You've probably seen them. The "rising stars." The people who seem to have some kind of invisible jetpack strapped to their career trajectory while everyone else is taking the stairs. It makes you wonder. When does high potential start, exactly? Does it kick in the moment someone finishes an MBA, or is it something baked into their DNA from the sandbox days?
Honestly, the answer is frustrating.
Companies spend billions—literally billions—trying to spot "HiPos" (High Potentials) before they even happen. They want to find that spark before it becomes a wildfire. But if you ask a room full of CHROs from the Fortune 500, you’ll get ten different answers. Some think it starts with a specific IQ score. Others swear it’s all about "learning agility," a term popularized by researchers like Dr. Scott DeRue.
The truth is that high potential doesn't have a definitive start date. It’s not a race where a gun goes off at age 22. It’s a shifting baseline.
The Myth of the Day-One Prodigy
We love the narrative of the "natural." We want to believe that Steve Jobs or Indra Nooyi walked into their first jobs and everyone just knew. That’s rarely how it goes. In the real world, identifying when high potential starts is more like predicting the weather than reading a blueprint.
Early in a career, "potential" is often just a polite word for "hasn't messed up yet and seems smart." Most organizations don't even start formal tracking until an employee hits the 3-to-5-year mark. Why? Because you need a baseline of performance. You can’t have high potential if you can't even handle the high-performance part of your current job.
According to the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), now part of Gartner, a staggering 70% of high performers are not actually high potentials. Read that again. Just because someone is great at their job today doesn't mean they can handle the ambiguity of a role three levels up.
High potential starts when an individual demonstrates three specific "X-factors":
- Ability: The raw horsepower to do the work.
- Engagement: The actual desire to lead and sacrifice for the role.
- Aspiration: They actually want the big seat.
If you have two of these but lack the third, your "start" is stalled. You're just a high-performing specialist.
The Science of the "Start"
If we look at the psychological side, specifically the work of Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, potential is about personality. It’s about being "rewarding to deal with" and having a high degree of "coachability."
So, does it start in childhood? Sorta.
Long-term studies suggest that traits like conscientiousness and emotional stability—key components of leadership—are relatively stable by late adolescence. But business-specific potential? That’s different. That starts when a person is first exposed to complexity.
Imagine a junior analyst. They’re great at Excel. Then, one day, the project falls apart. The client is screaming. The data is wrong. This is the moment. This is when high potential starts to manifest. Does the analyst hide? Or do they step into the mess and start organizing the chaos?
That "pivot toward the mess" is the clearest indicator experts look for.
Why age is a terrible metric
There’s this weird obsession with "30 Under 30" lists. It creates this false pressure that if you haven't been identified as a high potential by 25, you're washed up.
Total nonsense.
Take Vera Wang, who didn't enter the fashion industry until 40. Or Reid Hoffman, who was in his 30s before he really hit the "high potential" stride that led to LinkedIn. For many, high potential starts during a career pivot. It starts when they finally find the intersection of their natural cognitive strengths and a field they actually care about.
Identifying the "Spark" in the Workplace
Management consultants at Korn Ferry often talk about "Learning Agility." They define it as the ability and willingness to learn from experience and then apply that learning to perform successfully under new situations.
If you're looking for when high potential starts in your team, look for these behaviors:
- The "Why" Factor: They aren't just doing the task. They're asking how the task impacts the P&L.
- Social Intelligence: They can navigate a room without being the loudest person in it.
- Self-Awareness: This is the big one. If someone can't admit they're wrong, their potential is capped. Hard.
The "start" is often subtle. It’s a transition from "How do I do this?" to "How should we do this?"
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The Dark Side of Early Identification
There is a risk to saying high potential starts too early. It’s called the "Pygmalion Effect."
When a manager decides a 23-year-old has "it," they give that person better assignments, more feedback, and more grace when they fail. The person succeeds because they were given the tools to succeed, not necessarily because they were born a genius.
Conversely, the "Neglected Middle" gets ignored. People who might have had their "high potential start" at age 35 are overlooked because they didn't shine in their first 24 months. This is a massive drain on corporate talent. Organizations that believe potential is "fixed" from day one lose out on late bloomers who often have more resilience and life experience.
Factors That Trigger the Start of High Potential
Sometimes, it takes a catalyst. You might be sitting on a mountain of talent that hasn't "started" yet.
- Mentorship: A single conversation can flip the switch. When a senior leader says, "I think you could run this department one day," it changes the employee's self-perception. Potential often starts with permission.
- Failure: Surprisingly, a major setback is often when high potential starts to crystallize. It’s the "crucible" experience described by Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas. How you recover defines your ceiling.
- New Environment: A toxic boss can smother potential. Moving to a new team can make it bloom overnight.
Actionable Steps for Career Growth
If you're wondering if your own high potential has "started," or if you're trying to spot it in others, stop looking for a date on the calendar. Start looking for these specific shifts in behavior.
For Individuals:
Stop waiting for a formal "High Potential" program invitation. Those are often political and flawed. Instead, focus on increasing your scope. Volunteer for the project no one wants. Ask to sit in on meetings two levels above you. High potential starts the moment you stop acting like an individual contributor and start acting like an owner.
For Leaders:
Watch for the "Quiet Potentials." Not everyone is a charismatic extrovert. Look for the person who consistently solves problems before they reach your desk. Look for the person whose peers go to them for advice, even if they don't have the "Manager" title yet.
For Organizations:
Audit your HiPo programs. If 90% of your "potential" pool looks and thinks exactly like the current executive team, your definition of when high potential starts is likely biased. Expand the criteria. Move beyond just "performance reviews" and look at adaptability scores.
High potential is a moving target. It starts when the hunger for growth outweighs the fear of being wrong. It starts with a shift in mindset from "What's my job?" to "What's the goal?" And most importantly, it can start today, regardless of how long you've been in the game.
The most successful people aren't usually the ones who "started" first. They're the ones who never stopped evolving. That's the real secret. Potential isn't a status you achieve; it's a capacity you expand through constant, uncomfortable learning.
Identify the gaps in your current skillset. Seek out "hard" experiences that force you to adapt. That is how you trigger the start of your own potential.