How to embrace the era of talent empowerment

By Tom Finn, Co-Founder and CEO of LeggUP, the first company to ensure the productivity, well-being and retention of its employees.

When it was conceived, the work was conceived by humans as an act of community. But in my life, work has been a workout—a race up the corporate ladder. As I rose through the ranks, leading a team of 75 talented people in my twenties, work was nothing but a catalyst for accomplishments, acquisitions, and other materialistic gains.

Success has brought many positive things to my relatively young life, including status and stability. But as I prepared for executive meetings, it also brought me sweaty palms, high levels of stress, and possible panic attacks.

When work becomes less human and more transactional, we send ourselves down a destructive path of burnout or boredom; in my case, it was an acute burnout. So why is this happening to so many emerging leaders?

The era of talent empowerment

Seventy-seven percent of employees currently suffer from some form of burnout. Equally concerning for businesses, 52% are actively looking for new jobs. Why? Old leadership styles surrounding talent management practices no longer work.

Talent management has long been seen as the overarching strategy for aligning individual and organizational goals and meeting employee expectations in return for loyalty. The pillars of talent management include employee assistance programs, learning management systems, workplace hierarchies, group training, and compliance.

To survive the aforementioned statistics, organizations must move from a culture of talent management to a culture of talent empowerment, where all people have the tools, resources, and support to develop the skills, confidence and well-being needed to thrive at work and beyond. The five pillars of talent empowerment are as follows.

Personal growth and well-being

Empowerment starts with feeling good and functioning well. Opportunities for growth and development must improve an employee's well-being in order to improve their performance. In its simplest spectrum, personal well-being can be broken down into three areas: struggle, survive, and thrive.

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