The High-Potential Leader: How to Grow Fast, Take on New Responsibilities, and Make an Impact

by Ram Charan

Companies need High Potential leaders (Hi-Po's) more than ever before to help them adapt to todays tumultuous, digitally-driven business environment. If you meet the Hi-Po criteria, you're in high demand--and this book explains how to fast-track yourself.

Criteria for Hi-Pos are changing markedly. In the past, fast-track leaders were tapped mainly because of their cognitive abilities, analytical skills, imagination, thoroughness in finding solutions and even perfectionist tendencies. In the new climate, other attributes will count more heavily: relationship skills, experience, judgment, abilities to engage, motivate, and draw out the best performance in others, strategic skills and even personal habits and behavior style. Above all, companies see Hi-Pos as people who have the capacity to grow quickly and step into new leadership roles competently. This book is a step by step guide to becoming a high potential leader.

Genres: Business, Leadership, Personal Development, Business Strategy, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

Published March 13, 2017

About the author

Ram Charan is an Indian-American business consultant, speaker, and writer resident in Dallas, Texas.

Reviews

[Sloan]

I believe this is a good read if you are in a current management or leadership position and want to create some actionable goals to improve yourself in that role. Otherwise, if you are looking to develop leadership in general or when not in a management or leadership position, it can offer some insight, but is a little less directly applicable.

If you are part of the former, I would suggest a hardcopy of this to come back to as reference. Each chapter has a checklist to help keep you on track. It would be good to go back and make sure you are still working towards your goals.

With that said, while there is good information, I didn't find anything in particular mind blowing and/or revelatory. If you read books of the same ilk, it serves a good accompanying work.

[Tommy Kiedis]

Ram Charan delivers again with The High-Potential Leader.

“Everyone has potential to grow," says Charan, "but not everyone, not even every person with leadership skills, has the potential to lead a large, complex organization in the near or distant future.” High-potential leaders (“hipos”) do.

High-Potential Leaders are not always the smartest, most knowledgeable technical experts among their peers, rather they are those women and men who exhibit the leadership necessary to see the bigger picture, work across silos, and move people to a better future. "They're the ones who may be working behind the scenes to help those experts work together to achieve a common goal." (p. 187)

As a leader, your job is to grow your potential and be a scout — on the hunt — for hipo leaders in your organization.

Charan differentiates between high-performance individuals (stars with respect to what they can accomplish individually) and high-potential leaders. As he notes, "your goal is to select the company's future leaders, not the great solo performers who have no capacity for leadership."

Charan is not downplaying the importance of hipo individuals, he simply wants us to think about how we can maximize the lives and leadership of those with greatest ability to influence the organization or their respective part of it.

The High-Potential Leader is divided into three parts:

Part 1 explores 5 Essential Skills For High-Potential Leaders.
Part 2 addresses how to take charge of your growth.
Part 3 looks at how to care for and feed the high potential leaders in your organization.

This book is packed with sage advice, everyday examples, and practical ways to improve one's own potential while being on the hunt for the hipos in his or her midst.

5 Reasons To Read:

1. Hipo Self-Test and Development Guide: Want to know if you are a hipo? Charan provides a personal assessment tool.

2. Chapter Checklists: These are essential tools to implement concepts discussed, providing both salient reviews of key concepts and next steps for growth.

3. Everyday stories and "how-to" guides: This book is theory, practice, and tools.

4. Missionaries and Mercenaries: Wow, that was good. See chapter 7.

5. Immediate application: For me, an essential test of a leadership text is, "Does it move me to take personal action?" The answer when reading The High-Potential Leader is a definitive YES.

[Jess Kang]

Anyone who has strong career aspirations and anyone who is keen to train the successors are recommended to read this.

