Leveraging Your Executive Talent in a Shifting Market

I’m going to come out and say what we’re all thinking: recession. No one knows the future, but as an HR professional, you are keenly aware of how tough the market has been over the past several years, especially when tasked with supporting top talent. Economic uncertainty is likely to heighten those challenges. It’s expensive to turnover talent. But the financial cost of turnover pales in comparison to the tactical and emotional costs of losing talented team members. Turnover affects individual contributors and teams—and their work, engagement, and morale—not simply the bottom line. Companies are “labor hoarding,” forgoing any short-term gains made by layoffs to offset the costs of hiring. All of this contributes to a labor market unlike any we’ve experienced.

Companies are spending a lot of time on their P&Ls right now. The good news is that the numbers alone don’t provide the complete picture of the untapped potential of your leaders. Opportunities exist to leverage the talent you already have–through executive coaching, development, and support. These development tools help with executive retention, engagement, satisfaction, and fulfillment. They support you in strengthening your existing executive talent during an economic downturn to continue producing great work with their teams. The impact of this kind of executive support, two or three years down the line, can be enormous.

The investment opportunity often looks different for people moving into senior executive positions and those who are longtime, legacy executives.

Promoting high-performing people into senior executive positions can often be a difficult transition for people. To reach the level they’ve achieved, they’ve needed to overdeliver on their objectives repeatedly. Other people have established these objectives and KPIs throughout their careers. Once they ascend to senior management, nobody sets the next mark for them. They have to figure out how to drive but haven’t always received the tools to do that explicitly. Often when people are in senior management, there’s a pervasive and false assumption that people at this level no longer need career mentorship.

Conversely, legacy executives, or leaders who have been at the executive level for 20+ years, need support in a different vein. They’ve weathered the ups and downs of the market many times over, but none of us have experienced a labor market quite like we’re in now. Often, legacy executives need support unlearning. Their challenge is to accept the new ideas that they say they want. With experience comes bias. Bias in the form of strategies and outmoded approaches unequipped to solve the challenges of 2022 and beyond. We see this in all spheres of life (professional, social, political, and cultural). Everyone has an invitation to grow and take on new ways of doing things, even the most experienced amongst us. Engaging a growth mindset can be a struggle for people who’ve been at the top for a while. Top executives need support finding new purpose outside their business objectives and performance markers. Uncertainty and malaise tend to ripple outward at executive levels. Financial bonuses are great, but these executives need more. They want to feel like someone cares about them and their development. At the highest levels of successful organizations, we find that the investment in coaching is a bonus that keeps giving. High-level bonuses can be anywhere from 5-25% of an executive’s annual salary (not counting stocks, RSUs, and other compensation), acknowledgments with a check once or twice a year. Support through coaching can keep executive engagement high throughout the year, often at a lower price tag.

The investment opportunity often looks different for people moving into senior executive positions and those who are longtime, legacy executives

We are fortunate to work with clients that understand that their resource investment in executive talent development is a longer game, creating infrastructure for the inevitable future transitions that happen in any business, regardless of an economic downturn. Our clients are not immune to the forces of the market. They are dealing with the same talent retention and hiring sea change. Where they stand out is understanding that a strategic investment in their executives helps them weather the storm.

In this shifting market, your talent investment can yield a high impact, influencing behavior far and above your bonus performance indicators and becoming an engine for growth and sustainability for what is sure to be a volatile, uncertain, ever-demanding, dynamic time.