Managers MUST Have a Development Plan
Don't Let Imposter Syndrome Win
A common refrain from new or inexperienced managers is feeling like they are supposed to have the answers. They feel like they got promoted because they know more - or maybe even know everything they are supposed to know.
That leads to self-doubt and suffering from imposter syndrome.
Managers won’t have all the answers. No one will have all the answers.
Which is why having a development plan is as critical for managers as it is for employees. The types of things that the manager needs to know is different, but the fact that they need to improve and grow isn’t.
In this post, I’ll explain why you should have a plan and how you should share that plan with your team.
Why you must have a plan
Your plan takes on added significance. It is not only designed to help you grow and improve, it is designed to model expected behavior for the team. In other words, if you expect them to have a development plan, you should have one. Employees will watch what you do more than listen to what you say. If you say development is important but you don’t have a development plan, they will think you truly don’t value it.
If you want them to have a plan and take it seriously, you have to have a plan and take it seriously.
Another huge benefit of you having a plan is that you can show them how you built your development plan and why. You will use the same process you expect them to follow, so they can see it in action:
Determine your next role.
Think about the skills you need to improve or learn.
Build a plan for doing so.
Assign dates and have an accountability partner (who should be your manager).
The last reason why is that you will get to model for them how to respond to successes and failures. You will be just like them - you’ll miss deadlines, you will do some things well and some things poorly, and you will get better. When you talk about it, you create a permission structure for them to do the same thing.
NOTE: If you build your development plan so that you won’t fail (which is easy to do), then you are doing a disservice to your team. They need to see you struggle. It not only shows that you are human, but it shows that you want them to push themselves as well - which leads to failure sometimes.
How to share your plan
For managers, having a plan isn’t enough. You need to share it with the team. You don’t have to share the entire plan (although some managers do), you just need to make sure they know it really exists.
When first introducing my plan, I usually do so in a staff meeting. I let the team know the following things:
That I have a plan, just like them.
The process I used to come up with a plan. Feel free to do this in a general sense if you are not comfortable sharing your desired next role.
How I will keep them up to date on my progress - I like to do this in an email as it saves meeting time.
Why I am sharing - because I want them to see that development is critical and never ending.
Once I’ve established this, I use email to send updates. I prefer to use a weekly, all-team email because it tends to be something I do anyways. If you don’t do this, you can send out a special one about the progress of your plan, just don’t make it too long.
I simply share the action I am going to do and by when (models a clear action as well as a deadline). I also share how I will report it to my accountability partner (my manager). Over the weeks, I’ll share the successes I had, but more importantly the failures. As mentioned above, it is important they see that you are challenging yourself and that you will fail sometimes. It models honesty and resilience.
I personally love to highlight my failure and how it makes me feel. It puts a human face on management and is authentic. There are some failures that I brush off quickly, but others bother me a bit more. I want them to see all of this.
NOTE: Be clear that you don’t expect them to share their plans with everyone. If they want to, that is their choice. You are doing it like this because you feel you have a special obligation as manager to model the right behavior.
Conclusion
As a new manager, this may feel incredibly uncomfortable. You are not only sharing clearly a weakness (something you are working on), but also sharing potential failure. If you have imposter syndrome, doing this is going to make that worse.
Do not - under any circumstance - launch development plans until you are ready to share yours and deal with all the feelings and repercussions that entails.