146: If Your Company Says You Have Leadership Potential, Here's What They Really Mean

Being told you have leadership potential feels like a win— right up until you're hearing it for the third, fourth, fifth review cycle in a row, still in the same seat. 

This episode explains why being labeled "high potential" only means you've moved from Invisible to Recognized — stage two of a five-stage journey — and why the label itself can quietly work against you by reducing your own urgency to act. 

This episode kicks off a two-part arc leading into Dr. Nicole's live masterclass on August 29th, How to Get Your Executive Promotion in 90 Days — where she'll show you exactly how to turn "they see potential in me" into "I've been promoted".

👉 Register for the August 29th masterclass: www.thechangedoc.com/masterclass

Register here for How To Get Your Executive Promotion in 90 Days (August 29, 2026)

Transcript

When Potential Turns Into A Waiting Room

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The first time someone tells you you have so much potential, it feels like there's a door opening. By the third time, it starts to feel a little different. And by the fifth time, sitting in the same seat, still doing the same job, still waiting on the same promotion that was coming soon two review cycles ago, it doesn't feel like a door anymore. It feels like a waiting room. I used to sit on the other side of that conversation. Before I was a coach, I was a chief human resources officer. I was in the talent reviews. I was in the succession planning meeting. I have watched leadership write the word potential next to someone's name on a whiteboard. And I have watched exactly how much that word did and didn't and actually mean. So today I want to take that word apart for you because I don't think you have a confidence problem. I think you have an information problem. No one has ever told you what that label actually is structurally inside your company and what it isn't. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Now, this is the first of two episodes leading into something I'm genuinely excited about. I'm hosting a live masterclass on August 29th called How to Get Your Executive Promotion in 90 Days. So we'll talk more about that at the end. But first, we have to get very honest about this word, the word potential. So let's get into it. Here's what I want you to understand because it changes how you hear this word going forward. Leadership potential is not a commitment, it's a classification. Now, in almost every organization that I have ever worked inside, as an HR executive or as a coach, that label, leadership potential, gets assigned in a room that you are likely not in. A calibration session, a talent review, a succession planning meeting, a handful of leaders sitting around a table sorting names into categories, usually under some real-time pressure, usually without the information they need to

Potential As A Corporate Classification

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be fully accurate, and almost never with any binding obligation attached to what they decide. You get called into the hallway afterwards, or maybe into your one-on-one, and someone tells you, just so you know, leadership sees you as having a lot of potential. And it feels like news. Like for you, it feels like progress. But structurally, here's what's actually happening. Someone in a room who is not accountable for what happens to you next said a sentence about you, maybe even a paragraph. That's it. That's the whole mechanism. Now I want to place this inside my IRISE model because this matters. IRISE moves through five stages, and it's an acronym. I is for invisible, R is for recognized, I is for indispensable, S is for strategic, and E is for executive. So being told that you have potential means that you've moved from invisible to recognize. That's real. That is not nothing. So somebody has seen you, or a group of leaders have seen you. But recognize is only stage two of five. It's not the ultimate destination. That's not ultimately what you want. It's barely past the starting line. And here's the part that keeps smart, hardworking women stuck for several years in the same place. The label of being called leadership potential does something for you psychologically,

The IRISE Ladder From Seen To Executive

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right? And it's psychologically dangerous because it feels like a reward. It reduces urgency that you might be feeling. You hear that you have so much potential, and some part of you actually exhales, some part of you relaxes because it sounds like the system is working on your behalf, like you've been seen, like the next step is simply a matter of time. But time is not what moves you from recognized to indispensable. A plan is what moves you from recognized to indispensable. And nobody hands you that plan automatically just because they said a nice sentence or paragraph about you in the leadership potential meeting. So, how do you tell the difference between being genuinely invested in and being politely placated? I want to give you five real signs, not vibes, not compliments, but five real signs that give you structural evidence that you truly are not just being seen as high potential, but being positioned for what comes next. The first sign is sponsorship, not mentorship, right? So a mentor gives you advice. A sponsor spends their political capital on you in rooms that you are not in to further your career. Now, if no one senior in your organization is actually advocating for you when your name comes up and you're not there to defend yourself or to advocate for yourself, you have visibility. You do not have

Why The Label Lowers Your Urgency

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sponsorship. So those are not the same thing, and only one of them moves you forward to the next level of your career inside that organization. The second sign that your company is genuinely investing in you is that you get stretch work that's actually seen, not that you just get stretch work, right? Because so many of us get assigned things. But if what we're getting assigned isn't a priority for the company, then it's just more work. So there's

