During this pandemic, Help People Grow scores for our clients have been static or decreased. This is a major concern given the importance of individual growth and development in a high-performance culture. Even though we all know bad things happen when we neglect professional development, (e.g. staff turnover), many executives say they just don’t have the time to focus on this.
We challenge the assumption that you do not have time to Help People Grow while trying to save your business
There is good news for people who truly do not have time to launch new growth and development programs – you don’t have to spend a lot of time. In a prior post we talked about two things you can do Help People Grow in 15 minutes or less.
You may not have to do anything at all
Personal growth is already happening, but you just don’t see it. Development is all around us:
- Are people on your team stepping up to do things that they never did before?
- Is your team more or less capable at crisis management?
- Do you need people to maintain their level of capability or be able to do more, with less, even faster?
In many organizations, professional development is hiding in plain sight. We are just not looking for it or deliberately ensuring our team recognizes it. By way of example, the SupportingLines Cloud is a new eLearning platform that my colleague Tianna and I launched in April. Neither of us had ever done anything like this before. To pull this off we enlisted the help of an expert (Frank Chin). He helped us understand the mechanics of launching an eLearning platform and also progressed in his own professional journey by certifying in Google Analytics. While this is a great example of achievement and collaboration, it is also a powerful example of how we all stretched ourselves and raised our game.
How have you grown personally during this pandemic? What is your team capable of now that it wasn’t before COVID-19? I’m willing to bet your professional development hasn’t been static or decreased like our survey results suggest.
If we don’t deliberately look for examples of how people have grown, they will pass us by.
Jeff Smith
Jeff is the Founder & CEO of SupportingLines. He is also a certified Master Corporate Executive Coach, seasoned C-suite business leader and yoga instructor.