How to Identify High Potential Employees

If your organisation is navigating complex markets and shifting workforce expectations, identifying high potential employees early on in their career is a strategic move that can shape your leadership pipelines, protect institutional knowledge, and ultimately drive long-term business performance.

In this guide, we’ll explore the specific behaviours and traits that indicate an employee’s high potential to progress or evolve into leadership, show how tools like the HPTI can help you to assess them objectively, and outline how to use this knowledge within your business to create a targeted leadership development program.

Whether you're running talent reviews in a global IT firm or mapping succession plans in a professional services business, this article gives you the structure, tools, and next steps you need to make identifying high potential employees a part of your long-term talent strategy.

Key Takeaways: How to Identify High Potential Employees

Being able to identify high potential employees is most valuable when it’s based on structured, evidence-based information, and followed up by action.

• Potential and performance are not the same - High-potential employees bring adaptability, curiosity, and leadership traits, not just in-situ results.
• Assessment adds clarity - Tools like the HPTI help remove bias and give structure to your succession planning.
• Look for behavioural signals - Strategic thinking, learning agility, and influence all show up long before the job opportunity does.
• Development must follow - Identification is just the start; design stretch experiences that build on real strengths and address gaps.
• Link to business outcomes - Retention, promotion speed, and leadership bench strength are all measurable and improvable with the right approach.

Why Identifying High Potential Matters

In competitive industries, leadership gaps create business risk. Identifying high potential employees early gives you the ability to plan ahead, build resilient teams, and future-proof your talent strategy.

High-potential individuals often take on more than their title suggests. They drive decisions, lead informally, and challenge the status quo in ways that add real value. But these individuals aren’t always the top performers on paper, and without structured identification, they’re often overlooked, or worse, lost to competitors.

Organisations that treat potential as a strategic asset see the difference in leadership continuity, innovation, and culture, especially in sectors like professional services, IT, and enterprise HR, where knowledge transfer and client relationships compound over time.

Distinguishing High Potential vs High Performance

High performance reflects what someone delivers today, whilst high potential signals what they’re capable of delivering tomorrow.

The distinction is essential, as high performers typically succeed in their current roles through reliability, expertise, and consistent execution which are not necessarily the skills you should be looking for in a strong leader. High potentials, on the other hand, show performance indicators like adapting quickly to new responsibilities, and thinking beyond their current scope.

In practical terms, a high performer might consistently meet targets in their role, where a high-potential employee will question the target itself and propose a better approach to drive their team’s performance.

Using tools like the High Potential Trait Indicator (HPTI), you can separate performance from potential with data rather than guesswork.

The Business Case: Retention, Leadership Pipeline, Future-Readiness

According to the DDI 2023 Global Leadership Forecast, 33% of HR respondents said there will be a significant increase in the need to develop internal talent as a result of a tight labor market. 54% of companies saw turnover increase in the previous year, and ineffective leadership made leaders 3.5× more likely to want to leave their role within a year.

Identifying and nurturing high potential leaders within your business directly improves succession coverage for critical roles, talent retention, and innovation.

The report also found that companies with strong leadership benches have 22% more women leaders and 36% greater leadership background diversity than companies with weak benches, showing how essential it is to remove bias from your leadership planning.

These outcomes require a structured approach that connects early signals of potential to formal talent reviews, targeted stretch assignments, and collaborative approaches to leadership development.

Key Signals That an Employee is High Potential

High potential often shows up in the way someone thinks, engages with complexity, or contributes to the company beyond their remit. The following traits are strong indicators of high potential in a professional setting.

Strategic Mindset and Business Acumen

High-potential employees look beyond their role to see how their work connects to wider organisational goals. They show an interest in commercial outcomes and are comfortable operating at a systems level, not just within their function. You’ll notice they ask thoughtful questions about why things are done a certain way, or suggest new approaches grounded in measurable outcomes.

Learning Agility and Adaptability

People with high potential typically absorb new information quickly and apply it across contexts. They adapt to change without losing momentum and respond constructively when things shift unexpectedly. In assessment terms, this often maps to HPTI traits like adjustment and ambiguity acceptance, both of which are critical for succession in fast-paced, evolving environments.

Leadership Influence and Stakeholder Engagement

High potentials often lead informally, mentoring peers, advocating for new ideas, or resolving conflicting opinions with empathy and precision; it's not always about being the loudest voice in the room. These behaviours reflect strong interpersonal awareness and judgement, which underpin effective leadership performance.

Growth Orientation and Self-Development

Another strong indicator of high potential is how someone manages their own development. High-potential individuals seek feedback, act on it, and self-initiate growth, and they’re often the ones asking for stretch opportunities or cross-functional exposure in performance reviews, not just promotions. 

Collaborative and Inclusive Leadership

If an individual consistently models inclusive behaviours, such as facilitating diverse input, building trust across functions, and improving teamwork, these are strong leadership signals. Especially in distributed or hybrid teams, this behaviour accelerates cohesion both within teams and cross-functionally, ultimately leading to stronger results.

Proven Results + Potential for Stretch Assignments

Finally, an individual’s track record still matters. Ultimately, being high potential means that someone delivers, as well as showing readiness for more. Look for people who not only perform, but take on unfamiliar projects, solve problems in new areas, or step up during transition periods. These moments provide evidence that potential is turning into capability, and that the individual is ready for structured development.

