Over the past year, when I have been working to implement a new way of working with my customers, I have realized that it is a great challenge for managers to change their behavior when they are going from talking development with their employees traditionally once to twice a year to talking development continuously throughout the year.
When talking about development once a year, it is very difficult to be concrete and break down into what to do to develop. When you talk in a shorter perspective, it's much easier. But with everything that's new, we have to train before we get really good.
Put your hand on your heart, if you're talking development to make the individual reach their full potential, you don't think there's going to be any miracles if you don't talk about how it's going to happen, do you? When will you know if you have achieved a change if you cannot check that it has been done and you can barely decipher what you said in the documentation?
This week I talked about this with one of our partners and she told me about a leader who contacted her. He had had an employee conversation with one of his co-workers. They had had a good conversation, they had come to the conclusion that the individual needed to strengthen their self-confidence and believe more in their ability. But no more. As usual in a traditional employee conversation.
A few days later, the employee texts and asks the question -I understand that I will work on my self-confidence, but how should I do it?
In my opinion, this was a very clear-sighted employee who thinks about and really wants to develop. But how many people sit down and ask yourself if you as a manager can't do it?
So to my bottom, stop talking fluff and be concrete. Everything must be able to be answered with a HUR.
What must become an activity that is followed up in the foreseeably future. Otherwise, we all know it's not going to happen.