There has been a lot of media coverage about enormous salaries paid to top executives, including their mind-boggling “golden parachutes”. Primarily CEOs, these executives aren’t always paid based on their talents.

In fact, what many people fine surprising is that employee pay is often not based on what they contribute to the organization. Most companies have no idea how to calculate the contributions from individual members of the workforce.

Why should you be concerned about talent in your own workforce? It’s simple: talent produces quality. People with the talent who are also inspired perform better and possess the gifts they need to sustain the highest level of performance possible. All of my experience has shown me that talent is the key to the successful implementation of a quality revolution. They’re also people who, at the moment you need them most, unexpectedly spring into action:

• The hotel manager and cook who quickly put together a fantastic spread for a guest whose caterer was caught up in a traffic accident.
• The sales manager of a parts manufacturer who used her own car to drive three hours so she could personally deliver a critical component a customer needed to keep its production moving the next day.
• The young grocery clerk who guided customers to the safety of a walk-in freezer during an especially bad hostage situation. The clerk was later hailed as a hero by the international press.

If you work for a small business, the chief talent is possibly the founder because that’s what talent often does – they go off and start their own companies. But there are other “high potential” employees who work in your business right now, today. They are the indispensable people who, through their dedication and astuteness, do their jobs extremely well.

I believe that most potential employees can be nurtured into talent roles. You can guide and train them so that they know how to maximize the positive results that only they can achieve. While they work, their learning capacity increases as their confidence expands. While you work alongside them and manage them, you can focus their trajectory and help them build toward greater excellence so their talent shines.