E043: Personal Development Plans

Hello. This is James, and this is Jane, and here we are again with another episode of The World of Work podcast. We are on what is going to be we believe, hopefully, the last episode of Series five. So today we're speaking all about, what are we speaking about?

Jen, so today we're talking speaking about, what are we trying to try and speak about Personal Development Planning. Sorry. The reason I sound a little bit funny is because James was staring at me while he was telling me what number episode it was, and I thought he was looking at me like, I don't know what the number he actually does know what the number is. That's fine. So today we're gonna be talking about Personal Development Planning, because we feel like if you are in an organization that does it, most people don't get the most out of it, yeah, and if you aren't in an organization that do it, you can still do it yourself, and it can make a really significant impact. The whole series has been about personal development, self awareness, self reflection, and how to move yourselves forward, right, ultimately. So for us, this is about, yes, a lot of people, you say Personal Development Planning, they go, Oh no, that awful process at work, it can be, but

forget that for a minute. The process of planning your own personal development is brilliant. Yeah, it's a lovely thing to do. So we thought we'd finish that way. Yeah, it's

good. It just kind of wraps stuff up. We've talked about stuff now. You can learn about how to go and do

it, and it's not complicated. This is not a theory heavy episode. This is about prioritizing it, thinking about it a little bit differently, and sharing some of

our experience. Yeah. So it's gonna be quite a quick episode as we blast through this stuff, but before we get into it, in terms of the usual checking in, how do you how do you get to know us? How do you get a bit closer? Well, oh, I

don't know. I can't remember. It's been so long. It's been so long. So James is teasing, because it's the end of the series. We always feel like we know a bit better than the beginning, but we are always and love our gathering on Twitter. So we talk to lots of people on there at the WoW podcast. We have a website, www, World of work.io, and we also are on all the social media, well, all the social media for over 30s, right? Yeah. Social media, we not, not Snapchat. Someone called me out and they said, but you're not Snapchat? No, I'm not. I don't know how to that was my that was my moment where I went, No, no, but we are on Insta, Facebook, LinkedIn, come find us. And we're also on there, personally, on LinkedIn, yeah, so come find us. Yeah.

Cool. All right, so that's how you can get in touch with us in terms of the way we're going to do the episode. It's a standard episode, so we'll be using the standard format. We'll be starting with some definitions with our definition discussion, and we'll be doing a bit of a research round up. We'll have a list of a week. We'll then have some tales from a keyboard, so real life experience relating to this, before closing off with some top tips and final thoughts, and then checking out. And that's us. So that's how we're going to run it. Should we just jump straight in? Should we jump into some definitions first? James, take it away.

Take it away. The mic is mine. Yay. We've actually got a mic each now, because we've gone up in the world anyway or not. I don't know anyway. So in terms of definitions, we've only got four for you, because it's quite a straightforward subject. No, it's not too much there. But we wanted to bring a few up just to get everybody in the mood for the discussion. So we are going to start with a definition of a plan. This is exciting, isn't it? So a plan is simply a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something that's from Oxford Dictionaries. Detailed. Did you hear that people Yeah? Detailed,

yeah, yeah. So that's what a plan is. Then I'm going to go on to guess what. Since we're talking about development planning, I'm going to go on to development. That seems like a good one. And actually, if you look at definitions for development, it normally takes you to developing. So a definition for developing is to cause to evolve or unfold gradually, to lead or conduct something through a series of succession states or changes, each of which is preparatory for the next. So this was concept of, sort of developing over time, growing a series of stages, each one a build on the prior one and preparation for the next one. So I kind of like that layering that's from Merriam Webster. And if we bring those together, we've got a personal development plan. So a definition for a personal development plan is or a process. Says that personal development planning is the process of creating an action plan based on awareness, values, reflection, goal setting and planning for personal development within the context of a career, education. Relationship or for self improvement. So there's loads of different places for it, but you can have a development plan and our focus. We're normally focusing on work, but you can have a lot of different development plans, and then, yep,

no, I was just going to say, I know we always, we do always focus on work, but I would say this is the one area where it is as important to think about your personal, development as it is your professional person?

