Three golden rules for L&D

The three essential lessons for development:

1. Get out of the way

The most effective way of building talent and developing teams is to get out of the way. This is a lesson of my life. I was one of the great interventionists. I would be with people and hold their hand and take them down the road. I thought this was the best way of developing people and sometimes it is, sometimes you do need to sit with people. But the critical point of development is when you leave people on their own and let them get on with it. So that’s my first lesson of development. Get out of the way!

2. Stretch people

My second lesson of development is, stretch. If you don’t stretch people, if you don’t get them a little bit out of their comfort zone, they will develop only so far. And the people who say, ‘Oh, that’s scary,’ that’s the moment where they’re going to get their best development.

3. Make time

And the third is, to always have time for development. So whether that’s a development conversation, time to put someone on a more formal program, time to let someone go and visit an organisation or an individual, create the time for development. It’s all too easy just to say, We’re way too busy. This is impossible. We’ll do it next year. We’ll do it next month. That’s always career-limiting for the individuals you’re saying that to, and it’s often they tend to leave.So in trying to get too much out of people in too short a time, you often get far less out of them than you could do by giving them a bit of space and a bit of time.

This is an edited version of this Clear Lesson – watch the video for the full story.