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Joe Supervielle: Welcome to Voices in Local Government, an ICMA Podcast. My name is Joe Supervielle and with us is David Street, Chief of Staff for Loudoun County, Virginia, to discuss purpose in professional development. Thanks for joining us, David.
David Street: Really happy to be back.
Joe Supervielle: Yeah, our first repeat guest, happy to have you back. Mentors and Mentees was a podcast that David joined along with Mary Furtado and Rob Carty of ICMA. So that was up previously, please check it out if you haven't already. And we're kind of building on that topic today with professional development and specifically how to kind of be intentional and making sure you have a purpose and a plan so you're not just kind of all over the place and maybe wasting time and energy. So before we get into a few of those things, let's just touch a little bit on what professional development actually means. You know it's literally developing your profession, it's kind of furthering your career, gaining new skills, expanding your network, but can you talk to the audience a little bit about a few of the categories?
David Street: I think that's such an interesting thing to lead off with because it's changed over time. If you look back, it would've been very much in the hard skills area. Can you do this particular math problem or can you figure out this particular land use issue based on your hard skillset? So I think what we've seen is that the change over time has been from hard skills in specific to the work environment, an educational environment into other skills that are applicable both in your personal life, as well as your professional life.
So I think you're looking at a multi-circle Venn diagram, right? You have development in the workspace, development educationally. So maybe you are pursuing a higher degree or another certification. You have accreditation through professional development, certifying agencies, and then you have, I think an interesting part is growth in your personal life that overlaps with growth in your professional life. Because they're not really two separate lives, it's one life, but your personal growth can lead into, or supercharge your professional growth. So I think that that's an interesting frame to take, particularly if you're looking at all of those different areas together.
Joe Supervielle: There are a lot of areas you touched on a few of them. I agree there's overlap. Sometimes we talk about keeping work life and personal life separate, but inevitably it blends in, especially as technology and sometimes even remote work further blends it. But the good part there is sometimes those skills isn't even the right word, but sometimes the attributes or just the personality traits that you kind of develop can positively impact both, but there's a lot to get to. So can you talk a little bit about saying yes to everything which maybe sounds overwhelming to some, they don't even know where to start, but maybe that is the place to start just saying yes to more things.
David Street: Yeah. I took a little bit of a knuckle-headed approach to professional development when I first really started to get involved in professional organizations. And basically that approach was somebody put something in front of me and I would say yes to it, so very similar to the Jim Carey movie of decades past. So basically the question would be proposed, "David, can you help out with X or can you help out with Y? Would you be interested in volunteering for this or that? And invariably my answer would say yes in a way that would-
Joe Supervielle: Even if you had no idea how to do it, which maybe-
David Street: 100%
Joe Supervielle: ... Helped you learn, yeah.
David Street: 100%. So one of the first things that came up was helping to put together conference sessions, which of course I'd not done before for a couple years ago. So I'm helping to put together sessions for a conference I've not really attended or seen what the sessions look like. So it really is kind of holding your nose and jumping in. I took that approach so that I could test the waters a little bit to see where I wanted to spend my development time. And also because so much about professional development and local government is about contributing back to the profession. I think it's important early on in your career to find how you want to do that and then pursue it. So it let me figure out what I was interesting in developing myself as well as interested in giving back to the profession.
Joe Supervielle: So almost kind of like the buffet analogy, you get to try a lot of different things without necessarily filling up on one plate or sampling different areas so you can kind of hone in on what you're good at, but also what you enjoy doing?
David Street: Right. And it also gives you an opportunity to figure out in a non-work environment, in a professional, but non-work environment what you're not so good at and provides opportunities for you to spend time in that area if it's an area you want to improve. So going back to one of my prior blog posts, one of the areas that I wanted to spend time improving in was being a more succinct and communicative writer. And so I actively sought out opportunities to write more whether it was at work or whether it was through an outlet like the ICMA [inaudible 00:06:22]. So it gives you a chance to lean into those areas where you want to see improvement as well.
Joe Supervielle: And does this approach, again, it doesn't necessarily have to be work, but does it help someone kind of branch out, maybe get perspectives or learn different things from outside their own team or their own department, if you're kind of volunteering for your example, with the planning of the conference sessions I'm guessing at the time that wasn't really your job scope at all, but it exposed you to the people who do that. Not that you wanted to switch or become that full time, but it helped you kind of round out your overall perspective, which down the line at this point, Chief of Staff you're expected to understand all these different departments. So I think that that did help in the long term, yeah?
David Street: I agree. And another thing that developing a conference session or helping to facilitate a conference does, is it makes you really become a consensus builder and focus on the output from a lot of interesting and diverse individuals. And so I think from a skills building perspective that's one of the big pieces I took away from that, how can I take these two or three or four unique folks and bring them into one particular session that will make sense and have value for the people who are attending it. And just like you said, that's very applicable than the day job where I frequently have to bring folks together to build a consensus or a position.