Five Signs You Are Truly Positioned

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a difference between being handed more responsibility and being handed more responsibility that senior leaders can actually see, tied to outcomes that actually matter to the business. If you're doing the extra work, but the people above your boss couldn't tell you what the hell that work is, it's not building your case. It's not positioning you for something new and different. It's just simply more work. The third real sign that your company is genuinely investing in you and your potential is that you get in rooms above your current level. So genuine investment shows up as access. Are you being asked your opinion in conversations that are technically above your pay grade? Are decisions being shaped even slightly by your input before they're finalized? If the answer to those questions are consistently no, then the potential conversation and your actual access to influence are two separate disconnected things. The fourth real signal that your company sees you as high potential and are positioning you and investing in you in that manner is that there's a plan with a shape, not just a sentence. So real investment sounds like here is the specific gap, here is the specific timeline, here is what has to be true in 12 months for this conversation to turn into another role for you. If what you've gotten instead is a warm compliment and a vague, let's keep talking, that's not a plan. That is a placeholder. And the fifth sign that your company truly does see you as having leadership potential that they are willing and wanting to invest in to get you to the next level is that it costs the company something. Now, this is the test that I trust the most because I've sat on the other side of the budget conversations. Real investments in you as a leader cost money, or it costs headcount, or it costs someone's time or someone's political capital. If the entire investment in you to this point in your career there has cost the company exactly nothing, meaning no budget, no money has been spent, no title has been changed for you, no formal program, you've not been invited into a leadership program, internal or external to your organization, or no one's reputation is on the line. Then I want you to sit with that and think about what that actually tells you. If you're hearing several of these missing at once, like all five of these signs, and you are not seeing any of them for you, for yourself, I want you to notice that. Don't panic about it, just notice it. Because next episode, we're going to talk about exactly what that pattern usually means and the five specific excuses that companies use to keep that gap open for years instead of months. Now, here's what I want you to do with all of this information that we're talking about today, right? Because I want you to use it practically before we talk again next week. I want you to take those five signs, the five signals that we just talked about, and I want you to go through them, go through them honestly against your own situation. Not what you hope is true, but what you've actually observed and what you've experienced. So we talked about sponsorship, we talked about visible stretch work, we talked about access to higher level rooms, we've talked about a plan with a real shape, and we talked about actual cost to the company. I want you to write down which one of those five signs, true signs of being seen as high potential and being invested in as high potential. I want you to write down which one you actually have evidence for and which ones you're assuming are true because someone once said to you that you are on the leadership potential track, right? Or even if they don't say that you're on the leadership potential track,

Audit Your Evidence Then Ask Directly

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you may have been told that you're on a succession plan or two. That's another way that a company uh tries to signal to you that you are um you have a long runway inside that organization, but some people stay on succession plans for decades and still don't move their careers forward, right? So if you're being told that you have leadership potential, or you're being told that, hey, you're being woomed to be the successor, or you're on a succession plan, we you can think about those two things interchangeably, right? So I want you to think about, not only think about, but I want you to write down which ones, which one of those signals that we talked about, what ones you have evidence for versus which ones you assume are happening because someone said to you, hey, you're high potential, or hey, we're gonna boom you to be the successor. Then I want you to do one more thing, and this is the part that most high performers skip. I want you to ask directly. Not asking, Am I doing well? I don't want you to ask your boss that or your boss's boss or any other leaders in your organization, am I doing well? What I want you to ask is what specifically needs to be true, and by when for me to not only be seen as high potential, but to become an actual promotion, to get my promotion. Ask it to your manager, or better yet, ask it to whoever is in the calibration room. Ask it to your manager's manager, ask it to whomever you think is in the know. And if you can, ask it for more than one person. So, yes, ask your boss for sure. But I would ask a peer of your boss because a peer of your boss is also who you have a good relationship, because they also are in the room when the calibration is happening, right? When the talent review is happening, when discussions about your leadership potential are being held, all of that. And when you ask your manager or your manager's manager or another leader, I want you to watch how specific or how vague their response is, right? How they answer you. Because the specificity of the answer is data. You are allowed to want more than a label. Wanting an actual plan is not impatience, it is being precise. And that's exactly what you need to do. You need to be precise when it comes to moving your career forward. Here's what I want to leave you with today, right? Being told that you have leadership potential is not nothing. It means that someone is finally seeing you and your work. But it's a stage in your journey. It's not the summit, it is not the ultimate place that you want to get to. It's the recognized phase of a five-stage journey. And the version of you that stays comfortable there because you're grateful for the label and you're waiting for time to do the rest of the work for you. You can stay there for years. I have watched it happen and I have been in the room where it has happened. In our next episode next week, we're going to go deeper. I'm going to walk you through the five specific excuses companies use to keep that potential conversation going indefinitely without it ever turning into an actual promotion. And I want to also talk about exactly how you can tell the difference between a real delay when your company has a real true reason

Next Steps And The Promotion Masterclass

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for delaying your promotion, and when it's a permanent stall that they're trying to do, right? When they're trying to Heisman you essentially and keep hold you off and hold you in your current position for as long as possible. And if you're ready to stop waiting on someone else's timeline, whether it's your company's timeline, your boss's timeline, and you actually want to build the plan and your own timeline yourself, then I want to invite you to my masterclass on August 29th, right? It's a free live masterclass called How to Get Your Executive Promotion in 90 Days. And what we're going to do in this masterclass is we're going to name the excuses your company uses to keep you hopeful instead of promoted, what real investment actually looks like versus what it sounds like, and exactly what has to change in the next 90 days if you want your new title, not just the label of having leadership potential. It's free, it's live, and it's the natural next step after everything we talked about today. Check out the show notes because that's where the link will be for you. And if you're listening and you just want to hit it immediately, go to www.thechanged.com forward slash masterclass. That's www.thechanged.com forward slash masterclass. And I'll see you in the next episode, Lady Leader.