Career Conversations Employees Want
Like exercising or flossing, developing employees one of those things managers know they should do, but often struggle to prioritise. Yet in survey after survey, year after year, people express dissatisfaction in how their careers are supported. The danger is clear; if people don't get support to grow and develop they will either leave or (perhaps even more disastrously) just withdraw their engagement, motivation and energy.
What's a manager to do?
The authors recognise how challenging managers find the responsibility of providing career development, and offer the reassurance that it's simpler than most realise to provide the practical support employees want.
They suggest that we "reframe career development in such a way that responsibility rests squarely with the employee, and that our role is more about prompting, guiding, reflecting, exploring ideas, activating enthusiasm and driving action."
In a nutshell, they say, quality career development boils down to quality conversations.
Three types of conversation for development
The authors offer a framework for thinking about conversations that help others to grow. This is structured around three distinct types of conversation:
- Hindsight conversations - help people look backwards and inwards to determine who they are, what they've learned, what they love and where they excel.
- Foresight conversations - designed to keep people looking forwards and outwards towards trends, opportunities and the ever-evolving big picture.
- Insight conversations - leverage the convergence of what's been learned in hindsight and foresight conversations, focusing on what the employee needs to experience, know, learn, and be able to do.
What if?
Each chapter ends with some key 'what if' questions. For example, What If....
- employees really owned their own careers?
- your job was to facilitate conversations rich with insightful questions that would guide others toward greater awareness and action?
- these conversations were shorter, more frequent, and occurred within the natural flow of the work?
- you didn't pressure yourself to have all the answers?
- employees viewed career progression more as a rock-climbing wall than a ladder?
- they pursued career goals through an almost unlimited combination of moves - over, around, up and down?
- you talked to every team member about what advancement and career success means to them?
Get people thinking
Asking questions that elicit hindsight, foresight and insight helps people slow down enough to reflect, bring insights to the surface, articulate important messages and consider how to leverage their expanding skills and knowledge base. The key is to get them thinking. Because as the authors say, "when you help employees to think critically about the experience and learning they need to move forward and toward their career goals, you're doing career development".
"The true test of the effectiveness of the leader is this: Are your people better off when they leave than when they arrived?"James Hunter