Career progression takes three paths, stretching, mobility and promotion. Each of these can play an important role in seeing them take the next step in their career, as well as providiing unique opportunities for them to develop specific skills.
You might have singled out promotion in that list and had a shudder run down your spine. Today promotion is viewed as the direct path to progression, however others like me will tell you that is not always the right option someone may need to focus on. You see so many people are promoted and fail to measure up to the next level they are expected to perform. So you need to ensure that you promote folk when they are really ready, and are in many ways already performing at that level. Since we started talking about promotion lets talk about the other two first, then we can loop back and talk about promotion in more depth.
Leveraging Stretch opportunities
What do we mean by 'stretching'? It's quite straight forward, take the time to review the skills of each of your people, now from your prior discussions you will be able to identify areas where they may need to make improvement. Now here is the challenge for you. What opportunity is there for them to really focus on developing this skill, i'm not referencing just any surface level exercise.
What you are looking for is for them to struggle at first, then over time they will gain the confidence and understanding to be capable at the task, then after working hard to develop, they will do well. The key is that you will be with them to help every step of the way. Thinking back to our discussion around situational managment this is a situation where they will be S1, you may have to get them going, help them identifiy the exact area to focus on. Before you know it, their efforts will be clearly visibile in their delivery, making them more rounded out.
Stretching is all about learning and developing a new skillset therefore enabling them to be more effective in their role, improving their overall capabilities and impact.
Jordan was in a role that required that he communicate with numerous internal and external stakeholders. There was no glaringly obvious issues at first, however over time a theme developed. We had received feedback that Jordan's communication was leading to confusion, he was also getting very frustrated when expectations were not aligned. As a result, delivery of projects were delayed and the morale of the general group was declining, meetings were generating mutural tension.
Taking a step back we explored the communication challenges, both 'what' and 'how' he was communicating. This is a great stretch opportunity to help Jordan improve his communication skills. By taking time to review the messages, highlighing actions and deadlines, being clear in language and tone, removing unnessesary information and improving the message structure, Jordan had turned a major corner that he would continue to work on for almost a year.
A core skill such as communication can easily be overlooked, but when you are talking to different audiences the nueonces are subtle but incredibly important to ensure messaging is clear. By reacting to feedback positively, and workthing together to improve the area of concern, Jordan was able to build on his skills and remove the cause of frustration from his day to day.
By identifying opportunities for your people to stretch, brings great satisfaction when
A mobility journey
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The path to Promotion
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