How much do you know about your talent pipeline?

You may think it’s full, rich with a skilled and diverse group of people poised to lead your business into the future. But have you carefully examined how they were chosen? What criteria were used? New best practices? Or are they just your “best people”?

These are the types of questions Rose Patten wants more managers and HR professionals to start asking. Patten is an adjunct professor and executive in residence at the Rotman School of Management and is one of Canada’s best-known leadership experts. She is currently special advisor to the CEO and senior executives at BMO Financial Group, where she focuses on strategy, leadership development and C-suite succession.

She thinks that one of the biggest mistakes organizations make in talent development is equating high performance with high potential for leadership.

“High performance is situational. High potential is not,” she says.

She uses as an example a hypothetical high performer who is rising through the ranks at a company and has been identified as a potential future leader. This person is highly skilled in their role, exceeding their goals and impressing the senior leadership team. But conversations with their team or colleagues reveal the person lacks interpersonal grace and professional decorum. Their decisions are seemingly driven by ego and ambition.

It would be convenient to look past those flaws and keep the person on the leadership track.  But Patten warns ignoring that red flag could be costly. That person may have all the technical skills they need and the desire to lead, but assuming they will develop the soft/people skills to truly excel in a leadership role would be a mistake. And it’s crucial for organizations to have the right leadership to lead new generations of workers, who are bringing new attitudes, expectations and needs. Successful companies need to embrace, rather than overlook these realities, Patten says.

“As leaders, we used to be confused by millennials, and now Generation Z brings even more health/wellbeing issues, confusion and stress than the previous generation,” Patten says. “I worry about this current generation and how best to lead them — it’s very complex.”

Selecting the right people to guide these workers through their careers — and in turn, support the organization with a stable workforce — is essential. But how?

In her 2023 book, International Leadership: The Big 8 Capabilities Setting Leaders Apart, Patten recalls a time when an organization had a 500-strong pool of potential leaders in its pipeline. Yet, when a specific VP position needed to be filled, they discovered no one was qualified to do it. In investigating why there was a gap, Patten and her team found three issues with their talent assessments:

• Poorly defined requirements about what constitutes modern leadership potential;
• Too much emphasis on “in the moment” high performance;
• A halo effect: assessors choosing candidates in their own image.

These flaws, in turn, led to the prioritization of three attributes in candidates: technical skills, capacity for learning and initiative.

Sound familiar? Successful organizations are typically staffed with skilled, intelligent and ambitious individuals. However, Patten argues that the workforce has undergone drastic changes, and today’s leaders require a new set of people /human skills to guide their organizations into the future:

• Motivating others
• Relating to others (empathy)
• Delegating to others
• Inspiring others.

“Years ago, we brought in smart young people to my strategic management office at the bank. I noticed they were always curious about how they were doing and sought constant feedback. I asked a colleague, ‘What’s wrong? No matter how much feedback you give, they’re still on your heels.’ My colleague replied, ‘It’s the generation, Rose. You and we all have to adapt.’ That’s reality, and that’s what’s going on.”    

High performers are easily quantified, their resumes dotted with KPIs crafted to meet role criteria. But identifying high-potential individuals requires a different rubric, using the criteria Patten lists above as a baseline: How have they shown motivational prowess? Do they delegate or keep their cards close? Does their team look up to them? Do their colleagues respect them or merely tolerate them?

The costs of a mismanaged, or worse, empty pipeline are significant. Younger generations are suspicious of change and won’t stick around if they feel their job isn’t working for them. This leads to high turnover, lack of continuity and reputational risk. Patten urges executives to take these changes in the workplace seriously, and pursue new strategies to not only manage them but harness them. 

“This is about not getting positions filled,” she says. “It's about a form of leadership focused on developing talent pipelines. Employees look for an environment which shows interest in their career development and not just the job at hand.”