Or, who the devil is Tom Henderson?
Jessica Swanson
is managing editor of the Vancouver Business Journal.
I’m feeling pretty good about my profession right now – and it’s not just because I met Tom Brokaw last week.
It’s mostly because I met Tom Henderson.
I’ve also been away from the office a lot lately, but absence alone doesn’t make the heart grow fonder.
You might ask, where have I been? And who the devil is this Tom Henderson?
I have been engaged in what they call "professional development." And I am the poster child for the beneficial effects of professional development in the workplace.
Journalists are woefully undertrained. You may laugh, "Ha! Of course they are. Why else would they make so many mistakes?" But that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that professional development is not mandated by our industry – just like many of your industries. Unlike attorneys and architects, we do not have to achieve a certain number of continuing education credits each year to maintain our licenses. We don’t even have licenses. We just love what we do, and so we do it every day. Just like you.
But even a chosen profession can produce burnout and a dull ache around the eyes. Even a profession practically built on excitement – like Mr. Brokaw’s – can overwhelm with monotony at times. After all, we are asked to do many of the same things every day – because they have to get done and we are the ones who know how to do them.
I was telling my father how buoyant I was feeling because I have gotten out of the office lately with professionals in my field and heard solutions to many of the same problems I face daily in my job. I was telling him how great it feels to learn real lessons about today’s newsroom from professionals who have been navigating these lessons for longer than I have been alive.
My father, a pragmatist, a retired military policeman and instructor with the U.S. Army, said something like this: "Of course you feel great. You’re learning. In the Army, we never stopped learning. We did it every day."
Studies show that 45 percent of employed people are actively looking for jobs. My father and I, we love to look for jobs. Why? We want to keep learning, and not every employer believes – like the Vancouver Business Journal does – that professional development is a key component of retention and motivation.
There are two times when I feel really great at work – during "ah-ha! moments" and when I follow through on those moments with a course of action. The ah-ha! moments almost always come when I am learning something new, and the follow through is about applying the insight in a practical setting – the work place. Everybody wins. I don’t mean that managers should come back into the office after a nice bout of professional development and try to rebuild Rome in a day. Implementing a few key initiatives over time – and being supported by upper management – will increase the likelihood that those ah-ha! moments will create a return on the investment in professional development.
You might ask, now who the heck is Tom Henderson? And when are we going to find out how you met Tom Brokaw?
Last week, I attended the 32nd annual Murrow Symposium at the Edward R. Murrow School of Communications at WSU Pullman, where Tom Brokaw was the recipient of a lifetime achievement award in broadcast journalism. That’s how I met Mr. Brokaw; he signed a book for my dad.
That’s also where I met Mr. Henderson. He and I were on a couple of journalism panels together. An editorial writer for the Lewiston (Id.) Tribune, Tom told stories about the best articles he’s written, why he loves reporting more than anything and how he got into the business.
Our audience was made up of journalism students, writers for the campus newspaper, The Daily Evergreen, and high school students who already want into this crazy lifestyle. It was their annual day of professional development. They got to ask questions of those who had been at it a good bit longer than they had and got to commune with each other away from the classroom and commiserate about the balance between classes and the paper. They traded ideas on how to get good internships and jobs in the next couple of years and how to handle ethical dilemmas in the newsroom.
They got away from their work to focus on their work. Just like Tom Henderson and me.
The best part about professional development is meeting people who love what I do as much as I love it. The best – and least expensive – professional development an employer can offer is the encouragement of employees to make friends in the business – preferably friends who do it better and who have been doing it longer. Yes, you may eventually lose your employee to another job he or she got through the very network you encouraged, but while you have the employee you’ll likely be getting his or her best work.
Finally, if I can offer some direct advice – encourage your employees to teach and mentor. I’ve been impossible since coming back from the symposium at Pullman. Those students were inspiring, and I can’t stop thinking about them. They drew on my best resources and forced me to look at my career in a fresh and energetic way – as if I had never "worked" a day in my life. Now that’s a good feeling.
