Can talent really be measured?  Many people will tell you it cannot.  I have a different view.

Every day we size up talent by observation, through conversation and based on our own personal experience.  Imagine that you are hiring someone for a job.  When a person is sloppy, cocky or self-centered, it tends to diminish our assessment of them.  When they are confident, open to learning and focused on others, we tend to give them higher marks.  We have just measured talent.  It may not be the best way to do it or the most accurate or fair, but it is a rough and ready tactic that most everyone adopts.

Can we get beyond the gut instinct?  It is the subjective judgments that get in the way of good talent assessment.  Humans have a lot of predictable biases.   We have terms for them like “the halo effect”,”ingroup bias”, “projection” bias, “herd instinct”, the illusion of transparency, the illusion of superiority, the “self-fulfilling prophecy”–there are over 20 social biases.  Even when we’re aware of them, which isn’t often, biases still affect our sound judgment.

The fact is that talent can be measured objectively and we can override the prevailing bias that skews our judgment.  However, it takes effort, and it helps if you have some good tools.  One such tool is a well-designed process to follow so that you don’t develop tunnel vision and become trapped in one or several of the predictable biases.  Another tool that can work well in some contexts is the wisdom of crowds, or crowd-sourcing.  A well-known example of this is the American Idol series where millions of people get to vote on the top talent.  The crowd can often be better than the “expert” panel.  When you can get true experts, some variation of the Delphi method can be useful.  There needs to be some rigor in the process, and Delphi experts tend to be better at prediction and problem-solving than talent-related issues.  Another effective tool  is well-designed objective assessments or tests that demonstrates ability, tendencies or judgment patterns.   When these are correlated to the task that needs to be done, they can have a real objective value at separating the talented from those less-so.

One of the best ways to measure talent is to look at performance over time and in a wide set of circumstances.  How well does a person perform?  How consistently?  What is the trendline–is it improving or deteriorating?  Performance is one of the best indicators of talent, and ultimately talent that is applied is what we are interested in anyway, rather than mere potential or raw talent that has not been or will not be applied and put to the task.