Stretch Assignments that Develop Strategic, Interpersonal, and Personal Skills

Blog pic (stretch assignments) Given that most development occurs through experience (McCall, Lombardo, & Morrison, 1988), stretch assignments can provide a great vehicle for driving employee learning and/or leadership development. Stretch assignments are essentially short-term projects or assignments that provide unique and challenging experiences for the purpose of developing employee/leader skills and abilities. Although the use of on-the-job development is clearly on the rise, it is often applied without consideration of the necessary planning and support mechanisms.

The first thing to keep in mind if you’re thinking about leveraging stretch assignments for developmental purposes is the common-sense notion that different stretch assignments develop different abilities (e.g., public speaking skills cannot be developed through writing policy statements or crunching numbers). Because of this, it is important to first identify the specific skill(s) to be developed. Once you have a list of skills, the next step is to identify the available assignments that provide relevant exposure. This article will help you with this first critical stage of using stretch assignments – that is, thinking about competencies and identifying assignments. Below is a list of stretch assignments that have been shown to develop competence in the following three areas: strategic skills, interpersonal skills, or personal effectiveness.

If you would like to share this list, check out our reference guide which contains the same information in a PDF format.

Strategic Skills

These assignments will help develop competencies related to expanding one’s awareness of organizational functions and strategy (e.g., coping with ambiguous situations, gaining a strategic perspective, influencing others, working with customers, problem solving)

Spend 3 days with clients and report back (presentation or written report)
Conduct a customer-needs analysis
Write a policy statement
Interview external stakeholders about their opinions of the organization
Analyze and compare a competitor’s product or service
Put together a presentation for a senior employee (i.e., supervisor or manager)
Evaluate a training program
Join a cross-functional team
Join work on a project that has been unsuccessful
Put together a task-force to solve a tough problem
Monitor a new product or service through its entire life cycle

Interpersonal Skills

These will help develop competencies that increase one’s effectiveness to work with and manage other employees or teams (e.g., communication, listening, managing conflict, managing relationships, teamwork, negotiation, trust, approachability, delegation, leadership)

Lead a team meeting
Become a mentor to a new employee
Train a new employee in a particular skill
Represent team concerns to supervisor
Join a team that’s dealing with conflict
Negotiate a new customer contract
Take responsibility in resolving a team conflict
Troubleshoot a performance issue
Become a campus recruiter
Interview customers and report back
Work with a peer on a developmental opportunity
Delegate 2 tasks to a peer and ask him/her to delegate 2 to you

Personal Effectiveness

These are oriented around competencies most closely related to your performance and personal development (e.g., organizing, planning, intellectual acumen, creativity, composure, time management, work/life balance, decision quality, customer service)

Help launch a new product or service
Re-launch a product or service that previously failed
Learn a new tool, process, or approach and give a presentation on it
Work with someone from another department on a tough issue
Handle a difficult negotiation with an internal or external client
Take on a project that others have failed in
Write a press release
Teach a seminar on an unfamiliar topic
Create a customer satisfaction survey
Take on a task that you do not like to do
Take on an employee’s tasks who is on vacation
Conduct interviews with employees on their work/life balance experience & present findings

Note: This list is informed by research presented in Lombardo & Eichinger’s (1989) book entitled “Eighty-eight assignments for development in place,” and Yost & Plunkett’s (2009) book entitled “Real time leadership development.” I highly recommend both books as resources for any organization that currently applies stretch assignments or plans to in the future.

Going Forward…

Going forward, keep in mind that this is only a single piece in effective use of stretch assignments for developmental purposes. There are a number of mechanisms that are critical for actually translating experience into learning and development. Employees who will be given stretch assignments need the active support ant participation of their supervisor before, during, and after:

Before – to meet with the employee and discuss what skills to develop, then chose a stretch assignment and identify learning goals
During – to give immediate feedback, support and encouragement, and provide access to resources (e.g., time to participate in assignments, introductions to other people who can provide guidance)
After – to reflect and debrief on what was learned during the assignment and how that can be applied to their current job or future development