Most managers go their whole career interacting with High Slope Talent without knowing it. Until the concept becomes undeniably clear, you've probably overlooked it.

I often replay the time when I managed a brilliant but challenging employee who couldn’t follow simple instructions to stay in her lane. When I inherited her, the CEO shared this review: incredibly efficient and productive, but watch out, she gets involved in problems outside of her role. I took his feedback at face value and tried to reign her in. I didn’t see what was right in front of me: a High Slope employee who was persistent and endlessly curious to solve for the whole system when her job was narrowly focused. We inadvertently capped her Slope. 

When I expanded my team and put her under a new director, it was only days before they saw her Slope and expanded her remit to match. That employee went on to grow her role and impact tremendously. That was the day High Slope Talent became an undeniably clear concept to me. I thought about my own climb, hers, and multiple others from my past who were also on a High Slope climb despite company systems that sometimes held them back. The ground shifted and I made it my mission to unlock Slope ever since.

It’s a bittersweet moment when the High Slope Talent world opens up to you. You feel guilty for the talent you missed in the past, for what could have been. But it’s also beautiful: you stop seeing performance as static, and you start noticing PEAKS traits and possibility everywhere. When you accept this and shift how you lead, people management transforms into something more fulfilling and impactful than you ever could have imagined.

Every great manager has a High Slope ‘a ha’ story. This is Megan’s:

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Megan Barbier, a multi-time executive, is six months into her new role as CHRO at Xactly. Most leaders with her track record would simply implement their successful past playbook.

But Megan is trying something new at Xactly, made possible by the realization she has multiple High Slope members on her new team.

When Megan interviewed, she saw a strong team with steady tenures. It was green lights everywhere, but nothing that immediately screamed "breakout talent" on a résumé. But once Megan started working closely with the team, she realized she was staring right in the face of a few employees that could only be described as High Slope Talent. Once she saw it, she couldn’t unsee it. While not the most senior members of the team, their unparalleled action-orientation, curiosity, and persistence in rejecting mediocrity caught her attention.

Megan's realization that she was working with High Slope Talent changed everything. She made a choice to fully embrace this revelation, which forever shifted her thinking on how to identify it, hire for it, and lead teams.

This blog post captures Megan's real-time learnings as a manager of High Slope Talent, grouped into four key categories:

• How to spot High Slope Talent
• How to manage and develop High Slope Talent
• How to hire High Slope Talent
• How to adjust your own management

How to Spot High Slope Talent on Your Team

Megan jokes that “wait” is a four-letter swear word on her team. In a startup environment, moving fast is essential, but High Slope Talent exhibits more than speed alone; they move without being prompted. These team members don't wait for formal ownership or for someone senior to define the next step. They spot an opportunity and act on it.

For instance, her team member was planning a global virtual white elephant event for their international team. A vendor quoted $3000. Most would accept the proposal, or maybe negotiate a lower rate. This team member paused, reconsidered the entire approach, and independently built a $0 system using newly self-taught AI skills. She tested the workflow, documented her process, and shared her learnings with the broader team.

Why did she do this? Megan hadn't given a strict budget or reacted to the initial approach. This employee understood that a better result was possible. She took a systems thinking approach to improve what was available by reframing the problem, executing a superior path, and generously sharing her knowledge. This wasn't for praise; it was the act of a knowledge sponge presuming others would benefit from the learning.

When a manager consistently sees this type of autonomous initiative and rapid, action-oriented learning—the kind that shifts not only their own impact but how the team works—it’s impossible to ignore. This is High Slope in action, and Megan decided it was her responsibility to see how high the mountain goes.

High Slope colors outside the lines‍

If you’ve heard someone say, “that’s not my job” or “that’s above my pay grade,” you’ve seen the opposite of High Slope in action.

Megan started noticing that her High Slope team members consistently gravitate toward ambiguous, cross-functional work. She joked, “how are they putting peanut butter and marshmallows together?” The outcome is always amazing and unexpected.

At first, she thought these high performers were simply getting tapped for extra projects, a common scenario with reliable overachievers. But Megan realized the High Slope team members were actively claiming undefined work.

