The most important thing I've learned about developing people
The key to harnessing intrinsic motivation on the people you lead
Personally, I believe that the most satisfying part of leadership is helping people to develop professionally. It may sound cliché, but I’m really happy when I get feedback confirming that I’ve made (positive) impact in someone’s trajectory.
I want to share with you the most important thing I’ve learned about this in recent years.
When helping someone to grow professionally, we often forget that people only do what they really want to do (deep in their hart).
Motivation is a broad field full of studies and theories that tries to explain both its meaning and how it works in practice. I enjoy reading and learning about it, but still know very little. One thing I’ve learned: when it comes to motivation, the answer is always “it depends”.
So I will focus on the specific context of learning for professional growth. I will not dare to delve into any theory in this article, I will only share my experience supporting people I had the opportunity to lead.
Most companies have some sort of IDP (individual development plan) dynamics, where the leader and team member elaborate a path of growth and learning, specific to that person. It is expected that this dynamic considers the person’s characteristics and competencies, as well as the challenges they face in the company. And then, follow-ups take place regularly, often as a 1-on-1.
It's a beautiful theory: an individualized plan considering the characteristics and challenges of each person and with frequent monitoring. It can’t go wrong, right? But it usually does. What happens, mostly, is that the IDP never leaves the paper (or the Excel sheet) and does not become a priority for anyone. But why?
In my experience, IDP only works when it's a guided process of self-knowledge.
Back to motivation. People engage and put energy into activities that are somehow connected to their deepest needs, desires, and aspirations. The famous intrinsic motivation.
Learning something new takes a lot of energy and usually some personal sacrifice. The time invested studying or exploring a new skill could be spent with family, friends or any kind of entertainment. Or even to boost that project that is directly linked to the quarterly goals. Whether during “working hours” or not, evolving professionally always comes at a short-term personal cost.
And, in general, we have a tendency, a cognitive bias (hyperbolic discounting), to prioritize immediate rewards, postponing investments that will bring results in the medium or long term.
Naturally, everyone wants to evolve and become better in both personal and professional aspects. I’ve never led anyone who didn’t want to evolve. But all too often, people don’t want to evolve in the direction their leadership believes it is best for them or the company. Or that’s not what really motivates them.
This is where IDP fails! Because discovering what motivates us and connecting it with some practical learning, that will be useful in the day to day work, requires emotional intelligence and real connection between leader and team member.
If it’s just a list of things that don’t speak to the person’s intrinsic motivation, the IDP will never leave paper. Not for lack of interest or will, but because, deep down, the person feels (even if unconsciously) that this is not the best use of their time.
To conduct IDP as a guided process of self-knowledge, leadership needs to be prepared to accept an uncomfortable truth: the evolution process is not linear and it can lead the person to paths that do not align with the company’s immediate needs.
It makes no sense to expect someone to grow professionally and stay in the same place for a long time. More likely, evolution will take them to another position, either inside or outside the company.
It is essential to assure freedom and safety for the person to find a path of evolution that speaks to their intrinsic motivations, whether or not this is aligned with their current context in the company. Otherwise, don't even bother to do an IDP, because it will never leave paper.
The way to conduct this process can be very personal, but I usually break it down into four steps:
Goals
At this stage, the person lists one or more professional goals. It could be a position, to become a reference on a specific topic or a results milestone.
Examples: becoming the product chapter leader; to be a reference in design system in the company.
As a leader, you can support by asking questions that lead to reflection and help in the process of personal discovery.
Example: What would you be proud to tell your family and friends at the end of the year?
Skills
With the goals in mind, it’s time to list what skills are expected of a person who already “got there”. If the company was to hire someone for this position/situation, what would they look for?
It’s unreasonable to expect someone to be excellent at everything, so I like to include a proficiency weight, from 0 to 5, for each item:
0 - Don’t know (something I’ve never studied or applied);
1 - Know a little (I’ve studied the subject a little but never delved into it);
2 - Know it well (I’ve studied the subject well but never applied it in practice);
3 - Know and use (I’ve studied the subject and have put it into practice);
4 - Own it (I’ve explored the subject in practice in different contexts);
5 - Own it and can teach it (I know the concept and practice very well).
Examples: product discovery(4); agility principles (5); communication (5); software architecture (3).
The leader's role in this stage varies according to the person’s profile. More experienced professionals are able to put together the list independently, and leadership can provoke and guide the choices. Those at the beginning of their careers need more support to think through the items and adjust the weights.
Self-assessment
With the list of skills ready, the person performs a self-assessment on each item, also from 0 to 5 to compare with the proficiency weight (goal to be achieved).
As a leader, you must ask reflection-provoking questions so that self-assessment is sincere. This is fundamental to the self-knowledge process.
A dynamic that facilitates this exercise is to ask the person to do the self-assessment twice: in the first, thinking about how they evaluate themselves in each item and, in the second, imagining how other people would evaluate them. Then help compare the two assessments and ask about the differences (which always appear).
Avoid making inferences and never give value judgment opinions. This is a personal self-knowledge process and, as a leader, you are only there to guide.
I like to create a radar chart to visualize the result of the process up to this point. It looks like this:
Short term actions
The next step is choosing where to put energy in the short term.
The journey here must have helped the person understand a little better what they want to achieve and what it will take to get there. The radar chart helps to see where're the biggest gaps between goal and current moment.
And here we go back to motivation and to my biggest learning about IDP in recent years.
Short-term actions should be focused on what's most connected to the person’s emotional moment, not on the biggest gap.
Looking at their skills, the person must choose what they most want to study and learn at that moment. Any other way is simply unproductive. It’s also important to focus and choose one or at most two items to address at a time.
Having chosen where to focus, it’s time to list practical actions!
My suggestion is to think about three layers: what do I want to study (book/video/course/podcast), what do I want to do hands-on (project/poc/experiment) and where or with whom do I want to debate (community/event/forum/meetup). Actions must be clear, straight forward and have due dates. The more specific the better, avoiding ambiguity.
This is the step where you, as a leader, can support more directly! Chances are that you’ve read more books, talked to more professionals, and/or been on more projects than the people you lead. At this point, you can contribute by pointing out paths and creating learning connections in the market/community.
Once IDP is created, as a guided process of self-knowledge, comes the follow-up. I like to do this as part of the 1-on-1 dynamic, others prefer to create a separate meeting for this. The important thing is to help the person to set a pace to the actions listed. If the process has yielded the expected results, intrinsic motivation will take care of the rest.
Writing or speaking is much easier than doing. I can’t manage IDP the way I would like with all the people I lead, but when it works, it’s rewarding to be part of someone’s growth journey! I hope this article serves as a reflection and helps you find your own way to make IDP a useful tool for growth and learning.
