Recognising and acknowledging talent requires an understanding of what talent is. Talented people will continue to go unnoticed until someone who knows talent when they see it, recognises their talent. Further to this, a talented person also needs to recognise their unique value as part of their identity architecture.

Often charisma, personality and opinionatedness are mistaken for talent. Sometimes intelligence, good performance and diligence are mistaken as talent. Anyone can posses any one or more of these characteristics. It doesn’t make them talented.

“These cases of mistaken identities mean that people with real talents, sometimes with understated personalities, are overlooked,” says Davies, who along with Mark Holshousen, Master Executive Coach at CYCAN and Matt White CEO of WhiteLabel, is a panellist in the Rising Stars Awards Programme being run for the first time this year by the Human Capital Institute of South Africa and Blackbark Productions.

The aim of the programme is to unearth, acknowledge and celebrate South Africans with great promise and exceptional talent – the country’s future leaders, pioneers, innovators, rising stars. The top four finalists in each of the ten categories will be dubbed the “Class of 2012”, forming a network of the top 40 most talented people, under the age of 40, in South Africa. The Human Capital Institute of South Africa and Blackbark Productions are committed to keeping the network active with ongoing personal development and intra-network education. Each of the finalists will be given a personal Learning Management package from LRMG Performance Agency to assist with their development and ensure that they create value for themselves, the organisation they work for and the wider economy.

Davies says that the Rising Stars programme, with its unique nomination and judging procedure, provides an excellent platform for uncovering talent in South Africa.
South Africa has a reputation for being an excellent place for sourcing and nurturing talent, with multinational companies using the country’s tough business environment and unique political and business forces as a hunting and training ground for future managers and leaders.

Those whose talents are spotted early and who are given opportunities to combine their natural born talents with practical work experience have enormous potential to create value for themselves, the companies they work for and the people around them.

Certainly, South Africa is a fertile breeding ground for talented people but it is becoming increasingly important that their talents and critical expertise are retained in South Africa. Individuals must be given opportunities to explore and hone their talents so that they can actualise their fullest potential and also contribute to creating and growing critical talent pools.

“We are very excited about the Rising Stars programme because goes beyond just unearthing and giving visibility to some of the country’s top talent by creating a network and ongoing opportunities for them to further their development, fine-tune their talents and achieve their aspirations right here in South Africa. The programme is a giant leap forward for talent management in this country,” she says.