From HiPo new employee to rock star producer

Posted 04 November 2021 by
Melissa Summer, The Myers-Briggs Company

Each and every member of your team is a living, breathing, feeling individual as well as a vital component of your business. In fact, human resources training rightly reinforces that your employees are your business. Without them, your company is an empty shell.

But some team members stand out, don’t they?

Some learn more quickly than others and thrive in the fast-paced environment your organization offers. They not only naturally rise above the rank and file, they influence others to excel and succeed as well.

Develop their potential, and they’ll become the future leaders of your company.

These people consistently overcome challenging circumstances to produce peerless results. These are your high-potential employees.

Also known as “HiPos,” these relatively rare and talented individuals, if effectively nurtured to reach their highest potential, can lead an organization to world-class greatness.

But how do you ensure that your company develops a reliable system for identifying HiPo employees as they progress through the professional life cycle?

Human Resources Training is a Solvable Puzzle

Human resources training is advanced work. Getting it right requires matching qualified candidates with positions they’re equipped to perform in, and guiding them into a work environment that fulfils their professional desires.

Inspired human resources training reaches beyond hiring and assigning employees, it focuses on a program of continued professional development throughout the talent management life cycle.

When your organization achieves this level of human resources training and management, you’ll be killing two birds with one stone. You’ll not only be hiring the right people for the right jobs, you’ll also be placing candidates into positions that fulfil their professional desires into the foreseeable future.

In other words, you’ll give your new hires a job they love, and along the way show them that their ambitions for future professional development and career advancement can be met within your company.

After all, it’s a lot more expensive in terms of both time and treasure to hire, onboard, and train new employees than to retain key and essential HiPo veterans from recruitment to retirement. Creating and nurturing a positive organizational culture gives your company a decisive and sustainable advantage.

Know Thyself

These all sound like great concepts, but how does human resources training attack the challenge of identifying and developing HiPo employees and meeting their needs, as well as taking good care of valuable team members who choose to spend a lifelong career in the same position?

Let’s talk about self-awareness and why it’s so important. The short answer is that employee self-awareness is the foundation of effective human resources training.

Inversely, employees who lack self-awareness not only hinder their own development, but that of the team or department, as well. Let’s take a short trip back in time for perspective’s sake.

University of Connecticut professor of philosophy, Mitchell Green, says in an interview,
“I’m not sure that every civilization or even most civilizations have taken the goal to achieve self-knowledge as being among the most important ones. It comes and goes.”
“Know thyself” is an aphorism we can trace back to 4th-Century Greece. Somewhere along the way western societies seem to have strayed from that ancient ideal. But in recent years, popular culture has embraced self-awareness, often referred to in more eastern-tradition terms as, “mindfulness.”

Socrates is long gone, but here in the present, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is one of the tools that helps reveal the foundation of self-awareness, and possibly who one is meant to be. The MBTI assessment provides a bit of a shortcut for those of us looking to “find ourselves” without sailing around the globe or climbing Mt. Everest.

Leveling Up Your HR

Effective human resources training helps individual employees discover how they operate at their best, how others do the same, and how those factors interlock with the running of an organization made up of beautifully complex human beings. The Myers-Briggs assessment can be the catalyst of a personal and professional revelation in employees at any stage of their career in the form of:

The “aha moment” of realization of one’s own nature and aspirations
Actionable data for changing behavior, managing expectations, and identifying biases
Streamlining orientation periods between management, employees, and co-workers
Revealing to employees potential future opportunities they might want to consider as an organization changes and expands–a key to retaining experienced talent
Uncovering requirements for professional growth–a factor in meeting expectations for a next-level position
Helping employees plan to address their blindspots or weaknesses that may be demanded by a promotion

Bridging Generational Gaps

If you’ve ever heard an older person mention how things were different in days gone by, or witnessed a younger person’s eye-roll in response, you’re aware that different generations of people have distinct points of view about just about everything. The Myers-Briggs assessment can also be used to create a common language between generations for better communication.

The assessment can smooth over generational differences and translate these factors into what motivates a person, and how best to communicate with them in a meaningful way.

For example, we characterize Generation Z as people born after the Millennial Generation and up to the present day--in general, those born after 1997. That makes Gen Z about 24 years of age or younger. As the Gen Z generation enters the work force, it’s marking an interesting milestone–the first time in history that the American workforce will consist of five generations, including the Greatest Generation (which still makes up 5% of the workforce), Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. Gen Z’s norms are distinctly different from earlier generations, though what exactly that means remains to be seen.

Taking all this into account reveals that facilitating the engagement and success of HiPos from all five generations will be a new and unprecedented human resources training challenge.

What’s clear is this–no matter what generation a person falls into, they’re going to want to feel that they’re a valued member of the team. They want their voices heard, and that they’re prepared for the next stage in their professional journey, from onboarding to promotion to retirement.

The Myers-Briggs assessment will help any organization reveal what motivates high potential employees to excel, how to motivate the teams they’ll eventually lead, how to communicate more effectively, and more.

For example, the assessment identifies differences between those with a preference for Feeling make decisions based on people and values. Those with a preference for Thinking make decisions based on data and logic. Feelers generally want to be recognized throughout the process of a project, whereas Thinkers tend to focus on results and expect recognition at project completion. Being an effective leader requires an understanding of the personality differences in your team.

HR is Hard; We Can Help

Best known for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment, The Myers-Briggs Company emerged more than half a century ago when two psychology professors cooperated to apply research-based psychological assessments toward providing insight into how people can improve their personal and professional lives. Their efforts resulted in the company formerly known as Consulting Psychologists Press, who then became The Myers-Briggs Company in 2018.

Today, the Myers-Briggs Company helps find solutions to seemingly insurmountable questions organizations have about leadership, coaching and mentorship, building teams, managing conflict, discovering careers, and the selection and retention of people with the talent and work ethic organizations like yours need to face emerging challenges and opportunities.

Contact us today to tap into the people development solutions 88% of Fortune 500 companies rely on.

Or take a look at our Myers-Briggs Type Indicator certification program or CPI certification program to be able to use these powerful tools in your own organization.

We’re here to make human resources training a little easier.