Developing High Potentials
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“High Potentials” are people who are delivering fantastic performance and are ready for the next stage in their job responsibilities. They are great people to have in your team, but they can be somewhat demanding – they know they are destined for promotion, but they’re frustrated that they’re not already there.
This can make you feel under pressure to make sure that they’re happy and likely to stay with the organisation – which isn’t always an easy thing to do. Here are some ideas for working with your high fliers.
- Facilitate; don’t do. There’s a temptation to respond to their urgency and try and arrange everything for them and to ensure that all the right development is in place. But the reality is that you won’t be able to keep up with their demands or the pace at which they want to drive their careers. The answer is to challenge them to drive their own development and career. For example, if they want to job shadow someone put them into contact with the person, even let the person know they’ll be calling, but let them sort out the practicalities themselves with that person.
In my experience many high potentials can fail to impress because they don’t actively drive their careers themselves. Ultimately, people question whether they are seen as good because a manager has made them look good. So once you’ve pointed the way, get your high potential to prove that they are willing to drive their own development. If they don’t, are they truly high potential? - Delegate. By categorising someone as high potential you’re effectively saying they’re ready for the next opportunity. The way that next opportunity is often obtained is by people either seeing them do similar work, or hearing about them doing similar work at interview. With that in mind, delegate some of your responsibilities to them so they have an opportunity to demonstrate their skills and have examples to talk about. Allow them to deputise for you at meetings, on projects, when you are on holiday. When people see them capably handling work at the next level, they are more likely to think of them in connection with jobs that are about to become vacant.
- Play to their strengths. Give them work that showcases what they can do. Ideally, give them projects that will make them visible to other parts of the organisation. Give them a focus on delivering measurable improvements. A high profile project with hard evidence of the value they have delivered is great for their CV, and can retain them for 6 months.
- You can’t always retain them. Sometimes high potentials will get fed up of waiting, or the opportunity just isn’t there in your organisation. In this situation, trying to hold on to them can turn them bitter. Help them with their career and CV, and articulating their achievements – you can always ensure their CV circulates at senior level or with the Talent Team and HR – so that the wider organisation understands what they might lose. Even if you eventually lose them because the right opportunities are not there, you will stand out as someone who will help them with their career no matter what. In the future when there is the right opportunity for them, the good will that you’ve created means that they are very likely to come back and work with you, or the organisation, again.
Don’t feel as if it is your sole responsibility to sort out the career of your driven High Potentials. Instead you should open doors, give them visibility and work that stretches them and raises their visibility – and challenge them to actively pursue career opportunities for themselves.