202. Identifying and Nurturing High-Potential Talent with Mick Spiers

Can charisma really overshadow true leadership potential? 

In our latest episode, we tackle this compelling question with insights from Andrew Barry of Curious Lion. You’ll uncover the often-missed potential of introverted leaders and learn to distinguish genuine leadership skills from mere charm. We dive into practical tools like the nine-box grid to evaluate talent, and emphasize key leadership attributes such as accountability, humility, and a growth mindset. This conversation will equip you with the knowledge to identify and nurture high potential talent within your organization, ensuring a robust future leadership pipeline.

Reflecting on a whirlwind week, Mick Spiers shares the highlights and hurdles of presenting at the Systems Engineering Society of Australia's SETI conference in Melbourne. He talks on ethical innovation struck a chord with the audience, but it also reminded me of the importance of balancing professional commitments with self-care. 

Alongside these reflections, he expresses heartfelt gratitude to my incredible team whose efforts make The Leadership Project possible. 

Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for weekly insights and follow us on social media for the latest updates and behind-the-scenes content.

Chapters

• 0:01 Identifying High Potential Talent
• 14:30 Weekly Reflections and Future Plans
• 21:05 Appreciation for Team on Leadership Project

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

Are we confusing charisma with leadership skills? Are extroverts overly represented leadership and introverts overlooked? How do we identify and nurture our high potential talent in an organization? Many organizations invest money and time in developing the next generation, but it can be a hit and miss affair. In today's episode, I reflect on my conversation with Andrew Barry of curious lion about how we can best identify high potentials and what we can do to give them the best opportunity to shine earlier this week in episode 201, I was joined by Andrew Barry of curious line. We had a deep conversation about how we identify and develop high potential talent in organizations, and he introduced us into some really interesting terms, such as, What is a Cassandra and what is adaptive intelligence. In today's episode, I'm going to share my reflections of what I took away from that conversation and what I see in the world around the development of high potentials. One of the key techniques that Andrea and I discussed was the concept of a nine box grid. And many organizations use these they have two dimensions and nine boxes in a three by three grid, with performance being on one, access and potential being on the other. The Performance part is normally relatively obvious on how you measure what outcomes are they achieving, and also, what are their behaviors? Identifying potential is far more difficult. How do we decide which people in our organization are the high potentials? The first question you can ask is, do you see them moving at least two levels above where they are today? If we are going to invest a lot of time in them, where do we see them going? And to do that in a way that doesn't completely constrain them, you may be looking at things like lateral moves, diagonal moves. It's not just a vertical Do you see them taking their boss's job or their boss's boss's job? Where do you see them fitting into the future of the organization? And are they the one that we want to invest a lot of time, money and effort in? The first mistake I see many people make is to confuse charisma with leadership. There are many leaders in the world that were charismatic, but that doesn't mean that charisma is synonymous with leadership. This leads to extroverts getting more favorable attention and introverts often getting overlooked. But here is the challenge, what are some of the attributes that we look for in leaders, people that deeply listen, people that make people feel seen and heard, people that are able to process and make considered responses instead of spontaneous reactions. Great leaders are often great coaches that bring out the best in others. Instead of drawing the light onto themselves, they create an environment where people can do their very best work. Many of these traits I've just described are the very same strengths of introverts. So the key first step is to really think about what are the attributes of future leaders that you're looking for in your organization, to park any bias towards extraversion at the door and consider deeply. What are you really looking for here? Let's talk about some key things to look for when we are trying to assess potential. The first one, are their behaviors consistent and congruent with the values of the organization and the culture you are trying to build? Do they take accountability for their actions. Do they show humility, or do they think that they have all the answers? Do they pretend that they have all the answers, or are they the type of person that if they don't know the answer, they'll admit that they don't know the answer and then go and find that answer? Do they have integrity? Do they demonstrate that they will always do the right thing regardless of the situation. Do they have a creator mindset or a victim mindset? Quite often, our most vocal people in the organization that get attention are people that have a victim mindset. To be clear, we want people to be able to speak up and say what they see is wrong in the organization, but we want people that have a creative mindset that work out well, what are we going to do about it? Do they have a fixed mindset, or do they have a growth mindset? A fixed mindset person is going to assume that they either can do something, they're either good at it, or they're not. Call it, whereas a growth mindset person is always going to back themselves to learn how to do something new. How quickly do they learn? Are they adaptive? Do they have critical thinking skills? Are they able to solve problems in a group environment? Are they able to solve complex problems? How well do they work with other human beings? The funny thing in I'm going to say every job I've ever had is the technology part has always been solvable. Every job I've had has been a technology related role, and there's no limit to what we can do with technology. We can solve almost any problem. We can't break the laws of physics, but we can solve nearly every problem with