Career Development

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Matching Organization and Individual Needs: The Goal of Career Development

Career development is an ongoing, formalized effort by an organization that focuses on developing and enriching the organization’s human resources in light of both the employee’s and the organization’s needs.

Career planning is the process by which an individual formulates career goals and develops a plan for reaching those goals. Thus, career development and career planning should reinforce each other. Career development looks at individual careers from the viewpoint of the organization, whereas career planning looks at careers through the eyes of individual employees. In the end, a career development program should be viewed as a dynamic process that matches the needs of the organization with the needs of employees.

The Organization’s Role

The organization has the primary responsibility for instigating and ensuring that career development takes place. Specifically, the organization’s responsibilities are to develop and communicate career options within the organization to the employee. The organization must carefully advise an employee concerning possible career paths to achieve that employee’s career goals.

The organization must supply information about its mission, policies, and plans and for providing support for employee self-assessment, training, and development. Significant career growth can occur when individual initiative combines with organizational opportunity. Career development programs benefit managers by giving them increased skill in managing their own careers, greater retention of valued employees, increased understanding of the organization, and enhanced reputations as people-developers. As with other HRM programs, the inauguration of a career development program should be based on the organization’s needs as well.

Assessment of needs should take a variety of approached (surveys, informal group discussions, interviews, etc.) and should involve personnel from different groups, such as new employees, managers, plateaued employees, minority employees, and technical and professional employees. Identifying the needs and problems of these groups provides the starting point for the organization’s career development efforts. Organizational needs should be linked with individual career needs in a way that joins personal effectiveness and satisfaction of employees with the achievement of the organization’s strategic objectives.

HRM’s Role

HRM personnel are generally responsible for ensuring that this information is kept current as new jobs are created and old ones are phased out. Working closely with both employees and their managers, HRM specialists should see that accurate information is conveyed and that interrelationships among different career paths are understood. Thus, rather than bearing the primary responsibility for preparing individual career plans, the organization should promote the conditions and create the environment that will facilitate the development of individual career plans by the employees.

Like any other HRM activity, if career development is to succeed, it must receive the complete support of top management. Ideally, senior line managers and HRM managers will work together to design and implement a career development system. The system should reflect the goals and culture of the organization, and the HRM philosophy should be woven throughout. An HRM philosophy can provide employees with a clear set of expectations and directions for their own career development. For a program to be effective, managerial personnel at all levels must be trained in the fundamentals of job design, performance appraisal, career planning, and counseling.

The Employee’s Role

In today’s dynamic work environment, individuals are increasingly responsible for initiating and managing their own career planning. Career planning is not something one individual can do for another; it has to come from the individual. Only the individual knows what she or he really wants out of a career, and certainly those desires vary appreciably from one person to person.

Career planning requires a conscious effort on the part of the employee; it is hard work, and it does not happen automatically. Each employee must identify his or her own knowledge, skills, abilities, interests, and values and seek out information about career options in order to set goals and develop career plans.

Before employees can engage in meaningful career planning, they must not only have an awareness of the organization’s philosophy, but they must also have a good understanding of the organization’s more immediate goals. Otherwise, they may plan for personal change and growth without knowing if or how their own goals match those of the organization. For example, if the technology of a business is changing and new skills are needed, will the organization re-train employees to meet this need or hire new talent? Is there growth, stability, or decline in the number of employees needed? How will turnover affect the need? Clearly, an organizational plan that answers these kinds of questions is essential to support individual career planning.

Although an individual may be convinced that developing a sound career plan would be in his or her best interest, finding the time to develop such as plan is often another matter. The organization can help by providing trained specialists to encourage and guide the employee. This can best be accomplished by allotting a few hours of company time each quarter to this type of planning. Individuals and organizations must constantly recognize that individuals like their organizations change over time, their needs and interests change. Thus, it would be unrealistic to expect individuals to establish their career goals with perfect understanding of where they are going or, for that matter, where the organization is going. So while goal setting is critical, building in some flexibility is a good idea.

