Creating a Culture of Skill Development

Your people want to grow… But you’re not listening. Employees crave development, not just feedback. Leaders miss the bigger picture: ↳ Skill gaps and ambitions. Otherwise, employees feel: 1. Unheard 2. Undervalued 3. Stuck Without growth, engagement drops. Turnover soars… You need more than feedback. You need an actionable strategy. Here’s how: 1. Use Structured Frameworks. - Standardized templates reduce personal biases. - Blend metrics with narratives for actionable insights. - Structured feedback eliminates guesswork. 2. Focus On Future Goals. - Set SMART goals to make development clear. - Shift feedback from past to forward-looking progress. - Align team growth with your company’s goals. 3. Listen To Employees' Voices. - Surveys uncover ambitions often left unspoken. - Safe spaces allow employees to share openly. - Listening fosters trust and deeper engagement. 4. Bridge The Gap For Future Success. - Use benchmarks to prioritize critical skill gaps. - Compare current skills to those your future requires. - Prepare employees today for tomorrow’s challenges. 5. Empower Growth Ownership. - Prompts like “Where do I excel?” spark reflection. - Encourage employees to own development paths. - Regular discussions keep growth consistent and visible. 6. Collaborate On Development Goals. - Build trust with safe, judgment-free feedback spaces. - Visualise their goals, showing progress and alignment. - Collaboration ensures both clarity and accountability. When growth is intentional, businesses succeed. Focus on development now to avoid turnover later. Invest in your people to future-proof your business. Follow Jonathan Raynor. Reshare to help others.

This week, I facilitated a manager workshop on how to grow and develop people and teams. One question sparked a great conversation: “How do you develop your people outside of formal programs?” It’s a great question. IMO, one of the highest leverage actions a leader can take is making small, but consistent actions to develop their people. While formal learning experiences absolutely a role, there are far more opportunities for growth outside of structured settings from an hours in the day perspective. Helping leaders recognize and embrace this is a major opportunity. I introduced the idea of Practices of Development (PODs) aka small, intentional activities integrated into everyday work that help employees build skills, flex new muscles, and increase their impact. Here are a few examples we discussed: 🌟 Paired Programming: Borrowed from software engineering, this involves pairing an employee with a peer to take on a new task—helping them ramp up quickly, cross-train, or learn by doing. 🌟 Learning Logs: Have team members track what they’re working on, learning, and questioning to encourage reflection. 🌟 Bullpen Sessions: Bring similar roles together for feedback, idea sharing, and collaborative problem-solving, where everyone both A) shares a deliverable they are working on, and B) gets feedback and suggestions for improvement 🌟 Each 1 Teach 1:  Give everyone a chance to teach one work-related skill or insight to the team. 🌟 I Do, We Do, You Do:Adapted from education, this scaffolding approach lets you model a task, then do it together, then hand it off. A simple and effective way to build confidence and skill. 🌟 Back Pocket Ideas:  During strategy/scoping work sessions, ask employees to submit ideas for initiatives tied to a customer problem or personal interest. Select the strongest ones and incorporate them into their role. These are a few examples that have worked well. If you’ve found creative ways to build development opportunities into your employees day to day work, I’d love to hear what’s worked for you!

Work is Happening. Development Isn't. Here's Why. Yesterday, Lisa Lie summed it up perfectly: "WTAF?" And today, I want to add my own insights on this classic WTAF moment—because when engagement scores are low on training, learning, and development, it’s probably not for the reasons you think. Matt Gjertsen made a great point: LinkedIn Learning (or any platform) can’t train your managers. And that’s exactly the problem. You can roll out all the workshops, buy every training subscription, and load up your LMS with thousands of courses— but if these TWO THINGS are not happening, none of it will matter. 🚨 The Two Biggest Missing Pieces: 1️⃣ How work is assigned – If work is always assigned to the person who’s best at it, can do it the fastest, or simply has bandwidth (this is the worst one BTW), people don’t experience growth and development. 2️⃣ How work is discussed – If leaders aren’t explicitly connecting work to development, employees don’t recognize the learning happening every day. What’s missing? Most of us were conditioned to think about learning as something formal—a class, a workshop, a structured activity. But in reality: 👉 Most learning happens through real work and meaningful experiences. 🚀 The real magic happens when you combine organic learning with proactive coaching and intentional conversations. The biggest red flag that this is an issue in your organization: 🚩 Work is assigned based on efficiency, not development. The fix? ✅ Assigning work differently AND ✅ Leaders having these conversations in their 1:1s: ✔️ New Project – “I’m assigning you this project because I know you’re working on X skill, and this will help you grow in that area. Let’s talk through how.” ✔️ Current Work – “You have three big projects—how can you intentionally practice X skill while working on them?” ✔️ Teaching Others – “You’ve built strong expertise in X. Let’s take it further by having you guide others in this area.” Because if these conversations aren’t happening, people don’t see their work as development—even though they’re learning every day. This is a big topic (bigger than just a Wednesday post), so I’m dedicating next week’s Side Door Newsletter to unpacking this further (link in comments). ........................................................................................................................................ 👋🏼 Hi, I’m Michelle and I write about challenging the status quo and redefining how we think about work. #Manager #EmployeeEngagement #HumanResources