# Prediction 4: Professional development takes centre stage

- **Episode:** [18](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/18.md) (2022-12-29)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** professional-development, training, growth
- **Time:** 27:12–32:16 (start 1632s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/18?t=1632](https://truthliesandwork.com/18?t=1632)

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[27:12] Leanne Elliott: So my fourth prediction, I think professional development is going to be the kind of the people and culture area of 2023. Um, I think this has been of increasing importance to employees for years, and I think particularly, um, you know, when there wasn't You know, as I said before, during that kind of aftermath of the financial crisis, there wasn't as much mobility in terms of roles. So it came down to professional development being important. I think we're going to see that grow as we kind of move through post-pandemic. I think there's going to be a slight shift. I think there's going to be an increasing focus on professional development and career development routes. But I think there's also going to be a real focus on psychosocial development. And what I'm just—
[28:06] Al Elliott: tell us what psychosocial—
[28:07] Leanne Elliott: I was gonna say, and what I mean by that is— I already know what questions you're gonna ask me. I throw out a term, I know I'm gonna get, get grilled. Um, yes, psychosocial development. Um, so these are things that are— I guess we might have called them more things like soft skills previously, um, or how to just— how to navigate the working environment. How do we communicate? How do we negotiate? How do we build relationships? How do we influence? Um, how do we create work that is meaningful, that has purpose? Do we know what brings purpose and meaning to our people, and how are we connecting that to their professional development? Um, I think there's going to be a lot more, um, I guess I hate to throw around the word, but a bit more strategy around professional development. I think we're going to see clearer routes of development for people. And again, that links back to my first prediction: you need to understand the competencies people need to do that job to be able to develop them effectively, to see that translate into performance. Um, so I think competencies are going to be— competency frameworks are going to be, um, much more talked about in small businesses. I think we're going to see an increase in things like sabbaticals and stretch projects, um, or upskilling opportunities. Um, and equally, I think if we're focusing on, um, professional development, we also need to focus on succession planning, because whether that be an employee moving into another role internally or whether it be them leaving to an external role, it's going to leave a— it's going to leave a hole. And we already know that that fight for talent is going to continue. So, I think succession planning is going to be really important as well. As I mentioned before, you know, those 2, 3 years of COVID really did a number on all of us in terms of our communication skills, our interpersonal skills. And I think that's where we saw kind of the pushback
[29:52] Al Elliott: Mm-hmm
[29:53] Leanne Elliott: I guess a lot of the pushback of coming back to the office was a lot of people going, oh, I'd rather not. The politics, the office politics and all that bullshit. Nah, thanks. So I think, I think we've all struggled. But again, you know, the people that were joining the workforce during COVID missed out on all that, missed out on all that, that aspect of onboarding, of knowledge sharing, um, of informal mentoring and coaching. So I think, um, yeah, that, that's my, my prediction is that professional development is going to be a big thing and it's going to be a really strategic thing in 2023
[30:23] Al Elliott: Now what's interesting is that a lot of these things you're saying almost feel like Smaller businesses are borrowing ideas from larger, more established businesses. We talked a few episodes ago about Project Aristotle from Google. It used to be that you'd go, oh, they're a big business, so they do all this stuff, and we're a small business, therefore we go and do all this stuff. But a couple advantages of looking at the larger companies for ideas is exactly what Leanne said. There is a bit more strategy around it, a bit more tactics around it, but also you've got the flexibility. of being a small business and you've got 20, 30, 40 employees, you can implement something by next week. Whereas IBM, what, with quarter million people working around the country, around, around the world, they're gonna take 6 months, 6 years to implement something. So I think by looking towards the bigger people, looking towards those who are doing it, who are doing it right and may have, they may have a bigger budget than you, but what can you learn from them? Yeah
[31:20] Leanne Elliott: Absolutely. And how many examples could you pull from sales marketing, Al, where we, you know, you're borrowing those big, those ideas from bigger organizations, applying them in their organization? There must be hundreds of examples of things in marketing that smaller businesses have leveraged and seen big success from
[31:35] Al Elliott: 100%. 100%. And when you look at someone who's got a bigger budget, they've got more chance to, to, um, they've got more chance to experience, to experiment with something, but also So they've got this corporate ego where they want to talk about all the changes they've made. Great. Let's read those blog posts. Let's read their reports and let's steal relentlessly and shamelessly from them
[31:55] Leanne Elliott: What do you think we do?
[31:57] Al Elliott: So your number 4
[31:59] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, my prediction. I think professional development. So investing in somebody's professional development, in their personal development, in their whole person development. Um, to aid their, their personal and professional ambitions. Professional development is gonna be huge in 2023