Talent Development Strategies

I wanted to become an expert in ‘Behaviour Change’ But I struggled till an incident showed me what I was missing The story & the 2 Behavior Change principles every leader must know… It’s May and the Indian summer is at full strength. I am taking a session for school teachers but they don’t want to be here. They don’t want to attend another training that will be boring, disrespectful & useless. But our research had revealed these issues so I have some tricks up my sleeve. Our content is bite-sized, actionable & solves their top problems. Our trainings are full of games & movie themes. Most importantly we treat teachers with genuine respect. It works & the trainings go incredibly well. Teachers tell their friends & next day the attendance doubles. At the end, I ask: “Will you apply all this ?” “Yes” they answer. Then I follow up: “Do you think they will work ?” ”No” they reply. I am taken aback: “So why will you apply them ?” ”Because you were kind to us & you really believe they will work. We will try them for you.” This was unexpected. I wanted to convince teachers with our rigorous research & testing. But the trust was established by how we had treated them & our passionate belief in the content. Then I remembered Everett Rogers. Most know his innovation model: Innovators → Early adopters → Early majority… Few know his core insight behind the model: “Change is a social process. People change because of other people.” This explained what was happening here. Then teachers went back to their classes, tried our stuff & blew up our messages: ”OMG!! This works. Why were we not taught this before ?” ”This child who had never answered, answered today. I now believe every child can learn.” We had assumed these mindset shifts would take a long time. But many teachers were making them a lot faster. Guskey’s model provided the explanation: People do mindset trainings for teachers but that rarely works. What works better is to make it easy for teachers to try new behaviours. Once they experience success, they change their own mindsets. So ❌ Mindset Change → Action Change → Success ✅ Action Change → Success → Mindset Change ————————— Generalising these 2 principles for any leader trying to change behavior: 1️⃣ MESSENGERS MATTER → Make sure they are kind, fun, inspiring & respectful → It all starts with people liking & trusting them 2️⃣ FOCUS ON MAKING PEOPLE EXPERIENCE SUCCESS QUICKLY → People can disagree with you. They can’t disagree with their own success → Focus on them experiencing success quickly with the new behavior & adoption will skyrocket. We overhauled our model based on these 2 counter-intuitive principles. This helped us scale our model to 1000s of teachers & become one of the top training organizations in India. I now use these principles with 100s of entrepreneurs & leaders I support. They work just as well. #Change #Leadership #Management Any behaviour change insight you have stumbled onto ?

Top talent will NEVER join a company with a mediocre recruiting process. They assume the rest of your company matches that experience. Yet most leaders treat their recruiters like transactional rubber stampers — then wonder why they can't hire A-players. The reality: how you treat your recruiters gets reflected in your recruiting process. Treat them like cogs in a machine? That's EXACTLY how they'll treat your candidates. Here are 8 ways treating recruiters as strategic partners transforms your hiring: 1. Give them a seat at leadership meetings A biz recruiter pitched "we need an implementation specialist" for months. Candidates weren’t biting. Then she learned this hire would unlock a $2M contract. Changed her pitch to "we need this role to hit Q3 revenue." Filled in 2 weeks. 2. Make recruiting metrics visible company-wide When engineering managers check recruiting dashboards daily, magic happens. One team went from "where's my hire?" to "I see 3 strong candidates entering final rounds." Transparency turns recruiting from blame game to team sport. 3. Let them push back on unrealistic demands A recruiter shared w/ me why she quit her last role: "I was tired of smiling when they wanted senior engineers for junior salaries." Smart companies empower recruiters to say, "that's unrealistic." The rest lose their best recruiters. 4. Include them in offer strategy, not delivery Watched a startup land their dream candidate in 48 hours — beating higher cash offers — because their recruiter could negotiate on the spot. Most make recruiters deliver pre-baked offers like pizza. 5. Invest in their tools like engineering Teams tracking candidates in Google Sheets wonder why they can't compete. Companies investing in real recruiting tools see 4x productivity gains. Your engineers get the latest MacBooks. Why make recruiters work in spreadsheets? 6. Give them time to build relationships One Gem customer filled 70% of roles in 3 weeks. How? They maintained relationships with past candidates for YEARS. Most measure recruiters on this month’s roles they need to fill. So they spam everyone and start from zero next quarter. 7. Empower them with data "Trust me, the market's tough" doesn't move executives. "Your salary range is 25th percentile — here's the data" does. Give recruiters access to data and industry benchmarks. Watch them become business partners overnight. 8. Celebrate their wins like revenue That top 1% engineer who chose you over FAANG only happened thanks to your recruiter — celebrate them like AEs winning deals. Ring the gong. Most companies only notice recruiters when hiring stops. TAKEAWAY In this market — 2.7x more applications, 90% unqualified — the difference isn't headcount. It's whether you treat recruiters as strategic partners or paper pushers. Your recruiters are interviewing for new jobs right now. Still think they're just order-takers?

