Building Skills In Your Teams

How do you build skills in your teams?

Erica shares her thoughts on driving impact at an organisational level and the importance of managers seeing themselves as ‘builders of skills’ in their teams.

By seeing themselves as ‘builders of skills’, managers can promote and nurture skills development and enhance talent retention and competitiveness.

Most managers will look to learning and development functions when there is a perceived learning or skill need.

However, we know that to be the most effective and impactful, L&D needs to operate at the organisational level, as opposed to the individual level.

But this doesn’t negate the need for skills building at individual, team or functional level and building new skills is crucial for talent retention and retaining a competitive edge.

Skills building: Asking the right questions to find effective solutions

So, what’s the answer? Here are three questions to consider:

What research and thought leadership are you using to build your three to five year skills strategy?
How are you planning to deploy skills in your organisation and ensure your people are ready for the future of work?
What role do your line managers and leaders have in upskilling and reskilling your teams?

Effective skills embedding

We have the option of digital content, e-learning and online resources sitting in learning management systems, but this won’t cut it for true embedding of skills.

For this we need learning in the flow of work, the creation of learning agility on the front line, and skills application to drive true business benefits and realisation such as customer experience, productivity and output.

The key to unlock all of this is the manager

If we are to delegate skills building in teams to team managers, we need to make sure they can learn, are self-aware, can coach and, more importantly, buy into the need.

During my time in corporate I didn’t come across many managers who would tell me their priority was developing their team.

It was often wrapped up in a complex bundle of performance, projects and KPIs.

The importance of skills development

If skills building in teams is to work, we need managers to see this as an urgent goal.

Which means they need to be managed, measured, and developed in these key skills themselves.

To be candid (and at the risk of teaching you how to suck eggs), the starting place needs to be clear – their own skills development.

As part of my research for my next LinkedIn Learning course I’ve gravitated to some credible and insightful reading from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 and McKinsey and Company’s Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work paper.

Skills are the new currency

The reflections I have so far include:

AI is in there (as expected) but is only as good as you ask it to be
Human skills such as critical thinking and creativity rank highly for both organisations and the workforce
Skills are the new currency and will become a trade me commodity in organisations who are focused on their competitive edge

Skills building across teams: where to start?

In their research on self-development, McKinsey has grouped under this header the following skills:

Self-awareness and self-management – the ability to understand own triggers and emotions, understanding own strengths and meditations, self-confidence, and integrity
Entrepreneurship – courage and risk taking, driving change and innovation, and having energy, passion and optimism
Goal achievement – Taking ownership and being decisive, having grit and persistence, coping with uncertainty, and focussing on self-development

If you are seeking to have your managers build skills in their teams, you need to take a step back and build a plan to develop these three key areas.

Here are some of my ideas on how you can do this:

Build intentional and deliberate disruption and uncomfortable situations

This doesn’t mean just throwing managers in at the deep end hoping they will swim rather than sinking, as you’ll lose trust and psychological safety.

Communicate that this is what is going to happen, why it is happening, and what you are looking for.

Create learning opportunities specific to mindset and aligned to the McKinsey traits.

Score performance, follow up with clear and honest conversations, and build in reflection so managers can understand their reactions to the unknown, and how they can develop for next time (which might be the ‘real deal’!)

Use practical psychometrics for items such as mental toughness and resilience

Questionnaires such as the MTQ Plus measures and breaks down the specifics on how people think when under perceived pressure, such as their orientation to achieve, emotional reaction, ability to reflect on failure, and seeking out new opportunities.

This is what we mean by ‘grit’ – and is a key trait linked to optimism, resilience, ability to drive results, and respond to challenges.

Again, the research tells us these are all key requirements for the future of work.

Creating a true feedback culture is something that doesn’t just happen overnight, but the effort put in pays back in dividends when done properly

Make feedback ‘just the things we do around here’

Take any sting out of perceptions and engage people in the skill of receiving feedback.

Sheila Hean’s Thanks for the feedback changed my life in terms of the responsibility of feedback and gave me a true lightbulb moment.

Afterall, if the person receiving the feedback doesn’t do anything with it, you could deliver all the best practice feedback in the world, but it would be a waste of everyone’s time.

Creating a true feedback culture is something that doesn’t just happen overnight, but the effort put in pays back in dividends when done properly.

When making decisions, agree principles that force people to think differently, or use new solutions

Our brains are wired to be lazy, and we’ll always go back to lived experience, whether positive or negative, when coming up against something new.

If we are encouraged to consider different solutions, apply critical thinking and positive scepticism, and use techniques such as the ‘5 Whys’ we are more likely to build a growth mindset, and therefore take better risks.

Having the courage to do this is another thing, and some people will be more predisposed to taking risks than others, but this is one of the reasons why diversity in teams is so important!

Our brains are wired to be lazy, and we’ll always go back to lived experience, whether positive or negative, when coming up against something new

Managers are builders of skills

Having managers see themselves as ‘builders of skills’ in their teams shouldn’t be a massive jump in theory, however, this might be different.

By employing practical techniques, experiential learning, deliverable discomfort (that is signed up to) and making time for reflection, you will help to build the toolkit which managers need to step into this space.

This will accelerate the growth of adaptation in your organisation, and free you up as L&D professionals to work on the more visionary, and bigger picture priorities, providing you with the headspace and motivation to really deliver on these.

I’ve also created a LinkedIn Learning course on managers building the skills which matter most in their teams. It takes about 45 minutes to complete and has lots of practical tool and download resources.

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