In 'Alice in Wonderland', Alice meets the Cheshire Cat at a Crossroads, and she asks it which way she should go. The Cheshire Cat tells her that it depends on where she wants to go. Alice replies: It doesn't matter, to which the cat answers that it then doesn't matter which way she goes.
This dialogue from Alice may act as a parallel to competence development. If you are aware of where you are going in your professional development, it certainly does matter which way you go. Not all roads necessarily lead to Rome.
Like any other organisation, a school and educational institution should also ask itself: "Where do we need to be with regards to competencies tomorrow, in order to do our job and face the challenges that meet us – and do we have the necessary skills for it? Do we need entirely new competencies, or should we develop existing ones?"
These are key issues for school management. And the amazing thing is that it is possible to develop the skills of employees astonishingly well through a structured and sustained dialogue.
No matter how you refer to such dialogues, you have to pay close attention to how to prepare and execute them, and to how to follow up on them. Meticulousness and structure can make a world of difference. We call such dialogues by the classic name: Employee-Development-Plans, or: EDP. Whether you have them just once a year and then follow up on them continuously throughout the year – or if you have them several times, the requirement for serious structure and follow-up is the same.
In order to get the best possible starting point for constructive dialogue, it is our experience that both sides must be well prepared. In our view, a situation in which the employee has completed his preparatory questionnaire electronically – a questionnaire which includes both scores/ratings and free-text detailed comments – is a very good way to get in-depth with many issues. And on the basis of this, you can set goals for competence development for the individual employee.
We have seen significant positive results when, during the interview, the manager uses the employee's scores and focuses on what it takes, for example, to increase the score from 4 to 5 at the next interview. How can it happen? Who should be involved? What could stop it from happening? Based on this, we make a set of specific agreements, write them down and put on a reminder date as a deadline. The manager and employee will then receive a reminder in their mailbox to ensure that the agreement is followed up on.
These reminder e-mails help to ensure that follow-up actually happens. Because let's face it. We have all been in a situation, where good agreements are forgotten and are not followed up on when we get back to our busy everyday work life. And when this happens, the manager actually reduces the credibility and developmental power of the organisation.
K.E. Løgstrup talks about the fact that we hold some of the life of our neighbour in our hands, and in this way, we also share co-responsibility for the development and success of our neighbour.
Søren Kierkegaard talks about the art of helping, the situation where I get down from my high horse and meet my fellow human being where that person is and together, we walk further on.
The entire Grundtvig-Kold tradition in education is about developing people so that they gain "vitality" through enlightenment, and here it makes a world of difference, whether we succeed in vitalising or revitalising the trusted talents that are placed in the individual human being.
In this perspective, it would make great sense to put all our efforts into employee development in a school world that aims at life wisdom and insight as a raw material for the future.