[Kalyan]

The High-Potential Leader: How to Grow Fast, Take on New Responsibilities and Make an Impact
Available from Amazon: https://is.gd/TheHighPotentialLeader
Author: Ram charan
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Wiley (21 June 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 8126568194
ISBN-13: 978-8126568192
Product Dimensions: 20 x 13 x 1.5 cm

In today’s tumultuous and rapidly evolving business environment, High-Potential leaders are in high demand. Do you possess the relationship skills, strategic vision, innovation and determination needed to thrive as a high-potential leader in your organization? New York Times bestselling author Ram Charan answers that question and helps you hop on the fast-track to leadership success in this insightful guide.

Traditionally, leaders have risen up through the ranks based on their cognitive abilities, analytical skills, thoroughness and even perfectionist tendencies, but as modern businesses have moved to a more digitally-driven model, the criteria for leaders has markedly changed. The High-Potential Leader explains the modern business climate while highlighting the critical role relationship building, communication style, engagement and ability to motivate and bring out the best performance in others play in becoming an impactful leader.

Whether you’re just embarking on your leadership journey or are ready to make the leap to the next leadership level, Charan’s real-world lessons and practical advice will help you discover who you are as a leader, chart your path, accelerate your growth and ultimately, become the high-potential leader your organization needs to succeed.

[Varun Rajwade]

The book is OK And a tad disappointing. I was really keen to read this book as I am in that midcareer space and I was looking forward to lots of tips on how to move my career further. The book is a tale of two halves: The first half it’s full of tips advice and I found myself taking lots of notes. However the second half just devolved into some normal good to do advice without any sharpness. In the second half of the book I barely found anything worth noting as it was general advice.

The author speaks about having sharp targeting and action plans. But IMHO the biggest problem is the book is itself unclear about its targeting. The author interspaces examples of Hipos early in their career, mid career, senior career and even the likes of Elon Musk. That way the book appears quite confused and all over the place.

Overall read it for the first half lots of great tips and skim through the second.

[Rodrigo Pinillos Osnayo]

Una guía útil para gestionar a los llamados "High potential". Clave precisar que contra el "buenismo" actual que pretende asignar excepcionalidades a todos, aquí el enfoque es mucho más crudo (y real) y le asigna el calificativo "HP" solo a un reducido grupo de colaboradores que además de alto potencial, muestran cualidades para el liderazgo (algo lógico pero que siempre viene bien puntualizar: se puede ser muy bueno en lo propio, un verdadero experto, pero eso no te hace un buen líder dado las habilidades técnicas no son las requeridas para el mando y desarrollo de otros). A partir de esa distinción presenta una serie de elementos para trabajar en 5 frentes (en la figura de brechas por cerrar), así como recomendaciones para los directores que tienen HP entre sus trabajadores, y un último capítulo para las estrategias desde RR.HH.

Una lectura útil para quiénes tenemos muchas personas a cargo y queremos ayudar a desarrollar, sobre todo a las más competentes.

[MAC]

This is a Leadership manual for experienced HRM professional, who are tasked to create and build a leadership tier within their organization. Very detailed oriented and pertinent to fast paced business environment, where organizations need to have a continuous stream of Talent Pipeline, if they really want to excel in competitive business environment. Ultimately the winner organizations are the ones who have a trail of leadership, and which can bring change and innovation within the business and organization pattern. Good Read for HRM practitioners.

[Isabel]

El libro plantea pocas ideas interesantes, habría sido más útil que la mayor parte tratase de lo que dice el título, y centrarse en aspectos clave del alto potencial como personalidad, habilidades y estilos de liderazgo para desarrollarlos. En lugar de tantos ejemplos repetitivos, se agradecerían herramientas prácticas y marcos conceptuales aplicables.

Además, su enfoque en empresas innovadoras que venden productos que hay que diseñar limita su utilidad en otros entornos que operan bajo dinámicas distintas.

[Jarrett Crusor]

A plan for Hipo’s and HR to advance and develop leaders

Ram Charan provides some very useful concepts to help hipos (high potential leaders) set a course for developing into the leader that they are capable of. There are many stories from leaders that help give a perspective through their experiences. This book also gives insight into how to identify hipos and how to help them continue to get the best experiences inside and outside your particular organization.

