CHAPTER 9

Expand Your Employee’s Skill Sets

Once you’ve decided on a direction for a motivated employee’s development, you’ll need to figure out how they’ll acquire the skills to get them there. There are many approaches to growing your employee’s capabilities, from short-term training options that help them stay up-to-date on the latest industry knowledge to encouraging them to foster career-shaping, long-term relationships. The right approach will be determined by the employee’s situation and preferences. Consider the following tactics as potential options for development.

Skill-Training Programs

In many fields, learning and development have a short shelf life. In industries that are constantly changing and innovating, skills can become obsolete within mere months. Staying current in emerging technology, for example, requires a perpetual learning effort.

Some companies offer “corporate universities” as a way for their employees to learn the latest in their industry and job. These programs let a company tailor the curriculum to align training with its particular business strategy, focusing on the specific skills needed for organizational success. As a manager, you’ll know whether these options are available to your employees (and if you don’t, you can always ask your HR department). If you work in a particularly highly regulated field, like accounting, this traditional classroom training approach can work well.

These formal programs can be time-consuming, though, and they can take employees temporarily off the job. In some rapidly advancing fields—cloud-based computing, coding, and data science, for example—the curriculum changes so fast that traditional training methods can’t keep up.

In cases like these, consider more-flexible options. Encourage your employees to pursue off-site education at local schools or universities—or through online classes, which are usually less expensive than campus-based training and require no in-person class time. Online courses, certifications, and degree and “nanodegree” programs are widely available, regardless of geographic location, through university-developed MOOCs (massive open online courses) and e-learning companies (like Coursera, Lynda.com, and Udemy). You can help your employees find such programs by looking online at reputable sources and courses that provide the skills your team members need at a pace that works for them. If price is an issue, talk to your HR department to see if your organization offers tuition assistance for employees to invest in their growth.

Task Delegation

You may discover that an employee could learn better on the job than in the classroom. Task delegation allows you to test and expand their skills by handing off specific work assignments without adding these new responsibilities to their job permanently.

In this development tactic, you hand off a task (either yours or someone else’s) to your employee to gauge their ability in the project and offer more challenge. When you delegate one of your responsibilities to a direct report, you transfer not only the work but also the accountability for completing it—which builds trust. Delegating is an excellent way to communicate your confidence in your direct report’s ability. In doing so, you’re saying “I’m confident you can get the job done.”

Every time you hand off a project or task, you’re giving someone an opportunity to test their skills in mastering a new challenge. In some cases, this gives them experience with managerial work, like learning how to accept responsibility, to plan work, and to enlist the collaboration of others. In any case, it’s especially important to monitor their progress, offer feedback, and coach as needed to be sure that they’re learning the new skill.

Stretch Assignments

An alternative to delegation is to provide a discrete, time-limited stretch assignment. This is a particularly helpful method to assess whether an employee who has expressed interest in being promoted is truly ready for a more challenging role. Rather than handing off a task from your to-do list, design an assignment similar to what the person would handle in their potential new role. The key is for them to perform tasks they don’t necessarily know how to do or that they can’t yet do well.

Suitable temporary assignments for ambitious employees could include:

• Asking your direct report to develop and launch a product or head up a new initiative or project.
• Giving an employee the opportunity to fix a business or product that’s in trouble, like improving the bottom line of a new service or marketing a struggling product to a new customer segment.
• Assigning a job rotation in a new work environment. For example, have a marketing manager work in the sales organization for a while, offer an employee a short-term foreign assignment, or encourage your employee to join an organization-wide committee.
• Creating distinct tours of duty, where an employee takes over a new role for a specific time period before moving on to another role. (To learn more about this option, refer to the sidebar “Tours of Duty.”)

For this type of development opportunity, it’s especially important to be transparent about what you’re doing. Ensure that this is a short-term experiment, not a permanent change in responsibilities, and assign clear criteria for success and a time line for evaluation.

