Podcast - High Potentials: How Can You Nurture Them To Grow?

HR.com Live! Podcast with guest Dr. Brandi Maynard on developing high potential employees

Do you have employees who have strong potential in your organization? What are you doing to nurture it?

Recently, I asked one of my closest friends, Dr. Brandi Maynard, about developing high potential employees. I’ve known her for 18 years and we’ve had the opportunity to work together that long ago. She is currently the Senior Manager of Professional Development and Training at K12 Inc. She creates learning experiences that transform leaders through engaging stories and masterful facilitation. I've seen her in action and it's true, she has this really innate ability to create learning experiences that lead to continuous learning and lasting change. Brandi teaches others how to intentionally design interactive learning experiences within their organizations. 

Here are some of the highlights of our discussion:

First of all, Heidi, it's so fun to be here with you and to have walked some of this journey with you is so much fun because it's been intrinsic. It's something that was inside of me and I realized at thirty, I was wanting to get from point A to point B and what was it gonna take to get there. I went and talked to my mentor at the time and I said “Margo, what do I do? I want to do what you do. I want to grow and develop people. I want to speak. I want to present. Tell me what to do.” She said, “Brandi, you either write a book or you get a PhD.” I was on the phone to you within about 24 hours saying “Heidi, let's get our PhD together. It'll be like a girl’s night out. It'll be really fun!” 

It was a little bit harder than that, but having that intellectual friend, that intellectual partner to walk the journey with is so important. It was that intrinsic motivation and finding somebody to take the journey with, those were the two things that I needed to do for myself to get from point A to point B. 

My career started in the classroom with gifted and talented kids and I realized when I got into growing and developing people, these gifted and talented kids basically just grew up and became these hypos-- these high-performance employees. 

They have some of the same characteristics of gifted children just as gifted adults. One thing I found is task commitment; really committing to the task at hand and knowing that they want to get from point A to point B and knowing how to get there. The second one is they have this high social intelligence or emotional intelligence. So they really know how to relate to other people, how to connect with others and build relationships. The third is ability-- that natural ability. I like to think of it as aptitude. So aptitude, appetite, and that whole social component. 

I found that they need five things. The first one is to become their ally. Walk alongside them in the journey and know that they want to get farther to where they want to go. Help them to understand that, be a friend. Form a relationship because it is all about relationships. That’s the first key.

The second key is to be adaptable-- to really differentiate the experience for them, to individualize the experience, and to help them to get to where they need to go in a way that's going to work for them. I like to take a strengths-based approach to that. So figure out what those strengths are and then help them to leverage those strengths.

The third key is to be an architect. Be consistent in the way that you communicate with them. For me, I like to have one-on-one check-in meetings with the high potentials that I work within my company and to make sure that I am consistently meeting with them, so they know what to expect when we have those meetings. I continue to hold them to high expectations and to architect an experience for them that I know is going to be gratifying and help them to get to where they want to go. 

The next one is to be an aggregator. I like to think of it as a human aggregator and when we were going through our program, you have these RSS systems where they would bring in all the articles that you needed to read and everything would be brought to you. I think about this as almost like a human aggregating system where you're bringing in the best print, digital, and human resources to help that person learn and grow. What you need to do as somebody who's sponsoring this person or to help them learn and grow is you need to make sure that you are well-read, that you have the resources at your fingertips, that you're being innovative, and that you're trying new things as well. 

The final thing is to give them agency and not allowing them to be a victim, but let them have enough agency so they can positively move where they want to go and take themselves there.

I think the biggest thing that we can all agree on is that it's that willingness to be transparent and to be vulnerable, because when we’re coming into a relationship with people we have to be vulnerable with them. We have to take the time to build that relationship which is not easy. It takes being brave and it takes effort to maybe even say to a person “I’ve said this to people before. I don’t want this to change our relationship but there's something that I have to talk with you about.” I think that the number one thing that we can do in helping people get to where they need to go is our willingness to be brave but then inviting them into that space as well. We can only do that through trust. So building a relationship of trust where they know that they are safe, they know that they can share things with me, we can be real with one another and I will give them my honest opinion. We all need somebody else that's going to be honest and to be real with us, everybody needs that person. 

I was working with somebody yesterday and coaching and developing him and I said, “What is it that you need?” and he said, “What I need from you is for me to be able to continue to be fully transparent with you and real with you, because I don't have anybody else that I can talk to these things about.” When you're a leader, especially at the executive level, you have to be really careful about the lines that you walk. He just needed a safe space, he wanted to be pushed, he knows that iron sharpens iron, and he just asked for that safe space about transparency, vulnerability, and the ability to do just that. Those are the richest relationships that you're going to have. 

I work in a virtual organization and we're not face-to-face often. One of the ways that I really share with people is to connect with them virtually. I have a few tips and tricks that I want to share because I think we're kind of moving in that direction. 

So the first one is I learned how to set text messages that are on delay delivery. I use it regularly. In one-on-one meetings, if they tell you that they’re going to a wedding this weekend, they're really looking forward to it, I might go in and I might type into my text messenger a message asking them for pictures and then they get that the day of. It builds that virtual presence and that relationship that I want to have with them. It's a great little tool.

The other thing that I've been using lately is a little tip in self-care. It's this app that I have on my phone, it’s called D-A-Y-L-I-O. I like it because when I went to a Marcus Buckingham talk, he was talking about tracking the things in your work that you love and loathe. I thought, “Oh I could track my mood and see where the peaks and the valleys are coming in.” What I'm finding is the time that I spend with my family, the time that I spend on coaching calls or presenting or learning are those peaks. Then the time that I spend putting classes into the LMS are the valleys. So it’s really how you begin to take your work and re-orchestrate it so that you're living in those strength areas more often than the valleys. That's been really helpful to me as well. 

The thing that I'm reading right now is a book called The Free Thinkers Guide to the Real World: Nine Lies About Work. And again, I mentioned earlier that I went to Marcus Buckingham and was listening to him and he was talking a lot about strengths-based leadership, and then he was talking about the lies that we believe as leaders and it's just the way that we think that it is. 

So for one, we think that it's really important, the company that you work for is really important and these authors go in and say no. It's not the company; it's the team that’s important. It makes sense when you think about it. You don't leave a company, you leave a team. Another lie that was in here is that people are well-rounded. If people aren't well-rounded, they tend to be spiky. Then what we need to do in growing, developing and coaching them is to really help them to leverage those strengths, those spike areas that they're doing really well in. This book shows us how to do that and I really like this because I like the free-thinking part of it. It makes you think outside of the box and be more innovative. 

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	Dr. Heidi Scott is the Chief Learning Officer, HR.com
	Dr. Brandi Maynard, Senior Manager of Professional Development and Training, K12 Inc.