The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article aimed at those “high potential” people every company seems to crave. The title was “Getting Ahead as a ‘High-Potential’ Manager.”
Author Joann Lublin included good advice for “hi-pos” that mostly boiled down to “follow the rules and don’t turn into a jerk.” Then, there’s this.
“‘HiPos’ like Ms. Kane typically get extra training, powerful mentors, ‘stretch’ assignments and faster promotions. But beware: Simply winning this special status doesn’t guarantee you’ll achieve your lofty corporate ambitions”
Let’s turn that around. If you’re the company, how can you help those hi-pos succeed? Start by analyzing who winds up in this kind of program.
Your hi-pos are smart and talented. They’ve probably achieved in structured situations, like school. And they’ve been told that they’re smart since they were very young.
Your challenge is to turn as many as possible into business achievers. That means a concentration on performance, not potential.
Give them lots of feedback. That’s how they’ll learn where the problems are.
Be sure to review their performance for several assignments back. Many high potentials move so quickly from one assignment to another that they never learn about issues they created, but that didn’t surface until they’d moved on.
Praise performance and effort, not potential. People who are praised for being “smart” or “talented” often become unwilling to try new things.
Help them set goals for learning as well as performance. This helps them understand that talent development takes time and lots of effort. It’s never done.
If you do these things, some high potentials will thrive, but some will not. The ones who don’t are likely to go elsewhere, to an organization where they feel properly appreciated. That will leave you with the high potentials that turned into high performers.