It wasn't a land grab or about promotion; they were simply drawn to the bigger, messier challenges. High Slope Talent are systems thinkers who see the broader organizational picture. They thrive in spaces without an established playbook; in fact, those are the places they have the most fun.

When Megan reviewed their job descriptions, they looked like generic mid-level HR jobs. Yet, when she examined their actual contributions to the organization, she found contributions that cut across multiple domains, including AI transformation and integrating internal and external communications with Marketing.

This disconnect between title and impact is common. In Megan’s experience, High Slope Talent might not show title increases on paper, sometimes even appearing to stagnate if they are at the same company a long time without a formal change in title. For Megan, this is because true High Slope isn’t focused on titles as much as impact.

If you evaluate only formal progression, you could miss High Slope altogether.

How to Hire High Slope Talent

When asking Megan if she would like to hire more High Slope Talent when she expands her team, or aim for a balanced team, she lit up and said,

“High Slope all the way. I've been trying to think about this too, because I felt like my eyes were opened.  My initial take [when I realized I have multiple High Slope people on my team was]: this is gonna be a storm, these team members are gonna be at each other. [But it’s not competitive at all]. They are birds of a feather flocking together. They're the same speed. I think they appreciate each other… I would love to triangulate or quadrangulate [this dynamic]”.

How to attract High Slope Talent

Before opening a new headcount, Megan plans to involve her High Slope team members in shaping the role.

She envisions sharing: "I need you to come on the ride with me to create something really different. The outcome is exceptional quality talent, an amazing employee experience, and delivery against business objectives. Invite them to the whiteboard with me. We're kicking down the doors on everything. What's missing? What do we need? What do we need to hire for? Let's take all the traditional HR functions out of their bins and create something truly different."

High Slope Talent is more likely to be drawn to roles that involve building or reshaping something, not simply inheriting an established framework, and who better to help envision these roles?

Broaden your criteria

Once the role is defined and interesting enough to attract High Slope, it’s about sourcing a candidate pool and evaluating talent. Megan is keen on non-traditional backgrounds for future hires. She is particularly interested in people with broad exposure across functions or industries.

Her reasoning is pragmatic: technical knowledge can be taught. The ability to synthesize across domains, identify patterns, and act independently is harder to train.

Forget the resume

There are loads of non-traditional candidates for roles, so how do you decide which one has the Slope to catch up quickly and then take off ahead of the curve?

Megan explains, “I'm struggling to figure out how I would do it with a resume. I would have to talk with them, see how people think. I want to see what they would be like to work with. I want to see if they would be excited by the type of challenge… not just, can you do it?” 

This is important because the fire or passion of the candidate is what can’t be taught. She ponders, “I want you to be caffeinated by this, right? Like, run up those stairs two at a time because of [the role]. And I don't know if I have a good way to do that on a resume”.

Evaluating traits and skills

Megan credits her "secret superpower for sniffing out transferable skills." Instead of focusing on a textbook HR career path, she seeks evidence that someone has navigated complexity across different environments and can articulate their approach.

"You have to talk to the people and suss out how they take any experiences, traditional or non-traditional, and show a unique perspective that balances out the team and can reimagine a future state world," she believes.

Resumes and LinkedIn reflect past roles and curated narratives. High Slope is about how fast someone grows because they persistently learn to synthesize disparate experiences to determine what they are likely to do next.

Using the right interview questions

Rather than focusing solely on past accomplishments in the same contexts, Megan wants to understand how candidates think and how they respond to ambiguity.

Her question toolbox includes:

• Tell me about a time you changed your mind. What led to that shift?
• Tell me about a time you stepped into a project you hadn’t done before. What did you do in the first 48 hours?
• Tell me about a situation where others hesitated but you moved forward. What informed your decision?

She listens for curiosity paired with high initiative, evidence of thoughtful reframing, and cross-functional thinking. How do people weather past storms and synthesize disparate experiences for exponential learning over time?

She is also interested in candidate energy: what lights them up. Does the candidate become more engaged when discussing ambiguous, undefined problems? Or do they retreat to safer examples of past success?

