When I first started asking if people had a personal development plan about 3ish years ago, I was always surprised at the numbers of people that said that they didn’t. Other than their ‘annual review’ plan or similar, they didn’t have one specific to them and their career aspirations.
As the years have passed, that has changed. And more and more people now how their employers one, and one of their own. Sometimes these align, and sometimes they don’t. But regardless, they have a plan of their own. And I cannot tell you how it warms my cynical heart as something I love to see.
Why am I so bothered by other people’s professional development I hear you ask. Well mainly because I am, and have always been, a big advocate of our profession. I firmly believe it is a profession and I an a staunch believer in professional standards and development. Additionally, when I made the jump to go freelance I very quickly learned that if I didn’t take my learning and development seriously, no one else would.
And while employers will often say that they do, in reality this isn’t the case for many of us. If you are lucky enough to have an employer than genuinely wants you to grow and develop and tailors your development plan to you specifically, you are lucky indeed and treasure it. In my experience and talking to many of our profession, that isn’t always the case. We either get the standard ‘annual review and goals’ criteria, or are given some bland development plan that doesn’t really speak to our strengths and interests.
Regardless of if you have one of your own, or one forced upon you, there are some tips to your own personal development that I’d like to share with you. These are drawn from my own experiences being a manager and managing my own development, and drawn from what others have told me about theirs from various talks and sessions we’ve run.
First of all, where do you want to go? The point of a development plan is to develop towards where you want to be. So where do you want to be? Either in terms of a specific role/position, or even in terms of specific skills or knowledge. There some roadmaps out there to help you with those sorts of things, but all them start with your own goals and ambitions. So what are they?
Second, what do you need to do to get there? Logically then, do you know what you need to be able to get there? Both in terms of skills but also experience as well. We like to think that just doing X role will get us experience in Y, and my experience (I appreciate the irony there) is that this is not the case. If you don’t ask (or arrange) you don’t get.
What opportunities do you have with your employer? Most employers will have training programmes or other things available to you. Not all, but many. Have you seen what is available to you and what you could get the most out of? My experience when it comes to in-house training has been mixed, but of the courses that were of value, they really were of value. For example, when I was at Essex County Council their internally run course on presentation skills (train the trainer) was actually very good. Many of the lessons and points we covered I find myself covering now with the DP & IG apprentices. So you never know, always have a look and see!
Don’t be afraid to put things on the list that cost money or time. We will often discount things from our development plan we say they cost too much or in our mind would be too much of a time commitment. And that may well be true. However, I would say to you not to leave it off the development plan. Have a part of the plan that is the ‘would be nice’ category. A list of things that may well cost time or money that should the opportunity arise, you’d jump at the chance to do. You never know, that chance may well present itself and to have your homework ready there to go, will pay off for you massively. Discount nothing in your head, its all a fair target just make sure you split them into this year, next year and one year.
I’m not going to get into the debate on certificates vs experience on this blog post. I don’t agree with the binary argument as I firmly believe both have their value and place. I’ll simply say you do what you want to do, and ignore anyone else’s opinion on the matter. Your skills, your ‘certificates’, your development is a matter for you and no one else (well, maybe your employer but you get my point).
