Leadership comes in every form. When it comes to management, handling the secret weapon between a leader and employees are career conversations. Every leader must know how to communicate accordingly to his or her people.
Fast Company reported that Candor, Inc. co-founder and COO and former military leader, Russ Laraway believes that managers should help their employees communicate their long-term goals and visions for their careers. By doing this, managers will be able to grow and retain their top employees.
Laraway’s communication approach made him one of the most sought after advice when it comes to retaining employees and talent growth and development. He applied his framework for career development while he was at Google and Twitter. It was very effective for many employees in both companies.
According to Laraway, deep and meaningful career conversations between the manager and its employees along with action plans and set goals are great ways in order to keep them around. An effective way in managing your people is by becoming a servant leader.
Laraway said that "One way to know if you’re exhibiting service leadership is if the people under you are growing and developing."
He continued, "I've seen this play out in practice over and over and over. People are surprised that they can grow toward their dreams and stay put in their current role. This is one of the side benefits to this approach to career conversations. It can reduce any ants-in-the-pants of wanting to leave or be promoted. As a manager, one of your prime jobs is to help the people on your team develop."
However, Laraway also discussed some key points of how a manager can screw up career conversations. First is that this kind of career dialogue does not usually exist. Or if does, it is done in a wrong way like “imposter conversations.” A good example for this is “performance reviews.” Such reviews are backward-looking and can usually do no good while career conversations are forward-looking.
Another way is through short term dialogues such as promotions. Discussing promotions does not basically equal to career talks. Therefore, managers should also know how the right way to developing career plans and at the same time having a serious yet meaningful conversation with their employees.
There are many different ways in order to become a good leader or manager. He or she must inspire and motivate its team in every possible way as shared by Jobs & Hire.
