Is Your Manager Supporting Your Career Development?
Small Actions Managers Can Take To Support Career Development
Last month, in a manager development training I was leading, we came to a session around employee career development. This is a topic I’m passionate about and one that I don’t think gets quite enough airtime in the manager development dialogue.
There are a whole host of things that a manager must do in order to be effective in their role. But given how much career development relates to employee engagement and retention, we often overlook the role that managers should be playing in helping their employees develop in their careers. One question that came up in this conversation was “how do I find the time to do this given the other demands on my plate?
Before I go into this, it’s important to acknowledge that organizations have a responsibility to create systems, processes and resources that enable career development at the organization. Afterall, no person is bigger than the system that they operate in. Making sure the organization has a real philosophy around this, but also rewards people for doing this is critical to making sure it actually happens.
In my experience, one of the biggest mindset shifts that managers who do this well make is instead of treating employee career development as a big monolithic thing, they focus on small but meaningful actions that consistently, over time, help their employees with their career development and demonstrate that they are their to be supportive and encouraging of an employee’s growth. The employee has ultimate ownership, but a manager can support and empower through small and consistent actions and words of encouragement.
During our program, I shared 10+ examples of small habits that don’t cost money, nor cost a lot of time, that a manager could implement to support their employees career growth. I’m sharing a few of them here.
#1)Adding a Career Development Section to your 1:1 Document
Many managers already have a tool like a 1:1 document to communicate with employees and to use to guide 1:1 discussions. If you’re already doing this with your employees, you can make a small tweak, and add a section to discuss anything related to career development.
In this section of the document, you, or your employee can add anything that comes up throughout the course of a week or month that your employees want to bring up or talk about in your one on one meeting in a short in the moment kind of way. It could be a recent learning your employee had from a recent project, a new opportunity that you found based on their career interests that you’d like to discuss with them, or perhaps an update they want to share with you really quickly about how they are progressing on a career goal. It’s meant to really bring career development into the workflow through smaller bite sized actions.
It’s a small tool and technique but can often go a long way. First, it makes it okay and gives employees the chance to talk about their career development. Left to their own devices, this may not always come up. But when it’s right on the agenda, it serves as a friendly reminder that this is part of your collaboration with them on their goals and aspirations.
Second, it becomes a regular and consistent habit. Instead of waiting for the yearly conversation or performance evaluation time, it becomes part of your ritual and habit with your employees that becomes more frequent and consistent.
#2)Strengths Spotting
Research shows that when we use our strengths we’re more likely to be engaged and feel less stressed in our jobs. But even if we didn’t have the research, most of us intuitively understand that when we use our strengths in the projects and work streams in our job, we not only contribute meaningfully, but it also feels good.
One challenge we all face is that while some of us are more self-aware of our strengths than others, all of us cannot see beyond our own perspective. That is why as a manager, it’s helpful to you to proactively seek out and spot the strengths of your employees.
This action is called strengths spotting. The goal is to proactively spot your employees doing something great, identify and share with them the strength they are using and encourage them to keep up the great work, and then, to find another development opportunity for them to use that strength. This could mean, simply having them do more of that specific activity or project they are working on, finding another project to use that specific strength, or getting them into a different space (ex: working with a different team, different part of the org) where they can continue to use that strength.
This is helpful because while we all have strengths, we don’t always know how they apply or impact others. And secondly, your perspective as a manager helps contextualize how they can use that strength to continue developing in their career.
#3)The Back Pocket Idea
Early in my career, one of my managers taught all of us on our team to always have an idea for a project, initiative, or solution that you would like to implement, aka, a “Back Pocket Idea.” Basically, something you’d like to do in case someone asks you for a new idea and instead of fumbling for words or solutions, you just pull it out of your “back pocket.” Since then, I’ve taken this idea with me, and it's been responsible for almost all of the biggest opportunities that I’ve gotten in my career.
The idea here is to encourage your employees to think strategically and demonstrate ownership to develop an idea that would improve the business. Since it’s their own, it’s A) going to be tied to something that they’re genuinely interested and engaged in. It could be a way to improve the customer experience, a new feature or product, or perhaps a way to improve a process or existing program. When you give employees the empowerment to come up with ideas that they feel responsible for, it makes them feel excited and empowered to drive toward a solution or outcome.
These are great to call upon for strategic planning, quarterly planning, brainstorming sessions at internal meetings or offsites, or other opportunities when you’re looking for new ideas and solutions.
#4)The Career 10-Q
Each quarter, publicly traded companies must file a 10-Q to keep their investors and the general public abreast of the most recent developments and the health of their business. The Career 10-Q follows the same principle - provide a summary of what’s going on with your business (in this case, you) with your key stakeholders (ex: your manager) The 10-Q can have an overall summary of what projects for the quarter, the key metrics and your progress against them, and for anything completed, the outcomes of those projects. It also can include any progress or updates on any career development goals, or specific actions an employee is taking towards their career development.
This is helpful for both managers and the employees. For managers, it gives you more context and nuance into the progress and development of your employees. Instead of waiting until the end of the year and scrambling for performance evaluations, you can see it on a more regular basis. You can also use this in your efforts to amplify the work of your employees and celebrate them publicly. For employees, it gives them a chance to take a pause and reflect on what they actually did and worked on. It also gives them a chance to bring career development into the workflow.
#5) The Warm Intro
We all need relationships in order to be successful in our careers. It’s hard to advance, stand out, or achieve a career goal without the support of others. One thing a manager can do, is proactively broker introductions to their employees to help them gain the social capital and relationships they need to advance in their careers. The key here is to be focused and intentional for who you can introduce your employees to. A few examples include:
Skip Level - Your own boss. This is great for getting your employee exposure to a leader
Stakeholders - These are great for helping improve the effectiveness of your employees relationships with critical stakeholders on their team
Culture Carriers - These are individuals who embody your organizations’ culture and have formal/informal influence. These are great for helping your employees build their own acumen that can help them navigate their organization
Specific To their goals - If you are aware of a specific career goal your employee has, finding a specific person inside your organization to introduce them to is always a safe bet.
If you’re a manager I’d love to hear if any of these are things that resonate with you. And for all employees, if there are any other specific actions or behaviors your manager does that helps with your career development and you have additional suggestions please do share.
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!
Al