Building High Performers into Future Leaders

How to identify high performers in the workplace?

If you look at your workforce and don’t see enough people climbing the leadership ladder, don’t panic. It’s likely that your talent pool goes deeper than you think.

Here’s where to look for high performers. 

• Employee performance reviews. Naturally, you’ll focus on employees who deliver excellent results, as well as those who set ambitious goals and hold themselves accountable for working towards them.  
• Ask managers. They can tell you a lot about the mindset that an employee brings to work, and add additional detail that may have been missed in the performance review.
• Peer nominations. Performance reviews can be subject to bias, which means  high performers can go under the radar. Giving employees the chance to nominate peers anonymously can help unearth hidden gems who may not have received the recognition they deserve. Make sure that the peer nomination process is clearly communicated to all employees, with adequate reminders.

Building a high performance cohort

Once you’ve identified your high performance employees, implement targeted leadership training. While you can single out employees and send them to training programs as individuals, we recommend group leadership training. There are a multitude of leadership development specialists and providers who can provide tailored training programs for your company. 

Group training programs bring together a select group of employees into an ongoing structured learning experience for a specified duration (either recurring slots alongside a normal working schedule, or week-long offsites where participants focus entirely on the program).

These programs are shared experiences that foster learning, relationship-building, as well as personal growth. Employees from different teams learn from each other, get to know each other, and can form lasting relationships. This helps break down silos, develops a peer support network between high performers, and creates synergies within the organization.

Leadership training for your high performance cohort

Here’s what effective leadership training generally looks like:

1. It’s aligned with the organization’s goals and values. This lets cohort members immediately see how what they’re learning will help them and their teams to be more successful. Future leaders should be grounded in the organization’s vision.
2. It uses a mix of training modalities. Members might work on case studies, group or individual projects, discussions or online forums, and peer learning, with more traditional presentations as necessary.
3. Collaborative learning is always the focus. This allows members with different areas of expertise to learn from each other. It also provides high performers with an ideal context for honing their soft skills in a way that may be missing in more traditional training programs, and allows them to be open about their questions or uncertainties in a psychologically safe space.
4. It incorporates the practical application of skills. This should involve simulation scenarios or peer-to-peer practice exercises of leadership soft skills,  like providing direct feedback, having difficult conversations with empathy, or holding people accountable for their work. Colleagues and instructors can then provide immediate feedback.
5. It may include a practicum phase to let members apply what they’ve learned while still enrolled in the program. Cohort members can give each other feedback as they are implementing their new skills, and it helps them learn from experiences that may not go smoothly.

Mentoring your high performance cohort

Mentorship helps participants to apply what they’ve learned and to keep progressing in the right direction. A mentor can provide the following:

It’s important to make sure that high performers who are historically less-represented in leadership roles, like women or demographic minorities, have access to mentors. You can actively assign mentors, though it’s a good idea to allow mentors and mentees to request a different match if they don’t click. Matching can be based on job types, teams, skills, goals, communication styles, or personality types. 

Mentors need clear expectations. Your organization’s mentors should be prepared to commit to the following:

Long-term incentives to retain high performers

Even when the job market is tough, high performers may still be able to leverage their skills and experience to find new opportunities. Because of this, it’s important to incentivize these up-and-coming leaders to stay with the organization. 

We’ve previously written about four effective retention strategies:

1️⃣ Focus on compensation. Compensation needs to be competitive, and it needs to recognize and reward high performance. A commitment to pay equity and pay transparency also boosts retention. And it lets women and demographic minorities know that they are valued within the organization.

2️⃣ Foster relationships. Nothing burns employees out like a toxic work culture. Social events and team-building help keep your environment positive, allow employees from different teams to connect, and let them see their teammates in a new light, fostering a sense of belonging.

3️⃣ Provide flexibility. In their 2025 Compensation and Culture survey, beqom, our parent company, found that 72% of respondents would consider switching jobs for more flexibility in work hours and 65% would consider it for more flexibility in work location.

4️⃣ Build a supportive, high-performance culture. This improves both retention and performance. It involves focusing on three pillars: purpose, transparency, and putting people first.

Support employee performance and goals through bespoke career paths

Gone are the days of strictly linear careers. Today, bespoke paths are emerging, empowering employees with vertical and lateral movement. Organizations are recognizing the value of talent mobility, aligning goals and training, and simplifying processes to facilitate diverse career journeys. Here are three common examples:

By organizing career paths in this way, leadership and HR have visibility into how many employees are on each track and can see the size of the future leadership pool.

Some high performers with leadership potential may be curious about the leadership track but have reservations about it. For example, will it impact their work-life balance? Managers should be prepared to have honest conversations with their employees and make resources available as they design their career paths. 

beqom’s own CEO, Lars Pedersen, is a fantastic example of a high performer who created his own path into leadership. In this video interview, Lars talks about his career journey, as well as the role that fair performance assessments and equitable compensation play in an organization’s performance. We definitely recommend having a listen or reading the recap!