On one of my consulting engagements, our team was doing a review of senior talent in the organization to identify potential future leaders.
The exercise was fairly objective and it incorporated a variety of inputs that would typically not go into usual performance reviews.
The results were an eye opener.
About half the people we identified as high potential were a complete surprise to the senior management.
Why?
These were all folks who met or exceeded their formal KPIs. Many also demonstrated a combination of traits that often do not get easily measured - excellent contribution in cross-functional initiatives, great team player, deep functional knowledge, sensible decision making and strategic thinking, good mentors to juniors, go-to person for peers, diverse network, customer-centricity, good understanding of industry dynamics, cross-pollination of ideas across teams, adherence to organization's values, and so on.
But there was one critical element where almost all of these were below average - self promotion.
This was for a variety of reasons. Some were not good communicators, some inherently underestimated their own contributions, some hated the idea of blowing their own trumpet and believed their good work would get automatically noticed, and some just didn't think this was important enough.
These folks were likely hurting their career prospects, no doubt.
But what a huge loss it was to the organisation - not being able to fully leverage the potential of so many just because they were not good at self-promotion, and possibly promoting many lesser competent ones just because they were good at it.
***
I do believe that as professionals we need to own our careers.
But I also believe, equally strongly, that great organisations are great because they have a culture of spotting and promoting good talent internally, without over relying on self-promotion skills of people. In such organisations, leaders see this as their personal responsibility.
Two questions to ponder:
1. Are you promoting yourself enough?
2. As a leader, are you digging enough beyond the surface to identify your best talent, or are over relying on narratives and self-promotion?
#performance #potential #leadership #culture #career #talent #hr