TM - January 2008 - (Page 42)

recruitment & retention assessment & evaluation compensation & benefits performance management learning & development succession planning HOW TO FAST-TRACK MATURITY IN HIGHPOTENTIAL TALENT Rick Lash You can call them the “senior junior managers.” They’re the talented employees who rise to the top on the strength of their intellect and expertise, but then crash because they lack the personal maturity to manage human relationships. Companies can avoid this disaster by accelerating the personal development of their most talented people to help them succeed in leadership positions. It’s a pressing challenge right now. As the baby boomers retire, companies face a significant leadership gap. Critical leadership skills, such as the ability to inspire and influence, mentor others and think long term, are rooted in maturity and experience, and they also are leaving with this population. Organizations are looking for ways to accelerate development of their high-potential employees. If companies can fast-track maturity, they can ensure the talent pipeline, the next generation of leaders, is filled to meet current and future job demands. Unfortunately, many organizations find development is costly, time consuming and often not successful because they’re not accelerating the personal maturity of their talent along with the knowledge and skills critical for the job. Findings from more than 40 years of research comparing high performers to average ones show personal maturity is just as crucial as formal knowledge and practical experience in the business. Successful leaders have — or acquire — the capacity to manage themselves effectively. With maturity, they face up to their strengths and their weaknesses. They know how to control their emotions under stress and what kind of conditions they need to perform at their peak. This self-management guides how they use their formal and practical knowledge. Talented employees, the ones with high potential to lead in the future, also need to make a fundamental shift in inner maturity. These high performers are usually driven by the need to achieve. They set ambitious goals for themselves, and they drive themselves to meet or exceed those goals. But our research shows when they move into power positions, they must shift gears. They need to gain an increased capacity to relate to others and develop behaviors that focus on the betterment of others, the organization and their industry. As they move up the corporate ladder, relationships become more critical than their own expertise. They need to become ambitious for others, not just themselves. To shift into this new gear, the high-potential employee must acquire self-knowledge. Talent managers can help by giving frequent performance feedback. High-potential employees also need to hear how other people view them. This feedback may come from the senior management, fellow employees and colleagues, and may be challenging to accept at first. The employee will need to work with an expert to make sure he or she hears the feedback, acts on it and grows as a result. In this journey to greater maturity, the high-potential employee also needs to encounter a transformative experience. The high-potential talent should be put into a situation where existing knowledge and expertise won’t guarantee success. This is a crucial step for the acquisition of new skills. For instance, the brilliant financial engineer should be assigned a business to run before moving into the corner office. This type of “outside the usual job environment” immersion is also necessary to acquire personal maturity. The high achiever needs to learn how to help others. Becoming a company mentor is one option, or that person could be assigned to lead a group with a different expertise, where he or she cannot rely on personal experience. The high achiever also can develop this maturity outside of the corporate world by leading a community organization, for example, or in any semiformal situation where it’s necessary to learn how to get other people to do things. Rick Lash is the North American leader of the leadership and talent practice at the Hay Group, a global management consultancy. He can be reached at editor@TalentMgt.com. 42 talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - January 2008

TM - January 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Learning Connections: Working With Those People Leading Edge: Hub Caps for a Buggy Human Performance: Hawthorne Effect Revisited Beyond Affirmative Action: The Changing Face of Recruitment Assessment Centers in Talent Management: Strategies, Use and Value Nontraditional Benefits- How to Hook the Best Talent Intersection of Web 2.0 and Talent Management Cross-Training for Workforce Agility Mapping Talent Among Younger Workers Dashboard: Using Personality Data to Identify and Develop High-Potential Leaders Application: Shaffer Title Uses Myers-Briggs to Develop Common Corporate Language, Jump-Start Growth Insight: Dreier, Stein & Kahan LLP: Using Strategy to Bring Back the Law Profession Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Full Potential: Stop in the Name of Leadership

TM - January 2008

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