How High Potentials Drive Their Own Career

by Robert Sher

While most talented employees inevitably find their way up the company ladder, many others get stuck in dead-end jobs and trapped in a comfort zone that does not help them get ahead. What can those with high potential do to ensure they are challenged, developed and ultimately successful in their careers?

Many high-potential employees focus on the obvious metrics for assessing their progress: salary, benefits, responsibility, titles. Longevity itself can be an indicator, as seniority tends to attract respect and trust and may open doors. But while these indicators feel positive and can support further growth, they may also be traps, keeping an employee from real advancement.

Ambitious employees determined to advance their careers do not shy away from acknowledging their goals and setting out clear guidelines for how they assess their employers and what they will ask for along the way. This is not about entitlement. It is the employee creating an ambitious pathway of career development and leadership and continuing to produce and progress so that the journey accelerates.

“For me, it was definitely both push and pull,” recalls Kimberly Taylor, of her fast-track progress at Arborwell, the Haywood, California-based tree management service, that saw her rise in six years from marketing coordinator to a new role as Director for Marketing and Business Development. “I’m an ambitious person, I was desperate to learn and I pushed hard. But Arborwell definitely pulled me to develop myself further, funded my marketing certificate at Berkeley and really challenged me a lot.”

Designing Your Future

The starting point is to be the architect of your own advancement. The main building blocks of a strategy for high-potential employees are:

1. Select a company with a positive culture ready to support employee development. Good companies create opportunities so that fantastic staff get options and rewards far greater than they could get elsewhere. Avoid companies that try to lock employees in.
2. Be explicit with your manager about your desire to both perform highly and continuously improve and develop, with an eye toward advancement. Never demand promotion but do make clear that you aim to earn it at a good pace through excellent results.
3. Ensure a clear definition of your current job, with agreed deliverables against which you can measure yourself and demonstrate results to your boss.
4. Clarify and confirm next steps in your career path – in your own mind and in your manager’s – so you can both be aware of milestones you need to achieve and skills you need to learn.
5. Identify – and, as appropriate, request support for – training, education and other development aids, and don’t hesitate to be ambitious. Then when you get support, take full advantage of it.
6. Hold quarterly review meetings to confirm your great results with your manager and agree on next projects or learning objectives that will prepare you for your next role. The meetings should be documented, with notes ideally going into your personnel file, or at least in your own career file.
7. Always be training up your replacement. All good leaders have a number 2 in place, ensuring they don’t become stuck because the company is overdependent on them. It also demonstrates confidence and leadership.
8. Only work for a boss who is excited about your progression. An ideal boss mentors you and leads you. An acceptable boss cheers you on and doesn’t hold you back. A boss who just uses employees for the company’s gain without helping them develop should become an ex-boss.

The distinction between high performers and high potentials is their ability and their determination for personal growth. Both do great work. High performers spend up to 95% of their time delivering results, with the balance of 5% on development. High potentials fight for more time, both in their job and from time off, reaching a split of 75% / 25% – meaning investing significant personal time in their own growth. It’s a signal of their commitment to themselves, and it pays off.

Seeing the Forest and the Trees

Taylor’s experience at Arborwell was positive, but not unique at the company. Founder and CEO Peter Sortwell has pursued a strategy of investing in people, giving them significant responsibility and support, and holding them up for praise at key moments when merited. “Peter took a chance on me because he saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself and I’m forever grateful,” says Taylor.

Hired right out of college for a new marketing role at the company, Taylor built Arborwell’s profile, cultivated clients across the state and beyond and contributed to doubling the firm’s annual revenue. Her results, and her determination, led to rapid promotion as a director. When the company converted its ownership structure, she served as chair of the ESOP committee. Taylor has also served as a board member of the Silicon Valley chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women, providing profile and access that complemented her marketing and sales roles.

“Kimberly did wonders for the company because she was a great networker,” recalls Sortwell. “She ended up being our spokesperson and was out there in the marketplace socializing with lots of people. She opened up doors wherever we went because she just has that type of personality.”

Growing Your Own

Not every employee is high potential, talented, ambitious and ready to be fast-tracked. But Arborwell has shown the benefits developing high-potential employees. Taylor ultimately departed on good terms to join a smaller firm and continue her journey as a company builder. But Sortwell was able to step aside from frontline leadership through the appointment as president of Andy LaVelle, who came to the company as an operations manager with explicit leadership ambition. LaVelle is another example of Arborwell’s strategy of developing the business by developing the team.

As for high potentials, the strategy clearly opens the way for huge opportunity, within and beyond current employment. “Arborwell was a unique experience,” recalls Taylor. “An opportunity to forge my own path and draw my own line upwards in a company and develop myself, with the founder’s support. That’s why I stayed for so long and we were able to achieve so much. I couldn’t have gotten where I am now without what I learned at Arborwell and without Peter’s guidance.”

To read an extract of the interview with Peter Sortwell, click here.

To read an extract of the interview with Kimberly Taylor, click here.

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