When developing team members, most businesses fall prey to the topic of the day in the hope it will go some way to solving their current business challenge. Topics like ‘fierce conversations’, ‘becoming agile’, or ‘being a disrupter’ have been positioned as important skills over the last few years – similar to goji berries being a superfood one year only to be told bee pollen is the new superfood one year later. The hype makes it challenging for businesses to know where to invest in their human capital for the best return.
Whilst knowing how to have a fierce conversation is important, as is learning to be agile and being open to disruption, they become important and powerful when the individual has an opportunity to utilise these skills and knowledge within the workplace. Application of knowledge is key. Simply gaining information without an avenue to utilise and apply the information is a waste of time, energy and money.
Assuming not only the topic of the day is relevant but that it is required to be learnt by all team members results in a one-size-fits-all approach to development which leads to:
- Investing in skills and capability mismatched to individual, team and business need
- Lack of deep learning as information gained cannot be put to use in the business
- Misuse of time, energy and money with little to no return
Utilising a one-size-fits-all approach to team development often leaves leaders feeling frustrated with the lack of productivity and engagement of their team, and bewildered as to why they aren’t getting the results they want even though they have ‘invested’ in their team.
So, how do you know what skills and capability to invest in?
Step 1: Understand your teams capability strengths and gaps
Each individual is unique and different and brings specific value to your team. Understanding each team member’s capability strengths and gaps enables the business to not only identify and provide the ideal support at an individual level but also to obtain insight into patterns of capability to be utilised by the business and common capability gap deficiencies requiring support.
Step 2: Map your human capability to business need
As a business grows and evolves it requires different capability to overcome challenges it faces, problems it needs to solve and to make critical decisions to help it continue to grow. This happens at multiple levels – organisation wide, market unit, function/department level, team and individual specific. These phases of growth are experienced by all businesses irrespective of size. Knowing what phase of growth your business is experiencing helps you to understand the capability to cultivate in your team.
Step 3: Be intentional and strategic
Once you know what capability you have available to you in your team AND have identified the capability required by your business to help it grow and thrive then you are best positioned to make decisions about how to invest in the required capability at an individual, team and business level to deliver the best return.
To know if you’re on the right track ask yourself “Can I clearly and accurately pinpoint the specific capability strengths of each member of my team?” “Can I identify the main growth phase my team or business is experiencing and it’s associated ideal capability requirement?” If you can answer yes to both these questions then it’s likely you’re investing in capability your team can deploy and utilise for the benefit of the business. If you are unable to definitively answer yes then perhaps we need to chat.
Taking this simple approach to team development ensures you are not caught in the common pitfalls associated with a one-size-fits-all approach and instead enables you to strategically and intentionally invest in your team for their individual growth, team growth and ultimately business growth.
