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Improve Business Results by Developing Your High-Potential Employees in Orlando, FL

How a High Potentials Leadership Development Program Helps Develop Executive Talent and Leadership Teams in the Orlando area

Many companies spend sizable portions of their yearly budgets on recruitment, hoping to find star players hidden in the stacks of resumes they receive. When opportunities for growth are limited, internal key players leave to seek better prospects elsewhere. It’s a vicious circle, but it can be broken when businesses learn how to identify high-potential employees and invest in their development. Business owners who opt for customized HiPo training programs improve their companies’ structures, making them more resilient against industry change.

What Are High-Potential Employees and Why Should You Develop Them?

The first step in creating a successful high-potential employee program is understanding what high-potential employees are and why it is so important to develop them.

In their Harvard Business Review article, “Are You a High Potential”, Douglas A. Ready, Jay A. Conger and Linda A. Hill describe HiPos as possessing the following characteristics:

• A drive to excel: these employees are not simply high achievers. They are willing to do whatever it takes and make sacrifices to be the best.
• A catalytic learning ability: high potential employees don't just soak up knowledge like a sponge; they know how to convert knowledge into productive actions that get results.
• An enterprising spirit: high-potential employees are trailblazers. Never satisfied with the status quo, they are always seeking new challenges and figuring out better ways to do things.
• Dynamic sensors: the most promising leaders are always on alert for the next big thing. This can make them difficult to manage. If they can't sense a long-term career payoff where they are, they often get wandering eyes.

This combination of traits makes HiPos ideal candidates to guide your company into the future. But it also means they need the right guidance and training to keep their vision and goals reconciled with those of your business. Left to their own devices, they can easily get derailed and go rogue. The master trainers at Turnkey Coaching & Development Solutions understand the psychology of HiPos. We can help you build an effective high potential leadership program that strategically grooms them to steer your company to long-term success.

High Potential vs. High Performance

Many managers believe that the terms “high potential” and “high performance” are interchangeable. In fact, these two types of employees can be quite different from one another. HiPos can certainly perform well — and most generally do — but not all high-performance employees are HiPos. These similarities can make it hard to distinguish between HiPo employees who perform well and high-performance employees. Recently, the Harvard Business Review explored several different HiPo traits in a comprehensive report about high-potential team players. With that in mind, many HR professionals, department heads and other decision-makers now use the following list of characteristics to pinpoint HiPo employees:

1. Sensitive instincts, particularly in business, which lead individuals toward potentially profitable opportunities and help them avoid problematic situations
2. A driven personality, which causes them to excel, but which also makes them prone to overwork in the quest for perfection
3. An enterprising spirit, which comes with a fearless desire to create new paths and improve existing strategies
4. An ever-present and enthusiastic desire to learn, and to put what they’ve learned into practice

The most effective HiPo training programs are full of genuinely HiPo people. Keeping the above four factors in mind during the development course selection process can help you craft a great learning environment for your high-potential employees.

Our high potential employee assessment and HiPo development programs are nothing like the run-of-the-mill leadership programs you've likely sent your employees to before. We do not host one-day or one-week events where your company leaders mingle with executives from other firms and listen to so-called "trainers" rehash the same hackneyed leadership clichés that, by now, are probably seared into your brain.

Instead, we evaluate your company and its specific needs; then, we build a program from the ground up to meet them. We customize every program using high potential employee development best practices, including:

• Needs analysis using our high-potential employee assessment tools
• Culture analysis
• Employee level and experience
• Creating a "coach approach"
• Long-term sustainability
• Human resources integration and even ‘train the trainer’ options

Your hi potential employees get the opportunity to work with master trainers who specialize in developing high-potential employees. They have helped many businesses get the most out of their workforce and create seamless transitions between generations of leaders. Our master trainers HiPo program experts put their knowledge, experience and vast resources to work for your business.

What Do HiPos Look for in a Job?

