5 Reasons Why You Need to Drive Your Own Development

Many people across the world are experiencing an incredible learning curve right now not through choice, but as a requirement to respond to the dynamic environment we are experiencing in 2020: digital collaboration platforms, cloud-based based creation tools (Office 365) and the management of virtual teams to name just a few.

Basically, 2020 is VUCA on warp-speed for the office workplace.

As the impacts to people and finances continues to ripple out, there is no doubt most of us will be doing more with less. Therefore, taking ownership of your development has never been more important.

Here are a few of the specific reasons why this is so crucial:

1. Your organisation is focused on financially sustainable success. While the organisation and your personal development goals may be in synch in some areas, the mindset and motivations are probably vastly different. For an organisation, the focus is usually on investing in skills that have immediate return on investment. You do not have to search very far to see that organisations are looking for individuals and organisations to provide training on technology and change tools such as Microsoft Teams and specific ERP’s like SAP. While all development can be useful, this may not account for your personal focus on career goals.

2. The process of creating development plans is often not robbed of valuable reflection and visioning on the long-term needs of the individual. If you are among the few who have a line manager that identifies specific skills areas for these discussions, be grateful. For most of us, the process is more of a negotiation of asking for what you need and trying to justify the benefit to the organisation. Or even worse, your discussions are transactional and focus primarily on current performance, not future enablers.

3. Your boss may not have your best interests in mind when they give feedback on where you should be focusing your development efforts. I choose to believe that most managers want their team members to be continuously learning and growing, but the reality is that they have their own interests and the interests of others to balance into the equation, too. At the extreme end, some managers are intimidated by well-skilled team members. As disappointing as it may seem, some may even actively try to dissuade you from spending your own time and money through overt or passive-aggressive words and deeds.

4. No matter what your role is, you need to balance “soft” skills development with technical skills and/or academics. Often technical skills are the focus of organisation-driven development plans at the peril of soft skills such as emotional intelligence, change leadership and effective feedback skills, which can cause a failure of the application of the technical skills. Here is an example: Joan gets trained, along with her peers, on how to use Microsoft Teams. As the team starts to rely on the communication features, Joan is communicating on many teams in an abrupt manner that is perceived by some to be rude or disrespectful thus causing lost time in clarifying contexts and expectations thus defeating the perceived purpose of the tool as a collaboration benefit. Joan needs to build her written communication skills, a skill many perceive as “soft”.

5. Your professional development needs to focus on your career end game, not just short-term benefits. One of my mantras is “fate favours the prepared” and I have yet to see this disproven in my career. Of course many factors will impact the opportunities you pursue and the offers you accept; most jobs ae not “for life” and frankly I have observed that staying with the same organisation in the same job can actually be bad for the organisation in causing stagnation and greater resistance to innovation and change; comfort and protection become the greatest focus. True learning requires discomfort to get to growth, but only you can assess how much stretch you need at different parts of your life. Also, the mode of learning could and should be variable based on your plan. Whether you see 2, 5 or 10 years as your long-term plan, you need to explore different modes and investments based on your career goal.

Solutions That Work

One of the most valuable investments you can make to create and action your personal development plan is to engage a coach who is external toy our organisation’s environment because their focus will be on you and your plan. There is a vast array of tools they can help you master in order to evaluate where you are at, what is important to you, where you want to go, how you need to learn and what you need to get there.

An additional benefit of a coach for this purpose is that you have commitment to meet with your coach and engage in a “Low Urgency/ High Impact” activity that often doesn’t get enough time: strategizing for your personal success.

Do not have the funds for a coach? There are a plethora of books and tools online that can help you get started, you just need to make the time to reflect and plan to use them.

Summary

Most organisations know that having a learning culture just makes good business sense, but you also need to be an active owner of the what, why, when and how of your journey and create the habit of learning because you ant to, not just because you have to.