This post was going to be “Get your nose out of my hierarchy,” but that was far too esoteric.  My premise is that Managers should ask more questions before offering career advice, especially with hourly employees.   There is a fine line between constructive career advice and presumptuousness about what makes someone else happy – I am afraid too many of us lean towards the latter.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs effectively articulates the basic psychological model that employees use to determine if their current position meets their needs:

• Does your job give you the ability to feed you and/or your family? (Physiological)
• Are you earning enough to house/clothes/protect you and/or your family? (Safety)
• Does your position offer you enough resources (including time) to have good relationships? (Belonging)
• Do you feel validated by what you do; do you have confidence in your self-worth and abilities? (Esteem)
• Have you accomplished everything you want to/believe you can? (Self-actualization)

The model asks the individual to evaluate their sense of security, safety, well-being and success at each level.  Since it is the individual’s perception, it is entirely possible that one person is self-actualized having been elected home town mayor and another person could be struggling with issues of self-esteem because they are merely the Vice President of the United States.

HR practices focused on career development have a tendency to encourage junior employees to get promoted, take on more responsibility or we provide them generic career pathing so they can see a likely progression. (How often do we say to a high performing hourly associate – “you could do much more.”)  Before we start talking about what the employee could do to better themselves, we should ask, indirectly, about self-esteem and actualization – in effect, where they are on Maslow’s scale.  Based on the employee’s answer, providing career pathing or specific job development suggestions makes sense.  However, if you are offering up suggestions without asking the questions, I would encourage you to reconsider your approach for two reasons:

First, we should be trying to provide employees with a realistic way to accomplish what they want to accomplish.  Second, if you don’t ask first, you are sending a subtle message that the employee should not be happy in his or her current situation.

Think about what your reaction would be to someone who offers the following advice without asking your opinion:

• “Your still single?  You can accomplish much more than that – you’re a great person – you should be married and have kids.”
• “You only have 2 children? Really? I believe in you – I know you can do better than that if you really put your mind to it.”
• “I know you have only been divorced for six months and you say you are happy, but don’t you want to be in a relationship?”
• “Yeah, I know you own your home, but it only has 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. You should look to buy a bigger place in a better neighborhood.”

What if you are OK being single, only have two children, renting versus owning, etc.?  Wouldn’t the questions presume that something was wrong with your life today?  Wouldn’t you react a bit negatively to the questions – and if you were perfectly happy with your life, could these questions start to cause you to rethink your happiness?

Absolutely.  (I am sure many of you reading the above questions were feeling the resentment that you felt the last time your mother, father, friend, etc. asked you a similar question.)

With employees, we owe them even more respect than that which we have for family and friends because it is work and not personal.  Let me propose a simple two-part management philosophy to share with your employees to support their development:

• Whatever you do, do it well, and I will be happy.
• If you want to be happier, and things at work can help with that, I will help you.

While there is a possibility that some employees will claim to be perfectly happy, most will still want to talk about development.  The advantage to this approach is that you will avoid invalidating the employee’s current success and happiness while you are trying to support them in their future success.  And, this is one time that I would feel free sharing this post with the employee so they understand that you genuinely do care and want to support them in whatever they do.

One final note: asking the questions in the way I propose will also avoid unintentional discrimination based upon age.  You should be able to naturally ask everyone if there are things you can to in order to help them achieve their goals.  Somehow, I suspect, that older associates are not always approached with what they could do to advance in the organization.