The role of leadership in higher education institutions talent management processes

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to investigate the role of talent leadership in developing high potential academics in a selected high institution in South Africa. While the literature extensively discusses talent management issues, less evident is a comprehensive discussion of the role leaders plays in talent management. So obvious is this issue in the HEIs where leaders lack the requisite guidance on how to avert the persistent talent shortages, inefficient talent recruitment, mediocre career management, absence of employee engagement, uncertain reward systems, dented employment relationships, and the failure to retain top talent once employed. To understand the role that leadership plays in talent management, we adopted a non-experimental research design to purposively select a total of 10 academic managers for face-to-face interviews. Apart from the interviews, we also carried out document analysis to understand the expectations upon leadership in talent management in HEIs. We then applied Atlas.TI software to extract codes and themes reflecting the role of leadership in talent management. The study indicates the role of leadership in higher education institutions to include the review of the talent pool, offering strategic leadership of talent, effectively deploy the available talent, reward the talent, motivate talent, retain the talent, coach the talent, manage performance, innovate and communicate talent management matters. This paper thus brings new theoretical and practical insights on the role of leadership in talent management. However, to allow the transference of these findings, it is necessary to undertake further studies using different contexts to develop the theory on the role that leadership plays in talent management.