Coaches: You may not be a sport psychologist…but you are often in a more powerful position than I am to influence your players’ psychology (and psychosocial development)… And it’s on the grass where your psychological prowess can shine through. It’s in your activities through your session design, and in your coach behaviours through your voice and through your demeanour… -session design -coach behaviour You can always be better in your delivery of psychology. You can influence their psychosocial development every second of every activity on the grass… And so… Use your voice…tone, volume, rhythm Use your instruction…inject them with certainty Use your questions…get them thinking Use conditions and constraints…help them feel stretched Use your gestures…help them feel positive Use your body language…help them feel activated Use your silence…help them experience autonomy Use your assistant coaches…help them feel supported Use your knowledge of mental skills…help them build their understanding Use your values…help them establish an ethical and moral compass Use your water breaks…ask them questions to consolidate memories for learning Use your time between activities…cultivate leaders and team mates Use your empathy…aim to appreciate individual, social, and cultural differences You can always be better in your delivery of psychology. Aim to be as good at delivering psychology as a coach as you can be…deliver deliberately, intentionally, purposefully…

We all want to hire the best people - but a mistake so many founders make is ignoring step 1: Build a talent magnet 🧲 Psychometric testing, blind referencing, task-based assignments and culture-fit interviews - all great tools for selecting talent... But if your top of funnel is only 50 candidates per role - you're better off investing time in building the top of funnel rather than selection. At my first company we built a talent magnet that attracted 2,000 candidates per role (pre AI applications). Here are the core steps to building top of funnel in hiring: 1. Define your culture - ensure it is authentic and 'controversial' 2. Craft your employer brand - the reasons people enjoy working at your company (beyond your culture) - eg at sequel those might be working with the world's best athletes on a daily basis, funding pioneering founders, a 'dope' office with a roof terrace & plenty of socialising space, an experienced team with multiple exits 3. Pick your benefits carefully - you are what you attract - at sequel we offer a learning budget, free gym membership, private healthcare, a generous parental policy and proactive wellness screenings - therefore we have healthy team members with a hunger to learn and who want to have families one day 4. Talk about the above publicly - post on LinkedIn, attend events, talk to the press, apply for awards 5. Craft job descriptions optimising for top-of-funnel - remove barriers like requirements for certain levels of education, include wide salary ranges (and pick the range carefully), offer equity if you can, link to other resources to help people learn about your brand (eg we have a team video on our website) 6. Use an ATS & post widely to job boards - we use Workable and post to 20+ job boards for every role 7. Host events - hackathons are a great way to build relationships with engineering and product talent and spend extended period of time seeing how they work 8. Outbound - do not just rely on inbound - create an ideal candidate profile with a detailed dream job history - and start pro-actively reaching out to people who fit the profile Focus on attraction before you invest time in selection. It's a bit like dating... Any other tips for building a magnet for talent?

