Your executives are probably getting briefed on the measurable traits of high-performing leaders before they going into the talent meetings where they're choosing which individuals in which to invest their development dollars. This is where they discuss, calibrate and agree on the assessed performance and potential of key players in the business. Wouldn't it be interesting to understand their criteria and use it as a way to guide your own leadership development planning?

The premise is that building your development plan to focus on the leadership attributes that have been shown by research to predict who will perform well at higher levels is probably a good bet. It also makes sense to find out what your company uses as its specific criteria to assess talent to guide you as you prioritize your development activities.

Companies use different frameworks to organize their thinking around spotting high potential future leaders. A popular one is the Seven Signposts, by KornFerry, based...

Let's say you're working on getting promoted or somehow taking your career to the next level, but you're not sure if you have your manager's support.

Here are three things you can do to make sure that you're aligned and that s/he is fully behind you. These are relevant for getting great support in a promotion process or in moving your career forward, whether it's winning a new role, taking on more complexity, responsibilities, taking on managing a team, or even upping your game and your compensation in your current role.

High level: the first one is check in on your current performance, second one is to get into the right mindset to negotiate your next step forward, and the third is to make a forward movement plan together with your manager.

More detail: the best place to start is to check in about your current performance. You want to make sure that before you have any conversations about moving forward that your manager and your stakeholders are satisfied with the performance...

Your executives are probably getting briefed on the measurable traits of high-performing leaders before they're going into talent meetings where they're choosing which individuals to invest their development dollars in.

Wouldn't it be interesting to have these as a way to guide your leadership development plan for yourself?

I'm going to walk you through them. I help women who want to build careers that they love by driving their own development to do that.

So the premise is building your own development plan and focusing on the leadership attributes that have been shown by research to predict high-performing leaders is probably a good way to go.

I have a development planning template that's focused on these, which you can get at fullpotentialrealized.com/leader

These are the Seven Signposts. KornFerry has a framework which is based on 30 years of research. And seven is a lot so I'm not going to say that all leadership teams use all of them, but...

Working to answer this question has been a recurring theme for me given the disproportionately low representation of females in senior roles in most companies. Figuring out what the senior women have done that worked for them is something I’ve explored from the perspective of diversity and inclusion champion, leadership development consultant, and executive coach.

I had the chance to interview business and human resources executives specifically about promotions at senior levels, what women could to do to make it over the threshold and to possibly even accelerate getting there. I used this data to craft a process that women can use to drive their career progress more intentionally. Since I’m getting ready to launch a course on that very topic, I've been enjoying reviewing those very interesting transcripts.

Here’s what came up for me as I considered that work. The process was good -- once I was back in corporate I had in fact used it to finally get myself...