Talent Scout: What’s Your Success Rate at Identifying High Potentials?

Identifying high-potential employees is critical to corporate success and succession, but very few organizations actually do it well, according to a recent report by consulting firm The Talent Strategy Group.

In its survey of more than 300 global employers, the firm found:

• 44% of respondents report being correct in evaluating potential.
• 36% agree their high-potential assessment process is effective.

Additional research from consulting firm DDI found only 20% of organizations have a strong leadership bench. Based on that study, employers overwhelmingly don’t inform someone they’ve been identified as high potential (61%), and most don’t train managers to effectively identify high potential — only 23% require management training on the topic, and 27% don’t offer any formal support.

According to Meisha-Ann Martin, a vice president and the head of people research at employee recognition and rewards platform Workhuman, when you can identify high-potential employees well, you’re not scrambling when leaders leave or when strategy shifts.

“HR knows this is important work,” she said. “It’s how you build a bench before you’re in a crisis.”

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• Tips on Tapping Top Talent: How to Evaluate and Elevate Your Process

The Difference Between Potential and Performance

Organizations tend to overemphasize performance because key performance indicators (KPIs) are typically more concrete and documented, said DDI consulting director Patrick Connell.

Although KPIs make it easier to measure performance, the capabilities that drive success at one level aren’t always the same ones required to succeed at the next, he warned.

“High performance is how someone delivers today in their current role, while potential is the likelihood of leadership growth in the future — and the motivation to pursue it,” Connell explained. “A third lens — readiness — looks at how prepared someone is to tackle the challenges in a specific role.”

Instead of looking at only performance, Jennifer Schielke, the CEO and cofounder of staffing and recruiting company Summit Group Solutions, suggested employers also consider the following skills and traits in high potentials:

• Investment/alignment with corporate mission, vision and values
• Learning agility
• Handles complexity and ambiguity well, especially in decision making
• Actively pursues opportunities to grow
• Seeks out/applies constructive feedback
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Accountable, reliable and consistent
• Builds trust and elevates team success and capacity
• Inspires innovative thinking and continuous process improvement
• Navigates conflict productively

“It’s wonderful to ‘believe in’ people and have a ‘gut feeling’ about them, but honor the future of the individuals and your organization by translating that into routinely observable behaviors and documented patterns,” Schielke said.

Seek Input from the Right Sources

A large portion of building high potentials is giving them access to critical depth and breadth of experience, said Zac Upchurch, the chief operating officer and a partner at The Talent Strategy Group. Therefore, he added, it’s critical to give and receive as much feedback as possible when identifying a high-potential candidate.

Workhuman’s Martin also noted when employers overly rely on manager input — but that’s an indication there isn’t a robust assessment system in place.

“Do not rely on a single person’s nomination or opinion,” she said. “When important decisions lack structure, discipline and measurement, bias reigns supreme. ... People watch who gets tapped, and when it feels political, you lose trust, and you lose high potentials who are maybe just not as visible, and you end up promoting confidence over capability.”

Instead, seek feedback from multiple sources that have had the opportunity to observe the individual in multiple contexts and ways, Martin advised.

“Some of the clearest evidence of potential comes from peers people work with, not the manager an individual reports to,” she said. “That’s why recognition data is helpful here. Recognition can help surface signals about behavior and skills that you can’t get from a resume or a rating — [those signals are recognized] through the eyes of the people who actually see it in action.”

Once a high-potential employee has been identified, make sure that person wants to climb the ladder, Martin said.

“Don’t treat employees like pieces on a chess board; have actual conversations with people about what they want for themselves, and make sure that aligns with the plans organizations have for them,” she said.

But if that person is on board, start investing in that individual early, said Connell.

“Often, organizations fall into the trap of only thinking about succession at the senior levels, but a successful succession strategy is highly dependent on identifying potential at all leadership levels,” he said. “High potentials expect targeted development and stretch opportunities. Otherwise, they leave to acquire these experiences elsewhere. When done poorly, or not at all, companies risk leadership gaps, burnout among the leaders they’re stretching too thin and losing top talent to competitors.”

Editor’s Note: Additional Content

For more information and resources related to this article, see the pages below, which offer quick access to all WorldatWork content on these topics:

• Career Growth
• Employee Experience
• Employee Recognition
• Organizational Performance