Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go, 2nd Edition

The new edition of the bestselling employee development classic includes advice on engagement and retention in today's more flexible employment environment and a new chapter on creating a career development culture in your organization.


Study after study confirms that career development is the single most powerful tool managers have for driving retention, engagement, productivity, and results. It's the sustainable competitive advantage that will distinguish the winners from the losers. Nevertheless, it's frequently back-burnered. When asked why, managers say the number one reason is that they just don't have time-for the meetings, the forms, the administrative hoops.

But there's a better way. And it's surprisingly simple: frequent short conversations with employees about their career goals and options integrated seamlessly into the normal course of business. Beverly Kaye, coauthor of the bestselling Love 'Em or Lose 'Em, and Julie Winkle Giulioni identify three broad types of conversations that will increase employees' awareness of their strengths, weaknesses, and interests; point out where their organization and their industry are headed; and help them pull all of that together to design their own up-to-the-minute, personalized career plans. Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go is filled with practical tips, guidelines, and templates, as well as nearly a hundred suggested conversation questions. This new edition will also be released alongside an interactive Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go card deck to create organizational pathways for career development, and twenty-seven minutes of video trainings covering content, activities and practices in the book.