When you want to develop yourself: 8 ways to develop outside of training
At the beginning of the year we focus on setting goals for ourselves and with our teams and organizations. Most of the time our goals center on sales, clients, projects, processes and related metrics we are trying to achieve throughout the year.
How many of us think about development as part of our goals? Some organizations have this as an expectation — that employees must have at least one development or “stretch” goal — a goal that may be a little out of someone’s day job but is of interest and need. Other companies don’t dictate at this level but leave it up to the manager and employee to decide if development should be a part of annual goals.
When you have been working for many years, how do you develop? When do you know you should focus on developing yourself and what does that look like? Some would say that if you’re not learning or growing, you’re falling into a rut or even becoming irrelevant. Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, once coined the phrase: “When you’re green, you grow; when you’re ripe, you rot.”
I find with some seasoned employees, we don’t always focus on growth, development or learning. But, in today’s world, we can’t possibly know everything. Even if we have mastered our jobs, there is plenty of room to learn something new. In fact, learning has become an essential skill. According to The Economist, 47% of jobs will be gone in 25 years, which is quite startling. So, not only should you develop your skills and knowledge to be a better businessperson, you may need to grow and develop out of necessity.
There are many ways we can develop. Most people think attending a class or some type of seminar or conference is the best way to develop. This type of “formal” learning is definitely an option and the most tangible in what we can do to develop new knowledge or skills. However, there are many more ways we can develop ourselves.
Below are some of the best ways to develop as an adult. As a learning professional, I do like live, training events, even if they are all virtual in today’s environment. It is planned time to learn where our calendars are blocked and we try to minimize distractions. But, there are other ways to develop that are equally, if not more effective, than a one-time event.
Build an actual development plan. First, like with most successful efforts, create a plan. What do you need or want to develop? You may not know. Ask your manager, your peers, your skip level manager, a mentor, a coach, your family even. Maybe there is something you can improve and/or maybe there is a skill you want to develop to position yourself for a promotion or new opportunity. Whatever the driver, ask others for input and do some self-reflection. I talk about this is more detail in this post.
Consider finding a mentor, not your manager. I highly encourage to find someone, other than your manager, who can provide some guidance about possible career paths or skills and knowledge you could and should develop based on your goals. A good mentor should be someone you respect and click with. Plus, this person could be more experienced in a field you want to go into or represents an area you don’t know a lot about but want to learn more. A good mentor can also be someone who knows the organization well, asks good questions and can connect you to people who can help you. Oftentimes, we think of a mentor as someone older than us with more experience....maybe. I find age not to be as relevant as I find two things — chemistry and ability to guide/provide expertise. I will dive deeper on mentoring relationship next week.
Explore “informal” learning opportunities. Attending a training class is often referred to as “formal learning”. There are other ways to learn that we call “informal learning” — opportunities outside of a classroom. These informal opportunities can involve lots of ways to learn by doing. Examples include: Joining a cross-functional team or committee, volunteering for an effort related to what you do either within your organization or outside, taking on a new project that may be outside of your typical day-to-day but will stretch you in new ways, engaging with a mentor, engaging with an affinity group or community of people in a similar role or circumstance, shadowing someone in a job that you want to know more about, learning from a peer or someone else on specific skills. A good example of this is having someone show you how to use Pivot tables in Excel or handle certain client objections. Practice or role-play tough situations with a peer or mentor. While we may not label all of these experiences as “learning”, they all are, in fact, learning and can be powerful ways to develop our skills.
Read, listen and watch videos. This may be obvious, but we can do research and find best practices on just about anything through reading books, articles, blogs, listening to podcasts and recorded talks and watching videos. We are consuming information all day long. When we act on this information and try out something, practice something, we are, in fact, learning and developing. We all have different styles we prefer to learn. I know people who prefer a class, some prefer a video, some have to read and take notes before it gels. However you prefer to learn, don’t fight that natural way and lean into it. Take note of the best way you learn and follow that method. If you hate reading, then don’t go buy the latest ebook, maybe find it as an audiobook. If you can’t stand still for an 8-hour class, then find some self-paced learning you can take at your own pace. If you have to be with other people to learn, then find a class where you can interact and not be so solitary.
Join groups and communities. Joining others, sharing stories, war stories, lessons, failures and successes, is one of the best ways to learn something new or improve upon a skill. This can happen in an interactive class but it can also happen just through networking with others and joining groups that may exist or may need to be created. I have often given advice to people that if there is no community that supports your role, your area of knowledge, then go create one. If you want to connect with other project managers to learn more best practices, and this doesn’t exist in your company, start one. If you want to be a better gardener, connect with other gardeners. If you want to grow to be a leader, connect with other leaders.
Solicit honest feedback. Outside of training and informal learning, personal feedback is a fantastic way to improve and develop. Some people are uncomfortable with giving honest feedback. If they have feedback to give that may be critical or not so positive, some people can really struggle as they view it as bad news. It is not bad news. Just because someone needs to develop, does not mean they are bad or inadequate. it just means they could improve something to become even better. What is wrong with that? Nothing. Find people who can be honest and candid, seek out their feedback. People who really want to grow and develop, proactively ask for feedback after a presentation, meeting or sales pitch. They grow through receiving and acting on feedback personal to their style and skills.
Debrief activities. If you manage projects, you may set time to debrief them — how did they go, what worked, what didn’t work, what should we continue to do, what should we stop doing. I have found that this step gets skipped the most. Yet, for learning and developing, it is the most critical step. We can learn and grow as a team if we talk openly about how things went. Most of us dislike failing. We all want to achieve success. Debriefing is even more important when something isn’t successful. And, guess what? It happens. None of us are perfect. I don’t know one person who hasn’t failed at one point or another. Learning can come from failure. Sometimes we need to fail in order to see how something can work. The important thing is to not let the opportunity to debrief after failure go to waste. If you can learn from failure, then it was time well spent.
Teach back. Another way to develop is to teach others what you have learned. Not only does this pass on knowledge to others but it can help you, as the teacher, crystallize what you’ve learned. There is no greater way to gel new skills than to teach others what you know. If you attend a conference, put highlights together and share them with your team. If you take a course on negotiating, share the top 5 best practices with your peers. Build in time to teach back as part of your development plan.
There are many ways we learn everyday and we don’t even know we are learning. Like most efforts, to intentionally develop yourself, build a plan of what you want to develop and then brainstorm with yourself and/or your manager and mentor, ways to develop. I challenge everyone to think outside of the training class walls and come up with active, on-the-job ways to learn and develop skills and knowledge. With our world and business changing so rapidly, we must master learning as a skill unto itself and bake in learning into our everyday life.