Prototyping how to improve your professional development
Have you ever considered if your professional development process was outdated? I had that thought recently, and it got me curious. Could the process be improved? As a strategic designer, a significant part of my job is to drive processes, identify insights and prototype ideas and concepts. So, how might I apply this approach to my professional development process and prototype a method that would benefit myself and my colleagues?
It began when an insight struck me while I was preparing my annual one-on-one development talk with my manager: I’ve worked in the design consultancy business for roughly 20 years, and for the most part, my professional development has seemed like a one-man-band-journey. The onus has been on me; to identify challenges and opportunities; design and execute a plan; evaluate the outcome and speak with my manager about the findings. Why hasn’t this process evolved? ? And isn’t there a strategic opportunity to transform the process? Yes, there is. And backed by my manager, I’ve started prototyping how it can be done.
Bringing strategic design to professional development
During the past 20 years, the field of design has changed significantly. It has developed into a strategic discipline that demands the ability to empathise and learn, adapt, and co-create. And doing these at speed are key components to successfully driving impact and change for the better. Just like we help clients develop their businesses through research, explorative processes, and strategic design, before translating these into the development of digital products and experiences — all the things that make a designer tick — we can also take charge of our professional development by applying similar approaches and principles to our personal processes.
So I started my exploration by using the classic how-might-we approach with the following questions:
How might we design a better and more strategic approach to continuous professional development?
To me, at least two perspectives come to mind:
Firstly, how co-creation, along with its potential and impact, has become a mainstay in any design process. We increasingly co-create with colleagues, target audiences, or end-users, but also with clients and their stakeholders. The reason is quite straightforward; everyone realises that co-creation helps build ownership, leading to better processes and outcomes.
Secondly, a new leadership paradigm also caught my attention. One that emphasises the potential in thinking about managers as developers of talent. It is called strength-based leadership. I came across this some years ago, when I participated in a development programme, designed and facilitated by Lene Flensborg, a seasoned organisational psychologist specialising in leadership and talent development.
So what is strength-based leadership? This is how Lene Flensborg defines it:
Strength-based leadership is about building your personal leadership and how you lead others based on their strengths: As a leader, you strive to bring your strengths, and the strengths of others, into play in the best way possible, and leverage them as drivers for professional development in your organisation. This approach helps us do our best work and make a difference.
For something to be a strength it has to be rooted in two components: Talent and motivation. If you find it highly motivating to do a particular task — eg. doing qualitative interviews — and others would say that you have a talent for doing that particular task, then this is a strength of yours. Now, this is not to say that your weaknesses aren’t important components: The most important weaknesses are the critical ones standing in the way of you succeeding in working with your strengths — try to steer clear of other types of weaknesses in your work.
With strength-based leadership, employees are empowered in their professional development by not just words and mandate, but through active participation and strategic facilitation by the manager in a process with the employee. This way of thinking is based on the concept of ‘growth mindset’ by professor of psychology at Stanford, Carol Dweck. A concept that embraces personal challenges and weaknesses, by viewing them as opportunities and drivers for personal and professional development.
Inspired by these perspectives, I explored three questions to help outline a process for professional development:
How might we combine the strength-based leadership mindset with co-creation principles, apply it to our continuous professional development approach, and involve our managers as strategic facilitators and co-creators?
Could this accelerate professional development for you and your team, and help you discover opportunities that you would never have found yourself?
And how might we design a process that supports this on a busy daily basis?
Principles for co-creating your professional development with your manager
Taking my point of departure in those perspectives and questions, I see a few steps to test an approach. Think of them as prototypes, and feel free to try them on yourself:
1. Align with your manager on roles and expectations
2. Define focus areas through feedback and co-creation
3. Identify the next opportunity for practice
4. Practice
5. Evaluate and identify the next opportunity for practice
Repeat steps 4 and 5 until the next co-creation session (step 2).
1. Align with your manager on roles and expectations
This approach calls for a slight realignment of roles and expectations. On the one hand, your manager and yourself need to agree to be partners who collaborate on your development. This involves both of you assuming more active roles and a more equal and transparent relationship where you allow yourselves to think aloud to explore the boundaries of your comfort zone through conversations and experiments.
Lene Flensborg puts it this way:
In my experience, based on many years of working with developing talents, the key to creating the right ‘training ground’ is to enter an alliance with your manager. Sure, formally it’s the responsibility of your manager to take the initiative and work with your talent, but in reality, you have to take the responsibility yourself and make sure that the alliance is established. This might not be reality from day one, but it is something that you and your manager in partnership need to build over time.
