Retaining Your Emerging Leaders: Why Your Best People Leave
In Australia, 6.5% of your workforce is likely to be ‘high-potential’ (Gartner, Global Talent Monitor, 2025).
That means that within a workforce of 500 employees, there will be around 33 high-potential, emerging leaders.
These are the people you probably describe as ambitious, capable, high-performing and full of potential.
They are the people you expect to step up, take on bigger roles, lead teams, solve challenging problems, and influence culture.
These are your future executives.
And yet, here’s the uncomfortable question:
What is your organisation doing to make sure they want to stay?
Retaining High Potential Leaders
Identifying your high-potential talent is only part of the job.
The larger focus is giving them enough reason to believe their future is right here, within their current organisation.
High-potentials often leave because they stop seeing a future that feels big enough for them.
Over the last decade I’ve coached hundreds of high-potential leaders.
They work exceptionally hard, are bright, and are fast to adapt to changing circumstances.
But they’re also ambitious – and if they can’t see opportunity and an exciting learning stretch within their organisation, they start asking questions such as:
“What’s next for me?“
“Am I actually being seen here?“
“Does anyone know what I’m capable of?“
“Am I delivering at my full potential?”
“Am I developing quickly enough?“
“Is there a pathway here, or do I have to leave to create one?“
And this is where organisations can get caught out.
Because your high-potential leaders can be highly engaged and yet still be at risk of leaving.
And if you don’t take the opportunity to understand what they really need, you might find that suddenly, the people you thought were part of your succession plan have gone.
The Cost of Losing High Potential Talent
Replacing a skilled emerging leader can cost anywhere between 50% and 200% of their annual salary (depending on their role), once recruitment, onboarding, lost productivity and organisational knowledge are taken into account. And that’s only touching the surface of the impact that is lost (Society for Human Resource Management, 2025).
How Do You Start to Retain And Stretch Emerging Leaders?
A good starting point, to build engagement of this valuable talent pool is to ask a few simple questions:
- Do our high potentials know they are considered high-potential talent?
2. Can they see the opportunity and future for themselves in the business?
3. Are we building their capability and investing in them?
4. Are we doing all we can to retain them?
5. Do we have a system in place to support their growth, development and to advance them in the business?
Roadmap to Senior Leadership
Leadership transformation doesn’t happen through a series of one-off interventions. It happens through sustained support, real-world challenge and the opportunity to embed new ways of leading.
Our 12-month Roadmap to Senior Leadership program works alongside your high-potential talent as they navigate real business challenges – from role transitions and stakeholder complexity to increased responsibility and the day-to-day demands of leadership.
This is more than a series of coaching conversations. It’s a sustained development partnership designed to turn insight into behavioural change and behavioural change into measurable business impact.
Over 12 months, emerging leaders build a clear leadership identity and value proposition, strengthen their ability to lead with greater autonomy and strategic impact, and most importantly, demonstrate their readiness for their next stretching role.
Because the goal isn’t simply to develop your emerging leaders. It’s to transform how they lead – and ensure that same transformation shows up in the business.
