Getting Foot-Draggers On Board
I received an email question, “Some people in our organization aren’t interested in personal development. What can we do?”
Priority:
Personal development is the top priority for everyone passionate to maximize their opportunities. It’s not selfish to develop yourself so that you can expand your service.
Never be a martyr. Put the oxygen mask on yourself before helping others. Everyone wins.
Along with personal development, commit to develop your team. “The team with the best players wins,” Jack Welch.
Honor:
Enhance your work culture by honoring team members who value and embrace personal development.
- Provide free books, training, and other resources.
- Honor buy-in with high opportunity, high profile jobs.
- Begin meetings with short discussions regarding principles team members are learning and applying.
- Ask a team member to begin a meeting by reading a paragraph from a book they found useful.
- Publically recognize and reward those who complete personal development opportunities.
- Have a monthly pizza party to celebrate personal development and share lessons learned.
- Adopt a weekly leadership behavior that all team members focus on, try listening, positive affirmations, or candor.
Warning:
Some team members are stuck or stagnant due to fear. Give them time to embrace a personal development culture. Encourage them.
You may need to “manage out” the dead weight, eventually. Send them to your competitors. Do so carefully and in the best interest of all parties.
Avoid:
Reject the “leadership principle of the day” approach. This happens when leader haphazardly jump from one leadership principle to another without following through on any. You look weak and foolish when you do this.
Focus:
Choose leadership principles, resources, and behaviors that align with your values, current projects, or greatest opportunities.
How can leaders create a culture where team-member-development is a priority?
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Hi Dan,
Creating high performing teams is hugely dependent on all team members being passionate about developing their skills and knowledge. I like your point 3 of having an agenda item of sharing learning experiences each week. I have learned huge amounts through sharing lessons with others in this way and directly implemented changes to my own performance from these discussions. I hope to give value to others in this way too.
Thanks for the post,
Andrew
I always believed, as well, that people can’t improve by themselves in a work environment, not entirely at least. I like to help my employees not just to do things right, but to understand how they can further develop their abilities and skills, a process which naturally improves mine as well.
Hi Dan, team member development is an ongoing process which forms the skeleton framework for successful organizations. Development comes in all shapes and sizes and customizing it to accomodate different individuals provides true strength and diversity. We recently inaugarated the Harbin Library and Harbin Book Club. This initiative was created by the Executive Team with a lot of employee assistance and suggestions. Different team members will be responsible for leading discussions with leadership attributes as themes. Learning from each other’s interpretations of some Leadership classics will help broaden the “net of learning” and foster good will and camaraderie. Adding value to the organization starts with valuing our staff and what better way to do this than by adding resources which they help create and design. Feeling ownership is the secret sauce that gets everyone to the table!
Dan, hope you are improved. This is such a great reminder of two things. One, that self-development is so critical in our business and our personal lives to ensure that we are building capacity. Second, that not everyone is as interested in personal development. Many simply need time, encouragement, and the ability to experience themselves as they improve…their improved performance, their improved abilities with significant relationships, whatever. The key is in the encouragement and providing the space and resources for growth. Kind of like a garden; fertile soil (willingness), a little water (how’s it going, what have you learned, please share), and some sun (resources, all kinds of resources to encourage growth). And then, fruit. Ah…it’s a good thing.
Best…Jim
Guys, I think we need to be careful not to define others in our own image. I recall a cook I had in my company who didn’t want to become a sergeant, he just wanted to cook. He resisted taking the test and being promoted as long as he could, and finally got out when his only choice was to move up. However, during that time he never stopped learning about food and cooking. He kept making himself a better cook, even though he refuse to follow in the traditional path of self-improvement through promotion.
I think any employee who diligently does his or her job has a place on the team, even if he/she does the same job for 35 years. The “Move Up or Move Out” philosophy lost the Army some good soldiers, and it will lose us good team members.
Not everyone on the team has to be able to lead. When everyone leads and no one follows, chaos ensues.
Greg, you said exactly what I was thinking.
Personal development is not necessarily the same as professional development. Like Greg said not everyone is interested in moving up. How is the organization defining personal development? If a person grows and improves is that personal development even if they take on no new tasks or leadership roles?
I have a family member that loves her job and works hard to improve her skills. She has also left every company that moved her into a management position. She wants to be the best she can be and help the company be successful but she wants to do that without being responsible for other people.
She has experienced both personal and professional development. She is a natural leader that others look up to. It took her several tries to find a company that understood the benefit of her natural leadership qualities and didn’t try to mold her into the leader they wanted her to be.
Very well said….we need the ‘doers’ just as much as the leaders.
Great post, thanks for the reminders!
