4. Top Strategies for sucessful growth.
The Professional Growth
When you join a company, you have to learn the specific body of knowledge of this company, even if your related core capabilities were strong.
Example:
Let’s say you joined as a mechanical engineer or an electrical engineer, or an HR Technology specialist, your expected technical contribution differs from one company to the next. You bring your body of knowledge, but you have to learn the specifics of your new company and it is not always well documented. If you are an expert, you may be solicited more than you would like to be by those trying to develop in your area of expertise, and if you need expertise from someone else in your company, it may not be easy to identify who you should contact.
What's you should learn?
There should therefore be an internal market for specific company knowledge, with an easy way to post knowledge, search for posted knowledge or for the right expert to address unanswered questions.
As a professional,
1. You will be pressed to browse through this ever-growing body of knowledge to keep up with what your company is developing.
As techniques,
2. Technologies or the science evolve, you may experience a similar pressure from the outside.
What is going on?
What is new and promising? What is disruptive?
What may make sense to bring inside?
3. You could attend a conference, a seminar, a webinar, go back to school, read articles to develop the ever-changing capabilities required in your profession.
4. There may be functional academies available, with curated content allowing you to understand the trends in your field of work, or, as an expert, to curate content for others.
5. The dissemination of content in your field of work is probably multi-faceted and your network and professional affiliation are probably key components of the system you use to keep abreast of new developments in your field of work,
6. You should be able to keep track of new interesting material in a repository of knowledge where a piece of knowledge may reference others (if you liked this, you may like that) and could be scored (not useful, neutral, useful, very useful, for ex.), building an always more meaningful learning environment for you and others in your specialty.
7. In your work, you may also need information from other fields of study, on the use of productivity tools, for example, and you may need this information “in the flow of your work”.
8. You may not remember how to do a VLOOKUP on Excel but need to use this feature, or you do not remember how to use a function in “R”. Could this be provided to you just as you need it? The content could be curated, or created, with a taxonomy allowing to easily search for and access relevant information. It should be delivered to you instantly if you need just one piece of information to move on.
9. From just looking at those three dimensions of your professional growth, the maintenance of your core qualifications, the acquisition of the specifics of your company and the access to information from other fields of study, here are broad requirements we can derive for your Learning and Development environment:
What you need?
You need
A taxonomy of capabilities, and a quantified expression of the mix of capabilities required to deliver successfully on the goals and strategies of your company.
Everyone should know what potential technical gaps they may have, and be able to access suggestions to address them.
Take a peek at what such environments as Degreed or others could provide to you.
You need also a platform allowing to buy or create content and deliver it as required for the jobs performed at your company.
It could be in the flow of work or as a way to acquire new capabilities or extend existing ones.
It should marry different types of content, such as
webinars,
reference documents,
videos,
access to MOOCs,
checklists,
classroom training,
Virtual Reality environments, or mentoring.
You could also think about a talent marketplace, where employees could be given the opportunity to acquire new capabilities while working for a different function or team to provide a helping hand.
Tools on the market could help you manage your talent marketplace.
The Personal Growth
As we look at personal growth, we talk about very different learning patterns:
Changing Behaviors,
which is what personal growth is about, requires changing habits, and that is not the same as acquiring technical skills.
What are you looking to achieve?
Which changes of behaviors would help you succeed at home, at work, with your team or as a leader?
What would allow you to live more closely to your company’s values or your own values?
Whether through a dialog with others, inputs provided by a 360, a mandate to change, or your own willingness to improve your embodiment of values
You will gather the inputs needed to select a target behavioral change and, progressively, reconnect your brain to reflect this new way of thinking and behaving.
Do you have strong company values, with a description of corresponding behaviors?
Do you have a leadership model that identifies expected behaviors?
Do you have role models who guide what you do and how you do it, and shape how you see the world?
Do you have in mind your ideal self?
All of those elements should drive the choices that you make, year after year, to improve yourself.
