Our Why: Providing the most research supported, experience tested and thought leader endorsed best practices and tools for all of talent management including hiring, engaging, developing and coaching.
Mike Lombardo, Robert Eichinger, and Roger Pearman have collaborated over the last 40 years in a variety of configurations and combinations, putting their 150 combined years of study and experience to help individuals, managers and leaders perform more effectively.
All three worked in various roles on the Lessons of Experience research at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina. Based on those results and other research, Lominger Limited and Qualifying.Org were formed and operated for 25 years. Lominger was acquired by KornFerry in 2006 and continues to operate today. Mike retired and Bob and Roger continued working together on new tools for leadership development in the form of Apple Applications.
Then came a knock at their door from a major health care company with a simple question: “Can you create a common language of leadership for us to use?” Our response was yes. TalentTelligent, LLC was born.
From Competencies to a New Framework
As we began developing the common language of leadership, we leaned on evidence that the psychological and developmental needs of those at the executive level are quite different from those of managers and supervisors, and again from those of individual contributors. This was an enhancement of the Lominger 67 competencies covering all three broadly. Further, consistent evidence revealed that there were some absolute “musts” at each level of organizational life. Those “musts” we identified as Roles that are essential for success at each level of the organization. Supporting the Roles are an array of behavioral Practices that drive performance. We created three targeted libraries of Roles and Practices for Individual Contributors, Managers, and Leaders. While we were aggregating leadership development research, we decided to add two additional areas of development: Potential and Teams.
Looking at the behavioral summaries, it was apparent that the Roles and Practices came from the KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, and Attributes) that make the behaviors possible, so we named our libraries accordingly: : KSAI (Individual Contributors), KSAM (Managers), KSAL (Leaders), KSAP (Potential) and KSAT (Teams). We explored the connections between the libraries and found interrelationships that are essential such that it was clear that in the arc of a career, Roles and Practices developed at one stage were building blocks for the next stage. As we’ve been close to all the research and study that formed the 70-20-10 development meme, we further developed resources for supporting each audience by creating the developmental action tips essential to each group that relied on work/job assignments, coaching and mentoring, workshops and supplemental materials for growth in the most effective way.
We created a DIY (Do It Yourself) manual for each solution set, a significant enhancement to the well-known FYI–For Your Improvement (Lominger), which provided a single resource for all groups.
Enabling Talent Management Implementation
The libraries needed implementation products so that the common language could be put to pragmatic use. Our experience was that creating success profiles was essential for starting conversations about the behaviors needed for a given role or job, for understanding 360 results, for interviewing, and for targeting development initiatives. So, we created sort cards for each Role and Practice in each library. We created 360 assessment tools. We wrote development guides specific to each library. We wrote interview protocols and guides so that, when an organization was clear about what it needed from its talented associates, it could ask the right questions.
The Question of Potential
Bob and Roger felt that understanding potential fully and measuring it were gaping holes in the talent management profession. We first independently created a list of factors thought to characterize individuals with the highest potential. We did a deep dive into all social science research on potential and settled on 12 Markers and 25 Practices. We proceeded to test in multiple setting if these Markers and Practices allowed for the identification of those with the highest talent and the full range of talent in an enterprise. Several independent analyses verified the accuracy of the library.
We then did the same for Teams.
In the creating of the libraries, we used a panel of experts to evaluate the content and findings as we gathered data. Our research led to some changes early in our work, so we adjusted the libraries accordingly. When all the research and writing was completed, we had a full, comprehensive talent management portfolio that would allow any professional working in or with an organization to deal with their key talent pain point—hiring the right people, nurturing associates, creating the talent bench, and strengthening teams.
Bob’s knowledge and experience in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Roger’s knowledge and experience in Adult Development blended to create some of the most cutting-edge brain-savvy action learning tips in the industry. We cover the territory from contextual to specific, social to individual developmental factors.
Strategic Agility
COVID-19 accelerated a pivot from hard paper tools of cards, books, and placemats showing various relationships, and development guides to digital versions. Today, clients have the option of hard paper copies or digital access to all libraries and tools — sorting, surveys, and development guides.
OpenAI resulted in the creation of an AI Companion— the Career Architect (a career advisor as well as a day-to-day coach) — which took all of the books, articles, and research produced by Bob, Roger, and Mike into a single, fully vectorized 10 million word database, resulting in an AI experience that covers a broad range of human behavior. We have tested the AI Companion with every legitimate assessment tool, report, or research, and the results have been extraordinary. We believe we have the periodic chart of human behavior and leadership covered in the database, and with the AI engine analyzing it, we provide remarkable, clear guidance.
Innovation
Bob and Roger explored additional refinements that led to unique approaches to assessment in our 360 multi-rater assessment and card-sorting experiences. A customer may select the standard 5-point Likert scale, or an Absolute card sorting where there are no limits to the number of cards put in a given bucket, or a Relative card sort which allows a fixed number of cards resulting in more precise and nuanced feedback. We also developed a range of standard reports that can be used based on the learners’ developmental needs.
We are still innovating and humbled to have a 95%+ client retention rate! We take feedback seriously, and as customers and learners share their experiences using our libraries and products, we take a close look at their suggestions or questions. Even now, we are in the midst of a major data analysis that will enrich all our products, including our AI Companion database.
Bob and Roger with Mike have spent their lives creating content for practical use, all research-based and experience-tested, and have found joy and meaning in the discovery and learning others have found through use of creative and imaginative applications.
