Helping your team members gain career direction
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At this time of year, many of your team will be starting to turn their attention to their career direction for the New Year. This blog, previously published in February 2016, is a great starting place to help them start to get there…
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Talking to your team about their careers can be quite tough, as you may not feel that you have all of the answers. Team members will often be vague and not know what direction they want to go in, they might ask you questions about things beyond your knowledge (e.g. their technical development or opportunities in very different areas). Sometimes you might even wonder if you’re the right person to be giving advice on careers in your organisation at all!
It’s understandable that this can be off-putting for many managers. The danger is that this often results in career conversations not happening at all – and team members getting frustrated because they think you don’t care.
So how can you overcome your reservations and help them?
- Realise you shouldn’t do it all for them. Eliminate the pressure of having to have all of the answers by expecting them to prepare for any career discussions with you. As a manager you can’t have the answer to every question, and often the employee can find some or all of the answers themselves. For me, the most disheartening moment is when someone comes with a career discussion, which has been given little, if any, thought. If you find yourself in that situation, and there is no reason other than they just haven’t prepared, you don’t have to go ahead with the meeting. If they’re not prepared to invest time in thinking, and just want you to give them the answer, reset their expectations and reschedule the meeting.
- Let them do the heavy lifting. You might have some views or some advice, but they really need to think things through themselves so that they arrive at their own answers. In fact, your role can often be as simple as asking some good questions and being curious about their responses – ask what they enjoy doing, what energises them, what their strengths are and what motivates them. Ask about their timescales, and how work fits with home-life plans. Ask them what preparation they can do to be ready, and who could help them.
- Signpost them to other people. You are definitely the right person to be able to help them, but often you’re only one of the right people. If they need help that’s outside your own experience, introduce them to people who could help – or who would know someone who could. It’s down to them to follow through on the introduction, though you can put some urgency on this by scheduling a follow-up discussion.
- Don’t try and do it all in one go. It’s okay to not get through everything in one session, often you might be better off having 2 or 3 short sessions rather one 3-hour session! Give some consideration to what the right direction might be, ask some questions, and then send them away to work on it and come back with some answers. And a quick tip – sometimes the best thing you can do is wrap up the meeting and challenge them to return with a succinct summary of what they want from their career!
- Explore what they have the experience and knowledge for. In some cases their career aspiration might be beyond their current level of capability. They might have a good idea of what they want to do, but it may be out of reach. This is often where you can help them. Just be cautious of basing your advice on your own career path – you are a sample of one. Give them a view of what a range of people have done with their careers and help them find a pathway through to achieving their career direction.
Asking questions is better than giving answers. Some people may initially find that frustrating, but in the long run, allowing people the time and space to think about their own career direction will ensure they’re more motivated to follow through on their career plans.