Welcome back from the summer! As kids have headed back to school and the federal government has kicked off a new fiscal year, let’s take a look at some exciting developments in the human capital world. (And a look back on a book everyone talent developer and HR specialist should read.)
Stop Trying to Follow Your Passion for Your Career. Do This Instead, by Scott Gallaway, Time Magazine, July 2024
“People tell you to follow your dreams. I’m tired of following my dreams. From now on, I’m going to find out where they’re going and hook up with them later.”
– Mitch Hedberg
We’re often told that we should follow our passions. But there are a couple of problems with that. First, our passions may not pay very well! Second, and much more important, we don’t know what we don’t know. How will you know that your passion lies in knowledge management, or employment law, or DEI initiatives, until you get engaged with them? You probably didn’t know what a quality control inspector for an aircraft company is, but what if your passion lies there?
“I wonder what it would be like if we all became what we wanted to be when we grew up? I mean, imagine a world filled with nothing but firemen, cowboys, nurses and ballerinas.”
– Lily Tomlin
In short, Scott encourages us to follow our talents, and then find our passion within those. Good advice. I love to sing, but not only will people not pay me to do it, they won’t even want to hear it! (But maybe they’d pay me to stop….) Check it out; the article is filled with great insights.
Leadership Development With a Limited Budget, by Jennifer L. Blalock, TD Magazine, October 2024
Where does the Army get its generals? They take a whole bunch of second lieutenants, grow them, nurture them and develop them over the course of 20-or-so years, and from that crop a few generals will emerge. Leadership is like that; it takes a long time and a lot of resources. But can it be done on a budget? The City of Savannah, Georgia found out that it could.
Leadership development accomplishes three vital things. First, it prepares the organization’s strategic leaders of tomorrow. Second, it helps people perform better in their current roles. And finally, it helps retain people. People whose organizations care about their development tend to be more engaged and more likely to stay in the long run.
In this article, the author tells the story of a mid-sized city’s efforts to develop its own cadre of leaders. Using a variety of methods, including training, individual learning, group discussions, case studies, mentoring and much more, they were able to not only employ multiple methods effectively, but also cost effectively. There are a lot of good ideas in this article you might be able to leverage in developing your leaders for the future.
The Adult Learning (9th Edition), by Malcolm Knowles, et al, 2020
For the longest time, we trained adults the same way we educated children. Instructor-centric, classroom-based, we told the students what they would learn and how. This was called “pedagogy,” the teaching of children, and it’s still taught and used to this day. (Even with adults.)
But in the 1970s, Malcolm Knowles coined the term “andragogy,” or adult learning. It has several key principles, including:
- Self-directed learning—adults taking responsibility for their learning and its direction
- Experience as a resource—relying on—and building on—prior knowledge and experience
- Readiness to learn—adults tend to be more motivated to learn when it’s connected to their lives and careers
- Problem-centered learning—rather than just theoretical knowledge or rote learning, adults learn from solving real world problems
- Intrinsic motivation—adults are motivated from within and driven by their own interests rather than external pressures
It’s funny—or maybe not—how we still rely on the same methods based on the instructor TELLING the students—death by PowerPoint! But there’s so much more that talent developers can offer. The book has been updated over the years by some of the best minds in human resource development, including Richard Swanson and Elwood Holton III. It’s a must-read!