This will enable a safe space for both of you — a space where worries and doubts can be shared and discussed — and an increasingly stronger and stronger platform for your professional development. This reciprocity is very important. And ideally, your manager makes sure to bring opportunities and perspectives to the table that you might not know about yourself, and ensure that your professional development supports the strategic direction of your organization.
So, the alignment starts by having a conversation about your roles and expectations. And as part of this, make sure to initially identify, map, and discuss barriers that you might encounter.
2. Define focus areas through co-creation
Having aligned your roles and expectations towards each other, it’s time for co-creation. Plan a 45–60 minute workshop for this part, and do the following:
Before the workshop, ask some colleagues for their feedback. I would suggest three to four colleagues that you’ve worked with recently. I’d encourage you to cover colleagues both horizontally and vertically. For instance, don’t be shy about asking another manager that you’ve worked with. And ask for feedback digitally to give your colleagues a chance to reflect and give focused, coherent feedback. Keep it simple and ask for specific feedback.
Here are a few suggestions:
Working with me, what do you feel are my 2–3 main strengths, and how do you see these come into play?
Which challenges do you see for me when these strengths come into play? This could be in meetings, in my communication, in body language etc.
Which opportunities do you see that could help me further develop these strengths? This could be in projects, my team or even wider in our organization.
Make it clear that they shouldn’t spend more than five to ten minutes giving you feedback, and that it means a lot to you.
Now, you’re all set for the workshop with your manager. Here are a few pointers to get that going:
A. Use feedback as conversation starters: Bring the feedback that you’ve collected, share it and start mapping and grouping it on a whiteboard. Discuss the feedback as you go along and make sure to add your perspectives and reflections. Think of the feedback as conversation starters.
And one more thing: Remember, that your manager might be able to see opportunities that you can’t. Your manager is responsible for bringing these into play during your conversations, but make sure to ask probing questions as you go along.
B. Define focus areas: Identify the key takeaways and define 2–3 focus areas based on these.
C. Act on barriers: Recap the barriers that you initially identified with your manager, and zoom in on which of these, or any new ones, might challenge your work on the focus areas. Discuss how you can mitigate these and how your manager can help.
3. Identify the next opportunity for practice
Meet briefly for 20–25 minutes with your manager on a bi-weekly basis to evaluate your training in the past two weeks, and define opportunities for practice for you in the two weeks to come. Make this a recurring event.
When agreeing on how you will practice, two aspects are essential:
A. Choose the right practice opportunities: Make sure to choose opportunities for practice that align with your focus areas. These could be meetings, a workshop, interviews, or maybe the production of specific deliverables. Any work-related activity.
B. Define specifically how you will practice: How will you practice, and which of your strengths should you leverage and enhance? Make sure to discuss potential barriers and how to handle them, and agree with your manager on how they will help you succeed.
Think of this as a ‘stretch assignment’, where the aim is to explore and stretch the boundaries of your skill and comfort zone. But what makes a great stretch assignment?
An excellent stretch assignment has three characteristics:
It stretches you appropriately in the direction of the strength you have chosen to develop. It has direct relevance to the company’s strategic goals. And it allows for reflection and optimal learning as you go along — it’s not just about the task itself.
4. Practice
By now you should be ready to practice. Your manager has your back and you know what to prepare, even if it might be a stretch for you.
5. Evaluate and identify the next opportunity for practice
At your next bi-weekly with your manager, make sure to evaluate your training, before planning your next opportunity for practice: What did you achieve and what did you learn?
How do you convince your manager to join you?
I asked Lene Flensborg about this, and she was emphatic in her answer:
It means business. Literally. Good talent development is key for any organisation and a competitive recruitment edge. The outcome is more skilled employees, and increased retention, and it also helps attract new talent.
As an organisation, if you succeed with the strength-based approach, you will succeed in creating a learning culture that also builds closer relationships across hierarchical layers. This promotes psychological safety where people dare to talk about their mistakes, doubts and disagreements — and this, in turn, strengthens the internal culture of learning.
It’s time to put all these words into practice, starting now — do you want to know how it works out?
I’ll be applying the approach this year, starting right now. I hope that you will too. And I will do a follow-up article in 2023, sharing my experiences and learnings. So make sure to follow me or subscribe to my stories to get notified.
I’m also curious about your thoughts? Have you also experimented with different approaches to professional development? Let me know about it, and what you’ve learned.
Manyone is a strategy-design hybrid. Visit us at Manyone.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
