The High Potential's Advantage ─ Get Noticed, Impress Your Bosses, and Become a Top Leader

Being seen as a high potential leader is essential to getting promoted and reaching an organization’s upper echelons, but most companies keep their top talent list a closely guarded secret. And the assessment process they use to decide who is and isn’t a future leader is an even greater mystery.

The High Potential’s Advantage takes readers “behind the scenes” and shows them how to get on, and stay on, their company’s fast track. Leadership development experts Jay Conger and Allan Church draw upon decades of their research and experience—designing high potential programs for hundreds of large well-known global organizations, and managing and coaching thousands of developing leaders—to answer the critical questions asked by ambitious employees and managers: What will it take for me to advance in this organization? What does my boss look for when deciding whether or not I’m a high potential? Once I’m on the list, then what? Can I fall off of it, and how does that happen?

Revealing a set of key differentiators—the five “X factors”—that set people apart across companies of all types, readers learn what they have to do to achieve and maintain the coveted top talent status. Packed with examples of high potential leaders—from those on the verge of their first promotion to those only a step away from the C-suite—the authors provide detailed advice for cultivating and practicing each “X factor.” In addition, the authors show readers how to identify their company’s “signature factors”—those special capabilities particular to their organization—and how to gain insight into, and excel at, the specific process their company uses to identify and develop high potentials.

Jay A. Conger is an expert in leadership development and the author of fourteen books and more than a hundred articles on leadership skills and development, talent management, and leading change. He is professor at Claremont McKenna College and faculty chairman of its Kravis Leadership Institute. He has consulted for and designed leadership development programs for over four hundred organizations and has coached several thousand high potential executives and managers. He delivers over 50 speeches a year on leadership topics to executive and management audiences. He was chosen by Business Week and the Financial Times as one of the world’s top management educators.

Allan H. Church is a leading practitioner in talent management and organization development. He is the Senior Vice President of global talent assessment and development for PepsiCo. He is responsible for setting the enterprise level talent strategy for high-potential identification and development throughout all levels of the organization, from entry level to C-suite. He is the author of over 150 articles and over 35 book chapters spanning leadership research, theory, and practice. He serves on the Boards of SHRM’s Human Resource People and Strategy and the Conference Board’s Council of Talent Management Executives, and is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Author social media/website info:
Jay A. Conger: kravisleadershipinstitute.org/people/jay-a-conger/; cmc.edu/academic/faculty/profile/jay-conger; ceo.usc.edu/research-scientists/conger/
Allan H. Church: hrps.org/?page=AllanChurch; pepsico.com/