The assessment and development of leadership potential in organizations is a critical factor in an effective talent management strategy. Given the business environment, war for talent, and greater involvement from Boards of Directors on succession planning many organizations have prioritized their high-potential identification practices over other human capital goals. Although much has been written about theories and tools in the area of high-potential assessment, there remains little independent guidance for practitioners looking to compare practices across organizational settings. This article represents a follow-up study to Church and Rotolo (2013) based on responses from 80 top leadership development companies on their high-potential and senior executive talent programs and assessment practices. The results of this more in-depth study focus on how organizations define leadership potential, content domains being assessed today, and various other design elements including degree of transparency of high-potential labels, shelf-life of assessments, talent distributions, and access to results. Attitudes toward assessments, including performance impact, are also discussed. The article concludes with summary observations and implications for industrial-organizational psychologists, consulting psychologists, and talent management professionals.
Although high-potential and executive assessment has been a popular topic in practice for decades, the primary emphasis in the literature has been on the development and use of specific tools and interventions. As a result, when organizations seek guidance on the practice of assessment in corporations, Industrial-Organizational psychology (I-O) practitioners and consulting psychologists have limited information available with which to compare. Moreover, industry reports often represent a specific tool, technique or point of view. There are relatively few empirical perspectives of the current practice of assessment in corporations, and even fewer that focus specifically on high-potentials and senior executives. This article attempts to close the gap in the literature by presenting the results of a benchmark survey. The survey was designed to provide insights and visibility to talent assessment efforts in large organizations with strong talent management and leadership development functions. Specifically, the results focus on the use of formal assessments with high-potentials and senior executives, including the purpose of the assessments, the application of various methodologies, a discussion of scope and ownership models, and the type of resources used to support such efforts. The article concludes with summary observations and implications for internal and external I-O, talent management and consulting practice.
Organizations are undergoing unprecedented transformation in the area of talent management (TM). Companies are rapidly adopting new tools and approaches in a variety of what has traditionally been core areas of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology such as performance management, employee attitudes, recruiting, testing and assessment, and career development. Increasingly, however, these new approaches have little to no research backing behind them, and they do not tend to be the focus of I-O psychology theory and research. We call this trend anti-industrial and organizational psychology (AIO), as we believe these forces to do not advance the field for long-term strategic impact. We present a framework that describes how AIO practices are adopted by organizations, and how I-O psychologists often gravitate away from these practices rather than actively help to separate the wheat from the chaff. We found support for our hypothesis through a brief analysis of Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, the peer-reviewed journal of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). In this analysis, we found that only 10% of the focal articles from 2008 to 2016 represented topics that we call frontier—emerging areas in organizations but where there is no research support for them. We propose a set of recommendations for the field of I-O psychology and call for a more strategic approach to identifying and vetting new TM trends in order to increase the relevancy and impact of I-O psychology for our key stakeholders.
Personality assessment has a long history of application in the workplace. While the field of organization development has historically focused on developmental aspects of personality tools, other disciplines such as industrial-organizational psychology have emphasized its psychometric properties. The importance of data-driven insights for talent management (e.g., the identification of high potentials, succession planning, coaching), however, is placing increasing pressure on all types of applied behavioral scientists to better understand the stability of personality tools for decision-making purposes. The current study presents research conducted with 207 senior leaders in a global consumer products organization on the use of personality assessment data over time and across two different conditions: development only and development to decision making. Results using three different tools (based on the Hogan Assessment Suite) indicate that core personality and personality derailers are generally not affected by the purpose of the assessment, though derailers do tend to moderate over time. The manifestation of values, motives, and preferences were found to change across administrations. Implications for organizational development and talent management applications are discussed.
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