There are no simple answers for broad truths for employee development in the workplace. What works well in one office environment will not necessarily work in another, and developing employee goals has as much to do with personal management style, the personalities involved, and the types of work being performed as it does with principles of human psychology. Some people simply won’t work well with employee performance reviews, set criteria for achievement, and the like. Other people need concrete benchmarks and evaluation in order to achieve their full potential as workers. Being a good manager always requires a great deal of flexibility, and this case is no exception.

I cut my teeth in employee development while working in a small office. Most of our employee goals were very short-term and concrete. We wanted a human resource manager to recruit someone excellent for such and such position, for example, or we wanted the advertising department to target this or that audience in the local community more efficiently. We never set broad goals, so you would think that the best approach was to have concrete benchmarks.

Nonetheless, I took quite the opposite approach, and did it very successfully. Rather than pressing my employees to achieve immediate results, I gave them the latitude to develop their skills in other ways. I encourage employee social networking, outside job skills development, and other sorts of professional development. I let them pursue their own goals with company help. By supporting their own continual intellectual development, I was doing something good for my employees and good for the company: I was making the employees feel valued, and encouraging their intellectual development. This made them sharper workers, and increased job performance.

This just goes to show you that sometimes the most direct approach in employee development is not the best. If you’re working with a small group of highly motivated, independent people, the best thing to do is to encourage their motivation and their independence. These types of people will not do well with a micromanagerial office manager breathing down their neck, constantly encouraging them with some piece of new corporate jargon. Instead, they will do their best work when encouraged to act as individuals. If I was dealing with Another type of worker, such as low-level employees or engineers, I would have to take a more concrete approach to employee development and instruct them in precisely what to shoot for.

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