Many Professional Institutes and Societies have a requirement for their members to keep a record of their professional updating and development. SO why not take a leaf out of their book and start your own program?
Consider the analogy of walking up a downward escalator. As time goes by, your skills and knowledge with respect to current thinking and requirements diminishes. Therefore you need to maintain a certain amount of learning (CPD) to stay still. More to move up!
Even skills which 5 years ago were considered transferable are now being questioned. Communication skills, language skills, Project Management skills etc. are now seen by some as so situation specific that they are no longer considered core competencies!
The basic scheme for managing your own development is pretty simple;
- Know yourself better than anyone else
- Know what is required now and in the future
- Learn how to get there and how to add the necessary skills and knowledge
- Do it now, don’t wait
Want some tips? This video gives you 8 key tips to help you get started on your career plan.
Recognize a career development plan as an Impactful Development Method—
Corporate Executive Council research demonstrates that creation of IDPs represents the second most effective method for developing employees. It increases the effectiveness of leadership development by approximately 65 percent and can increase discretionary effort of employees by as much as 27%.
Create Effective career development plan—
Research indicates that up to two-thirds of all employees who have development plans feel they are unchallenging, inapplicable, and not leveragable in their day-to-day work.5 Learning and Development Roundtable research suggests that the best way to combat ineffective IDPs is to clearly define employee and manager responsibilities for creation of an IDP, and align those responsibilities to the four main components of an IDP, as detailed below
It is accepted that writing down sound goals helps you cross over from dreams to reality.
So what do you do if you maybe lack a skill or are a little under-confident about achieving something?
Development – growth, improvement, advancement
As the saying goes, you don’t drive your car by looking in the rear view mirror, so why take that approach with your life?
Development comes through knowing what you want to learn or change, what you need to do to achieve that and how you will know when you have arrived.
Planning –
structured preparation, ground-work, scheduling
And finally “planning”, the not-so-glamorous part that most people do anything to avoid. This is the nitty gritty of booking that course, making an appointment to see that specialist or completing some other task that will improve the quality of your
life.
Why do we avoid it, when the benefits are so great?
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