Managers' Professional Development Needs And Goals Are Evolving

Temitayo Samson-Grace, the Head of Talent at Big Cabal Media, shares insights about how best to support managers

About Temitayo and her role at Big Cabal Media

Temitayo Samson-Grace is based in Lagos, Nigeria and serves as the Head of Talent at Big Cabal Media, the media company behind content brands such as Tech Cabal and Zikoko. Prior to joining Big Cabal Media a year ago, she previously held a People Operations Partner role at Rensource Energy. She is the Founder of Bloome Academy, a future focused learning platform dedicated to supporting young professionals in their career journey where she also serves as a life and career coach. In her current role at Big Cabal Media, she is responsible for all talent needs at their fast-growing company, including talent acquisition, onboarding, training, culture, compensation, performance management and retention initiatives.

Temitayo shares views on manager support best practices

In June 2022, Temitayo participated as one of three panelists invited to comment on our CoffeeChat 2022 Manager Support Survey findings. CoffeeChat's second annual Manager Support Survey captured important trends around leadership development at 50 top companies and organizations with an operational footprint across Africa.

When reviewing the survey results, Temitayo found several points very interesting. First, the finding that around half of companies did not care or felt neutral about program certificates as a criteria for selecting leadership programs stood out to her. She sees this as a sign of progress, since she feels that leadership is about observable skills and experience, rather than certificates. Second, she agreed that flexibility and choice are increasingly common in leadership development programs as a way to empower managers to engage with content, peers and coaches in the way they want and when they have the time and energy for this.

At Big Cabal Media, there are currently around 20 managers in total. As a startup, there is a strong emphasize on learning on the job. Managers and soon-to-be managers are often intentionally assigned projects that help them practice and improve specific skills. There is also an active culture of sharing self-improvement resources through general and team Slack channel. That said, she is also currently exploring and experimenting with new types of programs and structured resources she can arrange for her managers. Her selection criteria is strong alignment with her team members’ diverse and real-time needs. She has already found that 1:1 coaching is a highly flexible option since conversations are catered for the individual’s context.

About CoffeeChat

CoffeeChat is a Future of Work technology company on a mission to democratize access to coaching support for the estimated 15 million managers working across Africa. Founded in early 2019, CoffeeChat has worked with dozens of companies to facilitate access to both professional coaches and peer coaches. CoffeeChat was featured in the HolonIQ Africa EdTech 50 list in 2020 and was ranked as a top startup during the Village Capital Future of Work Africa program in 2021.

Interesting in reading the full Manager Support Survey findings? Watch the video summary or download the full report.