LEADERSHIP

Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not.

From leaving home at 15 to becoming Britain’s first Professor of Social Mobility, Lee Elliot Major’s own journey has shaped a career spent examining one of the workplace’s most persistent problems: why some forms of talent are immediately recognised, while others remain hidden.

Drawing on his forthcoming book Cracking the Class Code, Lee explores the unwritten rules that influence who gets hired, who gets heard, who progresses and who is judged to have “potential”. From confidence and cultural familiarity to networks, language and assumptions about what leadership looks like, many of the signals organisations use to identify talent can reveal as much about learned advantage as genuine capability.

Lee introduces a more forensic approach to talent, challenging organisations to look harder at what they are actually rewarding and whether their hiring and progression systems are identifying ability or simply recognising people who already know how to play the game.

At a moment when many organisations are reassessing inclusion, while economic mobility and access to opportunity are under increasing pressure, the argument is not simply one of fairness. Organisations that learn to recognise capability beyond familiar signals gain access to talent their competitors may continue to overlook.