Talent derailment: a multi-dimensional
perspective for understanding talent
Suzanne Ross
Suzanne Ross is a Doctoral
Researcher based at
Nottingham Business
School, Nottingham Trent
University, Nottingham, UK.
PAGE 12 j INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose the value of more widely incorporating derailment
factors into talent management practices in order to effectively develop and engage talent.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper considers various approaches to understanding
derailment in the context of leadership talent. It draws on a combination of literature, early doctoral
research and practitioner experience in talent management and leadership development, to present a
viewpoint on the merits for talent management practitioners of using an understanding of derailment to
broaden talent development practices.
Findings – It is suggested that by understanding the nature of derailment and incorporating this
understanding into talent management practices, a more balanced and robust approach to talent
development is achieved. Only focussing on core talents without identifying potential derailment
tendencies and creating strategies at either the individual or organisational level to mitigate these, can
leave leaders vulnerable to derailment as they advance their leadership careers.
Originality/value – Prevalent within organisational talent management practices is a single minded
focus on definitions of talent, without considering aspects of derailment as a matter of course. This paper
encourages talent management practitioners to proactively consider aspects of derailment in order to
generate a multi-dimensional approach to understanding talent, therefore more effectively prioritising
talent development needs and engagement strategies.
Keywords Talent, Leadership, Derailment, Leadership success, Potential, Succession,
Talent management, Talent development
Paper type Viewpoint
Introduction
When talented emerging leaders fail to live up to their potential, often the perception from
HR, peers and line management is that perhaps they did not have potential in the first place.
Identifying someone as ‘‘talent’’ and assigning them as a successor should be the beginning
of the process of developing talent. In many organisations it is often the end. Talent is left to
sink or swim as they are progressed into new roles, projects or secondments without
adequate support or structured development. The purpose of this paper is to explore
derailment in the context of talent management practice. It is proposed that understanding
some of the causes of derailment in leaders and incorporating this thinking into talent
management practices as a matter of course, enables a more proactive, strategic and
robust approach to the development of leadership talent.
Derailment and talent management
Unlike definitions of talent, there appears to be relative consensus over a definition of
derailment. From an organisational perspective, a derailed manager or executive is
perceived to be one that, while previously successful in their career, has failed to live up to
their full potential. This has resulted in the involuntary cessation of career progression or
j VOL. 45 NO. 1 2013, pp. 12-17, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 0019-7858 DOI 10.1108/00197851311296656
‘‘ Whilst definitions of derailment are consistent, there are
various reasons why leaders might derail. ’’

failure in role, often with the consequent exit from this role (Lombardo et al., 1988, p. 199;
McCall, 1998, p. 23; Zhang and Chandrasekar, 2011, p. 37). The important consideration in
this definition is that leaders were successful to date. For talent management purposes this
implies they were perceived to have both talent and potential, where potential is the ability to
move into more senior roles. Given there are both direct and indirect costs associated with
derailment of talent including: lost opportunity costs of unrealised stretch goals; recruitment
costs if the leader exits the business and the impact on team morale when talent is perceived
to fail, it is important to consider why derailment occurs. It is also important from the
perspective of validating the robustness of an organisation’s benchmark definition of talent
against what success really looks like for leaders in the organisation.
Where organisations do not proactively consider derailment as part of the definition and
understanding of their talent the tendency is to assume, after the event, that derailment was
caused by a lack of those characteristics that have been identified as talent. Zhang and
Chandrasekar (2011), suggest that this approach has also been prevalent in academic
literature. Failing to proactively consider derailment, or to consider it only after the event,
means that talent development is not prioritised to focus on those attributes of leadership
talent that are both enablers if present and derailers if absent. A failure to proactively
consider derailment of leaders within the organisation also means that derailment factors
that are not the converse of the organisation’s definition of talent or potential are not
identified; neither are those organisational factors that could potentially derail talent.

Why talent derails

While definitions of derailment are consistent, there are various reasons why leaders might
derail. These may be primarily at the individual level, for example psychological forces,
personality traits or behavioural flaws, or they may be in part contributed to by the
organisation, for example, lack of developmental support at key leadership transitions,
inappropriate career pathways for expert talent or a cultural mis-match between definitions
of talent and the reality of success in the organisation. Understanding the circumstances of
derailment enables a more focussed talent development strategy.
Where derailment is as a result of characteristics of the individual that manifest in
inappropriate behaviours or behaviours that are lacking, it helps practitioners to target
support and development practice to understand if these characteristics are specific
psychological factors, personality traits, or individual behavioural flaws, or whether they are
the converse of those attributes used to define talent and success.

Individual traits and behaviours

When derailment is as a result of psychological forces, personality traits or behavioural
flaws, this may present as unique to the individual’s combined traits and circumstances. In
these cases it is often difficult to predict derailment and support needs to be specific and
appropriate to individual needs. However, there are some factors which can be addressed
through broader talent development practices. For example, when talking about
psychological forces, Kets de Vries (1989, p. 6) argues that leadership positions are
isolating, separating leaders from others, particularly those who used to be peers. This loss
of connection, a core human need, causes leaders to become divorced from reality and is
reflected in the saying ‘‘the loneliness of command’’. Where dependency needs remain
unfulfilled, individuals can experience frustration, anger and irrational behaviour that can in
turn lead to addiction and depression.

