Last week we hosted our last Breakfast seminar of the year where our guest speakers Björn Haring (Stardust Consulting), Simon Runsten (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), Malin Cronqvist (Help to Help), Pontus Liljefors (Accenture Sverige/ WePlanet), and Malin Mattsson (ICA) explored the challenges of maintaining and motivating young professionals, keeping the right people and mindset within organizations.
Talent management is about identifying, engaging and developing the people who can lead your business in a rapidly changing world
Human capital and human resources management is at the core of all successful businesses. It is important to keep the ability to attract the right people with the right skillset to help organizations to thrive and grow in volatile and highly competitive modern business landscapes. And an effective talent management program is crucial in this aspect, both to minimize the risk of losing talents and key people but also to create conditions for young professionals to develop internally securing future leaders for businesses. Besides, a good talent management program can also make the organization more attractive as an employer.
It’s essential to create and empower the right mindset within your company.
According to Bjorn to make the most of your people, you need to engage, empower and enable them.
The use of the word “talent” was challenged during the seminar, due to the negative effect that it can have in terms of expectations and performance of future employees. Talent, by definition, refers to a person who has a natural ability of being good at something without being taught. Therefore, being referred as a talent can have a negative connotation, and set the wrong mindset among young professionals and within the organization, creating an environment which doesn’t enable continuous improvement and learning.
Growth x Fixed : The Importance of Mindset
In the first part of the seminar, Theresia Silander (KTH Executive School/ Eatit) explained the differences between the growth and fixed mindsets and the importance of cultivating the right mindset within a organization. And according to Björn Haring cultivating the right mindset is very important not only at workplaces, but also in training, in schools, and other circunstances.
According to the researcher Carol Dweck (Stanford University), a fixed mindset creates the belief that basic abilities, intelligence, skills and talents are fixed traits, a growth mindset creates an underlying belief that learning, intelligence, and skills can grow with time and experience”. And the growth mindset is considered as essential for an organization and its employees to learn from challenges and difficulties and to power self-improvement and an open and inclusive workplace.
The mindset paradox:
The greatest threat for success is avoiding failure.
How can Organizations Attract and Maintain Future Business Leaders?
Stability is not a priority for young professionals anymore. So how can organizations of today and tomorrow adapt to the changes in expectations related to work life, adjusting to a dynamic multi-staged model prefered by the future business leaders? During the final part of the seminar a panel composed by young engineers and KTH alumni led by Theresia Silander discussed what makes workplaces attractive. According to Pontus Liljefors (Accenture Sverige/ WePlanet), the possibility of getting feedback and an work environment where everyone can grow are essential factors. For Malin Mattsson (ICA) the right organizational mindset, allowing both the possibility to give this feeback to help employees to develop themselves and also that allow mistakes is very important.
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” Steve Jobs (picture)
Watch out for our next breakfast seminars next year.
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