Four Approaches to Discovering Meaningful Developmental Needs
Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash
A critical element to acquiring, retaining, and benefitting from valuable employees is creating clear pathways for personal and professional development. Not only is it a leading expectation of the current workforce, but a necessity for the growth of coveted soft skills within every kind of organization.
To build a philosophical foundation for quality development, a leader must see and understand four building blocks:
See potential and possibility in every person you lead or oversee.
Determine specific areas of development with a bias toward growing their strengths over their weaknesses.
Help each person to activate their own development by providing the necessary resources to facilitate growth—including time, money, clear steps, emotional support, and healthy accountability.
Always recognize that development leading to real growth is a process that takes time. Be patient.
One of the most significant challenges for team leaders and HR departments is determining specific traits, qualities, or competencies to develop. Certainly, new hires need development in organizational specifics. What do you want them to accomplish that is role-specific, and how do you want them to achieve those goals that match your vision, DNA, and organizational culture? These competencies often dictate the first year or two of employee development. But how do you continue to develop senior employees or grow them into new organizational roles with more elevation?
Two key words in following through on these commitments are partnership and apprenticeship. Partnering with someone toward their own development and growth is to come alongside them and ascertain where they want to make progress. To apprentice someone is to take them under your wing and provide them with valuable experience in what you do and what’s next.
Consider these four approaches to partnering with an employee toward clearly defining developmental needs:
Ask them about their aspirations. Where do they want to be in five years? What do they think it would require in the realm of character and competencies to get there?
Be observant and notice where they tend to excel and where they might be stuck. These perceptions will aid you in living out a bias for developing strengths over weaknesses and helping them discern a vocational pathway for the future. Also, this noticing behavior will help you partner well by picking up on limiting beliefs and helping them to overcome them.
Use formal reviews for growth milestones and future pathways. Most review processes become ultra-routine and perfunctory. Instead, use them more positively by noting where growth has occurred and toward a new practical path of future growth. Everyone wants to know that they are making progress toward meaningful change. Tell them. Show them. Use the review to highlight specific progress and outline the next steps.
Consider the ongoing use of quality assessments. I work with many clients who have taken the Clifton Strengths assessment multiple times as an onboarding perk—usually with no coaching or follow-up. It merely becomes a report in someone’s digital folder or tucked away in some physical drawer. You can gain valuable development data from the use of proven assessments. Take that data and build on it by providing in-house or third-party coaching and development. Allow this snapshot of someone’s abilities, personality, or emotional intelligence to be a springboard toward ongoing development, growth, and advancement opportunities.
Since development and growth requires knowledge and experience, don’t forget to add an apprenticeship approach to the mix. Take them with you--anywhere. Include them in appropriate behind-the-scenes thinking and decisions so that they begin to think like a leader. Provide them with exposure to other leaders in the organization. This inclusion will give them a sense of variety and allow them to see the organization through different lenses. Give them stretch assignments now and then to help them build capacity and gain confidence. But always have specific development traits and goals in mind.
Partnering with the employee toward their development will build goodwill and a sense of value and help to create a growth mindset. Applying an apprenticeship approach to the overall developmental environment will add valuable experience, a real-time observation data point for determining progress, and the element of relationship and presence to the equation. Books, podcasts, conferences, and digital courses can greatly aid development. But at the end of the day, quality development is always relational.
Be diligent to know the condition of your flocks,
And pay attention to your herds;
For riches are not forever,
Nor does a crown endure to all generations.
When the grass is gone, the new growth is seen,
And herbs of the mountain are gathered in,
The lambs will supply wool for your clothing,
And the goats will bring the price of a field.
And there will be enough goats’ milk for your food,
For the food of your household . . .
Proverbs 27:23-27 highlights the advantages of knowing your people well and aiding their growth. It benefits them, and it helps you.
Let’s raise up more leaders. A great way to invest in your people and teams is through a Core Clarity Strengths Workshop. Click the button below for a 30 minute consultation.
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