Learn the Business

Do you understand your organization’s priorities and long-term goals? Are you aware of industry trends and how current economic factors affect your business? Do you study global market trends to better appreciate how they influence your company?

In “Become a Trusted Partner to Drive Performance,” Danielle Wallace advises that diving into these questions can help talent development professionals hold more fruitful conversations with internal stakeholders and develop more appropriate talent development solutions.

Why Have Conversations With Business Leaders?

Meeting with business leaders and finding out what matters to them fosters trust and credibility. That is, what are department managers accountable for this period? What are their greatest challenges? Are they experiencing any capability or skills gaps?

Learning about their pain points and centering the discussion using language that business leaders use will lead to invitations to collaborate on a routine basis and early in the planning stage, rather than being called in later to provide training when a new product is released or a new tool is introduced into their team’s workflow.

As Wallace describes it, these conversations enable talent development practitioners to serve as consultants rather than order takers.

During these conversations, it’s important to ask follow-up questions to get to the root cause of the performance issue rather than accept face value. Ahead of conversations, study internal and external business and industry factors, as well as performance data, employee surveys, and customer data, for example.

Building Relationships

TD leaders aren’t necessarily going to be immediately welcomed into business meetings. Some department leaders think of the talent development team as training providers, offering compliance or HR onboarding courses. This means you will need to sell talent development as a strategic business imperative, something that helps department leaders meet their goals and objectives.

Beginning small and providing data around things that matter to business leaders, such as increased efficiencies, quicker time-to-proficiency, and fewer errors will get their attention and lead to a seat at the table.

Ongoing Process

These conversations are just that—they’re not a one-and-done item on the checklist but an ongoing effort to keep on top of the business and maintain relationships. In certain instances, it may even mean mending fences if there has been a misunderstanding or lost trust. It’s important to address the fractured relationship; don’t ignore it.

Serving as an advisor is about building and maintaining trust and demonstrating the TD team as a business performance champion, sums up Wallace.