No Career Advice
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If you ask me for one easy thing that you can implement now to empower your team members, I'd say: Don't give career advice.
Maybe that is surprising because our mentees certainly ask for it. And why not provide what they ask for, right? In other words, why not give them the solution they are looking for?
3 Reasons and fallacies:
1. There is no way for you to know what their potential is.
To judge whether someone is suited for a career path or not, you need to make a prediction about this person's potential, the future.
Fallacy #1: We think we can predict future behavior based on past or present behavior.
Yet, most of us are notoriously bad at predicting our own future – or potential, for that matter.
Take a moment to reflect on this question: Where did I think I'd be now 10 years ago?
So, why do we think we're better at this when it comes to those we work with?
While past behaviors (e.g. showing up on time, working diligently, meeting deadlines reliably) may give hints as to someone's future behaviors, it is by far not equivalent to someone’s potential. Someone's future behavior isn't even necessarily predicted by their current behavior.
Again, ask yourself: How similar or different am I thinking, feeling, or behaving compared to 10 years ago.
If we were great at assessing potential, how come we hire people who do not succeed (by our standards), e.g. do not get tenure? How come we don’t even consider candidates who then turn around and become wildly successful?! Having sat on several search committees, I can share that this happens all the time. Clearly, there are many factors that determine how someone shows up and whether they deliver.
In addition to behavior, skill and aptitude, attitude and mindset, the environment, available resources including money, stuff, and mentoring play a huge role in realizing potential.
There are a lot of moving parts, most of which you do not control and can hence not predict.
Your team member decides how they show up, how much they apply themselves, whether to avoid or engage when projects become difficult, how much time to spend mastering skills. They decide what people to surround themselves with and where to apply for future jobs.
Because your mentee controls most (not all) of the variables related to their success, they need to take responsibility and credit for their success.
As a mentor, you can provide support, resources, expectations, and feedback right now and for as long as you work together. But you cannot take responsibility for their success, either now or in the future.
I argue that if you cannot control most of it and you cannot take responsibility, you should not tell someone what they can or cannot do with their career and life.
But what about providing advice? That brings me to point 2:
2. There is no way for you to know what will cause their success.
Fallacy #2: We think that we know what it takes to be successful, at least when it comes to the career path we have chosen ourselves.
To do this well you need to: a. evaluate the right metrics.
Can you be sure the metrics, behaviors, or events that you consider success-determining are causative? And even if they contributed to your success, are they necessary to be successful?
My favorite example here is grant funding. Does grant funding help to get a faculty position? It probably does. It is THE determining factor in securing the position? Probably not. Is it necessary to get a position and be successful? Now, there are many examples of colleagues who neither had funding when they were hired, nor did that prevent them from securing funding and building fantastic research programs in the future.
There is not just one formula to success.
3. Giving solutions is disempowering.
Fallacy #3: When someone has a challenge (like deciding on their next career move) and you see a solution and give it to them, you help them.
Now this one may be a bit more challenging to process. Why not help your team member by giving them all you learned and know about the business of being a researcher and provide some shortcuts?!
Well, for one, because of what we already discussed above. Your advice is based on your assumptions about what makes someone successful and about your estimation of their potential to map onto those "requirements".
You may want to ask yourself how you came up with these rules for success. Are they based on your specific story, things other people said, your observations? How generalizable are these rules? And how accurate can your estimate of their potential be?
Secondly, because you are in a position of authority and power. Your words carry great weight because of your position, whether you intend it to be that way or not. At the same time, you cannot fully control how they are received. No matter how innocent and well-meaning a "I think you are better suited for X" may be, it can have tremendous unintended effects on your team member. And you may not get a chance to refine your words later.
Why go there? Let your team member collect their own data as to their suitability and competitiveness. It is much more powerful when we find our own solutions than when they are given to us.
Providing solutions encourages learned helplessness while providing support and feedback is different: Feedback is provided on specific behaviors and skills continuously, consistently, and in a timely fashion. Robert and I are working on a few training videos about using a skill matrix to do that productively and in a way that encourages independence. Stay tuned...
Encouraging independent decision-making increases internal drive and personal power, which in turn will make success more likely. In this way, you provide career support, but not advice.
Happy leading!