Episode 3. Manager-Supported Career Development with Nick Denstaedt
Episode Description
In this episode of Office Hours, we continue our series on career development, exploring the ways managers can enable, support, and guide the career development of their direct reports.
I’m joined by Nick Denstaedt, a talent management leader with a background in operations, systems improvement, and industrial-organizational psychology.
Nick and I discuss how managers can more intentionally develop their people through better conversations, clearer follow-through, stretch opportunities, and everyday curiosity. We also discuss job crafting, experience mapping, psychological safety, and why making time for development may be one of the most strategic things a manager can do.
The episode is chock-full of practical tips and insights for managers engaging in this process to act with agency and to enable better individual and organizational outcomes.
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Episode Mentions, Notes, and Links
Below are some informational resources related to things mentioned in this episode.
70-20-10 rulehttps://hr.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/70-20-10_2.pdf
https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/70-20-10-rule/
Experience Mapping (article by Marc Effron)https://talentstrategygroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Using-Expereince-Maps-.pdf
The paper on team charters Nick referenced at the end of the episode:Mathieu, J. E., & Rapp, T. L. (2009). Laying the foundation for successful team performance trajectories: The roles of team charters and performance strategies. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(1), 90–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013257
Find Nick Denstaedt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-denstaedt
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Music: "Feel Good (Instrumental Version)" by PØW via Epidemic Sound
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Episode Transcript
Hannah (00:08)
Hey, y’all. Welcome to Office Hours at the Alignment Lab, where we explore what it really takes to align values, strategy, and behavior at work. I’m Hannah Yung-Boxdell, an organizational psychology practitioner, strategist, and systems architect. In Office Hours, we take an honest look at the human side of work and offer practical takeaways for evaluating what matters, what doesn’t, and how to focus our attentions accordingly. Whether you’re mid-career or in the executive suite,
The things you’ll hear about in Office Hours can build careers and organizations that are effective, resilient, and aligned with what matters most to you.
Hannah (00:49)
Quick PSA. There are a couple points in the episode where we had to contend with bit of external noise or technical difficulties, which created a little bit of disruption, like very, very brief cutouts. I did my best to minimize this, but apologies for any annoyance. If there are any audio engineers listening to this, I am ever open to constructive feedback.
Hannah (01:14)
So today we are continuing our conversation about career development and how our guest, Nick Denstaedt, approaches this topic as a talent management professional and a manager himself.
little bit about our guest. Nick began his career in supply chain operations, earning his Lean Six Sigma black belt and developing
in systems and process engineering.
He later turned a long time interest in psychology into a career, completing
the Masters of Professional Studies in Industrial Organizational Psychology program at George Mason and moving into human resources. For the past decade, Nick has led strategic talent initiatives, designing and improving tools and systems that enable HR and talent management to drive organizational performance. Welcome Nick.
Nick (02:02)
⁓ glad to be here.
Hannah (02:04)
Yeah, glad to have you here. We always have the best conversations. So we’ll just go ahead and get into it because I think we have a lot that we can get into. So, career development, of course, is a pretty wide ranging subject.
we’re breaking it down to talk about this work from mostly a manager’s perspective.
When it comes to career development, do you think responsibility actually sits? With the employee, the manager, the organization?
Nick (02:32)
I like this question. I have some strong opinions about it, as I do about many things. I’ve heard a lot in a lot of organizations the employee-led development or employees taking ownership of development. I don’t think it’s
problematic necessarily, but I know where it comes from, like adult learning theory and other self-determination theory where you want to give people autonomy and let them craft and own their development. But the problem is, ⁓ the fact that
A whole lot of people in their organization don’t find the time to develop themselves. So this is where I really start leaning towards manager-led or at least the manager partnering with the employee. I think the manager plays a real central and important role in making it happen.
Hannah (03:39)
I love that. So speaking of that, what do you think is the manager’s role within that ecosystem?
Nick (03:47)
there’s one challenge that comes up is that as an employee, if you think about when people are surveyed about how well they are, how good a driver they are. you probably heard this where it’s like 90 % of people say they’re better than average. That means 40 % are wrong. And we see this in
If you look at like training evaluation or things like that where when you’re reflecting on yourself, you kind of have an overinflated sense of self and the manager’s perspective, it’s a different perspective. And the manager is going to have some other things that are really helpful too, probably greater organizational awareness, a greater awareness of the
business priorities and probably knows how to guide you in terms of where you’re going and has the authority and influence a lot of times to kind of craft what you do and find, give you the space to develop, which is a huge part of you taking, you you’ve got learning and then you’ve got to practice and apply it for
for it to transfer for you to use it. So having that supportive space after not just the training event, after the event, the manager’s gonna play a big part in that. there’s a lot of ways as a manager, there’s a lot of things you can do to help your employee devote time.