Job Redesign

Job redesign allows a promising employee the opportunity to try their hand at a new task while changing the job permanently. Here, you make adjustments to an individual’s role at the margins, reassigning rote, lower-level tasks to employees for whom the tasks are more appropriate (or eliminating the items altogether). You then replace these tasks with higher-level ones that involve challenge and learning. For example, if a direct report whose work is mainly administrative demonstrates an interest in copywriting, you may be able to shift some of their administrative duties to the department assistant, freeing up some time for them to take on introductory writing projects.

The starting point for redesign is a careful inventory of all the tasks associated with the job. You and your direct report may be able to compile a list from their formal job description, from their to-do list, or through information gathered during check-ins and ongoing performance discussions. Look for opportunities to offload low-level items, perhaps to another team member or administrative staffer. Keep in mind, though, that just because someone has always done a task doesn’t mean that it is worth doing; you may identify out-of-date or unnecessary activities that can be eliminated altogether, such as pulling weekly analytics reports for the team when an automated monthly report is doing the trick. Then identify and add a more challenging assignment in its place as a regular part of the job.

Job redesign may be easiest when working within a team. Can you find your direct report a partner with complementary strengths to take on the tasks you want to hand off? It takes effort to custom fit a role to better suit an individual, but doing so will save you time in the long run. When people slave away at tasks that don’t suit them, they (and by extension you) rarely get good results. People are far more energized, efficient, and effective when their responsibilities draw on their innate strengths and abilities.

If you believe that someone can contribute at a higher level, don’t simply pile on new responsibilities. An “invisible” promotion that doesn’t recognize a person’s contributions with a corresponding raise or change in title can sap motivation. It can also lead to employee burnout. Instead, investigate how you can create a better fit between an employee’s work and their best self. Consider what they do well and find intrinsically satisfying and how they can do more of it. Great managers tailor roles so that individuals can succeed in their own way, capitalizing on their strengths and neutralizing weaknesses.

For example, in his HBR article “What Great Managers Do,” author and consultant Marcus Buckingham writes about Michelle, a Walgreens manager, who successfully tweaked the role of her employee, Jeffrey, to capitalize on his strengths. Not much of a people person, Jeffrey excelled when given clear, specific tasks, like stocking an aisle with new items and revising displays. In most Walgreens stores, one person is responsible for a particular aisle, including arranging the merchandise. But to capitalize on Jeffrey’s gift for precision, Michelle made Jeffrey’s entire job stocking and arranging products—in every aisle—while handing off his more social responsibilities to other coworkers. Jeffrey was able to spend his time on a task he excelled at and enjoyed while taking his sub-par people skills out of the spotlight. What’s more, by shifting around tasks on the team, his more social colleagues were relieved of work they considered a chore and could focus more of their time on what they did best: serving customers. After the role reorganization, Michelle saw increases in the store’s sales, profits, and customer satisfaction, and Jeffrey’s confidence grew so much that he became interested in management roles.

Capitalizing on individual employees’ unique abilities in this way can also help strengthen your team. Colleagues can recognize and better appreciate one another’s strengths while their coworkers fill in to neutralize their weaknesses.

It’s worth noting that it’s not always realistic for someone to hand off tasks and responsibilities they don’t love. If one team member drops an item from their list that doesn’t bring out their very best, another team member will have to pick it up. In some instances, particularly as people are taking on more and more work, there isn’t always someone who can pick up the discarded task—in which case you should consider other development options.

Mentorship and Sponsorship

Beyond course work and challenging tasks, employees can grow by tapping into the support and expertise of others around them. Mentors are individuals with experience, knowledge, skills, and perspective, who work one-on-one with employees to help them discover ways to achieve their goals. According to management consultant Tamara Erickson, “A good mentor is part diagnostician, assessing what’s going on with you now, and part guide, connecting you with the advice, ideas, people, and resources you need to grow and move ahead.”¹

Mentors teach, advise, motivate, and inspire and can provide guidance, career help, and even coaching to boost professional and personal development. They can help your employees meet challenges by offering encouragement and providing valuable feedback about where to improve. Given their experience and expertise in the company and their job, they can be valuable role models who help others understand and navigate organizational politics as well as help build support networks. While you may not play an active role in the mentoring relationship for your employees, you can help them align with the right type of mentor and assist them in managing the relationship.

