Editor’s Note: This entry is part of the Fredrickson Thought Leaders in Learning series. For this guest blogging series, we’ve invited well-known experts in a variety of fields to address leadership-level learning and development professionals with their thoughts on topics of their choosing. Our hope is to prompt discussion around an expansive range of ideas and concepts.
Despite economic conditions, unemployment levels, or any other business factor imaginable, your best employees – the ones you need most – want one thing from you, plain and simple: to support their growth and development. Study after study confirms that development is the single most powerful tool managers have for driving engagement, retention, productivity, and results. Yet, learning leaders know that career development is frequently the thing that gets sidelined unless or until the organization demands that some form be submitted during regular review cycles.
My new book (with co-author Julie Winkle Giulioni) sheds a much needed light on specifically what managers can do – within the time-starved, priority-rich, pressure-cooker environment in which they operate – to support employees’ careers. And it comes down to this: engage in short, ongoing conversations with employees about their career options, needs, and passions.
It’s really that simple… and that complex.
How do you, as a leader, start engaging your employees in career conversations? Here’s a preview of the first two chapters of my soon-to-be-released book to get you started.