Don't Run From Career Conversations

By: Beverly KayeTue Jul 8, 2008 at 5:47 PM

Talking to employees about their abilities, interests, and opportunities is critical. These five steps can help.

Step Four: Discover Multiple Pathways

Helping your employees consider multiple career goals while they grow within their current positions is a key element in development. When employees analyze their potential development goals in terms of business needs and the strategic intent of the organization, everyone wins.

One caution: The employee is still primarily responsible for his or her career. Our suggestions do not mean telling the person what to do. Instead, offer choices for employees to analyze and consider. This is important, but sometimes difficult. For generations, the only acceptable career direction has been up. But there are several ways employees can move their careers along. You can help your employees consider lateral moves, exploratory assignments, and opportunities to grow on the job as well as the traditional vertical moves.

You can give your employees permission to discover the possibilities based on their abilities, their values, and what they can contribute to the organization. The more career goals your employee identifies, the better. The biggest career frustrations (and the most exits) occur when an employee’s only goal is thwarted.

Once you have helped your employees look at options they will feel as if they have more leverage to manage their own careers. You might ask one of these questions:

Which goals seem most in sync with where the organization is going?
Which goals will position you best for the future?

Step Five: Design a Course of Action

A course of action increases your commitment and the employee’s commitment to the plan. Collaborate and brainstorm all of the steps your employee would have to take to realize the best choices. Develop contingency plans for each. Then, if one is blocked, the other paths will already be laid out. Work with your employees to identify the obstacles to each path, then brainstorm ways around the obstacles. During the process, help them to maximize the assets they already have.

Remember, your job is to stimulate your employees into identifying skills, development opportunities, and knowledge areas required for each alternative. Your job is not to build their plans, but to support them! Try using one of these questions:

If you could give yourself the perfect assignment, what would it be?
Who would you like as a mentor or coach? How can I help you enlist his or her support?

Keeping your employees on a continual path of growing, developing, and adding new skills will help you keep your competitive edge. You must help them discover the inevitable barriers that will get in their way. But they must overcome them and do the work. Help them build alliances and relationships to meet their goals. Any organization that ignores the ambitions of good people can’t expect to keep them engaged and productive.

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