Never forget, you own your development. At CareerTruth, we want to enable you to have a great development experience with your company.
Most companies have significant budgets and try very hard to create opportunities for their employee’s development. Yet most companies struggle to get the development of an individual right because every human is in a different mindset for growth and comes from a different place of skills and competency to build upon. In addition, every employee’s leader often feels rushed to build “development” plans that tie to a corporate program for compensation budgets as they are responsible for too many day to day duties. This historical top down process will continue to fail as career minded talent build confidence in who they are and set their own professional and personal goals for success.
The best method for any single employee to advance and develop in their career is by maximizing their relationship with their leader. Leadership is a relationship that inspires and guides growth. While good leaders want to work with each human under their guidance, delivering unique individual development plans that meet the individuals goals is hard. Leaders should not be required to read into your mind and guess at what you want. The talent and their leader’s relationship for the talent’s development will be maximized by the process being driven by the talent and guided and inspired by the leader.
TRUST
Leading starts with a single word – Trust. A leader can not lead a team unless they can lead a single person first. If you cannot trust your leader, you will have a tough time maximizing your relationship for development. To begin the process of building trust for your development benefit, you have the opportunity to create a full career strategic plan that starts with documenting your personal Values, Purpose Statement, Skills you have mastered, and professional and personal goals in CareerTruth. By preparing this work well, you will have taken a major step in building the clarity and confidence to help you realize you are a high potential who deserves the best for yourself. It is at this exact point you should trust that it is time to declare your documented career plan to your leader. A leader who is given the chance to align personally with your values, your purpose, and your goals will feel honored that you trust them with this information and ideas.
ALIGN and ADVANCE
It is always best to be proactive in building alignment for what you want to development to advance your career. By being proactive and setting the agenda for the first Alignment meeting for your development, you are showing confidence and let’s face it – the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The more open and transparent you can be regarding your strengths and goals to meet your purpose, the easier you are making it for the leader to support and guide your success. In dealing with any single talent, a leader should first seek to understand and then be able to advance your cause within the company by offering feedback, development tools and services to meet your goals.
AMPLIFY and ADVOCATE
Once you have your first meeting to align with your leader, you should schedule a meeting every 90 days for a full one hour that is focused only on your development. You are activating this relationship for your own good. Own your career. Leaders are to inspire and guide you.
First meeting – Align: the leader will help you reflect on your goals, provide feedback on strengths and identify gaps between where you are and want to be, and align your future success with the company mission,
Second meeting – Advance: the leader will advance your development with feedback on your vision of success, provide accountability for progress against existing goals, clarify new goals
Third meeting – Amplify: the leader will amplify your development by knocking down barriers, provide additional resources, and stretch your thinking into bigger ideas
Fourth Meeting – Advocate: the leader will advocate for you in your career with stretch assignments, promotions and sponsorship.
You should expect and enable your leader to Align, Advance, Amplify, and Advocate for you in your development. It is best to have 15-20 minute development sprint check-ins each month to make sure you on the right track between your 90 day deep dives on your development. These four one hour meetings + eight 15 min development sprint check-ins equate to less than .34% of your working time as talent and leader. This time is focused only for your development discussion. You deserve it.
The trust you will show will be returned in this relationship with your leader. If it is not, you do not have a leader. You have a manager or steward. The difference may start with you. Instead of waiting for the great plan to come your way from that perfect leader at that perfect company, lean into confidently declaring your values and strengths that feed your greater career purpose and goals for professional and personal success. Then humbly ask for a commitment of support and guidance that will help you be your best and the company meet their goals.