The appraisal has been a long time in dying, but is it actually dead? 6

It is quite easy to identify who is talented at a given task – but how do the ‘talented’ arrive at this peak of performance?

Explorathon – European Researchers’ Night – took place across Scotland on Friday 30 September and HRM researcher Paddy Sherrard gave a coffee house lecture as part of the University of Strathclyde’s contribution.

The purpose of the Explorathon is to give greater public awareness to research within the universities across Scotland – his talk showcased his initial research and illustrated how the British Army is advancing the talent debate both from a practical and academic perspective. This debate was one of many events taking place in Glasgow and across Scotland – check the Explorathon16 webpage for the other interesting events for all ages.

The free Explorathon Coffee House Lecture discussed one of the recurrent topics in Boardrooms this century – talent.

Since the late 1990s when a number of McKinsey consultants first coined the phrase ‘the war for talent’, how talent is acquired and then retained has been a recurrent agenda item for most businesses. However, the issue of talent and its development has far wider relevance than just business, it is also a ‘war’ for the British Army, other governmental bodies, not for profit organisations, sport and even for our children as they go through education.

Paddy highlighted the key debates on talent and garnered a view of the audience’s opinions over a coffee on Friday 30 September 2016 at the Tinderbox on Ingram St. Using his HR background as well as his coaching knowledge from a lifetime of playing, refereeing and coaching rugby, we had a really interactive talk which will challenge some of the assumptions relating to talent and its development. Click on the video for the preview!