TheGiftofPerspective.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe

You're listening to the MentalNotes podcast. In this episode, founder Scott Dow explains how to give career advice.

There's an important gift you can give your employees, and it's a form of career advice. I'm going to share what it is, but before I do, I want you to consider this: developing an employee is a lot like raising a teenager. You have a couple years of authority left, and you want to make sure they're on the right track, but you have to compete with the peer pressure they're facing, and that can be really hard.

Teenagers are very mission-focused: they're in a hurry to grow up, they want to get out of the house. They're on a mission to get into their dream college, or on a mission to move someplace cool, or get a specific job. They're impatient and they're focused on the outcome.

Employees are the same way: they want a certain title, or promotion, or pay increase, or transfer. It's all about the outcome. And like teenagers, the outcome they're chasing is influenced by what their peers or siblings have done. Listen, LinkedIn is a blessing, and it's a curse. It's a curse because people can compare their career arc with others and they grow even more impatient.

So what's the advice? It has to do with how people measure their growth. Most employees use outcomes to measure their growth, and that's a recipe for career-long frustration. Promise it. Think of it this way: if someone views career advancement solely in terms of promotions, or job titles, or salary increases, or rewards, then they won't experience growth very often. These are milestones, and milestones are important, but they're also misleading, and they don't come around very often.

We all know people that got the promotion they wanted, but they weren't prepared and they failed. They got their outcome, but they weren't ready; they hadn't grown enough along the way. When people view their growth as the experiences they've gained, the people they meet, the relationships they've developed, the things they've tried, the problems they've overcome, then they can experience and track their growth day-to-day, and they're prepared for whatever opportunity comes their way.

Here's an important secret to share: most career progression is random. People can't control when promotions come available. If you pin your hopes and your career progress on things outside your control, you're going to have a frustrating career. But if you think of career advancement as a series of little things, a process that you can engage in each day, then you seize control of your career. You're going to be in a much better place. Outcomes will still be random, but you'll be better prepared to enjoy the ride and to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way.

In this album, we focus on how to develop people, but start by giving people this gift. It's the gift of perspective. Milestones are important, but time is so precious. Make sure they understand the value of daily, incremental growth. And share the truth. Be honest: you can't control the opportunities that are going to come their way. Neither can they. But you can enable opportunities for them to grow into whatever opportunities come their way. That's the gift of leadership, and that's how you start developing people.