Talented employees are force multipliers. By word and deed, they model and teach winning behaviors that shape high-performing cultures. No wonder, then, that study after study shows stronger financial performance in companies that make proportionally greater investments in identifying and developing top talent.
In a review that compared scientific research on predictors of job performance to the qualities in highest demand for the 21st century workforce, we identified three general markers of high potential.
— ABILITY
The single-best predictor of job performance is a work sample test, where you observe the candidate actually performing the tasks that make up the job. However, in forecasting potential to excel in a bigger, more complex job at some point in the future, the question shifts to how likely an individual is to be able to learn and master the requisite knowledge and skill.
The single-best predictor of this is IQ or cognitive ability. Learning ability includes a substantial cognitive component but also the motivation to pick up new knowledge and skills fast and flexibly.
Any role requires abilities beyond cognitive ability. For instance, potential for performing in a leadership role at the executive level requires strategic thinking and the ability to adapt an organization for the long-term future. In addition to raw intellectual horsepower, this involves vision and imagination, as well as an entrepreneurial mindset. Thus early indicators of the ability for senior organizational leadership would also include creativity and a knack for systems thinking.
— SOCIAL SKILLS
Social skills involve two fundamental abilities: the ability to manage yourself and the ability to manage others. Employees likely to succeed in bigger, more complex jobs are first able to manage themselves — to handle increased pressure, deal constructively with adversity, and act with dignity and integrity. Secondly, they are able to establish and maintain cooperative working relationships, build a broad network of contacts and form alliances, and be influential and persuasive with a range of different stakeholders. And for senior roles, they have to be able to develop sophisticated political skills — the ability to read an audience, decode the unspoken rules and find solutions that satisfy the often competing interests of key power brokers.
An early indicator of high potential is emotional intelligence, which can be assessed by psychometric tests and further refined through training and development.
— DRIVE
This deeply motivational category is the accelerator that multiplies the potential influence of ability and social skills on future success. Ability and social skill may be considered talent; but potential is talent multiplied by drive, as this will determine how much ability and social skills get put to use.
Drive can be assessed by standardized tests that measure conscientiousness, achievement motivation and ambition. It can also be identified behaviorally, as signaled by how hard an individual works, willingness to take on extra duties and assignments, eagerness for more responsibility and even readiness to sacrifice.
In sum, not many employees are highly able, socially skilled and driven — but if you bet on those who are, which involves evaluating these qualities as accurately as you can, you will end up with a higher proportion of future stars who will contribute disproportionately to the organization.
(Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is the CEO of Hogan Assessments, a professor at University College London and Columbia University and an associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab. Seymour Adler isa professor of industrial/organizational psychology at Hofstra University. Robert B. Kaiser is the president of Kaiser Leadership Solutions.)
