Developing Your Early Career Professionals

Patroski Lawson, founder & CEO, KPM Group DC, is addressing inequities in rare disease, brain health & African American Men in Biotech.

One year. That’s how long my boss in my first corporate job waited to give me a performance review—only to tell me that my work was not up to his standards.

An entire year was wasted for both of us. My boss was masking his disappointment and, worse, not seeing the results he wanted from his team. As for me, I missed out on chances to do better, learn and grow as an employee.

From that day forward, I vowed that if I ever had direct reports, I would provide them with real-time feedback and opportunities. Through these opportunities, they can succeed or fail. Either way, it’s a win; we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.

Minimizing the impact of early career professionals is nothing new but rather an outdated leadership style where we think we know better and do better than our junior counterparts. Strong leadership knows they’re responsible for nurturing their team. If you want your team to grow professionally, you need to give them experiences early in their career.

This is how I embraced the concept of “delegate and elevate,” which starts with a strong sense of self-awareness. It means knowing what you need to offload from your plate and trusting and empowering others to take on more responsibilities. Fill your cup with what matters to you most and allow your team to explore what work is meaningful to them. Because when it comes to this next generation of young professionals, meaning comes first.

Give early career professionals purpose in their work.

This next generation tends to value standing for something. There’s a strong orientation toward equality, fairness and combining hard work with passion. These are purpose-driven professionals who want to derive meaning from their work. So how do they derive meaning? By being the ones who handle not only the daily nitty-gritty chores but also get to take on responsibilities that give them a seat at the table. As leaders, we need to be the ones who delegate these opportunities to them.

I find that in executive culture, it’s rare to see entry-level staff establish a relationship with C-suite people. At my company, all our team members have access to people in high places; it’s not just me who gets face time with them. Everyone gets the chance to take CEOs to lunch, run the presentation, lead the call—experiences where they can work alongside successful people and learn from those who model C-suite behavior. Trust that they are capable enough to take that on.

Cultivate trust to build transformational relationships.

Trust is a crucial principle of building transformational relationships with your team, and it requires doing the heavy lifting every day. Trust happens when you connect with people on a human level, do more active listening and give feedback by asking questions.

For example, when I recently caught wind that seven people in the firm were going to a meeting that I didn’t feel was necessary for all of them to attend, I could have said, “You don’t all need to go to that. That’s not a wise use of time and resources.” Instead, I asked, “So, how many of you are going? Has anyone looked at the agenda? Is this a good use of time?”

After some reflection, they realized the best course of action on their own. When you let your staff find their own answers, they learn how to trust themselves and begin to understand how to best delegate their time, resources and focus.

Emphasize your values and live by them.

Building trust translates into your company values. Early career professionals want to know you are serious about your values and follow through on them, so you need to execute every part of your organization based on your values. That’s how you show up authentically. If you want a uniting mission in your workplace and to build transformational relationships, it all comes down to being your authentic self at work. Then, it makes it easy for your team to know that you mean what you say and that you say what you mean.

As a leader, I want to reward high performers as opportunities arise that make sense for them—not just a raise based on tenure. Evaluate what you’ve delegated to your team members and see what sticks. If there is something they’re doing well, make that the launching point for the next stage of their career development.

Lead with empathy.

Above all, prioritizing personal growth and development for early career professionals by delegating and elevating requires agility and empathy. You have to be willing to change as the workplace does. Many of us had to change our approaches in a post-pandemic context where the rules were changing, navigating how to communicate with younger staff.

For example, I had to be more open-minded with new concepts like working from home, especially in DC’s lobbying and public affairs world, where people are used to seeing you in the office. I likened it to, “Well, do I want to be in the office every day?” And the answer was no. As a leader, if you decide something is good enough for you, then recognize that it’s also likely good enough for everyone else.

Delegate and elevate as an authentic and consistent leadership approach.

When you elevate your team, you drive bottom-line results that benefit the company, the team and you as the leader. Delegate opportunities that allow your young team members to derive purpose from their responsibilities. Build trust by living your values. Understand the human needs of your team and be adaptable to change.

How we as leaders develop people early on in their careers will set the standard for the rest of their professional lives. Therefore, I believe that leaders should prioritize the personal growth and development of early career professionals daily within the workplace—not just in the annual performance review.

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