Hannah (05:24)
Okay, just to kind of draw out a few points of what you said that I think are really interesting. So part of the manager’s role is to create some space, for, employees, their direct reports to be able to engage in activities, but also connecting.
the dots connecting maybe what the employee is doing with that greater organizational setting and like those priorities and contextualizing, what opportunities maybe there are or contextualizing the growth that the employee is undergoing.
Nick (06:02)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think you’re just you’re just as a manager. You’re just positioned in a great place And I think it’s it’s also understanding what motivates the employee too. And so this is this is where
There’s a good conversation to have as a manager when you think about employee engagement itself. it comes to mind like what you see in surveys, but when you look at the research of the definition of engagement, you’ve got vigor, which is energy for the job, absorption, which is getting lost in the job, and dedication, which is like your purpose. And if you can explore that,
Like when you first get, when you first become a manager with a new team or when you have a new team member join, it’s an excellent opportunity to have a conversation, to start teasing out the kind of things that they’re interested in, the kind of things that they just naturally feel compelled to do and kind of get lost in a state of flow. You explore that and then you know your business priorities.
And if you can connect those two things, you have a really good situation to give your employee really inspiring and well connected development to not only just what would be helpful in their career, but what’s going to get them passionate and want to make them really work hard and enjoy their job too.
Hannah (07:34)
Okay, I love that you that calling out specific opportunities that managers can start these conversations, right? Like, okay, when someone first starts, prime opportunity this conversation for the first time rather than waiting three months, six months, a year, or at some point, right?
Also, from the other when employees bring up career development,
Sometimes, some folks feel very comfortable doing that. Some don’t. I hear about these discussions, like employees and managers trying to have these discussions and outside of something like a more formal appraisal, it can almost feel like the conversations are ships passing in the night a little bit, like where there’s these missed cues
Nick (08:23)
Okay.
Hannah (08:23)
So in
your experience, how do employees usually bring up or try and broach topic of career development with their managers? it directly, indirectly, awkwardly sometimes?
Nick (08:37)
Well, you sure all of the above. I think the biggest problem is often you get lost in the priorities, they get lost in the priorities, and you don’t find time to talk about it.
So sometimes in some organizations, you’ve got a really structured performance management process, which includes setting a development goal and includes following up on it. And you’re getting well-timed nudges and you’re getting follow-up to make sure you do it. I mean, we could debate how much you should manage versus nudge and recommend. But the reality is that a lot of times, I think there’s certain individuals that just have a hunger for it.
and we’ll seek it out and it won’t matter. They’re gonna ask you for it and they’re gonna find it. But there’s a lot of people who, they get sorta, they’re just focused on their job and so it’s hard to carve out that time for them. Again, this is like as a manager, I mean it’s hard to carve out time as a manager as well but you put something on your calendar.
Like, you you listen to this, you put something on your calendar today. Or when you do the development goal at the beginning of the year, put something on your calendar now to check in on it. Because it’s just, I think that’s what’s really hard is just finding the time to talk about it and finding the time to follow up on that you’ve actually done something.
Hannah (10:15)
of tactics and speaking of approaches, from the manager perspective, because I think both an employee and a manager, position can what you just said and put it into practice, whether it’s self-led or the manager is leading the conversations. Either one can do that time blocking and scheduling out on calendars.
What are some common pitfalls that you think managers, most commonly maybe get wrong or miss when they’re trying to develop their people.
Nick (10:42)
Well, one thing I think it’s great as a starting point, know, figuring out again what it is they’re passionate about. So if you haven’t had the conversation, you can have it and you can prepare to have it where you’re going to ask some questions like, gets you up in the morning? What do you look forward to? What comes easiest for you? And then on the opposite side of that, also
What makes you hit the snooze alarm? What do you dread? Where do you thrive? What is just feels like exhausting for you? If you have that conversation, as a starting point, you know kind of their strengths and their passions. And so I think this is a great starting point to think about development. But then I think the other pitfall is just being thoughtful about what that development is.
So your employee might be like, Oh, I want to work on communication or, it’s, it’s something generic and you know, where did it come from? Did it come from 360 feedback? Did it come from your observations as well? Is it something that’s going to help them in their career? So being thoughtful about what it is and positioning towards.
how is it going to make you better at your current job? How is it going to prepare you for a future job or future job options? So I think that that is important as well. And I guess finally, I’ll note, it’s like you can go attend a training event, you can read a book, but you should think about when you’re working on something, you should think about a combination that the 70-20-10 rule in learning
You have 10 % formal learning, 20 % learning from others, 70 % learning from experiences. So I think you wanna think about putting all of those on the table. 20%, you can think about mentoring, coaches. Like when you learn something, that 10 % in a book or a formal training event, who’s gonna help you apply it? Who’s gonna help you give feedback after you practice it? And then the 70%, what experiences are gonna help you test out?
this new skill. So and I think you could fit that all into like a little one page development goal guide, because I said a lot. yeah, I be overall being thoughtful about that development goal and and having having some concrete plans to follow up.
