Editor’s note: This is a guest post Mike King of Learn This.

Talent is an interesting topic and one that is SO critical in the workforce.  Talent makes the difference between the top performers poor performers.  It can be cultivated and enhanced. Unfortunately the biggest problem is that talent is not always recognized by those who can see a use for it and individuals do not always see or even know how they can use it.  Luckily sometimes talents are obvious and people do utilize them in their life and work, but more often than not, talent is lost because it is difficult to recognize.  Here are 5 specific ways to recognize and utilize talent!

1. Talents Are Often Masked by Imbalance

Talents are not always recognized and one of the reasons for that is because they can be easily masked by imbalance. The imbalance of skills or lack of skills in a person’s life can easily mask talent because of so much disproportionate other ’stuff’.  In the workplace this can be someone in the wrong role and doing things they simply don’t have any talents in and it could be in life, where people are so busy or distracted by circumstances they don’t ever explore and develop their talents so they are never known.  And then even if they are known, often talents are masked away by decisions in life to pursue a different career, live a certain type of lifestyle or hang around with specific friends that can not only draw a person away from their own talents but literally push those talents out of their life so they can’t ever be recognized.

One great example of this is from the book, “Outliers” by Gladwell where he explores research finding how many sports athletes (specifically with hockey in North America) have an advantage if they are in a school year and born early in the year instead of late since this extra months of maturity gives them many advantages.  Since there are specific dates for cutoffs into programs and the older athletes (relative to each other since they are all young athletes) can have a significant advantage.  This advantage to some is exactly what masks out much of the talent in the other athletes born late in each year.  The talents of many of lost or never discovered fairly because of this. (Karl’s note: We must break through these barriers to bring out the talent, happiness, and success for as many people as possible.)

Many people mask their talents in many other ways as well such as lifestyle imbalance or skill imbalance. People with amazing talents might suffer in other fundamental areas such as social skills, or school skills where they are then quickly stereotypes or ‘labeled’ as a slow learner or put into special programs, often focusing on what they don’t have natural skills for and focusing on that imbalance instead of ever really developing the talent hiding behind that mask.  Social imbalance is a classic example as people quickly disregard or ignore socially inept people and their talents don’t get the attention or development as other people’s might, even though the talents can easily be as great or greater in comparison.

Recognizing talent can only be done if it is objective without prejudice or comparison to others.

Managerial Takeaway: Explore your people’s interests and hobbies to discover hidden talent that may not reveal itself in the workplace.  Let people try new things and explore new work so that you may uncover or develop a talent that is masked by the mundane or repetitive tasks.  You can easily be surprised at who or how real talent might be hiding right under your nose!

2. Passion, the Sure Sign?

Passion is another great way to recognize talent as they often go hand in hand.  Having passion for something can quickly expose or develop a talent and often the talent is what creates the passion in the first place.  Another simple test is to look at passion and how long it lasts or in what circumstances it exposes itself?  Is passion present only with certain activities or skills another person is using?  Or is passion on its own and existing regardless of what that person is doing?  Its much more likely a talent being exposed if they are more passionate about a certain activity or skill than on a topic, for instance.  Always look a little deeper into passions to see the root of it and this will hopefully lead you to more easily recognize talents that relate to that passion. (Karl’s note: Passion is one of the core components of a superpower.)

Managerial Takeaway: You need to really enable people to do things they enjoy and get excited about.  It’s often a sure way to discover a person’s superpower ability when you encourage them to act on their passions and apply it in their work!

3. Instinctive Skills – A Sign of Talent

Instinctive skills are something that is often a great sign of talent but that isn’t always easily recognized.  A talent can lay just out of sight yet related to a skill or action that someone takes or does without ever having been trained or prepared for it.  When this occurs, and they can repeat it, it is definitely a sign of a potential talent.  Musical skills, dexterity, sports, math, etc. can all be somewhat ‘natural’ or ‘instinctive’ to people and when it is, look for that as a talent.  Many of these instinctive skills or traits may actually be related to the talent of the individual, not always that direct skill itself.

