How many of us prioritise our development?
When was the last time your organisation invested in your development? How open are you to skills development? Are you able to incorporate development into your scheduling, or do you find that it gets pushed lower on your priority list, remaining there until it falls off, or becomes invisible?
“Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire”, W.B. Yeats
Most of our conversations touch on development, whether discussing specific group development sessions for clients, or personal and professional development in the context of performance coaching. A couple of conversations from the last week really stood out for us, and we wanted to share them here.
Conversation #1
We’ve worked with this organisation for several years, providing a variety of performance initiatives for their leadership team and wider employee network. They told us recently that the appetite for learning has shifted and, as a business, they’re solidly focusing on messaging ‘the importance of development’, putting effort into communicating why team members should nominate themselves, or be put forward for development opportunities.
What’s changed? As the business has grown, the competition has strengthened, and teams have become busier, the client has noticed that participants are cancelling off development programmes at the last minute, in favour of a client meeting or a supplier deadline.
This is symptomatic of three leading issues that we observe in competitive, growth conscious organisations:
- A misalignment between ‘what we say’ as a Business and ‘what we expect’
- Leaders place heavy emphasis on output, at the expense of developing high-performance input
- Individuals believe that presenteeism trumps personal development
Let’s reverse engineer the thinking: would these individuals decide to cancel a meeting with their most valuable client or asset? Of course not, so how are they any different from their most valuable client or asset? Without them, the service suffers, so why not work on providing the very best service?
Prioritise and engage in personal development to enhance the value of what we offer, book meetings and plan deadlines around it. Take a moment for self-reflection and ask yourself: do I prioritise my development sufficiently?
Conversation #2
The second conversation was also with a fast-growing, fast-moving organisation, but we are in the early days of developing a relationship. The organisation is managed by its two co-founders, who have overseen tremendous growth and who absolutely ‘get things done’. The founders are somewhat resistant to ‘people development’, they have enjoyed huge success up until this point without it, and don’t feel the need to introduce any externally provided development for their teams.
However, the challenge they are now facing is from within. The large workforce cite ‘lack of learning’ and ‘limited people culture’ as reasons for leaving the organisation. They’re increasingly tempted to join competitors who promote a ‘people first’ culture, providing development opportunities, and asking their people to hold them accountable to the values that make up the company culture. The organisation in Conversation #2 has always relied on lots of people being happy to ‘crack on’, put their heads down, meet targets and do the job required of them, with no need for personal development or culture initiatives to complement this. But as the business continues to grow, employee needs are changing, and the organisation risks losing a valuable and skilled workforce if not willing to consider and make some changes.
So how do organisations get the balance right? Organisation #1 offers a variety of development opportunities but is finding that some employees cancel in favour of operational expectations. Organisation #2 offers very limited opportunities in this area and is experiencing resignations from valuable team members.
Our dear Grandmas told us, “Learn something new every day”. But it’s important to remember that this can just as easily be achieved informally (via a conversation over a sandwich at lunch) as it can more formally in coaching sessions or in a learning space. Each one of us has a preferred learning style and we advocate that organisations should look to offer a variety of development options, so that each team member is motivated to prioritise their own growth in the way that best suits them and provides value to the business.
What is your preferred learning style? What is your best experience of development to date? Let us know!
