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Beyond Training: Building a Real Team Growth Plan · The Science of Leading

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Science of Leading, I'm Claire Monroe with Edwin Carrington.
• 0:03
  Edwin, I want to start with a phrase from the piece we're working from this week,
• 0:07
  that a team growth plan is not "more training."
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  Which made me wonder how many companies think it is.
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  Most of them, Claire, and it's an expensive mistake.
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  The moment a company hits fifty or so employees, growth stops being just more people
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  and starts being coordination.
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  Coordination creates bottlenecks.
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  Bottlenecks create frustration.
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  Frustration creates attrition.
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  And then you're re-hiring the same role for the second time,
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  which is a very costly hobby.
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  So the development plan is supposed to be the thing that catches that before it
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  turns into a resignation.
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  Exactly, but only if it's actually a system.
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  Business objectives translated into role outcomes, role outcomes translated into
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  development goals, and development goals translated into real behavior change.
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  Most companies skip straight to the last step.
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  They hand out a training budget and call it a plan.
• 1:00
  And that's where the generic version falls apart, right?
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  Because the piece calls out three failure patterns I think a lot of listeners will
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  recognize immediately.
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  "Everyone should improve communication," "more training resources,"
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  and "mentorship programs for everyone."
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  Each one of those is a translation problem in disguise.
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  "Everyone should improve communication" usually means nobody actually defined what
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  good communication looks like in that specific role.
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  "More training resources" usually means there's no accountability or measurement
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  attached to it at all.
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  And "mentorship for everyone" usually means mismatched mentors and mentees with no
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  real follow-through.
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  So the fix isn't a better training catalog, it's better diagnosis before you ever
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  pick an initiative.
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  That's step one and step two, in that order.
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  Step one, define organizational priorities and the critical skills that actually
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  predict those outcomes, per function, per role.
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  Not "take a course on productivity."
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  Something specific, like cross-team execution if your competitiveness depends on
• 2:02
  faster launches.
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  Step two, assess your people against that, using performance data you already have,
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  and behavioral data you probably don't.
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  The behavioral piece is what stops it from becoming one-size-fits-all,
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  isn't it.
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  Because two people can have the exact same skills gap on paper and need completely
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  different coaching to close it.
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  Completely different.
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  One person needs structure to perform, another needs autonomy or they disengage.
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  One thrives in ambiguity, another needs clearer constraints before they'll take a
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  risk.
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  One's energized by cross-functional projects, another's drained by them.
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  If your development plan can't answer who's actually ready for leadership training
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  versus who's still stabilizing core execution, you're not personalizing anything,
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  you're just running the same template with different names on it.
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  And OAD's own product is built for exactly that question.
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  A seven-minute behavioral survey that tells you role fit, leadership style,
• 3:00
  and team dynamics, so managers aren't relying on gut feel about who's ready for
• 3:05
  what.
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  Which matters because gut feel is inconsistent even from the same manager,
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  week to week.
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  Data doesn't have a mood.
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  Okay, so say a company's done the diagnosis right, they know who needs what.
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  What actually turns that into behavior change instead of another line item nobody
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  follows up on?
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  The initiatives themselves have to be engineered to the specific gap,
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  not generic.
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  Mentorship for the person who's still building judgment.
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  Cross-functional projects for the person who needs broader exposure to sharpen
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  problem-solving.
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  Leadership training for the person who's already stabilized their core execution and
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  is ready for more scope.
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  Match the initiative to the actual behavioral pattern, and you get real change.
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  Mismatch it, and you get a checkbox.
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  And then evaluation is what keeps it honest, because a plan with no check-in just
• 3:54
  quietly dies by month three.
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  Regular one-on-ones, structured reviews, and a short quarterly check tied to real
• 4:00
  business outcomes, not just intentions.
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  If you're not measuring whether the development actually moved a number,
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  you're funding hope, not growth.
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  And this all rolls up into succession planning eventually, which I think a lot of
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  companies treat as a separate project instead of the natural output of doing this
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  well.
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  It should be the natural output.
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  When people can see a real advancement path, backed by evidence of their own growth
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  instead of a vague promise, engagement and retention both improve.
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  Succession planning isn't a separate initiative bolted on at the end.
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  It's what a personalized, well-measured development system produces on its own.
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  If you want to stop guessing who's ready for what on your own team,
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  OAD has a free Top Performer Profile, real behavioral data in about seven minutes,
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  results in twenty-four hours, no credit card.
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  That's O-A-D dot A-I.
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  Diagnose before you develop.
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  Everything else follows from that.
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  Perfect place to leave it.
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  Thanks, Edwin.
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  Always, Claire.