There has a been a debate about Talent Management for sometime now, 'What does it mean?', 'Who is our talent?', 'Is is management or development?' - this is somewhat unsuprising given that there are still some common misconceptions around what good old Performance Review is.

A case in point was a recent conversation where an individual considered performance review to be a 'disciplinary thing' - this may be down to his particular experience in the organisation in which he was working, a belief left unchallenged over time or the meaning he attaches to those words.

It highlights an important point about how the meaning of words and the concepts they seek to describe can be understood in a myriad different ways; what is said, may be what is heard, but the meaning attached may be very much at odds with our own.

When we come to debrief 360 degree feedback, we must realise that recipients will attach a different meaning to our own when reading the report, so our role must be to understand their meaning; asking 'So what do you take that statement to mean?' can be an interesting way to help an individual reflect on how they are seeing the world.

John