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 Talent development strategies that support development through others, for example, peer
buddy’s, mentoring and networking at the emerging leader level and coaching, external
networking and mastermind groups at senior leadership levels, help provide for a talented
leaders natural need for connection. Where this need for connection does not appear to be a
requirement of the individual, there is a danger that the individual is isolating themselves
from the organisation.
Personality traits, in particular narcissistic tendencies of leaders have also been the subject
of academic review both in terms of their contribution to success and to derailment.
Grandiosity, arrogance, feelings of inferiority, an insatiable need for recognition, superiority,
hypersensitivity, anger, lack of empathy, amorality, irrationality, inflexibility and paranoia are
all traits of narcissistic leaders, causing significant derailment. It is not suggested that talent
development practitioners need to become psychologists, however it is beneficial to know
how such forces and traits impact individual capability and the ability to forge a successful
and sustained career.

Derailment as the converse of characteristics of success

In some cases, there is a converse relationship between attributes of success and
derailment factors. One such example is emotional intelligence. Early suggestions that IQ
contributed to only 20 per cent of life success, while 80 per cent was attributed to other
factors including emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1996, p. 34), led to a surge of interest in
emotional intelligence as an attribute of leadership success. Goleman et al. (2002,
pp. 323-32) extended this proposition through research into the competencies of highly
effective leaders. His conclusion from this research was that it was emotional intelligence
competencies that created the differentiation between successful leaders and their less
successful counterparts. That the competency models of many organisation’s talent
management frameworks include emotional intelligence based competencies as definitions
of talent, attests to the popularity of this belief. However, research also suggests that lack of
emotional intelligence based competencies and traits are key derailers for leaders.
Research by Lombardo et al. (1988) identified key derailers as: overly strong
self-determination, inability to negotiate, insensitivity, arrogance and coldness. Further
research also identified inability to develop effective interpersonal relationships (Lombardo
et al., 1988; McNally and Parry, 2002; and Van Velsor and Leslie, 1995, in McCartney and
Campbell, 2006). While these attributes were not specifically referenced as such, they are in
fact key attributes of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence provides an interesting example of the converse relationship between
attributes of success and derailment (high emotional intelligence enables leadership
success, lower emotional intelligence hinders success and can cause derailment). As
practitioners, understanding that failure to develop attributes of emotional intelligence not
only disadvantages leaders in their quest for leadership success, but may in fact cause
derailment at a later stage, enables the prioritisation of the development of these ‘‘dual’’
competencies.

Strengths, weaknesses and leadership transitions

While emotional intelligence provides an example of a converse relationship between
success and derailment characteristics, the relationship between leadership strengths and
derailment tendencies is more complex.
Often lacking in talent development is the balance between enabling leaders to identify and
leverage their strengths appropriately and encouraging the mitigation of weaknesses. A
leadership competency based approach appears to exacerbate this. Berger and Berger
(2004, p. 3) suggest that talent indicates high performance, inspiring others to achieve high
performance and the demonstration of core institutional competencies. A typical outcome of
such benchmarking against core competencies appears to be a ‘‘tick in the box’’ if the
competency is met and an action plan to encompass ‘‘development areas’’ for those
competencies not demonstrated at the required level. The focus here is on developing

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‘‘ Individuals who have talent and potential yet derail are a
valuable learning experience for organisations in ensuring
that definitions of talent and the reality of what success looks
like in an organisation are aligned. ’’

weaknesses. The challenge with this approach is summed up by Goffee and Jones (2006,
p. 10) who suggest that:

beleaguered executives are invited to compare themselves with lists of leadership competencies
and characteristics against which they are always finding themselves wanting.

This paradigm of focussing leadership development on areas of weaknesses, has been

