View or download the printable version of the Quick Guide to Career Conversations (Google Doc).
Supporting staff, faculty, and student employees in their professional and career development is part of the responsibility of a supervisor and faculty advising graduate or professional students at the University of Minnesota. Career conversations help supervisors gain insight into an employee’s motivation to guide and support their career development.
What are career conversations and why do them?
Career conversations are discussions that happen periodically to:
- Understand employee career aspirations as well as their strengths and skills that need further development.
- Provide performance feedback and development coaching that helps the employee make progress toward their career goals.
- Explore where employees can use their talents to make the most impact (assignments, cross-functional projects, other teams, etc.) This will help keep employees engaged, improve performance, and encourage employees to learn and grow.
Prepare
Employee driven, manager supported. Sometimes, employees might be hesitant to initiate career conversations out of concern of how it might reflect on them in their current role. As a supervisor, you can invite the conversation and demonstrate that you are open to discussion. This does not make career development a sole responsibility of the supervisor. A career conversation is a two-way street, where the employee drives their development with their supervisor’s support:
Manager Role
- Initiate conversations
- Listen
- Provide feedback and coaching
- Provide support and encouragement:
- Seek to give stretch assignments that align with the desired career path
- Remove barriers/obstacles
- Connect the employee with the needed resources or people
Employee Role
- Share career aspirations and areas of interest with their supervisor
- Seek and act on feedback
- Be proactive in asking questions
- Share progress
Although you can provide support and encouragement, the ownership is on the individual to take action to forward their career.
Regular and Intentional. Have career conversations regularly and don’t wait for a special occasion (like a performance review). Moreover, set it outside of your performance review discussion to allow for conversation beyond the context of immediate work.
Give employees time to prepare. Consider giving reflection questions ahead of time (see the questions below). Encourage them to look at real examples of careers from others with a particular background.
Avoid Assumptions. Avoid assumptions about what an individual employee wants to do. Some common assumptions include thinking that employees have the same interests, goals, and aspirations as you do or assuming they do not want to move beyond their current role. The questions listed in the second portion of this guide will help you surface and clarify assumptions.
Anticipate and encourage questions. Engaged employees who want to grow their careers as part of your team/department, college, or unit might ask questions about the future of work:
- How is the work changing? Given the work in the next year, which roles, if any, will need to change for our department or unit?
- What skills, knowledge, and abilities do you see as more relevant in the future?
- What opportunities for growth might be possible?
- What experiences might be needed?
Conduct the Conversation
- Open the conversation by talking about how the career conversations may or may not be connected with current work.
- Select the questions (see below)
- Listen to understand: focus on seeking to understand their interests and goals. Remember that the goal of this conversation is to understand and support the employee’s aspirations.
Follow Up
Following up on career conversations can be done informally, as part of the regular check-in meetings. Your success as a supervisor depends on your ability to provide feedback and coaching in ways that:
- support current performance,
- develop skills, knowledge, and abilities that might help them grow their desired career,
- ensure that people are ready for the roles and assignments you give them. Check out the Quick Guide to Performance, Potential, and Readiness to better target your feedback and coaching for more effectiveness.
Coaching and feedback* can be done via a variety of different tools: training new skills, providing practice opportunities, assessments, opportunities for reflection, soliciting feedback, and mapping relevant work experiences**.
If the desired/future career is outside of the current team or knowledge expertise, there are still things you can do to follow up and support your employee by connecting them to:
- Different people/networks to get different perspectives
- Outside mentoring or coaching opportunities
- Online advice/information