- Are you interested in discovering your unique talents?
- Would you like to enhance the difference you make in work and life?
Research has shown that the number one driver to individual effectiveness lies in discovering our talents – then putting them to work. Yet, as Peter Drucker observed over forty years ago, most people do not know what their talents are. And more recent studies have shown that less than one in five of us put our strengths to use every day. So here at Hello World, along with our valued partner - Talent Technologies, we acknowledge the difference playing to our strengths makes to the teams we are part of – and the first step is always identifying each individual’s talents. Using a process developed with over 90 years of empirical research, we help you discover your talents and put your strengths to work – effortlessly!
Highlands is an assessment tool which has been developed by psychologists from the Johnson O’Connor Institute in America for over 90 years. It was created from a GE project which aimed to discover what really caused human performance at work and has been used by numerous multinational corporations such as Cisco, HP, Pfizer, Chevron, IBM and many others ever since. That connection to performance is, as management experts from Peter Drucker to Stephen Covey and Jim Collins have for long advised, not intelligence, skills or experience but talent - our innate abilities.
These are simply the synaptic connections or ‘hard wires’ in us that determine which tasks we can excel at. Extensive research has identified that we have 19 core ‘abilities’ - and these correlate highly with our effectiveness in certain tasks, jobs and roles.
Highlands is an online tool which objectively tests how easily and naturally each person can accomplish work samples based on these 19 abilities. The research has shown that these also change little no matter how much or how little a person ages or trains in them, meaning that it is vital we work in areas of our talent and seek to turn these into strengths.
The concept of ‘Talent’ is one of the most misunderstood in modern management. Yet, because it is the #1 driver of employee engagement (as separate studies by the Corporate Leadership Council and Gallup have shown), it’s critical that managers and individuals in general have a clear idea of what talent is and how it can be applied.
Below is what can be considered a primer on Talent:
- Your talents are your brain’s ‘hard wires’ – the synaptic connections formed between birth to adolescence.
- These are neither skills, intelligence or knowledge – they are not the ‘what’, but the ‘how’ – how skills, intelligence and knowledge are used
- If you have a ‘high’ score in a talent, you will usually find using that talent easy and less stressful than if you had a ‘low’ score. If you have a ‘low’ score, it means that you have a talent in an area opposite to that talent.
- In the Highlands Ability Battery, a high score in an ability (talent) means you can accomplish tasks using it relatively easily. A ‘low’ score means there are other tasks you can likely accomplish more easily by not being high in that talent
- Attitudes and behaviours often follow talents. We usually love doing those things we ‘do best’ – often leading to a happier disposition. If we find a task difficult, and are asked to do it repeatedly, then our disposition may be more negative.
- Talents transfer from situation to situation
- Talent is the strongest predictor of future performance
- Skills or knowledge will be acquired much more efficiently around talent
- Talent is the necessary basis for consistent, near-perfect performance
- Talents reflect who you are, not what you know
If you are interested in discovering your own Talent, ideal career path and ‘natural roles’, then why not ask us about Talent Factor, our one-day program. If you would like to find out more about how discovering your talents can help transform your life and for details on all of our management training programs in Thailand, please contact us.
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