Creating impactful growth plans involves more than setting objectives.

– it’s about building a culture of continuous development, collaboration, and well-being.

By providing your team with clear goals, regular feedback, learning opportunities, and the resources they need to grow, you foster an environment where growth is both sustainable and impactful.

Equally, investing in your own leadership development is crucial to maintaining the growth trajectory of your team. Remember: A blend of soft skills, like communication and empathy, with hard skills, such as technical expertise leads to the ideal recipe for success.

Fostering Growth in Your Team

1. Set Clear, Aligned Goals

Growth requires direction, and as a manager, you must help your team set realistic, actionable goals that are aligned with both personal development and business needs.

According to a 2023 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, over 68% of developers indicated they were either actively looking for new learning opportunities or career growth within their current role. This highlights the need for clear career progression and the opportunity for continuous learning.

Such as:

– Career Ladders: Develop a structured career ladder or path for your team. Use frameworks like the Radford Career Levels to define job levels and expectations clearly.

– Tech Competency Frameworks: Implement competency matrices like the Engineering Manager Ladder by Medium or Spotify’s Squad Framework, which map specific technical and soft skills to each role within your team.

KPIs:

Stay on track with development.

– Goal Achievement Rate: Measure the percentage of team members meeting their quarterly or annual development goals.

– Learning Milestones: Track how many courses or certifications are completed in a given timeframe. Aim for an 80% course completion rate for your team.

2. Provide Regular Feedback and Support

Feedback is one of the most important factors driving personal and professional growth. Establish a structure where feedback is frequent, actionable, and supportive. Schedule moments to look back and review, for example:

– 1:1 Meetings: Use Lattice or Leapsome to facilitate structured 1:1s, where both the manager and employee discuss progress, challenges, and feedback. Make these meetings a two-way dialogue to encourage honest communication.

–  360-Degree Feedback: Implement 360-degree reviews using tools like Culture Amp or 15Five, which allow peers, reports, and managers to provide feedback.

KPIs:

–  Feedback Participation Rate: Aim for a 90% participation rate in peer and manager reviews, ensuring feedback is holistic and consistent.

3. Encourage Continuous Learning

In tech, keeping skills sharp and updated is essential. As a manager, it’s important to create opportunities for ongoing learning and development.

Examples:

– Learning Platforms: Enroll team members in platforms like Udemy or LinkedIn Learning for short, structured courses on emerging technologies, management, and soft skills.

– Tech Conferences: Encourage attendance at conferences like to expose team members to new ideas and networking opportunities. Take a look at Xena’s Tech Summit.

– Internal Learning Programs: Start an internal “lunch and learn” series where team members present on new technologies, methodologies, or case studies.

KPIs:

Find metrics to ensure that learning initiatives are impactful and lead to practical improvements in the team’s capabilities.

– Course Completion Rate: Track the number of courses completed and certifications earned. Set a benchmark that at least 70% of team members complete one learning programme per quarter.

– New Skill Adoption Rate: Measure how frequently new skills are adopted by the team and how they contribute to the team’s overall productivity or efficiency (e.g., adopting a new cloud service or framework to reduce deployment time).

4. Promote Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing

A collaborative environment speeds up learning and fosters innovation. Encouraging cross-functional teamwork and knowledge-sharing improves team dynamics and accelerates growth. Create the opportunity to hone in soft and hard skills.

– Code Reviews: Implement regular code reviews via platforms like GitHub or GitLab, ensuring knowledge sharing and peer learning.

– Hackathons: Organise team or company-wide hackathons to encourage innovative thinking and collaboration across functions.

– Internal Wikis: Use tools like Confluence or Notion to create internal knowledge bases where team members can document processes, best practices, or new learnings.

KPIs:

Promoting collaboration improves not only team cohesion but also accelerates problem-solving and innovation.

– Participation Rate in Knowledge Sharing Initiatives: Track how many team members participate in peer reviews, internal training sessions, or hackathons.

– Cross-Team Collaboration Rate: Measure the number of projects involving collaboration between different teams. Aim for a 25% increase in such initiatives year-on-year.

5. Address Burnout and Maintain Well-being

Burnout is a major issue in tech, and if left unchecked, it can severely hinder growth. As a manager, fostering an environment that prioritises well-being is crucial for sustainable growth.

Examples:

–Workload Balancing: Use project management tools to ensure work is distributed evenly. Regularly assess workloads and adjust when necessary.

– Mental Health Resources: Provide access to services such as Headspace or Calm for mindfulness practices, and encourage the use of Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) for mental health support.

