Personal development planning. (Checklist 092).

This checklist promotes personal development planning (PDP) as a way of enabling a constructive approach to acquiring knowledge and skills throughout working life.

The accelerating pace of market and technological change, the growth of information, and the shifts in economic and competitive pressures are all imposing increasing demands on managers to renew their skills and capabilities.

Flatter organisation structures mean fewer promotion possibilities. Managers are increasingly more likely to be faced with a series of sideways moves within and between organisations rather than with steady upward progression. Managers can no longer rely on their initial training or qualifications to carry them through employment, or on their employer to provide everything they need to develop skills and experience--the old security, if it ever existed, has gone. Increasingly managers will take responsibility for their own lifelong, continuing development--the bottom-line is that it is down to the individual. The new security consists of loyalty--not complacency--to oneself, to one's own skills and potential.

Management Standards

This checklist has relevance to the MSC National Occupational Standards for Management: Key Role C--Manage People.

Definition

Development is a lifelong process of nurturing, shaping and improving an individual's skills, knowledge and interests to ensure their maximum effectiveness and adaptability, and to minimise the obsolescence of their skills and their chances of redundancy. It does not necessarily imply upward movement; rather, it is about enabling individuals to improve and use their full potential at each career stage.

A personal development plan results from establishing what you want to achieve or where you want to go, in the short- or long-term, and identifying the need for skills, knowledge or competence. It also helps to define the appropriate development to meet those perceived needs. Scheduling and timing is important but cannot be too regimented.

Benefits of PDP

Adopting a constructive approach to PDP provides a schedule to work to, facilitates motivation, and offers a framework for monitoring and evaluating achievements. It can lay the basis for:

* re-appraising where you want to go and how you can get there

* revitalising those technical skills that date very quickly

* building up transferable skills (such as self-awareness, ability to learn, adaptability to change, empathy, good time management)

* continuous learning

* gaining satisfaction from a sense of achievement

* helping to ensure employability and survival in an age where very few jobs can be guaranteed the same five years from now

* getting into a position where you can make the most of opportunities which may arise, or which you can make happen.

Problems with PDP

These are usually associated with:

* `getting started' in a constructive way

* assigning importance to development activities which may not have seemed so important in the past

* being too modest, too demanding or perhaps too unrealistic

* getting the right balance between workaholism and inertia--between work, rest and play.

Action checklist

PDP is a cyclical process--you don't have to start at the beginning if you have already decided where you are going and what you need to do to get there. The following chart outlines the process:

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1. Establish the purpose or direction

The purpose of any development cycle needs to be identified. You may do this by yourself or with your manager, mentor, colleagues, or friends. It involves:

* gaining an awareness of your potential within your chosen sector

* gaining a measure of what you are good at and interested in

* taking account of the organisational realities you encounter and linking your plans to organisational needs as much as possible.

Think about:

* your own value system, involving private life and family, work and money, constraints and obstacles to mobility, now and in the future

* the characteristics of work that fit with your value system.

2. Identify development needs

The identification of development needs may emerge from intended or actual new tasks or responsibilities, from discussions with your manager or others, or from dissatisfaction with current routines. Some of us may know what we are good at, many of us may not. In order to find out, various instruments are available including self-assessment tests, benchmarking exercises against management standards, or personal diagnostics which elicit your view of yourself in a structured way.

Your development needs will differ depending on your career goals. If you intend to remain in similar employment, do you need development to re-motivate or re-orient yourself, or is the aim to improve your current performance and effectiveness? Or is development to prepare you for promotion, your next job, a new career or self-employment?

3. Identify Learning Opportunities

As a result of one, or several, of the assessment processes above, draw up a list of the skills or knowledge you will need to acquire, update or improve. Compare this list to your current skills and knowledge base and identify the gaps. Consider:

* your learning style--some of us learn best from trying new things, whilst others prefer to sit back and observe; some prefer to put things to the test, others to carry out research at first or second hand. Honey and Mumford have devised an instrument to help you identify your preferred learning style.

* the resources available--think laterally when trying to identify sources of help for development. In addition to your own organisation, consider government and private advisory agencies, literature and open learning aids, multi-media packages, professional institutes, your peer groups, networks and colleagues and from family and friends.

* the range of learning options available. These can be broadly differentiated into three categories.

--Education takes place over a sustained but finite period of time, usually leads to a qualification and may result in leading you to a new career direction.

--Training takes place at a specific time and place, is usually vocationally relevant and limited to specific aims and objectives which can be measured.

--Development encompasses a large number of activities which offer learning potential which are neither education nor course-based, but rather work-based (such as work shadowing, job rotation, secondment, attachment, mentoring, delegation, counselling or coaching) or personal (such as private reading, authorship, presenting papers, peer group contacts, networking, or community involvement).

4. Formulate an action plan

For each of the gaps you have identified, set yourself development objectives. These need to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. There must be an element of challenge in them so they stretch you as an individual and carry you on to new ground. But they must also be attainable and viable within a realistic time-frame, otherwise time will overtake you.

5. Undertake the development

Put your plan into action--your development is up to you.

6. Record the outcomes

Keeping records serves to remind you--and others such as potential employers--of what you have done. Most importantly they help you to focus on what you have got out of the development activity. Record the date, the development need identified, the chosen method of development, the date(s) that development was undertaken, the outcomes, and further action.

7. Evaluate and review

Evaluation is the key stage to the self-development cycle because it enables you to discover whether that development activity was worthwhile, applicable, and if and how your skills or working behaviour improved as a result. Evaluating development activities involves asking:

* what am I better able to do as a result?

* has this experience thrown up further development needs?

* how well did this development method work?

* could I have gained more from this activity?

* would I follow this approach again?

Evaluation will also provide a key lead to the next stage of the continuing cycle.

Goals change, tasks vary and new needs will emerge. It is important to revise your own plan accordingly. A plan that does not evolve and adapt is probably not being followed.

Dos and don'ts for personal development planning

Do

* Make sure your personal goals are balanced.

* Take time to reflect on and evaluate learning experiences.

* Seek out feedback on your performance.

* Focus on development in two different directions at the same time:

* for specific goals or careers

* for greater flexibility and adaptability to changing circumstances.

Don't

* Be too ambitious; development is usually incremental.

* Be afraid of asking for help.

Useful reading Practical self-development: a step by step approach to CPD, Bob Norton and Vikky Burt London: Institute of Management Foundation, 1997 Test your management skills: the management self-assessment test Corby: Institute of Management, 1995 Manual of learning styles, Peter Honey and Alan Mumford Maidenhead: Peter Honey Publications, 1982

Thought starters

* There were two stone-cutters chipping away in a quarry. Asked what they were doing, one said: "I'm cutting stone." The other said: "I'm building a cathedral". (Past tense, future perfect, Malcolm Kerrell, London; Souvenir Press, 1996, p. 127)