One of the great joys in managing people is watching them develop and grow professionally. For employees who are managed as part of a strong performance management process and are given opportunities for development, professional growth is a sure outcome.
Developing employees needs to be specific and intentional. Employees need to be given the opportunity to learn, grow and make mistakes. I think we can all give examples of how our best learning experiences were from making (sometimes big) mistakes and learning from them. These can sometimes be hard and painful lessons but the long-term affect of the learning experience is professional growth.
I’ve learned that some employees humbly come to the table and ask for development and appreciate feedback and coaching, while other employees find it easier to learn by doing and making mistakes along the way. In the right structure, both of these models can work but my old saying is, we can do this the easy way (you learn from what I have experienced) or we can do this the hard way (you learn from your mistakes). It is difficult but, like being a parent, some things just need to be personally experienced. But what a great joy it is when they come back and say “you were right, I should have listened to you….” Not that we as managers want to prove anything, but for myself, I just don’t want someone else to make the same mistakes that I’ve made.
One way to provide a learning experience is the use of Learning Projects. Learning projects are basically taking specific projects and designing them to help an employee learn.
An example of a learning project might be having an employee involved in the planning, facilitating and data collection of a customer focus group. The employee would be given assignments of helping to identify the customers, drafting invitations to the focus group, keeping track of customers who respond, helping to draft focus group questions and to observe the focus group as it happens. Once this focus group is over, the employee could help compile the information learned and work on developing a plan of action based on the feedback. This is not a project you would give someone with no experience in customer feedback methodologies but would be a great project for someone to assist and learn. Once the project is complete, the manager might review the competencies demonstrated and have the employee articulate what they learned from the experience.
This is just one example of many for helping employees learn by doing.
What you typically see in a learning project:
- The project is a real business project that relates to organizational objectives.
- The goal would be for the project to get results and benefit the organization.
- The employee will need to have the basic competencies to complete the project.
- The employee has a good understanding of what is expected of them and what their role in the project is.
- The employee is coached through the process as they learn.
- The employee receives feedback throughout the project.
Helping employees learn and grow professionally is one of the fundamental responsibilities of a manager. Being able to identify strengths and developmental opportunities is how managers can continue to move employees up the developmental continuum. There is no greater joy for a manager than watching employees develop and grow. I tell employees all the time that if I’m doing my job right, the day will come that I can walk out the door and they will carry on without me.
photo by: dkuropatwa
{ 1 trackback }