Career Habits in a Changing World of Work
The Importance of Teaching Employees Career Habits
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The Role of The Manager in Employee Career Development
For the past 3 months I’ve been spending time better understanding the role that managers play in employee career development. Through my own workshops and leadership programs this has become a topic of interest, as leaders often get put in positions where they know they need to support their employees but aren’t quite sure what specifically they are supposed to do.
To me, this is an important topic, given the many things that a manager has responsibility for I personally believe this sits at the top of the list. If you can grow your people, they can take on more, contribute at a higher level, and free you up to take on other opportunities. Not to mention, provide you with the long term halo effect of developing a brand for being someone that people want to work for.
Unfortunately, many of us struggle with this. I have written previously about how many people never formally learn or get taught on how to effectively and strategically manage their career. This becomes problematic, as many of these same people who struggle with this, then get thrust into positions as managers and leaders where they are now are not only responsible for managing their career, but now also supporting the careers of their employees.
If you aren’t sure entirely how to manage your career, how are you now supposed to know how to help the career of others? This creates a domino effect, and it becomes a lot easier to see why many employees feel like they are on their own when it comes to managing their careers, as well as why people often leave companies for the lack of career opportunities.
To me, what this really underscores is that your career is a team sport, and not an individual one. While everyone is ultimately responsible for their own choices, in my experience, most successful people when you ask them what made them successful will always point to the support, opportunities, and help they got from other people. In the case of career development, while managers play a role for each employee, the organization has a responsibility as well in terms of providing structures, systems and programs that enable career development.
One of the biggest gaps that I see collectively in society is that while the nature of careers has changed, the way that we prepare and teach people to think about and manage careers has not I think this is a miss, given how fast things change and how many opportunities for new roles, skills, industries and professions come up.
Through my work in the corporate, higher education and trade organization and association sectors, I’ve come to realize that there is a gap in teaching professionals the career habits and skills they need to to manage their careers. It is great and important that colleges, universities and trades are focused on helping their students land jobs or promoting the awareness of their profession. But for many people, the first job, career or profession you get isn’t going to be your last one.
Teaching people of all backgrounds how to manage their careers creates self-sustaining capabilities for learning and growth. It gives people the empowerment to self-direct their learning, and to develop and grow to sense and create opportunities for themselves and for others. I am a little less dogmatic about who should take responsibility for this (ex: high schools, colleges, companies, industries & professions, non-profit groups, workforce development) but more dogmatic that it actually starts to happen. And fortunately, there are some companies that are taking notice.
Last month at the ‘24 Association for Talent Development Conference (ATD), I had the chance to spend time with Terence Morley, the VP of Global Talent Development at NBC Universal. (You can check out my podcast conversation here) Terence and his team understand many of the challenges that I’ve identified, especially in a diverse business like theirs. In his organization, there are employees who manage the Harry Potter rides at Universal Studios and people who report on the United States election and everything in between. When you talk about diverse skills, career paths and opportunities, you can’t get a more diverse landscape.
Terence and his team understand that it can be incredibly difficult for any employee to understand their options for how to manage their career, so in addition to the many various traditional programs that they provide to support employee career development (ex: internal mobility, career conversations, training) Terence and his team have creating something called the “Talent Lab,” a program that thousands of employees have gone through that teaches them the basics and fundamentals of career management for employees.
The program teaches employees not just how to find their next role, or prepare a resume for a potential interview (although those have an important place) but rather, teaches them the career skills that are needed to manage your career in a self-directed and sustainable way, not just to find the next specific role, but rather, to actively manage your career over the long term.
In many respects, it is very similar to the parable/proverb about the difference between feeding a man to fish versus teaching him to fish. To date, Morley and NBC have put thousands of their employees through this program, and just recently launched a version of this for their managers to help them understand how they can support their employees’ career development.
This is a good start - I am less dogmatic about who should take responsibility for teaching employees this (ex: high schools, colleges, companies, industries & professions, non-profit groups, workforce development) but more emphatic that it actually starts to happen. And fortunately, there are some companies like NBC Universal and others that are taking notice.
