The Gartner Talent Angle

Harvard Business School professor Joseph Fuller joins the Gartner Talent Angle podcast to share the latest insights from his white paper, “Hidden Talent: Untapped Talent.” Fuller explains why fitting candidates are  consistently overlooked by recruiting technology. He shares solutions for uncovering these workers, and argues why senior leaders play a critical role in ensuring the success of the hidden talent pipeline. Joseph Fuller is a Professor of Management Practice in General Management at Harvard Business School and co-leads the school’s initiative, Managing the Future of Work. He graduated from Harvard Business School in 1981 and founded the consulting firm, Monitor Group, now Monitor-Deloitte. During his three decades in consulting, Fuller worked with senior executives and policymakers on a wide variety of issues related to corporate strategy and national competitiveness.

This week, we're re-releasing an audience favorite episode from this past year. Please enjoy our conversation with Rachel Botsman, a lecturer at Oxford University and author of “Who Can You Trust?” Botsman defines trust as the currency of interaction. She argues that trust has implications for how organizations can relate to their employees and customers, especially in a virtual world. Botsman joined the podcast to discuss the changing landscape of trust and to share how leaders can put trust into action to drive better outcomes.

In this Talent Angle podcast, collaboration expert Rob Cross shares ways employees can become more efficient collaborators and reclaim and reinvest their time. Cross explains how small stressors throughout the work day are  increasing, overwhelming and exhausting employees and lays out practical advice for addressing these issues. Rob Cross has studied the underlying network dynamics of effective organizations and the collaborative practices of high performers for more than 20 years. He is the Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College and the co-founder and director of the Connected Commons, a consortium of over 100 leading organizations accelerating network research and practice. Cross is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, and earned an MBA from UVA’s Darden School and completed doctoral work at Boston University.

In this Talent Angle podcast, Gartner chief of HR research Brian Kropp shares challenges and opportunities that are top of mind for CHROs as 2022 approaches. He discusses how HR must adapt to a hybrid future in which leaders and managers need new skills and employees expect a more human relationship with their organizations. Kropp goes on to explain how executives must take new approaches to decision making to usher in the changes needed in this disruptive environment. Brian Kropp is Gartner’s chief of HR research. He oversees Gartner’s research, tools, services and support for CHROs and their leadership teams. Before joining Gartner, he worked in a variety of roles, conducting different types of economic analysis to drive critical business outcomes. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s in economics from Clemson University and a doctorate in public policy and applied economics from the University of North Carolina. Peter Aykens is a practice vice president in Gartner’s HR practice. He is responsible for building and leading research teams within the practice to address client’s key initiatives. In prior roles at Gartner, he spent over 25 years leading research teams focused on banking and financial services strategy, producing numerous studies that addressed business strategy, channels, marketing, customer experience and product challenges. He holds a bachelor’s in political science from St. Olaf College; a master’s degree in international politics from the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth; and a master’s and a doctorate in political science from Brown University.

In his book, “The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas,” Kellogg professor David Schonthal challenges the default assumption that selling an idea requires the seller to heighten its appeal. Instead, he makes the case that failure to adopt ideas, strategies or products is often due to the four key psychological frictions that oppose change: inertia, effort, emotion and reactance. He argues that successful leaders and innovators must identify, understand and overcome these to achieve novel outcomes.

In this Gartner Talent Angle episode, author and banker Jeff Korzenik shares insights about the second-chance talent pool—that is, reemploying candidates with criminal records. He offers practical advice on tapping into non-traditional sources of talent by  differentiating between felony types, partnering with nonprofits and reevaluating legacy talent policies and processes. Jeff Korzenik is Chief Investment Strategist for Fifth Third Bank, one of the nation’s largest banks. He is the author of the book “Untapped Talent: How Second-Chance Hiring Works for Your Business and the Community” on the business case and best practices for hiring people with criminal records.

Questions of fairness and equity in the workplace have a renewed urgency, given the transition to hybrid work and the more human relationship between employees and employers. Workplace fairness--either perceived or actual--has real consequences on an organization’s performance and retention. Gartner’s Chief of HR Research Brian Kropp joins the Gartner Talent Angle to discuss strategies that organizations can apply to ensure employees are heard to bolster fairness. Brian Kropp is Gartner’s Chief of HR Research. He oversees Gartner’s research, tools, services and support for CHROs and their leadership teams. Before joining Gartner, he worked in a variety of roles, conducting different types of economic analyses to drive critical business outcomes. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Economics from Clemson University and a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Applied Economics from the University of North Carolina.   Peter Aykens is a Practice Vice President in Gartner's Human Resources practice. He is responsible for building and leading research teams within the practice addressing client's key initiatives. In prior roles at Gartner, he spent over 25 years leading research teams focused on banking and financial services strategy producing numerous studies that addressed business strategy, channel, marketing, customer experience and product challenges. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from St. Olaf College; a MSc.(Econ) degree in International Politics from the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth; and a MA and Ph.D. in Political Science from Brown University.

The team is working on new episodes of the Gartner Talent Angle podcast, which will start rolling out in a few weeks. In the meantime, new host Dion Love shares some of the team’s favorite episodes of the show. This episode originally aired in March 2017. Laszlo Bock believes that giving people freedom and supplementing our instincts with hard science are steps on the path to making work meaningful and people happy. Laszlo joins the Talent Angle to discuss the seminal importance of recruiting, rethinking engagement, creating transparent workplaces, fostering feedback, and so much more.

