Not sure how to enable your employees to develop their career and professional capabilities over time? Here’s an easy way to get started with a proven process that works regardless of the age or size of your company.
For the vast majority of companies, their most valuable asset goes home every night (and hopefully comes back the next day). Developing your employees, no matter the size of your company, to be the best they can be might seem to be a “nice when we have time to do this” kind of business goal, but that would be short-sighted.
The Unappreciated Value of Development Plans for Your Employees — Creating a culture that values serious reflection and continuous improvement for all employees is one of the most critical competitive advantages your company can develop. So why aren’t more companies doing this today? My theory is companies have lost sight of what an amazing competitive advantage this could be if they did it well. Time for a short personal history lesson to show you why this is the case.
Way Back in the 20th Century — I was lucky enough to start the first half (i.e. two decades) of my career at two of the largest (and I think best) companies on the planet: P&G and PepsiCo. What they sometimes lacked in agility they offset with other core capabilities. One of those areas of competitive advantage, honed over the years, was helping their employees figure out what their personal career development plans should be and who is responsible for what when.
At P&G and PepsiCo, over the years my managers helped me develop and adjust my personal development plan to enable me to grow as a business leader. They made sure I knew that my personal success and growth were really important to them. In short, they continually invested in my development as a business leader, knowing it would pay off in the long run.
P&G has a simple philosophy in developing strong business leaders (to note, over 300 CEOs of major companies started their careers at P&G). Procter made it very clear to aspiring leaders they only had to worry about two things — results and people. The tricky bit was getting them both right at the same time.
If you crushed your numbers, but destroyed your team at the same time to get results, you were a short-term leader (and likely a soon to be former employee). If your team loved you so much they would walk on hot coals for you (note: I’ve done this — not recommended), but your business results sucked, you were also going to be shown the door.
Getting the results needed to grow your business while growing the capability of your team at the same time is a constant challenge (as it is for any start-up or established company such as Thomvest Ventures where I now work). So how do you achieve this critical balance as a business leader?
My “Aha” Moment — I think I now know. As I’ve progressed in my career, I had the privilege of working in a wide variety of companies in various categories in different countries and cultures around the world. I’ve enjoyed managing a number of leaders and teams over the years. They ranged in size from a team of one when I first started at eBay to managing over 80,000 employees when I was president of H&R Block.
As I look back on what it was like to manage so many people and reflecting on what I was taught earlier in my career on managing people, I’ve come to realize there are five fundamental questions all employers (especially start-ups) should discuss with their employees on a regular basis.
How and when you create a personal development plan for each employee is an important part of this process. You should have this discussion about personal development on a regular basis, and absolutely at least once a year (ideally more frequently such as quarterly).
Having the right conversation with the right questions with your employees is even more important. Here are five questions you should be asking each of the people you manage on an annual basis (if not more often) if you want them to develop them into strong business leaders:
APPRECIATION: What does the company appreciate about you? — This question might sound either a bit obvious, or perhaps even unnecessary. But it’s critical to regularly ask and answer this question with each of your direct reports. Think about it: you or someone hired them because they were going to contribute something unique and valuable to the business. Perhaps it was their attention to detail. Or knowledge of a particular topic. Or the way they collaborate with others. Or a hundred other possibilities.
Whatever it was (and hopefully still is), a manager should regularly give their employees positive feedback on what the company appreciates about them as part of their ongoing development plan. It costs the company nothing to do this and reminds the employee what makes them valuable and critical to their team. Trust me, contrary to what some managers think, employees don’t get tired of hearing this kind of positive feedback about themselves too often — chances are they are starving for it.
SELF-IMPROVEMENT — What have you done to learn more about your capabilities and grow as a business leader over the past year? School isn’t out for the summer when it comes to someone’s personal career development. As a team leader, you should be challenging your employees to continually raise the bar on their own performance and reflect upon what they have learned about their own capabilities over the past year. This might involve self-assessments and 360 degree feedback from peers and others, in addition to having them craft specific personal business development goals and plans.
OPPORTUNITY — What could you have done better in the past year? It doesn’t matter how great a year they had (or lousy for that matter). There is always the opportunity to learn from successes and failures. In my experience, failures seem to be a lot more instructive, but we’ll save that insight for another blog. You should encourage your employees to be comfortable and vulnerable enough with you to recognize their own missed opportunities, and what they would do different next time if given the chance (as well as being able to explain why).
VISUALIZATION — Where do you see yourself in 12 months and in 5 years? This question should be included in EVERY annual performance review and development plan, but unfortunately rarely is. Asking it can yield some very valuable insights for the employee as well as the employer, such as a) is there alignment between what you think they are capable of compared to what they want to achieve?, b) are they being appropriately ambitious (or perhaps too ambitious) with their career goals, and c) does what they are doing now compared to what they want to be doing in the future make sense in terms of their planned career progression?
In my experience, this question alone can make a big difference in how a manager works with a direct report since they are both aligned on what that employee wants to accomplish in their career — be sure to include it in the next round of career development conversations with the members of your team.
ASSISTANCE — What can I as your manager do to help you develop to your fullest business potential? If an employee fails, it is not just the fault of the employee. Some (if not a lot) of the blame falls squarely on their manager. As their manager, you have to let your employees know you believe in them and want them to succeed in business as well as life. You should be their “North Star” who continues to believe in them, even during the times when they don’t believe in themselves. If you’re not willing to make this kind of verbal commitment to your direct reports, you should ask yourself if you really want to be in the people development business in the first place.
By letting your direct reports know how much you care about their personal development and future growth as a business leader, they will in turn let you know what they need from you to make the next phase of their career development happen. Maybe it’s a training course. Or a new assignment to stretch them. Perhaps it’s getting them a coach or mentor.
Whatever it is, make sure you understand what they are asking for as well as why. This is typically not a big investment, but by listening and responding to what they need, you can generate a huge ROI for your employees right now in terms of their level of personal motivation and commitment, as well as for your own company in the long-term if you act upon it NOW.
Well, What Are You Waiting For? — That’s it. Five simple questions to help your direct reports grow in their business career and personal development. Critical and timely questions about appreciation, self-improvement, opportunity, visualization and assistance. You don’t have to take my word for it this process works — you can easily prove it to yourself.
Here’s all you need to do. Ask these five questions to a single employee who reports to you at their next annual review. Better yet, don’t even wait for that to happen — schedule this conversation with one of your direct reports before the end of this month. Give them these five questions to think about in advance. Be sure to set up enough time to have a meaningful conversation on each question. Then see what happens next.
This one single conversation with a single direct report will clearly show you why these five questions should be the basis for a candid conversation that ALL your managers should have with ALL your employees on a regular basis. These crucial conversations will open up all kinds of future possibilities for your employees to grow in ways never imagined. When you fully embrace this process, you will be empowering the next generation of business leaders who in turn will each discover on their own how to achieve that critical balance between business growth and growing their own people.
You’ll see. I certainly did.