How to Spot High Potential Employees (HiPos)

by Angela Loeb

 

What is a HiPo? 

In the SHRM article, “Your Company’s Future Leaders May Be Right Under Your Nose—And You Don’t Realize It,”  a high potential employee (HiPo) is defined as someone who has “potential, ability and aspiration for successive leadership positions.” This doesn’t necessarily mean they crave a c-suite leadership position, but what does typically happen with HiPos is they have a strong desire to increase competence and responsibility levels over time. This means that they may tend to gravitate toward team leadership roles eventually.

And in “Are you a High Potential?” from The Harvard Business Review, we learn that more specifically HiPos “consistently outperform their peer groups in a variety of settings and circumstances. While achieving these superior levels of performance, they exhibit behaviors that reflect their companies’ cultures and values in an exemplary manner. Moreover, they show a strong capacity to grow and succeed throughout their careers within an organization – more quickly and effectively than their peer groups do.”

So, essentially, these are employees that will help your business succeed, and their potential is worth developing.

 

Don’t Confuse High Potential with High Performing 

You can have HiPos who are also high performers, but not all high performers are HiPos. Potential is an intangible quality. Performance is a metric. You can observe performance with performance indicators that will tell you how well or how poorly an employee is doing.

You can usually tell the difference between a high performer who’s just a high performer and a high potential employee by career ambition. High performers may be totally satisfied in their current roles, whereas HiPos are usually the ones you see taking the initiative to ask for new assignments, especially assignments that are outside of their normal job description. Again, they’ll often be eager to advance their competence and advance their careers.

 

Some of the Top Characteristics of HiPos 

  • Excellent Emotional intelligence. Wikipedia: “People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, and adjust emotions to adapt to environments.”
  • Not hemmed in by their job description. They will step up to take on more than required of them. The HBR article (previously mentioned) describes this as “driven to excel” and adds, “They are more than willing to go that extra mile and realize they may have to make sacrifices in their personal lives in order to advance.”
  • Proactively pursue ways to increase competence. The HBR article points out that HiPos are hardwired with a catalytic learning capability: “Catalytic learning requires an interest in acting, not just learning. Learning without actually changing your behavior is an opportunity wasted.”
  • Career ambition. They will often have a semblance of a plan to progress the career. This might include having a mentor or coach, setting personal goals, having strong organizational awareness, pursuing professional certifications, and belonging to professional associations. They believe it’s important to cultivate external industry connections, as well as network within the organization for their career.

 

Spotting HiPos During Job Interviews 

Since high potential is a trait, the best way to spot it during the interview process is to use behavioral-based questions. Behavioral-based questions will show you if a trait can be demonstrated through action or behavior. Because past behavior can be an strong indicator of future behavior, asking a candidate about a situation from his or her past is an outstanding way to uncover whether or not the candidate possesses certain traits.

As you can tell by the top HiPo characteristics list above, you’ll want to ask questions that focus on personal and professional drive, as well as interpersonal/social skills. Also be sure to ask about their most challenging assignments and the specific role they played in those assignments. Watch for signs like:

  • The candidate sought out and/or initiated the assignment.
  • The candidate found the risk of trying something new during the assignment particularly attractive.
  • The candidate truly enjoyed how challenging the assignment was and how it helped his/her career.
  • The candidate can readily articulate how the outcome of the assignment affected the organization.
  • The candidate can readily articulate what he or she learned from the assignment.

 

Bonus:  3 Tips on How To Keep HiPos Engaged 

You’ve identified them in your existing workforce and/or you’ve recently hired them. Now how do you keep HiPos engaged… and keep them, period?

In her excellent article, “High Potential Employee Characteristics – What You Need to Know,” Michelle Nystrom says that “High potential employees will thrive by being challenged with new and larger responsibilities… HiPos can be easily disillusioned by poor management and a lack of opportunities for growth. And they can easily find employment elsewhere.” It’s expensive to hire and train any employee, but it’s particularly painful to hire, train, and then lose a HiPo. You must do what you can to keep them engaged. Here are 3 bonus tips for you on how:

  • Train your managers on the importance of communicating regularly with HiPos to, as Nystrom suggests, “proactively identify and address current or emerging risks.” Of course, this is key to retaining all of your employees, not just HiPos. Nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning because managers taking the pulse is such an easy thing to do, but it’s also an easy thing to let slip through the cracks.
  • Give them highly challenging assignments with expanded duties that allow them to advance their career. You can do it so that it’s low risk to the organization but it’s supportive to the employee – so that “failing forward” is okay. And be sure they know that.
  • Foster their loyalty by making sure they understand their role and how it fits in the organization’s vision, mission, and goals. Alignment of this to their career should be apparent and compelling so you don’t lose them to the competition.

________________

If you want to know more about how AustinPeopleWorks can help you with your human resources needs, please contact us at https://austinpeopleworks.com/contact