Making A Successful Personal Development Plan

Why you need a Personal Development Plan?

If you want to do something well – make a plan.

To make the most of a career or life opportunity you need to the chance to think the possibilities through. You need to be really clear about what you want to achieve.

When I work with clients on coaching projects I take time at the outset to understand where they are trying to get to and to understand the nature of the challenge they are facing. It is very important to be clear about these facts and to build up a compelling picture of where you want to get to.

As Stephen Covey says in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People; ‘always begin with the end in mind.’

To achieve your goal you need to know what the goal looks like.

A Personal Development Plan is the basis of building for success

If you want to make a success of

a new promotion,
of a project, or
of a lifestyle change,

having a personal development plan, a plan you can work to that helps lay out particular markers you want to achieve along the way is essential.

Three keys to a successful personal development plan

1 Assessment: the basis of your Personal Development Plan

Once you know what you want to achieve, the next step is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your position.

What kind of shape are you in?
What kind of changes will you need to make to make sure you give yourself the best chance of achieving your goals?

2 What is the context of your Personal Development Plan?

Assessing your position is key because it will help you anticipate and understand the context in which you are trying to be successful.

A lot of good ideas and projects fail because we don’t fully think about the contexts in which we are trying to work. Developing a good personal development plan will take account of

the people and teams that you work with
of the time frame you are trying to be successful in.

If you are going to make a success of a project you need to have clear insight into how your project will fit with the people around you, with the people you work with.

3 Don’t get in the way of your own Personal Development Plan – don’t derail!

It is hard enough keeping your personal development plan on track and dealing with the obstacles that chance circumstance and difficult people can present you with. It is vital that you don’t do things that will undermine your plans.

The advantage of working with a good and well qualified coach is that they will help you to identify the ways in which you tend or are likely to derail and fall into negative patterns of behaviour or start to become overly self critical. You need all of your energy and resource to deliver your goals.