High Potentials Leadership Development: Turning High-Potential Employees into High-Impact Leaders
Organizations rarely outperform the quality of their leadership pipeline. Yet many companies struggle to:
— the employees most capable of driving future success.
High-potential employees can have an outsized impact on organizational performance. When identified and developed effectively, they:
The challenge is that high potentials are not always the most visible employees. They are often overlooked in favor of those who excel at self-promotion, office politics, or managing upward. As a result, many organizations inadvertently miss opportunities to develop the talent that will shape their future.
What Is a High-Potential Employee?
According to Industrial and Organizational Psychology (Church & Waclawski, 2010), a high-potential employee is:
“A highly valuable contributor with a great deal of stretch capability within the organization. Such individuals are typically promoted to higher levels beyond their current role, and a select few can be seen as leading the organization at the senior levels.”
At LSA Global, we define high-potential employees as the top 3% to 10% of talent who consistently demonstrate exceptional results, strong leadership behaviors, and the capacity to succeed in significantly larger roles.
High potentials typically excel in three critical areas:
The good news is that performance, leadership behavior, and future potential can all be measured. Research-backed leadership simulation assessments, people manager assessment centers, personality assessments, and org. talent review processes can significantly improve the accuracy of high-potential identification.
Why High Potentials Matter
Organizations that successfully develop high potentials often outperform competitors because they create stronger leadership pipelines and are better prepared for growth, disruption, and succession challenges.
Research from Indiana University found that the top 6% of employees contribute approximately 35% of organizational output, while the top 20% account for roughly 80% of results. While the exact percentages vary by organization, the finding is consistent with broader talent research: a relatively small group of exceptional contributors creates a disproportionate share of value.
Because of their impact, identifying and developing high potentials is not simply a talent management strategy. It is a strategic business imperative.
High Potentials Are Not the Same as High Performers
One of the most common talent management mistakes is assuming that today’s highest performers are automatically tomorrow’s leaders.
While high performers consistently deliver strong results in their current roles, high potentials demonstrate the capacity to succeed in larger, more complex, and often unfamiliar leadership situations.
High potentials typically exhibit:
The distinction matters because promoting outstanding individual contributors into leadership roles without assessing future potential often leads to disappointing outcomes for both the employee and the organization.
Organizations that separate performance from potential make better promotion decisions and build stronger leadership pipelines.
The goal is to find the talent that can deliver results today while growing into the leadership demands of tomorrow.
Ambiguity is the enemy of high performance. Focus on the few outcomes that matter most. Ideally, identify two high-impact performance metrics that account for 50 percent or more of the role’s overall success.
You will know you are on the right track when high potentials clearly understand where they stand, what is expected, and what it will take to succeed at the next level.
Our organizational alignment research found that workplace transparency and the timely flow of information are 13.5 times greater in high-performing companies. That matters because high potentials are more likely to stay engaged when they understand the strategy, trust leadership communication, and can see a meaningful future for themselves.
You will know you are on the right track when high potentials believe information flows across the company in a timely, honest, and useful way.
Invest disproportionately in the critical few people who have the strongest combination of performance, values-aligned behavior, and future leadership capacity. Provide customized training, executive coaching, mentoring, business-driven leadership action learning, career development, and meaningful stretch assignments.
The right assignments should challenge them to solve complex problems, influence across boundaries, question assumptions, and build the judgment required for larger leadership roles.
You will know you are on the right track when high potentials have the support, feedback, visibility, and development opportunities they need to be successful.
The Bottom Line
High potentials leadership development is worth the investment. When selected objectively and developed intentionally, they transition more effectively into larger roles, improve performance over time, strengthen the leadership pipeline, and model the behaviors that help others succeed.
High potentials thrive when development is tied to real business challenges. Download How to Fast-Track Leadership Development with Just-in-Time Action Learning to learn how to accelerate leadership readiness, strengthen your leadership pipeline, and drive measurable business results.
Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.
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