Name: The Edge: The Leadership Engine: Building, Measuring, and Scaling Talent in Today’s SMB
Uploaded: 2026-03-11T19:00:20.651Z
Duration: 32 min 56 s
Description: The Edge: The Leadership Engine: Building, Measuring, and Scaling Talent in Today’s SMB

Transcript for "The Edge: The Leadership Engine: Building, Measuring, and Scaling Talent in Today’s SMB": Thank you for joining us today as we dive into an engaging exploration of the pressing leadership gap faced by small and medium sized businesses, or SMBs. This interactive session will help with practical, insightful strategies to supercharge leadership pipelines, strengthen organizational culture, and drive business growth through intentional development and internal mobility. Please use the chat on the right side of your screen to say hello and send emojis to welcome to the stage TriNet's executive director for talent acquisition, Sun Pham, and director for leadership and organizational development, Alison Gorman. Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining us on the next edition of the Edge. My name is Sun Pham. I am the executive director of talent acquisition here at TriNet. We're excited about the topic and what we're gonna kinda convey with you today. But before we get started, let's cover a couple housekeeping items so you're familiar and you know how to navigate through this discussion with us today. Now if you take a look at your screen, you see the chat tab, messages, docs, and q and a. We do welcome your questions. We want this to be interactive and fun for you as well too, so but please put your questions in the q and a tab so they don't get lost as we engage in our conversation today. We do have TriNet colleagues in helping us answer questions via text that may not get onto the stage, so we do value your input and your questions, so please remember to use the q and a tab to enter those at that time. Okay? And then you can also send a direct message or a DM message to the message tab as well. Okay? Throughout our discussion today, we might launch a couple polls, and then we would love to get your response and your input. When we get to that segment, you'll see and we'll also identify where the polls are and how you would navigate through that as well too. Okay? You know, so those are some housekeeping items, so, you know, take a look and get familiar with the navigation and how you would be interactive with us. So I'll give it a second so this way you can get yourself oriented to your screen and what we just called out in terms of the navigation. All right. We are excited to get started. You know, in today's environment, every small and medium sized businesses leader feels a lot of pain, one of it, and it's a near and dear topic to us and our guests here today, is the leadership gap, right? When we explore how many small and medium sized businesses are experiencing, you think about your succession risk. You think about burnout from your high performers. You think about your bench strength. Do you even have one? Is it strong? Is it weak? And you also think about, you know, with your colleagues there in your organization is what are the performance signals that you should be looking for? Alright. What we're gonna try to do today is we're not gonna take this topic from your very stereotypical leadership development discussion, but we're really gonna look at this more from a strategic tool for what small and medium businesses need to do to drive growth, to drive retention, to mitigate risk, and then really think about truly at the end of the day what impacts you the most, your revenue, your culture, and scalability. Think about this. If your top performers left tomorrow, who's ready to step up? Great question. But before we get into that and unpack all that, I wanna kinda, you know, welcome Allison Gorman to help us unpack this topic. Allison, would you please tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your background, please? Sure thing. Thanks, Sutton. So hi, everybody. I'm Allison Gorman. I am the director of leadership and organizational development here at TriNet. A little bit about my background is that I've spent about a decade helping organizations develop their leaders and ensure that their people practices really align to their goals. So I'm very excited, very passionate about trying to address the leadership gap. Great, Allison. We are so lucky to have you, and I think this is gonna be a great, interactive conversations with our audience. And then I'm sure they're really gonna learn a lot about some of your insights and then some of the experiences that you face. Right? So let's really get into it, you know. And then the first question, Allison, that we really wanna kinda help our audience members think about is why do you think organizations and then especially small, medium sized businesses are filling the leadership gap right now? What's going on do you think? Yeah. So, honestly, I think there are a few things that are converging all at once. When we look at a lot of our businesses, you know, they're growing faster than their leadership capability can really keep up. So, you know, they're being successful. They're adding clients. They're adding teams. Their complexity is increasing, but the leadership readiness doesn't always automatically scale with that growth. So, you know, businesses really think that this is important. We need to have a leadership pipeline, but most companies don't really have that. Instead, they really