Although the term potential is used widely in the market, be in several publications on social networks and be common jargon in business environment, the truth is that there are still many conceptions mistaken on the topic. These mistakes can generate serious errors in people management and consequently cause a negative impact in terms of performance and results.

Scientific research has paved a safe path for address this concept within organizations, with approximately 900 articles published on potential assessment in the last 40 years. However, it is insufficient due to the distance that still exists between the academia and the market. Thus, a series of misunderstandings are caused, due to companies that use technical and theories practically extinct years ago, at the same time that they ignore the latest advances on the topic.

For example, the use of personality and intelligence measures for potential assessment, which provide a quantitative estimate of career potential, have been around for years. However, contradictorily, it is still common for companies make little use of tools of this type and still give little importance for methodological and psychometric elements in your Assessment processes.

After all, what is potential?

Defining potential is a challenging task, but it has already been widely discussed in the scientific field, where different authors have made important contributions to understanding this concept. Let’s start with the basics: potential is a set of elements that indicate that a given professional has a higher likelihood of growth. From there, let’s consider: what elements can indicate that a professional has a higher likelihood of growth?

Scientifically we know (for over a hundred years) that personality and intelligence are central factors. This means that people with certain patterns of behavior and with a great cognitive capacity, tend to be identified as individuals of potential, which makes a lot of sense, in addition to being a fact corroborated by research in the area.

A deeper look will demonstrate that we can include in this list of elements some social skills, after all, people invariably work in groups and rely on personal relationships to do a good job. Let's also combine the learning capacity, essential in a world where knowledge develops rapidly and everything changes all the time. Here we can also talk about adaptability, as High potential professionals must be able to adapt quickly (between teams and tasks) to deal with the dynamic environment of organizations and the market.

But even if the professional has all these characteristics, we need to look at the element that precedes them all and generates the driving force of the individual, which is motivation. In the end, this set of characteristics, when well aligned, will generate observable practical effects, which we can call performance.

In recent years, an extra element has been gaining strength, which is the relationship between potential and culture, more specifically suggesting that high potential professionals identify and reflect the culture and values of organizations to be a part of.

How to (scientifically) evaluate the potential?

Before we think about evaluating potential, we must reflect on how we are currently assessing people in organizations. Let's consider some data and analyses:

40 million assessments are conducted per year.

A majority of professionals never go through an assessment, considering a universe of about 4 billion professionals who work in the world.

Many HR professionals still rely too heavily on interviews (which are scientifically less predictive, in addition to being more expensive and time-consuming) and often make little, bad or no use of psychometric assessments, scientifically more robust and with high predictive value.

Considering the list of elements that form the potential, we can start the premise that a good assessment must necessarily include elements of personality, intelligence, skills and adaptability. Furthermore, they must be aligned with culture, values and strategy of organizations.

To achieve this, the use of a good mix of methods, especially assessments with a strong scientific basis, is essential for an adequate assessment of potential. Trusting “fashionable” methodologies or without adequate basis may cause significant damage, as the incorrect identification of potential generates a biased database to HR, jeopardizing any action taken thereafter.

What is the future of potential assessment?

Fads aside, in recent years there have beentechnological advances and methodologicalsignificant for the assessment of potential, many with great future impact for organizations.

In the field of personality, psychometric assessments have become increasingly robust, with counterfeiting control measures, reduction and adjustment of results to avoid bias being implemented successfully. Some studies have demonstrated that the combined use of different assessments significantly increases the predictive validity of assessments of potential, including excluding the need to carry out in-person interviews.

As recorded interviews have generated evaluative accuracy indices as good or even better than in-person or synchronous interviews and some elements of automation have already been successfully used in this regard.

With regard to skills and other elements, the use of various assessments such as situational judgment tests, cognitive skills tests and assessment of variables of interest linked to culture and strategy have become increasingly common and presented positive results.

One element that unites these success stories is the strong scientific basis and the methodological and psychometric rigor adopted in potential assessments.

If your company needs to perform Assessments accurately, scientifically based and with high predictive value, you can look for Clave Consultoria. Our team, with +25 years of experience, will help design an evaluation model that is suitable for your business and aligned with the best and latest scientific practices and market.