individuals and as a team. Imagine how your culture could transform with a truly diverse group of people who challenge ideas, exchange perspectives, and work together in new ways. With a variety of mindsets, teams can tackle problems from multiple angles, engage in constructive debate, and make better decisions. These dynamics drive innovation, boost efficiency, and create a more resilient company.
The bottom line? Building a well-rounded leadership pipeline starts early. Investing in high-potential talent through growth experiences, mentoring, and career opportunities ensures your future leaders bring the diverse perspectives needed for long-term success.
7 |
Challenges |
in |
Identifying |
and |
Developing |
Emerging |
Leadership |
Potential |
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Here are seven challenges that can make identifying and developing emerging leadership potential difficult and how you can avoid them:
There’ s a huge volume of people
It can be overwhelming to look at the entire population of individual contributors to spot leadership potential. That’ s why so many companies rely on managers to identify high-potential leaders( see next point). But you can put a number of systems in place, such as targeted, scalable assessments, that supplement manager ratings and help talent professionals look quickly and broadly across the organisation to understand talent strengths and gaps.
Only managers can evaluate potential
As mentioned above, many companies rely on managers to identify leadership potential. After all, managers see these employees in action. But most managers haven’ t had any training on how to look for potential, avoid biases, and differentiate against performance and readiness. Without the right training and accountability, managers will fall back on the way they know best: looking at performance in the current role to determine potential for growth.
No clear definition of leadership potential
Managers rarely have a clear, agreedupon definition for leadership potential. So, they’ re each left to come up with their own definition, which introduces inconsistency and inefficiency. This also makes your identification process ripe for bias, as most managers will pick team members who remind them of themselves or of other current leaders.
Training isn’ t focused on leadership
Training and development for individual contributors is often focused on helping them get better within their current role. For example, they might be attending conferences in their field or getting additional certifications. While this isn’ t a bad thing necessarily, it often comes at the expense of developing the leadership skills high potentials need to be successful in a future leadership position. We must democratize leadership development, and starting with high potentials is the next step.
Difficulty providing leadership exposure
It’ s great that you have identified leadership potential, but what are you doing to get these people ready for their next role? While development in the form of coursework provides valuable foundational knowledge, high potentials also benefit from direct exposure to leadership. On-the-job training and opportunities to“ try on” leadership in a role simulation offer hands-on experiences to prepare high potentials for the challenges they may face in their next career step.
And usually, it’ s even harder for organisations to get individual contributors leadership exposure, but bringing focus to this group is necessary. Don’ t forget to include stretch assignments and other forms of leadership experience in the development plans for your early high potentials.
Managers aren’ t trained to accelerate high potentials
When organisations identify highpotential leaders, they typically rely on managers to spearhead their acceleration and development. But since few leaders are trained to do this, development quality varies across the organisation. This approach also burdens managers with time-consuming responsibilities and diminishes the effectiveness of both the development programs and employee engagement. Not only that, but retention can suffer. High potentials are 2.7X more likely to leave in the next year if their manager doesn’ t regularly provide opportunities for growth and development.
Leadership assessments are rarely used Given the high volume of people and informal approach, many companies don’ t use assessments for leadership potential. But assessments are crucial. They help you to incorporate objectivity and find potential in talented people you otherwise might have missed. In addition, they can help give leaders specific direction about each potential leader’ s strengths and challenges so they can guide their development with more intention.
Watch for Burnout of High-Potential Employees
A word of warning: Once you’ ve identified and started to develop your high-potential employees, beware of burning them out. These are the employees you want to retain most, but it’ s easy to take advantage of them.
Because they tend to be high achievers and hard workers, it’ s easy to ask them to take on more. And most likely, they’ ll say yes.
But what’ s even worse is that it’ s common for high potentials to struggle in silence. Afraid of losing out on an opportunity, they may say nothing about their challenges. Instead, they may conclude that another job is the only way out. So you may not know that they are struggling until they leave. This highlights the need for a psychologically safe work environment- one where people feel empowered to speak up and share their challenges openly.
Invest in High Potentials Early
The future of your organisation depends on your leadership. That’ s why it’ s important you have a bench of ready-now leaders and an effective high-potential employee program. To get there, you need to know who in your organisation has the potential to lead. And then once you find them, invest in their development early.
Developing high-potential talent can’ t be an afterthought and it can’ t be left to chance. But with the right strategy and tools, you can identify leadership potential with clarity and fairness while gaining objective insights to target development. That way, your emerging leaders will have everything they need to succeed today- and tomorrow.
Dr. Clifford J. Ferguson is the Managing Partner of Rainmakers, and Board Member of Glad’ s House Kenya. You can commune with him on this or related matters via email at: Drcliffordjferguson @ me. com.