Ongoing growth should be an essential part of every artisan or professional’s work. Our careers and our personal development are in our own hands now. More than that, I believe that as knowledge workers, we have an obligation to evolve as fast as changes in our profession are happening.
To this end, many companies have discussions about employees’ career goals and development. These are important conversations because they give the employee time to pause and think about their own development and because they give the manager a chance to help the employee set and pursues their development goals.
That conversation can certainly add a lot of value, but I think there is a missed opportunity if the it lacks a more comprehensive perspective from the manager.
While the employee can lead the conversation in setting their own goals, I believe that there are things the manager is better placed to bring to the conversation.
What perspectives can the manager bring?
The manager can bring three things to the conversation, that might be more difficult for the employee to see without the manager:
- Sharing the needs of the organisation for future capabilities;
- Discussing role bottlenecks and evolving roles; and
- Considering and sharing the needs of the wider team.
The needs of the organisation
I know that the discussion is primarily about the employee and their goals, but I think the manager is there to represent the goals of both the employee and the organisation.
For example, the manager might be aware that there is an emerging need for a new skillset (Data analytics, AI, managing teams across borders etc). The employee might not be conscious of the opportunity (and challenge) presented by these emerging gaps.
If the manager does not share where there is a growing need for a new or existing capability then the employee might miss an opportunity to grow, but if they are aware of this opportunity the employee gets a new opportunity and the organisation avoids needing to hire or outsource to fill the gap.
The manager can just sit back and review where they see emerging needs coming from, or they can run through an assessment process with their team. I wrote about a full-blown process for doing this a long time ago and you can get more detail here:
- Defining what you want your team to excel at to serve your customers; and
- Reviewing the changing capabilities you will need in the future to stay relevant.
Considering the emerging needs of the organisation and sharing these with the employee can add an additional dimension to the development discussion.
Bottlenecks and evolving roles
I remember in one role I was the “go to” guy who took on the big challenges for the team. I got an ego boost out of this and I also got to take on really cool projects.
There were two problems with this though. The first one appeared when I wanted to take a new role that involved moving teams. I got excited about my new adventure but then my manager came and asked if I could postpone taking the new role for a couple of months while I closed out some projects and developed a successor. Of course “delaying a couple of months” meant missing the opportunity, so I was quite annoyed.
But actually the problem did not appear suddenly when I saw a new opportunity, it had been brewing for a long time. There were other people in the team who could have been ready for my exit, but they were not getting the opportunity to take on the challenges that “only I could tackle” because another name for “go to guy” is “the bottleneck stopping others from growing”.
I think the manager (and the senior team members) have a role to play in making sure that new and inexperienced people get the stretch they need to grow. However talking to the junior team member about this is not going to motivate the “team bottleneck” to start getting out of the way.
So I think the manager can give some thought to “who might this person be holding back?” and then looking at opportunities for the bottleneck to clear the path.
Clearing the path might just mean handing over some cool work, but more often it involves considering how to delegate, considering how to teach others and even learning to accept that others can do things just as well, given the chance, even if they do it differently.
So here the manager can begin a conversation that the employee might not consider – how can they start to delegate or share their work with others and support their growth.
Stretching a team member to share work and coach others will often be a great source of development and growth.
But I said there were two problems with what was happening. The other problem is that while the “go to guy/woman” is busy hammering out critical work, they may actually end up being held back by that same work.
Firstly, carrying the burden for a team can lead to stress and burnout. Secondly though, it can lead to getting into a rut.
This also happened to me as both manager, where I got feedback I was not letting someone take on enough leadership, and as an employee, where my manager went to all the “big-wig meetings” and I gave her updates for them.
So another aspect that the leader can think about before the development discussion is whether they can help the employee evolve their role.
Ideally an employee would be proactive enough to think about this themselves, but I believe that the manager can provide some great input for the bulk of us who are not gurus at managing our own careers.
So before the development discussion the manager can pause and think about where the employee sits in terms of maturity in their role, and what might inspire them to seek some new development. Typically this looks something like:
| Role “maturity” | Possible input form the leader |
| New to role | How can I and the team accelerate this person’s journey to become fluent in their role? |
| Fluent | If this person is a safe pair of hands and a good contributor, what might be a good area for them to master and potentially even lead of guide others in? |
| Getting bored | If this person is at risk of getting stale, what side issues could they take ownership of? Is there a meaningful project or secondment that they could explore? |
| Emerging leader | Where the person is fluent, or a senior contributor, are their areas of my role that they can take on from time to time? Are their other roles in the organisation that they can own? For example, could they represent the team in decision making forums? Could they take on some of the team governance? |
In some organisations this thinking is supported by competency frameworks. Whether or not that is the case, mature leadership teams will often review succession planning.
Whether or not the organisation has mature leadership practices in place, I think it is a good idea for each manger to think about critical roles and potential bottlenecks to career growth so they can bring more to the discussion than just ideas for skill development. A session looking at succession planning or even just thinking about how team roles might evolve can bring a lot of value to the discussion, from both the employee and organisation’s perspective.
The needs of the wider team
I once complained that there was sub-par training for our IT team and the CIO responded by offering me a secondment as an L&D manager.
I turned out to be a career changing move, but even before that I had noticed that some of my team asked for training courses because they wanted to get some development but had no idea what they really wanted.
The result was that they would ask if they could go to a particular training course that they had hear about or that a friend did.
Some of these training courses were actually pretty good. But sometimes there was someone else in the team who had already explored some training or built a skill they could teach. Other times when one person found a good course, there might have been 3 more people who would also love to do the training.
So it was a bit like “training course roulette” .
Rather than just letting each employee find a development opportunity, the manager has a chance to see across the team and find common needs or opportunities to share learning.
So I think the manager can collate multiple desires and needs across the team and then look for alignment and synergies. Even better they can hold a workshop for people to share ideas and goals and then see where there is a match.
With a little luck there might be a shared training need an you can get a discount for sending 5 people (say). With a little more luck, people might be able to form a book club or a community of inquiry to create a shared interest area and explore that area. With a lot of luck, such as I have had on a couple of occasions, there might be some team members with a development itch and others who have an unappreciated skillset that they can share or teach.
Shared learning builds team mojo, motivates people to learn and creates, I believe, greater learning and growth
Conclusion
These days our careers and our learning are in our own hands. The days of of being told what to learn and when are gone.
The leader’s role is no longer to provide a clear career ladder with specific development on each predictable rung.
The leader’s role is now to listen to the employee and to help them set meaning goals from themselves. After that the leader can help the employee to stay the course as they pursue their learning habits.
However I don’t think that the leader must be a passive listener who just helps the employee verbalise their own thinking.
I think the leader can help uncover the potential of their team members to help the organisation remain resilient and they can also bring some useful perspectives to the development conversation that the employee might not see for themselves.
In particular the leader can consider and share:
- The capability needs of the organisation that might provide opportunities, as well as succession planning and “key person risk” considerations;
- An understanding of development bottlenecks and opportunities for roles to evolve; and
- Shared needs and opportunities across teams that lead to shared (and cost effective) opportunities for growth.
James King 