Why high-potential development works best when it points at a role

High-potential employees rarely walk away from opportunities. They leave when opportunities run out of sight. When a talented person can't see where their growth leads, even good development feels like an activity without direction, and career related reasons are among the leading drivers of turnover.

So, organisations must make the shift: from development being a catalogue of programs, to being the bridge between an employee’s current and aspirational role. That’s the difference between training and development — one sharpens you for today’s job, the other builds you for what comes next.

The best way to build that bridge is to answer the questions your high potentials are already asking whether they say them aloud or not:

Where do I go from here? Name the roles on the horizon. Potential is easier to invest in when the destination is visible.

What will it take? Be specific about the gap. Vague encouragement isn’t a plan; a mapped set of experiences is.

Will I grow, or just get trained? The best growth is experiential – stretch assignments, rotations, exposure to bigger decisions. Roughly 70% of development happens on the job, 20% through others, and 10% in formal settings (SHRM Toolkit for Development Strategy).

How do you see me? When people know they’re viewed as future leaders and why, they lean in.

Does this fit what I care about? SHRM is blunt here: knowing what someone values, and how it links to their development, shapes whether the development works at all. Motivation lives in purpose and potential, not in pay alone.

Turning the questions into a system

Answering these questions well is a good conversation to have. But answering them consistently, for every high-potential, is a framework – and that’s what SHRM’s High Potential Accelerator does. Its seven stages move a person from promise to readiness:

• Identify: Surface real potential by assessing both current performance and future potential, using a tool like the nine-box grid rather than results alone.

• Define & align: Direct investment to the right people by setting clear criteria and getting leaders to agree on who qualifies, and why, upfront.

• Plan: Turn potential into a route with an individual development plan mapped to future business needs and to what the person values.

• Develop: Build capability mostly through real work – stretch assignments, rotations, exposure to senior decisions – backed by coaching and mentoring.

• Engage: Sustain performance and retention with direct motivators: understand each person’s baseline, coach the “why,” and let them own their problems.

• Build the pipeline: Secure readiness by preparing a bench of successors over one to three years, rather than preselecting a single name.

• Measure: Prove it works by tracking mobility, promotions, and retention of high-potentials – movement, not attendance.

Each stage answers one of those unspoken questions, so a private aspiration becomes something the organisation acts on deliberately. That’s when development stops being a periodic push and becomes a built-in habit. This matters even more in the MENA region, where a young workforce and growing national leadership ambitions require organisations to quickly close the gap between “promising” and “ready”. 

 Answer early, and your bench is ready when it matters. When development is tied to a future role, it answers the question every high potential is really asking: Is there a future for me here?