To effectively discuss career progression with new hires, consider the following strategies:
- Schedule regular conversations – set aside time for career development discussions, ideally a year into their role, to ensure they are ongoing and relevant.
- Prepare ahead of time – understand their current role, performance and aspirations to tailor the conversation to their needs.
- Create a comfortable environment – foster open communication by providing a relaxed setting where they feel comfortable sharing their thoughts.
- Align personal aspirations with college/unit goals – help them connect their career goals with the College’s objective to create a sense of purpose.
- Encourage small experiments – support them in trying a new class, conference, or training assumption that align with their interests and career development.
Tips for Talking About Career Development
- Set development expectations – the belief that employees should receive a promotion and pay increase if they acquire new knowledge, skills, or abilities creates unrealistic expectations for managers because of the limited opportunities to provide promotions or significant pay increases. That is why managers must clarify the expectation to employees that ongoing development is a baseline for job performance. To represent this mindset shift, the career lattice model shows how job and career growth have shifted from a vertical ladder progression to a vertical, horizontal, and diagonal progression that can change throughout an employee’s career. Movement on the lattice can be represented by growth in their job, on their team, or their career.
- Clearly define the employee’s responsibility – successful development conversation resulting in real professional growth are not a one-way street. What often gets overlooked is the employees’ role in having successful development conversations that result in meaningful growth. Employees have a shared responsibility with their manager to establish an ongoing pattern of effective development conversations by showing a desire for guidance, feedback, and coaching for improved performance and career growth.
- Co-Create meaningful development goals – setting clear and meaningful development goals provides the benefits of clarity, focus, and accountability. A meaningful development goal is a magnet for maximizing one’s effort to achieve an intended behavior change. Helping employees define a challenging, achievable, and meaningful development goal is not a one-size fits all approach. Managers should remain humble, help employees see real opportunities for growth, and consider ways that growth might look difficult for all employees.
- Ongoing coaching conversations – once a goal is defined, the focus of development conversations shifts to coaching the team member on what’s going well, what could be better, and how you can help the employee develop professionally. Effective developmental coaching requires leading by asking quality questions. Leading with questions allows leaders to understand the employees’ perspectives before choosing what input they need to provide. Shifting from leading through telling to leading through coaching helps create an environment where employees feel valued, empowered, and motivated.