On paper, every roadmap glows. Timelines align. Budgets balance. And then reality walks in. The biggest risk hiding in plain sight? People. By 2026, up to 90 % of organizations will face talent shortages. Estimated cost: $5.5 trillion in lost productivity and delayed delivery. That’s not a typo. That’s the new budget line: “Skills we couldn’t hire.” Still, every week, we plan new programs under the same fantasy: Unlimited cloud engineers. Unlimited cybersecurity experts. Unlimited humans to “make it work.” Spoiler: The market doesn’t care about your timeline. The talent race has hit critical mass. AI. Cloud. Cybersecurity. Every skill you need is already oversubscribed. So what do you do when there’s no one left to hire? You build. What actually works: ✅ Grow your own bench. Structured mentorship can cut time-to-competence by up to 40 %. The fastest way to hire… is to develop. ✅ Adopt managed services wisely. Outsource for speed not surrender. Avoid single-vendor dependency. Flexibility is your insurance policy. ✅ Budget for learning. Certifications aren’t perks; they’re retention strategies. Train your best before someone else poaches them. Expand your reach: 🔹 Go remote-first. Geography shouldn’t limit excellence. 🔹 Hire for skills, not titles. Problem-solvers rarely fit job descriptions. 🔹 Pair juniors with seniors. Knowledge compounds when shared. 🔹 Fight for budgets that reflect market reality. Cheap talent gets expensive later. Here’s the truth: Projects don’t collapse from bad tech. They collapse from capability debt. Every unfilled role becomes a bottleneck. Every untrained employee becomes a risk multiplier. The next wave of transformation won’t be about tools. It’ll be about talent flow. If you want your programs to scale, invest in the only asset that appreciates with use …POEPLE If talent is the new infrastructure… are you building it — or waiting for someone else’s to fail?

How to Stop Your Sales Team From "Knowing What to Do" But Never Actually Doing It Your reps sat through the training. They nodded along. Took notes. Maybe even practiced in the breakout room. Two weeks later? Back to the old habits. The new talk track sits unused. Discovery questions get skipped. The CRM is a mess again. Sound familiar? You can fix this, here's how. 1. Stop Teaching Everything at Once That two-day bootcamp where you covered discovery, objection handling, demo structure, AND negotiation? It's why nothing stuck. The human brain can't operationalize 47 new behaviors at once. Instead: Pick ONE behavior that moves your North-Star metric this quarter. Teach that. Drill that. Inspect that. Master it before you move on. Example: If your connect rate is killing you, focus exclusively on messaging and timing for 30 days. Nothing else. Watch what happens when the team actually gets good at one thing. 2. Make "What Good Looks Like" Crystal Clear - aka the Wiggle (WGLL) "Better discovery" means nothing. "Ask about their current process, the pain it's causing, and what happens if they don't fix it—then confirm budget and timeline before you demo" means everything. Document exactly what good looks like at every stage. Use your top reps' actual calls. Create scorecards with 3-5 specific behaviors. Then inspect those behaviors weekly. Not monthly. Not "when you remember." Weekly. 3. Inspect and Recognize the Behavior, Not Just the Outcome You can't coach "closed more deals." That's a lagging indicator. You CAN coach: "Did you multi-thread? Did you run discovery before demoing? Did you set a clear next step with a date?" Build a weekly inspection rhythm: → Pull 2-3 calls per rep → Score them against your WGLL scorecard → Flag the one behavior to improve this week → Coach it in your 1:1 When reps know you're watching the work (not just the results), the work changes. Shout out and recognize when the BEHAVIOR improves as well, not just the outcome 4. Turn Insights Into Micro-Drills Spotting the gap is step one. Fixing it requires practice. If your rep keeps talking past the prospect's objection, don't just "remind them to pause and confirm." Run a 5-minute micro drill right there in the 1:1. Skill doesn't come from awareness. It comes from repetition under pressure. 5. Use AI to Enforce What You Can't Watch You can't listen to every call. You can't read every email thread. But AI can flag when discovery was skipped, when a next step is missing, when a deal has gone dark for 10 days. Let technology do the inspection grunt work so you spend your time coaching the humans, not hunting for problems. THE REAL ISSUE: Most training fails because there's no operating system to keep it alive. You taught the skill. Then you went back to meetings, firefighting, and hoping it stuck. It didn't. Install the system. Make the right behaviors unavoidable. Watch your team finally do the work that moves the number.