have a hope strategy. So, you they're hoping that their best people will just step up when the time comes. And because they rely heavily on a few key leaders, if one of them leads, it's not just, oh, you know, we've lost one person. It's not just a vacancy to be filled. It can be really significant, you know, to the impact on the company. It can be lost momentum, lost customer relationships. It can be a real confidence hit for the business. But at the same time, leadership development, which we all know is important, tends to be reactive, not really intentional. And you'll hear me talk a lot about the word intentional today as we go through this. So it's reactive. It's not intentional. Burnout, it shows up fast among high performers. And, you know, sometimes companies will think, okay. Well, we can just go higher. Right? So we can go hire another high performer. And that external hiring sounds like the right solution, but it can be, you know, expensive, slow, and risky. And you said, I know that you're really familiar with this, working in TA. It's not always the right solution. So we see that these leadership gaps, they show up pretty quickly. You know, it shows up as that stalled growth, you missed goals, and, you know, exhausted leaders who are trying to hold everything together. You know, feel free to react if you're in the audience, if you you know, if that really resonates with you. But small and medium businesses, they really need to have an intentional approach to developing that leadership pipeline so that they can avoid some of the negative consequences and really maximize their success. And, you know, just like I mentioned, Sun, like, you're our resident expert in talent acquisition. What are your thoughts on the leadership gap? Like, what have you seen working your area? Yeah. And that's a great point there, Allison, and I love your tagline. You know? And I truly believe, and I had a mentor that kinda mentioned this is, really, at the end of the day, hope is not a strategy. Right? So from a talent acquisition perspective, when we kinda think about this leadership gap, is we kinda think about working with our business leaders and building a recruiting pipeline or key roles for succession planning. Because, again, we don't want to kinda lean on hope as a strategy. Right? We wanna be proactive. To us, one of our major KPIs is time to hire or time to fill, meaning when do we get someone into that position? If you had a critical role that's revenue impacting or operational impacting, you want to minimize that time to hire, time to fill. So being intentional, having a really robust partnership with the right leaders, then we can then think about how do we proactively build a pipeline that can minimize that time to fill, time to hire, that can really accelerate the velocity of that revenue component or that operational optimization. Right? So, you know, I kinda do it like that because it kinda makes me giggle because like hope really is not a strategy. We have to really be intentional. And then you had mentioned about the intentionality of leadership development and all that is, you know, what do you think in terms of how can our viewers understand how performance system is a critical component to all of this? Yeah. So that's a great question. You know, something that you mentioned too with the pipeline. Right? So you have the recruiting pipeline. I have the leadership development pipeline. We have to pull that thread through, and a lot of that comes to our performance systems. And so, you know, how are our performance systems working? So before we jump into, you know, me answering this question, I would love to hear from, you know, our audience members on their performance processes. And are you being successful in clearly identifying your future leaders with the systems that you have in place right now? That's a great point there. Alright, folks. You heard Allison. We're gonna execute a poll right now to really get your perspective on that particular topic. Right? And then the question is really gonna be how often does your performance process clearly identify future leaders? If you take a look at your screen, what you're gonna see is the poll tab is gonna be on your right side of your screen. A few tabs to the right of that chat tab is where you're gonna locate it. Right? So I'll give you guys a second or so to kinda locate it. We're gonna launch the survey, and then remember, the question is, how often does your performance process clearly identify future leaders? There are a couple answers or options that you can select from. It's always, sometimes, rarely, or never. Alright? So let's go ahead and execute that poll. You hopefully, you're already seeing it on your screen, and you guys are already responding as I can see. Right? Allison, we can see some of the responses coming in already. Yeah. Yeah. Give people a couple seconds. You know? For anybody who answers answers always, like, I I wanna learn more how you're always successful in that. Yeah. And then I I see it rarely there, so which is great. You know? Hey. Way to be transparent. Let's let's, you know, be you know, let's let's really know where we're at in the journey. Yeah. If you answered, you know, sometimes or rarely, you're in great company. So most of the times when I ask this to to different, groups that, you know, I facilitate with, you know, we we often see sometimes and rarely coming in. You're really not alone in that. This is exactly where so