Developing High-Potential Leaders Step #4: Successful programs have processes to identify and engage talent early in their tenure.

Hi there, this is Jeannie Taylor from the Cultivating Leaders Center of Excellence discussing another truth we found in our research, which you’ll find in our white paper, 5 Truths and a Lie About High-Potential Leadership Programs.

The 4th truth is that successful HIPO development program have processes and program elements in place to identify and engage talent early in their tenure with the organization. It's time to embrace the fact that millennials make up the new workforce majority. Naturally, they also make up the bulk of upcoming promotions into lower and even middle management, if not higher.

They, and the rest of us, have new expectations for our careers and everyday work due to the constant change and power of technology as well as new cultural norms.

Here is just some of what we found in our research:

• We found that the most successful organizations start early by assessing and developing talent right away – sometimes even during the recruitment and hiring process.
• By identifying those with high potential early, organizations can work with new talent to set up opportunities to stretch and grow right away. And this isn't a problem because this new majority wants and expects to be developed. The best will leave if they don't see a clear career path and a personal development journey ahead of them.
• Organizations that are doing this well deploy strategies to help individuals co-own the direction and development of their careers, and they support their leadership ambition.
• Organizations that assess potential early align their assessments with how they define potential across all levels of the organization, and they can track an individual’s potential throughout the journey.
• With many organizations flattening and focusing more on function than hierarchy, the best are setting up career paths that include lateral moves and cross-functional responsibilities. They find ways for talent to lead apart from formal promotions and job description and are honest with their talent about the journey ahead.
• And finally, successful organizations understand the learning styles of all employees and deploy a variety of methodologies, platforms, and tools to address all styles. Some even start with the learned and their preferences instead of the content or program.
• We found a small but interesting trend in our research in that some companies are abandoning the term HIPO from their lexicon and widening their focus to the potential of all talent – or ALLPO – with budgets re-allocated accordingly.

So, think about identifying talent as early in people's careers in company tenure as possible and unleash the power of the full potential in your organization as soon as you can. You don’t want to lose your best and brightest before you’ve even noticed they were there.