HiPo Development
HiPo Development That Shows You Who's Ready — Before the Promotion, Not After
Leave the readiness gap open and your HiPos draw their own conclusion. The ones you can least afford to lose go first. Here they lead a full day under real pressure while your senior leaders watch the calls they make. You walk out with succession evidence you could take to your board next week. 98% of participants would recommend it to a peer.
The HiPo Opportunity
You've identified your high-potential talent. They're smart, driven, and hungry. And a promotion alone will not make them ready. The gap between potential and readiness is real, and high-potential development is how you could close it before the promotion, not after.
HiPo development is about closing that gap fast. It's about giving them real leadership experiences without real consequences. They need to discover their leadership identity, learn to handle pressure, and build confidence before they step into bigger roles.
A slide deck will not do this. They need to experience what it feels like to lead. To make hard choices. To keep a team moving when conditions are unclear. To discover what they're made of.
This page is the program — the immersive experience that develops your high-potentials. For the methodology behind it, the eight keys that world-class high-potential programs share, read the 8 Keys to a World-Class HiPo Program guide, then bring your HiPos here to live it.
The HiPo Lab Experience
Real Leadership Pressure
Through seven expedition phases, HiPos face real leadership moments. Build a team. Adapt to catastrophic change. Maintain morale under uncertainty. Make impossible choices. Make it through. And if something doesn't work, there are no real consequences. The stakes are real. The safety is guaranteed.
Competency-Aligned Framework
The experience is mapped to your organization's leadership competency model. Generic skills stay on the shelf. Participants build the specific capabilities your organization needs in its next generation of leaders.
Peer Learning and Network
HiPos go through the experience together. They see how peers handle pressure. They build relationships with other high-potential talent in the organization. That network becomes its own force multiplier.
Observation and Coaching
Your senior leaders observe. They see who steps up. Who listens. Who adapts. Who keeps others moving. This becomes real succession planning data. And HiPos get feedback from senior leaders about what they saw.
What You Get
HiPo Outcomes
- ✓Real leadership confidence
- ✓Leadership identity clarity
- ✓Competency acceleration
- ✓Peer network strength
- ✓Organizational commitment
Organization Outcomes
- ✓Ready-now leaders
- ✓Succession pipeline data
- ✓Reduced time to competency
- ✓Talent retention (HiPos feel invested in)
- ✓Cross-functional relationships
HiPo Development Works Best For
- ✓Talent pipeline acceleration programs
- ✓Succession planning and readiness building
- ✓HiPo cohort experiences (batches of 8-20)
- ✓Organizations with high-growth ambitions
- ✓Companies trying to retain their best talent
Format
Full-Day Leadership Lab
Cohort of 8-20 high-potential participants. Seven expedition phases with real leadership pressure. Observation and feedback from senior leaders. Frameworks mapped to your competency model. Peer learning and network building built in.
6-8 hours | 8-20 participants | Senior leader observation included
What a HiPo Development Program Looks Like
The Lab is one day. The development happens over the ninety that follow it. A HiPo development program that stops at the workshop is the reason most of them show nothing a year later.
Day 1 — the Lab
Seven expedition phases with real consequence. Senior leaders watch how each participant decides when the plan breaks. You leave with evidence of who is ready, not opinions about it.
Days 2-90 — the High Impact Project
Each participant owns one real project with a number attached to it — their own work, not a case study. This is the individual development plan: what they will change, what it is worth, and the date they report on it.
Across those 90 days — High Impact Coaching
Three elements hold the project up: an accountability partner, coaching sessions, and deliberate practice between them. This is the part most programs skip, and it is why their participants drift back to how they worked before.
Day 90 — the results conversation
Participants report what their projects delivered to the executive sponsor, in your numbers. That meeting is your succession evidence and your program's return, in one room.
Customized for Your Organization
HiPo development is customized to your organization's competency framework, business challenges, and succession needs. We work with you to define what success looks like for your HiPos, then design the experience to develop those specific capabilities.
Senior leaders participate as observers and coaches. They see your HiPos in action. They provide feedback. And they help translate the experience into next-step assignments.
Questions Leaders Ask
How much does a high-potential development program cost?
Learn2 delivery is $10,000 a day plus travel, and the price is the same number in USD, CDN, or EUR. A cohort of 8 to 20 HiPos runs as a full-day expedition. Certification for your own facilitators is available so your team can keep running it after we leave, and the first facilitator is certified free with a new client's first delivery. Registered not-for-profits, charities, and associations receive 30% off list.
What is a high-potential development program?
A high-potential development program is where your best people practice leading before the promotion, not after. Leave the gap open and they draw their own conclusion — the ones you can least afford to lose go first. Here your HiPos run a full-day expedition under real pressure, 6 to 8 hours, in cohorts of 8 to 20. They make the calls, recover from the ones that go wrong, and keep a crew moving while your senior leaders watch. You leave with two things no assessment can give you: HiPos who know what they are made of, and succession evidence you can act on next week. 98% of participants would recommend it to a peer.
How is this different from a high-potential assessment?
A high-potential assessment tells you who might be ready. High-potential development shows you who actually leads when conditions get hard. Your senior leaders watch participants make real decisions under pressure, so you get both development and live succession data from the same experience.
How do we identify high-potential leaders?
You bring the cohort you already believe in, and the experience reveals what an interview cannot. Across seven expedition phases, senior leaders observe who steps up, who listens, who adapts, and who keeps a team moving when the path is unclear. That observation becomes real readiness evidence.
What size cohort works best?
Cohorts of 8 to 20 high-potential participants work best. That range is large enough for peer learning and relationship building across the group, and small enough that every participant gets real leadership moments and senior-leader feedback.
Can we run it for our own HiPo program?
Yes. The experience is designed to plug into your existing high-potential program and map to your leadership competency model. We scope it with you so the capabilities participants build are the specific ones your next generation of leaders needs.
How do you measure HiPo development results?
By readiness and retention, not attendance. Participants leave with clearer leadership identity and confidence, senior leaders leave with succession-pipeline evidence, and the organization keeps talent that now feels invested in. We design the observation so you can act on what you saw.
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