many small to medium businesses get stuck, And it's really why leadership development as a whole can can stall despite having really good intentions. And there's that word again. Right? Intentions. Because we wanna be intentional. We, you know, have great intentions, but sometimes, you know, things may not be as effective as we'd like. So when we discuss being intentional in developing a leadership pipeline, sometimes we can unintentionally undermine ourselves. You know, we say leadership development matters, but the performance systems that we put in place don't always actually support that development. When we think about what are people relying on now when, you know, we're looking at small to medium businesses, Most are still relying on annual reviews, which, you know, that sometimes it's the easiest course to do, but we know that most of the times, those are outdated. They look backwards instead of Ford. It's not providing continuous feedback in the moment. When we look at performance management, if you're doing it effectively, it really should tell you who's ready to lead. But in most companies, it doesn't do that. It really just tells you who survived the year. And so I don't know if that resonates with you, son. But, like, who who made it through? Yeah. Yeah. But another big miss that sometimes we see is unclear expectations. I harp on this whenever I'm facilitating. You know, you can't if people don't know what good leadership looks like, if they don't know what behaviors matter, what skills actually signal, you know, readiness, then leadership potential stays invisible. Right? So you're not really assessing your organization, the way you should if you're not really clear on, you know, what does good look like. And, really, you can't develop what you can't see. So you can't develop your leaders if you don't even know who they are. Another performance system that sometimes people, you know, overlook is recognition. And recognition can be, you know, disconnected from impact. This will probably resonate with a lot of people, and feel free to react if this does. But, high performers often get rewarded with more work instead of more growth. Right? And when your recognition systems don't match what you're trying to accomplish with your leadership pipeline, you're gonna get some burnout. Right? So, when you're doing a great job, you're showing potential, and you get rewarded with more quantity of work, we can have a big disconnect. So when we look at our recognition, it really should reinforce behaviors that build, you know, future leaders and not just reward tenure because you've been in the role the longest or who can carry the most load. That's not gonna be effective for us. Yep. I love that. Intentionality. Some some of the keywords I'm I'm hearing is intentionality. Right? Visibility to a performance management system and alignment. Yeah. And then it's so funny. It's like, you know, a lot of times you're right. That performance management is how did you survive the year versus that forward looking is like, what should we be doing in partnership to really continue to develop your development? Right? How do we excel that? And then you're so you're so spot on. It's kind of funny. It's like, we do at times unintentionally punish our hypos because we give them more work because we know they're a hypo. Alright? So, you know, I think those are great points. And then, yeah, I'm starting to see some some reactions there, you know, on the screen as well too. I I think that resonates with with our audience, you know, as well too. So so great insights there. Yeah. I wanna kinda bring up another aspect of bridging the leadership gap is bench strength. Now for our audience members who go to the gym regularly, when we talk about bench strength, we're not really talking about weight lifting on the bench or anything like that, you know, but but Allison, why is, you know, internal strength such as critical and often underused, you know, bench strength, you know, how can small medium sized businesses really think about bench strength as a competitive advantage? And, son, you know, my fitness journey lately, and so I was a little afraid that you were gonna ask me how much I'm benching now, which is not a lot. But when you're talking about bench strength in a company, I'm much better at talking about this. So more of an expert here. When we look at, you know, the landscape now, internal talent is actually one of the biggest advantages that small to medium businesses have, but it's also one of the most underused. The reality is your next leaders probably are already in your organization. Right? So this internal talent, they know your comp their your company. They know your customers. They know your culture, which is really important. How that business actually runs, which really can dramatically reduce hiring risk compared to bringing someone in cold that you're you don't know. Right? You're taking a risk on bringing them in from the outside. And, you know, I don't want to, like, downplay external hiring. Sometimes you need that fresh insight that comes in, but a lot of times that can be somebody's, like, initial reaction is to jump to external hiring when, you know, you should have strong internal mobility. Right? We need to know who our talent is and pull from in that and and value that institutional knowledge. Another, big piece that can really thwart our ability to close that leadership gap is retention. Right? So attrition can be really