Mistake 3: Not Developing Your Team
“But I’m not a teacher!” is a common reaction from a new manager when he’s been encouraged to develop his team. The good news: you don’t have to be a professional educator to facilitate learning on and within your team. So, the first barrier for new managers to overcome is moving from “that’s not my job” to “this is my job.” Effective leaders build learning into the daily and monthly work of the team. Some set aside time for deliberate learning by encouraging team members to attend courses or explore special interests on company time. Others take time to check in on learning during team meetings or during 1:1s.
Managers who do a good job of developing others:
• Take time during team meetings to capture from others what has been learned;
• Encourage team members to take time for formal and informal learning;
• Share what they know and encourage others to do the same;
• Deliberately establish cross-team mentoring relationships to broaden the collective skills of the team;
• Evolve a team that previously struggled to deliver results; and
• Become known informally as a developer and promoter of talent.
Many learning professionals use the 70/20/10 model to outline learning in the context of the workplace. The model was created in the 1980s by three researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership: Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo, and Robert Eichinger. It’s a learning and development framework that suggests a proportional breakdown of how people learn most effectively. It offers organizations a way to think about employee development, concluding that not all development should occur in a classroom setting.
70%: On-the-Job or Hands-on Experiential Learning. These are aha moments and insights gained during the application of concepts learned through informal learning within the job setting. This method allows team members to learn new skills, often from each other, within the flow of the work. The model’s creators argued that hands-on learning experiences are most beneficial for employees because they enable them to learn within the framework and constraints of their job. It involves trial and error while performing the job and requires feedback to be provided when new skills are tried. Keep in mind that you can leverage formal learning on the job. For example, create a weekly learning activity with your team by watching a favorite TED Talk or podcast. Listen together and then discuss. This is a great way to demonstrate to your team that learning matters and that it’s part of their day-to-day work life.
20%: Networking, Mentoring, and Coaching. Learning is deepened, reinforced, and aligned when people are encouraged to discuss and debrief with peers and mentors what they are learning or attempting to do differently in a highly collaborative way. This method, learning from others through networking or mentoring, is often the most under-utilized approach to learning I have found. Encourage your team to expand their networks and find mentors who are not direct supervisors but are within their work environment who can mentor them about specific work-related challenges and broader organizational insight.
10%: Formal or Structured Learning. Formal learning takes many forms: classrooms, self-paced eLearning, webinars, TED Talks, and podcasts—all of which build foundational skills. McCall, Lombardo, and Eichinger’s research concluded that, optimally, only 10 percent of professional development comes from traditional, usually classroom-based, settings. While traditional learning continues to play an important role in workplace education, it often doesn’t offer the practical application that learners need to apply new skills. Think of traditional classroom learning as providing the baseline knowledge or how-tos of a new skill, and then leverage mentoring or networking and applying it on the job to fully develop new skills.
Learning should and can happen on the job. Highly effective leaders make this happen by creating a climate for learning, ascertaining what each employee needs to learn, and then discovering the best channel to learn that skill. It takes time and effort. Effective leaders create an environment where learning is encouraged by asking team members about new skills and how they were acquired.
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