If your employees don’t feel safe, all the policies and resources in the world won’t matter. Having good mental health benefits is great, but making the environment safe for employees who take advantage of them is better.
We understand the value, and we’ve likely done the math. However, that’s not the end of the story. Speaking for myself, there are two things that we also need to talk about.
No matter how much technical skill you have, eventually, you will have to communicate your knowledge to someone who isn’t as skilled in the technology. If you can’t do that, your career will hit a ceiling. Even if you have no plans to get up in front of an audience, learning how to tell a story, influence others, educate others, etc., will serve you well when you have to explain a complex technical concept to someone.
You will have to explain what you know someday. Learn how to do it well.
Now, before you start with “they work in IT so that they don’t have to do public speaking,” I am going to argue that even if you’ve never wanted to present to a large conference audience or be asked to present webinars, etc., you would do well to learn how to do it anyway. You will need to tell a compelling story about what you do at some point in your career. Whether it be to defend your budget, ask for headcount, or explain your role on the team, being able to present your ideas well will go a long way. But, it’s not something we train for with many of our technical employees.
Too many people seem to think that you can automatically teach other people about something if you’re an expert at it. Being an SME is great, but communicating that expertise so others can learn from you is a different skill. In fact, it’s a set of skills. Skills we should encourage our SMEs to learn to help our whole team grow.
Make sure you are exercising those empathy muscles. They’ll help you understand where everyone is trying to go, and they’ll help you care enough to want to help them get there. That’s learning and development in a nutshell to me.