In his book, Talent Is Overrated, Geoff Colvin hypothesizes that too much emphasis is placed on innate talent when it comes to assessing “great” performers. Providing in depth analyses of world-class talents such as Mozart and Tiger Woods, Colvin theorizes that despite their seeming ease with life’s most challenging tasks, great performers are still subject to the grueling hours of study and practice it takes to accomplish anything worth accomplishing; they just realize a lot sooner than most of us that to be great takes years of disciplined loyalty to a chosen craft. Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, makes a similar observation and notes that it takes at least 10,000 hours of dedicated, diligent practice in order to become an expert at anything – clearly ability and talent are not things we are born with.

This theory is interesting when placed in an organizational development setting and puts a new spin on how we look at “talent” in the hiring process. Talent is obviously extremely important for all companies due to the fact that the identification, selection, development and retention of key, talented employees are necessary for organizational sustainability and growth – after all without people, there is no organization. It is important to select the “best” employees for key roles, not people who have a fancy school printed under the education section of their resume.

There are many tools available for hiring managers to assess the talents of job candidates, including behavioral hiring methods and hiring/promotion assessments. In the context of Colvin’s theory, it is important to use these methods/tools to ensure the hiring of the right person – do not automatically hire the Harvard Business School grad because of the name brand. Look carefully at a job candidate’s employment history, strengths, weaknesses, culture, background, education, assessments scores etc. and you will be sure to find the most talented candidates for the positions you are filling.

We all get a little temperamental at times don’t we? Most people don’t realize, however, that when we become temperamental we revert to our true nature or temperament. According to Robert Hogan (the personality guru) up to 50% of our personality is genetic and laid down at birth and we call this our “temperament”. It is the foundation on which the house of our personality is built and is manifested in well defined behavioral tendencies and mood states.

Temperament is usually divided into four main types first used by the ancient Greeks, Sanguine (fun lovers), Choleric (doers), Melancholic (idealists), and Phlegmatic (rationals). In an easy to remember system developed by Greg Hicks, the four temperaments can be portrayed as four animals:

The Fox:

• Fun-loving, optimistic, realistic, and focused on the here and now
• Pride themselves on being unconventional, bold, and spontaneous
• Make playful mates, creative parents, and troubleshooting leaders
• Excitable, trust their impulses, want to make a splash, seek stimulation, prize freedom, and dream of mastering action skills

The Beaver:

• Dutiful “doers”, cautious, humble, and focused on credentials and traditions
• Pride themselves on being dependable, helpful, and hard-working
• Make loyal mates, responsible parents, and stabilizing leaders
• Are concerned citizens who trust authority, join groups, seek security, prize gratitude, and dream of meting out justice

The Dolphin:

• Enthusiastic, idealistic, they trust their intuition, yearn for romance, seek their true self, prize meaningful relationships, and dream of attaining wisdom
• Pride themselves on being loving, kindhearted, and authentic
• Tend to be giving, trusting, spiritual, and they are focused on personal journeys and human potentials
• Make intense mates, nurturing parents, and inspirational leaders

The Owl:

• Tend to be rational, pragmatic, skeptical, self-contained, and focused on problem-solving and systems analysis
• Pride themselves on being ingenious, independent, and strong willed
• Make reasonable mates, individualizing parents, and strategic leaders
• Are even-tempered, they trust logic, yearn for achievement, seek knowledge, prize technology, and dream of understanding how the world works

Learning about temperament helps us understand the “glories” and “pitfalls” of our natural leadership style. This in turn will help us learn how to become more effective at leading others with different temperaments.