The talent enigma

Abstract

The talent enigma juxtaposes the discourses of ‘talent’ as an inherent individual quality to be sought out and recruited as against talent as inherent in organizations which grow their own. This article explores this issue in the context of an international ‘crisis’ of school leadership, examining how that crisis is constructed and how it impacts in differing contexts. Included here is discussion of the implicit assumptions of leadership qualities that schools require and, in other cases, explicit discussion of competencies deemed to be in short supply. In countries where no such shortages existed, the focus was less on the problems of recruitment and greater emphasis on growing and nurturing talent of prospective leaders and of school leaders already in situ. Recruitment issues and the debate over talent also served to bring into sharper focus the importance of succession and sustainability and leadership as distributed across the school community. This article examines these issues in light of the notion of the ‘war for talent’, reviewing the nature of the obstacles to recruitment, some of the proposed solutions, and taking issue with some of the assumptions on which the ‘crisis’ rests.

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Notes on contributors

John MacBeath

John MacBeath is the chair of Educational Leadership in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2PQ, UK. Email: [email protected]. He is a Director of the Wallenberg Centre and is president elect of the International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement. Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed him to his Task Force on Standards in 1997, and in the same year John MacBeath was awarded an OBE for services to education.