Hannah (13:19)
So as a manager, how do you encourage, if not ensure, people are actually doing those things?
Nick (13:29)
You know, practicing what I preach, like Sometimes I’ve done what I’ve said and sometimes I haven’t. Sometimes I do put those calendar invites where I say, okay, this one on one is going to be to follow up on development. You know, we’re going do this quarterly. I’ve done it before, but I’ve not done it before and got lost in my to do’s. So I think there’s absolutely that.
Something else, like if it’s attending a training event, you want to have some follow up and discuss how your employee is going to use it. something interesting is if you, if there’s a project or an initiative or another department that needs help and you connect it to somebody’s strengths and passions and you allocate some time for them to do it. And at the end, they have to present, they have to deliver something. Maybe they’re
implementing a vendor enhancement. Maybe they have to report out at the end. If you do that, you’re both going to be on the hook for the success for that. So that’s something else interesting to think about. And that can be harder to carve out that amount of time. But again, looking at your business priorities, often there’s a little bit of flexibility that you can find so that if you know what your employee likes and what their strengths are, you can connect that opportunity.
And then that’s going to be some rich experience that’s going to be really beneficial in their development.
Hannah (14:59)
Absolutely. That comes back around to where we kind of started about managers connecting the dots sometimes, connecting the opportunities, for the employee, like, okay, you’re interested in this. Here’s this opportunity. because managers so often have that greater span of,
what they can see and what they know about. They can help create those opportunities or connect those opportunities.
Nick (15:23)
Yeah, and you saying it It absolutely can sound like a lot. I keep thinking about time blocking That it’s almost like you need an accountability partner You can tell your manager that you’re gonna do it and then it puts you on the hook to do it Because I mean just personally I found I time block and I put time on my calendar and something urgent comes up and like
good, have some extra time and I, you know, use up that time block. I think it’s, coming together with your team, having a point in time where you talk to your manager or peers about development opportunities across your department and org. If you can get that, so that’s on the schedule, right? That you’re gonna,
you’re going to carve out time for yourselves to get on the phone or in person and talk about opportunities, stretch assignments, projects for the betterment of the whole group. Whether it’s a business priority, there’s development goals connected to it. you can get really creative because this is kind of a lot of work because a well thought out development goal, there’s thinking in between having the conversation with your employee and aligning with them and what the right development goal is.
So I think it’s definitely getting creative to find the way to carve out the time to do it.
Hannah (16:42)
Yeah, we were talking a little bit about self-led, right? But from a manager’s perspective, like managers are also employees, right? in, their own evaluations, like, hey, I’m trying to develop my skill in developing others.
And so that’s something that I’m calling out now and these are the things that I’m gonna be working on. I mean, I completely hear you. There’s a few different ways, approaching that. I don’t wanna get us too off course in terms of starting to talk about know we can,
Nick (17:11)
a man[ager], you inherit different organizational structures and different nudges. So when you don’t have them, it’s really interesting to think about,
Hannah (17:14)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (17:20)
to,
not to belabor it, but, ⁓ behavioral economics has some interesting
Things that I draw from that makes me reflect on how hard it is to just find time to act on things status quo bias a simple inertia of just following the set path and
it’s hard to take extra effort and go off that path and find time for your development. You’ve got a study on 401ks where before, this is the auto enrollment with 401ks where before there’d be a lot of people who wouldn’t sign up. And then it just became the default. So once it was the default, people could opt out. They being forced, they could opt out.
But so many more people were enrolling in 401Ks.
So it’s interesting to reflect on these things and just think about how, if you don’t have those structures in your organization, how you can do that with your team and commit to things, put something on the calendar, say, hey, team, we’re gonna dedicate this day for development and we’re gonna get together and we’re gonna bring in a facilitator. I think, probably said enough about it now, but there’s a lot of things you can do creatively to
think about how to make development happen.
Hannah (18:38)
Speaking of
creativity, From your perspective, what’s a, mindset shift or a certain mindset even that, a manager in order to really support development.
Nick (18:54)
you think about your business priorities, it’s understanding the importance development. I suppose you could speak to when you’re providing employees development opportunities that you’re to have better retention, you’re going have better engagement.
But I think a lot of leaders have seen when somebody moves out of a position and the time it takes to find a successor and the disruption related to that. that can get really hard, especially in a senior position when you replace that position and then
That makes an internal move and you gotta replace people in another position. So from a leadership continuity standpoint, it gets really hard if you’re not taking the time to develop your people. So I think if nothing else, it really is critically important for business continuity to be building your bench and carving out time for development.
Hannah (20:01)
So you’re saying taking a proactive mindset kind of like how one preventative care, right? An ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure type of mindset.
