Helping high flyers fly high: their motives and developmental preferences

This paper presents the key‐results from a two‐year research project which focused on the motivation and developmental preferences of high flyers. High flyers were found to have a particularly strong desire to be in a position of authority and control, but their concerns were mainly about working to the best of their ability and making efforts to master new skills. They were found to be more motivated by competition with themselves than by competition with others. Surprisingly, they were no more motivated by the desire for material and financial rewards than the general population. The research also asked which development tools high flyers had found most useful. Mentoring was considered the most valuable, with job rotation and 360° feedback also rated very high. Commonly used development processes, such as career development resources and technical training, were viewed unfavourably by a significant proportion of the respondents.