You may decide to talk less, or more, listen more, be more patient, have more empathy, be more attractive and less powerful, share more of your life, be less confrontational.
There are plenty of ways to be more effective, but what would allow you to go as far as you can right now?
Which change would mean the most to you?
How to start?
By cultivating your self-awareness and emotional intelligence muscle, identifying the behaviors to improve and deliberately acting on it. There is a ton of great literature on emotional intelligence and how to change habits.
Let’s just emphasize here a couple of points which should be meaningful for the choice of technologies which could support those efforts.
You need an environment where each employee can provide feedback to others, where pulse surveys or employee experience surveys could be run, analyzed and translated into potential actions that you or others could take.
You need access to a library of connected content.
You could also be matched to a coach if you wanted to have a sparring partner to help you grow.
This could be provided internally, by one vendor or a set of vendors.
For example,
you could have an employee listening tool; a 360 environment to assess managers against your leadership model; a solution to connect employees or managers with a mentor or a coach; and an environment to track goals and enable the exchange of feedback between employees.
How to build Growth Mindset?
Now, you may provide the best learning environment for your employees, but to be effective your employees have to have a “growth” mindset and your culture should encourage and reward those actively managing their growth.
It should be safe for employees to experiment, to learn, to provide feedback in a diversified and inclusive environment.
Calibrated survey questions could allow you to know if your environment is psychologically safe and inclusive and, therefore, an enabler of growth, or understand if you have areas, teams, functions where this is not the case.
Other points should be considered:
Are you investing into the wellness of your employees?
How do you cultivate resilience within your company?
Your policy in response to those two points could affect the ability of employees to grow.
Obviously, you cannot control everything. Things may happen in the life of your employees and last year has offered us, with the effect of the pandemic, a new perspective on the blend of work and home which we will have to integrate into our planning for the years to come. Gone is the time when we had a clear demarcation line between life at work and life at home, issues at home and issues at work.
The privacy line has definitively shifted, and companies are expected to provide a level of personal support that was not existing before.
Suggested five dimensions of wellbeing:
Mind and body:
Are we providing the right benefits for the physical health, the mental health and the emotional support of employees and their families?
Financial: Do we understand the financial hardships that they are experiencing? What type of financial education and tools can we provide to help employees on this sensitive and personal subject?
Family and Community:
Can we build our company as a community where we help each other? Can we provide outside expertise (extended EAP program) to help employees think through the challenges they face? Can we have a proactive role in our local community to help those in needs?
Human Connections:
Are we enabling a trusted environment?
Fulfillment:
Will the employees’ growth have a meaningful impact?
Now, we also want our employees to develop their resilience in order to better cope with the discomfort of growth and what they face. The top drivers of resilience growth crosses what we already discussed. Let’s list them for reference:
Self-Management:
The extent to which we regulate our emotions to remain calm and collected.
Self-Compassion:
The extent to which we are compassionate towards ourselves, treating ourselves with kindness and empathetic understanding.
Cognitive Agility:
The extent to which we adapt and shift our thought processes, leading to more positive outcomes.
Top Strategies for Successful Growth in professional and personal life
Remember the concept of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge. What we are suggesting here takes into account further developments in the field of Organizational Design, but the idea is the same. Your company culture has to support the growth mindset, has to offer a safe and inclusive harbor, should support the wellbeing of your employees and their resilience.
1. Find Your Purpose
This doesn't just mean your job title; it's more about what you’re meant to accomplish. What led you to your job or field in the first place? Look into yourself and your skills and connect that to your job title so you can compare and contrast until you find that deeper purpose behind what makes you so good at what you do. Once you’ve put a name to it, seek the opportunities everyday that connect with and fulfill that purpose.
2. Surround Yourself With a Community That Helps You Thrive
While a strong work community is beneficial to helping any business thrive, it's also important to surround yourself with individuals outside your work community who can help you grow. For example, you may be a successful manager at a marketing firm but also have an incredible friendship with an English teacher who helps you see the world from a new lens and develop new ideas to pitch and implement at work. By surrounding yourself with others who are not just like you or do the same work, you’ll find more opportunities to learn and grow.
