Regenerate!

Sounds familiar. The signs were all there.

She would come up to you and make some good suggestions. You would say ‘great’ and give her a know-all look and an indulgent smile. She would speak with conviction in meetings.  But she would not get a clear mandate from you. At the times of important decisions, she would observe you silently but relentlessly. You would of course indulge her once in a while.

Then one day she quits and you say ‘Oh!I was going to promote her.’ You even make an offer to her. But she has a better opportunity and she has made up her mind.

Sounds familiar. But preventing this takes much more.
-Do you promote people for performance (you can see that) or for potential (not obvious)? One needs to be clear on what additional competencies are needed to perform the next job. Your people too need to be clear about what do they need to learn for their advancement. Read this career planning.
-Do you have an ongoing mechanism for finding out the leadership potential of your people? And for ‘improving’ their potential? For knowing more about a tried leadership development process available, register at Learning Leadership and join the free program Leadership -learning, coaching, and developing.

If you do not a have a confident YES as an answer to each of the questions the above familiar incident might also be a recurrent one.  It is difficult to handle talented people as compared to the mediocre. The mediocre would be happy to plod around.

The talented people must be engaged with twin challenges of learning new skills and taking on more responsibilities. They also need to be coached well.

Learning Leadership brings such leadership coaching to your people through the internet.