Welcome to the September edition of The Inbox Coach. As we come out of the summer filled with holidays and breaks, I want to help you get back into the routine of working by looking at Career Development Plans.
I’ve got that back-to-school feeling so I thought I would pick a practical theme for this month and look at how to create your development plan.
What is a development plan?
Simply put, a development plan details what you want from your career and what steps you are going to take next to get there. The hardest goals to achieve are the ones where the distance between where you are now and where you want to be feel vast. We tend to avoid goals which are too hard or feel too out of reach. When you plot out where you want to be and start to fill in the steps of how to get there it starts to feel more achievable.
The best two things you can do for your development are to get specific about what you want and take consistent actions towards your goals. A development plan helps you to do that. When you start to be specific about what your goals look like they become clearer. Even if you don’t know exactly what you want next from your career, if you start to think about the detail your goal will emerge. Once you know where you are heading you can start to take actions that will get you there.
No action is too small. Researching something on the internet or asking a colleague a question are both small actions that can help you towards your goal. You learn by doing, so every action you take towards your goals will give you more information and the plan will develop.
What does your development plan look like?
The answer is whatever you want it to. It could be handwritten in a notebook, a note on your phone or a mood board with pictures you stick on your wall. The important thing is it’s not only in your head. The act of committing your goals to paper (real or digital) helps you to see them from a new perspective which can help you to gain a greater insight into your situation.
If you can look at them every day, it will also help you to prioritise your development. A plan can include where you are now and your achievements so far. It can be easy to forget that we have all already achieved so much, so celebrating those achievements in your development plan can remind you that you are capable.
Reflection
*If you can’t do the exercises from this email now, then don’t forget to pick a time when you are going to do them and add this email to your calendar
Whether you already have a system for your career development or you have never made a plan, it is a good idea to reflect on the process of how you develop. You want to find a methodology that works for you, that plays to your strengths and helps you to overcome the things you find more challenging. When thinking about your career plan ask yourself these questions…
How do you plan your career development?
What tools do you use to create and execute your plan?
When do you put your plans into practice?
What stops you from taking action?
What would your ideal development plan look like?
Action
One of the biggest challenges people face when it comes to their development is making time to work on it. It’s why I started these emails, so that you have one moment in the week where you are prompted to think about your career development.
Task
The first step to making more time for your development is understanding what gets into the way of you doing it. Spend a few minutes each day this week thinking about what gets in the way of you making time for your development and what you could do to overcome this.
Inspiration
“Change happens. Change is definitely going to happen, no matter what we plan or expect or hope for or set in place. We will adapt to that change, or we will become irrelevant.” - adrienne maree brown
adrienne mariee brown “grows healing ideas in public through her multi-genre writing, her music and her podcasts.” I first came across her when I read her book, Emergent Stratgey, which is all about a different approach to creating positive change in world by looking to the processes in nature such as fractals and the complex movements of birds and fish.
This book is her thoughts on the concept of emergent strategy, observations and stories of how she has used it in her work and also a fantastic resource for you to take the ideas of emergent strategy into your work. It's quite a heavy-going book, but I've already taken two really big things away from it. The first is this quote, which is the reminder that things will always change so working out how we can best deal with change is going to set us up for success. The other thing is “What you pay attention to grows.” So simple but so true.
A development plan is a tool to help you to pay attention to what you want from your career. If you make time for it, work on it, look at it, you will pay more attention to the opportunities to grow and develop that are in front of you and be more likely to grab them.
This month is all about practical tips for making career development part of your working week. If you have a particular challenge that you would like me to address, hit reply to this email and I’ll share my top tips on how to integrate career development into your day-to-day work.
I’ll be back next week
See you then
Laura
P.S. I’ve listed all the previous editions of The Inbox Coach emails on my website which you can find here. Each email has reflection questions and action tasks, so if you need to revisit a topic you can now browse them all in one place
