At our kids’ school PTM this past weekend, I noticed an interesting pattern while exchanging notes with other parents.
Before getting to the complaints, teachers often said something nice about the child.
Very capable. Could do really well. Great potential.
And then came the real conversation.
Got me thinking about how often we make similar distinction at work.
***
Potential is a wonderful word.
It sounds positive.
It signals promise.
And it leaves plenty of room for the future.
Performance is less forgiving.
It is measurable.
It is visible.
And it has consequences, here and now.
Potential is fuzzy. And it’s easy to fudge, without much accountability.
***
How do we know someone has high potential?
Often, it is a combination of past performance, reputation, confidence, pedigree, visibility and what a leader ‘feels’ about the person.
And therein lies the problem.
Two people can be ‘high potential’. Five years later, their trajectories will be very different if one has been given three big opportunities while the other is still waiting for their first.
***
I think there is a better way to think about potential.
Potential should be a hypothesis about future performance.
And like any good hypothesis, it should eventually face evidence.
If I say someone has high potential, I should also be able to say:
Potential for what?
Over what time horizon?
Based on which observable behaviours or capabilities?
Under what context/conditions?
And what evidence would tell me whether I was right?
If we don’t pose these questions, potential becomes a one-way street.
Leaders get to make the prediction about potential. The employee gets to live with the consequences.
And nobody is accountable for whether the prediction was actually right.
Maybe the real test of a good talent system is not how well it identifies potential.
It is how often it is willing to revisit its own predictions. And create the right conditions for those predictions to come true.
Potential rating without accountability is just a compliment with a career impact.
#talent #performance #potential #career