Abstract
M.Phil.
Orientation
People in leadership positions have become perplexed about their role in engaging and nurturing talent despite being in the midst of a war for talent. Leaders have sorely evaded their accountability as talent champions, since they have not embraced the prominence of talent engagement. Conceded as an impediment, empirical evidence suggests that leaders assume a role of bystander looking in on the talent cast without constructing, nurturing or engaging with high performers.
Research purpose
The study explored the effectiveness of organisational leadership in terms of the extent to which leaders engage and nurture talent in the work environment, as it constucted an understanding of talents‟ experiences and views of how engaging and nurturing leaders are in the banking environment.
Motivation for the study
Initially the study aroused keen interest as the bank‟s execution of the talent agenda was more academic than practical, and the execution was firmly placed on the shoulders of HR and not on those of leadership. The motivation for the study was therefore to deepen an understanding of engagement, and, specifically, to explore leadership‟s role and effectiveness in influencing talent engagement.
Research approach
I opted for a qualitative methodological approach, and, more particularly, a modernist qualitative-research application. My ontology was based on talent‟s subjective
viii
construction of their own social realities, as they shared their views and understanding of the effectiveness of leadership regarding talent management in the Bank. Hence, my epistemology was to explore and describe how talent interpreted their experiences, and how they viewed leadership in the bank.
The study was conducted in a local bank within a retail business area; a single case study was therefore opted. Six research participants were selected on the basis of having been identified as talent.
I used unstructured interviews and participant observation to gather the data. As already pointed out in exploring and describing the subjective views of talent, I generally used symbolic interactionism to describe talents‟ experiences.
Main findings
Talented employees had diverse views of how those in leadership positions were engaging them. The findings suggested that engagement is an integrative process, as it comprised of interdependant factors. These were analysed and interpreted through the following themes; assessing talented people‟s motivation and commitment to the organisation, feeling valued and involved, relationships, development, career advancement, reward, and retention and leadership effectiveness. More particularly, these themes presented a reflective account of talents‟ dissatisfaction around leadership‟s effectiveness in managing engagment. This illustrated that talent‟s perceptions were predominantly related to ineffective management, poor communication and poor relationships that were established with direct managers. Talented people had feelings of insufficient career-development opportunities, and of being devalued. Therefore the findings suggested that leadership influenced the talent-engagement experience. One can account that engagement emerged as an integrative systemic process and leadership‟s role in transforming it as a culture becomes eminent.