Wouldn't you love to know what those executives are talking about in talent review meetings? Who are they talking about, and what are they saying? Let's pull back the curtain a little bit, it's such an interesting process.

What is talent management? Talent management is a process by which senior leaders come together to consider and plan for the people in their organization to make sure that they're preparing a great bench of future leaders to be ready to go when they are needed.

Senior leaders want to ensure that they don't have any big risks (e.g., only one person can do a mission critical job), that they don't have continuity issues (e.g., someone’s getting ready to retire and no one is ready to step into that role), and that they have leadership development practices that produce the results they’re looking for.

To get the most beneficial impact for your career out of understanding of the talent process, I invite you to put yourself in the execs’...

Career success is based on three key factors: performance, image, and exposure, according to a theory published by Harvey Coleman in 1996.

The relative importance of these factors might not be how we typically think of them though, because the performance, while being imperative, only accounts for 10% - 20% of the success.

The other 80% - 90% is accounted for by image and exposure. Often, we are so focused on our performance that we're not managing our image and exposure. What I’ve heard about those who are considered to be rockstar, easily promotable candidates is that they're definitely managing their image and their exposure.

How exactly does one manage their image and exposure? In this post, I'll provide you with a step-by-step approach to integrating managing your performance, image, and exposure into your career efforts and your daily way of doing business.

The first time I got really present to the importance of managing your image and your exposure was a bit dramatic....

What distinguishes the high potential, high-performing, promotable rock stars from everybody else?

One thing I discovered in my interviews with executives about this topic is that the rock stars actively seek to find out how the promotion and talent management processes work in their company. Specifically, they look to uncover how the company identifies who they want to invest in and who they feel has the potential to go to the next level. Then they reverse engineer their career development and perception management efforts accordingly. And those conversations begin to foster alignment and trust.

Consider the impact of that action. Now they're competing for the best development the company has to offer and future leadership roles with their colleagues who maybe don't know how the process works, who are quietly waiting to be recognized based on what they're doing intuitively, and whose actions may not be best aligned with what needs to be done for them to be perceived in the best...

Wouldn't you love to know what executives are talking about in talent review meetings? Who are they talking about and what are they saying?

I help corporate women who want to accelerate their advancement and drive their own development. If you find this information to be useful, please share it with corporate women in your life who want to move forward.

So let's talk about it. I want to pull back the curtain a little bit, it's such an interesting process.

What is talent management? Talent management is a process by which leaders come together to review the pipeline of talent and to make sure that they don't have any big risks, that they don't have continuity issues and that they're preparing a great bench of future leaders to be ready to go when it's time in their organization.

So imagine you're an executive. You've invited all your team to come together. They come into the room with information about either their direct reports or their...

I know you're all interested in the promotion process as I've heard from you. I want to walk you through it. I'm Christina DelliSanti-Miller of Full Potential Realized.com and I help women to build careers they love by driving their own development.

So let me tell you a little bit about my background. I worked for 20 years in corporate in Fortune 100 companies, responsible for Talent Management or Diversity & Inclusion or Leadership Development and Succession Planning.

I spent a lot of time with executives behind closed doors talking about their people challenges and helping them to build leadership teams that were high-performing and balanced. And sometimes we got to the balanced part, but sometimes we're “still working on that”…

 And so I was thinking about what we could we be doing - I mean I thought about this all the time - what could we be doing to support more women and people of color to push through to senior leadership levels.

 I...