Nick (20:14)
Yeah,
Yeah, I think there might be something else to be said about like the kind of mindset when you think about growth mindset and kind of a similar association with psychological safety. There’s a there’s another kind of learning that takes place.
in day-to-day interactions. So I think there’s a whole other place we could go in terms of building psychological safety with your team. there’s things that you can think about in terms of how you run your meetings and how you set up your team agendas and finding reflection points. Like there could be key moments in a project.
or key moments in an annual, if there’s something you repeat every year, key moments where you reflect and you schedule a debrief and you openly discuss lessons learned. And you can model this too in the meeting where you’re acknowledging things that, like your role personally and things that you think could have gone better.
and just making it okay to present opportunities for us collectively to improve and build that psychologically safe environment. So there’s definitely, I think there’s the longer development arcs, but there’s a lot of importance gonna be time well spent to take inventory on how often you’re learning from mistakes.
or you’re just learning and continuously improving your processes in dedicating that time in your meetings to do that as a team.
Hannah (21:59)
Absolutely. You know, I am planning another little mini series psychological safety. because you’re right, there’s so much that we can get into there and kind of talk about what would feel like small practical things, and sometimes that’s just what it comes down to like carving out the space or creating the norm, right? And how do you do that?
So speaking of getting kind of practical though, we’ve talked about, some of these conversations, that should happen, you know, ideally if you’re a manager that wants to be developing their people So what does a good career development conversation actually sound like? like, how as a manager, for instance, do you?
Approach that. Where do you start?
Nick (22:46)
you
I think in addition to knowing what drives them and what interests them, think having some, I mean, it sounds kind of trite maybe, but asking if they’ve thought about things that they want to do in the three to five year time frame and
I think encouraging, ⁓ exploring, getting to know people and exploring future careers, I think that can be really helpful because if people have, if you can find a target, ⁓ you know, ⁓ a medium term target for their career, you can really help, you can talk together about the things that you think would be helpful.
The other thing is ⁓ finding, and this can be really hard, but it’s like finding the opportunity to reflect on ⁓ areas for improvement. And so sometimes that’s gonna come up. Ideally, it doesn’t come up only in the annual performance review. So like if, I think this goes way back to like the start.
of the performance management process where you’re giving your team, when you’re having conversations with your employee, you’ve given them role clarity, you’ve talked about what their job is and isn’t, you’ve set some clear SMART goals, and so you have a starting point. But then if you can build in natural points to reflect on
how things are going, like scheduling a quarterly meeting or finding key moments like maybe mid-project, end of project. There’s a lot of different ways you can find a milestone where you sit and reflect and talk about what went great and you frame it. You frame it that it’s a part of just continuous learning and figuring out,
trying to figure out what the best development goal and how I can best support you. And so frame the conversation, but making it a habit so it doesn’t feel awkward. Once you get into that habit of reflecting, I think that can be helpful. And when the opportunity affords it, 360s are wonderful. Not every employee in the organization you do a 360, but when it makes sense.
and you can do a 360. And if you can’t do a 360, as an employee, can ask for feedback after calls. can talk to somebody you have good rapport with. You can find moments in a project where you can get feedback. So I think getting feedback broader than what the manager sees is another great source of information, as is doing a
like a competency sort of assessment where you’re at, you’re both talking about the areas where you feel strong or feel you need more opportunity and lining. So I think there’s a lot of things that can provide input where you can kind of explore together what the best area focuses for the current job and future jobs. That was a lot, but I think there’s a lot of different sources of input that you can, that there’s a lot of opportunities to make that conversation a good one.
Hannah (26:38)
Absolutely. And kind of a side question here. So I think it’s natural to kind of, think about, you know, the employee who is maybe really driven and really wants career development is raising their hand is either starting or showing up to do these conversations in a particular kind of way. But there’s plenty of folks who,
maybe don’t show in that same way or going back to what you were first saying about like, well, kind of what are you thinking of interested in your next three to five years? If they say, I don’t know, or I haven’t thought about it, or I just want to be able to keep doing what I’m doing, what I’m good at. And then frankly, like go home and clock out mentally and live my life. And so how do you
or maybe does your approach shift, respecting maybe sometimes those boundaries, those desires, but also not wanting to completely,
step away or for lack of a better way, like write off direct reports who are feeling this way, because as we all know, like those things can shift, over time anyway for anybody. So does your approach change at all?
Nick (27:51)
Oh yeah, absolutely. Because there’s some people who have found a thing and they’re perfectly content in what they’re doing.
In that case, I don’t think it makes sense to push and force them to have a three to five year long-term career goal. I don’t think you need one. And it doesn’t shut down the conversation, because it’s possible that they come back and change their mind. You don’t have the conversation once and never check in again. also,
I do not hassle people who are like this. I’m not going to bring it up a lot. The one thing that I will absolutely do is standard in good performance management discipline, having goals that we’re driving for improvement and looking for ways to get feedback. Do we understand?
How will we define the customer of our process? Do we understand their needs? Are we delivering on them? How can we enhance it? So I think there’s always room and opportunity to focus on continuous improvement and focus on points of reflection for the growth mindset. What can we learn from this? Because they can be perfectly happy in their role, but there’s always opportunities to learn and tweak.
