Talent Management - December 2008 - (Page 38)

recruitment & retention assessment & evaluation compensation & beneﬁts performance management learning & development succession planning To determine what high potential means at your organization, talent managers should sit down and discuss it in terms of the organization’s business strategy, culture and leadership model, Morton said. Once the deﬁnition is crafted, it can be a guiding principle in what managers tell employees, thereby avoiding any implied promise. “You’re not high potential forever,” Morton said. “The potential has to materialize. You could be considered a high potential, the company works with you and tries to develop you, but you’re not getting there. Then you fall out of the high-potential pool. “Part of being clear is to tell people, ‘You’re not in this forever, and you need to maintain standards and the quality of work to remain in our high-potential group.’ You have to be up-front. This is why it’s complicated and some companies don’t want to tell because then made the strategic decision to tell these employees they are high potential to set an example for the rest of the organization as to what a leader should be. “We see them as the people with whom and for whom we’d like to provide future challenges that are growthoriented and rewarding career opportunities,” said Joyce McPhetres, vice president of HR and organizational development. “Our identiﬁcation of the group is our opportunity to say, ‘These are the people with the qualities and practices of leaders who will help us get to our future.’” Central Maine began the Accelerated Development Group by developing key leadership competencies critical to organizational success. When selecting the ﬁrst group of individuals, Central Maine looked at the competencies, performance assessments, patient satisfaction surveys, employee engagement surveys and the Caliper Proﬁle to determine which of the organization’s 125 managers ﬁt the bill. In the end, nine were chosen. “I strongly believe they should be made aware of the role they’re going to play,” McPhetres said. “By notifying them and others of their role, you create a standard, and you set a standard for development of other people within the organization. “It’s important for both the group and [the] larger organization to understand that we will not be operating as usual. It’s very important that we’re holding up a new model [and] new ways of behavior. And it’s important others understand that alignment with that model and those behaviors are critical.” The way Central Maine tells the Accelerated Development Group is signiﬁcant because the CEO, COO and president of the organization are the ones to do it. “I work in an exemplary environment, somewhat of a dream environment, in that each of the leaders of our organization are critically involved in deﬁning and structuring the future success of this organization. And they would have had it be no one else who would inform these people than themselves,” McPhetres said. “We look to our leaders to understand the next step, to understand how we might be moving toward particular goals and toward our future, and it’s very key for the top leaders to be intricately involved and actually communicate the programs and the developmental opportunities for the leaders within an organization.” Telling high potentials of their status can set an example for others that there are speciﬁc values an organization embraces. “The organization has to live and breathe these values,” Sweeney said. “It’s not like you can send out an e-mail and say ‘OK, here are our three high potentials this year.’ It has to be very thorough, very comprehensive, recognized at the highest levels within the organization, and it has to permeate the organization so the people who are identiﬁed are recognized in very real and meaningful ways.” “Our identiﬁcation of the group in essence is our opportunity to say, ‘These are the people with the qualities and practices of leaders who will help us get to our future.’” – Joyce McPhetres, Vice President of HR and Organizational Development, Central Maine Medical Family you get into this challenge of managing expectations and managing the dilemma of someone [who] falls out of the group. It’s not easy.” If it’s not handled right, telling high potentials also can create a negative dynamic in the workforce, as some people are highlighted and others are not. “If you have good data to support how you make your decisions, you should be able to say, ‘Jane, you didn’t make the cut this year, but as you can see from this information, here are the things you need to do. And we will help you work on those. We expect that if you continue the way you have been and you work a little harder, you’ll make it,’” Morton said. “You need to show people that you have made informed decisions, and you are supporting and helping them.” Telling Is Central at Central amily Maine Medical F The leaders at Central Maine Medical Family recently created the Accelerated Development Group, a pool of talent that will be readied to assume key leadership roles in the future. The organization and its top leaders 38 December 2008 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com http://www.talentmgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Talent Management - December 2008

Talent Management - December 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Human Performance Leading Edge Foundations Recruitment & Retention Assessment & Evaluation Compensation & Benefits Performance Management Learning & Development Succession Planning Insight Dashboard Application Advertiser's Index Editorial Resources Full Potential

Talent Management - December 2008

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