How to Identify Your Employees’ Capacity for Growth

Most people think of babies as sitting, crawling, standing, walking, then working in that order. I agree that the path has a certain logic. But those who have experience with children have seen babies who crawl before they can sit, and babies who crawl all over. In this most basic sense, every baby has their own zone of proximal development (ZPD).

The ZPD is the gap between what you can do with someone’s self and their support (i.e. exercise, training, etc.). Research shows that you can bring to learning in the ZPD – someone’s “sweet spot” for growth.

An alert and thoughtful baby manager can see the signs and direction of their charges’ progress and help them. Those who want to walk can be given a push toy for the experience. Even those who want to stand before sitting (my youngest at four months did this to our excitement) can be given opportunities to practice this.

The key is to support people within the ZPD and, say, try to teach a site how to run it.

Related: Workplace learning is broken. These 5 steps tell you how to fix it.

Professional ZPD

How do you know someone’s ZPD? You should try it.

ZPD in the workplace, it is easier to work to have responsible and professional standards, because the goods that are professional and professional standards in the business world, most professionals will try to do the best. And yet experience shows that even professional ZPD varies greatly.

Recently, my team decided not to renew an employee who was chronically fatigued. I even make weekly team meetings, where no one is late, a regular occurrence. Losing your job because you couldn’t wake up on time is a crying shame. However, this was an adaptation that was outside of the person’s ZPD.

In contrast, I once had an experience that was high school age, but had the ability to build financial models. I asked how to set up a discounted cash flow in Excel. I gave him a webpage to read and an assignment. A winner who answered correctly returned hours with a model. In order to test the terrain, it became possible to build a standard version of its model using generally accepted modeling conventions. His ZPD was huge in this realm.

Try, try again – with some people

Most managers know that their employees are already good. But do you know the ZPD of your direct reports? The ability to do things they didn’t have before, how effective new skills and how much leadership?

If you know, then as a manager and coach, you can be smarter about what you invest in training and development – with whom to “try, try again”. You can now ask someone to do certain things and the quality of work you will get back. With ZPD, you can test the power of your individual team members to grow. You can calibrate how long it takes you to get their growth.

How to test ZPD

Here’s a simple way to test ZPD: think aloud the protocol.

1. Give your team member something they’ve never done before.

2. Ask the person to share their thoughts as they try this new task. Welcome questions along the way.

3. Actively listen to where they struggle and where they could benefit from direct coaching.

4. Ask them to practice in real time and talk about how to complete the task.

5. When they reach a good stopping point, ask them to come back and do the same thing again. It may be appropriate to ask them to follow up on their own.

6. Repeat steps 2-4. This will test the catch as well as build on the progress.

7. If the person’s written skills are better than their verbal skills, this process can also be done through a chat platform. The main thing is that it happens in real time.

Related: ‘Culture of Coaching’ Is the Most Important Ingredient for Success

I encourage all managers to use daily appraisals on a daily basis to constantly evaluate their team’s growth and abilities.

This, in turn, will allow you to invest strategically in each. When the team’s goal is to do more in less time (when?) your team will reap the benefits of your investment in great ZPD people. Because my team is familiar with the person outside the ZPD, it will tell you when to stop investing.

It’s a very repetitive habit that you get to die. If you consistently measure the team’s ability to learn, you’ll see that their growth tends to improve.

Most people think of babies as sitting, crawling, standing, walking, then working in that order. I agree that the path has a certain logic. But those who have experience with children have seen babies who crawl before they can sit, and babies who crawl all over. In this most basic sense, every baby has their own zone of proximal development (ZPD).

The ZPD is the gap between what you can do with someone’s self and their support (i.e. exercise, training, etc.). Research shows that you can bring to learning in the ZPD – someone’s “sweet spot” for growth.