Remember you own your own development. At CareerTruth, we want to enable you to have a great development experience with your company. We know that when you take responsibility for your own growth, everything improves.
Many companies have a significant budget and try hard to create opportunities to develop their employees. Yet most companies fall short of developing the individual well, because every person has a different mindset for growth and possesses different skills and competencies to build upon.
In addition, because leaders are responsible for too many day-to-day duties, they often feel rushed to build “development” plans that tie to a corporate program for compensation budgets. This conventional top-down approach is becoming less viable in the modern work environment, particularly as managers are increasingly responsible for larger teams with fewer resources.
The best way for any employee to advance and develop in their career is by maximizing their relationship with their leader. Leadership is a two-way relationship that inspires and guides growth. While good leaders want to work with each person under their guidance, delivering unique individual development plans that meet the individual’s goals and desires is difficult.
Leaders cannot read your mind and guess what you want. The leader-talent dynamic will be most effective for development when the employee drives the process, and the leader guides and inspires the employee.
TRUST
Every relationship is built on a single foundation — trust. Humans rely on psychological safety to take risks and perform. If you cannot trust your leader, maximizing your relationship for your development will be hard. To build trust for your development benefit, you can create a whole career strategic plan that starts with documenting your personal values, writing your purpose statement, and inventorying the skills you’ve mastered. When you’ve done that work, you’re ready to set goals, personally and professionally.
By preparing this work well, you will have taken a significant step in building the clarity and confidence to help you realize you are a high potential who deserves the best for yourself. At that time, you should trust that it is time to show your documented career plan to your leader. A leader hoping to align personally with your values, purpose, and goals will feel honored that you trust them with this information and ideas.
ALIGN and ADVANCE
It is always best to be proactive in aligning with your leader to build the skills and competency that will advance your career. By setting the agenda for the first Alignment meeting for your development, you are showing confidence and clarity, 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 make it for your leader to support and guide your success. Your leaders 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 hour focused only on your development. You are activating and investing in this relationship for your own good. Own your career. Leaders are to inspire and guide you, but the relationship will have a better foundation with your investment and energy.
First meeting – Align: the leader will help you reflect on your goals, provide feedback on strengths, identify gaps between where you are and want to be, and align your future success with the company’s mission.
Second meeting – Advance: the leader will advance your development with feedback on your vision of success, provide accountability for progress against existing goals, and clarify new goals.
Third meeting – Amplify: the leader will amplify your development by knocking down barriers, providing additional resources, and challenging you to 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 ensure you are on the right track between your 90-day deep dives on your development.
These four one-hour meetings, plus eight 15 min development sprint check-ins, equate to less than .34% of your working hours in the talent-leader relationship. This time is focused only on your development discussion. You deserve to be seen, heard, and supported in your development, and as you develop, your improved performance will benefit your leader and the broader organization.
As you build and extend trust to your leader, they should return that same trust. If they don’t, they aren’t actively leading you. Instead, they are managing processes and outcomes without paying attention to their most valuable capital–the people in their charge.
The difference may have to begin with you. Instead of waiting for a perfect leader at the ideal company to read your mind and issue a great plan, confidently declare 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 to help you be your best and help the company meet its goals.