Great Managers Connect People to People
Investing in Employee Career Development Doesn't Mean You Have to Do it All!
Part of helping your employees grow is realizing you don’t have to be the one to help them
As a manager, supporting the career development of your employees doesn’t mean you have to be the one who has to directly help them!
Sure, it can be, but one helpful thing you can do that doesn’t involve you at all is to connect them with other people who can elevate their work and support their career.
If you agree that your success in your career is related to the amount of people who want you to succeed, helping your employees build the connections and relationships with other people is something that you can do that doesn’t really involve you!
As a manager, you’re in a unique position to do just this. First, by the nature of your role and experience, you have additional perspective and relationships that your employees may not have. You can use that to facilitate introductions to people they might not have been able to even conceive or think of on their own.
Secondly, in some cases, your own standing in your organization, as well as being an official people leader, can help them gain access and introductions to people that would have been a lot harder to do without your social capital and goodwill.
Your Role: Being the Connector to People and Opportunities
As a manager, helping them with connections to other people and relationships can be beneficial for many reasons
It helps them become more effective in their job - Helping them build relationships with their stakeholders or peers can help them collaborate and cooperate more effectively with the people they need to do their jobs more effectively
It increases their visibility for future opportunities - People help people that they know, like and trust. Furthermore, many of us find new opportunities because of other people in our network. Building relationships with other colleagues and leaders helps them build their own social capital that will benefit them in the short and long term.
It helps them learn - We learn a lot from our peers and their experiences. Getting them exposure to individuals who have experience and expertise that they are interested in is a great way to help them gain the insight and confidence about the types of opportunities they might want in their current role or beyond.
How to Do This
Let’s say you think your employee needs a hand with building better relationships for their career. Here is how you can start to help them.
1) Ask them. I almost hate writing this because it seems so obvious, but a good starting point is always just to ask your employee either who they would like to meet that would help them with their career, or the kinds of people that they would like to meet to help them with their career. Chances are, they may have a few people in mind
2)Come with a few suggestions - Sometimes, employees know they want to build relationships but they aren’t sure exactly who. If you have an employee who falls into this bucket, come with a few ideas. Depending on the employee, you may already have some good ideas and suggestions based on what you know about their goals and aspirations. Take some time to generate a handful of ideas, that way, it helps them from getting unstuck.
Step 3 - Find the right role and support they need - One of my favorite career beliefs is that your career is a team sport, and not an individual one. While each individual is responsible for their career, they will need the support of others to be successful. Just like on a football team, even if a star player needs the support of his or her teammates, each employee will need the help of other teammates. On any given sports team, different players have different roles. The quarterback and wide receiver on a football team both are on offense, but they have different roles in helping the team be successful.
The same is true for your career, and the people and relationships in it. Depending on where you are in your career, what you’re hoping to achieve and what you want, you need different kinds of support, and thus different roles.
For any given employee, there are a number of common roles of people that could be beneficial for them to build relationships with in a way that helps their career development. The key is to work with your employee to understand based on their priorities or interests, what roles would be most helpful to them right now. Once you know what kind of help they are looking for, you can start to think about the people who would make sense for that given role. Here are a few examples of different kinds of roles:
Thought Partners - People who share your professional interests who you can connect and engage with. Great for giving your employees a chance to share their ideas, questions, and learnings about their career development with another like minded peer
Advocates - People who will support and advocate for you who are in formal positions of power and influence. Great for helping your employee find formal advocates/sponsors who can use that power to get your employee exposure, experiences, or opportunities.
Amplifiers - People who have seen and witnessed your work, and would be happy to spread the awareness behind it. Great for connecting your employee with other people inside your company who are familiar with their work and can help them grow their brand
Mavens - People who are very well connected, are great networkers, and who can help you see the “bigger picture.” Great for helping your employee build relationships with people who are very well connected and who can either often connect your employee with others, or help them understand your company culture to be more effective in navigating it.
Mentors - People who are more experienced and can share their expertise and lessons to you. These are great for providing specialized experience and expertise related to what your employee wants to learn or grow into.
Even if you are comfortable with #1 or #2, I like doing #3 with each of my employees as it also helps them think more intentionally about the types of relationships that they want to build. But even more important than that, it gives them language for the kinds of help and support they can ask for out of other people. In many cases, I’ve talked with employees who said to me, I didn’t even know that I could ask for that kind of help.
In the end, the goal here is for you to be the connector, and to use your own social capital and reputation to assist your employees in their own efforts to develop their own.
How to Get Started
You might be wondering, “how do I tactically do this?” Here are a few ideas:
Talk to your employees about their relationships for their career - In your next conversation about career development, use the topic of relationships as a discussion prompt to better understand A) the current people supporting their career and B) the potential help they need. You can even use the role examples as a way to frame the conversation
Talk to them in their 1:1s - Another way to bring this up is in your regular 1:1s - simply ask your employees to map out who they think the most important relationships are for success in their role, and help them identify what relationships they need in their role, and/or any additional relationships they’d like for their career growth
Bring it up in a team meeting - If you lead a team, another way you can bring this up is by incorporating it as a short activity or exercise in a team meeting. Ask everyone to go take a few minutes to identify 2-3 people they need to be successful in their role, and 2-3 people they’d be interested in connecting with to grow in their career. You can do this as a team, and then follow up individually with them to see what their answers are and how you can support them.
At the end of the day, we all need each other to be successful. As a manager, one of the high-value activities you can do is to connect your employees to the people they need, both for their role, but also for their career development.
Up Next in May: A handful of leadership programs on leading distributed teams, AAPI Month, and the ATD Conference in New Orleans.
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!