technology. But it's the people that are far more complex than a spreadsheet or any tool or technique that you're using. So it's the people that are able to work well with other human beings, and I'm talking about someone that can work with almost anyone that's the person that we're looking for here. Do they truly listen to and respect those around them? Do they co create? Do they collaborate with their team members to develop something that is greater than the sum of its parts? Another aspect to look at is whether they demonstrate capacity across what we call the three dimensions of leadership, which are leading self, leading others and leading the business. Leading self means that they're highly self motivated. They are good at their own time management. They're good at prioritizing their own work. They get things done, they meet deadlines. They're able to motivate themselves. They're resilient. They can push through even when things are not going perfectly to plan. Do they demonstrate a capacity to lead others? Are they influential? Do other people look at them for guidance, whether they're in a leadership position today or not. Do they have a level of influence and persuasion of those around them? Do they care about others? As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. So does this person show care for other human beings, do they show a capacity to lead the business? Do they have business acumen and to understand the different levers within a business that keep the doors open and keep the organization going forward? So business acumen and understanding of the nature of the business, the levers of the business, and how different actions can have an impact on the success of the business. The next challenge I want you to consider in your organization is whether you also have a what I'll call a technical leadership stream. I've been talking a lot about the attributes of a people leader. We also need people in our organization that may go on a completely different stream, a technical stream around deep knowledge of their craft. I'm talking about here, people that may never take on a people leadership responsibility. In fact, they may not enjoy people leadership at all, but they become the deep technical expert in their field, whether that's in nursing, in accounting, in engineering, whatever the case may be, these are the kinds of people that do go on to change the world. They develop new innovations, new inventions. They develop patterns. They make a lasting impact on the world, but they also create future revenue streams for the business. So we mustn't forget to look after our technical leadership stream, which is a different set of attributes that we're looking for here. Have a critical look at your organizational structure. You might be in a situation where people feel that the only way to get promoted, recognized and to get salary increases is to take on a people leadership role that they never wanted in the first place. When you have a highly technical person that feels that they get thrust into a people leadership role, you end up in a double whammy, particularly if they don't want to be a people leader. I'm going to use software engineering as my example here. When you promote your very best software engineer, because you think, Oh, they're obviously going to be the best leader, you end up losing your very best software engineer, and you end up with a team that have got a poor manager who doesn't even want to be there. So make sure that you also have a technical leadership high potential path for people. The next challenge is to make sure that our high potential people feel seen. There is one thing for sure, if someone. Feels that they've got more to give, and they're not getting the opportunity to give their full potential, they will start looking elsewhere. So we need to make sure that our high potentials do feel seen and do feel valued. Andrew Barry brought up the concept of what is a Cassandra. Cassandra being a Greek goddess who was cursed by Apollo with the ability to be able to foresee the future, but with the burden that no one would listen to her. Do you have people in the organization that feel like that? They feel like they are able to see all of the elements of the business. What needs to happen for the future of the team, the organization and the business, but no one sees them and no one hears them. So we need to be able to show people that we do see them, that we believe in them, and that we're going to invest in them. This is a very important part of the process, or you will soon find that your high potential people start exiting stage door left. The next challenge is, how do we invest in them? And what we need to embrace here is the 70, 20, 10 rule, the way people learn and grow is through experiential learning, our investment in their development needs to be 70% around giving them opportunities to try something new, the opportunity to learn and grow. People learn far more by doing than they do by anything that they might be taught in school, the 20% would be coaching and mentoring, putting them together with someone, where they have a conversation about their growth. And the 10% might be the formal part, the formal skills training, the part where they might go on a development course. So think about how are you going to give people the opportunities to learn and grow, to stretch their legs, to get out of their comfort zone? How you're going to give them the opportunity to have conversations with other people about their growth, to support their learning and yes, complement that with the formal training programs This all needs to be wrapped around with a what I call a development conversation. One of the mistakes I see many organizations make is that this talent development, it's a once a year activity. You get around and you talk about succession planning and who are the talent and what are we going to do, etc, and then you forget about it until one year later. Learning and growth needs to be a very frequent activity, having development conversations every month, every week, even for some people, to sit down and talk about their growth. What's working, what's not working, what will they do differently? Where are the next opportunities for them to learn and grow a consistent conversation. This allows them all kinds of things. It allows them to do little course corrections. So if they're going a little bit off track, it can also be a performance conversation about bringing them back on course. So