Tools & Methods to Identify High Potential

Observation alone isn’t enough to reliably identify high-potential talent, especially in large, distributed, or cross-functional teams. Structured tools help validate signals, reduce bias, and ensure consistency across your organisation’s talent strategy. Here are the most effective methods used by mid-to-large enterprises to assess potential with clarity and rigour.

Assessment Centres and Psychometrics

Assessment centres simulate leadership challenges in a controlled environment. When paired with psychometric tools like the High Potential Trait Indicator (HPTI), they offer a comprehensive view of both an individual’s behavioural tendencies and personality traits under pressure.

The HPTI measures six traits that are linked to long-term leadership success, including conscientiousness, adjustment, and curiosity. These insights help you to understand why someone shows high potential, not just how they behave in a specific scenario. This approach is especially useful when selecting candidates for executive development programs or fast-track pipelines.

Performance + Potential Matrices (9-Box)

The 9-box grid is a widely used visual tool for mapping talent across two axes: an individual's current performance and future potential.

Used well, it can spark meaningful dialogue during talent reviews, especially when it’s supported by consistent assessment data. However, it’s critical that placement isn’t based purely on a manager’s opinion of someone. Instead, using HPTI data within this approach leads to more objective and inclusive decision-making.

Talent Reviews and Leadership Feedback Loops

Regular talent review sessions are a key forum for surfacing high-potential talent and interest across business units. These sessions are most effective when supported by clear criteria, common language, and structured data. Incorporate 360° feedback, manager input, peer insights, and behavioural indicators to help you get a fuller picture of who’s ready for stretch and why.

Real-World Stretch Assignments and Mobility Data

Sometimes the clearest signal of high potential comes from how someone performs in unfamiliar territory. Track participation and outcomes from temporary assignments, cross-functional roles, or leadership during periods of change. These experiences test an individual’s learning agility, ambiguity acceptance, and influence, all of which are critical for modern leadership.

Mobility data (both internal moves and external promotions) also provides insight into how potential converts into career progression. High potentials typically move more often, take on broader scopes, and succeed faster in stretch roles.

Data-Driven Dashboards and Predictive Indicators

Dashboards that integrate assessments, performance data, engagement scores, and mobility trends help to visualise your leadership bench strength across departments or geographies.

Predictive indicators, such as HPTI trait scores, flight risk models, or succession readiness indexes, allow you to proactively plan and tailor your development track at scale. This is particularly useful for HR leaders in larger organisations who are managing multi-site talent pipelines and high internal mobility.

What to Do After You’ve Identified High Potential

Once you know who your future leaders are, the next step is building the pathways that turn that potential into performance with measurable impact. The following steps show how you can create structured development around your newfound knowledge about high potential in your organisation.

Design a High-Potential Program

Start by creating a development track tailored to your high-potential cohort. This doesn’t need to be an entirely separate experience, but it should offer increased stretch, exposure, and support.

Effective programs include:

• Blended learning (virtual, in-person, self-paced)
• Coaching based on individual HPTI profiles
• Action learning projects tied to business priorities
• Executive visibility and sponsorship

A strong program design should also reflect the core traits your future leaders need. If you’ve used the HPTI to identify talent, you can map development activities directly to the traits covered, such as adaptability, curiosity, and influence. See our guide to the 6 Traits of High Potential Leaders for more about these traits and how to design a high potential leadership program.

Build in opportunities for peer learning and a collaborative approach to development that mirrors how leadership works in practice.

Link Development to Business Outcomes

Tie your program to specific business metrics. This may include:

• Increased succession coverage in key roles
• Reduced time to readiness for leadership transitions
• Higher retention rates among identified talent
• Improved team or function performance

Aligning your development track to your organisational needs strengthens buy-in from line managers and executive sponsors, who need to see leadership development as a contributor to commercial results, not just a learning initiative.

Make use of HPTI data here too. Tracking changes in trait expression, engagement scores, or behavioural feedback over time can help you to demonstrate how your program is shaping leadership capability.

Monitor, Measure and Evolve the Talent Pipeline

Leadership potential isn’t static. Reassess your high-potential population periodically, especially after major organisational changes, mergers, or restructures. Over time, your program should become more than a once-a-year cohort. It should be a continuous cycle of identifying, developing, and retaining leadership talent with clear links to strategy, performance and future growth.

How to Choose a Partner to Help You

Designing and running a high-potential program takes more than good intentions. It requires tools, insight, and infrastructure that align your development program with your business strategy. That’s why many HR and talent leaders choose to partner with specialists who can help them move faster, scale effectively, and demonstrate measurable impact.

Criteria: Proven Tools, Business Impact, Customization

When evaluating potential partners, look for three key strengths:

Proven assessment tools - A credible partner should offer validated psychometrics like the HPTI to objectively assess traits linked to leadership potential, to ensure you’re investing based on actual leadership capacity.

Demonstrated business outcomes - Ask for case studies that go beyond participation rates. Look for evidence of increased internal promotions, improved engagement, or reductions in leadership turnover.

Customization and cultural alignment - Choose a provider that can tailor learning journeys to reflect your leadership model, culture, and language. Programs should be relevant across departments and scalable across geographies, especially for mid-to-large US-based organisations.

Why Thomas is Well-Placed

At Thomas, we work with organisations to identify, develop, and retain their leadership talent using science-backed assessments and tailored development programs.

Our High Potential Trait Indicator (HPTI) gives you early insight into who’s ready for more, backed by data, not assumptions. From assessment through to design and delivery, we help you turn talent signals into real business impact.

Contact us to learn more.

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