[David]

Items of Note:
* To grow fast, you must be willing to step out of your comfort zone, take on new responsibilities, and embrace the discomfort of growth.
* Leadership is not about having all the answers; it's about asking the right questions, empowering others, and creating a culture of collaboration.
* The best leaders are those who can balance short-term execution with long-term vision, ensuring today's results while building tomorrow's capabilities.

[Phyu Hninn Nyein]

Ram Charan is already an accomplished writer on business management. I find this book as more of a summary of his HBR articles. Nonetheless, I find the last chapter (Chapter 9) the best and most useful. That chapter focuses on how to find and groom a hipo (HIgh POtential), and his suggestions are a little different from typical coaching/mentoring techniques.

[Andy Febrico Bintoro]

This book is not a typical leadership book full of ancient wisdom and legacy principles. Many of the ways here and the language used is the millenial's terms in digital startup. So the book made a difference between hipo leader and hipo individuals. This book is for hipo leaders, as well as management and HR people.

[Fabrizio Poli]

This book maps out a step-by-step process to take your leadership into high-potential mode.
I liked the team aspect and that a leader needs to learn to delegate but first understand who to delegate what.
The book is written quite well but lacks flow in certain areas, as far as writing style. However, worth reading as it does contain a few nifty ideas.

[Chanh Nguyen]

One of the biggest traps of abstract topics, we're falling into the prescription trap
1- Seeking for the answer, not the realization
2- Be selfish with your time. A lot of people don't deserve it.
3- Most successful people are just a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity.
4- Most people ask for advice when they want permission

[Raaga]

Excellent read to identify and enhance hipos

Excellent practical guide to understanding what high potential can be converted into high performance .. the book is must read for mid career introspection

[Carlyle Roberts]

A good take on identifying, managing, keeping and even becoming a high-potential leader. A good guide for those seeking to move up in leadership, as well as HR personnel or top leaders on guiding and identifying high potential leaders.

[Maya Jarkas]

This is a fantastic book and a great read for anyone looking to improve their leadership skills. It's well written and provides a handful of tips that you can use daily to enhance your capabilities

[Ron Hoffman]

A bit of an explanation of those employees that with the right opportunities would grow to a C-level position

[Miguel Angel]

Para leer al acabar la carrera.

[Amanda Wilkinson]

Loved this book! Taught me so much about being a good leader!

[Katie]

Didn’t feel like it gave many unique insights.

[J]

This book was helpful for me. I felt it was true to its description.

[HJ]

Couldn't finish it. Too prescriptive for me

[Ishan]

Handson book to understand how to develop yourself as a high potential talent in any organization

[Alimanzoor]

Surely not the favourite of many - the book smells so business.

Ram Charan offers concrete advices to CEOs, especially the budding leaders - "hipos" as he calls them. High potential leaders are the hipos who are fertile enough to thrive soon. The book targets them extensively.

A checklist of practical advice is given at the end of each chapter that could help to manage the companies. The examples and lessons learnt from top leaders make the book more attractive.

The book aims hipos, but the advices are useful for all who want to make a change in whatever they do. At times, it feels a bit dry in the middle and the book sounds like a text book.

It's a good read with loads of information. The checklists at the end of chapters could be your take-away if you are not interested in reading the whole book.

[Paulo Emilio Pinzon]

Práctico y poderoso

Es un libro que toda empresa y en especial quien gestiona el talento, debe tenerlo como una guía práctica para aplicar con los talentos y el potencial de sus líderes.

[Raghu]

Expected more

Good overview of traits and skills required to demonstrate high potentiality. Expected more depth and case studies that reflect knowledge work environments.

[Fernando]

Nice

[Doris Gomez]

Me pareció interesante que sirve de guía. Te obliga a autoevaluarte y a seguir pasos para mejorar tus capacidades de liderazgo..