You can't undo development

Right, rant alert. I’ve been sitting on this for a while, wondering if it’s the right thing to put out there. I know there are reasons for processes and we’re all trying to generally do our best by our people - I’ve done a fair bit of time in HR roles over the last 15 years and overwhelmingly the people I’ve met and worked with are full throttle all about helping people grow and their organisation be better. So, disclaimer done…

I was having a conversation just before lockdown that really stuck with me. I was talking with a person I’d consider a strong ‘up and comer’ in public sector leadership. She’s someone who is focused on her people, always asking questions about how to get better, and an experimenter. She was also on a secondment in a leadership role. For six months. You might think that’s not too long and all good – she’ll learn something from it.

Then I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with someone else that reminded me of that earlier person. This person is also in her first leadership role. It’s a secondment. It’s two years long.

Then a guy who is coming to the end of a leadership role secondment. After leading a team for 12 months. He’s going back to his ‘substantive role’ as a senior advisor now.

All of these people, who are three of many in similar situations, are coming up to a point where they are expected to go back to their previous roles (we call them “substantive” to make the safety net nice and comfy) and do the work they previously did. Is anyone else reading this picking that these three examples of talent are going to be more than a bit restless after so long in those more challenging roles?

I’m calling it now – are we crazy?! One of the fastest and most effective ways to develop people is through what us development geeks call a ‘crucible experience’. You know the crucible, right? That implement used to subject its contents (in this case, our fearless secondees) to high heat and, in doing so, burn off impurities and create a new – often stronger and more resilient – material (ta-daahh, our newly developed person!)

In that environment, the person we started with is transformed through the experiences they have, the insight they gain and the lessons they learn. Crucible experiences might feel uncomfortably hot, but they also show us what we’re made of and what we can be. So, when we’re putting people into leadership secondments where the work is tough, and challenging, and there’s development heat, that’s a crucible experience. The consequence is that the change that happens can’t be undone. To put people into a situation where they are permanently changed – usually in a more developed way – and then expect them to come back to their old role and do their old work is like trying to unburn a piece of paper. My year 10 science teacher taught me that can’t happen. Yet we do it. I get it for a really short term measure – three months at the most. But in the same way nobody ever succeeded in getting you to sit still once you learnt to walk, or keep quiet once you’d learnt to ask questions, expecting someone to stop being a people leader when they’ve spent serious time doing it is a tough ask.

When I was a much younger lad, I once got offered a secondment opportunity. The manager I was working for is someone I still refer to often in my leadership programs. She taught me so much gold that I’ve taken with me. And at that time, when I talked to her about the secondment, her advice was for me to take the role and leave my substantive role in the team permanently. Her view was that there would inevitably end up being something I’d move to as a result of the development I was going to get. I freaked out, didn’t do it, and missed an opportunity because I was too worried about no safety net. But she was spot on and ahead of her time. If we dropped the illusion of job security (let’s face it – change is so constant you’ve got to be ready to move) and instead framed secondments as stepping stones to something new - with support from organisations to help it happen - I reckon we’d get much more out of people and we’d see the development curve take off.

Instead of expecting our people to come back and do what they did before, let’s set them up for new experiences and then let them apply what they learn in new roles. What are we scared of?