Having Career Conversations

This resource first appeared in issue #120 on 30 Apr 2022 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Coaching, Becoming A Manager: Managing Individuals

Having Career Conversations - Joe Lynch

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, mentorship only goes beyond cheap advice-giving if you’re willing to dig in a little deeper to the questions and answers being presented to you.

Part of every manager and lead’s job is to support the career development of their team members. And that means having career conversations with them. That means digging deep. Lynch prods us to go beyond the superficial of what the team member says their goals are, and to understand the (usually multiple) motivations behind the goals. People, especially but certainly not only juniors, often trip over the XY problem in setting their career goals. They ask for help with X so they can do Y, when it’s not a given that Y is even what they really want, much less that X is the way to get it.

Beyond that, Lynch emphasizes:

Trust is needed for these conversations
These are ongoing conversations
There needs to be shared expectations about the level of confidentiality of the conversations
You have to be prepared for the high likelihood that once enough time passes, these conversations will eventually lead to conclusions that the team member will have to pursue their goals outside of the team or even the organization. That’s ok. People happily moving on is good and healthy. A team of “lifers” isn’t a healthy team, and shouldn’t be a goal.

Lynch gives a number of concrete suggestions, both tactical and more long term, for having these conversations, and if the topic is of interest it’s a short read.