Written by: Marguerite Thibodeaux, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
No one loves annual performance management conversations. In most cases, they are an exercise in creating paper trails, wasting everyone’s time, and have absolutely no impact on performance.
The reality is that continuous support of your team’s professional development may be the most important part of your team's long-term success and growth, and it doesn’t happen during the annual performance review. Like working out, you don’t get sustainable results from going once a year. Instead, working out regularly over a long period of time, even in short sessions, builds muscle. The same principle applies to professional development. It's better done incrementally, in short sessions throughout the year, rather than in one long performance management conversation annually. Here are some tried and tested systems to help you continuously support your team's professional development.
1. Recurring one-on-one meetings
To provide any development support at all, you need a space to do it. Schedule a recurring one-on-one with each teammate. Ask how things are going, if anything has changed or improved from your last one-on-one meeting, and if there’s any additional support they need from you as a leader. These sessions can take different forms, from formal one-on-one meetings to a casual chat over coffee. They can be weekly, biweekly or monthly, whatever works best as long as it’s regularly scheduled and that time is honored. Don’t be tempted to cancel or reschedule indefinitely. Canceling or indefinitely rescheduling can break down trust and make professional development even harder.
2. Single source of truth
To support an ongoing conversation, you need a single source of truth, a space where both you and your teammate can refer to a plan, take running notes, and make adjustments throughout the year as needed. This single source of truth for each teammate should include:
Running notes for one-on-ones
Living Professional Development Plan
360 feedback quotes gathered throughout the year
Link to a kanban board managing the team’s work and archivingachievements
No need to duplicate a separate list of completed projects when you can link to an existing one
Need help in creating your single source of truth? Click here for a template to get you started.
3. Co-create a Plan
Co-creating a plan with your teammate helps build trust that will be critical for providing difficult feedback and collaborative brainstorming. Rather than telling your teammate how to set out in their career growth, co-creating a path forward benefits you as a leader:
Learn about your teammate's less obvious interests and strengths
Increase engagement from your teammate
Gain long-term staffing insights seeing where your teammates are personally interested and headed
If you're not sure how to co-create a plan, start by sharing this free professional development worksheet with your teammate. Ask them to complete it on their own first and bring it to your next one-on-one to discuss and refine.
4. Leadership updates
Regular update senior leadership and your leadership peers on your team’s professional development progress. This has a two-fold positive impact: 1. Regularly celebrating your team’s wins helps them stay top of mind for performance reviews and new opportunities.
2. You are building credibility as a leader who can successfully develop talent, building your own brand.
5. Create an environment that encourages learning
One of the ways you can create a safe space for professional development for your teammates is by creating an environment that encourages learning.
Perhaps you can set up your office space in such a way that informal learning is encouraged, like placing books and tools where people can see them as they go about their day-to-day work. Or you can provide opportunities for employees to learn from one another. This could include team meetings, workshops, or even short impromptu brainstorming in a team standup.
While these are a couple of ways to go about it, you can still get creative with other systems that can be just as effective. A quick browse through this article could help you get some ideas.
About the Author: Marguerite Thibodeaux is an executive coach and talent management consultant dedicated to changing our relationship with work. Work should be a place where each of us gets to enjoy the challenge of contributing to something bigger than oneself. She focuses on helping leaders at all levels create habits, skills, and environments that empower teams to thrive.
Every leader deserves support.
Want one-on-one adapting these strategies to your team? Book a complimentary call with Marguerite. Every leader deserves support
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Marguerite Thibodeaux, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Marguerite Thibodeaux, an leadership coach and talent management consultant, helps leaders and organizations bring the best out of people with courage, compassion, and clarity. After building development programs and leading a talent transformation at a Fortune 100, she became increasingly aware that not all leaders had access to a Fortune 100 Learning & Development team. To do something about that, she started Magnanimous Leadership, a leadership coaching and consulting firm that's on a mission to make resources and support available to every leader.
