Are you Promoting the Right Talent? One of the most common mistakes when promoting our people is to confuse high performance with high potential.
I believe you have heard the popular saying: he was a great salesperson, and now he is a terrible sales manager. This happens not only in sales, but in most cases throughout the organization when a person goes from individual contributor to managing people.
There is a significant difference between a high performer and a high potential employee, but do not get me wrong, it does not mean that a high performer can’t have enormous potential, we just need to make sure that it is the case. On the other hand, it is more common to have a high potential that can also be a high performer, nevertheless, we must also make sure we are correct about it.
 Leaders always look for high performers, people that, no matter how, will achieve the goals and make their teams work hard to deliver results. In this VUCA world, companies, and their leaders feel they don’t have time for people to be developed, they perform or off they go! For some leaders, this group might seem like better candidates for management positions, because of their stability and dependability in pushing business results.
The problem with this approach is that, in most cases, it will have a terrible impact on the organization: rising levels of stress, higher burnout rates, and increased turnover are some of the most frequent symptoms you can observe of such leaders.
Another quite common situation with high performers is that their managers will keep them as long as possible, limiting their opportunities to move to other roles, or seldomly exposing them to other leaders that may give them an opportunity to gain experience or develop in other areas of the business.
In many cases high performers may not have the desire to take on leadership roles, on the other hand, a high potential has the ability and aspiration to be a successful leader within the organization.
High potential employees frequently show ambition in their career development, they won’t stay in a job for extended periods of time and will always aim high for promotions. They will always volunteer for new projects, especially if this means learning something new. They love challenges and thrive outside their comfort zone. As leaders of high potential people, we need to invest in their development, promote them soon, and provide them with opportunities to collaborate with other teams.
High Performers often prefer to stay within one role for extended periods of time, they are less likely to volunteer for new projects or even take on challenging work outside of their usual responsibilities.
While high-performing employees might not always have the desire or potential to be leaders, they are still an asset to the company.
It is critical for companies to identify both high-potential and high-performance employees and create programs that would help them reach the highest level of success in their own path.
Some next steps to keep in mind:
The first step to take action to avoid falling into the high potential / high-performance trap, is to acknowledge the problem, here are some useful tips to address the issue.
- Define what your company means by “high potential”. Most companies assume leadership is broadly understood and generally defined; the truth is that defining what it means to be a leader might be different for your company, and potential is also something that needs to be clearly defined and agreed upon so that identifying and developing people becomes a culturally engrained habit in the company.
- Be clear on measures, expectations, and observable behaviors. Get your team together to assess and define what are the measurements of high performance, and what are the observable behaviors of high potential. Although there are some generally accepted definitions, nothing works better than your own leadership team reaching this agreement.
- Feedback accordingly and with congruence. If your company aims to promote people with the potential to reach higher levels, then be sure to feedback accordingly those that do not meet such standards. And be congruent with what will you do if faced with the decision to promote someone that doesn’t meet them.
- Understand that, even high performers that do not have the leadership skills to grow, still have their own improvement in mind. If you wish to keep your high performers, while promoting your high potentials, then you must find a way to aid those who will not grow vertically to grow horizontally. The alternative means that eventually your high performers will also feel ostracized and diminish their output given the lack of opportunities to improve.
If you want to learn more about nurturing high potential and engaging your high performers, contact us and we will be glad to offer our expert assistance.
Author: Hugo Lara
The Morphing Group®
Managing Partner LatAm
Board Effectiveness | Talent Identification | Business Transformation | Enterprise Strategy | Leadership Improvement
hugo.lara@morphing.guru
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Mexico City, Mexico
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