The week of June 25 represented Career Development Week at dentalcorp, an annual event focused on educating and empowering employees on how to best manage their careers so they can achieve both personal and professional growth.
The first set of leader sessions brought dentalcorp managers together to collaborate and share best practices and success stories of guiding, growing and mentoring their teams. As a leadership team, Vice Presidents, Directors and Managers discussed the importance of understanding the different learning styles of each of their team members and the resulting need for tailored and focused feedback to accelerate their development and effectiveness in their role. As leaders, people managers learned the need to be able to adjust their own communication and management style for both the situation and employee audience to elevate employee performance and development.
In other sessions, employees in the early stages of their careers participated in a workshop to learn and explore the steps needed to not only take ownership of their career growth but actually drive it. The focus of the session was on providing tools needed to empower employees to have constructive developmental conversations with their managers centred on objective setting, engaging in meaningful dialogue and how to best receive coaching towards achievement of their objectives.
Later in the week, the entire Support Centre team came together to participate in a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment led by Sandy Reynolds to better understand their personality type and preferences around work. The goal of the discussion was to help individuals recognize how they could optimize communication and interactions with other team members. It proved to be an energetic and enlightening morning of discovery about ourselves and colleagues which empowers us to work better as a team. Part of the excitement of the experience was seeing the diversity of personality types within and across teams.
The final session included an engaging panel discussion of leaders from across the business sharing stories about their career development and success at dentalcorp. The conversation was moderated by Elyse Leblanc, and included Stephanie Holdsworth, Quinlan Boots, Kieran Atkinson, Julia Croll, and Joe Spagnuolo who all spoke candidly about the importance of taking ownership of their careers and how building strong relationships with mentors accelerated their development and ability to navigate their growth within the broader context of a rapidly growing organization.
The first annual Career Development Week was inspiring and stimulated conversations across departments while providing all team members with the tools needed to strengthen their skills and relationships.
We are excited to prepare for the growth of our employees and the business and the positive outcomes we expect as a result.