Joe Supervielle: Yeah. Those are the soft skills you mentioned at the top. It wasn't just about the conference planning as a skill. It was, how do I coordinate different people from different backgrounds at different locations, different expertise, and figure out how to put that puzzle together in a coherent way which is good for anyone to know. Again, it doesn't matter what your job title or your exact role is. Those are the soft skills that everyone can be developing.
David Street: Yeah. Now I have to caveat that a little bit by saying that I got, and I think I mentioned this on the prior podcast, but I got lucky with who I worked for and that I worked for one in particular, but a group of people who are willing to develop staff as well as in my case, put me in positions where I could say yes to a lot of stuff. And so I think that's another important thing for folks as they're either coming out of graduate school or looking for their next career opportunity. One of the important questions to ask yourself is, okay, is this organization, is this person, is this supervisor going to be somebody who is going to be willing to put me in positions where I can grow?
Joe Supervielle: Yeah. And while it's not the focus today, something for the city county manager or department head, or whoever might be on the kind of closer to the top to think about aside from your own professional development, which never ends, what are you doing to help the opportunities for your staff below?
David Street: For sure.
Joe Supervielle: As you shift from, I've been trying a bunch of different things for a few years now, what was kind of the spark that triggered you to realize, okay, now it's time to start pairing it back a little bit. What was your process to figure out what you wanted to focus on?
David Street: So I spent about four-ish, three and a half years in that yes to everything or yes, to most everything phase let's say. And that served me really well from the perspective that I made a lot of great connections, got to build a lot of great relationships with people and organizations. And I got a pretty wide exposure to a lot of different opportunities and organizations, but going back to the buffet analogy, you can just continue to load onto your plate till it's not really... You can't carry it back to the table to eat it because there's no waiter or somebody kind of moderating your portion-
Joe Supervielle: Controlling it a little bit for you, yeah.
David Street: Right. And so I got to the point basically where I just said, I can't carry this tray. I need to focus a little bit, which also happened to coincide with the onset of the pandemic. So really I didn't hit that place until early 2020 and those two things together, let me really sit back and take stock. And as I was developing my plan for this year, really honing on, okay, what am I about? What do I want to do? How do I need to grow?
Joe Supervielle: So those are the questions what kind of criteria then do you use to answer those questions?
David Street: I think that comes out of personal reflection. I've focused a little bit more on integrating my sort of personal development and professional development to basically just become a better human being and therefore become better in my role and workplace and better in general. So a lot of my time has been spent on diversity equity and inclusion initiatives, trainings, and involvement as something that's come up as important for us as a profession to look at as well as me as a place for personal growth.
Joe Supervielle: It seems more like a cycle. It's not like you just do this kind of valuation and then you're done. Once you get a good picture, are there ways to do minor course corrections or adjustments? Are you literally judging one activity versus another when you're deciding where to spend your time or how do you ultimately, when it comes back down to the real question when someone asks you, or when you're asking yourself yes or no, can you do this? How are you ranking them or prioritizing as you go?
David Street: For me, at least I have a general yearlong plan or focus that I want to take. That's not because it takes a year to improve in an area, but because that's a useful planning cycle for me personally. It basically comes down to, does this opportunity mesh with what I'm trying to achieve this year or in general or does it have a good value add for my organization or my team? And if the answer is shaky on one or both of those, then for me, it's probably a pass at this point. Similarly, if it passes one or both of those tests like, oh yeah, that's definitely something that I need to improve and/or definitely something that I've singled out as a space I want to spend more time in. Then it's an easy, yes. So for me, it's a quick little flow chart in my brain that will run on each opportunity as it comes up. Does this conference achieve... Does it have sessions that it focus on the goal that I've set for myself or the trajectory that I've set for myself? Does this webinar focus on issues that I care about or need to be informed about now?
Joe Supervielle: So professional development, whether it's a kind of low commitment, one off like webinar or a bigger commitment courses over a few months, or even a year or more ultimately, maybe working backwards on what is my goal, or what do I want out of it? And while no one can predict a future or know for sure, if you have some goals for yourself then you can kind of work backwards on, does this activity help me move in that direction? And then that will ultimately help decide yes or no.
David Street: Yeah. I guess I'm presupposing too, that folks have developed or have reflected on specific goals or areas. But I think that that part is critically important. Even if it's just one or two things I would like to be able to write better. I would like to be able to speak in public better. I would like to spend more time in land use planning, whatever your own area or goal may be I think it's really good to identify that and track it in whatever method you are most comfortable with. So for me, it's writing it down, for others it may be putting it in their device or something similar to that.
