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Using a High-Potential Employees Program to Cultivate Company Success in Visalia, CA

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

A big part of any company's success is having the right people in the right seats. Ideally, your business currently has top talent filling its leadership positions. Unfortunately, those people aren't going to be around forever. People retire, move, change careers or branch out on their own. This presents your company with a dilemma when it comes to bringing in the next generation of leadership. You can recruit talent from outside, but no matter how qualified the candidates, there's always the risk they won't mesh with your company's culture. That's why your best option is identifying current high-potential (HiPo) employees and grooming them to take on leadership roles in the future. By establishing a high-potential development program, you can ensure the transition from each generation of leadership to the next is as seamless as possible.

High-Potential Employees Defined

All your employees are valuable, useful and vital parts of your business, and without them, your company would cease to exist. High-potentials are upwardly mobile employees with the capacity to move easily through the ranks and positively influence the staff members they manage. Also known as HiPos, these unique individuals are relatively rare and achieve consistently good results under challenging circumstances. When correctly identified and trained, HiPos can help shape the future of your company for the better.

HiPo Development Programs Explained

Most industry leaders believe that all employees benefit from competency development training programs designed to help them harness their talents. High-potential employees are frequently already in charge of other people — or they’re earmarked for management positions — so HiPo development programs usually have a positive effect within your company. High-potential Development programs work like this:

Stage One: You identify your HiPo employees and create a list of potential course objectives and attendees.

Stage Two: You implement a custom-built high potential development program in which participants benefit from one-on-one mentorship, individual feedback and development planning, face realistic challenges during simulations or shark tank style workshops and gain access to multidisciplinary training opportunities.

Stage Three: Newly energized and inspired, HiPo employees drive growth and move your company forward.

Companies Must Work to Identify HiPos

According to data from the Harvard Business Review, most organizations are simply not adept at identifying and developing high potential employees. HBR reviewed data regarding 1,964 individuals who were identified across three organizations as high-potential workers. The reviews included feedback from multiple assessors, who agreed that as many as 40 percent of the identified employees were not, actually, HiPos. Instead, companies were identifying candidates with strong technical skills who consistently honored commitments and took initiative. Those are all great strengths for employees — and certainly are traits that might show someone belongs in development or leadership training. They don’t, however, mean someone is HiPo. Why does it matter? It’s not that HiPos are the only employees your organization should invest in. It’s that HiPos tend to respond to training and development in different ways than other talented employees. Therefore, it’s important to align the components of a program to the level and talent set of the employees. Some participants may warrant a workshop only, while others, such as your HiPos may benefit from Shark Tank style capstone projects, or peer-to-peer shared intelligence sessions. Simply put, it’s important to customize the program to be challenging and relevant to the high potential employees.

How HiPo Development Programs Benefit Your Business

Forward-thinking organizations set themselves up for success by providing well-constructed, high-potential employee development programs for their high-performers.  By offering your HiPos a plan for managing their careers and creating a path for promotion, your organization not only builds more competent employees but cultivates a greater probability of business success. HiPo training programs make your most promising employees  and leaders more effective by teaching them how to leverage their natural talents. In turn, HiPos generate new ideas, encourage other members of staff and generally strengthen your business from within.

During high potentials leadership program, trainers frequently tackle the following topics:

• Mechanisms for success. Managers who truly believe in the phrase “the ends justify the means” need not apply to a high potential training program. In the HiPo employees universe, methods count as much as results, and bullying isn’t a part of the curriculum.
• Decision making. In the business world, calculated choices frequently have to be made on the fly. Innate talent is useful, but pragmatic decision-making skills sometimes must be taught.
• Self care. Because they’re driven by the desire to excel, many HiPo employees push themselves too hard. When they’re taught to pace themselves, high-potential individuals perform more consistently, get sick less often and avoid exhaustion.

When equipped with the above three skills, high potential employees bring even more to the table and your business benefits accordingly.

What Do High-Potential Employees Look Like?

One of the reasons companies struggle to discern between high-potential employees and other high achievers is that they sometimes look the same, especially if all you consider on a regular basis are performance metrics. In fact, a potential HiPo that hasn’t been developed is actually likely to have lackluster performance metrics, especially if they’ve done the same task for some time and are bored with the work. At Turnkey Coaching & Development Solutions, we encourage executives, managers and HR staff to look beyond performance metrics. Through regular communication and working side-by-side with your staff — and even participating in team development programs with them — you can better identify individuals who have traits associated with HiPos. Some traits to look for include:

