A personal
development strategy begins with a simple premise: your development is your
responsibility.
At heart we
probably know this to be the case, yet how often do we sit back waiting for
that development to be put on a plate for us. For a lucky few things might fall
into place easily, but for most of us that will not be the case.
So why not
decide that you’re going to make your own development a priority, rather than
leaving things to chance.
Here we suggest
15 tips to help you think about your own personal development strategy. In
doing so we propose that you think more widely about how you’d like to develop.
Don’t limit your thinking to just the work you’re currently doing.
For a happy
manager, development is much wider than job specific training, it should be
about you career and about your life.
Here are 15
tips to help you develop your own personal development strategy:
1.
Make your own development your number 1 priority.
2.
Spend more time developing as a person than developing
as a manager.
3.
Imagine you had to make the case to yourself regarding
the development you need. What would it take to convince you to invest?
4.
Give yourself a self-appraisal. (see our article:
self-performance appraisal for some useful questions to ask yourself)
5.
Choose how you want to develop, rather than conform to
whatever an organization might tell you to do. In some cases they may be one
and the same – but the difference is that you choose to do it!
6.
Spend much more time on getting better at what you’re
good at, than struggling to improve your weaknesses.
7.
Identify some specific strengths you have and commit to
getting even better at them.
8.
What do you aspire to do/be?
9.
Make the “ordinary” part of your development – what
happens in your normal day’s work that can help you to develop?
10. Choose
something you do, then try to do it to the best of your ability.
11. Take
real pride in something that you do.
12. Take
on an ordinary project and find something extra-ordinary in it – try to make a
real impact.
13. Vary
your learning diet. Experience bite-size learning, the small learning snacks
just when you need them. But make sure you also experience the breadth of
learning from a longer, more measured, “learning” meal taken regularly.
14. Cultivate
a healthy dissatisfaction with how things are. If you are to improve you need
to have some dissatisfaction with your current abilities. Be careful that your
motive here is to improve, not to become frustrated or cynical.
15. Learn
more about what you really enjoy doing.
Perhaps a good
place to end this article is with what could be described as St Augustine
“If
you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what
you are.
For
where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained.
Keep
adding, keep walking, keep advancing.”
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