Help Your Team Learn New Skills to Keep Them on Board

The importance of talent development for the team and benefits for the manager, how to introduce learning practices in your team

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When I quit my previous job, my boss asked me why, and my answer was, “I haven’t learned anything new during the last six months.” I believed in the company, I loved the team, but I was getting no lasting value from staying there anymore — just salary.

And I’m not alone in this: 59% of millennials say opportunities to learn and grow are extremely important to them when applying for a job (Millennials Want Jobs to Be Development Opportunities).

Why is professional development suddenly so important?

People, on average, are not getting more progressive or ambitious. Many people still prefer safe and predictable income, but today the very definition of safety and stability has changed.

Let’s be honest: there are very few companies where people plan to stay until retirement. And if you are not working for one of them, you have to keep in mind your next job. Even if today you are perfectly happy, perform well, and maybe your grade or title changes annually, someday you will brush up the resume, and your exiting skills will be judged against the new position you are applying for.

With rapidly accelerating technological advancement, the job market changes: some professions die, some appear, and existing change all the time. And even if the job description doesn’t change that much in your current company, it changes everywhere else.

That’s how job stability works today. If you are not learning new things to stay up to date and be in-demand, you are falling behind.

If people in your team do not grow professionally, do not get new experience, and do not develop their skills, they will be open to new opportunities. Guitar classes or gym in the basement can retain professionals only for so long, and then curiosity will make them vulnerable to sneaky recruiters.

So think about your team: who do you think cares about professional growth? Are you comfortable with the idea that those specific people will quit? In my experience, learners are usually top performers and I want to keep in the team as long as possible.

There are two aspects to professional growth:

• Career advancement or job mobility — getting new job titles or new positions with time.
• Talent development.

And there are two main challenges:

1. Not all teams have great opportunities for real career advancement.
2. Organizations with such opportunities, but without established learning culture, fall under The Peter principle (“employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another”).

Solving professional growth for “stable” teams

The first problem happens in situations where specific teams or whole organizations are not growing, so career shifts happen only when people quit. That is not a sustainable growth model, and it leads to high turnover — people at lower positions will not stay for long. So it creates a constant burden on management with hiring and onboarding new members. Together with no ability to retain top players, this deteriorates the team’s potential to perform.

There are two ways to operate within this situation:

• Overpay for average talent
• Reduce turnover by creating an incentive to stay

That incentive is talent development. Think about it: if I can learn new things, keep my skills up-to-date, and truly grow my experience, then I have no pressing need to change jobs: I’m getting more and more attractive as a candidate, and anytime I choose to make this change — I can do it. More importantly, changing the job creates a risk of losing the opportunity to continually develop new skills, so my requirements for a new job go up.

Essentially, your team’s learning practices is a competitive advantage: the organization that competes with you for talent has to offer more — higher salary, better benefits, or similar learning opportunities.

Does learning replace raises and promotions? No, not really, but those things are a “hygienic” job factor: people expect compensation for seniority. Constant learning and talent development just make them justified.

A note on growing organizations without learning culture

The second situation, Pieter principle, creates different problems:

• Deteriorating management culture
• Unfair compensation structure: people get paid for things they cannot do
• Learning on the job requires more micro-management, or lowers decision quality

And the solution is talent development again: if people start developing skills for a new position in advance, the promotions are better targeted, and transitions happen more smoothly.

What is talent development specifically?

Talent development is about learning new things, expanding the experience, and perfecting new skills. Talent development is not strictly related to career: if you spend ten years in an organization, your job title changes, but it doesn’t mean that you had an opportunity to get new experience and new skills efficiently. The key to master something is not repeating something for 10 000 hours, but deliberate practice: proactive development of lacking skills.

Simply speaking, talent development consists of learning new skills and deliberate practice to enforce them. In a team setting it is an individual effort focused on specific skills, consistent feedback on performance and mistakes, and expert guidance about the path: what are the next skills that need development.

What if my current company doesn’t provide good learning opportunities?

The trick is it doesn’t matter if the company has it or not: 90% of talent development happens between a team lead and a team member. Only the manager is close enough and has the perspective to see areas for improvement, and only the manager has the power to create or authorize practice opportunities.

Any manager can initiate the change. That also means that you, as an individual team member, can request this from your manager — discuss your perspective and aspirations, choose specific skills and start learning them, then together seek the opportunity to practice it.

Mentorship is another excellent option that does not require authorization from the company. Usually, a mentor has a different perspective and can provide invaluable feedback. Still, they have limited ability to affect immediate work, and practice opportunities will require more initiative on your side.

What is the difference between individual talent development and team learning culture?

There are three levels of talent development:

1. Reactive: Usually, individual employee coaching happens to some extent naturally: managers have to steer the direction and provide some personal feedback to keep the team operational.
2. Individual: The manager focuses on ‘grooming’ specific members that show maximum promise. That is an infinite improvement comparing to the reactive approach, and it is easy to start in any team. Still, in the long run, it can create a situation of unfair treatment and playing favorites that lead to unwanted tensions and group dynamics.
3. Team learning culture: transparent values and culture that apply to everyone in the team, and the potential to learn is entirely dependent on an individual team member: everyone moves forward at the pace they choose.

Learning culture creates favorable side effects for a manager:

• People want to stay with the manager who cares about them and creates an opportunity to grow. Other people within the organization will be more willing to join the team.
• Team performance grows as people grow professionally: less management is needed, more complex tasks get solved.
• In a culture where learning is praised, team members start helping each other — they share resources, have interesting discussions, and more open to feedback.

How to start practicing talent development?

The first thing you need to do is to check if you truly believe that it will benefit your team. You will see a lot of support and enthusiasm, but you will also meet some friction.

• Then start with individuals: before everyone believes in the new idea, you need to prove that it works, and it is easier to do with most motivated people.
• Discuss with 1–3 people their aspirations and interests, hear their perspective, brainstorm together.
• Once you outline the plan — look for opportunities for your members yo practice the skills.

It goes without saying that you should be clear about things you can and cannot promise, so be careful about creating the expectation of extrinsic benefits, but it is always in your power to provide guidance, feedback and recommend some resources.

Not all opportunities will work out, but you will see what works for you and your team after a couple of iterations. You will also see improving performance, more interest in the group, and most likely encouragement from your bosses.

Once you see results, you will have the leverage to scale the initiative, and you will see more opportunities. The next steps for your team will be evident from there.

My personal experience

Like most teams out there, we onboard new hires with small tasks and then choose new assignments to expand their proficiency with core products. But once they exhaust learning opportunities in the existing scope, we introduce individual growth projects that increase learning opportunities by a level of magnitude. Being mindful about individual learning needs, combined with regular meetings and radical candor, create fertile soil for growing competent and motivated professionals.

What learning practices do you have in the team?