So I think that’s important to maintain in your conversation. But I don’t think it’s necessary to really push the long-term career goals. So I absolutely do think it makes all the sense to adapt these conversations depending on what people are looking for.
Hannah (29:36)
So switching gears here for a second, a little. You recently mentioned to me the concept of experience mapping as a practical tool. First of all, for our listeners who might not be familiar, what is that? And how does it differ from maybe more traditional approaches?
Nick (29:55)
Yeah, and I’ll say I’ve really gotten interested in this. Mark Efron has written some articles on experience mapping. And so I think to get the best definition of the approach, you can look at that. But what really resonates for me, it’s really interesting.
Once again, think about
the 70-20-10 rule in learning and how much is coming from the 70%. But also, I think it’s natural, like when you think about success profiles for a role. And this can get into succession planning, this can get into selection, but when you think about what makes somebody successful for this role, often it’s your KSAs, your knowledge, skills, and abilities. But
really interesting to look at it
that involves
And so, like as an example, you could look at somebody and
readiness for a particular role and think, how are they in strategic thinking or system thinking? And you could be, you could be in a team you could be debating this with a bunch of leaders. Whereas, what about if it’s an experience which was
this person has had broad experience in leading complex cross-functional projects that have had an enterprise level impact. And you can start talking, and you can get more specific than that, where you’re talking about these specific experience statements that have demonstrated that skill in others by this person successfully being exposed to and executing those things. So I think it’s really compelling and interesting to think about
where not that you don’t ever, not that KSAs aren’t important, but how interesting it can be to be able to assess people’s readiness and to think about development in terms of a set of specific experiences that make you ready for a certain role.
Hannah (32:00)
So some of our listeners might be doing succession management, trying to build their bench, trying to do strategic workforce planning, looking at, okay, these are our critical roles or role families that we really need. rather than maybe focusing on the skills needed
looking at it from, right, these are the experiences that have developed the people who are successful in these roles now. these are the types of experiences have developed them. so once you can develop that tool, that’s your, that’s your template, for then taking that, like, okay, these types of experiences have developed.
you know,
what’s necessary for someone to bring to this role or be successful in this role. it’s kind of also a roadmap, right? on how to get there in and of itself. then you can also take that and try and base individual.
or team development plans drawing from those.
Nick (33:06)
Yeah, and I like you said roadmap, it’s a great way to think about it because if if you ask the incumbent of a role, you ask a leader about their role and and say what are the critical experiences that got you and you ask some other incumbents and you see what patterns there are. Where you think about what what experiences are going to prepare us for the future.
And you come up with a set of experiences and then you look at somebody and their readiness for that role and you say, they’ve done this or that. Yeah, that really fits there. So yeah, I think they’ve developed the skills that we based this experience, but here’s a couple of other experiences. And let’s think, how long does it take to lead a big complex project or to spend time as a manager of managers in this area?
You know, these are things that take, more than a year in that experience. And now you say, well, they really need to do both. And both take about two years. So now you’re figuring out a long-term career path to be ready for a role. And I think it’s good to be thinking of the end in mind here is that as you map this out, you’re getting really specific.
really tangible and concrete development plans. So that’s some of what I found really compelling about the idea.
Hannah (34:33)
I just, I love this. I love this idea. so is this something that you’ve been, you’ve kind of started doing a little bit in your organization? are there any particular areas or ways that you’ve seen it work particularly well or not?
Nick (34:50)
Yeah, no, I’ve seen it be helpful in succession planning. And I think it’s interesting to explore where else you can use thing that’s interesting to think about. If you are thinking, I’m an employee, how could I apply this for myself?
As you, it’s a great thing in general to network and build relationships and learn about things that you might be interested in or just broaden your knowledge and understanding of your organization. Cause you might find something that you’re interested in that you didn’t realize you’d be interested in. But as you do that, if you ask questions like, what are some of the key experiences that made you ready for this role? And you ask different people.
Like say you find something you have a target on and you talk people within your organization, outside of your organization, and you ask the same question. You can be doing sort of your own ⁓ research on your target and you can find some patterns and themes and then you might have some developmental experience ideas for yourself that you can talk with your manager.
or you can pursue. So again, I think it’s really healthy to do competency assessments and consider what KSAs you need to develop to be better in your current and future roles. But it’s just an interesting way to come up with some really concrete experiences that can build the scaffolding of your career and get you from point A to point B.
Hannah (36:32)
I love that you found a way even for like individuals to this, but overall just taking a step back, you’ve mentioned this is really helpful and that is more concrete. And just want to highlight that how often have we had people say, well, here are our competencies. And then, you hear people being like, well,
what is executive presence? And like, how do I get that? I hear this a lot, with, ⁓ I’ve spoken to a lot of women, you know, about that one in particular, you know, what is executive presence and why am I being told I don’t have it? I think there’s actually some other things going on there, but this is a different way that can like increase the,
Nick (36:59)
you
Hannah (37:15)
about like what’s what’s meant by things.