Mentorship is not just for ambitious early career upstarts; people at all stages of their careers can benefit from mentorship. Different types of mentors will be appropriate in different stages of a person’s career.

• Buddy or peer mentors are suitable in the early stages of an employee’s work life, when what is most helpful is a peer-based mentor who can speed up the learning curve. This type of mentor can provide assistance and information about skill development and basic organization-specific practices. Such mentoring relationships can come about somewhat informally, through social and professional networks.
• Career mentors serve as career advisors and advocates for employees after their initial period at an organization. This mentor helps provide context and explains how an individual’s contributions fit into the bigger picture and purpose of the organization. Author and CEO Anthony Tjan explains, “When people feel that they understand their current role, its impact, and where it can take them next in a company, it leads to higher levels of satisfaction and motivation.”² This type of mentor should be a supportive advocate and advisor within the company and should meet with their mentee semiannually or quarterly.
• Life mentors offer invaluable support for people in the mid- and senior stages of their careers. Tjan explains that people at this point need “someone in whom they can confide without feeling that there is any bias. This is someone who can be a periodic sounding board when one is faced with a difficult career challenge, or when they are considering changing jobs.” While life mentors don’t supplant career or peer mentors, they can impart significant wisdom and should be consulted annually.
• Sponsors are like mentors, but rather than solely focusing on support, they also advocate for an employee. As economist and author Sylvia Ann Hewlett explains, “Where a mentor might help you envision your next position, a sponsor will advocate for your promotion and lever open the door.”³ Sponsors can spur a protégé’s career into corporate heights by connecting employees to senior leaders, promoting their visibility, opening up career opportunities, helping them network outside the company, and generally providing advice. These individuals are usually two levels above the employee, with a line of sight into potential future roles.

Employees shouldn’t be limited to one single mentor or sponsor. Instead, they would be better served by a “developmental network” with various areas of expertise and different perspectives. Tapping into multiple supports decreases the likelihood of wearing out one individual mentor or sponsor, or finding oneself without guidance if that person leaves the company or is unavailable. A mentoring relationship can be a long-term, even lifelong, relationship—or it can last just a few hours or weeks.

As a manager, you may be able to introduce your employee to mentors and sponsors who can turbocharge their career development. But where do you find them? Some companies offer formal programs that encourage mentorship. If your organization has no formal program in place, ask your employee what they’re looking for in a mentoring relationship to see if you know anyone who might be the right fit. You might consider looking for mentors or sponsors who:

• Are able to understand and shape the employee’s long-term professional goals, such as someone who has a similar background, or someone in a position the employee might like to have in the future.
• Are influential within the organization. These individuals know how things work and can help your direct report navigate the system.
• Have a broader skill set than your employee, so they can help them grow and develop in new ways.
• Possess a higher level of functional experience than your employee does. Sometimes this is a person outside your organization or outside the chain of command, like someone in a trade organization.
• Are not part of your organization and therefore may be able to offer broader perspectives and provide even better support for ambitious employees.

You may also want to discuss with your direct report some basics they should establish at the beginning of the relationship. For example, How often should they meet? What types of things should they discuss? What are their expectations for confidentiality? While you can take some steps to set your employee up for success, it is in their hands to secure and maintain the mentoring relationship once it’s established.

All of these development tactics can help individuals cultivate the skills they need in order to reach their professional aspirations, but remember that your employees are unique and learn in their own ways. If you want your direct report’s development efforts to be effective, you need to decide which option best meets their personal learning style and then craft a plan for paving the way to success.

NOTES

1. Tamara Erickson, “Introduction: Taking Charge of Your Career,” in HBR Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need, Harvard Business Review Press, 2014, 1.

2. Anthony K. Tjan, “Keeping Great People with Three Kinds of Mentors,” HBR.org, August 12, 2011 (product #H007LK).

3. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, “The Right Way to Find a Career Sponsor,” HBR.org, September 11, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/09/the-right-way-to-find-a-career-sponsor.