At Kiddy & Partners, our approach to identifying leadership potential offers a holistic and forward-thinking method that goes beyond traditional performance evaluations.
At its core, our model emphasises that leadership potential is not just about past achievements but about predicting an individual’s future ability to adapt, grow, and excel in more challenging roles. The model is designed to identify those with the highest potential and help them realise it, within the specific context and future needs of the organisation.
The complex nature of potential
Leadership potential is often misunderstood and oversimplified. Many organisations mistakenly equate high performance with high potential, but our research shows that only 30% of high performers are also high potentials. This is because the skills required to succeed in future leadership roles are often different from those that brought success in the past. As the business landscape evolves, what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. Effective leaders must be adaptable, capable of learning from new experiences, and able to apply those learnings to novel challenges.
Individual components of leadership potential
Our Leadership Potential model identifies two key individual components: Foundational Elements and Growth Elements. Together, these represent the personal qualities a leader needs to thrive in more complex and senior roles.
Foundational Elements
These underpin a leader’s current performance and provide a strong base for future development.
- Critical thinking: The ability to think strategically, manage ambiguity, and make sound decisions based on complex information. Effective leaders need to assess situations carefully, draw logical conclusions, and balance decisiveness with reflection. Cognitive skills like problem-solving and strategic insight are essential to handle the challenges of senior leadership roles.
- Personality enablers: Traits such as emotional stability, sociability, conscientiousness, and adaptability are key. These qualities enable leaders to build strong relationships, manage their emotions, and deliver on commitments. While traditionally bold, extroverted traits were valued, we emphasise that qualities like humility, empathy, and integrity are becoming increasingly important for modern leaders.
The role of learning agility and drive
In addition to Foundational Elements, our model highlights two essential Growth Elements that power leadership potential: learning agility and drive.
- Learning agility: This is the ability to quickly learn from new experiences, apply insights, and adapt to novel challenges. Research shows that learning agility is a better predictor of future leadership success than past performance. Leaders who are eager to seek out new experiences and reflect on their learning will develop faster and perform better in senior roles, especially in today’s complex, fast-paced environment.
- Drive: Drive refers to both the motivation to succeed and the ambition to lead. Leadership requires resilience, energy, and commitment to overcome challenges and take on greater responsibilities. However, drive also includes a strong desire to step up into more senior leadership roles. It is essential to distinguish between those who have the skills to lead and those who have both the capability and the ambition to pursue leadership. In some cases, individuals may possess the potential but lack the ambition due to misaligned career goals or work-life balance concerns. Organisations should address these concerns to unlock an individual’s full potential.
Organisational components of leadership potential
Leadership potential is not just about individual qualities. The right organisational environment is critical to unlocking and developing potential. Our model identifies two key organisational components: the learning context and the organisational values and performance climate.
Learning context
Organisations must create environments that allow potential to flourish. Even individuals with strong potential require stretch opportunities – challenging experiences that push them out of their comfort zones. However, stretch alone is not enough; there must also be:
- Support: As challenges increase, learning can diminish without the right scaffolding support. Carefully designed support systems are essential to ensure leaders continue to learn and grow as they take on more demanding roles.
- Feedback and reflection: Regular feedback loops and opportunities for reflection are vital to maximise learning from experiences. In many cases, both managers and employees struggle with giving and receiving feedback. For learning to be effective, leaders need both motivational and developmental feedback in a psychologically safe environment where they can make mistakes and learn from them.
Organisational values and performance climate
A good fit between an individual’s values and the organisation’s culture is essential for unlocking leadership potential.
- Alignment with values: Individuals may have the drive and ambition to lead, but if the organisation’s performance climate or values don’t resonate with them, they may not be motivated to take on leadership roles. For instance, organisations that prioritise long hours over work-life balance may deter leaders who value flexibility. Organisations should ensure that leadership roles align with the values and aspirations of their high-potential talent.
Why our model stands out
What sets our approach apart from other models is our focus on the specific organisational environment and the unique needs of each business. Many traditional models for identifying leadership potential rely on generic assessments of individual traits or past performance. While these may provide a partial view, they often fail to consider the critical role of context in determining leadership potential.
Our model goes beyond simply identifying potential. It recognises that leadership potential is highly context specific. For a leader to succeed, their individual qualities must align with the organisation’s future challenges, culture, and strategic direction. This makes the question “Potential for what?” central to Kiddy & Partners’ model. By linking leadership potential directly to the specific requirements of the organisation, we provide tailored insights that ensure the leaders selected will meet the precise demands of the business, both now and in the future.
Moreover, Kiddy & Partners’ approach leverages independent assessments and contextual analysis to reduce bias and ensure objectivity. This allows organisations to make more informed decisions about succession planning and talent management, compared to other models that may over-rely on subjective judgement or past performance metrics. Our assessments are structured to provide a clear, data-driven understanding of not only who is ready to step up but also how to develop those leaders within the specific context of the organisation’s goals and challenges.
Predicting future success: “Potential for what?” and “Potential for when?”
One of the key elements of our model is that potential must be assessed in relation to future leadership needs. The question “Potential for what?” forces organisations to clearly define the leadership capabilities they will need as their business evolves. This requires a thorough understanding of the internal and external challenges the organisation will face and what it will take for leaders to navigate those challenges effectively. Given the unpredictability of the future, we advocate for scenario planning, preparing for various possible future states and selecting leaders who can thrive across a range of scenarios.
The second key question is “Potential for when?” – an evaluation of when an individual will be ready to step into a more senior role. Organisations must assess not only current capabilities but also an individual’s ability to grow and develop over time. This is where the growth elements – learning agility and drive – become critical, helping to predict how quickly and effectively a leader can develop into a future role.
The pitfalls of overlooking internal talent
One of the biggest risks organisations face is relying too heavily on external hires for leadership roles, rather than promoting from within. External hires are often more costly, take longer to integrate, and may not perform as well as internal successors. Our approach highlights the importance of developing internal talent pipelines by identifying those with leadership potential early and providing them with the right opportunities and support to grow.
Biases in leadership selection can also hinder the identification of potential. Internal candidates are often overlooked due to assumptions about their capability or ambition, or because of biases like “similar-to-me” bias, where decision-makers favour candidates who resemble them. These biases limit diversity and can lead to ineffective succession planning. We make use of structured, independent assessments that helps reduce bias, ensuring more objective and data-driven decisions about leadership potential.
Conclusion: a strategic approach to succession planning
Our approach to measuring and developing leadership potential is designed to address the most pressing challenges in modern talent management. By focusing on future capability rather than past performance, we help organisations build stronger, more resilient leadership pipelines. The emphasis on both individual traits and organisational context ensures that potential is accurately identified and nurtured in alignment with the organisation’s future needs.
In today’s fast-changing business environment, having a well-developed pool of leadership talent is essential. At Kiddy & Partners, our model provides organisations with a strategic, evidence-based approach to succession planning, ensuring that they not only identify the right leaders for tomorrow but also support them in realising their potential.