How to Make Improvement Happen as a Manager
It’s no secret that I am a huge advocate for supporting the career development and progression of others. In fact, this entire blog was created to support the development of my students and other young professionals through the lessons I’ve learned along the way. One of the biggest challenges for managers in the modern workplace is developing staff to get them prepared for the “next level” in their career, whatever that level might be. The reason why this is so challenging is because feedback and opportunities don’t always align properly, and it’s the manager’s job to make development happen despite these challenges. Today, I’m going to share my step-by-step process for improving my staff so you can learn how to improve your own, let’s jump in!
Step 1 - Shadowing, Templates, and Examples
The most important first step in anyone’s development is to give them an idea of what they should be doing. For many people, it’s not enough just to tell them to do something. You will need to give them multiple opportunities to absorb the information on something before they are responsible for delivering it for themselves. My 3 favorite methods of doing this are:
Shadowing - Having someone sit with you on calls and watch as you perform is an excellent way to expose them to the real world scenario they may face in the near future. Shadowing is particularly effective when soft skills are involved because a lot of soft skill context is missing from the next two options.
Templates - Sometimes, staff just need to get the reps in and be exposed multiple times when learning something new, and having templates on hand is a great way for them to see a basic outline of what something should look like, while also being able to focus on the steps necessary to take that template to the final deliverable.
Examples - Not everything can be made into a template, but it’s still worth it to provide a visual example to staff so they have some guidance on what the end deliverable should look like. Having visual examples as a reference will provide the staff a framework for what the desired outcome should look like, and that little bit of structure can go a long way when learning new things.
Step 2 - Timely Feedback
Everyone needs feedback and guidance to progress in their career. While there are some circumstances where someone may be able to identify their own faults and effectively provide themselves feedback, it is often the case that someone with more experience is able to better identify areas of improvement. However, feedback is worthless if it isn’t timely. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve seen someone get a performance review for a job that happened 3-5 months prior. Feedback that comes that late might as well not be given at all because the person likely doesn't even remember the details of what happened. Instead, I am an advocate for feedback that is instant or comes within days or weeks, not months. By accelerating the timeline for feedback, a manager can help the staff identify areas for improvement while the facts and circumstances are still fresh. It’s important to remember that timely feedback should be both positive and constructive because it’s just as important to reinforce and champion good behaviors as it is to remedy the less desirable ones.
Step 3 - Actionable Improvement Plans
So, you gave your staff examples and timely feedback on their performance, great! But how do they improve on that feedback? That improvement should also be your responsibility as a manager! Every time I give feedback to someone, I try to identify an opportunity on the next project where they can demonstrate their improvement and consciously act on that feedback quickly. For example, if one of my staff got feedback along the lines of “We want you to take more initiative in client communications,” I will go out of my way to place them on an engagement where they can be comfortable and supported in that role. It’s likely to be a lower risk client and I will offer them some extra guidance if they need it, but it will be a situation where they are empowered to act on the feedback immediately. This step is the one that is the most often overlooked by managers because they are comfortable putting the employee in a place to build those new skills. Ultimately this behavior leads to a vicious cycle of “Keep doing X, we want you to try Y” while giving them only X, and hardly any Y opportunities.
As you can probably tell from these steps, making improvement happen as a manager boils down to conscious decision making to support the immediate development of staff, and just really caring about them. If you made it this far down the post, I challenge you to implement these steps into your own process and make the positive change I know you’re capable of!