The Age-Old High Potential Question: To Tell or Not to Tell?

The Age-Old High Potential Question: To Tell or Not to Tell?

In my travels and talks with Talent Management professionals, this question always comes up and has for over 25 years in my career. In a recent white paper written with my colleague Cori Hill, we addressed this inquiry by recounting the following.

The dilemma of “to tell or not tell?” a high potential employee has been around for decades. Don Laidlaw, Corporate Head of Executive Resources for IBM in the 1980s, used to respond to this complex question with a simple answer: “Yo,” or yes and no.

Yes. You should tell a high potential their designation, but be very careful what you communicate. Do communicate the responsibilities of being a high potential and do not portray it as an elite status or set of rights. Do communicate that the designation of high potential is context-bound and not forever. If well-communicated, high potential talent will understand they are going to be given tougher assignments and they are going to be scrutinized by senior executives of the organization.

No.

You should not tell a high potential if you are at risk of inadvertently creating an implied contract for promotion, special or elite status, or a set of expectations for opportunities that may or may not come about. In addition, don’t tell if your differentiation strategies and frameworks are unclear to managers as this may increase the risk of demotivating those who were not selected.

In our experience, the issue of “to tell or not tell” is an evolutionary hallmark. One that is confronted by every organization as it develops its strategic talent management practice. In, and of itself, the question tends to reflect a predictable crossroads in a developing succession culture. One of the roadblocks in this crossroads is the ability of managers and executives to have career-focused, positive, corrective and actionable feedback with all of their direct reports.

So the ultimate answer is yes, if you have managers and executives that are experienced enough to have these conversations with their direct reports. If not, don’t tell. However, be mindful of the consequences if you are not transparent about your high potential talent. Without transparency, your employees may make something up, and it is not likely accurate, nor what you intend.

Nice, Jim.

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Antoine Tirard

Talent Management Adviser, Leadership Consultant, Executive Coach and Author

7y

Great article, Jim, summarizing this old age question well. In a 2015 study published by Marc Effron, 42% of companies reported explicitly telling their highest potential leaders their designation. Interestingly, there seem to be a link with the size of companies. Those with headcount of 100,000+ were 71% telling it while the smaller one (<1,000) only 17% — this could actually reveal the level of maturity and ability to have the right talent conversations between high potentials and their manager.

Ibrahim Falatha, CIPD

Country HR Manager at Ericsson

7y

Pradeep Nambiar Deric Crosby .. When managing talents it is critical to making sure that they’re committed or engaged to the work that they do, it’s not just that they’re satisfied, it’s they’re engaged and going extra mile, doing their best and giving their discretionary energy. Dave Ulrich suggested 7 key practices which stand for VOICE that managers can follow to make engagement happen: - Vision: Have you created a vision that the people are part of? - Opportunity: Are the employees are given opportunities to learn to grow to get feedback and to develop their talents? - Incentive: Do you have system in place which pays the employees financially for the work they do? - Impact: Do people think their work matters and creates change? Do people do work that they sense has an impact on things they care about? - Community: Do leaders help others build community? Do your employees work with each other in effective teams? - Communication: Do employees know what’s going on and why things are happing? - Entrepreneurship: Do we build flexibility into the work processes that we have? The leaders' job to manage talents is to give them a VOICE; Vision, Opportunity, Incentive, Impact, Community, Communication and Entrepreneurship.

Ibrahim Falatha, CIPD

Country HR Manager at Ericsson

7y

Thank you Jim. Excellent article that may solve the dilemma!

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