The Manager’s Role

It has been said that “the critical battleground in career development is inside the mind of the person charged with supervisory responsibility (Randolph, 1981). Although not expected to be a professional counselor, the manager can and should play a role in facilitating the development of a direct report’s career. First, and foremost, the manager should serve as a catalyst and sounding board.

Managers should encourage employees to take responsibility for their own careers, offering continuing assistance in the form of feedback on individual performance and making available information about the organization, about the job, and about career opportunities that might be of interest. The manager should show an employee how to go about the process and then help the employee evaluate the conclusions.

Unfortunately, many managers do not perceive career counseling as part of their managerial duties. They are not opposed to this role; rather, they have never considered it as part of their job. To help overcome this and related problems, many organizations have designed training programs to help their managers develop the necessary skills in this area.

Successful career development results from a joint effort by the organization, HRM, the individual, and the immediate manager. The organization provides the resources and structure; the individual does the planning; and the immediate manager provides guidance and encouragement. However, none of this is possible unless efforts are made to improve the match between an employee and an organization as soon as the employee enters the organization. One way of avoiding the conflicts and mismatches is to utilize a realistic job preview.

The followers’ influence upon a leader can enhance the leader or accentuate the leader’s shortcomings. Many of the competencies that are needed in leaders are the same qualities needed in effective followers.

In addition to possessing initiative, independence, commitment to common goals, and courage, a follower can provide enthusiastic support of a leader, but not to the extent that a follower fails to challenge a leader who is unethical or threatens the values or objectives of the organization.

Ineffective followers are as much to blame for poor performance, ethical and legal lapses within organizations, as are poor and unethical leaders. Followers have a responsibility to speak up when leaders do things wrong as this is a cornerstone of an effective leader-follower relationship and the relationship between a leader and their followers is critical in order for any goal to be obtained.

The Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX)

One theory that takes a look into this relationship is the leader-member exchange theory (LMX).

Under this theory, leaders differentiate their followers based on their perception of their follower’s competence/skills, trustworthiness, and motivation to assume greater responsibilities. Leaders then treat those with “high-LMX” differently than those with “low LMX.”

Those with “low-LMX” are more likely to be part of a transactional relationship with their leader. These types of interactions do not create a harmonious relationship between leaders and their followers. It is because of this that leaders are looking for followers that have “high-LMX.”

How does one find or foster followers with “high-LMX”?

One way is by using servant leadership. Servant leadership puts the emphasis on the needs of the followers.

If the needs of the followers are met then it is more likely that the relationship and interactions between leader and follower will produce an increase of LMX from the followers.

One could argue that any good leader is in turn a good follower. It has been suggested that every great leader had to be a great follower to succeed and that is what makes a great active follower (an active follower is described as a follower who is enthusiastic, intelligent, and self-reliant).

An active follower is self-managing, committed, competent, and courageous (remember our discussion earlier of the models, styles, or types of followersOpens in new window). Self-managing refers to being able to think critically and control their actions. Committed followers are committed to the goals of the teamOpens in new window and organizationOpens in new window.

Competent followers have the skills and knowledge that they need to accomplish the goal of the team and organization. Courageous followers are not afraid to stand up for their beliefs, even when they differ from the leaders.

A good leader knows the importance of followers that will stand up and have their voice heard even when the view is opposed to that of the leaders. However, if the leader exhibits a great deal of the dark side personality of narcissismOpens in new window they are likely to see courageous followers as insubordinate.

Interestingly enough, these traits could be applied to good leaders as well. In fact, the traits line up fairly well with Northouse’s five major leadership traits (e.g., determination, self-confidence, integrity, sociability, and intelligence in our text).

Leaders and followers share many of the same traits which calls into question such century old theories as the trait approach. Thus, if traits are shared between great leaders and followers then one might ask if the traits have more to do with great team building traits?

It has been said that “Effective followers and effective leaders are often the same people playing different parts at different hours of the day.” Perhaps the emphasis that LMX has is right.

That is, maybe the reason why leaders and followers with a “high-LMX” relationship work so well is because they are a cohesive team and the lines between leader and follower are narrower. So what is a leader without followers? Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

So, what do leaders need from followers? And, what do followers need from their leaders?