Three Powerful Conversations Managers Must Have To Develop Their People
Have career conversations, or deep, meaningful dialogue coupled with action plans around measurable goals, to keep your employees around for longer.
You shouldn't avoid career conversations, because those people will grow with or without you.
Ways to screw up career conversations include not having them at all, limiting them to the near future, just checking the box, or improvising in a half-baked way.
Each step below requires an hour of investment approximately two weeks apart form one another, and explores the employee's past, present, and future.
First, ask "Starting with kindergarten, tell me about your life."
Probe with more questions when they talk about pivots. Look for the patterns that give you a strong signal and write them down.
Second, ask the employee what he or she would be doing at the pinnacle of his or her career, when feeling challenged, engaged, and not wanting anything else.
Ask what size company they want to work for, what industry they want to work in, and whether they want to be a in a senior IC role or a senior management role?
Ideally you can place the employee in a position that will deliver experiences that will compound and prepare him or her for where he or she is headed.
Third, create a detailed action plan, which shows how your employee is going to reach that vision for themselves. It is a roadmap to self-actualization.
To develop a career action plan, first develop their role, or make adjustments to take them toward the end goal in their career.
Second, enhance their network, helping them identify the people who can inform and influence where they're trying to go.
Third, define their immediate next step, which can involve advocating for them to make a lateral or vertical move, or giving them goalposts to hit on a quarterly basis.
Finally, enlist others to help hone their skills, such as sending your employees to training like conferences or workshops.
You must intently invest in each employee, and make sure they're getting the tools and experiences they need to advance in the way they aspire to advance.
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