Managing HiPos

“It’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you use that makes a difference.”

Managing high potentials can make or break an organisation, is a job with high stakes and higher rewards. While everybody wants to become a high potential, it is their attitude and their ability to remain focussed which gets on their way... Managing HiPos can bring huge competitive advantage for an organization, taking the Company to reach greater heights with a constant source of motivated exceptional talented employees. So we ought to first Identify the HiPOs through their Ambition, Ability and Commitment levels and then manage them well, retain them and let them grow along with your Company.

Considerations When Interviewing for High Potentials

1. Does this person have a proven track record for accomplishing impressive results, not just meeting expectations?

2. Does this person take charge and make things happen, or sit back and let things happen before producing?

3. Does this person inspire confidence in his or her decision making?

4. Can this person lead through persuasion and influence? Can he or she serve as an effective sounding board to others who are struggling with complex issues?

5. Do others trust this person to lead projects and teams, even though he or she doesn’t have a leadership title?

6. Can this person keep a global perspective? Are priorities apparent, or does she or he become mired in the details and tactics?

7. Do obstacles stop this person? Or do they represent challenges, not threats?

8. How do unexpected changes affect this person’s performance?

Interview Questions to Identify High Potentials

Focus on asking questions that uncover the three key characteristics of individual’s potential: Ambition, Ability, and Commitment. Review the considerations to ensure you are thinking about the right things as you prepare to interview candidates.

Ambition

Where do you see yourself in five years? Why? How might you envision getting there? Choose a time when you made a career move. What motivated you to make a change? What are your greatest career achievements? Tell me about a time when you felt “off track” in your career progress. What are your long-term career goals? What have you done to make progress towards these goals?

Ability

• Tell me about a time when you had to take initiative to solve a problem. Share a specific experience you’ve had where you had to influence someone who didn’t agree with your point of view. Tell me about a time when you had to overcome a challenge. Tell me about a time when an expected change happened. What did you do to deal with it? Describe the most creative idea that you’ve implemented to solve a problem. How did you come up with the solution? Share a specific situation that required you to respond to a significant change in your environment. Walk us through how you adapted to this situation. What was your role? What was your approach? Tell me about a specific task or project you had to complete with a high degree of autonomy. Tell me about a time when you had to learn something new to be successful on the job. What did you do? Tell me about a time when you faced a significant obstacle. Give me an example of a time when you had to solve a highly complex problem, which required multiple steps, across weeks or months.

Commitment

• What are the top five factors that motivate you on the job? Why? Choose one that hasn’t been present in a job you’ve had in the past. ? How do you keep yourself motivated? ? What factors keep you at a company? Which might make you leave? ? What motivated you to consider leaving your current/previous employer? ? What does it take for you to do your best work? ? What elements of a company’s culture are most important to you? ? Tell me about a time when you failed to honor a commitment. ? Tell me about a time when you honored a commitment even though it was challenging to do so.

Strategies I learnt to manage HIPOs

If you want to keep your high potentials engaged, motivated, and accountable,

1. First, provide them with targeted development opportunities. Get to know your high potentials so that you can gauge exactly where they need focused learning. They may not need to sit through every standard development course so be selective about how you can help them pinpoint their professional education. If you're organization doesn't offer targeted training, you may need to get creative and find other ways to help your high potentials expand their perspectives and their skills. Perhaps you have them participate in business simulations, a leadership immersion course, or attend industry conferences as both an attendee and perhaps an expert panelist. You might also give them access to self-development tools and courses like executive presence, emotional intelligence, and thought leadership could dramatically accelerate their growth and better prepare them for roles at a much higher level. Second, increase their experiential learning. In other words, ensure that your high potentials have rich, on-the-job opportunities to learn and grow. 

• You might put them on a cross-functional team or ones that are international in scope. Providing them with assignments that stretch their thinking, whether that means developing innovative processes or identifying market trends that point toward the need for new product features. If your company offers rotation programs, consider giving your high potentials a hands-on experience of moving through diverse areas of the company and facing the vastly different challenges that come with those rotations. The point is the deliberately increase their responsibilities and exposure to different perspectives so they can learn about the company and the industry from multiple angles. In the process, they will also feel reassured about gaining traction for career advancement. 
• Provide exposure for your high potentials to senior leadership. For instance, you might facilitate networking, host periodic open forums, organize leader as teacher opportunities and mentoring programs. Encouraging senior level involvement in key activities will provide high potentials with a closer look at some of their role models. Expose them to varying viewpoints and it will help to meet their expectations.
• Finally, be specific with high potentials about their career pathing. A typical plan for individual development won't be sufficient. They want to see a specific career path that more clearly identifies next steps. What's expected of them, how their advancement will progress, and when those changes might possibly occur. As a manager and organization, it that takes more time and resources to map out this kind of growth. But it's essential to keep high potentials emotionally committed to a future with your company. We know they can get bored and impatient. Career pathing gives them the incentives they need to create long-term loyalty.

By combining these strategies to manage your high potentials, you'll keep them plugged in to delivering peak performance and you'll groom them for success at a higher level in the years ahead.

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