Instinctive skills are often discussed around leadership as well, where some individuals are quick to recognize the need for teamwork and cooperation in a challenging situation.  That leadership is often instinctive to a person and is quite likely, a talent.  Is it easy to recognize and develop them if you look at instinctive and natural skills?

Managerial Takeaway: Make sure that you develop natural instinct when you have people who have good gut instinct for decisions, leadership and communication.  If you train and further assess areas of instinctive talent, you will discover talent that you’ll otherwise have to live without!

4. Remove Your Selfish Blinders

Recognizing the talents of other people can often be most difficult since we so quickly make comparisons and judgments based on our own wants and desires.  We must learn to remove and disconnect those selfish blinders though and look more objectively for talent in others.  A colleague up for the same promotion as you, or a competitor in a sport or contest often drives us to disregard their talents in order to push our own egotistical minds above them.  It blocks us from seeing talent and creates fears instead of encouragement.  If you want to be successful at recognizing talent, you must learn to be objective and separate talents from your own desires and see everyone equally.  Quite likely, this is the hardest things of all these 5 ways to recognize talent! (Karl’s note: Jealousy creates a lose-lose situation.)

Managerial Takeaway: As a manager, you must rate yourself by what talents you discover and develop in your team.  If you want to be a great manager, you must look at your teams accomplishments and development as the main metric for considering your own success.  This will enable you to bring many talents from your team to the table instead of only the ones you think you may have yourself, but actually don’t!!!

5. Get Out of the Way of Talent

Recognizing talent goes beyond what you see yourself and more to what others are able to recognize and evaluate as well.  For this to occur, you sometimes have to get out to of the way of talent and let it surface.  This might have its own sacrifices when it comes to competition or even personally in your own lifestyle or relationships, but if you truly want talent recognized, you have to stop holding it back, whether on yourself or others.  Jobs with strict responsibilities and descriptions are often limiting, rules and guidelines in school, tight regulations or policies and even family boundaries about who does what and how you should behave can be incredibly limiting instead of exposing talent.  Talent being exposed and recognized is typically not the normal behaviors of people and so there are almost always things that get in the way.  Talent is unleashed through creativity and people have to be given some creative freedom to expose their talents and it’s the only way to recognize talent in others.

Managerial Takeaway: You have to let go of control and influence as a manager and let your team operate in their own ways if you ever hope to discover the true talent that exists.  Micromanagement and reports that depend on your every approval and decision is like a noose around your talent.  Let it go, support your team to make their own suggestions and decisions and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you see talents that you were constantly in the way of earlier!

Your Turn

How do you leverage other people’s talents to help people become happier and more successful at work?

Mike is the author of Learn This , a productivity blog for self-learning career, leadership and life improvement tips. He’s written many articles about finding your passion in life, goal setting and many other ideas around learning to have a better and more positive life and workplace. Please subscribe to his RSS feed here or by email to read more of his articles!

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Sean Conrad of the Halogen blog

A lot of employees and managers experience performance appraisals as a negative process. This is true even for employees who are generally good performers. At the core, the reason why we experience performance appraisals negatively is because we are being judged and rated by another.

But you could change the whole experience and improve the business value of performance appraisals simply by changing their focus. What if the goal of your performance appraisal process was to find way to encourage and inspire people to be happy at work and to be their best, rather than to critique, rate and rank them?

There are several things an individual manager or better yet an entire organization can do to make performance appraisals a positive experience that encourages and inspires:

Start by Getting Their Perspective

It’s important to begin your performance appraisal process with your employee’s perspective. Invite them to tell you about their accomplishments, performance, successes and challenges. You can do this by getting them to complete a self-appraisal before you write their appraisal.

You can also do this by having them to keep a performance journal year round or by providing you with short weekly or monthly reports. The important thing is to get them to reflect on what they’ve done, how they’ve done, what makes them happy, what inspires their best performance and to share this information with you. This gives them an active and important role in the performance appraisal process and gives you both information for a meaningful dialogue.

