Living in the COVID-19 World ... and Beyond #21: Am I Still High Potential?

Many corporations evaluate their personnel relative to both performance and potential.   We are almost all familiar with performance evaluation, getting feedback about what we have done well and could do better at our jobs.    Evaluation of potential is about whether someone could do other jobs in the organization and particularly higher-level jobs.  Companies use evaluation of potential to differentiate investment in staff … offering more development opportunities (training, coaching, mentoring, etc.) to staff members who are deemed to have more potential or, in the vernacular of my field, deemed to be high potential.

When I joined GE one of my early mentors was a senior executive named Bob.   I liked and respected Bob.   He had already had a long career at GE.   He had been a change agent within the leadership and organization development areas in which I was interested.   And to some extent, he saw me as a kindred spirit and took me under his wing and helped me learn how to navigate, lead change, and be successful working at a company like GE.  

About 6 years into my GE career, Bob chose to retire.  The company hosted a retirement party for Bob and although I was now working in a different city, I was able to go back to where I worked with Bob and attend his retirement party.   As was typical at these events, people gave short speeches.  They were often appreciative and humorous, and then the retiree was able to have the last word and speak to the assembled.   Bob’s retirement party played out in that same fashion.  And I remember the 1st thing Bob said when he took the microphone: “Does this mean that I’m no longer high potential?”

Bob had always been rated as high potential throughout his career and he had advanced to a senior executive level at GE.   Now he was retiring.  He was clearly no longer high potential.   But in his mind, he was still struggling with embracing this new reality within the language and definitions used at GE.

I’m 66 years old.   I no longer work in a big organization, and I’m no longer evaluated on my performance nor my potential.   And I want to keep learning and growing, challenging myself, and taking on new things.   Am I still high potential in the true meaning of the concept?  It’s not that I can obtain a higher position.  I don’t expect that to happen anymore.   But I still have the capability of learning new things, I still have the capacity for tackling new challenges, and I still want to grow.   And now my growth is not limited to just my professional career.  My career is part of it for sure.   But I also want to grow in the myriad of other activities in which I’m engaged, specifically the peer counseling work that I have been doing for over forty years and in the local activism that I have been doing to end racism and to help address the climate emergency.  I have a lot more that I want to do, and I believe that I have a lot of potential to move things forward.   So, in my own definition of such things, I’m still high potential.

Are you still high potential too?