Professional Development

Career Development for Staff

As a manager, you want to invest in professional development that will have positive impact on the efficiency, productivity, quality, and timeliness of your staff and their work.

♦ Start with the End in Mind

When a staff member requests to attend training:

  • Discuss why they want to attend the training and what they expect to gain or learn.
  • Explain what your expectations are for applying the skills they gain when they return.
  • Ask the staff member to submit 3-5 bullet points of what they’ll do differently upon returning from training.
  • Set that expectation in advance about how they will identify key learning points and create a plan for applying them back on the job is critical.

♦ Proactively Identify Skills Gaps

Your team may have a skills gap if expectations for communication, collaboration, timeliness, or quality are not being met, or if they could be met more effectively.  Consider if:

  • A manager or employee performs adequately, but there is room for improvement.
  • Incremental improvement in a skill could be useful to your team, department, or organization.
  • There are consistent pain points in a process, job, or team.

If so, explore Talent Development opportunities that can help fill the gap.

Professional Development for Managers

As a manager, you have to attend to your own professional development, too. Use the same strategy for determining your training needs as you do for your staff: If you’re going to invest time in attending training, consider how you will apply the information or skills to your work. 

Understanding your training needs may also require self-reflection. Consider:

  • Where would you like to be better?
  • Where would it benefit your team or the university to be better at something? (The aim is usually to improve a skill you already have, not to learn a completely new skill.)
  • Where do you want to go, and where want to grow?
  • Where are your personal pain points? What can help you immediately?
  • What’s of concern to you right now, and how will training influence that?

Learning and Education also offers a range of Leadership Development programs that can help managers enhance their management and leadership skills.