Talent management represents an organization’s efforts to attract, develop, and retain skilled and valuable employees. Its goal is to have people with the capabilities and commitment needed for current and future organizational success. An organization’s talent pool, particularly its managerial talent, is often referred to as the leadership pipeline.

The leadership pipeline is managed through various systems and processes to help the organization source, reward, evaluate, develop, and move employees into various functions and roles. The pipeline bends, turns, and sometimes breaks as organizations identify who is “ready now” and who is “on track” for larger leadership roles. From this perspective, talent management is something done to and for an organization’s high-potential employees, in service of the organization’s needs.

But talent management has another, overlooked perspective: The view from the pipe.

The employees and managers who are inside the leadership pipeline do not operate solely as a stream of talent to be funneled and directed by the organization. They bring their perspectives and experiences to the process, too. CCL’s research team decided to factor in the views of high-potential managers to deepen our talent management knowledge and that of executives and talent professionals.