You hire the employees who seem to have the skills and abilities necessary to fulfill their role.
Once they are settled into the rhythm of their position, how do you continue helping them grow? They know how to fulfill expectations, but are you providing them continuous opportunities to become more successful?
I’ve been there before. As a manager of 13 women, it was the expectation that I always kept the team motivated, engaged, personally progressing as well as collectively progressing. No problem, right? That is what a manager does. Challenge was, as a manager, I also had other expectations – like doing the job I was hired to do and doing it well. In addition, I also had to keep myself motivated, engaged and personally progressing.
It was an absolute fact that 13 women on one team, working side-by-side every day had enough “catty” challenges on its own. However, in my quest to keep an outstanding team-machine running solid, I wasn’t ever able to add an element of life success skills to our ongoing development.
…In my defense, there are only so many hours in the day.
To be honest, at that point in my life I personally wasn’t qualified to help my team become more successful at what they were hired to do. Again, they knew how to get their job done – that is why I hired them. The piece I was missing was teaching them how to focus better, how to get more productivity out of their workday, how finding passion in what they do will impact their results, why their health needed to be their first priority if they wanted to find happiness and a higher level of performance.
My team rocked at what we did and there was still unfulfilled potential in each one of us. My company didn’t have a plan in place to help us be more successful. My time was limited and my skills in this area weren’t strong. Looking back, I’ll never know how much more we could have achieved if we had a chance to increase our motivation, effectiveness, influence and wellbeing.
Today, I work for a different organization. It’s our job to help companies, like the one I used to work for, create more successful employees. It isn’t easy to find the highest level of potential in employees, but it helps when there is a ready-made system created by an organization that has been bringing quality personal development to business professionals for the last 14 years. I’m proud to be a part of The Rockstar Academy by sparkspace, helping to give businesses a means to develop their team continuously.
What’s your ongoing development plan?
This article was written by Heather Zeigler, promoter of enriching pathways, sparkspace.