Far too often, I see leaders and companies move on from innovation, believing it's only necessary during the startup phase. In reality, it's what keeps companies alive and thriving. As companies grow, it's easy to fall into routine and let creativity fade. But innovation must continue-even as you scale. An older HBR article I came across this morning highlights how breakthroughs in management can create lasting advantages that are hard to replicate. Companies focused only on new products or efficiency often get quickly copied. To stay ahead, businesses must become "serial management innovators," always seeking new ways to transform how they operate. This idea remains as relevant now as it was back then. The benefits of sustained innovation are undeniable: •Competitive Edge •Increased Revenue •Customer Satisfaction •Attracting Talent •Organizational Growth and Employee Retention Embrace the innovation lifecycle-adapting creativity as your organization matures. Sustaining creativity means creating an environment where people feel safe to push boundaries. Encourage your teams to think big, take risks, and use the experience of your organization. Here are three strategies that I’ve seen work firsthand: Make Experimentation a Priority: Mistakes are part of the process—they help us learn, grow, and innovate. As leaders, share your own experiences with risk-taking, talk about what you've learned, and celebrate those who take bold steps, even when things don’t go as planned. It sends a powerful message: it's okay to take risks. Promote Intrapreneurship: Many of the best ideas come from those closest to the work. Encourage your people to think like entrepreneurs. Give them ownership, the tools they need, and the freedom to explore. Whether it’s through ‘innovation sprints’ or dedicated time for passion projects, showing your team that their creativity matters sustains momentum. Address big challenges, ask tough questions, and let your people feel empowered to tackle them head-on. Break Down Silos: True innovation happens when people connect across departments. Create opportunities for cross-functional interactions-through gatherings, open forums, or spontaneous connections. Diverse perspectives lead to game-changing solutions, and breaking down silos opens the door to that kind of synergy. Innovation doesn’t happen by accident. It requires dedication, a commitment to growth, and a willingness to challenge what’s always been done. To all the leaders out there: How are you ensuring your teams remain creative and engaged? What strategies have you found that create space for bold ideas within structured environments? —-- Harvard Business Review, "The Why, What, and How of Management Innovation" #Innovation #Leadership #ContinuousImprovement #Creativity #BusinessGrowth #Intrapreneurship #CrossFunctionalCollaboration #ImpactLab

Last week, I was invited to speak with a group of young managers and emerging leaders. The conversation was wide-ranging: leadership, coaching, current challenges, and what’s ahead. They came with lots of curiosity, openness, and stimulating questions that mattered a lot to them. At one point, someone asked: “What’s actually in the toolbox of a great coach?” What do you need to know, and how do you need to work to genuinely support others? I shared this: It starts with you (the “armchair”) If you’re not comfortable with yourself, you can’t be present with someone else. You need to be able to settle. To quiet the noise inside. Coaching begins with being fully available in the moment, without trying to impress or fix or steer. Then: listening. Real listening (the “stethoscope”) Not reacting. Not preparing your next question. Active listening means listening for their truth. Not your version of it. And being okay with the silence in between. And from that space, you ask open questions (the “wonder questions”) Not to lead, but to unlock. Questions like: What’s on your mind? What part of this feels most unresolved? What would progress look like for you? Not for the organization, but for you? These questions don’t direct. They expand. We also talked about reframing and the ability to change perspective (the “mirror”) Someone may come in saying, “I’ve failed. This project fell apart.” And through the process, they come to see, “I challenged the status quo, and now I see what needs to change.” Reframing means looking again, differently, until new meaning, and often new energy, appears. Then came the conversation about goals (the “bow and arrow”) Coaching should have a goal. But it’s not the coach’s goal. It’s the coachee’s. And it’s not about ticking boxes. It’s about growth and transformation. The coach doesn’t lead that journey. They walk beside it. You hold the process, not the answers. You stay in service of their direction. And underneath all of this: self-awareness (the “enlightened mind”) Not as a nice to have. As a discipline. You should be aware of your own biases and your blind spots. You need to learn how to empty yourself, so you don’t bring your own values or assumptions into the space. Your work isn’t to shape the coachee in your image. It’s to create space for them to discover who they want to become. On their terms. That was the conversation. It left me quietly optimistic, because what they were asking wasn’t just about tools. It was about responsibility. About how we show up and help others to leverage their potential. What do you think? *********************** If you want to learn more about coaching, feel free to reach out on Linkedin or via my website. I´m an executive coach, consultant, and advisor to senior leaders and entrepreneurs worldwide. A former leader at Amazon, L’Oréal, Chewy, and executive board member at Tchibo. #coach #coaching #growth #personaldevelopment #team #fulfillment #leader #leadership