Megan says competencies are table stakes. “Yes, you can navigate. Got it. But can you draw the map? And are you excited to draw the map?” It’s important to differentiate whether someone is energized by the challenge, not just capable of performing it.

Differentiating standard hires from a High Slope hires

Impressive credentials and strong performers are not the same as High Slope. High Slope is about growth over time, not a point in time, and interviews often conflate this as they are a snapshot.

Red flags for Megan include:

• Variety of experience without evidence of rapid learning or synthesis.
• Strict adherence to role boundaries, not looking beyond their own scope.
• Heavy emphasis on past delivery with little forward thinking.
• Reluctance to move without explicit direction (the dreaded four-letter word “wait”).
• Changes that happen to them, not by them.

High Slope Talent consistently demonstrates forward orientation and manufactures outcomes. They talk about what they would build, improve, or change next. Their examples are self-initiated, not assigned. They see problems and find solutions.

How to Develop High Slope Talent

Congrats! You’ve either inherited a team member with High Slope or you made an intentional hire with great potential. What comes next matters most. Many managers make the mistake of thinking, “just hire great people and get out of their way.” This is only half true. High Slope Talent loves autonomy, but every growing leader needs a mix of challenge and support. Here’s how you balance these pieces for High Slope Talent.

Managers can foster the growth of High Slope employees in several ways. Common examples are:

• Assigning stretch projects
• Increase their decision surface area, not just responsibility
• Establishing small "think tanks" or brainstorming sessions where they can debate and develop initiatives or propose improvements to department operations
• Let them see upstream thinking (Board-prep discussions, capital allocation reviews, org design convos).

High Slope still requires support to be successful. Common approaches are:

• Specific and timely macro feedback in positive and constructive situations
• Sponsorship; active promotion of their capabilities and inclusion in higher level opportunities
• Affirmation of their impact, even when their impact seems clear

Effective support for High Slope employees is not one-size-fits-all, as different individuals require different approaches. In Megan’s world, one team member thrives with collaborative brainstorming, while another prefers a clear, visionary mandate to independently craft their own plan. It’s important to co-create how you develop the employee what they prefer and adjust as you go.

How this looks in practice: one of Megan’s High Slope team members took the initiative to rebuild an entire workflow with AI. Megan saw her as leading the way on AI and invited her to join the AI transformation council alongside senior executives. On paper, this employee is the most junior participant of the council and could be misperceived as the assistant or coordinator for the group. Megan made it clear to everyone that she is there because she adds value.

High Slope Talent are not immune to Impostor Syndrome and whether they are explicit about it or not, they can tend to be highly self critical leading to disengagement when they don’t feel the right mix of challenge and support. 

The Shift Required from Managers

This article covered how to spot High Slope Talent on your team or in a candidate and what to do to activate their potential, based on Megan’s experience. The most important learning she found, however, is that a manager's shift is essential to leading High Slope Talent.

Megan realized she may have misread similar talent earlier because she filtered through assumptions about what ambition and potential look like. She also recognized that managing High Slope Talent requires her to adjust.

“Many managers increase output expectations. Few increase decision rights. As a leader of High Slope Talent, I challenge myself to  engage their learning velocity and abstract reasoning, not just execution capacity. I remind myself that they don’t need protection from hard problems. They need protection from low-leverage ones.”

These employees do not need constant instruction, but they expect thoughtful feedback and visible advocacy. Managers must listen and support when High Slope Talent is challenged. Managers who prefer the status quo will experience this talent as disruptive. A manager must be clear if they have the capability to manage this way.

If a manager is willing to engage with that challenge, High Slope Talent becomes a force multiplier.

“It’s honestly exhilarating to be crafting the development of my High Slope Talent alongside them. The weight is very different but the reward is high!”

Megan’s takeaway is still evolving, but one thing is clear: once you recognize High Slope Talent, you start evaluating and managing talent differently. You pay closer attention to initiative, reframing, and forward motion. You also become more deliberate about creating environments where that trajectory can continue.

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