detrimental. What we found and, you know, this, I I think, resonates with everybody is that people don't leave companies. Right? They leave dead ends. They leave managers. But they truly if they don't see a future in your company, you know, they're not gonna stay. So when employees do see that feature, they tend to stay longer. Right? So you're reducing that that cost of having to hire and replace. They're a lot more engaged. There's just so much research out there that engagement is just really key to productivity. They're more willing to stretch. Right? They're gonna go above and beyond. They're gonna put that discretionary effort in. And when you know, Sun, you and I have talked about this at length, you know, emerging talent. Right? So those, you know, individuals who are starting their career, right, early early talent, early careers. When you look at what they want, it's not just perks. Right? They they don't they don't want the pizza parties. They they want growth. They want meaning. They wanna know that they're building their career towards something. They want to feel like they have a feature with your company. So it's really important for, you know, for us to address that. Where businesses struggle, is that leadership potential often goes unnoticed because there aren't, you know, visible clear pathways. Right? So that internal mobility may not actually be apparent to, you know, our employees. But the good news is that small and medium businesses are really uniquely positioned, to move faster than large organizations. So large enterprises, you know, they're a little bit slower to move, and smaller, medium businesses, you know, they can they can react faster. It's really key that you don't you don't really need a massive program here. You just need clear expectations. You need intentional exposure of your hypo employees or your high potential employee employees to leaders. You need get them that face time. Give them stretch assignments, not more work, but actual meaningful stretch assignments. That's something that, yeah, you really have to call out there. It's not giving them so much that they're overloaded and they're surviving the year like we talked about earlier, that they're getting something to really stretch their brain to pull them in, make them feel a part of something, and then have those pathways that are visible and show people how they can grow into leadership, that they have a feature with your company. I love that. I love that. You know, from from a talent acquisition perspective, internal ability is really important. You know how early we mentioned about, you know, some certain KPIs that we look at from a t a, TA perspective, time to fill, time to hire. Well, cost per hire is really important for us. Right? And what is you know, internal mobility is really a great lever to really reduce that cost per hire because we're looking internally to see who's ready for that next opportunity, you know. And then you're spot on in that if we facilitate internal mobility from the talent acquisition perspective, there is a retention component to it. We're reducing our cost of hire because we're looking internally. We have a retention. But this doesn't just happen by accident. You have to be very purposeful, you know, because what we do from a TA perspective is that we actually develop processes around this. We develop clear objectives with businesses and business leaders and says, hey, this is a great segment in terms of thinking about talent strategy overall. Right? Then we also have to make visible to our internal colleagues where to go look, where are the opportunities. And then we also have to be transparent in terms of that. If the opportunity is not right for you, what can we do to lean in to identify resources that our internal colleagues can go to? Maybe it's a certification. Maybe it's additional education. Or maybe, to your point, a stretch assignments to kinda learn about the role. To prepare them when that next role becomes available, They use our platform. We've got the process in place. We've got the tools in place. Then they can then go apply and then transition into a great opportunity internally. And then I love you know, in years past, I've had mentors that says, you can have a very rich career and growth in an organization and never be in the same role for the the twenty years in which you're there with that organization. And that's where internal mobility really is the catalyst for all of that, is that continued growth and development without having to sit in that same seat for those twenty years duration. Right? Yeah. And, you know, that's just something that what you're saying with all these different opportunities. I feel like, you know, we're we're getting this ask a lot more of our colleagues. Right? They're coming to us and asking for these tools and, you know, like, what do I do next and how can I think about and really taking an active ownership in, you know, their their future? It's just incredibly important for us to have an answer when our employees ask. Right? Yep. I love that. You know? And I know with with our audience members here, you know, we have a lot of leaders that are running small, medium businesses. Right? So they're probably thinking to themselves, this sounds great. How do I accelerate the readiness of some of my hypos or even some of my internal colleagues that I know could really have great potential? How do I accelerate that? What do I need to do to develop