Career development issues

There is little question who is responsible for assess­ing training needs and planning strategies to meet these needs. Most organizations hold the supervisor responsible for seeing that subordinates are trained to do their jobs. However, assessing career goals and the education and skill development needed to achieve these goals is another matter. Who is responsible for employees’ career development is very often not clear.

In helping employees assess career goals and education and development needs, the supervisor has to decide how far his or her responsibility in career counseling extends and how far he or she is willing to go to provide help.

Most experts on career development believe the employee should have final responsibility for managing and developing his or her own career. The supervisor can help in many ways but should remain a helper–not a decision maker, but a facilitator of decisions. In this role, supervisors should follow good counseling practices:

• Ask questions

• Listen actively

• Provide information

• Help focus ideas

• Give feedback on strengths and weak­nesses as they are perceived

• Refer the employee to other sources of information (and perhaps a professional career counselor if

needed and if avail­able), and

• Assist the employee in developing action plans

Supervisors should avoid overdoing the following:

• Evaluating the employee’s future (as the supervisor sees it)

• Criticizing the employee’s evaluation of his or her own future

• Trying to solve the employee’s career problems, and

• Stating opinions about what the em­ployee “should” do.

A potential problem in career development discus­sions is that of raising hopes about promotions. Many organizations and many supervisors avoid career discussions for this reason alone. They fear career development discussions will raise unrealis­tic expectations about promotion. Although many employees are not interested in promotions, this is indeed a possibility.

However, it can be dealt with by explaining very clearly to the subordinate what can and cannot be expected as outcomes of the discussions. For ex­ample, a supervisor could say to an employee: “Ob­viously, the more you develop your skills, the more prepared you will be if openings occur. But, frankly, there are no openings at present, and my main inter­est is to help you grow in your present job.”

Source : Cliff F. Grimes E-mail: cfg@accel-team.com http://www.accel-team.com/

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