Growing Others
"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."
-Jack Welch
individual development plans
Individual Development Plans (IDPs) are an excellent way to help your team members grow and develop. Unlike performance evaluations, IDPs ask this question of your team members: "What is your desired career trajectory and how can I help?"
Leaders who use IDPs are more attuned to the aspirations of their team members. They understand what drives them. This helps the leader remove obstacles and put their team members into positions to work on things that they are passionate about. When this happens, results and engagement improve.
You can create your own IDP template, or share the below link with your team. They fill out a form and the responses are emailed to the supervisor email they entered. Your team members can click the button below or you can send them this link.
"The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity."
-Ayn Rand
make CAREER pathS TRANSPARENT
If you team members can see a clear path to career progression, you are more likely to retain them. This will help you attract high achievers. It gives your team members a sense of purpose and more tangible goals.
Transparency: Make potential career paths publicly visible.
Skills: Include key skills and competencies necessary for success in each position in the path. Then, link those skills to resources that your team can use to further their professional growth and development. This way, when opportunities arise, they are better prepared to rise to the challenge. And, you will be investing in professional growth along the way, which improves engagement and retention.
Performance Standards: Make performance standards clear for eligibility to advance. This does not mean that your team members are guaranteed to advance if they meet the standards, but it will let them know what to do in order to position themselves for the next opportunity.
Communicate: Engage in career progression discussions regularly with team members. Start with orientation. Include discussions during performance evaluations. As with everything, communication is key to effectiveness.
"Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it."
-Henry Mintzberg
develop leaders early
When people talk about leadership or professional development, they often mean going to a conference or attending a class. And, those are excellent steps! But, leadership is ultimately something that is learned by doing. This is the same reason that UGA implemented an experiential learning requirement.
Here's what many leaders miss: You should start developing your next leaders before they become leaders.
Not only will this improve engagement and results, but when the opportunity arises for them to step into leadership roles, they will be significantly more effective. Leadership development can look significantly different from team to team, but here are some sample exercises you can use for your team to develop the next generation of leaders.
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
-Mahatma Gandhi
LEVERAGE UGA'S RESOURCES
Whether your team is interested in leadership development, career development or general professional development, UGA has a wealth of resources available. This is a strategic advantage at our fingertips.
UGA's Learning and Development team has a robust offering of courses in all formats: Live/In-Person, Live/Online, Recorded, Cohort-based, and so on.
Additionally, all UGA employees have access to LinkedIn Learning with thousands of on-demand offerings on just about any topic you can imagine.
Professional development does not have to mean taking days to go to a conference. It can be done in bite-sized chunks with a big impact over time.