How we Learn, Team Development

The Capability Gap We Don't Notice Until It's Too Late

Most organisations know they should develop their people. The harder question is whether we're developing them for the problems they have now, or the problems they're going to have next.

Work changes. Teams change. Technology changes. Responsibilities grow. Someone who was perfectly capable in a role two years ago can find themselves operating in a very different environment without ever actually changing jobs.  And sometimes we promote a technically capable person into leadership and assume they'll work the rest out along the way. Sometimes they do. Sometimes we spend the next two years wondering why they won't delegate.

Upskilling is how we close the gap between the capability we have and the capability we're going to need. But that requires us to think about development a little differently.

Upskilling Isn't Just More Training

There is no shortage of training available. Courses. Qualifications. Workshops. Webinars. Podcasts. Books. Videos. An alarming number of LinkedIn carousels. We can consume an enormous amount of information without becoming noticeably better at anything.

Upskilling should result in increased capability.

• Can someone make a decision they couldn't confidently make before?
• Can they handle a conversation they previously avoided?
• Can they take responsibility for something that previously needed to be escalated?
• Can they solve a more complicated problem?
• Can they operate effectively with less direction?

That's a considerably more useful measure of development than how many courses we've completed.

Develop People Before We Need Them

One of the least effective times to start developing someone is when we've already become completely dependent on them having the capability. Yet organisations do this constantly.

Someone gets promoted. Now they need to lead people. Someone takes responsibility for a larger project. Now they need to influence stakeholders. Someone moves into senior leadership. Now they need to think beyond their own team and understand how decisions interact across the organisation.

The title changes overnight. Capability generally doesn't.

There will always be learning on the job, and there should be. But waiting until someone is struggling before investing in their development makes the transition unnecessarily difficult.

The best time to build capability is usually before it becomes critical.

Technical Capability and Leadership Capability Aren't the Same Thing

This becomes particularly obvious when people move into leadership.

We often promote people because they're very good at their job. Then we give them responsibility for other people doing that job. Those are not the same skill. The strongest salesperson doesn't automatically know how to coach another salesperson. The best project manager won't necessarily be comfortable managing conflict. A brilliant technical specialist may struggle to delegate the work they're brilliant at doing.

None of this makes them a bad leader. It means we've changed the job.

Leadership introduces a different set of problems: people, expectations, accountability, influence, judgement, uncertainty and conversations where there isn't always a comfortable answer.

Those capabilities need developing too.

Development Needs Somewhere to Go

Learning something isn't the same as being able to do it.

We can understand delegation perfectly well in a workshop and still take the work back the moment a deadline gets tight. We can understand conflict and still avoid the conversation on Monday morning. We can know all about decision-making and still hesitate when we're choosing between two reasonable options and both have consequences.

That's why development needs somewhere to go. Learn something. Apply it to a real problem. See what happens. Reflect. Adjust. Try again. The workplace provides the test. Discussion, feedback and coaching provide an opportunity to make sense of the result.

That's where development starts moving from something we understand intellectually to something we're increasingly capable of doing.

Upskilling Should Make the Organisation Less Dependent

There's another useful test for development. What can happen without us now that couldn't happen without us before?

• If every significant decision still travels upwards, we probably haven't built much decision-making capability.
• If the manager still needs to solve every problem, we haven't developed much problem-solving capability.
• If one person remains the only person capable of doing something important, we've created vulnerability rather than capability.

Good development should distribute competence. People become capable of carrying greater responsibility. Decisions can be made closer to where the information sits. Senior leaders have more capacity to work at the level they're supposed to be working at.

This isn't simply good for the individual. It makes the organisation more resilient.

Sometimes Upskilling Means Letting People Struggle

This is where development becomes uncomfortable.

We can teach someone a framework. Eventually, they need an opportunity to use it. That means giving people responsibility before we're completely certain they'll handle it exactly as we would.

• They might take longer.
• They might make a different decision.
• They might get something wrong.

If we intervene every time that becomes uncomfortable, we haven't really delegated responsibility. We've delegated the task while retaining control.

There obviously need to be boundaries around risk. But within those boundaries, people need room to think, decide and occasionally learn something the hard way.

Capability isn't built by watching someone else carry the weight. At some point, we have to carry some ourselves.

Development Should Match the Level We're Operating At

Not everybody needs the same development.

A new team leader might need to become better at understanding people, setting expectations, communicating clearly, handling conflict and solving problems without immediately escalating them. A more experienced leader may already be comfortable doing those things personally. Their challenge is different.

• They're trying to create those conditions across multiple teams.
• They're influencing people they don't directly manage.
• They're balancing competing priorities.
• They're making decisions where every option might negatively affect someone.
• They're trying to understand why something that made perfect sense at the top became five different versions by the time it reached the people doing the work.

The fundamentals of leadership remain. The complexity changes.

That's why we don't believe in giving every leader the same content and calling it leadership development. The capability we're developing should reflect the level at which someone is expected to operate, the problems they're responsible for solving and the decisions they're expected to carry.

Sometimes development needs to prepare someone for their current responsibilities. Sometimes it should prepare them for the next ones.

Organisations Have a Responsibility Too

We talk a lot about individuals taking responsibility for their own development. We agree. Nobody should be waiting passively for an organisation to make them better. But there's another side to that. Organisations can't continually ask people to carry greater responsibility without considering whether we're helping them develop the capability required to carry it.

• We can't promote someone because they're technically excellent, provide no leadership development and then become frustrated when they struggle to lead.
• We can't say we want initiative while requiring approval for every meaningful decision.
• We can't tell people to think strategically while keeping them permanently buried in operational work.
• And we can't send someone on a course, change nothing about the environment they return to, and assume development has been taken care of.

Development is a shared responsibility. Individuals have to be willing to grow. Organisations have to create the conditions that allow it.

Upskilling Isn't About Fixing People

There's another trap worth avoiding.

Development shouldn't only appear when someone is struggling. When training becomes something, we prescribe after a performance problem, people understandably start viewing it as remediation. Upskilling can serve a much bigger purpose.

• It can prepare someone for greater responsibility before they're promoted.
• It can deepen capability in people who are already performing well.
• It can build capability across a team rather than concentrating it in a handful of individuals.
• And it can help an organisation prepare for challenges it knows are coming.

That's a different conversation from: “Who needs training?” A better one might be: “Where does our capability need to be stronger than it is today?”

The Real Benefit of Upskilling

Yes, upskilling can improve retention. It can support engagement, succession planning, productivity and career development. Those things matter. But we'd argue there's a more fundamental reason to do it.

The problems our people are expected to solve rarely become simpler as they progress.

• Their decisions affect more people.
• The information becomes less complete.
• The trade-offs become harder.
• The consequences become greater.
• And eventually, being technically good at the job isn't enough.

Upskilling gives people the opportunity to build capability before the consequences of not having it become significant. So perhaps the more useful question for organisations isn't: “Are we investing enough in training?”

It's: “Are we building the capability we're going to need next?” Because those are two very different things.