challenged by an upsurge in strengths based development. Inherent in focussing on
strengths when developing talent is the assumption that it is more motivational to work with
strengths where the individual is leveraging a talent that comes naturally to them, than to try
to develop in someone a skill, knowledge or capability that they have little or no natural
aptitude for. Some authors suggest the counter argument: that strengths based leadership
development has led to an emphasis on developing leadership strengths and ignoring
problem behaviours or weaknesses (Zhang and Chandrasekar, 2011); others propose a
balance is required as leaders are ‘‘rich tapestries of strengths and weaknesses that they
apply in complex combinations to get the work of the organisation done’’ (Hollenbeck et al.,
2006, p. 399).
Talent development strategies need to leverage strengths appropriately, develop skills,
knowledge and competencies and mitigate weaknesses in order to ensure that these factors
do not derail leaders at a future date.
Talented leaders are particularly vulnerable to derailment at key transition stages. Charan
et al. (2011), pp. 7-9) identified six key passages (transitions) in a leaders career: Managing
self (individual contributor) to managing others; managing others to managing managers;
managing managers to functional manager; functional manager to business manager;
business manager to group manager; group manager to enterprise manager. Charan
argued that each transition requires both the acquisition of new ways of working and the
letting go of old ways of working in the three areas of: skills and capabilities, time frames of
working and values around what it is important to focus on.
Talent appears particularly vulnerable to derailment at the first transition stage of individual
contributor to manager of others. As an individual contributor it is typically expert
knowledge, skills and capability that is both valued and rewarded. High performance is
based on individual results in areas of expertise. The progression from individual contributor
to manager of others requires a fundamental and often reluctant mind shift. For expert,
specialist talent often the only option for career progression is into management roles.
Whereas previously the individual was valued for their individual expertise, their value is now
based on their ability to get things done through others. This requires a ‘‘letting go’’ of that
very expertise that has enabled their success to date, and a focus on the acquisition of
‘‘management’’ skills.
Zhang and Chandrasekar (2011, p. 38) summarise key studies as identifying five core
themes in derailment: interpersonal relationships and the inability to build teams (as
previously mentioned), inability to adapt, too narrow a functional orientation and failure to
meet business objectives. Inability to adapt and too narrow a functional orientation can be
directly attributable to an individual’s ability to move away from the role of functional expert
and acquire the managerial and leadership skills required for their developing leadership
career.

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 As talented leaders accelerate through their leadership career and the scale and scope of
their leadership challenge grows, so too does the potential for derailment. Alongside those
factors relating to emotional intelligence and personality already cited, key derailers as
leaders progress into more senior leadership roles are the inability to handle complexity and
ambiguity, to think strategically and politically and the inability to make quality decisions
(Lombardo et al., 1988, p. 212).
Kovach (1986) highlights the particular vulnerability to derailment of fast track managers
accelerated through career progression only to derail mid-career. Characteristics of
independence, boldness and assertiveness fail to translate well to mid and senior roles
where personal power, relationships and the ability to influence the interdependent
organisation were key. Independence further up the organisation may be perceived as not
being a team player, confidence and assertiveness are perceived as arrogance. Unable to
‘‘let go’’ of those strengths that have served them well in the past and unable to acclimatise
to the broader requirements and mind shifts of the leadership transitions, fast track manager
stall.
Understanding the vulnerability of leaders through these key transitions and the derailment
potential of over utilised strengths, inability to adapt, failure to let go of old ways of working
and the necessity to acquire not only new skills, knowledge and capabilities but to also
develop a new mind set and operating beliefs, enables the potential to create much more
robust development plans than are created from a focus on either strengths or development
areas alone. Practitioners can further support managers and leaders through these
transitions by themselves recognising that each transition is in effect, a movement into a new
role. There can be a view that ‘‘leadership is leadership’’ without adequate recognition by the
organisation of the fundamental differences in terms of role, responsibilities and leadership
capability required at each level of leadership within the organisation.

Conclusion
Unless organisations proactively incorporate derailment factors into their talent
management practices often such tendencies are largely ignored. Understanding
derailment factors however, enables the creation of a significantly more robust talent
management strategy as well as the effective prioritisation of talent development initiatives.
Individuals who have talent and potential yet derail are a valuable learning experience for
organisations in ensuring that definitions of talent and the reality of what success looks like in
an organisation are aligned.
Literature and academic research to date, suggests that there are core themes and
tendencies that leave leadership talent vulnerable to derailment. Some of these, such as
psychological forces, personality traits and behavioural flaws, may be unique and specific to
the individual. Others however, are tendencies that have been more consistently
demonstrated, for example the converse of attributes of success, in particular emotional
intelligence attributes, some psychological forces, narcissistic tendencies and over played
strengths, failure to appropriately mitigate weaknesses and failure to effect new
requirements in relation to leadership transitions. These latter tendencies can all be
supported by prioritised, specific and targeted talent development activity; appropriate
career pathways for expert and leadership talent and organisational support through key
leadership transitions. In particular, ensuring role clarity, the presentation of opportunities to
acquire the new skills, knowledge and capabilities required at new levels and helping new
leaders to understand those behaviours which will no longer serve them well, will be
particularly helpful when transitioning leaders.
Rather than perceiving derailment to be the negative side of talent management, it is
proposed that proactively considering derailment factors creates more effective and
sustained talent development.

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About the author

Suzanne Ross is a Doctoral Researcher at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent
University completing a PhD in the psychology of talent: how leadership talent enacts
success. The focus of the research is on how successful leaders enact their talents into
sustained success and why some talented leaders derail. She is an experienced talent
management and leadership development practitioner with a background in international
talent management and development. She is now an independent consultant and coach.
Through her consultancy ‘‘2thrive consultancy’’, she specialises in talent, peak
performance, developing leadership capability and emotional intelligence. Suzanne Ross
can be contacted at: Suzanneross@ntlworld.com

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