Every once in a while during a Business Leadership training session the intensity level of an application discussion gets so intense that we lose ourselves in the learning.  During a deep conversation this week, one of my participants in a High Potential Leader program used a term that I had never heard of when she was describing her most frustrating current leadership situation. “I am dealing with a team of people who I call the ‘Almost Engaged’ and I don’t know what to do with them.”  The entire group of 22 participants was curious about the term “Almost Engaged” and asked her to explain and define.  She shared and described a type of employee who seems very happy with their jobs but aren’t producing at the levels they should or could be.  “They love coming to work, they are on time, they are happy, but they just aren’t that productive.”

When business organizations go through significant change – and most of the business organizations in the world are going through major changes these days – leaders must work extremely hard to set and manage expectations through the change process.  Last week while leading a Business Leadership training program for a group of Mid-Career leaders, I had the chance to listen to an executive leader share his expertise and wisdom with my participants about how to lead effectively during times of significant and disruptive change.  What I found most interesting about his dialogue was that the theme was different.  It wasn’t about how great he is, or what are things everyone needs to do to be a great leader.  Rather, he shared his insights about how critical it is to create an organization where leaders feel comfortable and are enabled to “lead up” in an organization going through change.

Earlier this week, I wrote about why organizations should invest in developing talent who has fear.  The premise of that blog is to present options for investing in talent development by segmenting potential participants between those who are identified as “high potentials” and employees who embrace their fears to motivate their learning journey and performance improvement.

One of our readers, an executive with a Fortune 500 firm, sent me a nice note thanking me for the insights and suggested a related follow-up topic.  He shared that one of the biggest issues facing his organization isn’t the lack of high potential training or focusing on special audiences such employees who have a fear of failing; his issue is the fact that his company is as strong as its weakest contributors.  I was surprised to learn during our conversation that he never suggested terminating the weak employees as an option, but rather he was intensely focused on looking for creative and cost effective methods of providing better and scalable foundational skills that can help weaker performers get better.

Much is written and discussed about developing top organizational talent to be able to perform at the highest levels to achieve strategic goals and financial objectives.  During the past eight years since the financial meltdown of 2008, many global business organizations that had cut training budgets have never come back with full budgets to cover everyone in their organizations, instead choosing to focus on specific audiences such as High Potential leaders who could lead the businesses sometime in the future.  While choosing to focus on high potentials, these organizations also chose not to focus on the core performers. Employees who lead and do the actual work that creates the value which customers buy.

Invest in an aligned and efficient brand portfolio strategy

The internet is a wonderful tool that has changed everything in the world and everything in business.  Every potential customer and every existing customer has an infinite amount of data available at their fingertips to gather information as part of their decision-making process.  Unfortunately, in our 147-characters-or-less world, once a customer has developed a perception – which is accomplished at internet speed - about your company, products, and value proposition, there is a danger they can categorize you and keep you stuck there forever.  This is called “pigeonholing.”