Jay Conger - The High Potential’s Advantage: Get Noticed, Impress Your Bosses, and Become a Top Leader

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You are ambitious. You know you have tremendous untapped potential. You dream of becoming an executive officer one day or, more boldly, a CEO. You often find yourself restless when it comes to workwanting bigger, more rewarding, and challenging assignments. Most importantly, you want to be an influential leader who makes a genuine difference, a person who people admire and are excited to follow. You want to be one of your organizations high-potential leaderssomeone people see as able to advance to much higher levels. If this description fits you, then we have a road map for arriving at your dream destination.

Our goal is to answer the destination questions on your mind as an aspiring leader. For example, you might be asking yourself: What will it take on my part to get to the senior-most levels of my organization? What skills, abilities, and knowledge do I need to get there, and do they differ at career stages or stay basically the same throughout my career? Am I better off staying in my current organization or jumping around to improve my chances of climbing the corporate ladder? What does my boss look for when assessing whether I am a high-potential leader? And whats my organizations process for assessing my potential? Should I aggressively campaign and ask for that promotion, or just put my head down and do my job the best I can... hoping for a promotion soon? How will I know if Ive achieved high-potential status when executives in my organization dont share that information?

If you have these questions, then we have the answerswhether you are just entering the workforce, brand-new to your organization, a midcareer professional, or a junior executive thinking about how to get to that ultimate level of CEO, CFO, or COO. We design and implement high-potential identification processes in well-known global organizations. We have coached, observed, and assessed thousands of front-line and middle managers as well as senior executives. For this book, we interviewed over a hundred leaders along with dozens of senior HR officers who oversee the high-potential talent of their organizations. We also dived deep into the research about high-potential leaders and why they sometimes derail their careers (see the sidebar near the end of this chapter).

Our core findingand the key insight of this bookis that five critical skills differentiate high potentials from everyone else. We call them the X factors of high potential . Anyone can learn and get better at these skills, but our research shows that you must be proficient in all five to get on your companys high-potential list. And you must always be improving them to stay on the list. Certain skills are building blocks to others, so well describe the sequence in which you need to cultivate each.

In The High Potentials Advantage , we examine in depth each of the five X factorswhat each one is, how each works, and how to develop that particular skill. We will also take you behind the scenes to understand how bosses and organizations determine whether you deserve that high-potential status. You will learn about the mechanics and politics of the processes that your company uses to assess your potential.

Our aim throughout this book is straightforwardto help you become an influential icon in your organization and ultimately to build a great career. No matter your career or industry, you will find this book a valuable reference. Its insights are the product of our research looking across the broadest spectrum of high-potential designations, from early career to senior management, and our collective experience designing and working with high-potential programs in many different industries.

But first, youre probably wondering what exactly is a high potentialand why you should care.