Identifying and Nurturing High-Potential Employees

I’m not a fan of the term ‘high-potential’. Before you read on, take a moment to picture what the kind of person you believe to have a high potential. Was the person you imagined an overachiever? Someone who thrived in a certain university? Someone who manages to ‘have it all’?

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Not to discount the person you made up – chances are you’re right, they’re immensely talented. But really, with the right support, anyone could be a high-potential employee if they are in the right place.

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Relearning What High-Potential Looks Like

I think the main issue is that most people tend to associate high potentials with individuals who execute tasks well, who you can count on to exceed expectations in delivering results. They’re eager to grow and this usually means that they’re excited to pursue leadership roles. Also, people tend to assume that high potentials are mainly in business units that lead innovation and transformation. But, beyond just execution, beyond these favoured business units, there is so much more talent that is often overlooked. This is why our general definition needs to change to include a more balanced mix of individuals.

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What we see as high potential needs to start including skills beyond amazing job performance. I’m not one for football but will use this example from Barcelona FC to show why a group of highly skilled individuals simply isn’t enough. Barcelona FC once thought that hiring the best players in the world would mean that they had the best team in the world. They paid a fortune to gather them and train them only to have them lose every single match during the season.

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What went wrong? For one, simply putting a group of excellent individuals together isn’t enough. You also need to build harmony, if it isn’t already there, and for the group to see that success is a collective effort.

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With this in mind, selecting high potentials purely based on their skills can often end in disaster. In addition to technical expertise, these individuals will also need to have emotional intelligence, be trustworthy, be a good fit with your company’s culture, and more. The definition of who a high potential is can, and should, change with what your team, your company needs.

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Also, I believe that high-potential employees are people who have found roles that let them play to their strengths. The same person could be a terrible performer in one role and a high performer in another. Instead of working to identify your high potentials, perhaps your role as a manager is to learn your colleagues’ strengths and match them with responsibilities that give them a chance to excel. If your company allows, adapt existing roles. Your company benefits from their collective strengths, and you get a larger, more balanced mix.

Unlearn Your Biases

In identifying who a high potential might be, it’s key to at least acknowledge your inherent biases that would colour who you select. I still hear plenty of ‘old-school’ thinking. People say things as if they were facts. Things like: ‘men can work later than women’, ‘Japanese are hardworking; Australians and New Zealanders are lazy’, ‘a woman will be good for this – they tend to be more creative’, ‘this person went to my university, he should be good’.

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Having worked in Europe, US, and Asia and having met people from different backgrounds, I’ve found these stereotypes to be untrue. Yet, these worldviews continue to impact where and how managers look out for high potentials. Recognising this is a first step, but more needs to be done.

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As a manager, you need to create systems that hold you and your teammates accountable for your decisions. Use checklists to help you make decisions based on data, minimise how much you’re influenced by your personal views. In making a decision, you need to have sound answers to questions like: Why are you hiring in this country? Why did you choose this candidate over another? Have you looked beyond your own network? It takes more time, but in return you get more opportunities to work with better talent.

The best way to keep talent, I’ve found, is to create opportunities for them to learn continuously. The more they know, the more they learn, the more likely you are to keep them. To do so, you need to create a customised development plan for those you’ve found to be high-potential individuals.

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Begin With the End in Mind

Where does your high potential see themselves in a year? In five years? You don’t have to follow this too strictly, anything that isn’t the immediate short term works fine. The point is to sit down together and establish the vision that both you and your high potential want, so that you can start to develop a path to help them build the capabilities they need to get there.

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Especially with overachievers, it's easy for them to overcommit to new and innovative projects that crop up. Taking time to define their goals and map out a path gives them a reason to step back and assess if this really matters, so that they can focus on what really matters.

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Broaden Expertise

Recently, I spoke to a high potential who had come from a consulting firm and had all the skills to become a leader, which is great because his goal was to be a top executive. Considering his background, I asked what he needed to learn to manage operations – and he was shocked. He explained that he was the person who led transformation, who developed innovative solutions and didn’t see why operations would be a factor.

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This is a limiting mindset I’ve seen time and again. Because certain areas like innovation are celebrated more than others, people start to see them as the only things to focus on, when really, they need to be considering the business as a whole. And for that, you need to understand operations. You need to know how things are running, what the day to day looks like if you really want the innovative solutions you conceptualise to result in actual change. The high potential I shared this with was open enough to take this gap as an opportunity to learn, and chose to join the Operations department to build experience he currently lacked.

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Taking the step to get experience in new areas can be humbling. Especially if the high potential has spent years developing expertise in a specific area, if they’ve built a reputation as the go-to digital person, for instance. Yet, it’s crucial for them to expand their experience in new fields. Even if it makes them uncomfortable. Jobs, business units and products get replaced and disappear all the time. It’s a bigger risk to keep to just one thing, even if you’re really good at it.

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As the person guiding them on their development path, it’s important that you help them to see this. That they accept the humility of returning to the ‘beginner’s seat’ in a new role. And if they need a resource, I recommend What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by executive coach Marshall Goldsmith.

Softer Side

As a leader, having humility is critical. You can’t achieve success on your own. As we saw from the Barcelona FC example earlier, you need a team, a supportive ecosystem, to help drive a project. For some high potentials, putting their egos aside can be a challenge. One of the things I’ve noticed is that some tend to extend expectations for themselves to their team, without checking with their team at all. This, in turn, breeds disharmony which makes any success harder to achieve.

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Also, high potentials are often convinced that they have the right solution – which might well be true. But what they need to recognise and learn is that pushing their idea does more damage, even if it solves the problem at hand. What is more important is that they create a space where their team trusts they will be heard, where they feel safe to share their ideas.

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These softer skills – listening, putting others first and more – may not come easy to your high potentials. Help make them conscious of this, of how what they think merits a good performance needs to change. With mentorship, training and practise, these skills can, and must, be developed for a high-potential employee to become a great leader in time.

Expand What Defines High-Potential

In selecting high-potential employees, most tend to focus on expertise and execution. Expand your search to include soft skills your employee will need to grow. This includes emotional intelligence, work ethic, values and how much others trust them.

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Be Excellent, Be Humble

Strong past performances do not indicate successful futures. Be honest with your employees about this and with honest feedback, coach them to develop self-awareness and equip them to keep growing.

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Rotate Their Roles

Move them, especially if they’re overperforming in a specific department. This might seem counterintuitive but in not making the change, you risk them becoming entrenched in the role. They then stop growing, which is an even bigger waste of talent.