From the course: Having Career Conversations with Your Team

How career conversations differ from performance reviews

From the course: Having Career Conversations with Your Team

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How career conversations differ from performance reviews

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- Performance reviews are about looking at the previous year or six months, the results of someone's work, sometimes with input from peer reviews, and usually with a discussion of strengths and areas for development. In anticipating these sessions, employees are often nervous and on edge. That's why I strongly recommend separating the two, creating multiple conversation touchpoints throughout the year. A career conversation is more expansive and exploratory, and it's about handing the floor over to the person in front of you. This is a rare moment for you to show your team member that they have the answers within them, that they are the expert on themselves, and their career, and where they're heading. Together, you can ask and understand, what's working best in your role, what energizes you most? What are you most excited about for the year ahead, in terms of growth and impact? Part of the reason career conversations, and even informal moments throughout the year are so important is that people are changing all the time, and you can't assume that you know exactly what's on their mind. You can't assume that just because you've had one conversation a year ago that everything is still the same. Sometimes, managers approach these conversations with a feeling of pressure, that they need to solve something, or they need to provide a ton of great insight and actionable advice. During these career conversations, your goal is not to try to solve anything. In fact, I recommend managers step back completely from giving advice or feedback, at least in the first half of the conversation. Experiment with 70% listening. The counter-intuitive advice here is that the less you talk, and own the outcome, the more the person sitting in front of you will get out of the conversation, because you're going to keep unfolding the layers of their greatest strengths and aspirations. Now, what if the person directly asks you for advice? Sometimes your employee or coachee will come in and right away say, "well, what do you think I should do? "What would you do if you were me?" I always like to respond to that with, "I am happy "to weigh in with my insights, experiences and advice, "but let's save that for the end, you first." When you email your team to ask them to schedule these career conversations with you, you can also help set this tone by saying that these conversations will be very exploratory, and that you're going to save your insights and advice for the end. Tell your team: this is about you. Don't feel like you have to have all the answers before we meet, but just know that this isn't about me telling you what to do or giving you all the answers. This is about helping you explore and uncover what excites you most for the year ahead."

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