– Flexible Working Hours: Embrace flexible work schedules or remote work opportunities to help employees balance their personal and professional lives.

KPIs:

These KPIs directly correlate to employee retention, satisfaction, and productivity, ensuring long-term growth potential.

– Employee Satisfaction Scores: Use pulse surveys to measure team satisfaction. Set a goal of 75% or higher in employee satisfaction.

– Burnout Rate: Aim to reduce self-reported burnout rates by 15% through better workload management and well-being initiatives.

Planning Your Own Growth

As a tech leader or manager, it’s easy to overlook your personal growth while focusing on your team. However, developing your leadership skills is essential to stay effective in a rapidly evolving environment.

For this section, we’ve collected advice from Dani Araujo

Meet Dani: Engineering Manager at Flix and Author of Bits&Brushes. As a seasoned IT professional with over two decades of experience in the software industry, she brings a wealth of expertise to the table. Her passion lies in guiding individuals through their transformative journey of growth, empowering them to reach their full potential. 

Many people don’t invest time in a growth plan because they underestimate the importance of having clear goals. Some try and fail because they create abstract plans and set goals that are impossible to achieve or don’t have genuine interest or motivation. Here are some essential factors to consider when developing a consistent growth plan and making significant progress in your career.

Acknowledge how it can help you.

– It brings clarity to what you want to achieve. Without clear goals, career progression is like gambling. You never know if you will win, and sometimes you try to fool yourself, and the perspectives are usually not good. It prevents you from stagnating in your career or missing the best opportunities as it guides your actions and decisions keeping you focused on what matters.

– It boosts your motivation. A clear vision for your next steps fosters a sense of accountability and commitment. And as you progress, the feeling of accomplishment will help you stay focused.

– It allows you to measure progress over time. Your plan enables you to assess where you stand, identify gaps, and make adjustments. A continuous assessment keeps you on track and ensures that you progress in your desired direction.

1. Identify where you are in your career.

Before setting goals, you need to do an honest and deep self-assessment. Consider your skills, values, personality traits, and, of course, your interests. If you understand where you are, it’s much easier to set a direction.

2. Understand what you don’t know.

Feeling that you don’t know what you don’t know is very common when you don’t have clarity about your next steps. Using your assessment as input can help you to identify what would suit you better. If you feel lost, start by exposing yourself to different things.

– Explore job descriptions and career ladders. They can be good resources to clarify expectations.

– Talk with people who are doing what you are considering doing next. Consider people inside and outside your current company. Diverse contexts can provide a market perspective. It sets you up for success no matter where you work. Those conversations are full of real-life examples to help you identify skills to focus on and avoid a common pitfall: consider only a role or level to define the next steps in your career.

– Seek for feedback. Family and friends can be good sources of feedback on specific skills like communication, empathy, patience, etc. They are the people you feel more comfortable to be yourself. Connecting what they share with feedback from your professional connections can be a tool to identify the areas you struggle with. Consider them when defining your goals. You don’t need to be good at everything to succeed.

3. Set goals that make sense.

The SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) is the best method I have found for setting goals. You might have trouble with the measurable part. Usually, it happens because you didn’t set a goal but a task that should be part of your action plan.

An action plan includes specific steps to achieve each goal. Plus, their timelines, resources needed, potential challenges, and alternatives to overcome them.

6. Find support.

Having external input to support your progression is a must. Engage with mentors and peers for guidance and feedback.

Your manager can help you refine and align your goals with the company strategy. They can also provide you with the best opportunities in that context and even sponsor you. Use them as a resource for your development.

You can also get support from a professional coach if you have resources available. In this case, I recommend finding someone with real-world experience in the area you want to focus on.

7. Review and adapt.

Building a growth plan is the first step. But it is not a one-time activity. Life circumstances, market conditions, and personal interests can change. So, besides monitoring your progress, you should often reevaluate your goals and reassess your interests.

Remember that career progression is not a straight line. Even with a plan, keep the door open to the unknown.

Push the fear of failure away.

If you prefer not to plan to avoid failure, remember that setbacks are learning opportunities. If your goals are achievable and based on an honest assessment, you’ll likely succeed most of the time. To get more confident, take some time to celebrate the steps you complete.

Consider personal development (and life) as part of your career growth milestones.

When people are strongly motivated to achieve their goals, they can overload themselves (I’m guilty!). Career progression should not come at the cost of one’s well-being. A good balance allows you to have a fulfilling and meaningful life and fosters sustained productivity and career progression.