Nick (37:17)
Yeah.
Hannah (37:19)
not like putting too fine of a point on on things, right, which can be the trap, what feels like the trap these types of experiences tend to help develop this type of skill or competency, right?
Nick (37:33)
Yeah, I think it’s with competencies, again, they’re important, but you do a lot of work to get really objective and to get aligned on what that means. Behavioral anchored rating scales are great, but they take a lot of work.
And you can have them at the bottom of a nice one page layout for your leader, your executive or whatever, but it’s easy to make that mental shortcut. It’s a lot of information. It’s good examples of behaviors of what developing, proficient, excelling, whatever the scale is, it’s helpful. when you’re having a conversation, like in a talent review, and you say so-and-so does it, doesn’t have it,
Are you really consuming that information? I think it takes a good facilitator to challenge those things and make sure you’re talking behaviors and so that people are really aligned. it takes, sometimes it can take more work. Whereas if you have a suitable experience, it can be a little more concrete. I don’t say that we move away from competencies, but I think it’s nice to blend and it’s nice when.
When you have those experiences, it can be a little more straightforward when you have the conversation about readiness or how to develop people.
Hannah (38:55)
Yeah, absolutely.
So another, little jump here, just because you and I have talked about this subject so often and I think it’s a favorite. I know you have a perspective on job crafting, and from a manager perspective rather than from the employee perspective, Because job crafting at its core is how employees,
craft their own jobs it’s not by design, it’s not being directed What’s your perspective on job from a manager’s standpoint?
Nick (39:25)
I think it’s the same problem as employee-led development where ⁓ absolutely, I mean, it’s a great tool for employee to think about. Like, how can I influence, what am I truly passionate about? What am I good at? And how can I influence what I do, who I work with, why I work on it?
All of those things you can influence and enrich your job. But I think it’s quite powerful, again, because the manager has this broader understanding typically of things that are coming down the pipeline. And if you get that understanding of what your employees really want and what makes them tick, you’re in a better position to job craft for them.
Yeah, I think it’s I really the other thing again, there’s there’s employees that actively are doing this and their employees like you noted that are pretty content in their job and they don’t necessarily think about how they can enrich or some people get stuck and they don’t really like it but there’s these opportunities to enrich their job. So I find that being proactive
Sometimes I’m asking questions of my employees that they haven’t considered for themselves and haven’t considered. I mean, me personally, finding a way to bring psychology into my job and just recognizing, you I love psychology, but I never thought that I could do it in my job. And then I had this moment where I got a project that ⁓ liaised with HR, supply chain and HR, that I was like, ⁓ maybe I could.
try to bring psychology into my job and try to move into HR. I hadn’t considered it for myself. So I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for the manager to prompt that conversation to really understand what makes their employees take what they want and connect it with opportunities because they’ve got a broader view of the opportunities and priorities that might fit.
Hannah (41:27)
So we’re talking about like, somehow engendering or planting a kernel maybe that the employee then, decides to water or not in terms of, crafting their own job. How, as a manager, you like, how are you approaching
Nick (41:47)
it’s funny, I was asking a direct report what they enjoy doing, where they really feel like they’re thriving. And I asked them, what don’t you like? And they’re like, it’s fine. I do my job, fine. No, it’s okay, you can tell me. I really want to know. And so it was interesting because they hadn’t been asked that.
You know, and I think there’s different ways to ask it. And sometimes you know without asking. Another way is observing where, when they get excited, when they’re talking about something and you see somebody with more body language, they get more animated.
So they’re really excited about the topic. So you can watch for those kinds of things too, but people won’t always tell you. So when you find that sense of purpose or that thing that gives them energy or the thing that they get lost in, they get in a state of flow and you just feel compelled and you enjoy doing it. When you find those things, you can’t always find the perfect match.
But there’s often something that you can do to shift things. it just so happened that there was an employee that was in an analytical role. And I was noticing that they were getting a lot more energy, like being in the front line, doing fast-paced stuff. And it was a real mismatch with their current job. essentially, we took steps to find them a new job.
And it was a little painful for me because I had to find a room. But that’s how it goes. And it’s better for the organization overall. So yeah, think it’s asking the questions and observing.
Hannah (43:43)
And then sounds like, you you might make that observation and then, share that observation with them
Nick (43:48)
yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I’d be like, noticed that you really dig that, you know, exactly right. you just, bring it up in, in, in hopefully you’re having a regular one-on-one because that’s, that that’s really helpful for getting that and just feedback and make sure they have what they need. ⁓ there’s, there’s a lot of good evidence, having some kind of regular one-on-one weekly biweekly is, important. but yeah, you bring it up in the next one or one and you bring up what
observed and explore that.
Hannah (44:18)
Yeah. And sometimes that’s enough, right? You don’t have to be the one solving everything, you know, just planting the seed with an observation can, can lead to a lot of places. Absolutely.
