Career conversations with your team are a great way to motivate and retain them, but they’re not always easy. These career conversation tips will help you succeed.
11 Career Conversation Tips
One. Remember, your team member is responsible for their career (not you). You’re responsible for supporting them.
Two. Career conversations are confidential. Choose a suitable location (a meeting room, not a coffee shop).
Three. As a manager, you should be genuinely interested in the development of your team. (If you’re not, please fix yourself before you try and help them!)
Four. You should aspire to be a source of talent for your business (promoting your team up and across the organization). Much better that great talent stays, with your help, rather than leaves without it.
Five. Set expectations up front: career opportunities are not guaranteed, they depend on many factors. The best thing your team member can do is work to develop themselves, so they’re ready when an opportunity arrives.
Six. In the conversation, expect to be speaking least (aim for 20-25% of the time). If you’re speaking too much, you’re not doing it right.
Seven. Schedule 1 hour for the meeting, it may seem daunting, but a good career conversation requires this much time.
Eight. Adopt a coaching style to the career conversations: ask big, open, non-leading GROW coaching questions. Eg: “what would you like to be doing in 5 years’ time?” (See career conversation tip Six above. Ask great questions and let your team member do the talking!)
Nine. Make your team member aware that lateral moves can be good development opportunities, they shouldn’t only consider vertical moves.
Ten. If someone has no career ambition, and they’re happy to remain in their current role, that’s legitimate. However, you may want to explain that they are expected to continue to improve, even in the current role. Explore these other career conversation examples to familiarize yourself with other scenarios.
Eleven. The last of our career conversation tips: always use a gentle tone, even when you’re delivering a firm message.
Career Conversation: take-aways
Career conversations are most successful when you bring the right combination of mindset, structure and skills to the conversation.
Make use of these 11 career conversation tips and you’ll be well prepared.
Dig deeper and explore our detailed career conversation guide too!
