3 Tips for Meaningful Growth Conversations with Your Employees

I was inspired by the good 4 min read by Sydney Finkelstein in Harvard Business Review why you as a manager should plot and track individual growth paths with your employees. Agreed! You can find the full article here. There are three small angles I want to add:

Understand your employee's life situation first.

It's important to talk about career goals, but if your employee has just founded a family, is building a house, or taking care of elderly people full-time, his/her priority might be to calibrate to this new life situation. This doesn't mean that there is no room for development, but it means that the job might not be the centre focus of his/her life right now. And I believe it is totally ok to "just" do a good job – without heavily working on a promotion. There is life beyond work.

Have regular, joint growth conversations.

For me, keeping an employee file that showed the nuances of individual behaviors was very helpful. At the same time, each of the entries I made was an entry that I had provided as feedback and discussed with my employees – no hidden secrets. So, talking to team members is key and: Yes! Do now wait for the assessment cycles to provide feedback. I sometimes gave feedback 3-5 times a week – do it as often as necessary. Probably, this seems overwhelming and way too much, if you hear it first. But remember that a) feedback is positive and negative feedback and b) that you need to reach a certain quota in order to cater for the Losada line – the critical positivity ratio.

Driving seat: the employee – not the manager.

Overall, your employees are in the growth driver seat, not you as manager. The longing for development is something that needs to come and be driven by your employee. As manager you are there to offer reflection, provide the room to grow – but in the end it is your employee who needs to drive it forward. You cannot make people grow, if they don't want to. It's part of their accountability, not yours.

I am curios to hear your experiences with growth conversations: What are your secret tips for having impactful and motivating conversations with your team members?

Reach out if I can support you in leading deep, comprehensive, structured and meaningful 60-90 min. growth conversations with your employees.

#leadership #development #growth #learning #feedback #losadaline