Nick (44:30)
Yeah, that’s funny thing you said, said too. I think sometimes when you become a manager, you put this weight on yourself. You’re like, my employees engagement, this, this affects so much of their life. And you have to give yourself some grace and realize that you’re just a person too. And you do your best. try to fit it in, but, you’re going to make mistakes and.
That’s okay.
Hannah (44:54)
So speaking of that, you know, mean, just-
managers, right, and grace. So we’ve talked about a lot about these, but if you had to give managers like maybe two practical starting points for developing their people more intentionally.
what would those be?
Nick (45:14)
I think it’s carving out time for a development conversation and to align on a development goal and to schedule meetings to follow up on it. I think that’s one. And
it’s having that conversation to learn about. It’s more than just what do you want to do in five years? Because it’s interesting because when you ask these questions, what’s up in the morning? What do you look forward to? Where do you thrive? What do you dread?
And I think this is at the heart of job crafting as well that ⁓ you have this idea of this unicorn dream job, but in reality, if you reflect, know, what is it in my job that really gets me going? Do I love coaching people? Do I love owning a thing and leading a thing and having full autonomy? ⁓ Do I love technology?
Do I love just interacting with people and getting people to collaborate? There’s a lot of those things that you can find in a whole lot of jobs. So it’s really not about finding a unicorn job. It’s about finding the job that hits on the things that give you energy and enjoyment. And so that’s why I think it’s so powerful to ask some simple questions because I have experienced this where people are discovering what they really like about what they do.
and what they don’t like, and it’s broadening the places that they could go to fulfill that, which really opens up your career possibilities. So yeah, those are the two things. Simply making time for it, whether you need an accountability partner, you use Outlook to help you, and having a good conversation about people, what really gets people to tick.
Hannah (47:05)
Time and curiosity about others, right? About your people. I love it.
Nick (47:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
Hannah (47:13)
speaking of curiosity, how does like a manager’s own values maybe influence how they approach developing others? How does that, how do your values maybe influence how you approach developing others?
Nick (47:26)
I think one thing I’ve always thought is if you can position your team with, their strengths and their interests in a way that aligns with the priorities of
business. It’s quite a powerful thing. And I think it’s probably a servant leadership mindset as well. But it’s like giving your team the tools to thrive, positioning them to thrive. I mean, those are the values that I draw upon,
a big time investment, something that anybody can do. So I recommend it for everybody. the other value that I think comes to mind for me goes back to my Lean Six Sigma training.
That if you set your internal customer up for success, if everybody does that, you’re leading to a pretty well-run business. That comes out in the process, how we can get customer feedback and how we’re continuously improving.
Hannah (48:33)
I love those, I love those. So do you think?
you just said that it doesn’t take too long to kind of figure out your values and be intentional. You don’t need to spend a lot of time necessarily doing that. But how do you think managers overlook values when having career conversations? Or maybe I put another way, how do you incorporate values into these kinds of career conversations?
Nick (49:03)
That’s a good question. I mean, I might be somebody who overlooks it. I think it’s interesting to, I’m to have to reflect on that one, but
Maybe that is one thing to self-reflect on what that is. You know, the other thing that comes to mind for me, it was when studying about leadership frameworks, that was pretty interesting. getting me to self-reflect on what it means to be a leader and what inspiration I draw from. So I think you make a good point here.
I think some people naturally come up with and know their values, but finding opportunities for people to reflect on, especially early, like with frontline or first time leader development. I think that’s probably a good place for that, where you’re getting some idea of what it means to be a leader and to inspire and motivate a team.
Yeah, but I’m gonna have to might have to take a takeaway to self-reflect on that, you know myself in terms of how my values play out and how I you know how I leave
Hannah (50:17)
I love that. I will just say for the benefit of people listening to this, Nick and I were in, did our masters in the same program. And so he and I had this assignment, that involved, you know, putting words to basically the top characteristics or you could call them values.
in your individual ideal or schema of leadership and how everyone has their own actually. And so there’s all these different styles of leadership and basically that exercise though, where you put it into concrete terms and I come back to that a lot too.
for sure.
Nick (50:53)
I probably know it probably was pretty Insightful yeah having gone through
Hannah (51:03)
Before we wrap up, I’d love to shift a little bit from strategy and the tactical things we’ve been talking about to alignment in general for a moment. I have three questions that I like to ask every guest. Ready? Okay. So what’s one value of yours that shapes how you make decisions?
Nick (51:18)
I’m ready.
Hannah (51:27)
Ha
Nick (51:28)
Why I’m going to pick one that I haven’t said already, because I like to think about positioning employees. I like to think about customer focus.
Being data driven, that’d be another one for me that just comes out frequently. And I definitely draw upon research in the IO space, having a good way to measure results, to come to the right decisions. And the challenge doing that in the HR space, but you can find ways to do it.
