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8 Ways to Cultivate High-Potential Employees

By  Rebecca Koenig
May 23, 2017

You’d love to give all your employees abundant opportunities for professional development and leadership training, but your nonprofit’s budget just won’t support it. To use limited time and money most effectively, experts recommend channeling the resources you have available for the purpose into employees who show the greatest leadership potential.

Identifying those workers is only part of the challenge, however. You also must retain them long enough for your investment in their success to pay off.

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You’d love to give all your employees abundant opportunities for professional development and leadership training, but your nonprofit’s budget just won’t support it. To use limited time and money most effectively, experts recommend channeling the resources you have available for the purpose into employees who show the greatest leadership potential.

Identifying those workers is only part of the challenge, however. You also must retain them long enough for your investment in their success to pay off.

Follow these steps to cultivate and keep employees who have the most potential to improve your nonprofit’s work.

1. Make expectations clear

Employees themselves will ultimately show whether they have the potential for increased responsibility or leadership roles, but managers and human-resources staff are responsible for setting those employees up for success.

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That means “being open and transparent” with employees, from the minute they’re hired, about what will be expected of them and how their success will be measured, says Wes Pruett, owner of coaching and consulting firm HR Advisors.

2. Train managers

Managers must know how to find, empower, and get the best from the people who report to them, Mr. Pruett says: “You can’t become a high-potential employee unless you have a good manager.”

His key attributes for effective managers include coaching and mentoring ability, strong listening and communication skills, and a knack for working with employees to come up with solutions that satisfy their career goals.

3. Look for past success and “readiness” for new opportunities

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Experts recommend training managers to look for specific traits that suggest an employee can handle new responsibilities. One factor to consider is past success: How has each worker contributed so far? Are they meeting the goals set when they were hired?

Another indicator, harder to discern, is potential for future success.

It can be tempting to simply cherry-pick a few people and set them on a leadership track. But rather than permanently dividing employees into two groups — those with potential and those without — look instead for “readiness” at a particular moment to tackle a particular challenge, recommends Michael Tetreault, chief people officer at the Nature Conservancy.

That approach avoids “disenfranchising” employees who may simply need more time to develop their skills or whose talents may not be as readily apparent, Mr. Tetreault says. By assuming all employees have some potential, and making sure managers coach and listen to all of them, you’ll be better able to “figure out if they have the skills, commitment to learning, and the desire to take a different role.”

4. Conduct retention interviews

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Employees’ goals and interests can also provide clues to their potential for increased responsibility. Mr. Pruett recommends conducting retention interviews to learn more about staff members and show you care about their priorities.

During these talks, ask employees about career aspirations, skills they want to develop, and new experiences they’d like to gain, says Karan Ferrell-Rhodes, chief executive of Shockingly Different Leadership, a company that helps organizations develop and keep next-generation leaders.

These conversations will often reveal whether your nonprofit is at risk for losing an employee, Mr. Pruett says. If a high-performing staff member seems ready to jump ship, assess what the loss would mean and determine if there are new opportunities you could offer to entice that person to stay.

Because these conversations are forward-looking, they should be conducted separately from annual reviews, which look backward, Ms. Ferrell-Rhodes says. Hold retention interviews three or four times in an employee’s first year, Mr. Pruett suggests — new hires are especially vulnerable to leaving if they don’t feel supported. After that, you can have these conversations less frequently and less formally.

5. Share your observations

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Many organizations are uncomfortable with being transparent about which employees are poised for leadership positions, for fear that word will spread through the office and hurt morale, Ms. Ferrell-Rhodes says. But once you’ve found the people who show promise, it’s important to talk with them about your aspirations for them — if they don’t know that opportunities await them, they may be more tempted to look for jobs elsewhere.

Ms. Ferrell-Rhodes recommends having the employee talk to one of your nonprofit’s leaders and, if there is one, a human-resources representative to go over why, and how, the organization would like to support the staff member’s professional growth. The meeting should also cover goals the employee will be expected to meet to take his or her next steps in the organization.

6. Carry out plans for developing the employees’ potential

After inviting employees to retention interviews and conversations about potential opportunities, it’s essential to actually put plans in place, Mr. Pruett says: “It doesn’t make sense to ask the question if you’re not going to do anything with it.”

Possible strategies include assigning employees to shadow leaders, enrolling them in a training program, or pairing them with mentors.

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It’s also important to give high-potential employees exposure to the executives who ultimately make decisions about advancement, says Ms. Ferrell-Rhodes. For example, invite them to participate in, or pitch ideas during, executive meetings.

7. Offer new projects, not just new jobs

Professional opportunities don’t necessarily come in the form of promotions.

The staff-retention rate for senior leaders at the Nature Conversancy was 95 percent from 2014 to 2016, according to Mr. Tetreault, the chief people officer. That means there are very few chances to promote talented employees into new positions. So the organization frames “career progression in terms of opportunity for increasing the scope of responsibility on a project basis rather than a position basis,” he says.

Projects require the collaboration of multiple people playing different roles, including what the Nature Conservancy terms a “director,” whose vision drives the process; a “manager,” who ensures the process runs smoothly; and a “sponsor,” who champions the project to the wider organization. The nonprofit hopes to develop a system that will allow employees to take on these different roles when they are ready for new challenges. Eventually, it may create an internal, digital “marketplace” that allows workers to match their skills with open positions on relevant projects.

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8. Provide ongoing support

After high-potential employees have met their new goals, carried out their growth plans, and been given new roles or responsibilities, continue to check in with them and provide support, Ms. Ferrell-Rhodes says. “Turning off the faucet of development too soon,” she says, is a key reason employees fail to live up to their potential.

A version of this article appeared in the November 1, 2017, issue.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Executive LeadershipWork and Careers
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