In Support of Your Team’s Development

Domain: Managing Others - Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

One of the key responsibilities as a manager is supporting the growth and development of your entire team.

They key word here is "support". Each individual is responsible for their own growth and career development. A good leader will simply understand how they can help support that growth in a positive way.

While there is not a one-size-fits-all approach for developing individuals, there are several fundamentals that I recommend in most situations. Here are just a few of them…

Seek to understand

Supporting others in their development is a nuanced and highly contextual endeavor. Knowing that, it's important that you take the time to consider the individual.

How long have they been in their role? How well are they performing in that role? What are their strengths? What are their career goals and aspirations?

Understanding all of this is key to understanding how you can support them.

Let's start easy. Do you know the specific career goals for everyone that reports to you? If not, start having those conversations this week.

Maybe they haven't even thought about it much themselves. That's fine. Let's get them thinking about it now so that we can move the conversation forward.

Time and space

Continuous development benefits both the individual and the company. Knowing that, let's normalize the idea of giving people the time and opportunity to focus on activities that support their development while on the job.

This will be easiest for goals that are more relevant to the individuals current job but even loftier aspirations will likely include skills and competencies that can be developed for the benefit of both the organization and the individual.

How do we do this? During your discussion with your employee, make it clear that they can work on their development during the course of the workday.

This can be as simple as acknowledging their goal and suggesting they spend some time on it between now and your next meeting. For example: "I love that you want to get more comfortable delivering presentations. Spend some time before our next meeting on where you think you'd like to start and we can make sure we're supporting you in that."

Share your resources

One of the best ways that we can support the development of the individuals on our team is through the knowledge, resources and networks to which we have access based on our role.

This doesn't mean that we have all the answers or the ability to solve all their problems. Instead, we can introduce them to the right people or help get them on the right projects that will further their growth. In this way, we are leveraging our resources to champion their own efforts for self-development.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement.

This week’s action items:

1. Ask and learn about the development goals for each of your employees.

2. Encourage them to take the next logical steps towards pursuing those goals and agree to follow-up.

3. Identify how you can leverage your resources and contacts as a leader to support them.