Career development and professional development often get used in the same sentence, but they're definitely different.
Professional development is all about getting better at the current job. In sales, it could involve things like getting better at negotiation, prospecting, qualifying, etc. For a marketer it comes down to things like being a better copy writer or improving your SEO skills.
Career development, on the other hand, is about thinking more long term. This involves asking yourself where do you want to be 12, 24, 36+ months from now and figuring out what skills, knowledge, experience, relationships, etc., will you need to get there.
Let's say you have a sales rep that wants to be a manager in 3 years - to get there they're going to need both career and professional development. Here are the steps I would use to coach that person:
- Step 1: Master your role as a rep. This doesn't necessarily mean you need to be the 'top' rep, but you need to be a solid performer that the team recognizes as a great seller. Here we are talking all about professional development: you need to master your prospecting skills, become a great negotiator, develop great story-telling and demo skills, learn to qualify deals, etc.
- Step 2: Build manager skills and reputation. Once you're making great progress on the skills above, you now need to develop attributes that will help you become a great manager. Start to learn some teaching/coaching skills, learn how to manage projects that impact more than just yourself, understand how to develop others, etc.
Professional Development
How often should you have these conversations as a manager? Professional development discussions are best done weekly (or more frequently). These are planning sessions focused on what skills you are going to focus on improving this week, right now. I find the this schedule works best for me:
- Monday AM: Decide the skill you're doing to improve that week and lay out the plan. Make it a clear goal.
- Wednesday at Lunch: Check in, am I on track? If not, what can do do before Friday?
- Friday PM: Recap how I did. If I hit my goal, then 🎉 🙌, if I missed my goal, then figure out what I can do differently next week.
If you can go home on Friday and legitimately say you're better at something than you were on Monday, then that's a big win. Think how much you can improve if you compound those accomplishments over 52 weeks, then over years.
Career development
The purpose here is to step back and think about where you want to be 12-24 months out, then decide the skills, experience, and reputation you need to get there. The best way to handle this is to go deep on this topic quarterly and then do monthly check ins to see if/where you need to course correct.
- Skills: Do I know the right things? Find out what skills are needed to get you to the desired level. Go talk with people that are exactly where you want to be 12 months away and figure out what they were doing 12 months ago.
- Experience: Have I done the right things? Here you want to be able to help your teammate point to specific things they can demonstrate that show they've mastered the required skills. Have they closed the right deals? Have they delivered the right projects? etc. Notice here I'm not saying, "have they done X for enough time?" Sometimes time in seat is relevant, but mostly if someone can show they've done the thing enough times to master it, that's good enough, regardless of how long it took.
- Brand: Do others know I've done the right things? What do other people know that you know? More specifically, if you want a promotion, do the right people know that you know how to do that job? If not, you've got work to do.
Hope this helps! Any other thoughts leave a comment 👇, thanks!
