The trouble with talent: Semantic ambiguity in the workplace

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, “talent management” has become an increasingly popular descriptor of activities previously referred to as “human resources.” Across five studies (total N = 9,966), we investigate this terminological shift and its organizational consequences. We find that contemporary human resource professionals prefer “talent management” to prior terminology, deeming it more optimistic and motivating. Nevertheless, “talent” is semantically ambiguous. Lay definitions of talent vary in the degree to which it is defined as innate versus learned, and these definitions correspond to differences in growth versus fixed mindsets. By contrast, “skill”—a common synonym for “talent”—more unambiguously signals that ability can change. In decision making scenarios, we found that replacing the word “talent” with “skill” more uniformly evokes a growth mindset about ability, which in turn leads to more optimistic attitudes about persistence after failure and an inclination to direct organizational resources toward employee development. Collectively, these findings show that synonyms for ability differ in the mindsets they evoke and illuminate the trouble with talent terminology in the workplace.