High performer or high potential: can you tell?
IDENTIFYING high potential is one of the most common and important challenges that businesses face but research and client reporting consistently show that most are failing at this critical task.
So what’s behind this serious underperformance and what can you do about it? In our experience, one of the biggest mistakes that companies make in identifying and managing high-potential employees is confusing performance and potential.
High performance is not the same thing as high potential. Don’t rely on manager nominations and performance scores but rather identify and measure what high potential people do differently.
High performers consistently hit or exceed performance standards, do things better than most others, execute strategies, work independently or collaborate well, know their job and know to do it better, and develop existing capabilities.
For employees with high potential, it’s important new expectations of performance are set and jobs are redefined, while they may be inconsistent with performance due to being mismatched in their jobs or with a leader.
Employees with high potential do things that others cannot, contribute strategic insights, lead others and people follow them, know the business and how to make it better, continually learn new capabilities, broaden their knowledge, and unlearn habits and assumptions that hold them back.
Employees with high potential know they are better than everyone else and have high expectations and little patience, and so are harder to engage. If they are not engaged, you’ll be wasting money developing talent for someone else. Thus, you need to actively check engagement, then focus on these areas to actively build it:
l Personalisation. We live in the age of personalisation and people are bombarded with personalised hooks. People are engaged by different things. It’s essential to find out what’s important individually for your high-potential employees and ensure they get it or someone else will.
l Commitment. Make it clear what options are available – what timelines, expectations and possibilities. Hold regular discussions on career paths and development and deliver on your commitments.
l Communication. Make them feel special. Some companies don’t even tell their high-potential employees they have high potential for fear of “building expectations”. If you do a great job of identifying genuine potential, let them and everyone else know but make sure to identify the right people first.
l Differentiation. Make sure you treat top talent differently and continue to reward them for success.
Failing to check aspiration.
Not everyone wants to be the CEO and people’s aspirations change over time. Different people have different priorities and forcing people do something that they don’t want is a sure-fire way to lose top talent. Aspiration |conversations are notoriously difficult to manage and ensure openness, so focus on:
l Trust. Conversations around aspiration only work in an atmosphere of trust where people feel comfortable talking openly about their aspiration or lack of it. People need to feel safe saying “no” or “not now” and still be and feel valued.
l Timing. Aspiration is not fixed. It varies throughout people’s careers and life stages. Check in regularly to see if aspiration has changed or if new opportunities in the business are a better fit.
Of course, high performers are important too, but it’s your high-potential employees who are your future leaders. It is they who will transform your business and sustain its success, so make sure you are effectively differentiating between performance and potential, and that you’re treating your high-potential staff differently today.
Richard Gilman is Corporate Consulting Specialist at APMGroup, Thailand’s leading Organisation and People Development Consultancy. You can contact him at [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/apmgroupthai
