 Whether you’re the new hire in a cubicle, the boss in the executive suite, or a long time employee who has almost given up hope of advancement, you have unrealized potential for greater productivity and fulfillment. The key is to learn how to change the story you keep telling yourself about why you are hindered in success and why you can’t use all your talents. Instead, it’s time to find ways to power through obstacles and build your own personal brand.
That’s the premise of a new book, Take Charge of Your Talent: Three Keys to Thriving in Your Career, Organization, and Life (Berrett-Koehler Publishers) by Don Maruska, a former CEO of three Silicon Valley companies and now consultant for individuals and corporate leaders, and Jay Perry, one of the founders of Coach University and the International Coach Federation.
Maruska and Perry make a solid case that most people have talents they aren’t using. In fact, they report that even very high performers in excellent organizations -- both large and small, for profit and nonprofit -- admit that 30 to 40 percent of their talent is untapped.
 So what can be done if you feel stuck or stagnant in your career and feel your talent is dormant or wasted? Take Charge of Your Talent outlines how employees at any career level can take charge of their own talent development using specific strategies:
Power up your talent story. How do you describe your life and your career? Too often, people talk about themselves as somehow being the victim of circumstances. For example, do you ever say your boss “won’t let you” do something or you “can’t spare the time?”
In their book, Maruska and Perry present exercises (designed to be carried out with the help of an appropriate person from among your coworkers, friends or family who functions as a “Talent Catalyst”) to help you shift your story about your talent. Instead of seeing yourself as a victim, you become the hero when you talk about your life and where you want to go with your career. The result? A new perspective, a feeling of more power and fresh ideas.
Accelerate through obstacles. Everyone has obstacles, whether you find yourself stuck in a traffic jam and miss a meeting or feel you’ve reached a career dead-end. In Take Charge of Your Talent, the authors outline additional exercises to help you transform set-backs and obstacles of any kind as opportunities to sharpen new skills. They explain ways to change your perspective about obstacles so you find hopeful outcomes, grab opportunities, and use challenges to stretch and inspire yourself and others.
Multiply payoffs for yourself and others. “You don’t need your talent to be the ‘best thing since sliced bread’ to gain a big payoff,” Maruska and Perry write. “You can simply take the knowledge and skills you have developed while taking charge of your talent and get them working powerfully for you.” They explain how to convert your talents into career assets that you brand to attract the opportunities you want. For example, they suggest looking for opportunities to share what you know and then “deposit” proven career assets with your organization or community. By using available vehicles (such as web postings and intranets) you can store, connect and share your knowledge assets while gaining recognition and building your brand.
 The Take Charge of Your Talent Manifesto
Maruska and Perry have come up with what they call a “manifesto” of positive statements, based on their research and experience, that they say will support your own talent growth – and benefit your organization, too.
- We each have untapped talents and opportunities for greater satisfaction. “We have a wealth of opportunities to contribute to the world and improve our personal well-being,” the authors state. “We just need help to figure out how.”
- Accessing our hopes helps us to get out of our own way and stimulates better results. Neuroscience has shown that being in a hopeful frame of mind engages the parts of our brains that specialize in creativity, insight, and the development of new alternatives.
- We can be Talent Catalysts for one another to generate new ideas and precipitate action. By helping others with carefully targeted questions, generous listening, and a focus on action, Maruska and Perry explain we can use Talent Catalyst Conversations to look at our careers and lives from a new angle.
- Abundant resources are available to help us realize our deepest hopes. Learning how to identify and attract the resources we need is a key to success.
- We can get the time we need to pursue our hopes and take charge of our talent. One of the biggest complaints people have is that they don’t have enough time to pursue their goals and talents. “We can be like surgeons and slice through overwhelming workloads to do what’s most valuable,” Maruska and Perry write.
- The self-organizing culture of talent development creates enduring assets and fulfillment for individuals and organizations. “We feel more responsible for our organizations because they become ours, as we helped to create and foster the talent that fuels them,” the authors explain.
- Everyone can participate because the “See one, do one, teach one” approach supports a culture of accessible and self-organizing talent development. The movement to take charge of your talent can go viral in the positive sense that it is a highly constructive and also contagious. It builds a network of learners and teachers so that talent emerges and is encouraged individually and throughout the workplace.
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