{"id":4867,"date":"2021-07-14T09:53:02","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T09:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/uncategorized\/how-do-you-define-and-measure-high-potential-2\/"},"modified":"2025-04-18T17:44:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T16:44:16","slug":"how-do-you-define-and-measure-high-potential-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/developing-leaders\/how-do-you-define-and-measure-high-potential-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you define and measure high potential (and avoid elitism)\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this blog TPC Leadership UK\u2019s Associate Partner Catherine Bardwell<\/a> and Associate Peter Wall<\/a>\u00a0discuss how to define and measure high potential amongst your\u00a0<\/b><\/span>teams.<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

How do you define and measure high potential (and avoid elitism)<\/h2>\n

It is difficult to predict how people will develop as their careers unfold. Some high potential employees are obvious, others are harder to draw out. While there are tools to help managers identify and measure high potential, the process will always rely partly on human judgement.<\/span><\/p>\n

Catherine Bardwell, TPC Leadership Associate Partner, and Peter Wall, TPC Leadership Associate, explore how clear roles, shared responsibility and an inclusive approach are key to successfully identifying and nurturing <\/span>all <\/span><\/i>high potential employees.<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the key success criteria that define high potential?<\/b><\/h2>\n

High potential is usually defined by an employee\u2019s ability, drive and social skills. Catherine stresses, \u201cIt\u2019s a balance. You can\u2019t just measure the results leaders deliver or their IQ. How they develop trust and motivate others is an important indicator of their emotional intelligence too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When C-suite members are looking to define high potential, they should take a holistic approach \u2013 consider a candidate\u2019s emotional intelligence, their ability to work collaboratively across boundaries and how they influence teams. They will need to draw on all of these elements to achieve sustained high performance in today\u2019s increasingly complex and diverse organisations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Developing\u00a0 emotional intelligence starts with increasing self-awareness. This shouldn\u2019t be underestimated.\u00a0 The more a leader understands how their personal feelings may impact reactions and decisions, the less likely they are to demonstrate subconscious bias or promote elitism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Make developing people a performance objective<\/b><\/h2>\n

If leaders are to truly embrace and value the process of identifying and developing high potential, they must be measured on it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter explains that best practice is for leaders to have \u201cdeveloping, identifying and nurturing people\u201d as part of their performance review. \u201cIf you\u2019re measured on it as part of your job, you\u2019ll do it and you\u2019ll take it seriously\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

The difference between good leaders and outstanding leaders, Peter explains, is that good leaders ask, \u201chow do I get this done?\u201d while outstanding leaders ask, \u201chow can I use this to give someone an opportunity to stretch and grow?\u201d They focus on the inputs at least as much as they do the outputs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some businesses choose to appoint an employee in HR to manage talent identification and development. The danger of this is that line managers may then abdicate responsibility for developing their people. The focus must be on shared responsibility \u2013 an HR professional may oversee development, ask challenging questions and act as a conscience, but managers are best positioned to spot, measure and nurture talent in their teams.<\/span><\/p>\n

Share responsibility and adopt a coaching culture<\/b><\/h2>\n

The idea of shared responsibility in measuring high potential can be encouraged through creating a coaching culture. Catherine explains that a successful coach will provide three key building blocks:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Create awareness within the coachee by asking probing questions that help guide them through a process.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Offer choices \u2013 it\u2019s not about one career path, but about exploring what\u2019s important for them.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Make the coachee responsible for their journey so they feel empowered to drive forward.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Peter explains that traditionally, when senior leaders try to manage and measure someone else\u2019s career, they take a problem-solving approach. \u201cThey\u2019ve learned to help people by offering advice telling them what they should do to fulfill their career aspirations \u2013 after all, that\u2019s how they\u2019ve got to where they are.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cThey\u2019re trying to be helpful,\u201d says Peter, \u2018but a shift in mindset is needed. Now the best leaders are realising that they can help people make progress by supporting them, stimulating them, asking questions and challenging assumptions.\u201d Their responsibility is to guide and oversee \u2013 it is the individual who takes responsibility for their own career journey.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Avoiding elitism<\/b><\/h2>\n

    There is a danger that measuring high potential can lead to bias, elitism and \u2018cloning\u2019 \u2013 where leaders subconsciously choose to develop people who are like them.<\/span><\/p>\n

    We have a human tendency to gravitate, particularly when under pressure, towards people whose personality fits with our own. Peter refers to when he worked as a coach with a team on an engineering project. The project was struggling, and the pressure was on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Peter recalls the manager saying, \u201cif everyone was just like me this would be so much easier\u201d and immediately laughing in disbelief that he\u2019d said it. Regardless of our values and best intentions, we can still revert back to a self-preserving mindset when the pressure\u2019s on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    The best leaders then, will meet the needs of the business rather than their personal need for security or superiority. They will practice continual self-awareness and development and strive to make conscious, objective, fair decisions when defining and measuring high potential.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Looking for insight on how to develop high potential in your organisation?<\/b> Get in touch with us<\/b><\/a> to find out how we can help.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In this blog TPC Leadership UK’s Associate Partner Catherine Bardwell and Associate Peter Wall\u00a0discuss how to define and measure high potential amongst your\u00a0teams. How do you define and measure high …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rank_math_title":"How do you define and measure high potential | Blog | TPC Leadership","rank_math_description":"In this blog TPCL UK's Associate Partner Catherine Bardwell and Associate Peter Wall\u00a0discuss how to define and measure high potential","rank_math_focus_keyword":"Attracting and retaining talent, High Potential","editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[60,61],"featured-blog-post":[],"page-type":[],"class_list":["post-4867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-developing-leaders","tag-attracting-and-retaining-talent","tag-high-potential"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4867"},{"taxonomy":"featured-blog-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured-blog-post?post=4867"},{"taxonomy":"page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpcleadership.com\/ch-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page-type?post=4867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}