Today AND Tomorrow

A Dual Intention For People Development

Recently I have been visiting friends and former colleagues at a boarding school (my first job after university) and had an insight on the train yesterday on the lessons taken from developing a student in a school environment and the opportunity to develop people in a professional environment.

In both environments, there are behaviours and needs to be met in the immediate sense.

Whether that’s onboarding to a culture or performing to a certain standard - whether for exams or university admission to quarterly results and yearly goals.

The difference lies in the outlook and time horizon for the development of the individual.

In a school setting, there’s a great big unknown where you are doing the work of helping the person in the moment, with the hope that it will impact and support them as they are older.

You know the moment is coming of when they will move on.

Graduation is the milestone, while when you join a company it’s a bit more abstract around how long they will stay and what on-going role you will have in their development.

Will they pass their probation period?

or

Hey, maybe we have a future director on our hands here!?

Many teacher friends share with me the joy of the student returning 10 or 15 years later to tell them what an impact they had on their lives as a teenager.

In the professional environment, I don’t suspect many are considering too far in the future what you may do or become as the demands of the moment are so present.

I have read and observed great things about certain brands and organizations that hold a long term view around their employees development and career trajectories - regardless of whether that happens in their place of business or somewhere else.

I just got a ping that an old client recently reached 35 years at their company. A lot has to go into making that work, form both sides, but you see these examples and you see people continually evolving and getting a chance to develop and shine in new ways.

It also impacts the bottom line.

High retention and internal promotion sure feels a lot more fun (and profitable) than what the hiring/firing doom loop offers.

In high school the teacher is so many roles - instructor, facilitator, coach, mentor and more.

They continuously straddle the world of - “we need results now but also want to ensure you are doing well in two decades from now”.

I think it was Chip Wilson founder of Lululemon where I took this from, but the idea of even as adults you should leave an organization better than when you joined - in all facets of work and life - as an adult.

For me this is attention to self-awareness and adult development - and helping people along the way with this duo focus of “how can we perform well today” with a “these efforts will also continue to allow you to keep developing over time.”

Like in many situations our relationship to time is always this dance between here and now and tomorrow.

That’s it for this week.

Best,

Jamie