How to Help an Employee Figure Out Their Career Goals

It is not always possible to help the people we serve identify and work towards their career goals. But having a purpose and a sense of momentum in achieving our career goals is powerful, so if we can help our people get there, it’s a meaningful path to transforming their lives and career success. In this article, the author offers three strategies managers can use when leading someone who is uncertain about their career path: 1) help them analyze patterns, 2) expand their worldview, and 3) don’t be too harsh to control.

The best leaders want to help their people grow and achieve their career goals. But what if your employees don’t actually know what they want? Today, career paths are not clearly defined in many companies, so it is very likely that some of your employees will look to you for direction. Should they try to move into management or stay as an individual employee? Fishing for an overseas opportunity? Move to a different role that better aligns with your interests?

Of course, your employees are the best judges of what feels right for their future. But if they’re unsure, there are steps you can take to offer support. Here’s how you can help them identify career goals that feel both meaningful and motivating.

Help them analyze patterns.

A lot of employees aren’t sure what their “passion” is — and honestly, identifying one is a pretty high bar. But we all have a good sense of what we like or find interesting. As I describe in my book, The Long Game: How to be a long-term thinker in a short-term world, it’s valuable to focus on how to “optimize for interesting” because we rarely take the time to think about our preferences—and understand what they mean for our long-term career goals. Help your employees think this through by asking them what they enjoy most and least about their current role and what new areas they are curious about.

It can also be useful to discuss where they naturally excel. You may already have a sense of their strengths (from past experience or comments from colleagues and clients), but for many professionals this can be a blind spot, so don’t hesitate to point out areas where you think they excel Fitness. It’s often harder for people to identify their strengths (which they take for granted) than their weaknesses (which feel obvious), so helping them gain clarity is a mitzvah. Armed with their answers and the preferences they have articulated, you can suggest logical next steps and avenues for them to explore.

For example, an employee may recognize that they enjoy giving presentations and are good at them. But he may not be aware of opportunities in your organization to use this skill, especially if it’s outside the scope of his current job. You could encourage him to look for sales positions or, if he also enjoys travelling, direct him to international business development or government relations positions where he would have the opportunity to access new geographies for the expansion of your business.

Expand your worldview.

For some employees, exploring their interests helps uncover patterns about where they excel, what they find most compelling, and possible future directions. But others, especially if their role is fairly narrow, may not have had enough opportunities to get a reliable picture. If they are interested in exploring career goals, you can try creating a personalized “micro-rotation” experience for them. Just as a company’s talent development department curates specific learning opportunities for high-potential employees—often including travel across geographies and functional roles—you can do the same for your employees on a much more limited scale.

Of course, it’s unlikely that you can (or want to) send them abroad for months or outsource them to another team. But you could create a more limited version that requires you to put in extra effort to get them trying new things, whether it’s presenting at an all-hands meeting, attending an industry conference they’ve never attended , or at an interdepartmental service committee. By letting them experience new challenges and then reviewing them regularly to see what they enjoy and where they have natural abilities, you can help them identify areas of interest to explore further — and your personalized approach is likely to bring both gratitude as well as generate loyalty.

Don’t steer too hard.

Once you’ve immersed yourself in the role of mentor, it’s easy to learn a little to wrapped up in the result. You may take it personally if your employee decides they don’t like a job you think they’re good at or doesn’t want to pursue a career goal that you think would be right for them. We need to control ourselves and recognize that as leaders we are there to help our people achieve their career goals – not to dictate them. If they end up looking different than we hoped or imagined (for example, your protégé decides that if your proposed promotion goes through that he doesn’t want to take your position), we need to adjust to reality and remain loose enough to accept stay value our employees for what they do can offer us, the team and the company.

It is not always possible to help the people we serve identify and work towards their career goals. But having a purpose and a sense of momentum in achieving our career goals is powerful, so if we can help our people get there, it’s a meaningful path to transforming their lives and career success.