But I like to have that keyed down so that I can always go back to it, evaluate if I need to and use it as a baseline for making decisions on those different opportunities, because you well know that there are many, many opportunities to go to a webinar, to see a conference, to participate in a cohort. There are a lot of really great organizations, including ICMA that offer a ton of content. So I find it useful to have a way to filter that content.
Joe Supervielle: Yeah. So what about motivation? Maybe I'm speaking just for myself, but it seems like the motivation should be literally for your development. That's right there in the title professional development, rather than, well, hey, this thing will look good on the resume or my boss or their boss said you should go to this webinar, but really doesn't look that interesting to me. How do you personally balance this matches up with my goal and what you want to do for yourself versus kind of the, I don't want to say pressure, but the external forces where certain expectations are there to kind of have that checklist go over oh, he did this. He did that.
David Street: Yeah. The easy answer is that I cheat and try and line things up that I want to work on with areas that would also be good to improve in. So an example being, let's say that my own goal is to get some writing practice in or some public speaking practice in, what opportunities and my boss has told me that I really need to focus in on budgeting. What are my opportunities to write and/or speak about budgeting? So I will sort of use what would be useful to the organization or useful for my own growth in my job as recommended to me by my peers or supervisors or mentors to back into what I want to do. So I'm a big believer in two birds with one stone.
Joe Supervielle: Yeah. Efficient. I like it. It seems like this has worked pretty well for you, especially over the last couple years. I think sometimes people can get frustrated where they're putting the time and effort into certain activities. And in theory, it is lining up with a longer term goal, but there's not really immediate payoff. Even when you complete a program, you might get that certificate, but it doesn't necessarily amount to any tangible, immediate change. But can you speak a little bit to keeping a mindset on the bigger picture and development, because it's a slow build. It's not like it shoots straight up the mountain right away. So how can people measure success? Let's say in this kind of ambiguous area?
David Street: I think that's a really interesting question. And one that kind of speaks to me a little bit too, as somebody who likes to tick things off of lists. You can't necessarily do that, particularly if your area of development is not in something that's easily trackable, like a hard skill. I think a lot of it is keeping mind of what you want your ultimate trajectory to be career-wise, how that ties in with what you're focused on. And then I'm also a big believer in sharing or talking about what I'm doing. So one of the ways that I kind of motivate myself and/or hold myself accountable to what I've said I want to do or focus on is making it public. So in this instance, there was a series of posts I did on the ICMA blog about exactly what I wanted to focus on, why I wanted to focus on it and how I was going to do it. And that both motivates me because people are seeing and responding to it as well as keeps me accountable, because there's a reasonable chance I'll get asked about it.
Joe Supervielle: You're on the record.
David Street: Yeah, right. I'm on the record. I'll get asked about it later. Now that said I do my own sort of development, planning process, and I will jot down or write about different experiences that I've had that are in line or not in line with that to sort of not necessarily track progress, but to remind myself, okay, here's what we're rowing toward.
Joe Supervielle: So purpose in professional development, it sounds kind of in summary, the stages are early on, whether it's early in your career or not, if you're just getting started or want to put more effort into this, it doesn't really matter what your title is or what stages, but keep trying more things, maybe do that buffet approach a little bit where not necessarily saying yes to everything, but try a lot of things, get some more exposure, just with a goal of kind of becoming more rounded and figuring out what you're good at, what you like. Then as you develop, start focusing in making sure what you're spending your time on really points towards your longer term goals, and then kind of just keep refining as you go.
So I think your example has worked out well. I know you don't want to brag too much, but I know you've kind of shot up the ladder pretty quick here in Loudoun County, all the way up to Chief of Staff. And I think others can... whether that's their career goals or not emulate the same thing with their professional development. So thanks for your time today, David, and your expertise on this topic. Please check out David's blogs on professional development, as well as our earlier Mentor Mentee Podcast.
David Street: Thank you so much. I appreciate being able to come on again and having the dubious honor of being your first repeat guest. The one thing I'll say in closing is a quote that I really and truly love from the Magic School Bus. The immortal Ms. Frizzle, which is, "Take chances, make mistakes and get messy."
Joe Supervielle: Well said, you and the Frizz. Thank you, David.
David Street: Thank you.
Guest Information
David Street, Chief of Staff, Loudoun County, Virginia | view LinkedIn profile
Episode Notes
David Street, chief of staff of Loudoun County, Virginia, joins us for a follow up conversation to talk about professional development and optimizing your time and energy to maximize ROI.
Discussed in this episode:
- How to blend professional, educational, and personal development into an overall growth mindset.
- When is saying yes to almost everything good approach?
- What criteria is used to better prioritize time and energy?
- How to measure impact and progress to short or long-term goals.
Resources:
EP08 Two-way Relationship for Mentors and Mentees
Learn more about the National Mentoring Month campaign
Learn more about the free ICMA Coaching Program for local government professionals
Read David Street's professional development series on the ICMA Blog:
