Ask HN: How do you support your employees' career development?

Be a company that promotes from within. Lots of people on HN will vehemently claim that promoting from within is an anti-pattern. But if you don't promote from within, you turn into the kind of place where the more an employee strengthens a skillset, the more undervalued they feel. That kind of resentment leads to an environment that either stunts employees or makes them act contrary to company interests. Both of those are dysfunctional outcomes.

As a framework, I've yet to find something better than the Manager Tools "Trinity" which includes coaching [0].

The short version: work with each of your directs to have a coaching goal. Help them define one or more next steps. Then let them get after it, with you holding them accountable for the steps that you defined together. You can do effective coaching in ~5 minutes per week per direct. That's not just what the Manager Tools podcast says; I've done it.

Just have one coaching goal at a time. It should be something that is pretty apparent if they've achieved it. "Get better at $COOL_TECH" is a lousy goal; "learn enough COBOL to be allowed to take $LEGACY_APP pager duty" is a nicely-measurable goal (if lousy for other reasons).

Steps will be small. You'll start by brainstorming resources with your direct. Then it might be tiny steps like "email me to confirm you bought $BOOK from Amazon by end of day today", "send me a note on Slack with the date of your meeting with Bob about $TOPIC; complete scheduling no later than noon Friday", "show me your 'Hello World' program by end of day Tuesday." Small steps early help keep the coaching work in-mind for your directs. Reporting steps to you helps them avoid putting tasks aside for a week, then scrambling to catch back up. That slows the coaching project down and stresses them out.

One of the biggest stress-relievers of the model is that "coaching" isn't the same as "teaching". Coaching resources can be books, courses, other people in the company, etc. It's also not (necessarily) related to the projects your direct is working on. Providing projects where they can stretch and grow is great (keep that up!), but there might be other skills they need to learn. Running meetings, sales, design, interviewing customers, working with other departments... Your company has its own set of skills. And it's okay if they want to learn something unrelated. A while back, I felt like I needed to learn to draw better, and I had a great boss that agreed that was worth learning on the job, even though I am not and never will be a designer-type. YMMV based on your organization, of course.

How many direct reports do you have? Having too many can make things a lot more difficult, not just for coaching.

This was a bit quick, but if you have questions I'd be happy to help!

[0] https://www.manager-tools.com/2009/07/coaching-model-revised

I've had some amazing managers who have truly helped me but I have also had lots that wanted to:

* lead instead of manage.. which leads to them not being a good manager

* be a servant leader.. which leads to undefined requirements

* be a mentor.. where they give no actual help or advice but try re-frame any questions as alternative questions

It will depend on your company, some have defined career paths while others will have you wait for your boss to retire or hop between departments and geography (especially in sales).

As a coach, you help your employees understand their goals and then set actions to reach these goals. If they want to be CEO, maybe their next step is somewhere else and you have to choose between being the coach or the company’s management.