Careers for people who don’t want careers
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Is it okay if someone in your team doesn’t want to progress their career?
Many managers feel required to push people to progress their careers – we all feel the organisational pressure to move everyone forward. But if you have someone in your team who doesn’t want a career or even any development – is it okay to honour that?
The answer is absolutely “Yes!” People who don’t want to progress their careers and who are happy where they are, are a source of stability in the organisation. Note that sometimes people may not want to progress their career right now, and sometimes they don’t want to have a career at all.
But you need to explain two things:
- Security comes from having a reputation as a high performer. The performance bar in the organisation is always lifting and, from time-to-time they will need support to help them meet performance objectives – and you want to help with that.
- That they need to stay ‘fit for change’. Their job may well change over time as the organisation changes. They need to get positively involved with that. And that means that they need to engage in learning, so that they are able to be flexible when needed.
- Decide on the priorities. Your focus needs to be on what will help them to improve their contribution to team performance. There will be things they will be interested in but they will not necessarily be priorities – so focus on the areas where they don’t have great results, or where their performance dips.
- Examine their strengths. What are they really good at that they could use more – to help themselves and the team? Could you help them use this high performance to build their reputation? This could be very useful later if they change their mind and do want to move on. And at the least, it will help them stay motivated.
- Do they want to be an expert? Are there ways in which they could deepen their skills and knowledge to benefit the team? For many people who don’t want a career, moving them towards expert level in what they do can be incredibly motivational. Note that you may need them to take responsibility for documenting areas where they are the only person who holds that knowledge, or for training up another member of the team. This means that the team can carry on if the person falls sick, for example.
- Can they multi-skill? Are there pieces of work that they have never tried? If people want to stay put, they need to stay ‘fit for change’ – and this involves making sure that every week or two they are learning something new. Think of this as flexibility exercises – everyone needs to stay in shape!
- Are there things they avoid doing? Why do they avoid doing them? Is it because they hate them or because they find them uninteresting? Can you motivate them by taking some of that activity away and developing them into other areas, which they are good at and enjoy more?
- Are there some weaknesses that they can manage a bit better? What is it about their performance that causes you a problem? Do they need to fix it? Do they have to continue doing that work, or could someone else cover that? Or are there other things you could do to help them manage that weakness – for example, in the way that we looked at innovation a couple of weeks ago?
It’s okay sometimes for people not to want a career or to not want development. Some people work to live, rather than living to work – and sometimes we have a lot going on in our lives and want work to be the area where we can simply do a good job, without being stretched. Supporting your people now in getting what they need might lead to them trusting you when a challenge comes along later down the track.