Successful firms take care of recognising, evaluating, and developing people with potential within their companies. While the “A” players or “top talent” in a company are often those with the best performance ratings, there are other ways to define top talent. You cannot effectively target employee development for important initiatives and meet corporate objectives in the end if you solely concentrate on job performance. You have to look for potential as well. High potential employees must be identified, developed, and engaged for an organization to succeed. They are aware that their leaders shape their culture and that effective leaders are linked to various favourable outcomes, such as increased staff retention and higher employee engagement scores. These programmes are aimed to engage and develop high-potential employees so they do not turn elsewhere for possibilities for career progression and development. This is one of the threats leaders face in a cutthroat, international market difficult to discover and even more difficult to keep.

You need a disciplined programme for choosing, fostering, and engaging high potentials to draw in and keep this talent. The problem is that the majority of businesses either do not have a high potential programme or do not have a formal process for identifying their high potential individuals.

What is Potential?

Potential is, in the simplest terms the capacity or ability to acquire a skill in the future. It may also be thought of as a hidden quality that is still unrealized this is what we do whenever we decide whether to hire or promote a certain person. We are taking a calculated risk that they will be successful in a position or duty that they have not before held. Identifying who has potential and who does not is the most challenging aspect of potential. To identify people early in their careers and set them on the right developmental course so they can reach their full potential, we need to discover the potential indicators.

Consider the question, “Potential for what?” before you start the identification process. The end-state typically determines the answer to this question. For instance, the potential might be described as the capacity to advance into a job that is two or more levels higher than the present one or to take on a wider range of responsibilities (including leadership components). The most typical classifications used by businesses categorise high potential by position, degree, or breadth. The concept of potential in your business must, however, be in line with your firm’s long-term objectives and short-term plans. Defining potential by role makes sense if an organization expects the demand for senior managers to rise over the next few years. Instead, they should define potential by breadth if the organization’s objective is to make sure leaders have a broader skill set so they can lead effectively across functions. While an organization can be reluctant to define potential in detail because they like flexibility everyone must be aware of who is eligible for the additional resources, especially among leaders involved in these decisions. 

The Three Key Dimensions of Potential

Organizations are better equipped to discover the crucial traits and skills that will categorise a person as having potential once potential has been defined. Many distinct capacities or dimensions can be assessed, and the particular ones vary depending on the organization. We are going to focus on three of them for this article.

1.     Foundational

The fundamental components for evaluating potential are called foundational dimensions. These abilities are not expected to alter significantly without major influence because they are relatively stable through time and in different circumstances. Cognitive capacity and personality are two examples of basic dimensions specifically. More emphasis has been placed in recent years on the need for leaders to manage complex and confusing circumstances. Successful people are more likely to be those who can handle complexity well and think strategically. However, because they are directly related to long-term leadership potential, interpersonal abilities, assertiveness, and resilience are also evaluated beyond organizational boundaries.

2.     Growth

Growth dimensions are unique elements that can either help or hinder a person’s propensity for development. They typically are quite stable, although they may show up in environments with a positive culture or when a person is engaged in work that they find interesting. Both learning and motivational skills are growth characteristics. To identify people who will be driven to take on new challenges and learn for the sake of learning, it is helpful to look at their learning abilities, which may include learning orientation, flexibility, and receptivity to ideas or feedback. Since change is the only thing that is constant in companies, a person’s capacity to accept and manage shifting circumstances and markets are essential. Furthermore, common qualities taken into account for motivation include having an achievement orientation, displaying desire, and displaying organizational commitment. Finding people who take on tough jobs or who demonstrate initiative rather than just expressing a desire to learn new abilities are effective approaches to spotting people who have potential.

3.     Career

This final set of skills reveals if a person is prepared for or likely to succeed in taking on greater levels of responsibility. The simplest to acquire are these skills. Career dimensions are highly specialised talents, such as technical and leadership abilities, that are crucial for a variety of career choices. The “people-side” of leadership qualities, which include including others and encouraging, coaching, and engaging them, is frequently the emphasis of businesses. Technical skills also encompass any functional knowledge necessary for a specific profession as well as commercial or industry expertise. The crucial thing to keep in mind is that because they may be developed, these should be viewed as preliminary indicators of one’s potential. In addition, these are areas where businesses invest a lot of money in training initiatives.

While we have concentrated on these three foundations in this article, it is also common to consider additional environmental elements. We do recommend the same to you. Mobility, cultural fit, diversity, and prior performance are the contextual elements that are most frequently taken into account by businesses. These indicators are useful for talent planning, but for conceptual and legal reasons, they should not be used to determine whether someone has potential or should be accepted into a high-potential programme. One other thing to keep in mind is that potential is dynamic. While some of these skills are very solid, others can alter and are much simpler to learn.

Concluding Thoughts

Finding and choosing high potentials can appear to be a difficult undertaking. It is overwhelming to try to reduce your workforce population to 10% of your best and brightest. However, organizing it into logical phases will be helpful. Define what potential means to your company and connect this to its goals. Identify the essential fundamental, growth, and career dimensions that are pertinent to the program’s aims. Choose methods for measuring these dimensions as part of the selection process. By using these tips, you will be able to spot potential employees and better keep and grow your best staff.