Tips to Maximize Employee Development

During my conversations with senior managers they mention lack of time to develop their team members and thus they need quick formula and tips. However, there are exceptions, like managers from reputed organizations like P&G, GE, and Unilever etc. who are willing to spend 30-40% of their time on employee development activities of their team members.

These tips are mostly for those managers who mention lack of time as the number one excuse for not spending time on employee development. The readers may find this strange that the time that the managers actually spend with their team or any of its members could itself become a time for development opportunities.

Tips for the fast-paced managers on employee development:

1. Research where you recruited your best people from and plan to get more from the same sources.
2. During the time of on-boarding itself or induction of new team member, provide clarity on the role and the expectations from the team member on a word document or excel sheet.
3. As far as possible, set 75-80% of the goals aligned to that team member’s key strengths as identified during interview or any other discussion. On a lighter note, don’t ask a horse to do a donkey’s job.
4. Walk among your team members, also it will be good for your health to move out from your chair, to offer encouragement in what they are doing.
5.  In any of the appropriate recognition forum, recognize publicly an individual who is doing a good job in developing himself or herself.
6. Encourage feed forward with your team members after taking their permission to suggest, and then provide 2-3 experienced valuable tips they could use to improve in an area where they are currently struggling.
7. Use a coaching conversation style with experienced and senior team members by asking more questions than suggesting.
8. Ask your team members proactively what help, advice, resources that they may need to get their work done productively. You may even ask your team “What is it that you need to do differently to help them work better?”
9. Organize knowledge sharing sessions once in a month based on the learning from “what went well?” in a project and “what did not work and could have been done differently?
10. Look for existing company resources like e-learning, open workshops and seminars which you may point out through an email to your team member.
11. Practice the above tips…till the next set of tips follows.