"Contributing to the career development of your employees: a win-win strategy" - Déborah Romain-Delacour

Déborah Romain-Delacour has a doctorate in social psychology and is an occupational psychologist. She is also an author specialising in the development of professional potential and the acquisition of talent. After 10 years in management positions, she is now putting her experience in the field and her highly practical approach to work for the companies she supports.

In this interview, Déborah talks about the importance that managers should attach to the professional development of their teams.

What's the difference between personal and professional development?
Is the boundary between the two so obvious?

Personal development is a conscious process of self-improvement aimed at positive change. It aims to bring the individual's intrinsic nature into line with their aspirations and the environment in which they evolve, by making the most of their talents and potential.

This work helps to increase self-awareness, consolidate existing skills or develop new ones, and improve interpersonal contact.

Professional development is identical, except that it focuses on the world of work. Professional development focuses on career objectives and enables you to build a career path. So it's simply a change of context.

So personal development and professional development are based on the same techniques, which aim to increase strengths, creativity, initiative, autonomy and efficiency. They also prepare individuals to mobilise the appropriate resources and tools to achieve this.

More concretely, these techniques can be used to unblock private or professional situations, such as

• motivating teams or yourself
• managing time more effectively
• communicating more assertively, whether with your children, your partner or your colleagues,
• supporting change,
• improving performance,
• managing stress,
• etc.

They call on what are known as soft skills. These are social, emotional and behavioural skills that can be learned and are increasingly essential in a fast-moving organisational world, where technical skills are rapidly becoming obsolete. We need to be able to adapt, and self-development gives us access to greater flexibility, which is essential if we are to cultivate efficiency and peace of mind in our work.

Why is it in a company's interest to support its employees' professional development?

Today, many employers have realised that it is essential to put their employees' professional development at the heart of company policy.

And why is that? Because that's exactly what employees want. Talented professionals want to work for companies that give them the opportunity to develop their skills, enrich their knowledge, learn and progress - in short, to advance their careers while at the same time fulfilling their potential.

In this sense, managers must attach importance to the professional development of their teams. If they don't, this could have a negative impact on the morale and productivity of their staff, who will not feel that they are being properly appreciated. In this case, it seems likely that these discouraged employees will decide to leave the company to work for a competitor.

So how do you show your employees that their manager, and more generally their company, supports their professional development? Here are a few ideas:

• Take a genuine interest in your employees' career objectives
• Develop a learning company environment that encourages training and learning
• Safeguard the work-life balance by putting in place practical strategies (right to disconnect, fight against presenteeism, etc.).

Professional development is a lever for success and efficiency. Neglecting it would be a major strategic error.

How can it support them in this?

It can support them in two ways:

👉 Collectively: by offering managers and employees training courses or group coaching sessions related to personal development, such as:

• emotional management
• communication
• time management
• self-confidence
• decision-making techniques
• solving complex problems,
• entrepreneurship,
• etc.

By offering managers training to become manager coaches, focusing in particular on benevolent management methods.

👉 Individually: by offering personalised support to employees who want it, such as career coaching.

Of course, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that contributing to employees' career development is always a win-win strategy. The return on investment will not be long in coming: less absenteeism, less presenteeism, increased motivation and performance, and a better social climate.

Why do managers have a key role to play?

A large part of professional development concerns interpersonal interaction, and in particular improving communication skills to build harmonious and positive relationships with others. These communication skills lie at the heart of the manager's job, and are the key to success in this role.

Being a good manager is difficult, but it can be learned. And there's no shortage of training courses on offer.

In my opinion, the essential points for a good manager are as follows:

• Know yourself well enough to take on the role of leader
• Building a framework for development that is reassuring and stimulating for your staff
• Mastering the art of communication, of course
• Knowing how to organise and manage your time
• Generating trust among your staff
• Unleashing the company's talents
• Flexibility in project management
• Demonstrating professional courage
• And last but not least, cultivating goodwill in the workplace time and time again.

It is essential to train managers in the tools of benevolent communication and coaching. On a day-to-day basis, they themselves can become real manager coaches and ensure that their staff progress and flourish.

Do you think they are sufficiently prepared for this? Especially since the recent spread of teleworking has forced companies to adopt remote management.

No. And yet, with the spread of teleworking, the role of the manager in the company has never been so important.

It's because people are so far away that human skills need to be developed more than ever. Remote managers have to learn how to manage their teams using specific tools (video conferences, collaborative tools, etc.), and by learning new interpersonal techniques.

Generally speaking, human skills are essential and can be learned from books or training courses. In practical terms, they enable us to adopt the right social behaviours, using tools and methods such as empathy, active listening, emotional intelligence, stress management and positive communication.They enable you to adopt the right social behaviours, using the tools and methods of empathy, active listening, emotional intelligence, stress management and positive communication, to better support your teams, both face-to-face and remotely, on the road to individual and collective success.

For example, it is important for a manager to know how to detect stress and the risks of overwork, to respect the right to disconnect, and to make it a point of honour to ensure an effective separation of professional and private life for everyone, including themselves. Because a 'good' manager is also a man or woman who feels good about himself or herself and knows how to apply to himself or herself what he or she advocates for others.