Focus on the Positives

Whoever said that performance appraisals had to be about providing negative feedback on areas of low or poor performance? Why not focus on the positive? Use the opportunity to give your employee feedback on all the great things they’ve done. Give them specific examples, touch on the “how” as well as the “what” they did well, and let them know how that impacted the team, department or organization in a positive way. Positive feedback about our successes is a great motivator, and tends to encourage more great performance. This doesn’t mean you don’t take time to discuss areas where performance is lacking; it just means you broaden your focus and give your employee a more balanced perspective.

Of course, you shouldn’t limit your positive feedback to performance appraisal time. Make sure you give your employees positive feedback on good performance on a weekly basis.

Identify the Root Causes of Happiness and High Performance

Invite your employees to reflect on why they excelled in a particular area or at a particular task, as well as the times they were truly happy at work. What were the “conditions” that supported their success or happiness? Did the work ignite their passion? Did it open up new avenues for creativity? Was it the mix of people on a project or team that brought out their best? Did it invite them to learn new skills or apply old ones in a new way?

By identifying and understanding the root causes of happiness and high performance, we can then try to recreate these conditions as much as is possible or practical. You can’t guarantee that you’ll always be able to provide your employee with work that is fun and engaging, but if you don’t know what makes them “sing” how can you ever hope to encourage that?

Take the Focus Off the Ratings

Ever thought of conducting performance appraisals without ratings? When we assign numbers to performance, we judge others. While it might be helpful to ask the employee to rate their performance, if we want the performance appraisal to be a positive experience and help them be happy in their work, the focus should be on helping them improve, succeed and be happy in their work, not on the ratings. Instead of numbers, the focus should be on:

> What successes they had

> What contributed to their success

> Their career interests

> Skills or areas they would like to further develop

> Things they need to support their performance and success

> Things at work that contribute to their happiness

> Things at work that contribute to their unhappiness

The manager’s role should be to coach and support, not judge. To encourage this, you can do away with numerical ratings all together, or move to a simplified 2 or 3 point scale that serves as an indicator.

Foster Personal Development

You can also make performance appraisals a happier, more pleasant experience by making development planning an integral part of your performance appraisal process. Every employee should be encouraged and supported in their development, helping improve their performance and preparing them for career advancement. Development plans shouldn’t just be assigned to address “performance gaps”. They should focus on enhancing or broadening an employee’s skills, experience and expertise. Here again, you should look at the kinds of work that make the employee happiest and where they perform best. How can you help them expand and develop further in these areas?

You should also invite your employee to reflect on and identify their preferred learning style, and look for development activities that suit that style. Think beyond traditional training courses to include a variety of learning activities like job shadowing, reading, podcasts, volunteer activities, mentoring, on the job training given by another employee, webinars, etc. For example, if an employee hates reading, and learns best by doing, don’t assign them books to read; look for on the job training experiences or hands-on learning activities for them. That way you set them up for success.

Conclusion

Employee performance appraisals don’t have to be a dreaded task that creates anxiety and animosity between managers and staff. With the right positive focus and approach, they can be a powerful tool for nurturing happiness and high performance.

Your Turn

Have you ever had or given a performance review that left you more motivated?

Sean Conrad is a happy employee at Halogen Software, a market leading vendor of performance appraisal software. His passion is helping managers adopt talent management best practices. You can read more of his posts on the Halogen blog.

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* Staying focused on one task at a time is not easy. Especially if you are like me and like to hop all around. Stacey over at Mom Renewal has a great guest post on single tasking that most of you need to read.

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Evita of Evolving Beings

It seems that as technology expands forward, it is allowing more and more people the freedom to not be tied to a desk at their office any longer.

More and more people are either being approached by their company with an option to work remotely, such as from home, or are themselves suggesting the option to their company.

