Every company is looking for the best, for those really exceptionally talented people who can decide the “race for talent” in their favor. Among the many tools to spot talent are IQ-tests and many of those sought-after people will definitely qualify as highly gifted. A scientically well elaborated IQ test is one of the best predictors for a successful career and smart employers and HR departments use them for the benefit of the company.
Highly talented employees – added value in the workplace
Highly gifted people are like everyone else – they only think much faster. They often like to classify facts, dicover surprising connections and delight in developing and building new structures. Their accelerated ability for “pattern recognition” enbales them to identify complex problems and – very often – also resolve them at astonishing speed.
Such gifted people feel at home in professions that benefit from their analytical skills such as scientific research, legal contexts or in IT.
Since languages are also highly complex systems many high potentials possess exceptional language skills: a broad vocabulary combined with linguistic expressiveness.
A smart way to tap into a lot of highly gifted people is through their international organizations such as Mensa. The organization founded after WWII unites gifted people in over 150 countries.
High potentials and routines
Many creatively gifted people have an aversion to unproductive routines. They get bored out when forced into systems which are too rigid and rhythms that lull them instead of sparking their creative potentials.
It therefore makes sense to give them a high degree of self-responsibility, as they can bring their existing capacities to full development.
Diversity and giftedness
True diversity should be one of the core values in any striving company aiming to be successful in the 21st century. Companies and institutions should represent the multiple aspects of ethnicity, beliefs, age and gender. This way they will be able to connect easily to their clients and customers.
And it is very advisable that at least 2% of its employees should qualify as highly gifted.
Leaders should consider to give them specific and challenging tasks to make them happy.
And it’s worth while to check if a certain kind of unhappy employee might even be a hidden gem: s/he might an unrecognized and hopelessly under-challenged gifted person, whose potential may be easily unlocked.
Biographical reasons
Most highly gifted are already ahead of their environment as children. Driven by curiosity and fascination many of them pick up reading, writing and sometimes even math without a real teaching environments. They are motivated self-learners and enjoy understanding why things happen the way the do, often driving their parents nuts with a never ending string of questions.
Very often a standardized learning systems designed for the broad mass does not cater to their needs.
Workshops on giftedness
In my workshops and lectures for highly gifted people and their environment, HR managers can learn and train how to spot their high potentals and how to the best synergies and results with.
In my application workshops the highly gifted people can practice how to make employers aware of their value.