Busine and Nigel Phang, Director for Business Solutions at DDI Singapore, recapped learning points presented in the previous bistro such as building your leadership pipeline, and DDI’s business-driven approach to talent management which closely aligns talent strategies to organizational goals. In this second event in the Leadership Bistro Series on Talent Management, they provided an overview of assessing the readiness of today’s leaders for future roles. Critical talent decisions, such as placement or promotion, require robust and objective diagnostic data gathered against the requirements of the target job.

 

Prior to assessing for readiness, it is important to recognize the distinction between potential, performance and readiness. From the last Bistro, almost half of HR leaders surveyed have a process for identifying high potentials. However, anecdotal evidence suggests many organizations do not have consistent criteria to identify high potentials. As a result, leaders often nominate high potentials based on subjective and untested data. More often than not, high potentials are identified based on their current performance, without realizing that different skills, motivations and attributes are required for the next leadership level.

 

“Simply assessing a candidate based on his or her current performance is an inadequate gauge of their suitability for the next level role,” says Busine. “There is a need to be able to distinguish between a candidate’s performance, potential to grow and readiness to take on a leadership role.

 

In considering their pool of high potentials, organizations need to look at leadership potential factors such as receptivity to feedback, adaptability and passion for results.” DDI has identified these factors and helped clients worldwide to ensure they have the right pool of high potentials that will benefit from the accelerated growth and development opportunities. Read more about the factors in an article Finding Future Perfect Senior Leaders. (More reference materials are listed below.)

 

Group activities were also facilitated to allow guests a hands-on experience to work with the concepts discussed. They had the opportunity to 1) review sample profiles of candidates based on strengths and development areas, 2) determine the candidates’ readiness against key business goals, and 3) have initial discussions on possible development initiatives to close the gaps. The engaging discussions revealed common challenges among the HR leaders who attended, such as: using inappropriate tools to identify high potentials, ignoring personality patterns that might derail the candidate, and failing to make clear links between the talent and business plans.

 

Guests were also invited to participate in a poll on which tools are used to assess readiness of future leaders across organizational levels. Across all levels, performance appraisals (38%) and multi-rater or 360-degree surveys (18%) are the most commonly used assessment tools, while cognitive tools (6%) and behavioral assessment centers (7%) were the least used. 

Articles & Publications on Assessing Readiness

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