Speaker 1: I'm Patrick Sweeney, I'm the Executive Vice President of Caliper. Today I'm very pleased to share with you insights and some compelling stories from several experts on identifying and developing high potential employees. I'd like to also mention that all registrants today will receive an email with links to slides and a recording of today's presentation. Now I'd like to introduce our guest speakers. With me today is Eileen Krantz, the Vice President of Organizational Development Services here at Caliper. Eileen has 10 years of experience with counseling and coaching both individuals and teams to help them improve their performance in the workplace. Her principal responsibilities include providing consulting services to companies in the areas of job analysis, selection systems, leadership development, executive coaching, team building, and performance management. Welcome Eileen, thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 2: Thanks for having me Patrick.

Speaker 1: Oh that's great, we're thrilled to have you here. Now later in the presentation I'm also going to be speaking with Joyce McPhetris. Joyce is the Vice President of Human Resources and Organizational Development at Central Maine Medical Family. She'll be discussing with us how Central Maine has been able to identify key performers and prepare them for future leadership. Also we're going to be talking with Dave Lawson, the Vice President of Human Resources at Franciscan Health Systems, along with three individuals who will share stories with us about their participation in the leadership development program that was implemented at Franciscan. And finally we're going to be speaking with Paul Orleman, the Director of Top Talent Management at SAP. He's going to be providing us with some insights into how SAP has been able to identify top talent and develop individuals into future leaders. Now I'd like to move on to what we'll be discussing during today's session. We're going to be going over what does high potential really mean, how do you identify high potential employees, what are some of the ways to develop high potential employees, and how do you set yourself apart as a high potential employee. So let's dive in. Eileen, we're focusing today on developing high potential individuals. And high pose has certainly become a catchphrase in many businesses today. Everybody wants to be a high po. Tell me, Eileen, what from your perspective does high po really mean?

Speaker 2: Well, Patrick, it usually means we're looking at people from our bench who have a high potential to move into managerial and leadership positions. If they're in an individual contributor role, we're looking to move them into supervisory or management positions. If they're in a middle management position, we're looking to move them into senior leadership or even into executive leadership roles. So it's about advancing our most effective and best performers into areas that tap into their highest potential.

Speaker 1: You know, as I hear you talking about that, Eileen, I mean, it's very interesting, but it's also a very complicated notion, because you're talking about high potential, not just the very highest levels of leadership in the organization, but you're talking about high potential through every department, as I understand it.

Speaker 2: Yes, that's correct, Patrick.

Speaker 1: And sometimes people who are in leadership positions inside of that department don't necessarily have the potential to move beyond that. And to further complicate things, we tend to see people in a certain light based on what they're doing as opposed to what they're really capable of doing.

Speaker 2: Well, yeah. I mean, you can have somebody who is very, very good at what they do. For example, you could have an engineer or someone in a technical role who's extremely skilled, extremely proficient. That doesn't necessarily mean they have great potential for managing people or for being a visionary or strategic leader. They're a good engineer. They may be a great engineer, but that doesn't mean that they have what it takes to be a manager or a leader. So their potential for moving into different roles may vary.

Speaker 1: So you have that on one level, as you described, and then you might also have someone who's leading a department right now who might not have the potential to move to the next level.

Speaker 2: That's true. There might be a department leader who's maybe more of an operational manager. They get stuff done. They make sure that the train stays on the tracks. And while they may have people they supervise, what they manage is more of a process than it is a vision or a strategic goal. So moving them up into an executive level position that's more about strategy, that's more about planning, or more about competing in the marketplace, utilizes different skills than not.

Speaker 1: Hmm. Okay. So let's get at that word potential that you keep using. How do you recognize, Eileen, if the leader of this department has the potential to move on, and if someone on their team might have the potential to leapfrog into another position of leadership?

Speaker 2: Well, the process is very much like selecting somebody for a new position. The first step's really defining what that other position or that other level, that next level looks like. You know, sometimes we make assumptions that it's the same job with just a higher salary or a larger span of control, but it's really about looking at what's fundamentally different about the next level, and identifying the skills and competencies that are required to be successful. Then, you know, you can turn to a Caliper consultant who takes an objective view of that individual's potential. You know, we'll use assessment tools such as the Caliper Profile, which allows us to see personality dynamics that drive behaviors, or we'll use 360 assessments to analyze and get feedback on the person's behavior in a variety of situations. Also if a company has their own competency model that aligns the types of competencies and behaviors they look for in leaders across their leadership realm, they can evaluate that person against those competencies. So you're really talking about almost reassessing that person for their fit into this new role or into roles like it.

Speaker 1: Now that's really a huge concept you're describing, Eileen. I'm sure to some companies it's as natural as just turning the page, and to others it's something that they'd like to do, but it just seems too big to get their arms around.

Speaker 2: We can certainly simplify it. You know, by saying, you know, if you're hiring from the outside for a leadership position, if we had to replace our CEO, for example, if this person left tomorrow, if they won the lottery, if they retired, what would we be looking for? How would we define that role? What would that person be expected to do? How would we know they're doing those things? How would we know that they have the knowledge, the skills, the abilities, the personality attributes to be successful in that role? So if we're looking for an external candidate, we would certainly think about those things before we started to look at resumes or interview candidates.

