How to keep improving
Personal development / 01 June 2010
Developing your personal management skills may take commitment, time and analysis, but the improvements to your performance and the sense of achievement make continuing professional development a worthwhile investment, says Scott Beagrie
To survive and thrive in today’s rapidly shifting employment landscape, managers and professionals need to work hard at maintaining their employability. If you still conform to the notion that management capability is simply something to be accumulated throughout the passage of your career, think again. Instead you need to look into how you can make yourself more employable.
Integral to achieving this is continuing professional development (CPD), whereby you take a planned and systematic approach to the maintenance and upgrading of existing skills and knowledge.
The true value of CPD can be gauged by improvements in your performance but it does require wholehearted commitment and for the necessary resources to be made available by employers and professional bodies. Certain industries and professional bodies promote or require CPD and this can pre-determine the route you take.
Your organisation’s learning and development strategy and approach to personal development plans (PDPs) may also have a bearing. But whether you have preconditions to meet or can fulfil your own needs, there are some guiding principles to adhere to that will accelerate the benefits of any CPD scheme or programme.
Best practice suggests that regular conversations need to take place between you and your senior manager, reflecting upon and also recording performance against your objectives
John Castledine, director of learning solutions, Institute of Leadership & Management
The way I see it
John Castledine, ILM
Q. Do you have a personal strategy for continuous development?
I place a high value on professional networking, both online (through tools such as LinkedIn) and in a blended approach (through membership of professional bodies). I find that most people are very generous with the support they are willing to provide.
Acting as an informal coach to others and the supervision of staff provide an ongoing mix of challenges that is rich in learning opportunities for a manager-leader.
Q. Are there any new theories on learning and development throughout our careers?
There is growing recognition of the importance of informal learning in CPD (blended with undertaking formal training and qualifications). A growing number of HR and learning and development (L&D) departments are looking beyond a curriculum of training events and qualifications and are seeking to influence and amplify informal learning opportunities. This can include connecting individuals together in coaching relationships or action-learning sets. Plus encouraging the adoption of Web 2.0 tools within the enterprise (blogs, wikis, and RSS feeds) can all have a very powerful impact.
Q. In your opinion which sectors or organisations are good at fostering this culture?
Organisations that create a strong coaching and mentoring culture will help maintain CPD across their workforce. Many professional bodies covering a broad range of sectors and organisations actively promote or require ongoing CPD. They may also identify progression pathways that link series of qualifications that can help develop the capabilities of their members as they move through their career.
Explore CPD methodologies
It’s a common delusion that CPD means going back to the classroom, taking courses and qualification programmes or attending lectures. While these can and often do form component parts of CPD, it also embraces a range of activities including informal and on the job training, visiting conferences, exchanging knowledge in online forums and even reading business pages or a self-help book.
The broad range of online learning materials available and the use of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis also brings many more flexible options to share and learn.
“The first rule is that not all CPD can or should be planned,” says John Castledine, director of learning solutions at the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM). “It is important to make the most from those unpredictable events in the workplace, whether it is acting up to cover a staff absence or learning from a project that goes horribly wrong.”
Define your development goals
If your organisation strongly encourages CPD or it’s compulsory within your industry and you are required to commit to a certain number of hours of CPD a year, it’s highly probable that there will be prescribed elements. If this is the case, your professional institute may offer frameworks or pathways for learning.
But this shouldn’t deter you from setting your own improvement objectives, too. Your individual development needs will depend on personal circumstances and a variety of factors including current and future job role, the outcome of an appraisal and career aspirations as well as non work-related interests and targets.
Carry out a personal skills audit and include core managerial skills such as decision-making, problem-solving and negotiation as well as professional or technical competencies to identify any skills gaps you have as well as the development actions you need to take. If necessary enlist the help of your manager to check and balance your thoughts and plans. Time spent reflecting on why these aims are important to you and how you are going to achieve them will also assist with your motivation.
Reflect and review
An essential element of any CPD activity is allocating enough time to reflect on and evaluate the usefulness of it. Have you acquired a new skill or gained valuable insight or experience that has made you more effective or productive? Where and how can you demonstrate or apply this learning? Are you aware of a disparity between your current capability and what your organisation or role demands? Where an intervention has failed, would you have acted or reacted differently if you were to face a similar situation again?
Validate your learning
Tracking and documenting these events and achievements is the key to continual improvement and learning better ways of doing things. Record them in detail or as key learning points or insights in a diary, log or online tool. Regardless of how you rate your power of recall, without recording your experiences you won’t have any hard evidence and you can’t analyse, review or learn from them.
Castledine adds a further cautionary note that however simple or sophisticated an organisation’s performance management system is, it will typically be the record-keeping that represents the greatest challenge. Appreciate that goals and priorities change and that you should treat your CPD programme as an evolving process that needs to be habitually revisited and refreshed accordingly. “Best practice suggests that regular conversations need to take place between you and your senior manager, reflecting upon and also recording performance against your objectives,” says Castledine. “From this needs can be evaluated and also agreed and monitored.”
Use coaching and feedback
An experienced executive coach or mentor will help to further develop your capabilities and maximise your potential, particularly in areas where it is difficult to make advances on your own such as improving self-awareness, image, confidence, strategic thinking and personal discipline. Similarly you might require their insight and support to strengthen your skills and expertise to meet the specific requirements of a new role or forthcoming project. Tapping into the knowledge, wisdom and perspectives of colleagues and peers and also using them as a sounding board may also help to bring improvements.