"We brought in a trainer for two days and nothing changed." Of course it didn't. You treated training like a checkbox activity. Sales leaders constantly make this mistake: → Hire external trainer for 2-day workshop → Everyone gets excited during sessions → 30 days later, zero behavior change → "Training doesn't work" Wrong. Your approach to training doesn't work. Here's what actually happens: Day 1: Reps are pumped. Taking notes. Asking questions. Day 2: Still engaged. Ready to implement everything. Day 30: Back to old habits. Zero retention. Why? Because you treated symptoms, not the disease. You didn't change their daily habits. You didn't provide ongoing reinforcement. You didn't build systems for accountability. Real training that creates lasting change looks different: #1 It's diagnostic first. Before any training, you identify specific skill gaps through call reviews, deal analysis, and performance data. Not generic "they need better discovery" but specific "they ask surface level pain questions but never uncover business impact." #2 It's delivered in sprints. Six weeks of twice-weekly sessions beats a 2-day workshop every time. Reps can practice between sessions, get feedback, and build muscle memory. #3 It includes reinforcement systems. Weekly coaching calls, peer practice sessions, and manager check-ins. The learning doesn't stop when the trainer leaves. #4 It measures behavior change, not satisfaction scores. "Did you like the training?" is worthless. "Are you now asking better discovery questions?" matters. #5 It provides job aids and frameworks. Reps need cheat sheets, email templates, and conversation guides they can reference in real situations. Most importantly: It's customized to your specific challenges, not generic sales advice. The companies that see 40%+ improvement in performance don't do one-off training events. They build learning into their culture. They have weekly skill-building sessions. They do call reviews with specific feedback. They practice objection handling until it's automatic. Stop buying training like it's a magic pill. Start building capability like it's a muscle that needs consistent exercise. Your reps deserve better than motivational speeches that wear off in a week. — Tired of wasted training budgets? I'll design a performance improvement system that actually creates lasting behavior change. Book a diagnostic: https://lnkd.in/ghh8VCaf

One of the biggest misconceptions I see in coaching: You have to establish a session agreement quickly. One of the coaches I’m mentoring for their PCC came to me with this exact challenge. They had completed their ACC with a globally reputed coaching institute and were taught that an agreement should be set within 5 to 7 minutes. So when they shared their recordings with me, I noticed: → The conversation felt rushed. → The agreement wasn’t deep enough.  → The client wasn’t clear on what they wanted. And as a result, the conversation lacked depth. So, I asked them to do something that went against everything they had been taught. → Spend 1/3rd of the session on establishing the agreement. → If that’s not enough, spend half the session on it. → If the client still isn’t clear, spend 2/3rd on it. Because without a strong agreement, there is no coaching. Fast forward a year—this coach has completely transformed their approach. They’ve slowed down and started giving space for clarity to emerge. These are the changes I see now: → Their coaching feels effortless. → Their presence is grounded. → Their silence is intentional. And the most beautiful part? Because they’re taking the time to truly establish an agreement, awareness starts before the coaching even begins. Although they’re still working towards their PCC, I already see them coaching at an MCC level. This is why I say that when you slow down, you actually move forward faster. P.S. How much time were you taught to establish a session agreement?