leaders? Yeah. So I'm asked this so often, and this is something that is a passion project for me. It's something that I've seen so much so much success for. There are really just so many things that you can do to develop leaders, but one of the fastest ways that, you know, small and medium businesses can accelerate their leadership readiness is through rotational experiences, so rotational programs. You know, leadership isn't built in a workshop as much as you know, I'm a leadership development person. Like, we do workshops all the time. It's so important, but the real leadership is really built in that real work and that day to day. Classroom training, super valuable. Right? But it doesn't always change how our leaders and think and operate under pressure because you're learning those tools in, like, the ideal environment. Right? You're giving them the foundation, but the application of those skills that they've learned is where the magic happens. So if you only ever experience it in a classroom and you don't ever get an opportunity to practice it, it's not gonna stick. So I would ask, like, our audience members, you you please feel free to put in the chat if your organization uses rotational experiences and what your experience has been. And we'd love to to hear from you. Your son and I have done rotational programs, quite a bit, and I just, I I get excited to see that because it just gives people such a great opportunity. Rotational ex yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I actually you know, not I don't mean to, interrupt you there, Allison, but I do see a question that just came in here. Mhmm. And then, you know, they asked the question is, like, does rotational program need to be long in duration? Because I I think some folks think about LDP program being at least two years, three years long. Right? So does it have to be long to really get folks to to kind of bridge that leadership gap? No. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to be super complex. You can really cater this to the needs of your business. It's, the value really truly of rotational exposure is that it gives these emerging leaders. So these people who are just now on the cusp, it gives them a business wide perspective. So if you build a program that is, you know, expansive, that lets them see things outside of their space, they start to understand that downstream effect. Right? So they start to understand how decisions ripple across teams, how customers are impacted, how the outcomes happen, not just their own department. Right? So we can get stuck in silos. It doesn't really matter the size of your organization. Like, sometimes people can get into silos whether that is, you know, a physical or, you know, just kind of a thought silo. But the exposure when you have to go and and do rotations outside of your area, it ex it it builds confidence. Right? It increases the ability to judge things properly, and it creates a lot of agility. And we know that agility is super important, particularly in small, medium businesses where you may not be super resource heavy. And can go to your question, it doesn't have to be disruptive. It doesn't have to be complex. Small and medium businesses, in my opinion, are actually in a great position here. So short term project based rotations can dramatically accelerate readiness. You know, you can pull and maybe that's thirty, sixty, ninety day project, put that person in that, get them that exposure, and pull them back. They're gonna bring what they learned back until their role. So the key is making sure you're giving people real responsibility, real visibility, real learning without pulling them completely out of the business. But, you know, when leaders experience the business end to end, they're not just more prepared. They're really more effective the moment they step into bigger roles. So just like we talked about at the beginning, you know, if your highest performer leaves, right, if if something happens, right, what is your bench strength here? Have they done rotational programs? Are they ready to step in? You know, because you're gonna have to find somebody to step in. And so, you know, it's it's a no brainer to make sure that they're prepared. Yep. And I and I love that. Right? And then so, you know, for our business leaders that are are are are here with us and listening is don't let the artificial barriers stop you from thinking about, yeah, or what Alex just said. Hey. It could be short in duration. It's not disruptive. If anything, you've given your prospective colleague development opportunity that if they learn more, they're gonna do more for you. Right? So, you know, and it's great points there, Allison. And then, you know, one of the last questions, and I I know business leaders, and we get this within our organization, is is around tools and partnership. Right? So as, you know, our audience members who are are leading the their small, medium businesses is, you know, they're building this internally. You know, what do they think from tools or partners that will help support them through this journey when they think about bridging that leadership gap? Yeah. So we've talked a lot of, you know, about a lot of things, you know, with, like, the rotation part programs. Like, you don't have to be complex. You can start small. But, really, the most important thing, I think, is to build internally the foundation. Right? So clear expectations, real accountability, having a strong feedback