Why is developing your High Potential Leaders important ?
Developing your High Potential Leaders is a key task for any successful managers to usher in the company’s next generation of leaders.
Experts recommend creating in-house leadership development programs that focus on developing your high Potential Leaders that puts them through multi-year programs, including mentorships, management classes, stretch assignments and coaching.
The goal is to elevate candidates above a single function and give them a broader vision of the company. It’s usually less expensive to retain and develop homegrown talent than to hire it from the outside. Here’s some advice on how to implement such a program:
Rotate people through different jobs
You want to give participants first-hand experience in many different roles throughout your company.
Challenge them with unfamiliar jobs
Even failure offers valuable lessons that can add new skills, improve confidence and solidify employee commitment.
Create mentoring programs
Create clear guidelines for the relationship. When partners meet for the first time, they should determine the mechanics of their relationship – when will they meet, how often, and how will they communicate outside those meetings.
Ensure participants get frequent feedback and coaching
You want them to stretch but not break, so make sure they have adequate support in new assignments.
Tap veterans’ advice
Set up mentoring programs between veterans and high-potential future leaders, and consider ways to keep older workers on tap even after they’ve retired, through contracting or part-time arrangements.
Allow participants to wash out
Selection should be an ongoing process and doesn’t require every new participant to start at the same time. Have senior members of the program tutor new candidates.
Indicators of High-Potential Leadership
In my many years of observing leaders, I have noticed a number of signs that a person has high potential for corporate leadership.
High-Potential Leaders will:
Seek Information and See the Broader View
Exhibit Drive and Aggression
Put Their Business on the Offensive
Synthesize Data for Decisions
Balance Inherent Tensions
Passionately Pursue Learning and Growth
Are Intellectually Honest and Dissatisfied With the Status Quo
Have Integrity and Tell the Truth
In summary, the High Potential Leader will operate with a wide cognitive bandwidth – the capacity and inclination to see things in a broader context – is an earmark of a natural leader who anticipates how changes in the external environment will affect the business.
