The Four A’s of Leading with CareerTruth

Traditional leadership methods fail in today’s war to secure talent, where the best company desires to maximize each wonderfully unique human talent from all backgrounds. Support and Development are quickly usurping Command and Control. Gone are the days of the top-down pyramid, with the few leaders at the top dictating through middle managers down to individuals who create value for the company in the market. 

The best companies are flipping the pyramid to enable true leaders to serve each unique human to be their best as they achieve a common purpose and desired outcomes for collective success. From the front line to divisional leaders to the executive team and CEO, each human is valued for their abilities, supported in relationship with their direct leader, and provided opportunities to develop uniquely to achieve their purpose aligned to the company purpose.

To enable this excellent employee experience to work well, the talent and leaders require new tools and solutions that allow the talent to own their personal career development and work with their leaders to achieve aligned success. 

CareerTruth is disrupting and innovating the current top-down development planning where the leader feels a burden to create a unique plan for each team member and enlivens the leader with talent development experience. As more managers have over ten direct reports and too many other responsibilities, the “one to many” development plans fail and leave talent feeling “processed.”

How it works:

CareerTruth’s Four A Development Experience is customizable to the individual need and creates four major development milestones with monthly development sprint check-ins

  • Milestone #1 Align – Once you and your talent have begun in the CareerTruth platform, you will work through step one of Knowing Yourself by naming and documenting your values, purpose, professional goals, and personal goals. In these first 30 days after kickoff, you will meet for 60 minutes to align and gain commitment to the Four A development experience. You will build trust and respect by sharing your values, purpose, and goals with each other.

Between each Four A milestone one-hour meeting on development, you will have a 15 to 20-minute development sprint check-ins solely to discuss each talent’s development progress. These sprint check-ins show your commitment to their personal development, hold your talent accountable to the development process, and provide guidance as needed. Sprint check-ins round out the Four A milestones creating a 30-day cadence for development.

  • Milestone #2 Advance – As each talent approaches the 90 day mark, you will take a deeper one-hour dive into each talent’s full career plan that includes each talent’s vision of success, professional goals, and action plan to develop and personal goals related to their work. The discussion should focus on strengths and STAR experiences while reflecting on learnings from losses that lead to a gap analysis for growth to a new level.
  • Milestone #3 Amplify – Near the halfway point of the talent’s development experience at around 180 days, you spend an hour reviewing progress toward goals and amplifying success. To boost success, you will encourage their growth plan to reach higher and provide enhanced resources. You will remove barriers and communicate to others your talents’ successes in their development.
  • Milestone #4 Advocate – In reaching the three-quarter point of the development plan, you will be ready to advocate for each of your talents by helping them see what is possible in their future career while in the current role or other potential roles in the company. You may offer stretch assignments or job shadowing opportunities that expose the talent to opportunities for growth.

Because CareerTruth provides insights, exercises, and tools for all seasons of the employee’s career, which they can do on their own or in the community, the leader and talent can spend as little as .3% of their time strictly on significant development. .3% of a year is around seven hours annually per talent! Studies today show that leaders spend even less time on their own careers or those of their team members.

By allowing each person to create an individual strategic career purpose and action plan accounting for their whole life, the leader and each of their talent build a relationship of trust, support, and accountability. CareerTruth helps create this excellent employee development experience, increasing engagement, retention, productivity, performance, and results for each talent and their company.