Potential-related practices lie at the very core of exclusive talent management. According to some researchers, these practices are supposed to increase commitment, engagement, motivation, and loyalty among employees labelled as ‘high potentials’, while simultaneously reducing organisational costs and ensuring a higher return on investment.
However, these practices can also lead to decreased commitment, engagement, motivation, and loyalty in employees not labelled as ‘high-potentials’ (typically comprising 80-90% of the workforce). These can also result in reduced workforce diversity and heightened perceptions of injustice, favouritism, elitism, and discriminatory behaviours, particularly in cases where transparency is lacking, and labelling processes are based on subjective, biased judgements. Furthermore, these practices may significantly elevate the expectations of ‘high potentials’, potentially prompting them to change jobs if expectations are not met and causing the organisation to lose its investment.
The idea of potential can be so seductive that it might seem incontrovertible and obvious. However, while some may feel that it is possible to tell if someone is destined for greatness in their professional life, others may feel that there is something wrong with it. For some, it could be linked to its elitist nature; for others, it may revolve around the act of labelling individuals and putting them into boxes (nine boxes, to be more precise). For yet others, the discomfort might stem from the notion of telling someone they either lack potential or possess it in a minimal amount.
One of the fundamental problems around potential, from which many issues emerge, is that it is not even a construct; it is a referential concept. Essentially, potential is likelihood, something that exists only as a possibility, and what we attempt to do in the world of work is to estimate that likelihood. Potential is someone’s judgement on the likelihood of an individual’s future state. It is not something we can say a person has, like a quantifiable amount of possibility within them that can be identified
Potential is an estimation of the likelihood of an individual being able to do
or become something in the future within a specific context.
When working with potential, we assess characteristics that are likely to help an individual perform at new levels of complexity. We neither take a deterministic stance on people’s future nor claim knowledge of things we cannot know.
We provide insights on whether certain aspects of a person’s profile are likely to facilitate or hinder their career progression within a specific context, without making predictions about whether a person is destined for success or doomed to failure.
For a deeper exploration of potential, read our article: Potentially disappointing: What is potential?