So that’d be the third one that I think really shapes how I lead is getting, our team to think about how we’re measuring success and aligning on what success looks like.
Hannah (52:15)
Okay, Second question. Can you share something in your life or career that changed once you aligned it more closely with your values?
Nick (52:26)
okay.
Yeah, I think when I matched my interests in psychology more with my work really getting expertise in it more than just listening to podcasts and reading books, getting a master’s in IO psychology, I think it really, it helped me feel
more aligned with what drives me and what I think is super important in organizations to use good evidence-based talent and HR practices. So both moving into HR and really realizing that I’m in the HR space, but there’s a lot of questions that I don’t really know what the…
the best evidence says that we should do. Getting educated on evidence-based practice, think, made me feel, a lot better and it does feel more aligned what I wanted to do in my career, is to be able to really influence good talent decisions.
Hannah (53:39)
That’s awesome. addition to like just loving that answer, also just love that for you. Okay, so last question. What’s one thing that you’re currently experimenting with or maybe reconsidering in your own life or work?
Nick (53:57)
Mmm.
I’m pretty regularly trying new things. I’m regularly challenging myself to an area of research that I don’t understand as well and find ways to apply it in what I do. I mean, just one example, there’s this paper about
charters from Mathieu and Rapp and they were showing how when you think of a project charter you think about the goal, the timeline, the scope, the sponsor, those are things you traditionally think about in project management but they had brought this idea of team roles and aligning on team processes.
and thinking about how are going to manage conflict. And so this is just one example where challenged myself to find a way to incorporate that and got the opportunity to help a team that was getting started.
explore their differences in communication styles, in team roles, in working styles, and capture that in a team charter so they better understood how to work together. And this goes right at the heart of team science. So this is something that I’m regularly challenging myself to find ways to pull in the research to improve organizational outcomes.
Hannah (55:32)
Love that we managed to get teams in here a little bit.
Thanks so much, Nick. I really appreciate insights today. For listeners who want to connect or follow you, where can they find you?
Nick (55:43)
LinkedIn, Nick Denstaedt, D-E-N-S-T-A-E-D-T.
Hannah (55:48)
Okay, yeah, there’s a hidden couple letters in there. But we’ll include it in the show notes.
Hannah (56:00)
That was Nick Denstaedt breaking down the manager’s role in career development and offering a ton of tactical information about how managers actually do this in their day to day. I really appreciate how Nick centers the employee in this process. In his approach, employee motivations and interests often serve as the entry point to career development conversations rather than simply thinking about what problems they, the employee,
might be ideally situated or suited to solving for the organization. There are myriad ways Nick talked about that managers can do this, be it through curious conversation or their own observation, or even through modeling behaviors to encourage learning or development in day-to-day interactions, one-on-one or team interactions. I also appreciated the framing that
Nick provided that managers are uniquely positioned with opportunities to both enable and support the ongoing development of their people and by extension their organizations. Some of my favorite points related to this unique positioning were that managers have a greater span of organizational awareness, making them well positioned to discern opportunities.
often that serve both the needs of the employees and the organization. And secondly, this word wasn’t used, but the sense making function of managers. That is the role that managers play in contextualizing opportunities and learning, the learning process itself for employees within the greater organizational context or
or even just a more personal process and trajectory of their own careers. And then finally, just remembering that managers are employees too. We kind of circled back a little bit briefly on self-led development when it comes to managers, right? And that the idea that managers can incorporate employee development activities and outcomes into their own personal development plans, which is an idea that
I definitely love personally.
Hannah (58:15)
Finally, a listener mentioned in a comment to me that they aren’t super familiar with industrial organizational psychology. Really appreciate that feedback. And so I just wanted to take a moment here because this topic has come up a few times already. I mentioned it in the intro and especially this episode since Nick and I both studied IO psychology in graduate school and we leverage the science of that field in our daily work.
it’s come up. And so I wanted to take a moment here to say a couple of things.
First, IO psychology is a field of behavioral science that’s focused on both workplaces and elements of work itself. And so there are many areas of focus under the umbrella of industrial organizational psychology, including those focused on personnel.
such as selecting, assessing, and training workers. The word industrial ostensibly refers to the side of the field. I’ll say the field was named a long time ago. And the organizational side, generally speaking, focuses on a on the broader work environments and factors, such as team and organizational dynamics, culture and climate, leadership, et cetera.
So I’m thinking of doing a deeper dive on this subject in one of my upcoming solo episodes, where I can explore with a little more detail what this field is and various ways that it matters to you or to all of us. So if that would be interesting to you, or if you have any specific questions about this topic, please let me know.
You can send me a message at officehours at alignmentlab dot online or via the message form at alignmentlab.online.
If this conversation sparked something for you or made you think of a manager you’ve had, please consider sharing it with someone it brought to mind. And please subscribe and rate the podcast on Spotify. I would really appreciate it. And I think you will too.
Until next time, stay curious.