Many organisations have clear processes and guidance to help their staff prepare personal development plans, for example, Performance Management. But what if you work for a manager that doesn’t value personal development or for a small organisation that doesn’t have the necessary procedures or support in place?
It is not always easy to prepare a personal development plan on your own, but the following guidance will help you to identify your needs and prepare a plan that will enable you to take responsibility for your own development.
Your personal development plan should be based on a number of things such as your current role, what ambitions you may have, and not simply aimed at correcting any weaknesses. Indeed, building on your strengths is equally as important.
The following questions will help provide some insights into what is important for you and what you need to focus on developing. You do not need to answer all of the questions; you only need to answer those that are relevant to you at this time.
1) What ambitions do you have?
Are they ambitions to be competent/effective in your current role?
Are they ambitions for a promotion/different role etc?
2) What are your strengths and personal preferences?
What do you enjoy doing?
What motivates you?
What feedback have you had from appraisals/other people?
What psychometric profiling have you undertaken – what does it tell you?
3) What are your weaknesses and things you prefer not to do?
What do you least like to do?
What feedback have you had from appraisals/other people?
What psychometric profiling have you undertaken – what does it tell you?
4) What will add the most value to your performance in your current role?
5) What experiences do you need to have and what skills do you need to develop to achieve your ambitions?
6) What key development needs do you therefore have?
7) How will you address you development needs? It is important to work out how you will meet your needs as well. For example, you may wish to be more efficient in the way you plan and manage your time, but how you will achieve these things? Some suggestions might be to read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and identify what changes you could make to how you organise yourself. Alternatively it might be to regularly use a ‘To Do’ list to prioritise the urgency and importance of tasks or record your activities for 2 weeks to see how you spend your time.
8) What resources do I need? What resources, financial or other support will you need?
9) What date will you complete all your actions by?
10) What will be the outcomes? The last aspect of your PDP should be concerned with the outcomes you expect from your development actions, i.e. how you will measure your success. For example you may feel the need to attend a Project Management course, but the outcome you really want is being able to deliver projects on time and within budget more regularly.
It is not always easy to prepare a personal development plan on your own, but hopefully the questions provided above will give you sufficient guidance for you to prepare your own PDP and take responsibility for your own development.
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