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A High-Potential Employees Program Cultivates Future Stars in Virginia Beach, VA

With High Potentials Leadership Development, You Identify and Engage Some of Your Best Employees and Prepare them for Future Responsibilities in the Virginia Beach area

Without the right people, an organization can’t succeed, and in today’s complex, competitive market, it’s not enough to identify staff with the right skill sets. Successful companies look toward the future and ask questions like “Who is going to lead innovation tomorrow?” One of the answers to those questions is high-potential employees, or HiPos. The designation of HiPo doesn’t necessarily pertain to how well a person can perform a specific type of task — there’s a difference between high-potential and specifically gifted. Instead, HiPos are up-and-comers with a high probability of success — which means a high likelihood of contributing to the success of your organization. By identifying and developing HiPos, companies position themselves for a brighter future.

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 or Just Talented?

To remain competitive and drive growth, businesses are almost universally better off developing talent from within rather than hiring external candidates for newly vacant managerial or executive positions. Recently, however, a survey by the Corporate Leadership Council found that only 25 percent of respondents felt confident that they would fill all open leadership positions within the next half decade. Worryingly, a concurrent report by the Conference Board revealed that only about 34 percent of companies effectively identified future leaders within their ranks. Some of the confusion may revolve around an inability to distinguish talent from high potential. While both types of employee are vital for business success, only HiPo employees reliably travel up through various management levels to executive status. Gifted individuals often prefer solving problems on their own; high-potential employees work in groups and encourage the people they manage to excel. Talented people may be innovative but lack serious ambition; high-potential employees come with a built-in desire to excel and have naturally exceptional business instincts. According to a recent Hewitt Associates study, when HR managers and existing top-level executives consistently identify and develop high-potential employees, companies tend to see a jump in shareholder returns. Even greater returns begin to happen when businesses track their employees’ successes and use them to build progressively more powerful high potential employees development programs.

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.

HiPo management isn’t without struggles. Aside from being hard to identify, HiPos can be difficult to keep because they need to be challenged. High potential employee assessments and high potential development programs let you identify and cultivate gifted individuals within your organization, providing them with relevant skill sets and practice so they’re ready to take on new challenges with your company. Our high-potential employee programs let you take advantage of proven, high potential employee development best practices and our experts who understand what works and what doesn’t. We engage with our clients to create custom training for your HiPo teams that include any number of unique components. Including:

• 360 feedback or personality assessments (including high potential employee assessments)
• One on one Coaching / Group Coaching
• Active Learning / Training / Lunch and Learns
• Shark Tank Style Capstone Projects With Mock Investor Panel
• Manager Input / Facilitated Supervisor Benchmarks
• Job Benchmarking for High Performance
• Team Development and Team Building
• Career Planning
• Development Planning and Competency Benchmarks
• Proven leadership models
• Integration with Internal Training / Leadership Models
• And, more

 

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