Instead of dealing with this situation solely as an information- and action-provoking process, he might well consider its emotional aspects also. What is this employee feeling at the moment? What brought about the offer? Did the employee seek it out because of personal dissatisfaction with his present position? Is he using it as leverage to force the manager to talk about future prospects? These are important factors that will help guide the course of any discussion between the two men.
The intention here is to stress two points: (1) The manager caught off guard responds as best he can. But he would be in a much stronger position if the discussion were carried out in a less threatening climate. The employee, too, would be better off if he had thought through his general situation before he faced the pressure of a specific offer. (2) Managers need both information and training in order to conduct helpful career discussions with employees.
These points suggest that the career-facilitating system of a firm should include periodic discussions with employees to learn of their current interests, to provide information about likely opportunities, job requirements, and the like, and to work out alternate paths to known career targets. Such discussions are best carried out by trained counselors-professionals in a personnel or manager development function. However, most firms cannot provide this service because of cost and inadequate numbers of competent specialists. Moreover, many employees are unwilling to seek and pay for outside help of this nature. Perhaps they should be encouraged to do so.
The manager therefore finds himself charged with the responsibility more often than not. The least he deserves is training to establish the probable limits of the help he can give, to provide some approaches for dealing with situations that arise frequently, and to help him find suitable words to ask for needed information and respond to it. In this article, a suggested training program is outlined. It contains a considerable amount of practice in actual discussion since only through practice can the manager begin to feel some degree of confidence in his ability to deal with this extraordinarily delicate type of interview.
The training program is presented in outline form. It consists of six sessions:
SESSION 1. Objective: To help the manager understand his role in career management and establish his values with respect to advancing employees' careers.
SESSION 2. Objective: To supply participants with useful information on the promotion system, the availability of data on employees, and past career patterns; to enlist their help in avoiding common abuses of the promotion system.
SESSION 3. Objective: To supply participants with useful information about the future of the business and likely job opportunities that should occur if plans materialize; to identify additional areas where information is needed in order to conduct career interest discussions intelligently.
SESSION 4. Objective: To teach a viable pattern for real-life dialog through simulated career discussions; to help the participants develop some personal standards for questioning, listening, and counseling.
SESSION 5. Objective: To allow participants to conduct real interviews with young employees, exploring their career interests and offering such information and counsel as seem appropriate; to pinpoint where career interviewing techniques need improvement and stimulate successful dialogs on this subject.
SESSION 6. Objective: To consolidate the learning from the previous five sessions through an exchange of actual career interviewing experiences.
