Anatomy of a High-Potential Program
Emerging high-potentials are the future of your company. You know they need grooming, attention, and investment. You want to ensure they have the tools to step into higher profile leadership roles in the future, and be successful. You also know that they are the ones that headhunters call with job offers, and that you have to show them they are valued so they stay at your company.
So these are important folks. But how do you create the right program for them, where they learn the right skills, at this particular juncture in their career? What does a great high-potential development program look like?
Here are some key components:
1. Assessment: Collect data about the participants to help them identify key needs to work on during the program. Some approaches we like are virtual assessment centres, traditional assessment centres, and custom 360s.
2. Action-learning sessions: In-person group sessions for sharing important content about leadership/management, practicing skills using simulations, and generating feedback from peers on how to improve.
3. Coaching: Interspersed between the action-learning sessions, participants meet with a coach to debrief their assessment, build and implement a development plan, and practice skills learned in the group sessions.
4. Team project and presentation: Each cohort of participants receives a ‘challenge topic’ that is strategically relevant to the organization. They must work as a team to analyze the problem, and at the end of the program present their recommendations to senior leaders who may implement their ideas.
5. Role models as guest speakers: At each action-learning session, a guest speaker appears and gives a presentation on their personal career story, their advice on how to be a great manager, and a day in the life of their role.
6. Peer-to-peer learning groups: Outside of formal program activities, participants meet with each other to share best-practices on implementing insights from the action-learning sessions.
But there’s more! These six components may be the ingredients for a successful high-potential program, but there is a recipe on how to tie these all together:
1. Selection: What’s the criteria for identifying this notoriously hard to define concept of ‘potential’? And once you’ve defined it, how are you going to make sure the right people get selected into this program? We encourage clients to make this step more rigorous than they otherwise would.
2. Differentiation: This is not a program for everybody. It should be selective. In fact, being selective will give the program caché and will make others want to work hard to be admitted.
3. Keys for action-learning: Action-learning sessions should be conducted in short bursts, and should be distributed over time, since participants will need time to absorb what they’re learning. They should also be interspersed with the coaching sessions, since participants may want to discuss their in-class learning with their coach.
4. Assessment is complex: The question of what assessment tool to use is more complex than it seems. The market is flooded with low quality assessments that are marketed as high quality. When you use them you risk making a mistake when identifying a high-potential. This is a big deal! This could be a future executive! Get some guidance and advice on how best to measure potential with the highest quality tools.
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Are you a fast growing company with leadership development challenges? Give us a call to set up a 30 minute brainstorming session. We’d like to learn more about your business. 647–969–8907.
Jackson Leadership’s Blog: The Leadership Pad