High-potential individuals look for many of the same basic benefits as everyone else when they read through a job posting: decent health insurance, high-quality training programs, advancement opportunities and a well-equipped workspace. Unlike many other applicants, however, HiPos examine prospective employers carefully and look for very specific additional perks. Both external candidates and internal candidates do this, so if you’re looking for HiPo prospects, you can use this checklist to bait your employment posting accordingly:

• A survey by Training Magazine found that 97 percent of all high-potential employees look for HiPo training programs before they apply for positions at new companies
• Once they’re hired, HiPos expect to be given additional opportunities to advance and succeed
• High-potential individuals want to be identified as HiPos, and if they aren’t formally identified within a reasonable timespan, more than a third of them seek new employment
• More than 80 percent of HiPos look for opportunities to help train and develop other members of staff
• Nearly all HiPos want recognition for the work they do, and they enjoy working on high-visibility teams

Many organizations place a priority on ensuring their HiPos receive the extra support and the additional development opportunities they request. Thus, if you intend to make high-potential employees an integral part of your company set aside an annual HiPo development budget and establish performance metrics and a career path that will inspire and retain your HiPos. Many companies agree that HiPos are well worth the additional investment but most do not have real clarity regarding the real return on investment of ensuring their High Potentials are properly developed and engaged. A 2016 Gartner (formerly CEB) white paper found that high-potential employees are roughly 91 percent more valuable to their employers than regular members of staff, and for several reasons. For a start, HiPos tend to exert about 21 percent more effort in any given task than their peers, and palpably drive business success as a result, so companies generally get what they pay for. HiPos also love to influence the employees they’re put in charge of, so they function a little bit like beacons of light within the organizations they serve.

Support Your Future Growth with an HiPo Management and High-Potential Leadership Development Program
You can actively retain existing high-potential employees and make your company more attractive to external HiPos with a tailor-made executive potential program. At Turnkey Coaching & Development Solutions, we craft a custom high-potential leadership program based on your company’s needs, mission, competency requirements and budget. We train, coach, and engage your executives and potential leaders in proven methodologies that will hone their innate talents and enable them to collaborate successfully with other top-ranking leaders and stakeholders. An effective high potential development program will not only help you retain and develop your HiPos but ensure they return to their positions with fresh inspiration and a desire to contribute, innovate, and collaborate.

Traditional day or week-long high potential employee development programs might seem like an easy way to develop your high-potential employees — after all, that's what other companies are doing, right? — but think about how many such programs you've attended in your career. Then ask yourself, "Am I really a better leader because I attended a few formulaic leadership conferences?"

If you want real results, you need a customized HiPo employee development program custom-built just for your company and with high potential development programs best practices. That's what our master trainers and certified coaches at Turnkey Coaching & Development Solutions have to offer. Typically, we work with both large and small groups of high potential employees to create a comprehensive training and HiPo development program crafted around your goals that prime your business for success.

What kind of background do your master trainers have?

Many of our master trainers have 10+ years corporate experience, thousands of hours of executive coaching, and have served as corporate executives themselves or had Fortune 500 companies as clients. In addition, many of them hold advanced degrees such as MBAs and Ph.Ds.

What kinds of results can my company expect?

The goal of our high potential employee assessment and development training programs is to first establish the results you hope to achieve and then design our program to offer the best chance of seeing those results. Perhaps your organization seeks to reduce turnover, or improve innovation, or perhaps your executives are within retiring age and you want to ensure a ready-now bench of competent leaders.  We can design a high potential employee development program to address these needs and more. In fact, many of our clients have reported increased productivity, better organizational strength, cost reductions, higher bottom-line productivity and many other positive results.

How much does a high-potential employee development program cost?

Because we custom design each program based on the client's individual needs, it is impossible to quote an exact cost up front. What we can tell you is this: We offer a variety of participation levels that let you choose the intensity and duration of the high potential development program based on your budget and the time your organization has available to invest.

Businesses frequently hold hidden gems in their ranks: high-potential employees who could move all the way up to executive level if they were given the right type of training, coaching, and mentoring. High-potential leadership programs give these gifted individuals the specialized attention and coaching they need to develop their innate talents and lead teams to success. Such targeted training programs pay for themselves over time as recruitment and turnover costs go down and profits increase as your company structure, strategic readiness and competency improves. In the end, your HiPo employees and your company both benefit equally.

 

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