Skills contained in this skillset:
People development is the process by which an organization equips employees with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes they need to reach business goals.
The primary motivations for investing in the development of people is to
- Get the most out of people. In the context of an organization, this means that a person is empowered to provide the best possible contribution to the organizational vision and objectives.
- Make it more attractive to be a part of the organization. Studies show that whereas only 8% of people attribute their job change to a higher salery, 30% attribute their job change to a lack of professional and personal development. These numbers were repeated as recent as in 2023 by PwC Norway, where 48% of respondents consider personal development the most impactful factor in their career motivation, 43% attribute it to making a difference, and 9% to financial incentives.
- Priority: I don't have the time
- I am concerned it will take up too much of my time
- I haven't gotten around to it yet
- Know-how: I don't know how to do it/where to start
- Value: I don't think it's neccessary
- People automatically improve over time, right?
- It's people's own responsibility to improve themselves, right?
- The stuff people have mentioned they want to improve in seems unrelated to improving their contribution to the organization
- Fair of failure: I don't know how to make it a part of my day-to-day routine (ensuring that it actually gets done)
- Accountability: No one expects it of me/holds me accountable to it
Psychological safety is the belief that you won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.
Explore this concept in the survey How psychologically safe is my team?
Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset.
A growth mindset means that you thrive on challenge, and don’t see failure as a way to describe yourself but as a springboard for growth and developing your abilities. Your intelligence and talents are all susceptible to growth.
"In a growth culture, people build their capacity to see through blind spots; acknowledge insecurities and shortcomings rather than unconsciously acting them out; and spend less energy defending their personal value so they have more energy available to create external value. How people feel — and make other people feel — becomes as important as how much they know.
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By contrast, a performance-driven culture often exacerbates people’s fears by creating up a zero-sum game in which people are either succeeding or failing and “winners” quickly get weeded out from “losers.” "
https://hbr.org/2018/03/create-a-growth-culture-not-a-performance-obsessed-one
The knowing-doing gap is the disconnect between knowledge and action.
It's the difference between what people know they could or should be doing, and what they actually do.
To which extent a team or organization faciliates the development of its members can vary greatly, from a "do it yourself"-attitude, to close and customized follow-up of both professional and personal development.
The infographic below marks four levels on the development enablement spectrum.
Deliberately Developmental Organizations (DDO) are organizations that are committed to developing every one of their people by weaving personal growth into daily work.
Think of a DDO as an incubator for people’s development.
From My experience with a Deliberately Developmental Organization:
DDOs share some traits with the Management 3.0 approach, such as an emphasis on company culture, personal growth, self-organization and transparency. But the resemblance stops there. Management 3.0 aims to create happiness and self-realization in the workplace. DDOs aim to make a badass out of you, going further and faster than you thought possible.
Read more about companies who have adopted a DDO mindset in the Harvard Business Review article Making Business Personal.
An everyone culture is a culture focused on developing every employee, regardless of position and seniority.
Read more in the book An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization
Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy in which the goal of the leader is to serve. This is different from traditional leadership where the leader's main focus is the thriving of their company or organization.
The Pygmalion effect is the theory that people will rise or fall based on the expectations that authority figures have of them – and has been proven in settings ranging from classrooms to corporations.
All leaders have tremendous power simply by being in a position of authority, and can use their words to influence how others view themselves. The act of expressing belief in your employees and focusing on setting high, but achievable standards for them has real repercussions.
People analytics is defined as the deeply data-driven and goal-focused method of studying all people processes, functions, challenges, and opportunities at work to elevate these systems and achieve sustainable business success.
People analytics is often referred to as talent analytics or HR analytics.
Internal mobility is the movement of employees (vertically and laterally) to new career and development opportunities within the same organization. This includes promotions, demotions, new positions, mentorships, cross-team or additional projects, job shadowing, and job swaps.
A competence strategy includes all the skills that an organization needs to master and continuously develop in order to achieve organizational objectives and realize strategies.
Skills gap refers to the disparity between the skills an employer expects their employees to have and the actual skills employees possess.
The skills gap can be broken down into:
- Skills current employees are lacking
- Skills the organization is lacking
- Skills required for the future
Different types of skills are commonly separated into two main categories: hard skills and soft skills.
Hard skills
Hard skills (sometimes also referred to as technical skills) are skills which allow you to understand and complete technical tasks.
Examples of hard skills include:
- Microsoft Excel
- User interface design
- Programming
Soft skills
Soft skills are skills which allow you to function and work well, both on your own and in collaboration with others. Soft skills inform how we behave and treat both ourselves and others.
Examples of soft skills include:
- Problem solving
- Critical thinking
- Willingness to learn
Soft skills can be broken down into skills which affect how you treat others (also referred to as people or social skills) and skills which affect how you treat yourself (also referred to as self-management, self care or self love skills).
Upskilling is a workplace trend that facilitates continuous learning by providing training programs and development opportunities that expand an employee's abilities and minimize skill gaps.
Upskilling focuses on improving current employees' skill sets, usually through training, so they can advance in their jobs and find different roles and opportunities within the company.
A skills inventory is a comprehensive list of all the experiences, professional skills, and educational qualifications of employees in an organization.
A skills taxonomy is a structured list of skills defined at the organization level that identifies the capabilities of a business in a quantifiable way.
Essentially, it is a system that classifies skills within an organization into groups and clusters. Having a skills taxonomy for your organization creates a unified understanding and language that can be used to deliver effective workforce strategies and drive operational efficiency. It is at the heart of a skills-based approach.
In order to get the best out of someone, you need to know:
- What you want from them (the roles they are expected to hold and the goals they are expected to contribute to)
- The ambitions you have for them, and the ambitions they have for themselves
- What's holding them back
Examples of things that might be holding people back include:
- Skills or competence they lack (or do not feel sufficiently comfortable with)
- Expectations with which they are insufficiently familiar
- Expectations which they find unclear
- Fears, weaknesses, insecurities or opinons keeping people from improving their level of mastery or adjusting their behaviour
Explore the concept of Assessments as a means of identifying and communicating potential.
There’s a natural tendency for us to gravitate toward what we’re good at doing. Then we get stuck there because we’ve gotten comfortable.
This kind of stasis can be too much of a good thing and inhibit growth. Good leaders push people to try things they have potential for and give them the opportunity to take a risk. They actively look for ways their employees can practice the exact thing they need to do, but might be uncomfortable trying.