Four Professional Growth Issues For Managers (And How To Address Them)

Managers, when it comes to your employees where does professional development rank in your list of priorities?

A. It’s vitally important and I discuss it frequently
B. It’s important but don’t talk about it much
C. It’s not important - or - there are more important things to focus on

If you answered ‘A’ above…congratulations! Keep on doing what you’re doing. However, for all you folks who answered ‘B’ or ‘C’, let’s have a friendly chat, okay? I won’t lay a guilt trip on you (okay…try not to) and I promise by the end you’ll come away with a new appreciation for why growing your employees is important.

When I work with managers, I often hear four common reasons for why professional development gets pushed to the backburner:

Good Ol’ Fashion Fear of Change
Perhaps the greatest fear expressed is that if you grow someone, you’ll grow them right off your team or out of your organization. That might just be true. When people grow as professionals, they do change…and change can bring fear. In this case, it’s the fear of changes in the environment. There might also be a fear that if the employee leaves you just paid for growth that will benefit another organization and not your own.

So, what if you grow an employee and they leave? As Jamie Notter once pointed out, think of it this way: what if you don’t grow them and they stay?

What you can do: It’s time to confront this fear and realize that professionals must hone themselves or else they become dull and rather useless. If the employee stays, they’ll be far more useful to your organization’s purpose. Yet if the employee leaves, you can still take pride in the fact that you helped them move on to something important. And here’s an often ignored bonus: you now have a potentially new social link to another organization in order to share ideas and experiences.

Not Enough Time or Resources
This usually follows with, “When things settle down and get less crazy, then I’ll be able to give more focus to professional development.” Here’s the problem with that statement: it’s never going to get less crazy than it is now. If anything, it’s just going to get crazier.

What you can do: Stop finding reasons for not making disciplined time or resources available around professional development for your people. If time is the reason, create ways for your employees to make time (e.g., move some lower priority tasks off their plate to make room for professional development). If resources are the reason, it’s time to evaluate where you spend your money. If you don’t see professional development as an investment in your company’s future success, there may be something there to reflect on further.

We Have Bigger Problems to Solve Right Now
See above. Again, it comes down to priorities. Also, ask yourself this: Would growing the skills, experiences, and knowledge of our employees help us solve this problems more effectively?

It’s the Employee’s Responsibility
Managers, if this is your belief we need to work on changing that now. Here’s a simple question: what is your role in your organization? Take a few minutes to reflect on this. Hopefully, somewhere in your response, the word lead appeared. If you are a leader, know that a key responsibility of leaders is to produce more leaders. That takes a firm belief in the value of growing your employees.

What you can do: Assume the responsibility for growing your people. Yes, it’s the employee’s responsibility to be open and eager to achieve their own development (it’s the old horse and water thing). Yet, you must create these professional development openings and then create the space for your employees to use what they’ve learned. Going back to the first issue around the fear of employees leaving…if an employee has the ability to grow and use this new growth in their work, they’ll likely be far happier and fulfilled in what they do.

Remember managers…if your employees look good, then you’re going to look good. The manager/employee dynamic can be a mutually beneficial relationship…particularly if you take care of your employees and their need for professional development.

Feedback: Karaoke With Tube Socks?

Steve Roesler published a great post (then again, has he ever written a bad post?) titled Talent: Accurate Self-Awareness or Karaoke Feedback?. The main focus is feedback and he offers suggestions on how to give it as well as how to receive it.

For me, I find the hardest thing to remember about feedback is that it is a gift. Yes, sometimes that gift is like receiving tube socks for Christmas but every so often I get the kind of feedback that is right up there with receiving a first edition signed copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Feedback is learning and I have to remind my ego that learning is good if I want to grow (it helps to talk to my ego like it’s a five year old).

It also helps to frame the experience of receiving feedback in this way. Steve notes:

And remember: Feedback is more indicative of the person giving it to you than of you yourself. It tells you what’s important to them, reflects underlying values and expectations, and reveals ‘how you measure up’ in their eyes.

It’s a terrific post and made even more so by the addition of Wally Bock’s comment where he tells the story of how his father, a Lutheran pastor, asked for and received feedback from his family after each service and sermon. His experience offers additional elements that are vital in making feedback the powerful learning tool that it can be.

How are you practicing good feedback to those around you?
Are you asking for candid feedback and taking notes?

No Tuition Reimbursement Where You Work? There Are Other Options

As I vaguely mentioned in my last post, after a few months of hustling to get all of my application items together, I’ve finally been accepted to the business anthropology master’s degree program at the University of North Texas. Along with my background in workplace coaching, organizational management, and leadership development, I’m excited at the prospect of adding an applied anthropology discipline to my portfolio (shoot me an email if you’re curious about what business anthropology is). My program is almost entirely online so it will be interesting to experience this type of learning and how different it might be from the traditional classroom experience.

But now comes the dawning realization that this program actually costs money (who knew?). Once upon a time I worked for a non-profit that offered a pretty sweet tuition reimbursement package in their benefits. The only condition was that you had to have a B grade or better in each class to be eligible for the reimbursement. Interestingly, the program didn’t necessarily have to be aligned with your job role (which is also rather rare). So, for instance, if you were in customer service and wanted to earn a degree in accounting, you were free to pursue that path.

