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Who Is Responsible for Professional Development?

Deborah Bigelow Crawford has more than 20 years of experience in business management and handles the operational and administrative functions of PM Solutions. Ms. Bigelow Crawford also serves as Co-CEO of the PM College®, PM Solutions' training division, where she is responsible for the fiscal management and quality assurance of all training and professional development programs. Prior to joining PM Solutions, she served as the Executive Director of the Project Management Institute (PMI), and was instrumental in providing the foundation and infrastructure for the exponential growth that the Institute has maintained over the last 10 years. In addition, she served as the Executive Director of the PMI Educational Foundation. Over the last decade, she has authored numerous articles in PM Network, Chief Project Officer, and Optimize magazines. Ms. Bigelow Crawford is also co-author of the book Project Management Essentials. She has presented a variety of papers as a speaker at international symposia and conferences, and is a member of the National Association of Female Executives and the Project Management Institute.

As a manager, you want to be good. You want to feel like you are supporting your team … and making a difference. You want your team to feel that they are growing both professionally and personally. You want to build that trusting relationship that all research points to as a “requirement.” It certainly is not easy an easy task. There are realistic constraints … time, budget, resources, and personalities … that prevent you from providing the coaching and support your team needs. So what do you do?

Sydney Finkelstein, in “Why a One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Employee Development Doesn’t Work” (March 5, 2019 in the Harvard Business Review online), states you should personalize your coaching, support, and teaching effort by organizing developmental information about your employees in a spreadsheet week by week and month by month. At the end of each week, take 15 minutes to write down the steps you’ve taken to support team members. Note any patterns you see developing and find a few minutes to discuss with your team individually. You need to let them know that you know what success looks like for them, and what exactly they need to do to improve. And you then need to provide them with the professional development they need.

HBR also has a new product called HBR Guide to Your Professional Growth that encourages you to be your own “coach.” It is their belief that the days of HR-sponsored development plans are over, and that the employee is responsible for managing his or her own career and pushing him or herself to the next level. The one thing both points of view have in common is that whether it is you as a manager or you as an employee, you must make time and take responsibility to do this.

I am somewhere in the middle. As a past and current manager, I probably lean more toward a more customized approach, but my reality is that time and budget are constraints. However, there are lots of channels to recognize, discuss, and provide coaching to your team and, for me, I know it would not be that structured. The weekly structuring makes it seem too daunting, but I do like the idea of ensuring that you “jot down” thoughts and observations on the employee and then find time each quarter to discuss them. Bottom line is to build great teams you need to focus on a few critical habits and make them a part of your everyday behavior; inspire your team; give them clarity of purpose; insure they have the proper skills; and give them an appropriate level of autonomy. You also need to identify and close gaps within your team. If you are able to do this, you just might be able to develop and sustain strong, trusting relationships … the core of every great team!