Here's how you can guide and develop your team members' career growth as a leader.

The first step is to connect with your team members as people. Take the time to get to know them. What they care about, What excites them about life and the future. What concerns them? Building connection and understanding takes time, and by doing this, you gain valuable insights into what’s important to them while helping the individual connect with this, too. Connection is not achieved through the priority check-in lane. It’s achieved through genuine, authentic conversations that build over time. This gives space for values to be discovered, and clarity around priorities and experiences that the person desires is uncovered. A solid foundation to begin to plan your career trajectory.

Development isn’t a set-and-forget exercise, but one that provides space to invest in the work, while providing processes and resources to encourage reflection, planning and action. In addition to providing external support through coaching, training and conference opportunities. Leaders have the opportunity to mentor and sponsor their team members. Checking in is an important part of this process. Leaders who understand this schedule time to do so, it doesn’t have to be long-winded, it does have to be a commitment kept.

Mentoring makes a difference when set up well. It can derail careers and culture fast when not. In addition to pairing up team members with experienced mentors, invest in training your team members in coaching mentoring skills to utilise in the workplace. So they can prepare to set up their mentoring for success and learn to mentor each other, peer mentoring and coaching can be a powerful process to build cohesion within teams, cross-functional teams and across different departments. Encourage team members to mentor others either within your organisation or in another setting.

Growth opportunities are important, they allow you to put what you are learning into practice. This is where real growth is achieved. Ensure you have resources that help your team members identify how to plan and act on this. Be a sponsor so they can access these opportunities. Remember, no one benefits when stretched to capacity. Assess current workloads and priorities. Are there other team members who could take on some of these providing a stretch opportunity for them? The goal is to develop and build capability, not destroy someone's enthusiasm, health, and well-being.

Be interested; this makes a world of difference. Helping team members to connect with possible pathways is a powerful way to expand their view of what is possible and available. Help them to identify the skills, capabilities and experience needed to progress. Share your process and thinking to help them think strategically. This will fuel motivation and highlight your company's opportunities. Equally important, it will show them what’s not available.