Value-Added Skills for High Potentials Are Their Competitive Edge

by Dave Brookmire
January 2009

If there is one lesson that high-potentials can take away from Friedman’s “The World Is Flat,” it is that no one’s professional future is immune from the changes happening in our increasingly competitive worldwide workplace. It’s no longer just about outsourced manufacturing jobs and overseas call centers. Even people in professional services – doctors, attorneys, accountants, etc. – will have to demonstrate a compelling value proposition to prospective clients, customers and employers in order to remain viable in a world in which technology enables competition from virtually anyplace.

Friedman points to the commoditization of low-level components of professional services (i.e. outsourcing basic accounting services and the growth of tele- radiology in India) as evidence of our flattening world. Professions once thought to be so relationship- based that they could never be accomplished through virtual or technological means are discovering a new, flat world.

“No matter what your profession – doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant – if you are an American, you better be good at the touchy-feely service stuff,” said an American CPA quoted in Friedman’s book.

Friedman further clarifies those value-added skills in a chapter titled “The Right Stuff.” They are skills like “forging relationships rather than executing transactions, tackling novel challenges instead of solving routine problems, and synthesizing the big picture rather than analyzing a single component,” according to Freidman.

When we talk about coaching high-potentials, we often refer to the “time value of improved performance.” In other words, performance improvements that happen now are exponentially more valuable than improvements that happen later. Never has that statement been truer, or more urgent.

High-potentials, by their very nature, are well positioned to take advantage of this shift in the market’s perception of value in professional services. When we coach high-potentials, we focus on defined behaviors that make a difference in how our coachees are perceived by others. In other words, we focus on important skills that define their value internally to their organization (direct reports, bosses, shareholders, etc.) and externally to their customers and clients.

Our experience tells us that “Right Stuff” skills like those described by Friedman are learned and developed. And coaching is one of the fastest and most immediate ways to gain those skills.