Some of the Most Important Development at Work Is Difficult to Measure
Professional Development: What Counts as Development? For Bada, the question had become more nuanced than she had expected.
Bada had been working as an architect for three years.
She could see the difference between the architect she had been when she started and the one she was becoming.
She was quicker now. More assured. She could look at a complicated set of drawings and see problems that would once have taken her much longer to find. She had learned which questions to ask, when to challenge something and when to let it go.
She had also become better at reading a room.
That had surprised her.
Architecture had seemed, at least from the outside, to be about buildings, design and technical knowledge. But working on real projects had taught her that much of the work happened between people.
A good idea could be lost because it was badly explained.
A project could stall because two people were protecting different priorities.
A client could reject something they didn’t understand.
And sometimes the person with the best idea wasn’t the person who could persuade everyone else to see it.
Bada was becoming interested in that part of the work.
The Meeting
A few weeks earlier, she had been asked to sit in on a meeting with a client.
She wasn’t there to lead it. Her role was mainly to explain some of the design decisions and answer questions.
The meeting began well.
Then the client raised an objection that Bada hadn’t expected.
It wasn’t really about the design.
It was about what the design meant for the people who would eventually use the building.
Bada knew the answer technically. She could explain the reasoning behind the decision and defend it.
But as she listened, she realised that wasn’t what the client needed.
So she stopped explaining.
Instead, she asked a question.
“What would need to change for you to feel that this works?”
The conversation shifted.
It didn’t solve the problem immediately. But it changed the nature of the discussion.
Later, one of her colleagues mentioned it.
“That was a good question.”
Bada knew it had been.
What interested her was why.
There Was More to Learn Than She Had Expected
Bada had been trained to solve problems.
Now she was beginning to understand that some problems couldn’t be solved simply by knowing more.
They required judgement.
Listening.
Curiosity.
Patience.
The confidence to hold back an answer long enough to understand the question.
These weren’t things she could add neatly to a list of architectural skills.
Yet they were changing the way she worked.
And the more she noticed them, the more she began to see that Professional Development was happening in places she hadn’t previously thought of as development at all.
Not only when someone taught her something.
Not only when she completed something new.
But when experience changed the way she approached something she had done before.
We Tend to Count What Is Easy to Count
Professional Development is often made visible through things we can record.
A course completed.
A qualification gained.
A new skill.
A promotion.
A new responsibility.
Those things matter.
But they don’t tell the whole story.
What about becoming better at listening?
Making a better judgement?
Handling disagreement?
Understanding how other people experience your decisions?
Knowing when your first response isn’t your best one?
Becoming more confident without becoming overconfident?
Learning how to recover from getting something wrong?
These changes can be significant.
They are simply harder to put on a development plan.
Bada’s Work Was Developing Her
Bada began to think about this differently.
The work she was doing was developing her, but not always in the ways she had anticipated.
She was developing her professional knowledge, of course.
But she was also developing her judgement.
Her ability to communicate.
Her understanding of other people.
Her confidence in uncertainty.
Her awareness of how she worked best.
And, perhaps most importantly, her sense of what kind of professional she wanted to become.
That last part couldn’t be taught to her.
She had to discover it through working.
So What Counts as Development?
Perhaps we need a broader definition.
Professional Development isn’t only what we deliberately set out to learn.
It can also be what working life teaches us when we pay attention.
Sometimes we develop because someone gives us a new responsibility.
Sometimes because we make a mistake.
Sometimes because a difficult situation exposes something we need to work on.
Sometimes because another person sees an ability in us before we recognise it ourselves.
And sometimes because we become curious about something our work has revealed.
The development may be technical.
It may be personal.
It may be relational.
It may change how we think, how we behave or what we believe we are capable of.
Often, it is several of these things at once.
The work was giving Bada more than experience.
It was changing how she saw, how she judged and what she believed she might be capable of next.
And that, perhaps, is one of the most important things to recognise about Professional Development.
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