The Gartner Talent Angle

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2020 interview. Businesses across industries and geographies are facing disruption on multiple fronts — economic turmoil, employee activism, regulatory uncertainty. In this Talent Angle podcast episode, Andrew Barnes, author of “The 4 Day Week,” argues that success in this environment calls for businesses to embrace new ways of working which are rooted in flexibility. Barnes shares his company’s journey to designing a shorter workweek for employees and urges other organizations to abandon what he views as an entrenched anachronism, the 5-day workweek.

The team is working on new episodes of the Gartner Talent Angle podcast, which will start rolling out in a few weeks. In the meantime, new host Dion Love shares some of the team’s favorite episodes of the show. This episode originally aired in March 2017. Laszlo Bock believes that giving people freedom and supplementing our instincts with hard science are steps on the path to making work meaningful and people happy. Laszlo joins the Talent Angle to discuss the seminal importance of recruiting, rethinking engagement, creating transparent workplaces, fostering feedback, and so much more.

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2020 interview. On this episode of the Talent Angle podcast, executive Nancy Duarte shares insights from her new book DataStory: Explain Data and Inspire Action through Story. Duarte emphasizes the importance of empathy when presenting data, offers compelling structures for storytelling and outlines strategies to craft data-driven recommendations. Nancy Duarte is a communication expert who has been featured in several media outlets and is also a Harvard Business Review contributor. As a persuasion expert, she specializes in incorporating story patterns into business communications, and her firm, Duarte, Inc., is a leader behind some of the most influential visual messages in business and culture. She's written five bestselling books—four of which have won awards. She's also spoken at numerous conferences and her TEDx talk has garnered over two million views. She regularly speaks at business schools and is a lecturer at Stanford University.

The team is working on new episodes of the Gartner Talent Angle podcast, which will start rolling out in a few weeks. In the meantime, new host Dion Love shares some of the team’s favorite episodes of the show. This episode originally aired in April, 2016.  For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But today, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. Through his research, Adam Grant argues that at work, most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return. Using his own pioneering research as Wharton's youngest tenured professor, Grant shows that these styles have a surprising impact on success. Although some givers get exploited and burn out, the rest achieve extraordinary results across a wide range of industries.

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2020 interview. Succeeding as a leader requires you to create conditions that enable others to thrive and perform. But too often, leaders overly center themselves in an effort to ensure effectiveness. In her new book, Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You, Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei challenges our existing models of leadership. She proposes a different orientation—one which shifts the frame of reference from leaders to those around them.

In this Talent Angle podcast, workforce expert and “Undercover Millennial” Clint Pulver shares his unique methodology of “undercover” interviews to understand employees’ workplace experiences. He discusses the impact of underperforming managers on employees — from low engagement to increased attrition. Using qualitative findings from his interviews, he argues that managers and leaders should create moments that lead to solutions and develop mentorship opportunities for themselves and members of their teams. Clint Pulver is a professional keynote speaker and author of “I Love It Here: How Great Leaders Create Organizations Their People Never Want to Leave”. Pulver has worked with corporations to create loyalty through his work and research as the “Undercover Millennial.” He has been featured by BusinessQ Magazine as a “Top 40 Under 40.” In 2020, Pulver won an Emmy Award for his short film “Be a Mr. Jensen,” which tells the story of how a single moment and a particular mentor can change the course of a life.

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2020 interview. Companies often assume their workplace cultures are ones with high levels of integrity. But too many rely on reactive rather than proactive approaches to managing misconduct. On this episode of Gartner’s Talent Angle, Rob Chesnut, Chief Ethics Officer of Airbnb, offers practical advice on creating organizational culture with intentional integrity. Chestnut also lays out how companies can effectively clarify their ethical stances and motivate employees to model desired values.

Humans are hardwired to add rather than subtract. Across various contexts ー whether biological, cultural or economic ー we often default towards more. Professor Leidy Klotz, author of “Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, ” argues we pay a price for the belief that more is better. In this Gartner Talent Angle interview, Klotz makes the case for the untapped potential of less, exploring subtraction as an overlooked strategy to achieve business results.

*This excerpt was taken from our 2020 interview. The #MeToo movement has called attention to the prevalence of workplace misconduct. In response, organizations across industries and sectors have had to confront the many risks—legal, reputational, and financial—misconduct and harassment pose to their bottom line. In her book #MeToo in the Corporate World: Power, Privilege, and the Path Forward, labor economist and award-winning author Sylvia Ann Hewlett urges companies to recognize the adverse consequences of toxic workplace cultures. She provides HR leaders and professionals with tools and strategies to create more equitable and safe workplace environments, especially for marginalized groups.

Using findings from her two books — “Collective Genius” and “Being the Boss” — Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill, reflects on the elements of leadership that produce innovation. She argues for a view of leaders as social architects, tasked with building cultures and capabilities necessary for their teams to do their best and most creative work. For organizations looking to learn from her leadership playbook, she counsels focusing on creative abrasion, creative agility and creative resolution.