Early this year, LinkedIn Learning asked me for a big idea for the future of workplace learning. My idea was based around this exact topic. Here is what I said:
What if we treat career navigation as a mission-critical skill set?
“Leveraging relationships, identifying strengths and interests, and tapping into personal curiosity are all things that can help employees grow their careers — and fuel retention within your organization. Finding ways to teach employees the skills and capabilities that can help them navigate their career in a self-sustaining way, outside of formal learning moments, will unlock growth for them and growth for your organization.”
Teaching your employees to manage their careers creates self-sustaining capabilities for learning and growth. It gives employees the empowerment to self-direct their learning, and to develop and grow so that the organization can develop and grow. Enabling managers to know their role in employee career development accelerates learning and growth, and improves engagement and retention. When done right, business growth is driven by the growth and learning of each employee, so investing in employees means investing in the health of your business.
The Importance of Career Habits
So what does teaching employees how to manage their careers look like? To illustrate this, I often bring up something we all know collectively pretty well, and that is our habits. The dictionary defines a habit as something that you do regularly, sometimes without knowing that you are doing it. Just like we have habits to help us live better, we can also incorporate habits to help us manage our careers.
One way to think about helping employees learn how to manage their careers is to teach them specific behaviors that can help them manage their careers, and over time, through practice and repetition, they can start to become habits.
These habits, practiced over time, can lead to opportunities for development and growth, for employees, and for managers and leaders. Like many things, I am not dogmatic about what these habits are, and, I do have my own point of view which I have taught for the past decade of what I think they can and should be, so if you wanted to focus on this, here is where I would start:
Practicing Self-Awareness: Developing self-awareness around your strengths, interests and aspirations and using them to identify opportunities
Demonstrating Self-Advocacy: Understanding, documenting, and sharing your work and expertise so that you can help others and others can help you
Investing in Relationships: Identifying and investing in relationships with others to achieve your goals
Learning Through Experimentation: Experimenting with interests and curiosities to learn and grow
Iterative Growth: Intentionally and iteratively practicing behaviors and to create your own career growth
Teaching employees how to manage their careers and managers how they can support helps employees thrive in a world of work that is constantly evolving and changing. Arming them with the habits and practices to grow their career ensures they can sense and respond to evolving trends, and stay ahead in a fast-moving world.
Doing so enables them to grow, which in turn helps companies grow. Above all, it gives them the tools to unlock their talent and potential so they can contribute in impactful ways.
Learn and Teach
2 weeks ago I attended ATD and spent 5 days with 10,000 of my peers in the talent development profession. In addition to attending sessions and having conversations with peers and friends, I had the chance to present 2 sessions covering various leadership topics for talent and learning practitioners.
In my session “Lead From Anywhere,” I made the case that we as talent and learning professionals have a chance to drive greater impact in our organization by practicing leadership right from where we are, regardless if we are a formal leader.
One of the biggest pieces of advice I gave was that if we want to drive change, make an impact, get our ideas heard, start new initiatives, etc, we have to start taking our own medicine and modeling the behavior we want to see.
To do this, I shared my own framework of Learn and Teach. This is a framework I’ve used in about every room I’ve been in since I was a teenager, but the idea behind it is that we all have knowledge and expertise that we can share with others, and we all can learn something from other people.
When we start to model this in our interactions with others, we not only can embody and model the learning that we want others to do, but we can also inspire others to act in a similar way.
This creates a force multiplier of learning and collaboration towards a shared goal. While this presentation was focused toward learning and talent development practitioners, I have found that it resonates with people of other roles, especially those who are in positions where they have to work cross-functionally with others.
If you’re looking for some help for your learning and development, leadership development or professional development for this year, I’d love to work with you: Here is how I might be able to assist:
Team Trainings & Professional Development: Happy to facilitate training or professional development opportunity for your team & organization - common topics include: influence without authority, navigating change, hybrid working, and others.
Consulting & Advisory Work - Are you looking to improve the ways of working of your team or organization or looking for guidance on remote/hybrid work? Let’s chat about how we can work together
Leadership & Learning Programs: Formal training and leadership development in your company, such as new manager or new leader training, or skill-based programs.
Feel free to contact me directly for more details!
Have a great week!
Al