I’m beginning to realize just how uncommon tuition reimbursement is in today’s organizations. Perhaps it’s always been this way or just a reflection of the current economy. Maybe you’re facing the same situation: you’re an employee planning on going back to school or a manager with staff who are interested in pursuing an advanced degree of some type…but your organization doesn’t have a tuition reimbursement or assistance program. While the financial aid is a nice benefit, there are some other ways to support academic learning in your organization:

Executive sponsorship
Think of this as an academic adviser within your organization. Each program typically assigns a faculty member to help students align their courses and learning with their professional direction. Well, apply that same type of role within your organization. Ask a senior manager or seasoned professional within your organization to be a mentor. This sponsor would ideally be someone who has the background, experience, and network related to the student’s field of study. Their purpose would be to offer insight and help connect the classroom study to the day-to-day world of work.

Workplace Learning Cohort
If you work in a big enough organization, there will likely be others pursuing a degree along with you. Why not develop a learning cohort and pull all the students together? The cohort doesn’t have to be grouped according to field of study - unless it makes particular sense to gather all the MBAs together. But, there is a strong possibility for additional learning if the group is a collective from multiple disciplines. If for no other reason to form, the cohort can be a support group for balancing the demands of work, school, and home lives.

Mini-Internships and Work Integration Options
Unless your ultimate goal is to be the prince of an ivory tower, you’re probably going back to school in order to advance your professional goals. And there’s nothing more frustrating to get all of this academic learning with no application to the real world of work. There needs to be a balance between theory and application. If your degree is directly aligned with your current work, then talk with your executive sponsor or immediate manager about how you can best integrate your academic work with your daily professional work. If your degree is not aligned with what you do daily, make a case for a mini-internship in another department (or at another organization if you can make a convincing argument). Just be prepared to show how your current work assignments won’t suffer and that the mini-internship will make you more valuable to your manager, team, and company.

The big idea is to be creative in how you integrate your professional development and your work even if there are no established programs in your organization. Anyone have other ideas or programs they’ve run across for how companies can support the learners in their workplace?

Tag Game For Tasty Reads

Steve Roesler applied the tag to me last week for a book reading meme. I’m kind of a sucker for anything book related so here she goes… 

The object of this meme’s game is to share what I’m currently reading and sentences 6-8 of page 123 of that book. I’m actually reading three books right now, two of them contributing to my professional learning: Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting and Pamela Skilling’s soon-to-be-released Escape from Corporate America. Here’s the page 123 snippet from Pamela’s work:

However, it is the immediate manager you work with every day who makes the biggest impact on your job satisfaction. Great companies cultivate great managers. They also give them the tools and the autonomy to lead their teams effectively.

What else is currently in the queue? Here’s my bookpile in the order I plan to read:

The Halo Effect - Phil Rosenzweig
Weird Ideas That Work - Robert Sutton
Get Back in the Box - Douglas Rushkoff
Excellence by Design - Turid H Horgan, Michael L Joroff, William L Porter, & Donald A Schon
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There - Marshall Goldsmith

Dang…that’s a bit of a load and I’m not at all sure that I’ll get through all of these books by the end of the summer. The problem for me is that I’m the king tortoise of reading…I read reeeeaaaal slllllooooow. And I’m also starting my Master’s degree in Business Anthropology in July so there are no guarantees. Honestly, I imagine there will be course prescribed reading that will trump my bookshelf selections. 

So, who’s next? I’m curious to see what kind of book reading projects on are on the minds of…

Jenny Ward
Pamela Skillings
Judi Sohn
Jason Alba
Frank Martin

Don’t Jump Ship Too Quickly

Admit it. Unless you’ve found your soulful work, there are days when you come home from the job and toy with the idea of ditching it to move on to something better. But is ditching your job the best answer? It all depends on your circumstances.

A few days ago, CNN published a (somewhat surprisingly) insightful article called Look on the bright side of a bad job. Based on this title, I didn’t have high expectations. I rather expected the writer to admonish his readers to just “buck up” and find their shiny, happy selves. Instead, there are some pretty good ideas in the article…in particular the last one under their category of Wisdom.

If you’re unhappy, examine why. Do you dislike the people you work with or is it the actual work? Are you in a dead-end position? Think back to your interview and see if you missed any warning signs that this job might not be the one for you. Use your experience to avoid falling into the same predicament in your next job. If the situation didn’t turn sour until after you’d been with the company for a while, you know to stay attuned to shifts in attitudes and practices…Making the best out of a bad job situation doesn’t mean being complacent. A positive outlook shouldn’t replace your plans to move on (emphasis mine).

This is brilliant advice. I know from personal experience and from coaching clients that when the crapstorm at work starts to get wild, there’s a strong impulse to jump ship. Yes, there are times when it’s necessary to move on (say, when our health is at stake or the situation has become toxic), but it’s not always the best plan for our working future. Most times, these bad jobs are chock full of learning that we need to absorb in order to make better future decisions that will help us find work that has meaning and purpose. Or else, we risk falling into the same situation again and again (think Bill Murray’s plight in Groundhog Day).

If you’re in a spot where you’re edging toward the end of the plank and thinking about leaping for another ship, take some time to answer the questions posed above. Take full advantage of the wisdom and experience that this experience is offering you.

Also posted at Career Hub…read more articles at the #1 HR Blog according to HR World.