Organizations can lose momentum when significant gaps in leadership positions require others to temporarily step in to fill the void. These gaps can stress organizations, whose people already are working to capacity. Our program employs a proactive and transparent approach to talent management that prevents the kind of talent abysses that can quickly stall forward movement of shortand long-rang...

THE EXPERTISE APPROACH AND SKILL ACQUISITION Research on expertise is by definition focused on a restricted sample of individuals. Experts are people who consistently produce outstanding performance in their domains (Ericsson, 2006) and as such are without exception located on the positive side of the skill distribution. The usual approach in the study of expertise is to compare the extreme gro...

In our 2016 paper (Collins et al., 2016a), we proposed that superchamps (athletes who have achieved the highest level in their sport) were differentiated from their less successful counterparts by their use of positive proactive coping and a "learn from it" approach to challenge. This skill-based focus to talent development (TD) is supported extensively in the literature (e.g., MacNamara et al....

The recent boom of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests, aimed at measuring children's athletic potential, is the latest wave in the 'pre-professionalization' of children that has characterized, especially but not exclusively, the USA in the last 15 years or so. In this paper, I analyse the use of DTC genetic tests, sometimes coupled with more traditional methods of 'talent scouting', to asse...

Many scientists agree that expertise requires both innate talent and proper training. Nevertheless, the highly influential deliberate practice model (DPM) of expertise holds that talent does not exist or makes a negligible contribution to performance. It predicts that initial performance will be unrelated to achieving expertise and that 10 years of deliberate practice is necessary. We tested th...

The role of practice in the acquisition of expertise has been a key research question at least since Bryan and Harter’s (1899) study on expertise in Morse telegraphy, which proposed that it takes 10 years to become an expert. The framework of deliberate practice (Ericsson et al., 1993) has taken an extreme position by denying the role of talent in most domains and stating that superior performa...

Five studies examined the relationship between talent and team performance. Two survey studies found that people believe there is a linear and nearly monotonic relationship between talent and performance: Participants expected that more talent improves performance and that this relationship never turns negative. However, building off research on status conflicts, we predicted that talent facili...

The relationships between talent, technology and regional development have been widely examined in the advanced economies. While there is a general consensus as to the important role talent plays in regional development, debate has emerged on two key issues. The first involves the efficacy of educational (i.e. human capital) versus occupational (i.e. the creative class) measures of talent; the ...

BACKGROUND Effective talent development requires robust supervision. However, the effects of supervisory styles (coaching, mentoring and abusive supervision) on talent development and the moderating effects of clinical learning environment in the relationship between supervisory styles and talent development among public hospital trainee doctors have not been thoroughly researched. In this stud...

In order to explain how and why talent management can contribute to a firm’s sustained competitive advantage, we need to gain insights into the philosophies about talent that underpin talent management. This article introduces four talent philosophies that vary in their perception of talent as (a) rare (exclusive) or universal (inclusive), and (b) stable or developable: the exclusive/stable; ex...