Growing Employees

Always strive to help employees grow into their next careers, whether that means they work for you or maybe - you work for them later! My Guest, Will Butcher, is joining to share a story about hiring and mentoring the best & brightest.

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Welcome back to my podcast, Scaling Out.

During last Thursday’s podcast Helping Others, I spoke about helping people thru appropriate networking. Helping others also includes helping employees achieve their potential. So today, I wanted to chat about growing employees with my guest & coworker Will Butcher.

Hi Will! How are you today?

> Hi Angela! Thanks for having me join your podcast.

Thanks for joining in the fun! So, having conversations about growth sometimes seem staged or required by HR. How should a manager go about starting the discussions on what the employee wants to do next?

> Its important to partner with your entire team and be transparent about career growth opportunities. Have HR come in and help communicate what available paths exist. This sets the stage for the individual conversations.

So at an individual level, how could these conversations end up going?

> If an employee is complaining, they are either doing so habitually, there's something about the job that's frustrating, or maybe they need to find a new challenge. Similar on the "best" employee side - how do they continue to be the best, challenge themselves, grow in new ways. Even if they are your best and happy, that may eventually mean helping that person into their next role b/c it's what is right for their career. 

One of the constraints in business is that there are only so many leadership opportunities. If you have more potential new leaders than there are positions, what options do you have to coach the employee?

> You must consider the next step might NOT be in the current group, and that’s OK. Consider this an opportunity to grow your own network, coaching and mentoring them to move up elsewhere could be a landing spot for you in future years.

I remember one hiring scenario from years ago. The candidate we hired was fantastic, and I knew from the moment we extended an offer that the person would likely only be on our team for a short period of time. So why did we move forward with that candidate? The answer was simple – we wanted the best, and the benefits and growth that employee brought to our team during the time they were with us were well worth the investment. From a manager perspective, I knew (and accepted) upfront that my mentoring strategy for that person would be centered around coaching them into their next career path – most likely in a different group. The strategy worked and was a win-win for both the team and the employee. 

Thanks so much Will for joining me on the podcast. Until next time, stay safe everyone!