4 Hour Work Week

“It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them.”
- Tim Ferriss author of 4 Hour Work Week

Working from home definitely takes a certain kind of discipline, but I always had this theory that it would make one more productive. Well, after having read “The 4-Hour WorkWeek (Expanded and Updated)” by Timothy Ferriss, and seeing my husband do it, I am even more convinced. In the book Timothy explains how, just because you are at work, does not mean you are actually working and how much more productive one can actually be through telecommuting.

It is actually too bad that more companies are not open to embracing this approach because it could prove very beneficial for both the employers and the employees.

Cost Savings

For starters, it can greatly cut down on costs. Less employees in the office equals less desks, which equals less space needed. This in turn tremendously lowers rent costs.

Overall facility costs can also be significantly decreased. These take into account various bills for the company like electrical, heating, and air conditioning. Some companies also provide small treats or stationary items for their employees, and even those may be small expenses, in the end it all adds up.

As for benefiting from decreased costs, it is not just for the employers. Employees who work from home normally save on the transit they would be paying for, work attire and food on the go. These costs quickly accumulate for an employee, to the point that working from home can translate to an immediate pay raise, based on all the money the employee is saving. And of course a happier employee, results normally in a more productive employee.

Proof

On the topic of happiness, studies have also found that employees who work from home are actually happier, healthier and more productive.

A 2007 study by the American Psychological Association, found favorable effects on perceived autonomy, work–family conflict, job satisfaction, performance, turnover intent, and stress. Another study in 2008 by CompTIA Research found that 67% of companies polled said employees were more productive, just from cutting back on the commute to and from work.

Where health and happiness is concerned, not going into the office protects and benefits the employee in many ways. First off they most likely get to avoid a normally stressful morning routine, commute to and from work, and work environment. Secondly, working from home normally increases the amount of home cooked meals or just more balanced meals eaten. Most employees will be able to get more sleep as well. This all, as well as decreased exposure to others, decreases chances of infections and sick days, while increasing the general level of happiness. In the end, it results in a win-win situation for both employee and employer.

At a time where our awareness for being environmentally conscious is growing, our discussion would not be complete without also considering the environmental benefits from telecommuting. Less people traveling on the roads naturally decreases the greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation that would be used. On a national or global scale, this can quickly add up and make a huge difference where the state of our climate is concerned.

Why More Companies don’t Offer Tele-commuting

So by now you may be wondering – “if it is so good, why don’t more companies go that route?”

For starters, not all jobs can be done remotely. Some obviously require the employee to be physically present.

However for those who can work remotely, the biggest road block why more companies don’t take advantage of this type of work environment, seems to be the old stereotype that still hinders many companies. And that is, that their employees will slack off at home or need to be monitored. The truth is normally very different.

Most people who work from home actually feel more compelled to prove themselves in that they do not need to be monitored, and thus deliver better results, not to mention how much wasted time they avoid. This alongside the mentioned benefits above, can mean a very logical decision in the end for a company who wants to increase its own, and its employees happiness.

Evita’s next post will explain how to apply 5 important rules when telecommuting.

Do you work from home?

What are the advantages and disadvantages when telecommuting?

Evita Ochel, B.Sc., B.Ed., CHN – is the main author of EvolvingBeings.com where she writes about spiritual and personal development. She hopes to inspire people, to truly live out the life of their dreams and awaken the highest version of themselves. She is also the main author of EvolvingWellness.com where she writes about nutritional science and holistic health for optimal health and longevity. Learn more about Evita Ochel or Follow Evita Ochel on Twitter.

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When a business stops trying to control their employees, the employees begin to feel free at work. This freedom will allow them to feel more comfortable and happy.

Let’s say you have 50 employees who each have 100 Facebook and 100 Twitter friends. That’s 10,000 people that your employees are interacting with. They are talking about you to their friends.

What are they really saying?

Employee Outreach

You should be encouraging your employees to talk about their company, but never force them to use social media. Your employees will share the company’s story with their friends when you treat your employees like the superstars that they are.

This is where freedom comes in. If your people feel that they are free to do what is best for them and the company, they will use this freedom to make both themselves and the company happy.

