From Courses to Careers: L&D’s Critical Shift to Grow Unstoppable Talent

People who work in learning and development (L&D) are really being stretched in their roles right now. We’re tackling massive organizational challenges and reinventing how companies help grow their talent.  

This transformation was clear at last year’s Association for Talent Development conference (ATD23), where sessions buzzed about future-readiness, revolutionary tech, and a stressful question: In a world that’s changing so quickly, what the heck is my job?

Here’s my answer: Keep reaching, keep stretching all the way to a new mission. Our purpose is no longer simply delivering course curriculum and adapting instructional design for changing technology. Today we have an opportunity and responsibility to empower impactful careers. 

Most likely you’re already aware of L&D’s tilt toward career development. It’s also likely that you’re busy trying to figure out what it means and what the best path forward is. 

I’d like to help by sharing why this transformation is so important and how it empowers unstoppable talent. I’ll also share four questions — and small steps — that will help you make progress and align career development with business impact.

How career development motivates employees and supports business outcomes

Work is changing incredibly quickly, and organizations are looking to L&D to help with core business metrics. This is why the role of learning has shifted from a nice-to-have to a need-to-have.

Learning for learning’s sake is wonderful. Everyone benefits from a culture where curiosity, exploration, and experimentation rule the day. But it’s no longer enough.

To best inspire learning culture and apply learning to top business priorities, we need to pay attention to people’s core motivation. And for the vast majority of learners, that motivation is the desire to succeed in their careers.

The 2023 Workplace Learning Report tells us that “progress toward career goals” is employees’ No. 1 reason to learn. “Staying up-to-date in their fields” is No. 2. 

The true magic of unstoppable talent happens when organizations direct this potent employee motivation to learning that supports critical business goals. Outcome-led learning geared toward career development keeps people learning and growing at the rate (and in the direction) that the new world of work requires.

In fact, organizations that cultivate employee growth are:

•  7.2x more likely to engage and retain employees. 
• 2.6x more likely to exceed financial targets.
• 4.1x more likely to innovate effectively

The four questions that help build a culture of career development

Building a thriving culture of career development takes time, and it might seem like a monumental mountain to climb. So it helps to apply our own curiosity and powers of experimentation to identify small victories. 

Below are four questions and a few steps that can help you chart your way forward. Incidentally, I believe these questions can be equally helpful to organizations, managers, and even all of us individually as we look to build our own career paths.

1. How are you building agility?

Agility is our ticket to future success. We must be able to adapt quickly to market changes, rapidly evolving technology, industry trends, and customer needs. To build agility, we must invest in learning and development programs that inspire and enable people to continually improve and innovate.

Forward-thinking organizations recognize that agility means incorporating learning and growth into everyday work. Toward that end, even small moments of learning represent enhanced agility — and career progress. 

Taken together, these quick and nimble hops represent the enlarged capabilities and outcomes that companies need to leap ahead.

One step forward: Build agility by celebrating and thinking about career growth in a new way. Recognize and reward employees for trying a new tool, completing a course, sharing knowledge with others, delivering a stretch project, working with a mentor, taking a risk, investing time for feedback, activating a new idea, or developing a new relationship.

2. How are you prioritizing skills?

Skills are the building blocks of agility. Many organizations are realizing that the more we get to know our skills, the better we can understand our strengths and close our gaps.

To empower employees to achieve their career goals, we must help them understand the skills that are most relevant to their roles and career aspirations. This means providing tools and resources that help them assess their existing skills and acquire the new skills they’ll need to succeed.

One step forward: Prioritize skills by putting them at the center of career development conversations. Help team members shine a light on what they consider their strengths and give them support and resources to understand what skills they need to develop for their current role and to achieve their aspirations. 

3. How are you embracing mobility?

Mobility — building flexibility and fluidity into careers — is an opportunity that everyone should seize. 

For teams and organizations, it means fostering ways for people to take on new challenges and new roles, bolstering institutional knowledge and building a more versatile pool of skills. It also means looking at internal talent when hiring opportunities come around, creating career paths that enable lateral and vertical moves, and offering additional training to help people succeed in new roles.

For individuals, embracing mobility means having the courage to pursue big-leap growth experiences that expand skills and career relevance. It also means being open to sideways or jungle-gym moves instead of simply climbing an old-fashioned career ladder. 

One step forward: Embrace mobility by actively seeking to go beyond your career development comfort zone. Take ownership in seeking collaborations that break through traditional silos and open doors. L&D pros particularly need to partner with talent acquisition to help people transition and build new skills for open roles. 

4. How are you empowering people to achieve their career dreams?

For employees to thrive now and in the future, they need to feel empowered to think big and harness their passions. 

Unfortunately, working amid so much change and uncertainty can rob people of their sense of career ownership and autonomy. Many don’t know how to define their next step or have access to tools and networks that make career transformation possible.

Inspiring people to design their own futures starts with recognizing their uniqueness and individuality, paying attention to their personal passions and encouraging them to flourish. 

It’s also important to share information about roles and skills that represent the most impactful needs for the business, where the largest areas of opportunity reside. Help people think about skills that are transferable, opening new directions to grow.  

One step forward: Inspire people to achieve their goals by investing time with them to think and talk about career growth. Show them that their dreams are valued and help them achieve clarity on where they want to go. If you’re in a leadership or management role, make sure these career conversations include information on tools and resources. 

Final thoughts: Stretch but don’t break

As I highlighted earlier, many of the problems we’re trying to solve are massive. They’re highly complex and nearly overwhelming.

As you stretch to both empower employee careers and drive business impact, remember that no single person or even a single team can do this work alone. 

And no matter how the world of work evolves, remember that there’s one important skill set that is not going to change: We all need to apply our human skills, like empathy and compassion, to cheer for one another and take good care of ourselves.