Corporate Talent Detection and Development

4 Potential-Situation: Potential as an Exteriority to the “Self”

4.1. Without potential, the result cannot be actualized

4.1.1. Potential, a capacity for expansion

The classical meaning of talent is the visible “beauty”, whereas intelligence is the intelligible “beauty”. Both are conceptual twins. Potential, in the Western ontological field, is a “promise” made to Being, of which the concept of autos-kratos (the all-powerful spirit on the world) is implied. Having (high) potential induces this social promise: the individual has potential (so they can do “everything”). Now, what does the reality of the company show us when the person is associated – like talent – with a status (identity): high potential (HighPot). They enter an ascending “corridor” of “skills”, whose expected plan (eidos), organized in the talent management process, is to, one day, allow them to occupy “key” functions. However, such a “plan” is often undermined on both sides. Indeed, what the plan does not foresee are fluctuations in reality. Being HighPot at 35 can seem rewarding. It can even flatter the ego (the idea that you make yourself and that you express your “power”), in effect “being of high potential”, that is, being identified (or classified) as superior to others (regardless of the frame of reference) and possessing rare and remarkable skills, amalgams a possible specific operative reality and an unavailable potential, because it is projected by others on the future of the latter. Thus comes ...