Are Your Senior Leaders “High Potentials”? I hope so . . .

In the world of talent management and leadership development, companies place a lot of emphasis on identifying and developing “high potentials”.   Often these high potential leaders are high performers in the middle levels of the organization who are viewed as future senior executives.

Explore for a moment the paradox of high potential – as opposed to low potential. High potential means that people have the capacity to grow significantly beyond their current level of performance.

So what does low potential mean?  It means that someone is operating at their natural capacity – there is little room left for them to grow – whether their role is as janitor or CEO, both can be said to be low potential if they are working at the limit of their natural capacity.  In other words, it is possible for someone to be high performance and low potential – meaning that they are a perfect fit for their current role (again, CEO or janitor, e.g.) but not beyond.

To understand the distinction between high potential and low potential, I offer an analogy to rockets and high school physics. First, a few definitions — Potential energy is stored and available for use – while kinetic energy is active and in use.

A rocket on a launch pad, full of fuel, awaiting takeoff – it has a lot of potential energy but no kinetic energy.

A rocket in orbit has a lot of kinetic energy but very little potential energy. It is moving in orbit on its own inertia – but would need a booster to
move into orbit at a higher level.

[Project Mercury postal stamp, issued, 1962, to honor first orbital flight of US astronaut John Glenn.]

So in an organizational setting, the implication of the ‘high potential’ leadership development approach is that we have “high potentials” that are at the mid-levels of an organization – with capacity to move up over time.

Here’s the rub – this terminology inadvertently implies that the senior leaders are “low potentials” – not to say that they aren’t effective, but that they have “arrived” – they are in orbit, moving with strong kinetic energy, but – see definition of kinetic energy – very little potential energy. Another way to phrase it: they are moving on inertia, which is how a rocket moves in orbit. (Remember that inertia means two things – the tendency of a body at rest to stay at rest, and of a body in motion to stay in motion, resisting acceleration, unless acted on by an outside force.)

Senior executives may be quite effective at that level of orbit – but orbiting on inertia is not enough.   You really need your most senior leaders to be high potentials as well.  Why?  Think booster engines. Companies must grow, innovate, shift business models, develop a leadership pipeline, and grow all levels of leadership.  If senior leadership is not developing their own capacity, then you have a serious energy (capacity/performance) problem – how can you get to a different orbit?

When you seek senior leaders – it is tempting to not look for high potential – we want the person who has been there, done that – so they can do it again for us.  But in this economy – there is no been there, done that – it is all new.  So unless your senior leadership can learn and innovate at a personal level, how can your company?

A frequent question I explore with senior leaders is – what would it mean if you were just a little bit better?  What would be different for you and your organization?  Why do I ask that?  Because the CEO is the ultimate constraint for the organization. If the CEO does not have more potential, then neither does your company.  If the CEO is not committed to growing personally, then how can your company grow?

We need our CEOs and most senior leaders to be high potential – and to be actively engaged in developing that potential.

I think it’s time to break the distinction between senior leaders and high potentials.  We need high potentials at all levels, including the most senior executive leaders.  What do you think?

[End note: I do not accept that view that there are people with ‘low potential’ – although there are people who are currently complacent.  My experience is that people always have much higher potential than they are currently aware of or expressing – the issue is how they tap into it – so that they see it, want it, commit to it, and grow into it.  But that’s a conversation for another day.]