Over the years, I've used a handful of simple questions to best diagnose where to spend time and resources to support customer's talent needs.  How can you adapt these questions for your business?

One of the greatest challenges in Talent Development is prioritization. Time is a most precious resource and prioritizing the issues we should be addressing can be frustrating, especially with demanding customers.

We may have great structures in Talent Development ,like the annual Talent Cycle, and useful methodologies, such as Talent Reviews and Succession Planning, but they often don't provide the solutions needed to address critical talent challenges - those that make a significant difference in meeting business objectives.

To assess where to focus and what to prioritize, it's helpful to have a handful of go-to questions to get the discovery started.  If your customers are like mine, they may not know what to ask for in the way of talent support and they often don't even think to ask. 

I have collected three question sets over time that I use with my customers to determine how to best support them and their teams.  These questions begin a dialogue with my customers and lead to other inquiries that provide context and depth.

3 Diagnostic Talent Development Questions

Good questions don't have to be rocket science.  Target getting the discussion going.

👉 Pro tip: as you are collecting your own diagnostic questions, avoid closed-ended questions, i.e. yes or no questions.  Yes or no questions halt the conversation and don't allow you the context needed to provide fantastic solutions.

Without further ado, my secret stash of diagnostic questions to determine how to best support a leader and her team:

1. How's your business doing?

2. What's the 5-year growth plan for your business?

3. How's your leadership team doing in managing their teams?

Let's dive in to learn how you can use these questions to narrow your focus and solve talent challenges that drive bottom-line results.

Questions Beget More Questions?!

You'll see that the purpose of these questions are to begin a dialogue that allows space for you and the leader to discuss what's going on in her business.  Don't expect an immediate 'ah ha;' you'll have to do some digging to uncover the best place to support.

Also, before you dive into questioning, begin your conversation with assurances - assurances that what's shared in the conversation is confidential (unless there's an employee issue to be addressed, unethical behavior, etc.), and that your primary goal is to help the leader be successful.  This dialogue shouldn't feel like an interrogation.  And have it over several coffee chats - this may be a discovery process.

Talent Question #1: How's your business doing?

This question is a broad one.  It allows plenty of space for both you and your customer to discuss trends in the business and where your customer sees a need for talent support. 

To dig deeper, I may ask more specific follow-up questions, such as:

1. Where are you falling short in meeting your business metrics?

2. What keeps you up at night?

3. What skills do you wish your teams or employees were equipped with to meet business objectives?

Talent Question #2: What's your 5-year growth plan?

I'll always ask a future-focused question or two.  We are focused on the present, and also need to be thinking about the future and how to set up a healthy pipeline for future growth.  It also helps push your customers beyond tactical needs and into more strategic thought.

1. Do you have leaders ready or almost ready to support growth plans?

2. Do you have the employees ready with the right skills to support growth goals?

3. What skills do you expect employees will be using in 5 years?

Talent Question #3: How's your leadership team doing in leading their teams?

The sore spot in so many cases is leaders who need help engaging and managing employees effectively. 

Dig deeper with these questions:

1. Have you checked the retention of the folks on their teams' lately?

2. What are the latest employee engagement numbers?

3. What's the tenure of your leadership team?  (I ask this question to see if they have a group of new managers who need a skill boost or many tenured managers who might need a modernity boost.  Either way, leaders likely need a boost.)

Bonus Diagnostic Talent Question: How can I help you be successful?

This one is my favorite.  It often catches people off-guard, but it's fun to hear the responses, especially if they take you seriously.  Answers usually center around helping them help their teams, retaining employees and tackling one of their professional growth goals.  Of course I want to help them with that!

I'm certain if you pair these three questions with a cuppa, your customers will provide invaluable insight that will help you prioritize your focus on the initiatives that will close the gap on your customer's biggest talent challenges.

Now then, it's your turn.

Join the Conversation!

Your thoughts and experiences are invaluable. I'm sure you have a question or two that has worked well. Leave a comment below and let us know what has worked for you.