Getting Career Development into Your Your Employees Workflow
The 3P Model for everyday career growth
Stop me if you’ve had this experience before. Your manager tells you that your upcoming yearly career conversation is going to happen next week and she encourages you to think about your career development goals and where you want to go over the next 5-10 years.
You make a note to put time to think about your career development, but by the time the conversation comes, you’ve been really busy doing other things. Your manager, with the best if intentions, asks “so how do you want to develop and grow over the next year” and you’re at a loss for words. You stumble over something, give a few half hearted ideas, and then move on from the conversation.
Has that ever happened to you? If so, you’re not alone. In my experience talking with leaders and employees this is fairly common. What I have observed over the years is that many people struggle on their own to specifically develop aspirations for their career.
Left to our own devices, sometimes it's difficult to come up with ideas for our career out of thin air. It’s not something that comes naturally to a lot of us, and that is okay! But with a little help and support, we can start to make progress on this, and that’s where the manager comes into play.
Getting Career Development into The Workflow
One area that I’ve found to be helpful in solving this is to get managers to help employees get small practices of career development incorporated right into their workflow. Instead of career development being a large amorphous monolithic thing, getting it into smaller bites or actions that is contextualized into an employee's experience or day to day work makes it both real, and actionable.
As a manager, you can be a co-creator and collaborator with your employee, and help them develop ideas, get unstuck, or gain the confidence they need around some ideas for career development and to do this, you can rely on the three P’s: Pulses, Prompts, and Paths.
Pulses
Sometimes it can be difficult to know where to start with your career development. As a manager, one way you can help is by providing some “pulses” or data/insights from what you see, that give your employees a solid foundation from where to pull from when they think about their career development. These are pieces of data and insight that you observe and see about how your employees are working, their own words or actions, or past work experiences that you share with your employee. Think of it as insights and data that allow an employee to draw conclusions, generate ideas, or gain confidence.
Example: last quarter, Jen, you did an exceptional job leading the Client Quarterly Business Review as well as handling the internal presentation to our stakeholders in Customer Support. One insight I’d love to share is that your presentation and communication skills in front of live audiences are really strong.
Example: Jen, you are exceptional at presenting. As you think about your career goals, the two areas where you really excel in this are in A) presenting to internal stakeholders and B) to external clients. Regardless of how you are thinking you want to take your career, I hope that it includes presenting. Is that something that sounds exciting or interesting?
Prompts
Even when an employee has information or data to pull from as they think about their career development and growth, it may sometimes be hard or difficult to see how you can use that data and do something with it. And that is where a prompt comes into play. A prompt is a question, idea, or conversation starter that encourages an employee to take action. Left to our own devices, sometimes even with great data, it is hard to take action. Think of a prompt, almost as an “excuse” or “tripwire” that literally prompts someone to take the next best action. This is great for when an employee feels like they are stuck or spinning, and just needs to move from thinking to doing.
Example: Jen, you did an exceptional this quarter with demonstrating effective presentation skills in the QBR and with the internal meetings in customer support. What would it look like to have you take on additional responsibilities where you could use these skills you are exceptional at?
Example: Jen, your client presentation skills are exceptional, as seen in that last QBR and in our internal meetings. As you’ve thought about your career development, have you ever considered what it might mean for taking on either a few more tasks like this, or pursuing a developmental opportunity? I have a few ideas, but wanted to hear your thoughts.
One of my favorite things about prompts? When done nicely they act as a firestarter around career development. Afterall, you can’t think your way into career growth.
Paths
Sometimes we need to see not just the immediate next step, but perhaps where it could lead over time. That is where a path can come into play. A path constitutes a series of steps/actions that an employee could take toward a specific goal or outcome. This can be used, either to describe a set of additional actions that show further progression, or in some cases, a specific path (set of paths) that an employee could pursue based on the role.
Example: Jen, if you want to keep developing and taking on potential opportunities that leverage your presentation skills, you could keep progressing in your role in customer success, (ex: Team Lead, and then regional lead) but you could also consider other areas like Sales Engineering. (Towards a role)
Example: Jen, if you want to keep building on your presentation skills, here are three specific actions we can provide. First, we can get you a presentation coach, second, we can get you opportunities to present in other internal leadership meetings, and finally, we can find you a leader in our internal communications team who can meet with you to give you feedback or support.
Note: In my experience, out of the 3P’s, the “Path” one is what employees want most of. I would encourage you to lean on the first two P’s first, but if you can identify a path, it never hurts.
As a manager or leader, you don’t need to solve their problems or map their career goals, but you can play a role in collaborating and facilitating them through the process. I’ve found that using the pulse, prompt, or path framework is a great starting point to helping your employees make career development tangible, personalized and hopefully fun!
A big takeaway from me from all my years of doing this work is that the more you can turn a career into something that is a small habit or practice versus a big monolithic thing, the higher likelihood you can empower your employees to take ownership of their careers.
While an employee has to own that, your career is a team sport, and a manager is a critical player in enabling that employee career growth that many employees desire. Getting into the 3P framework is a great way to do just that.
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!