• Big picture understanding and thinking. HiPos don’t like to stay in a box, so they don’t think inside the box. They ask questions and seek information about the big picture; these are the employees who want to know why their task is important and what happens to work before and after they touch it. Big picture thinking lets HiPos integrate easily into teams, work for the good of both themselves and the organizations and react more proactively to changes — especially if you’ve invested in their development.
• Collaborative outlook. High-potential employees can shine, but they don’t have to. They have excellent natural communication and collaboration skills, and with the right HiPo leadership development or team development programs, your high-potential staff can even inspire and lead others to shine. That means more employees meeting goals and engaging in projects that really matter, which contributes to individual and company success as well as increased morale and a positive team culture.
• Easily adapts to change. High-potential employees roll with the punches in a way that is more skillful than laissez faire. It’s not that HiPos allow themselves to be shepherded through change without complaint; it’s that they expect change, are ready for it and find ways to make the most of it. They are agile critical thinkers who aren’t derailed by new challenges.
  

You can see how many of these traits would make someone a great leader. While it’s true that not all HiPos will rise to executive ranks (or even want to be in such a position), but by investing in leadership development for your high-potential employees, you help draw out all these positive skills. Our coaches and master trainers develop HiPo programs that integrate your mission and vision, so high-performing individuals as well as your high-potential employees are ready to return to teams and departments with actionable knowledge and increased awareness of their own skill sets.

When to Implement HiPo Development Programs

If they’re exposed to the right potential development training program, high-potential employees thrive no matter when they’re identified.. Developing high potential employees requires thoughtful consideration of where they are in their careers; as newcomers may require a different approach than an employee with more experience. Thoughtfully designed   high potential leadership programs treat these two HiPo types differently to ensure optimal development.

1. Early-stage high potential employee development programs may combine 360 feedback, coaching, and mentoring with technology-enhanced learning tools and group-reinforced training methods. When they’re caught early, HiPos usually develop quickly and often provide their parent companies with years of service.

2. Late-stage HiPo employee development programs require greater sensitivity in the set-up phase.  It’s important to foster engagement by leveraging the experience of more senior employees. When encouraged through recognition and personalized learning goals, more experienced employees often help create a rich learning environment.  

Taking time to fully customize a program is considered an important high potential development best practice and by taking advantage of the group’s collective wisdom, high potential programs for employees can achieve impressive results.

In short, company owners should invest in both early-stage and late-stage high-potential employees to cultivate success.

HiPo Programs: The FAQs

Q: Why should I give high-performing employees special attention?

A: All employees benefit from excellent training courses, and business leaders looking to achieve real success should invest in every employee. By identifying high potential employees and crafting a plan to retain high potential employees, HiPo development programs create a succession strategy and ensure the underlying structure of a company can survive beyond the current executive team.  Additionally, in a rapidly changing business environment, employees require specific training and encouragement to ensure innovation, interpersonal effectiveness, and the other leadership competencies required to create a lasting competitive edge.

Q: What is the payoff of a high potential assessment and development program?

A: During high potential training courses, attendees learn how to hone their instinctive skills and how to communicate effectively with others to achieve success. When training programs conclude, attendees emerge with new enthusiasm, fresh ideas and vision for the future. More specifically the ROI of retaining high potential employees yields reduced employee turnover costs, knowledge capital retention, and greater returns due to employee engagement and competency.

Q: What do effective high potential employee assessment and high potential leadership development programs  look like?

A: High potential leadership development programs vary depending on the participants, the company goals and budget. High potential employee development programs best practices include leveraging more experienced HiPos and customizing the program to be strategically aligned with the long-term goals of the organization.  Best practices include using relevant high-potential assessment tools and online 360 feedback tools, personality assessments such as the DiSC or MBTI plus individual development planning, coaching, mentoring, shark-tank style capstone projects and group coaching, to name just a few options. TurnKey Coaching & Development Solutions specializes in custom-engineered high potential talent development programs that deliver multifaceted learning opportunities to help participants advance.

Without the right leaders and skilled innovators, your company can't compete or grow. A high-potential development program is a proven way to find future managers and executives or develop and recognize the leadership you already have. At Turnkey Coaching & Development Solutions, we believe it's important to invest in all your people, but we also know that HiPos perform and react differently from other staff. By customizing leadership programs to account for their inherent talents, we help high potential employees hone those skills faster and most appropriately for use in a business environment. Your customized high potential employee development program may include any number of options, including your choice of the following:

• Coaching
• Active Learning Workshops
• Shark Tank Style Capstone Projects
• Business Simulations
• E-learning Modules
• Group Coaching or Peer-to-peer shared intelligence Sessions
• Lunch and Learns
• High Potential Employee Assessment
• Gamification
• Soft skill development as well as business competencies such as finance fundamentals, business acumen, critical thinking, strategic planning, etc.
• Key stakeholder input / supervisor feedback
• 360 assessments and more.

 

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