It’s this happiness that flows into the rest of their conversations.

Some employees will always rebel against their employer. They will feel stifled working for someone else. This is a small percentage. The majority of the people will compare their freedoms with their friends. If they can leave work to watch their daughter in a school play on a Wednesday afternoon, they will feel lucky. If they don’t have to ask the boss for permission to do so, they will feel trusted.

They will also be more willing to think about work while in the shower. This after hours thinking is when the big ideas manifest themselves. When at work people are distracted by the small tasks.  When away from work (i.e. taking a shower) their mind is free to expand into creative solutions.

It’s About the Results

A person who is engaged in their work and who cares about what they do will be working at all times of the day. They will feel free to do this because they were free on a Wednesday afternoon when they wanted to watch their daughter in her play.

“It’s a two way street,” as my father always told me. The more freedom and trust you give your employees, the more energy they will give back to you.

Is this a perfect method? No. But the alternative is watching employees like a hawk, restricting their creativity until you piss off most of your employees, then they feel forced to leave or stay under the radar. We know how both of these options work out.

We have to adapt and treat people the way they want to be treated, so they will be happy and create results that will make both employer and employee proud.

A New Direction

We must rehumanize business for the sake of our health (economy and individual).

It’s also the best way we can reduce stress. People don’t stress out because the work is too hard. People stress out because they feel forced to do work that they don’t like.

70% of people go to the hospital because of stress-related symptoms. It’s funny that 70% of white collar workers are unhappy at work. Coincidence, hmmm I think not.

When people believe that they are making choices instead of being told what to do, then they will feel like they are creating their own destiny.

Rehumanizing business will improve most companies’ bottom line (more creativity, increased engagement and less absenteeism) as well as individual employee’s happiness and job enjoyment.

My Own Rebuttal

If this is such a great idea, then why don’t all companies give more freedom to their employees?

Old Habits Die Hard

We are so used to the old way of doing business. We are afraid to try something that might not work. We don’t want to risk the whole company crumbling because everyone is off watching their daughter in her school play or hanging out in coffee shops.

We need to crush this fear and replace it with fear of falling behind. We all know that when we are happy and free, we do great work.

We should give employees more freedom to connect with the customer (improve marketing), take off when they want without fear of big brother keeping track (improve trust), and develop projects that will improve the company (improve creativity).

Let’s rehumanize business together.

Link to this post or tweet about rehumanizing business and let’s get more people talking about this concept. You could also send this series of posts to a friend who owns a business. Hopefully they see the value in letting their employees have the freedom to create amazing work.

Want to catch up in this 3 part series? Then check out:

- Part 1 – Rehumanize Business

- Part 2 – Unleash Your Employee’s Creative Marketing Beast

* Join over 600 people who have already subscribed to the FREE Happy at Work 10 Week eCourse. It will arrive in your inbox every Monday morning, when you need it the most. (Sign up is in the top left corner)

* I love an article from Office Arrow. It’s called Challenge Your Potential: Competent Leadership.

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You may have read that title and thought, “What does my company’s marketing have to do with work happiness?”

A lot.

70% of business is transacted because your friend told you about a product or service. You probably own an iPod because your friends wouldn’t stop raving about their iPod. You trust your friends to recommend good stuff.

Zappos let’s their employees Twitter on the job. They trust their people to connect with the customer.

I love Zappos, not because they have every kind of shoe on the planet, but because they ship for free, have a 360 day return policy and pay for shipping back to the company if you want to return a purchase. Now that’s worth spreading.

People want to share stuff that makes them happy. It’s up to companies to encourage their people to share their story.

Your Marketing Team

When a company thinks of everyone as a part of their marketing team, they become more humane to their employees. For example, an employee can now blog or Twitter about an event that happened at work and there is potential for millions of people to hear about it.