Greg – you are spot on, love this line ‘Not everyone on the team has to be able to lead. When everyone leads and no one follows, chaos ensues.’
Hi Greg, I hear what you are saying. It is true that not everyone wants to be promoted but certainly everyone wants to get better at what they are passionate about i.e. in your example the “cook” expanding his knowledge. I think leadership in the classical sense is not for everybody but the skill set of leadership can help us all navigate “life.” Providing resources for those interested in expanding either what they are presently doing or moving up to new challenges should be an imperative for most healthy organizations.
Al, I agree completely that the resources and opportunity for improvement must be provided for all, even though not all will take advantage. I’m just suggesting we don’t make self-improvement in the traditional sense a condition of employment. Sometimes the things people are passionate about are un-related to the job, and the job for them is just a means of resourcing their avocations. Those folks are often steady, productive people, but in the same way year after year.
From what I’ve read of your comments in the past, I think you and your organization get that. We would all be fortunate to be in a workplace as people-centric as yours seems to be.
As a book lover, I am especially fond of #4 (Ask a team member to begin a meeting by reading a paragraph from a book they found useful.) AND I would suggest that the books don’t always have to be “management” or “business” books.
For example, I would propose that there are “business” lessons in this excerpt from Paulo Coelho’s “The Devil and Miss Prym”:
“Every time you wish something, keep your eyes wide open, focus and know exactly what you want. No one hits the target with eyes closed.”
To many it sounds counterproductive, but if the game of golf when aligned with strategic objectives and balanced with organizational resources, the game is a wonderful tool to motivate people to change, learn, respect others, deal with set-backs, think strategically, manage their emotions, compete ethically (non-combatively), share information and improve mental, physical and spiritual health. Most of all they are having fun. A culture that encourage golf for strategic business purposes is a great motivator and engager. Give it a try. The results may surprise you.
Great blog, Dan. Agree with your perspective as far as honoring team members that value personal development. The caveat is to offer the incentives that appeal most – so not everyone interesting in advancement wants/cares about training opportunities and may not value additional training opportunities. Some may even view training as a hindrance (look at the consulting industry attrition problem if you need evidence).
Employees will respond best to what they care most about. For managers to generate buy-in, measure what the team cares most about and then use this insight to customize communication accordingly by highlighting their “win.”
Dear Dan,
Fear blocks growth, personal growth by any means destroys
organization.When people are fearful, they confine their output and
creativity. They need moral support of colleagues and superiors.
Leadership support plays great role to turn them into enablers. When people are excessive growth centric, then unethical practices bound be prevail. I believe, leaders can create platform, where everyone excel.
Where only few people develop then leaders should also ensure that talented, meritorious or dissent are not left behind. They should the opposite side of development. IT means why others are not developing.
This questions creates culture of equity, opportunity and caring. This also creates a balanced cultures where everyone is happy. So, I believe, leaders should think, discuss why some people do not develop.
Do they not have potential and capabilities or something else is
stopping them.
Dear Dan,
An interesting post with meaningful things to learn and practice. It’s a dangerous sign if some people in the organization aren’t interested in personal development. It’s not because of any fear but simply they have lost their interest in the organization and do not have faith in management for their individual progress.It is suggested that HR can take lead role in bring the correctness by improving the organization climate. It’s better to weed out problematic employees fast before they do more of damages.
Seven points under Honor are quite practical steps. for personal and team development
Yet, everything depends on CEO and his style of working. HR can bring in good value-based systems and procedures to ensure good per man productivity with job satisfaction.
I read this recently from Bersins, which adds some additional weight to the idea that individuals need support in their career development:
“Why would an individual move to another job? Because it is in his / her own career interests.
Many years ago we looked at four “types” of career development and tried to understand the impact of each.
• Type 1: Manage Your Own Career – The “rugged individual” model, through which each employee finds his / her own career path within the organization.
• Type 2: Supervisor-Driven Career Management – Your individual manager takes responsibility for helping you with your career.
• Type 3: Functional Career Management – A business function (e.g.,IT, marketing) creates its own career paths and models, and people within that function learn how to progress and advance similarly to others in that function.
• Type 4: Enterprise Career Management – A company looks at careers across the organization in an enterprise model.
PREDICTIONS
Our research found several things. First, we found that Type 1 creates a negative impact on company performance. When you tell an employee
to “manage his / her own career,” you are telling them that you do not really care. Some will manage well, but most will manage themselves out of your company.
Second, we found a huge improvement in outcomes when you move from Type 1 to 2. Just having managers and supervisors trained and equipped to help people with career management has a huge impact. In order to accomplish this, we have to give managers the tools and models to use, of course.”