In January of this year, Monique Valcour posted an article on her Harvard Business Review blog titled, "If You're Not Helping People Develop, You're Not Management Material." For managers struggling to meet performance quotas, that may sound harsh. It's true that meeting quotas is key—managers who don't meet goals often lose their jobs. It's also true that simply meeting quotas won't be enough to advance you to higher levels of management.
Motivating your employees and helping them to succeed is key to your long-term success. You will have a hard time finding and keeping really good employees unless you offer them opportunities for learning and development.
In a 2012 survey conducted by Jumpstart: HR, both the unemployed and current employees said that the single most important factor in considering whether or not to submit an application was "a company where they can increase their skill set." This ranked higher than compensation and benefits, company culture or company brand.
Training and development is clearly important—but it's also the first budget item slashed when the economy is struggling.
"Fortunately, many studies show that challenging work assignments are often more developmental than workshops," says Deb Wood, senior consultant for VITAL WorkLife.
Developmental Assignments
What makes an assignment developmental? It's giving employees something to do outside their individual comfort zone that challenges them to try something now. Managers should look for projects, activities, group involvement and responsibilities that can be added to an employee's current position to help with growth and development, such as:
- Training or mentoring a new employee
- Leading a staff meeting
- Assuming responsibility for a slightly senior, vacationing staff member's job
- Writing a memo about a new rule or policy
- Representing the team at a department meeting
- Following up on a customer complaint
- Representing the company at a high-school job fair
- Learning a new software program and then teaching other team members to use it
- Brainstorming solutions for a problem that's cropped up
"It's important, in giving the assignment, that you explain why this assignment was chosen and what skills you expect it to develop," says Wood. "It's equally important to debrief afterward and discuss what can be learned from the experience and applied to other situations."
It's important to provide feedback, but it's unrealistic to expect perfection or to expect employees to do things exactly the way you would have done them yourself. "This is not a situation where you want to say 'Do A, B and C,'" says Wood. "It's all about giving employees the chance to learn from experience—and we all learn from our mistakes."
Development in Lieu of Promotion
Have a talented employee but no openings higher up on the career ladder? One way to retain this employee might be to give him or her a lateral career move to a position where he or she would learn entirely new skills. Saying "I don't want to lose you" is nice. Saying "I want to help you develop skills you will need no matter where you go" shows you recognize the employee's potential and are investing in helping develop the skills needed for career advancement.
Development in Lieu of Burnout
If looking for development opportunities for your staff feels like too much work, chances are you're working harder than you should. The biggest symptom of underdeveloped staff is an overworked, stressed out manager—who believes there's not one single aspect of the job that could be delegated to his or her reports.
Is that you? Take a breath and think about the smartest person who reports to you. Anything they could do for you today? Too much trouble to explain it? Try devoting 20 minutes to delegating a task and giving it away for just one day. Does the performance need tweaking? Spend another 20 minutes debriefing and reassigning. For most managers, investing an hour in effectively delegating a task today can save them an hour a day for years to come—and help them develop their own skills in delegating and developing their employees.
"You don't have to delegate every task the first time out, but every hour you invest in developing employee skills not only makes you more productive—but also makes your employees better skilled and more satisfied with their jobs," concludes Wood.