turn your once a year performance dialog into a development conversation that happens at least once a month. Okay, so there you have it, my reflections on how we identify our high potentials making sure that we're not missing the hidden treasures in our organization, that we're not confusing charisma with leadership, that we're giving the best opportunity for everyone in the organization, extroverts and introverts. Once we identify that talent, make sure that they feel seen, make sure that they feel heard, make sure that they feel valued, or they going to find somewhere else that does value them, and then invest. Invest, and it doesn't always have to be sending them on some glorious course. Investing in them is giving them opportunities to learn and grow the 70, 20, 10, all backed up by a consistent and frequent development conversation. Okay, so now we move on to my weekly leadership reflections. For those that are new to the show, I've been practicing a daily reflection routine every day for the past 11 years. I asked myself the same five questions, what went well today? What didn't go well? What would I do differently next time? What did I learn about myself and what did I learn about others? I share with you at the end of these solo cast episodes, some reflections from the week. So what went well this week? Okay, I was greatly honored to be invited by the Systems Engineering Society of Australia to speak at their SETI conference in in Melbourne this week. I was absolutely delighted with how the presentation went and how the audience engaged with what I was trying to share with them. It was a presentation about looking at innovation through an ethical lens. Systems engineers were all trained to think about the art of the possible, and what I wanted people to do was stop and think and reflect on making sure that we're also asking the question, What have I just made possible? So making sure that we're thinking about the unintended consequences of our new innovation, our new system, our new technology. And I have to say, It resonated really well with the audience. The reflection here is, why do I think the presentation went well? Well, I really took the time to understand the audience, to understand the content, and to really practice what I was going to share with them. I intentionally put into practice the things that I teach other people, about presentation skills, about having clarity of message, about congruence of my body language, my imagery on the slides, which had very few texts on the slides, it was just pictures about using intentional pauses to emphasize the key parts of my speech, to engage the audience, to ask them some rhetorical questions. So they felt that they were part of the journey to use storytelling, relatable storytelling, stories that would resonate with everyone in the room, to bring home the message of what I was trying to share with them. So I was very proud. I was very proud of how it went, and I'm going to reflect into future ones. is part of learning what went well and why did it go well, so that the next time I get the honor of speaking at a conference, I take some of those positives from this week's presentation into my next opportunity. What didn't go well this week? Well, I have to stick up my hand here. I have not managed my energy as well this week. I over committed. I tried to do too much, and I'm feeling quite tired right now. It was a lesson to think about, what would I do differently next time? More self care to remember that I need time to rest and digest. Not just run at 100 miles an hour every day, I perform better when I invest in my rest, my relaxation time to myself at different times, family time to spend time playing with Thomas. I'm going to say Thomas has probably missed me this week. I've been working too long hours. I've been too committed. I've been too over committed. So what will I do differently next time? Better prioritization of my time. I then perform better when I am rested. So it is like an investment. You don't have to run at 100 miles an hour every single day. Think about it like an Olympic athlete. An Olympic athlete does not train at 100% capacity. Every day, they prioritize their rest, because they realize those moments are what allows them to rest and recover. So next time they go out onto the field, they're going to perform at their very best. What did I learn about myself? I do need to take that time. I do need to have some time, some clear time where it's just me thinking, no clutter, no distractions. That's what brings clarity in my life, that my family is really important to me, and that I've really missed Thomas this week, he's missed me and I've and I've missed him, spending that time playing with his toys and watching the joy of the curiosity in his mind and the way that he makes up stories as he plays with his toys. What did I learn about others? I have seen a few situations this week where people are not truly listening to each other. They're waiting for their turn to talk. They're making assumptions about what the other person is saying, instead of stopping and really getting curious about what is this person trying to tell me right now, I felt the need a couple of times to try to help with that, to try to get two people that are speaking the same language to truly understand each other. So there's a lesson in this for all of us, when we're in a conversation, are we focusing our entire time of what we are trying to express and not spending the time to try to. Understand what the other person is trying to say. Okay, so there you have it for this week, Episode 202 of The Leadership Project. In the next episode, I'll be joined by Adele Gambardella and Chip Massey. Adele is an expert in crisis communications, and chip is an ex FBI hostage negotiator, and we're going to be celebrating their book convince me all about influence and persuasion. If you're getting great value from our content, we would love it. If you would share a rating and review on Apple podcast or your preferred podcast service, you can also subscribe to The Leadership Project, YouTube channel, where we bring you weekly videos, video podcasts and live stream shows. We would also love it. If you subscribe to our newsletter, we bring you weekly insights from the world of leadership, both things from the show and also things that we see in the wide world of leadership. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo And my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.