Career Development Basics

By Michael Kroth and McKay Christensen

This book is now available as an ebook through ASTD's new service: Content Express!

Even in the best financial times, career development is often relegated to the back of the bus because it's seen as a short-term cost rather than a long-term investment with lasting impact. But the reality is that career development helps people strive for meaningful accomplishment in the workplace, and both individuals and organizations thrive when their goals are being met.

This book is intended to empower training and development leaders with the knowledge and tools needed to become catalysts for bringing a career development focus to their organizations. Because busy managers in today's hectic business environment already have plenty on their plates, Career Development Basics jump-starts the learning curve by providing a succinct, ready-to-apply approach to this challenge.

Within this book you'll find a sound, no-nonsense framework for implementing a career development focus, supplemented by an array of easy-to-understand materials including worksheets, comparison charts, case studies, flowcharts, and specific forms for turnover cost calculation and a sample performance review.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Association for Talent Development
• Release date: Jun 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781607282488

Book preview

Preface and Acknowledgments

The more we look at organizations, the more we see that career development often takes a back seat to the organization’s day-to-day demands. The need to promote a career development culture has never been stronger than it is today. The cost of not having a career development culture far outweighs the cost of supporting such an initiative.

When an employee’s career development goals are aligned with the needs of the organization, career development seems effortless and is a clear and affordable priority for management. The problem, however, is when the employee’s and the organization’s goals diverge.

Often, the fallacy is that the employee’s aspirations and the organization’s goals are divergent when they are really more similar than one might think. In our experience, an organization that is focused on career development often steers the individual aspirations of employees toward the needs of the company. The stronger the career development focus, the less divergent the interests of the employee and the company. That’s because the company is able to steer, develop, and influence the employee’s aspirations along the way.

Think about it: Most employees had a keen interest in the organization’s goals when they joined, but somewhere along the way, they lost their passion. For example, most employees don’t join an engineering company with career aspirations of becoming a professional lounge singer. But employees do feel less than satisfied in an engineering company when they feel pigeonholed into a routine with limited scope in relation to the broader elements of engineering work that first attracted them to the profession.

As organization leaders go about trying to get the right people on the bus, they often overlook the opportunity to grow the right people who are already on the bus (Collins 2001, 41). The focus on short-term demand and immediate contribution can derail the real opportunity to grow the right people who will make a lasting impact on the organization’s success. Can leaders implement a development focus, and will that focus increase the volume and quality of work, thereby helping training and development managers demonstrate a return on the investment in career development? The answer to this important question is certainly Yes! But training and development managers often don’t understand how to make the argument clearly so that organization leaders will not only buy into but also lead out from the process.

We see today’s workers placing a higher and higher priority on career development. Organizations that offer a broad practice of developing employees now uniquely and powerfully compete in the recruiting arena. They have more to offer than salary, benefits, and a certain number of vacation days. Human resources professionals need this competitive edge. Whether it’s the new college graduate looking for ways to develop a résumé without moving from company to company or a baby boomer in the middle of a midlife crisis looking for a new feel to the second half of his or her career, career development is attractive for a reason: It’s what employees need and want.

This book is intended to empower training and development leaders with the necessary tools and understanding to become catalysts for bringing a career development focus to their organization. It’s our experience that training and development managers have espoused the virtue of a development focus, yet in most organizations this focus has not been embraced by company leadership and, more important, by department management. Why? We see three key barriers to a career development focus:

Training and development leaders don’t know how to bring a development focus to the forefront of managers’ strategic priorities or how to extend that focus across organizational boundaries in the face of department self-interest.

Managers don’t know how to sustain a focus in the midst of budget cutbacks and short-term profit goals, and they often don’t place a high financial priority on development.

Department managers and organization leaders aren’t encouraged or rewarded for a management mindset that focuses on helping others reach their goals.

We frequently see department managers protecting high-performing employees from being taken to another department, and objecting to their promotion to another department because their own department needs their expertise and high productivity. Often, this standing in the way of an employee’s career is done without the employee’s knowledge or buy-in. How do company leaders facilitate career development and practice healthy intervention between departments? How do organizations create an ongoing development focus for employees without moving them to different positions?

In this book, training and development professionals and company managers will find the tools they need to prevail against the natural tendency to resist spending time and resources on career development. This book intends to answer several important questions about career development:

What are the clear, useful ways in which a focus on career development will benefit the company, managers, and employees—and increase the bottom line?

How can managers complete an organizational assessment, implement career development in the organization’s staffing process, and integrate career development into succession planning?

What simple actions can every company take to get managers to think like their employees and employees to think like the company when it comes to career development? What actions will foster career development while increasing buy-in to the needs of the company?

Does research show that the unique combination of a mentor focused on helping others reach their potential will create better leaders, and what are the simple steps to find, train, and utilize mentors who are focused on helping others reach their potential?

