To create an environment where my teams can growing professionally and thrive, here are a few practices I find work well.
Team health check
Following Spotify's Squad Health Check model, I implemented the process to evaluate team health and efficiency. After reviewing results with my team, we built a roadmap to address areas of improvement.
Quarterly OKRs
Every quarter, each team member sets professional growth and development goals (objectives and key results) that they feel they can accomplish that quarter. We also set goals as a team. Often the goals focused on improving a skill, understanding the business, or improving a process. They also often sharing learnings with the team.
An important part of my role is to support and help them discover opportunities to reach their goals. However, taking the initiative to check in and ask for help is entirely in their hands. At the end of the year, the team can then use their accomplished OKRs to build their yearly annual performance and use as aids for promotions.
Performance evaluation surveys
I make sure each role has a clear list of skills and responsibilities so that every team member understands what is expected of them in their role. They are then able to look at positions above them and understand what they need to demonstrate in order to be considered for that role.
Twice a year, I send out a questionnaire to product owners and anyone else who has worked closely with the designers, which asks them to rate the team member on key responsibilities at their role level.
This performance evaluation gives each member a baseline score, and an understanding of which responsibilities they should try and improve on throughout the year. The team members and I work through ways to create OKR goals around improving future evaluations.