The team is working on new episodes of the Gartner Talent Angle podcast, which will start rolling out in a few weeks. In the meantime, new host Dion Love shares some of the team’s favorite episodes of the show. This episode originally aired in April, 2016.  For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But today, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. Through his research, Adam Grant argues that at work, most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return. Using his own pioneering research as Wharton's youngest tenured professor, Grant shows that these styles have a surprising impact on success. Although some givers get exploited and burn out, the rest achieve extraordinary results across a wide range of industries.

In this Talent Angle podcast, workforce expert and “Undercover Millennial” Clint Pulver shares his unique methodology of “undercover” interviews to understand employees’ workplace experiences. He discusses the impact of underperforming managers on employees — from low engagement to increased attrition. Using qualitative findings from his interviews, he argues that managers and leaders should create moments that lead to solutions and develop mentorship opportunities for themselves and members of their teams. Clint Pulver is a professional keynote speaker and author of “I Love It Here: How Great Leaders Create Organizations Their People Never Want to Leave”. Pulver has worked with corporations to create loyalty through his work and research as the “Undercover Millennial.” He has been featured by BusinessQ Magazine as a “Top 40 Under 40.” In 2020, Pulver won an Emmy Award for his short film “Be a Mr. Jensen,” which tells the story of how a single moment and a particular mentor can change the course of a life.

Humans are hardwired to add rather than subtract. Across various contexts ー whether biological, cultural or economic ー we often default towards more. Professor Leidy Klotz, author of “Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, ” argues we pay a price for the belief that more is better. In this Gartner Talent Angle interview, Klotz makes the case for the untapped potential of less, exploring subtraction as an overlooked strategy to achieve business results.

Using findings from her two books — “Collective Genius” and “Being the Boss” — Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill, reflects on the elements of leadership that produce innovation. She argues for a view of leaders as social architects, tasked with building cultures and capabilities necessary for their teams to do their best and most creative work. For organizations looking to learn from her leadership playbook, she counsels focusing on creative abrasion, creative agility and creative resolution.

While technology such as instant messaging and videoconferencing have driven digital productivity, leaders and managers are struggling to effectively communicate with their teams using these tools. Entrepreneur Joe Freed joins the Gartner Talent Angle to share how technologies will reduce cognitive load and enhance culture initiatives. He also shares seven markers of digital interactions to assess the health of your organizational culture in the hybrid world. Joe Freed is the Co-founder and CEO of Cultivate, a technology company providing a leadership development platform for the digital workforce. He has led several startups focused on online learning and HR technology, and lectures at UC Berkeley Extension.

In this Gartner Talent Angle podcast, labor market expert Martha Ross explores how non-college-educated talent can excel at organizations with the right on-the-job learning opportunities. She offers tactics for organizations seeking to diversify their recruitment strategies and improve sourcing of underrepresented talent. Martha Ross is a senior fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. Ross researches and writes about workers and the labor market, with a focus on low-wage and underemployed workers, the education and employment experiences of 18- to 24-year-olds, pathways to good jobs for young adults, and COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on these talent segments. She has a master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and a bachelor’s degree from Colorado College.

Hear Jeff Kavanaugh, author of The Live Enterprise, discuss how to transform your organization into an ever-evolving, continuously learning industry leader. He provides a clear path to transform large and complex businesses into agile ecosystems that evolve with changing market needs. 

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2020 interview. In this episode of The Talent Angle podcast, Alden Mills, author of Unstoppable Teams: The 4 Essential Actions of High-Performance Leadership, discusses his C.A.R.E.-based leadership framework. Mills shares how HR and business leaders can overcome personal barriers and build teams that are motivated by factors greater than themselves.

Ram Charan, business advisor and author, introduces a new leadership thinking approach to help executives exploit shifts in their business landscapes. In the book “The Phoenix Encounter Method,” he and his co-authors — Ian Woodward, V. “Paddy” Padmanabhan and Sameer Hasija — offer a methodology to use change as a catalyst for transformation. According to Charan, leaders can adopt this new mental frame by: developing a nuanced understanding of their operating environments; pressure-testing options for legacy business and innovation; and leveraging new competencies and emerging technologies for business growth.

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2019 interview. Conflict resolution can seem like a daunting task, especially when previous attempts  have failed. In this episode of the Talent Angle, Dr. Jennifer Goldman-Wetzler, author of Optimal Outcomes: Free Yourself from Conflict at Work, at Home and in Life discusses practical approaches to both resolve and free yourself from conflict. By applying these practices, you will not only learn to observe complex situations with greater clarity, but ultimately achieve your optimal outcome.

On this episode of the Gartner Talent Angle podcast, trust expert Rachel Botsman defines trust as the currency of interaction. She argues that trust has implications for how organizations can relate to their employees and customers, especially in a virtual world. Botsman joined the podcast to discuss the changing landscape of trust and to share how leaders can put trust into action to drive better outcomes. Rachel Botsman is a lecturer at Oxford University and an expert on trust. She is the author of “What’s Mine is Yours” and “Who Can You Trust?”. Botsman’s TED talks have been viewed more than five million times, and she hosts the podcast series “Trust Issues.”

*This spotlight contains an excerpt from our 2019 interview. Marc Effron, author of 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus on What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest), joins the Talent Angle to discuss how to cut through the noise and boost workplace performance. He shares what behavioral changes and practical steps employees can take to improve performance and deliver outstanding results.