culture. These are all things that are gonna be incredibly important and effective. You know, leaders need to know what that good leadership looks like. Right? Like, we we talked about that, what they own, how they're gonna be held accountable. Ownership and leadership visibility are also really critical. So leaders have to be visible, present, and modeling the behaviors that they expect. Right? You've gotta lead from the front here. And when leaders are modeling the right behavior, right, when you're doing all these things, that leadership development really starts to scale across your organization. So, you know, we have these clear expectations, accountability is consistent, everything just works better. Where partners and tools come in is around support. So coaching, HR expertise, compliance structure frameworks, those can all be accelerated through the right partner. So tools help create consistency. You know, we know this. And frameworks can give leaders a common language, but only if the work you know, that internal foundation is solid. So the thing that I would like to emphasize, like, this is just if you take nothing else away, you you don't need to build everything. You just need the right foundation. The goal, it's not being complex. It's not complexity. It's impact. So when expectations are clear, accountability is real, leadership development really becomes so much easier at scale. Yep. I love that. And then and you're right. You know, when we get back to that first question is, what would you do if your top performers left today? You know? Who's next? Right? So that right foundation really kinda sets it up, and it's a great, you know, stepping point there at that at that journey. Right? So, Allison, thank you so much for just the insight, you know, talking about your experiences and what you've seen and, you know, and just really tidbits that we're providing, you know, our small, medium business leaders as well too. Okay? So really, when we kind of think about it and kind of bring it home here and wrapping it up is, you know, leadership development, it isn't a perk. It really is a business strategy. Because here are some of the benefits from this particular business strategy. You think about better performance, higher retention. You're gonna reduce the risk to your business, stronger culture. You know? And that's you know, because you wanna attract and retain the right folks because that culture is really strong and it resonates with them. And every business leader is looking for growth, not only for growth, but how can you scale it as well. Right? So really, you know, when you think about this, if your top performers left tomorrow, you know, don't leave your next leaders to chance. Build that foundation. Build that energy engine, I'm sorry, and keep your business moving forward. Alright? So really just scale it and grow. Allison, I really appreciate your time today. I know our audience members appreciate it because I could see some of the accolades that are coming in right now. Right? But if you enjoyed this, edition of The Edge, we do want to invite you to join us next month for the next edition as well of the Edge, and it's around AI, AI talent strategy for SMBs. Alright? Closing the skills gap and building the wisdom worker workforce is the long title, but think about it as AI as the next topic for the edge. Right? We do have a discovery zone that we invite you to kinda join and go in there and ask questions, get more information. I believe we're gonna provide some links in those discovery zones when you join in those little, breakout rooms there. We'll have our colleagues from TriNet, you know, provide us some additional information as well too. Or if you wanted to, you can all do a one on one, you know, with a colleague at specific tables and how the the virtual room is gonna be broken out and things like that. So do please take a look at the discovery zone and join and explore where you can, but more importantly, put it on your calendar for the edge for next month around the AI talent strategy for SMBs. With that, I do wanna say thank you so much again for joining us. Allison, thank you again. And then we wish you a great day, and go build some future leaders for your organization. Okay? You guys take care. We would like to invite you to join us for our next monthly, the edge session, AI talent strategy for small and medium sized businesses, SMBs, closing the skills gap and building the wisdom worker workforce. Artificial intelligence is transforming how SMBs work. In this session, TriNet experts, including Chief Talent Officer Kathy Manginelli, break down findings from the new Harvard Business Review Analytics Services study on AI and SMB talent strategies and translate them into practical actions leaders can put into motion. Register now at events.trinet.comtheedge. If you are not a current TriNet client and have questions about how TriNet can support your business or to find a more personalized solution for issues discussed today, we would like to invite you to join us in the Discovery Zone where you can explore demos and talk live with one of our colleagues. The Discovery Zone is accessible via the tab on the upper left hand side of your screen. If you would like to schedule a time to talk for another day, please click the yellow Contact TriNet button at the top of your screen and a colleague will reach out. We thank you for joining us today and look forward to seeing you again at our next TriNet event.