How To Establish a Culture of Professional Development
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Among my top five values is personal growth and among my top strengths is learning. When I first started to manage people, I was apologetic for my great passion for personal and professional development. I was embarrassed by the things I found interesting.
At the same time, all the books about leadership I have read indicate that curiosity, learning, and constant development are key to becoming an effective leader. So, I started to share some of the things I studied with my direct reports and with several peers.
As I became a more established leader and more confident in my own abilities, I stopped being apologetic about my value and strength related to development. I was now a combo: if you got me as your manager, you got personal and professional development along with it.
I recently learned that when it comes to personal and professional development, people fall into one of these four categories – approximately 80% of people fall into the first two:
Fixed mindset – According to Carol Dweck, in a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them.
Hobbyist – These are people who learn what they find fun or interesting. There is no ambition, and their growth process does not challenge them.
Weekend warrior – There are two groups in this category: the lazy learners, who will do development work if it is easy for them to do so. And the mercenary learner, who will go through development to pursue a specific opportunity such as a promotion, higher sales, etc.
The exception – These are the people who believe and proactively pursue learning and development. The process of learning and growing is their reward. They believe they can grow and learn into their goals and future selves.
My strategy was never to impose but to firmly encourage and to consistently lead by example. I established certain routines and behaviors to create a culture of development among my direct reports, first, and then my entire team.
Here are four actions I implemented to build the culture of development.
“We can’t become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” – Oprah Winfrey
1) Have an official development goal
Among my work goals I always included one related to development. I highly encouraged my direct reports to do the same for themselves and for their teams. I also shared my goal with them.
My tacit message was ‘if I, the head of this group, have a development goal, I expect the rest to have something similar.’
This goal was usually related to something already identified in the Individual Development Plan (IDP) and it could be training, networking, development programs, etc.
It sounded something like ‘complete at least 40 hours of training including self-pace courses’ or ‘increase my network at all levels by meeting at least four people every month.’
2) Have it on the agenda
I had weekly 1:1 meetings with my direct reports. When they started to work with me, I told them that in one of those meetings (usually the first or the last in the month – only because it is easier to track) we would have the topic of development on the agenda.
Some months we had a lot to talk about; other months we did not have as much. The point was for both of us to keep personal and professional development on our radars instead of going through the motions of writing the goal or the IDP to check the HR box.
Of course, anyone on my team (not only my direct reports) could discuss development (or any other topic for that matter) with me at any point in time – they did not have to wait for the scheduled 1:1 meeting.
3) Share your new knowledge
Every time I learned something I thought could be helpful for my direct reports or entire team, I would share it with them during one of the existing meetings. Sometimes I would prepare slides if there was a lot of information. Or I would start with questions and then share what I discovered.
And on multiple occasions, I would experiment with a specific methodology as part of our group way of working such as goal setting, project status update, etc.
4) Develop as a group
One of my direct reports had a weekly team meeting. Once a month, she would use that meeting for development.
Sometimes they would watch a specific video such as a TED talk and discuss it. Or they would invite one of their partners to talk about their function and how to better interact with her team. Or she would ask a more senior person to talk about their career path.
Another version of learning together is to attend coffee chats, usually organized by employee resource groups, where people discuss a specific topic or bring questions to the group. This serves the dual purpose of networking and growing.
“Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.” – Chinese Proverb
High performing teams require to have high performing people. And in order for us to work at our maximum potential, we have to intentionally grow.
As leaders we want to lead by example and share with our team the activities we do to continually improve ourselves and grow. I encourage my coaching clients to share the fact that they take time during their working hours to have coaching sessions (of course, they do not have to discuss the nature of our conversations).
Personal and professional development is not a hobby. It is not something to do after hours or when we have time. Development is part of our job. If we want to grow, we need the physical, mental, and emotional space to execute the actions in our development plan.
How do you encourage others to grow consistently? Please, let us know in the comments.
As a leadership coach, I enable talent to achieve bold goals with high standards. My mission is to help women transition from mid to senior level leadership positions by creating awareness, increasing emotional intelligence, and unveiling the tools and choices available to them, so they can confidently realize and fulfill their potential.