Here is how to hold a good meeting about career development

According to Gé Oerlemans, business development manager at Focus Nederland it is all about continuous development, so that you find work that suits you. Based on your personality and strengths. Also based on what motivates and inspires you. Throughout your entire working life.

Many people choose their first job based on the knowledge they acquired during their education. It is also really important to end up in a job that suits you. Are you by nature, say, a manager, an information provider or do you prefer to act as an advisor? This relates above all to your personality traits and the qualities that derive from these.

At the beginning of their working life, many people do not have a very good image of themselves. They take time to try out many different things and absorb experiences like a sponge. At some point, they notice that they find some things much easier than others. They become aware of their limits, but also where there is still room for further development. This means they can now make informed choices about their career.

Your stage of life may also determine what choices you make. For example, when you have just acquired a young family. Many people are strongly focussed on getting promoted during this time of their life. Later, once the kids have left home, there is generally more space for people to do what they find really important and motivating. Often, the focus is more on doing something meaningful for others, and for society as a whole.

All kinds of research have shown that if we know the type of work and type of role that suits us, we will get more enjoyment from our work and less stress from colleagues. That translates at the organisational level into a company that performs better, with staff who are more involved, absent less often, achieve better results and more able to deal with changes.

Sometimes managers may hesitate to invest in career development. All you might be doing is making people think about looking for a job elsewhere that suits them better. In reality, the chances are slim that you will retain someone by not investing in their career development. How great is it, when someone finds the best path for themselves, and at the same time feels that their manager has their back when they start off down that path? That way you probably gained a supporter for life. Someone who will likely come back once they have learned what they needed. And likely someone who can help you to define correctly what their successor, whether in the company or outside, needs to have in order to do the job properly.

Anyway, who says that your employee will have to leave the organisation? There may well be a job somewhere else in the organisation that suits them perfectly. Think in terms of the long term and the bigger picture. You may well be surprised by the win-win situations that pop up.

Don't make a mountain out of a molehill. Many managers think that career development is a whole separate thing that they need to discuss once a year. That it is difficult, and involves major steps, such as getting trained or changing job. Ge’s advice is keep it close at hand, on the work floor and all year round.
Give your employees incentives:

• to develop by giving them the power to make decisions. Agree results-based management for challenging tasks.
• to learn new things and to explore within the security of their own job. Let them do new things and take on other tasks. Leave them to work out for themselves how things could be tackled differently and more smartly.
• by setting up a culture where people can grow, develop and choose their own path. Leave it to the employee, but facilitate and support as far as possible.
• by making it clear that the goal is that they and the company develop in tandem. A precondition is that it is also clear where the organisation wants to be heading, and what people will need to do specifically in the future.
• by observing your employees closely you can give targeted feedback. So you know what their strong points are, and you can encourage them to develop these further.

This way, you influence people's development focus, which means at the end of the day you get more from them. Likely the time will come one day when they outgrow their current role. Until then, however, you have made the most of each other.

Imagine, someone needs to draw up plans to improve the processes in your organisation and you have an employee who wants to learn how to network better. Then you may be able to agree with this employee that he or she develops his contacts with people in comparable organisations, to research how things are done there. This way, the employee adds value to the organisation and also learns something for themselves.

The core of your job needs to consist of things that you naturally do well. Of course it is really interesting to see whether you can improve on that. In this case you just need to keep a close eye on whether the development is something you are capable of, on what you can develop from your personal qualities, and what you cannot. Some skills are anyway easier to develop than others. Things that don't really fit with the way you are will be more difficult and take more effort to master, so if you are totally focused on these you are more likely to feel stress and enjoy your work less.

As a manager, you are probably the best career coach there is. You see a person at work, and this gives you a good view of their potential. A coaching-based style of management can help to further develop that potential. This management style does not suit everyone, however. In that case outsourcing is an option. There are obviously questions that anyway go beyond the expertise of a direct manager.

Often you will see, for example, an employee who feels that something in the job still needs some further polishing, but can't quite put their finger on it. Then it can help to get a career advisor involved, who specialises in getting whatever is happening out into the open. As a manager, it is then important to remain involved and to make it clear what output the organisation expects from the career advice process.

Gé Oerlemans is business development manager at Focus Nederland and a typical example of someone who is continuously working on (career) development. After secondary school he studied biology very briefly, but then switched to art school, after which he became a furniture and theatrical set designer. In a sideline job at Van Gend & Loos he managed a data entry department – a group of ladies who literally tore each other's hair out. Gé therefore took a course on coaching and his interest in coaching was born. He started at the Nedlloyd development centre as a careers advisor, and art faded more and more into the background. About 20 years ago, Focus Nederland took over the staff of the Nedlloyd development centre. After a number of years of coaching and training at various locations, he then moved over to become business development manager, which completed the circle of inventing and creating new things.