Speaker 1: That's a great way to look at it, Eileen. I want to come back to you in just a little bit, but now what I'd like to do is introduce Joyce McPhetris, the Vice President of Human Resources and Organizational Development at Central Maine Medical Family. Central Maine is an integrated healthcare delivery organization serving Central and Western Maine. It's great to be talking with you, Joyce.

Speaker 3: Yes, and it's so very good to be talking with you, Patrick.

Speaker 1: Central Maine has an incredible commitment to identifying and developing people.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker 1: That's got to be very refreshing for you.

Speaker 3: It is. It's extremely exciting, and this is a very exciting time here in our history as we move forward into becoming a more integrative delivery system.

Speaker 1: Tell me, if you would, about some of the employee development programs that you've been implementing.

Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that Caliper has worked with us on is identifying first competencies within the organization that are critical to success here. We looked at the executive competencies and then the competencies of our managers, and through focus groups and work with Caliper, we were able to identify the competencies that are most important to this organization. We now have integrated those into our performance management program. At the same time, through the identification of the competencies and then Calipers on each of our managers, we've identified an accelerated development pool, a group of nine people who we're developing as future leaders of this organization.

Speaker 1: Take me back just for a minute, Joyce. When you talk about competencies, I know a lot of people have a different understanding of that word. What does competencies mean in your world?

Speaker 3: Well, what is leadership? What does it look like? What is financial acumen? What does it look like? How do we engender the right type of communication? Those are the types of things that Caliper helped us define in meeting with managers and focus groups throughout the organization. We then were able to further refine those competencies into our performance management system.

Speaker 1: Then, from there, you did some executive coaching.

Speaker 3: Yes. Actually, one of the first things that we did was to provide a coaching class to all of our executives. As a part of that, we did a 360 tool with our executives and then a follow-up of at least three coaching sessions with Caliper experts. Each of us at the executive level had an opportunity to understand how do our peers, those who report to us, and those who manage us think about us in a 360 evaluation. We had some opportunity for a review of that with Caliper coaches. We then had a class which introduced us to coaching and then had follow-up coaching sessions based on our own 360s and our Calipers.

Speaker 1: All of you simultaneously, for the first time, I guess if I'm hearing correctly, looking at yourselves as leaders, being evaluated from every angle, up, down, sideways, what was that like for you as an individual as well as for the other members of this executive

Speaker 3: team? Well, for me as an individual, it was very important because it was only six months or five months into my time here, so it allowed me to take a look at who I was in the eyes of others being a brand new person and to have some coaching around not only that, but helping me through some very important work that I was doing in my role. For others, I think the response varied, to be honest. I think some people saw this as an opportunity to really develop self, to take back information they've learned to the people who report to them, to their peers, to talk about that and to talk about how they could develop and use their coaches to that end. I think others may have seen it as less of an opportunity, but I think that's true. We all know coaching oftentimes, it has to be something that the individual initiates as well as having the opportunity to have it come to them.

Speaker 1: Right. Even so, some people afterwards, they dive into it and some stay away.

Speaker 3: It's a part of the human condition, isn't it? I think sometimes individuals are differing depending upon the situation they find themselves in, whether they feel that it's a safe situation, whether they feel that growth is a part of their responsibility as a leader. I think that probably is one of the biggest distinguishing pieces.

Speaker 1: Tell me about the coaching. Now, at first, all of you were taught some basic principles of coaching, if I heard you

Speaker 3: right.

Speaker 1: Yes, correct. What were some of those and then how did the individual coaching go from there?

Speaker 3: Essentially, the coaching class, I thought, was an excellent way in which to introduce the group to the concept of coaching more broadly and the concept of all people having their strengths and opportunities, all people having places of perspective that are different and must be considered when taking in the entire employee. We have a group of nine people who are identified as Acceleration Development Pool. For the first time in the history of this organization, these people were held up as the type of leader that this organization supported and wanted to ensure was honored in this organization. As a result of that, they engaged in a four-month action learning project with Caliper. There are three projects that came of that action learning project and all three are still ongoing.

Speaker 1: Now, I'm most interested in learning how these nine individuals were selected, but before we get to that choice, explain for some of our listeners who might not be familiar with this phrase, action learning, what this process is and what these programs were that were being unveiled.

Speaker 3: Action learning is an opportunity for people within an organization to come together to deal with a real issue and there are many components of it. Often it involves a coach, it involves a facilitator, and it involves a real-life issue that needs to be looked at, assessed, analyzed, and then action decided upon as a result of all of that other work. This group of people came together. They were given the project, which was to increase market share, and they did multiple sessions of in-person interaction where they dealt with the questions, they Q-stormed, they determined some of the real questions, they created project teams, and then virtual learning opportunities where between live sessions and live interactions, they were able to be interacting with one another, interacting with people within this organization, people outside of the organization, and with Caliper coaches who helped facilitate some of the work in the virtual arena.