Skip Level Career Conversations - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

Eleanor Roosevelt once observed that “no one can make us feel inferior without our consent.” But the sad reality is that some people will try to quash our dreams. Unfortunately, sometimes these people are in leadership roles where they should be encouraging our development. In my 18 years of teaching graduate students, I had 2-3 students each year who have a problem with a manager threatened by their pursuit of graduate education. Their question was always the same – What do you do when you love your unit and love your team but know that you will have to move on to move up because your leader does not support your career development?

In today’s highly competitive job market, organizations need a strategy to address leaders who are career dream killers. Nurses today will move on if they don’t get career coaching from their managers. In a recent webinar, a manager told me that her organization had found a way to make sure that this does not happen. They have implemented a Skip Level Career Conversations program. Any employee in the health system can schedule a skip level career conversation with any leader in the health system, including the CEOs. New staff receives orientation about the program during onboarding. The appointments are booked on the leader’s calendars as skip-level career conversations. No permission or discussion about the appointment needs to happen with the frontline leader. These meetings aren’t meant to undermine managers in between but rather to connect those working across multiple levels of the organization to discuss an employee’s growth. There is a strong message sent to every leader in the organization that they are all retention officers.

This manager reported that both staff and leaders love these meetings. Senior leaders rarely have opportunities to have these one-to-one conversations with frontline staff. She told us – My staff are totally pumped after these meetings and feel that anything is possible with their careers. My CNO says that these meetings never fail to make her day. It is empowering for me to tell an employee to go ahead and schedule a skip level meeting to learn more about a role that they are interested in – and then know the meeting will actually happen.

In today’s environment, every new retention strategy idea is worth considering. Gallup’s research tells us staff leave managers, not organizations. Every health system has some career dream killers. Initiating Skip Level Career Conversations is one way to hardwire a strategy to prevent this problem.

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