What tools will enable employees to manage their own career development and engage their supervisors in the process? What organization tools will allow employees to take charge of their own career development plan?

How can older employees be enabled to discover how development can open up the second half of their career? And how can younger employees be assisted to develop the right types of expectations and a realistic career development plan?

How can managers learn to avoid mistakes in career development discussions and to utilize the performance review process to facilitate career development? How can these development discussions help employees see the alternatives in their development path—that it’s not just about promotion or advancement but also about the right kind of development?

How can employees, managers, and organizations learn to understand their own motivations so they can develop their own career development plans more effectively?

Last but not least, a career development focus can be the means for perpetuating a company’s goals, mission, and culture. When companies proactively help employees develop and influence the direction of this development, they mold and shape the prevailing culture. It’s our goal that through this book, training and development leaders will find the added help they need to create ongoing career development focus in their organization.

Look for These Icons

aaa

What’s Inside This Chapter

Each chapter opens with a summary of the topics addressed in the chapter. You can use this reference to find the areas that interest you most.

ada

Think About This

These are helpful tips for how to use the tools and techniques presented in the chapter.

aasa

Basic Rules

These rules cut to the chase. They represent important concepts and assumptions that form the foundation of adult learning.

ss

Noted

This icon calls out additional information.

wsda

Getting It Done

The final section of each chapter supports your ability to take the content of that chapter and apply it to your situation. Sometimes this section contains a list of questions for you to ponder. Sometimes it is a self-assessment tool. And sometimes it is a list of action steps you can take to enhance your facilitation.

Words of Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Mark Morrow at ASTD for his patience and encouragement as we both fought demanding schedules while trying to bring this project in on time. Also, we thank Michael Sackley for the hours he spent in thoughtful review and editing that have made our book so much better. Our ability to write a book such as this is really the culmination of years of experiences with inspiring and wise leaders and mentors.

From McKay Christensen

I would like to thank those who help me on a daily basis to remember the priority of developing others in my career, including Michael Kroth, Frank VanderSloot, Jann Nielsen, Erik Madsen, and my wife, Jennifer. To my first mentor, Dad, thanks for your patience and teaching.

From Michael Kroth

I would like to recognize, in particular, Leonard Gillingham, who, as my minister many years ago, opened my eyes to my potential for doing something meaningful in the world. He was and is, to me and many others, the kind of potentiating, servant leader McKay has studied and speaks so eloquently about. I think of him whenever I know I’m falling short of making the difference I know I could be making.

I want to thank the members of my Spring 2008 HRD and Organization Development classes, who helped me to think more broadly about my contributions to this book, and also Lorri Morgan, Marty Yopp, and Carissa Miller, who know far more about aging and career development than I do. Also, thanks to Lisa Haneberg and Elaine Biech for encouraging me to pursue writing a book for ASTD.

I also want to thank McKay for being a true professional to work with and also for the wisdom, from both real-world and scholarly experience, he brought to this project. He exemplifies the qualities of a true servant leader in a very successful company, and I am quite sure that all who work with him walk away as not only better employees but better people.

1

Career Development: Whose Responsibility Is It?

wsa

What’s Inside This Chapter

In this chapter, you’ll learn:

Why organizations should take responsibility for career development

How a career development culture can increase your organization’s results

The need for a new employment agreement between organizations and employees

The barriers to a career development culture

The bottom line of career development.

The stories emerging from today’s workplace aren’t unique. Whether manufacturing, research, education, health care, or any other type of organization, the experiences are similar:

Jann, a bright young college graduate, eager to climb the corporate ladder, becomes stuck in her career and never gets out of the purchasing department and into the marketing job she trained for in school.

Burt, a 50-year-old designer, labors away in his current job for 10 years and feels frustrated. He can’t seem to move on to that creative position for which he feels best suited.

Michael, the marketing VP, wants to promote someone from within the company but is too far removed from the day-to-day reality to see anyone who is the right person to lead the web marketing department.

Truth be told, Jann and Burt both have the potential to be the right person for Michael. They already bring so much to the table: longevity with the company, understanding of the industry, passion for the people, and good communication skills. Both are bright, capable, and willing. Yet, somehow, they’ve been sidetracked in their career development. Who is responsible?

Consider their situations. Jann accepted her position in purchasing to get her foot in the door, but despite what she was told in the interview process, no one has ever moved from purchasing to marketing. The only career track into marketing seems to be for those who arrive with an MBA or come from an advertising firm. She has an undergraduate degree in marketing and is an exceptional performer in purchasing. She’s managed her accounts with great precision, her follow-up is excellent, and her interpersonal skills are improving.

Jann has taken the initiative to improve her career. She’s approached her manager twice on the topic of moving to marketing. Her manager has no ability to initiate such a move, he wants to keep her in the