Whose priority is your career development anyway? Well, it must be and is the responsibility of the individual above all else, no matter how much support is given or not from the company. I guess it's like “you can bring a horse to water but make it drink”, well... so no matter the good intentions from a company, it's really up to the individual.

Most medium to large companies will have career development baked into a formal process. But in reality, it’s a semi-important priority compared to business results. In a lot of cases the focus being a process that is tick box followed versus quality of conversations and effectively managing good career progression. Now, I know this is broad strokes and no company would agree this is what happens here, but even if the intentions and communications are all pushing for the best career dev outcome and culture, it rarely matches the reality from what I’ve seen. However, if a company has the best intentions and facilitates a process for career development, then employees and managers alike should grab it with both hands and view it as a positive thing.  

Career development hasn’t a great rep so viewing it in a positive light can be hard for some. When we hear career development we might think of weaknesses, or work that takes me away from doing the real work I don’t have time to do. So writing these weaknesses and extra work out in black and white for a manager and upstream to view and comment on, well are you crazy? Often resulting in bland career tasks or complete avoidance. Avoidance is surprisingly easy to do when business results are the top priority and you're good at deflection tactics. If a manager sets your career dev focus areas this can place a heavy burden on you too. It can sit heavily on your shoulders and if the career dev process is a one-off conversation every quarter, it is easy to fall into pushing out that development until tomorrow while you watch the situation spiral towards the next career development conversation and little to show. 

Again, progress is down to the individual and success is determined whether they view the glass half-full or half- empty. If half-full, they will be glad there is a career dev process and pick a course to start and complete, perhaps find a mentor, a new challenge that will help with competencies to improve. Better still if the glass is very full, a career dev topic chat will be part of their weekly one-on-one conversations! If viewed half empty, then shining a light on areas that show your perceived limitations will be avoided. Generally, the easiest thing to do for all is take a course, the safe approach and if not completed then no one really is put out apart from the budget but with a promise to do it next month. But the good stuff is more inward looking, deeper and would make folks more effective and happier longer term.

What would be the ideal career development situation? 

For the Company/Manager: 

• Abandon the formal quarterly or yearly career development process. This quarterly or yearly process facilitates milestone thinking where it's seen as a task to do by a certain date. But career growth and development are rarely that unless you're only counting a technical certification etc. Planner type people will plan what they might do and perhaps start something. Doer’s will leave it to the last minute to start but only have time for a token effort. The milestone passes, you start again and the cycle repeats. Perhaps time to get off this hamster wheel?

• Regular 1-1's with career heavy conversations following the 80:20 rule could be the only mandated career dev process. 80% career development discussion and 20% pressing work issues. Outside of 1:1’s is a world full of status, progress reports and meetings on issues etc. to get all the status and ideas you could ever want. What’s needed are conversations that build trust, talking about and sharing career path needs and discoveries.

• Formal feedback surveys to employees facilitating and tracking culture of career development as a priority. Using questions such as “I feel engaged and motivated after 1:1’s with my manager” and “My manager listens, understands and supports me in achieving career development goals” and “I have regular  career development 1:1’s with my manager” or similar. Or some mechanism that promotes conversations and experiences you want to know are happening every week with employees across the organisation. This way progress and action areas can be deep dived versus only having data that shows X % of employees ticked the box to say they finished the process. The latter doesn’t tell anything about the health of career development or culture of 1:1 conversation in the organisation. 

• Managers switch into mentor and coach mode for all 1:1’s and leave management or any micromanagement tendencies at the door. Such as telling, your ideas or command and control approaches. Easier said than done and even though I knew this was the way to go I fell into bad habits often as a manager. But promoting a leadership coaching approach across managers and ensuring employees know what to expect can make a massive difference.  

 For the Employee:

• Commit to having open career development conversations with your manager. You need to kick it off, your manager is not a mind reader. For example what your strengths are and how you want to grow them, where you see gaps and how useful or important it is to spend time tackling those, is your path in this role or elsewhere, is it in this company or elsewhere etc. Your ideas in general for personal growth. Success will depend on creating a trusting space between manager and employee on sensitive topics. 

• View career dev as an ongoing weekly activity that you and your manager check in on as regularly as the work tasks. Never leave career dev conversations to a one off meeting as part of a process. Imagine if you could write about all the great career conversations you had with your manager over the quarter, what you tried on the job, and other, so at review time you had a path of achievements similar to your work tasks with the next steps more obvious.   

• Commit to small gains every week with your partner in action (manager) helping motivate and keep you going. If there are setbacks in progress you look forward to the next 1:1 to discuss knowing that a new perspective and plan will emerge in that trusting space.  

I always remember a VP saying that people should be managed up and out. Meaning they need to be pushed hard, to get results and grow as a person to advance up the levels and ultimately out of the group into a bigger role for the company or another company and quickly. On paper, sure it reads great and powerfully presents on screen around the board table, but I think this is far removed from reality and remains the path for the 2%’ers. The folks that know exactly where they are going and know how to get there and do. For most, well they like doing their job, are good at their job and like working in their company. This cohort being the brunt of the company and if encouraged to deliver small 2% career development gains consistently could create massive results for the business and themselves over time.

But to be clear, regardless of the quality of the career development process at your company there is always someone having career conversations with their manager every week. They are in your team, in your group and you could too by deciding to take control of your 1:1 conversations and make it happen. Your People and HR teams can only do so much for you. Your manager would love it if you did this too as it's their job to help get the most out of people and see them thrive but need a little help sometimes.