Southwest Airlines has the rapping flight attendant. Over 100 thousand people have viewed videos of the flight attendant rapping the rules of the flight. It makes me wish that some day I will have him on one of my flights. This is more valuable than a Super Bowl ad (2 million dollars for 30 seconds). This YouTube video is being passed around by friends, making people talk about it. Because our friends like it, we trust it.

Friends encourage one another to watch the video, which makes people more likely to try the product.

We are living in a day and age when employers can encourage employees to take a larger role in a company’s success. Why aren’t we jumping all over this?

Fear.

- Companies are afraid that their employees may do something to embarrass the company.

- Companies are afraid that their employees will take advantage of these new tools.

- Companies are afraid that…

And on and on. The fear rolls on.

Your fear should not determine the happiness of your employees. After all, your employees who are taking advantage of you are doing it right now and will continue do it because they feel they are justified.

You can’t stop this.

It Comes Back to Trust

What you can do is give your trust, and when your trust is broken you can create a warning system (3 strikes you are out) then pull that trust from that one employee. Don’t take it out on everyone else.

Most of your employees will be more loyal when they know that they have your trust and respect.

If you allow your employees to Twitter, blog, and Facebook while at work then it’s up to you to create some guidelines.

The idea is to create an open community of thoughts and ideas. When you allow your employees to share their thoughts with the world about your business, you will get honest feedback and a chance to reach out to the world with your people’s ideas.

Company Culture

Zappos encourages a fun, interactive, and creative culture. They want to develop relationships that stick. Read my interview with the CEO of Zappos Tony Hsieh right here. Zappos has some of the stickiest relationships with their customers.

I admit that tweeting and blogging isn’t for every company, but I do believe that every company should implement some kind of open forum for their employees to reach out to the community. We need to create a culture that allows people to let their personalities out.

Let’s stop hiding our people away form the public. Let everyone have a chance to influence the customer. The freedom to make connections that will build loyalty. It’s this marketing that pays forward in many directions. The employees feel trusted. The customer doesn’t feel abused (they opted in to the message). The company makes both employees and customers happy.

In the next post we will talk about freedom at work.

Want to catch up? Check out Part 1:

- Rehumanize Business

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* Tony the CEO of Zappos wrote an enlightening piece called Your Culture Is Your Brand. It’s a must read for all business owners.

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Too many businesses are worried about playing it safe. They don’t want to uncover the bad stuff that is happening in their business, so they look the other way instead. Human Resources is there to protect the company. Upper management only wants to know about positive sales figures.

Who can most employees turn to?

They don’t turn to anyone; they just leave.

I want to rehumanize (I borrowed the word from Chris Brogan) business so that people feel free to speak up. The only way business is going to become faster, more enjoyable and more profitable is if you have every person in your company and even your customers become a part of your marketing department. That means they tell their friends, family and their internet buddies that your products/services are awesome.

Eliminate Employee Criticism

A great way to reduce or eliminate badmouthing of the company by the employees is to give them the chance to talk about what is bothering them, listen to their concerns, and allow employees to be a part of the change.

BzzAgent’s CEO Dave Balter learned that his employees’ opinions mattered. They mattered so much that the whole company addresses everyone’s issues, from needing four pronged forks in the lunch room to discussing how they can communicate with clients better. He created an anonymous suggestion box that was open to everyone. This created an opportunity to listen to and address people’s problems.

There will be times when a company is unable to accommodate an employee, but most employees understand this. At least they had a chance to make their feelings heard.

Your company probably has a few disgruntled employees. Every company has them. If you aren’t listening to their needs, you are creating a divided culture.

Listening Skills

Think about what you can do to improve your listening skills and deal with your employees’ needs.

When a company stops treating their employees as dollar signs and actually allows them to direct the company, that company gains 1,000 paddles in the ocean pushing their message out to potential customers. Believe me, the money will flow back into the company. I promise. All it takes is a leap of faith.

In the next post we’ll talk about how to unleash every employee’s creative marketing beast.

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* Gallup wrote an interesting piece called How to Bolster Employees’ Confidence. I’ll give you a hint, encouraging words matter.

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