How to keep high-potential talent happy and engaged

Your high-potential people are crucial to the vision, growth and succession-planning of your organisation. Yet they are also the most at risk if opportunity is not available. Our expert consultant, Dr. Maggi Evans offers advice on how to manage expectations and retain your best and brightest. 

Keeping high-potential talent onboard: Key Insights

• High-potential team members are the people who possess the skills and social capital to become the future of your organisation. They will be key to your executive succession-planning and it’s highly important that you keep them engaged. However, a lack of immediate progression opportunity can be a problem.
• There are four main risks attached to high-potential people. Faced with a lack of opportunity, they can become stagnant, they can fail, or burnout. Or they can leave. 
• Communication is key to maintaining good relationships and motivation. Leaders should adopt an open style, with scope for both formal and informal discussion around aspirations and realistic timelines. There are certain questions you can ask which prove especially helpful in managing the risks outlined.

Read on for more detail on leading high-potential talent and managing expectations.

Alternatively, contact your local consultant for more info on how we can help you and your business.

High-potential talent: Background

High-potentials are an important group within any company. Most organisations have them – the people at the heart of the exec-level succession plan, who are considered ready to move into top roles. They wield a lot of the intellectual, social and cultural capital within the business and getting the best out of them is crucial for future success. There is a built-in challenge. however. This group of high-potentials needs to be motivated, engaged and retained, even when there is no immediate vacancy for career progression. A period of limbo can lead to problems for business performance and your succession planning. 

We’ve identified four different ways that senior high-potentials could react to a lack of clear advancement opportunities. Each of these carries a different risk for your organisation. They are:

• Stagnation 
• Failure 
• Burnout 
• Departure

Thankfully, there are also solutions. Below we explain what each of the risks are, how to manage them, and how to lead your high-potential team to future greatness.

What are the risks?

Risk One – Stagnation 

Stagnation often occurs when talented people make significant progress, then hit a ceiling.  Your high-potentials may have taken part in structured development and had opportunities to grow and take on new responsibilities. They have done everything to prepare for a next step upwards, only to find there is nowhere for them to go.

If this happens, you may find that your once-driven talent slips into a comfortable pace and place. With limitations in place, people stop thinking about how to improve, they lose curiosity, hunger for a new challenge. By this point, everyone has already gotten used to seeing the person’s name on succession plans, so their ongoing inclusion is not questioned. But by the time a role does become available, they may no longer be the right person to fill it

Risk Two – Failure

It’s common for a myth of invincibility to build up around high-potentials. Often, they have had one really significant success, and this is taken as an indication that they can do anything. As a result, they are given the most challenging tasks to undertake whilst waiting for their big role to become free. They are left to work, unsupported, with impossible aims.

When the project inevitably fails, people start to question if the person was high potential in the first place. It is a case of setting people up to fail and the result is often a forced exit. The business loses someone really talented and the individual carries the weight of the experience for the rest of their career.

Risk Three – Burnout

Burnout also stems from expectations, but in this case the expectations are self-imposed. High-potentials often describe anxieties that come with their label. Are they really good enough? How do they prove their worth? How do they consistently demonstrate that they are top talent? As a result, they feel compelled to say yes to every opportunity and challenge. There is pressure to work harder, do more, and keep proving themselves. In many cases, this leads to stress, exhaustion and eventual disengagement. In a word: burnout. 

If caught early, this pattern can provide an opportunity for the person to re-calibrate their expectations and develop new strategies to manage their relationship with work. However, in some cases the outcome is long-term social and employment difficulties.

Risk Four – Departure

Certain high-potential people will react to a lack of clear progression by looking for other employment options. When faced with no promotion opportunities they start expanding their career management activities and having informal conversations with head hunters or recruiters. Sooner or later, they will find an opportunity that they feel more properly rewards their talents.

How to manage these risks, and retain your senior high-potential employees

Our research and experience point to the importance of ongoing and transparent communication. You should build an environment in which people can explore what the organisation needs from them, and identify the progression that would reward their hard work. This may seem an obvious approach, but research shows that quality career and developmental conversations are rare at senior levels. Consequently, employee expectations are often poorly managed.

As leaders, we need to help people to talk. An informal approach is great, but formal check-ins focusing on career development and learning are also essential. Here are some suggestions for questions that will help you to identify and manage the risks of stagnation, failure, burnout and departure:

• How are you feeling about your current role?
• What have you really enjoyed in the past 12 months?
• What has been difficult or frustrating?
• What have you learned about the business – and yourself – over the past 12 months?
• What are your hopes and aims for the next 12 months?
• What do you hope to achieve in the longer term?
• What can we do to help you to achieve this?

Pursuing these simple questions can be the start of a powerful dialogue. You can work in partnership with your high-potentials – finding ways to reach a solution that delivers a group of motivated, capable and agile successors.