Support the professional development of others

Little of this can be handed to software today.

The reporting and paperwork around management automate well. Directing, developing and evaluating people does not, and people do not accept it when it is attempted on them.

Key facts about this work activity
How automatableBarely automatable
Kind of workManaging, training and developing people
Jobs that do it12 occupations
Tool categories that applyEnterprise platforms
O*NET activityDeveloping and Building Teams (4.A.4.b.2)

What this looks like on the job

Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 12 occupations that perform it.

  • Identify educational, training, or other development opportunities for sustainability employees or volunteers.
  • Encourage and support party candidates for political office.
  • Participate in special education-related activities, such as attending meetings and providing support to special educators throughout the district.
  • Mentor graduate students and junior colleagues.
  • Mentor new faculty.
  • Mentor new faculty members.
  • Prepare actors for auditions by providing scripts and information about roles and casting requirements.
  • Provide coaching and mentoring to other caregivers to help facilitate their professional growth and development.
  • Provide staff with assistance in performing difficult or complicated duties.
  • Counsel employees in work-related activities, personal growth, or career development.
  • Recommend and implement measures to improve worker motivation, work methods, or customer services.
  • Speak to students to encourage and support the development of future political leaders.
  • Counsel and provide guidance to students regarding personal, academic, vocational, or behavioral issues.
  • Mentor and support administrative staff members, such as superintendents and principals.

What we would actually use

Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.

Our pickBuy nothing

Buy nothing. The reporting and paperwork around management run on whatever you already use for documents, and the part that is actually managing people does not automate at any price.

Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.

The rest of the category

Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.

Enterprise platforms

Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.

Work that goes with it

O*NET groups these under “Provide support or encouragement to others”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.

Related work activities
ActivityJobs
Encourage students13
Interact with patients to build rapport or provide emotional support8
Visit individuals in their homes to provide support or information7
Encourage patients during therapeutic activities5
Encourage patients or clients to develop life skills3

Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.