My Career – Please talk to me

One of the top 10 reasons why large companies fail to keep their best talent according to a Forbes magazine article is No discussion around career development. Not a performance review. That’s different.

Rather, we’re talking about specific one-on-one discussions about where the person is going. While asking what the team member wants to do in the future is certainly a part of the discussion it really is a coaching task – drawing out a cogent plan, something many people aren’t able to do on their own.

A real discussion about an employee’s career accomplishes so much:
- Shows you care. (you do right?)
- Provides context for transactional behavior.
- Gives you, their leader, critical information for your planning.
- Creates a targeted development plan fueled by a strong vision.
- Helps both of you understand each other better.
- Brings value to the organization because you better understand their goals and they better understand the needs of the organization.
- You both have something to talk about besides the production tasks.
- Boss/employee morphs into human/human.
- A valuable connection to the organization helps the employee justify staying with your organization.
Talk about career, career path (and how promotions aren’t required to grow), and how to navigate the political waters, regularly. Enhance the relationship between you and your team members and reap the results that all championship teams experience.

Tap into expert Janine Moon here at ELCircle. Her specialty is career ownership for both the leader and the staff member.

Photo credit: Luc Galoppin

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Janine

Jim: a really timely post…while surveys differ, recent findings continue to show employees are pretty unhappy with employers and career discussions do traditionally fall on the list of manager tasks. Many managers–whether they’ve learned how to have a career discussion or not–think they need to have “answers” about an employee’s career direction and that’s not true. Several of your points above reflect that there are other really good reasons to sit and talk, especially the caring and humanness aspects!

It takes “2 to tango,” as they say, so I encourage employees to not wait to be invited by their manager into this discussion…rather, to initiate it. The employee creates a focus of “value” rather than progression. The individual can identify the value that s/he brings, identify additional value and potential growth opportunities, and clarify the strengths and leverage opportunities in their work. In addition to showing initiative and connection, the individual is showing alignment with the organization’s strategies…a most critical measure of value and identifying (for the manager) the ways to get more and better from a (human) resource. What manager doesn’t want to be known as one who does more with less?

To a great extent, this can be a more comfortable discussion for both with benefits for both. In addition, when people act to take ownership of their career, they most often find that they like the driver’s seat and move more quickly and accurately toward their career goals.

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