How much do talent development services cost?

This, of course, is always one of the first questions a team leader has when starting the research process for talent development services.  Here at Kutsko Consulting, I'd imagine we receive these questions dozens of times a year, likely within the first couple of conversations.

But we get it.  Price matters (along with many other factors). Setting a yearly budget for talent development is wise and we are glad you asked.  It can certainly dictate what services and growth you're able to achieve in the long run.  You need to be able to develop an initial budget and plan for the ongoing costs, no matter what you decide to do about talent development, employee retention, and people engagement.

As you might imagine, though, the problem with answering this question is the fact that each team we work with has so many unique needs to consider that it can be tough to truly know the price to develop and align a...

Did you know that Conceptual Thinking is a competency that you can develop? We define the Conceptual Thinking competency as, "analyzing hypothetical
situations, patterns and/or abstract concepts to formulate connections and new insights." Who do you know who is highly skilled at Conceptual Thinking?

With practice, you can grow and develop this skill just like other "hard skills" you might be good at like cooking, public speaking, employee coaching, or playing golf.

How do I grow as a leader: Conceptual Thinking?

Those with a highly developed skill of Conceptual Thinking exhibit the following:

• Demonstrates the ability to identify patterns, themes or connections not
  noticed by others.
• Gathers hypothetical or abstract concepts to formulate new insights.
• Evaluates many patterns to formulate connections.
• Recognizes unique or unusual perspectives.
• Envisions hypothetical situations to formulate new concepts.
• Utilizes patterns to develop new ways to process information.
• ...

So far, we've gone over three of the five areas you need to understand to be a great leader who grows a healthy team: Driving Forces, Behaviors, and Emotional Intelligence. Next, we're going to cover Competencies or soft skills. 

All people have all of these personal skills to one degree or another. Everyone can't be good at everything, however, so you want to focus on developing the competencies that

• A) You are already strong in 
• B) Focus on the ones that you need to be strong in for your current and future roles.

Over the next few lessons, we will be investigating each of these 25 abilities one at a time to help you grow as a leader.

How do I develop as a leader?

Developing your skills as a leader is just like developing any other skill, it takes practice and lots of it. The trouble is, it's not always as easy to identify how developed our skills are at work, especially in "white-collar," creative or knowledge work. In fields with lots of technical skill...