations on new-millennials.

There was a discussion about organisational capture and imprinting – there is a train of thought that excuses the failure of talent management and succession planning on the basis that individuals naturally tend to evolve to a set of expected managerial behaviours as they mature. However the alternate view is that poor succession planning will perpetuate poor succession planning – if you truly want to break the mould then the succession planning and talent management has to be done in the style which you wish to espouse for the future.

So there is a future in coaching succession planners!