How Leaders Can Build Development into Their Daily Work
Unleashing the potential of your people through practices of development
Let’s face it. We are all a work in progress, and none of us have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to do every task or project assigned to us.
Furthermore, the workplace moves so fast that we’re often put in positions where we have to do things, take on new projects or deliverables, or solve problems to which we don’t always have all the answers. This is not a problem and is normal especially given the technology (AI) market (economy) and business (layoffs/org restructures) that are happening today - but how do we ensure our employees have the confidence or opportunities to develop and deploy their skills?
One option we have and rely upon for this is formal learning. In many organizations, the learning and development team/HR team supports employees' learning and development so they can do their jobs effectively.
While those teams and departments are critical at the organizational level to achieving business goals, most employees spend far more time outside formal learning experiences (ex, workshops, training, leadership development programs, compliance training, etc) than they do within them so, while those experiences should continue to play a role, that can only take us so far in helping our employees achieve their goals.
So what about the other parts of the time? Where else can employees get the learning, knowledge, and skills they need to tackle their job and do it well? How do we equip and empower employees to have the confidence to proactively ask for help or generate opportunities for themselves to solve problems and generate solutions without having to ask their manager for help each time?
PODs: Incorporating Practices of Development Into The Workflow
One way to do this is to redesign work and incorporate practices of development (or PODs).
These are specific actions and digestible designs around work that can be incorporated into what an employee works on and how an employee gets work done so that they can gain the knowledge, skills, and capabilities to do their job, flex new skills, and develop professionally and increase their contribution to your team’s outcomes and goals.
Think of these as small actions that you, as a leader, can create conditions for and encourage in how the work gets done inside your company on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
While many of these are things that leaders can do and incorporate, there are many benefits from individual contributors, especially those who work in cross-functional roles, using these when leading teams, even when they don’t have formal authority.
I’ve compiled a list of about 8 of my favorite PODs that I teach and and encourage organizations and leaders to use. These are both A) things leaders can use and B) organizations can think about encouraging at scale by incorporating into their talent processes, learning programs, values statements, etc.
I’m sharing them below and some insights into how they might be incorporated into an employee’s workflow:
#1)Sets and Reps
Description: Finding moments to apprentice employees, especially those who are more junior or new, to help them “learn through observing.”
How to use It: Take a more junior or less experienced employee through a task, process, or activity where you help them get sets and reps by first doing thing yourself, then having them do it with your supervision and feedback, and then finally, allowing them to do it on their own. Works great for onboarding an employee to a role, or a first time task.
#2) Paired Programming
Description: Pairing up an employee with another employee when they take on a new task to help them get up to speed
How To Use It: Assign a new project or task to one of your employees and pair them up with a more senior team member or in the organization currently doing the task or activity. This works well when upskilling a new employee on a new responsibility or switching projects on teams.
#3) Learning Log
Description: Getting your employees to create a template to track their learnings and having them update it regularly. The log can include 1) what an employee is working on 2) what an employee has learned and 3) what questions an employee has.
How to Use It: In your 1:1 doc with your employees, create a new template that has a section specifically for a learning log. Ask them to update that portion of the document on an ongoing basis, and review it with them at least once a month. This works for any employee, and can be incorporate into career development planning.
#4) Bullpen Sessions
Description: Bringing together employees with similar roles and helping them think better and improve their work through feedback and social learning. Great for helping your team members “think better” and generate better ideas when they are working on similar types of projects or deliverables.
How to use It: Find 3-4 employees who have a similar job/role together and give them 60 minutes to share best practices, ask questions, and solve problems that they are facing. Each person gets 5 minutes to present, the other three give specific feedback, and then you rotate. Great for people who have the same/adjacent role but work in different areas/teams/business units etc.
#5) Learning Threads
Description: Creating a digital place for your team members to share their learnings and insights each week
How to Use It: Using Slack or Teams, create a #learning thread, and each week, at mention everyone to share one thing they learned that week. Take a few minutes during your weekly team meeting to share the posted learnings and allow team members to contribute to the discussion. Great for encouraging a culture of learning and collaboration on your team.
#6) Documenting Your Work
Description: For tasks, activities or deliverables that get done on a consistent or repetitive basis that have to be done by a person, do the task, activity or deliverable and record yourself doing it. That way, someone else can eventually watch what you did and start to do it by learning from you
How To Use It: Great for tackling a new process or activity that your team hasn’t done yet, but you want them to take on in the future. It is also great for anything that has to be done consistently or repeatedly.
#7) Each One Teach One
Description: Bringing people together and allowing them to share their talents and insights with one another. Everyone gets a chance to teach one thing related to their work to the group/team. The goal is to have people share a diverse strength, skill, or task they know how to do so everyone can walk away with something new that they learned.
How To Use It: When you want to improve collaboration and teamwork on your team. When you are trying to foster cohesion or connection (offsite, in-person experience)
#8) Leadership Exposure
Description: Sometimes, employees benefit when they get greater awareness and understanding of the broader context of your team/business unit or company. Help them do this by bringing them to a leadership meeting and then debriefing with them afterwards.
How to Use it: Identify a critical leadership meeting or project that has an event (ex, leadership meeting, team offsite, quarterly business review etc). Bring a more junior employee along and brief them beforehand on what’s going to happen. Encourage them to take notes and listen, and when it’s over, have a debrief with them to explain what happened and ask them what they learned.
Leaders Are Sitting on a Gold Mine of Talent
Many companies are sitting on a goldmine of talent. They spend all this time and effort attracting and hiring great talent, and in many cases, hiring people who don’t just have the skills to do the job, but based on an idea that they have additional skills that would be valuable and helpful. That said, far fewer companies and leaders actually take the time to either create conditions to
let their people use these skills, or go out of their way to develop their talent.
As Artificial Intelligence continues to transform and evolve the workplace and workforce, having employees who are constantly developing and growing to be able to stay relevant but also move your organization forward is critical to employees and organization. When leaders go out of the way to do this, they can create opportunities that align people development with business growth.
However, the former only happens when organizations and their leaders create opportunities for the latter. As you can see, these are not activities that take up significant time. This also means that for them to pay off, they have to be practiced deliberately and consistently. The good news is that they are activities you could reasonably find ways to incorporate in someone’s workflow.
While some of this will come from formal learning opportunities, there is a lot of potential for more informal ones. Great leaders create conditions - one way to do this is by incorporating practices of development, to maximize the impact of your team, to enable success of the business, and to empower your people to develop and grow.
Call To Action
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this newsletter and found it valuable and would like to work together, here are three ways. If you’re looking for some help for your learning and development, leadership development, I’d love to work with you: Here is how I might be able to assist:
Leadership & Learning Programs: Formal training and leadership development in your company, such as new manager or new leader training, or skill-based programs. (See Here for more details)
Keynote Speaking - Do you have a conference, offsite, or event and in need of a speaker? I’d love to hear more and see how I can assist
1:1 Executive Coaching - Are you looking for an executive coach for 1:1 leadership support? Let’s chat about how we can work together
Feel free to contact me directly for more details!