3. Understand Your Position Requirements
Once you recognize your own position's requirements and are ready to exceed them, start getting to know how your company’s organized and all the different kinds of positions available. Once you understand the structure and different types of jobs offered, you may discover more advancement opportunities and how to obtain them if they open up.
4. Don’t Waste Time Or Resources
This may seem obvious, but it's important to stay on task when working. If you’re seen slacking off or wasting time, others may take that to mean you don't value your position at your company or that you may not even have enough to do. It’s also important to avoid wasting your company's resources, as wasting supplies may mean that you don’t value the company or its resources.
5. Challenge Yourself
Set goals, both personal and job related, that are challenging to achieve but will give you a feeling of pride when you do. Make a list of books related to your position that you want to finish by the end of the year; start listening to a podcast that talks about better time management; find something that will enrich you and your work and challenge yourself to be dedicated and committed to it. Regardless of what you do, there will always be opportunities to carry personal growth over into your position and success at work.
6. Schedule Informational Interviews
The next best thing to getting an interview with a leader you admire is inviting them out for coffee. Most people love to share about their experience and expertise. Find a mutual connection on LinkedIn or Facebook and ask to be introduced. Then ask if you can treat your aspirant to coffee or lunch — no strings attached.
7. Find a Mentor
Perhaps your informational interview over coffee turns into an actual interview or perhaps that friend of a friend has your dream job. Ask if they’d like to serve as your mentor. Agree on what exactly that means: How often will you meet? Will you have questions prepared for them? A meetup once every two months or so is a good target — the experience shouldn’t add extra stress to you or your mentor.
8. Work Outside Your Job Title
Find opportunities to volunteer or lead on a project that aligns with your passions. You’ll be able to showcase your skills while learning more through the process to benefit your growth. There’s value in being a specialist, but accruing the knowledge to be able to speak into many different aspects of your organization will give you clout and comfort in meetings and conversations with colleagues.
9. Don’t Do Anything Until You’ve Set Expectations
Aligned expectations are key to success. When they aren’t defined, how can you know if you’re living up to them? Sit down with your boss and simply ask, “What are your expectations of my role?” You’ll gain clarity while also impressing your supervisor with your initiative and foresight. Use those expectations as a framework for how you work; this will give you a point on the horizon to work toward and benchmarks toward success.
10. Exceed Your Expectations
Once you have those expectations set, think of practical ways you can go above and beyond. Prominent blogger and author of the book Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, Michael Hyatt, suggests this exercise: “List your boss’s (or client’s) expectations in one column of a sheet of paper or on a spreadsheet. Now, in another column, list what you could do to exceed those expectations. How can you make [their] jaw drop or at least make [them] smile with delight? Use your creativity to create a wow experience.”
And the extra key to great success …
Whether you’re following industry blogs, learning from mentors, or seeking more formal education, you should always be open and excited to learn. The most successful people in this world are those who approach life with humility, and that means knowing there’s always more to know.
Simply put:
- When you have the humility to seek wise counsel.
- And set expectations you intend to exceed.
- Your organization, your community, and you will succeed.
Conclusion
It takes a village to build a growth environment and provide employees with the opportunities to challenge themselves. The number of tools that could be deployed in support of your growth strategy could be numerous. Obviously, in this article, I suggested many more tools than any company should deploy, but a learning infrastructure does not consist anymore of just one Learning Management System (LMS). You should define and deploy the different components of the growth ecosystem you deem critical to success.
The two prerequisites for the selection of the components of such a learning ecosystem are a strong company culture and values supporting growth, and the definition of learning goals in support of a sound business strategy.
In this context, employees should be able to re-discover themselves, identify a targeted future, design a growth plan and execute successfully on it. In today’s world, where flexibility and agility are two critical components of success, the ability for employees to re-design themselves and adjust quickly their capabilities may be the key to continuous positive outcome.
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