What Happens When The Work Around You Changes?
Professional Development: Are We Developing the Right Things? For Segun, the question emerged at a time when everything seemed to be going well.
Segun worked in cybersecurity for a growing technology company.
He was good at it.
He could spot vulnerabilities other people missed. He was methodical, curious and calm when something went wrong. He liked problems that required concentration and persistence, and he had become someone colleagues trusted when a technical issue needed untangling.
Then the company began to grow.
What had once been a small team was becoming a much larger one. There were new clients, new systems, new people and more demands on everyone’s time.
Segun’s work was changing with it.
He was spending less time solving problems himself and more time explaining them to other people.
That was harder.
The Part of the Job Nobody Had Mentioned
Segun knew how to explain a technical problem.
What he was beginning to learn was how to help someone else understand what it meant for them.
He could tell someone exactly what was wrong.
He could show them the evidence.
He could explain the risk.
But sometimes the conversation ended there.
People nodded.
Then nothing happened.
At first, Segun thought the problem was that people didn’t understand cybersecurity.
Then he began to wonder whether he was making it harder for them to understand.
He started paying attention to the conversations that went well.
One colleague didn’t give people more information. He gave them less.
He started with what mattered to them.
Another asked questions before offering an answer.
And someone else had a way of explaining a serious problem without making the person hearing it feel that they were being blamed for causing it.
Segun began experimenting.
He Changed One Thing
At the next meeting, Segun had a long explanation prepared.
He didn’t use it.
Instead, he asked:
“What are you most concerned about here?”
The answer took the conversation somewhere he hadn’t expected.
The issue wasn’t the technical problem itself.
It was what the client thought might happen if they got it wrong.
Once Segun understood that, he could explain the technical solution in a way that made sense to them.
The meeting went better.
Not because he knew more.
He already knew enough.
He had changed how he used what he knew.
Development Can Change as the Work Changes
Segun had spent years developing his technical expertise.
That development mattered.
It was the foundation of his work.
But the work around him was changing, and so were the capabilities he needed.
He was being asked to become capable of something more.
Listening before answering.
Explaining without overwhelming.
Understanding what another person needed from the conversation.
Building trust.
Helping people make decisions.
His technical knowledge had opened the door.
It wasn’t enough to walk him through every room.
We Don’t Always Notice the Next Thing
Professional Development can be easiest to recognise when someone tells us what we need to learn.
A course identifies the gap.
A manager suggests training.
A qualification gives us a goal.
But sometimes our work tells us first.
The difficult conversation.
The responsibility we weren’t expecting.
The part of the job we keep avoiding.
The thing that seems to come naturally to someone else.
The situation in which being good at what we already do suddenly isn’t enough.
These moments can be uncomfortable.
They can also be useful.
They can show us where our development needs to go next.
Segun Didn’t Need to Become Someone Else
He didn’t need to stop being the person who loved solving technical problems.
He didn’t need to become the most confident person in the room.
He needed to add something to what he already knew.
And perhaps that is one of the less obvious questions within Professional Development:
Are We Developing the Right Things for the WorkLife We Are Actually Living?
Not the work we had when we started.
Not the work we imagine we should be doing.
The work that is changing around us.
The work we are moving towards.
The work we may want to create for ourselves.
Segun’s technical ability had brought him to this point.
Now his working life was asking something different of him.
He was still developing his expertise.
He was also learning how to make that expertise useful to other people.
And that was development too.
What is your WorkLife asking you to develop now?
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