Yeah, you can get a lot out of it. And then the last thing we had is deliberate practice, which is a phrase you might have heard. This is a definition from the James clearly website. I'm sure you'll have heard the phrase deliberate practice, but it's just something worth calling out in a bit more detail. So deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic, while regular practice might include mindless repetitions. Deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with a specific goal of improving performance. So this is kind of that sort of focused, mindful, solution oriented way of doing things and repeating things to help you reach a goal. Is that right? Would you say that's your understanding? Yeah, I think

so. The way I have used it is when you are trying to improve as something, being given a series of tasks in a very explicit manner, a very specific manner, and being asked to do them in a certain way such that you learn from it. And it might be that you're learning it as habit, or it might be you're doing it in an exaggerated way in order to achieve some kind of heightened self awareness. Cool. So the example that I would give when I talk about deliberate practice, particularly when I'm mentoring, is asking people to who talk too much in meetings to not talk to and instead, the way that we manage that is, we will ask them. I will ask them to take notes during the meeting. Curious notes. Who spoke the most, who spoke the least? Who did they think was most interesting? What would they have said if they could have said and then ultimately, you kind of loosen the rope a little bit. Yeah. Next meeting, they might not talk till everyone's spoken. Yeah. Okay, and so it's, it's deliberately going in and doing real consciousness thing. And it's, it's a way of highlighting where you actually are versus where you think you are, and then starting to move

that. Yeah, good. All right, cool. Well, that's our definition discussion. Do you want to lead us into a bit of research

this week? Yeah, so I'll be really honest. Um, research for Personal Development Planning is pretty straightforward, and there's about a million websites that you can go to and look at lots of different people's examples of personal development plans. So I'm going to stick fairly light touch with within research Roundup. I'm going to talk about why personal development plans matter and why you need one. I'm going to talk about eight different ways that you can do personal development. One of the reasons is that quite often I speak to people and they're like, oh, I want to go on a training course, yeah, of course. Okay, great. What else you gonna do? Yeah? And they're like, I've got another training course, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, implement that. And also, what else are you going to do? So I want to just talk through eight different types of personal development that I tend to use as I've got a little wheel, is you can see it on the website, and it's like eight ways, and it's shamelessly stolen from ex boss of mine, Russell. Thank you. And then I'm also going to go through an action checklist, which is kind of like a process for it, and just talk through some of the major things that go wrong within that process. That sounds good. So, and then you're gonna move on with the list of the week. Yeah. So starting off with why people should be engaging with personal development. So I've picked this list out from a University Career Development website, actually, and I quite like it, aside from the fact that it's unique, I think it's quite helpful. So they give five clear ways that you can engage the why you should engage with Personal Development Planning. One, recognize the skills and abilities you have developed since you last checked in with yourself. Okay, right? Actually, actually, take a moment to go, where am I now versus where I was? I never think of that as the first one. Always be the first. Identify your baseline, right? Always, yeah, your current baseline. Cool. Number two, recognize how these skills and abilities are transferable to other contexts. So one of the things they talk about, which I think is really interesting, is that when your Personal Development Planning, one of the things you think about is actually you think about the next job or the next step. And instead of just going right, what do I need to do to get there, they're saying, Look at what you've already got. See, this is good, right? Totally not annoying about it. And then number three is identify areas you want and need to improve and

develop. Fine. I know it's brilliant, isn't it?

Number four, well, interesting. You might change your mind. Number four is improve your employability and plan for your future career. Yeah. Okay. And then number five is self satisfaction of development. Yeah. So interestingly, as a uni, I thought that would be first, and it wasn't. It was last. But what I think is really amazing about this, they kind of map out the process the way it should be, yeah, yeah. Which is where are you now? What can you take with you to your next step, yeah,

and then what do you need to work on? Yeah, with a little bit of a wordy one, yeah.

So I really like that. I really like the way it's worded. I really like the thought process behind it. And I think that the reason I picked that one, and there's, there's like, a million, but the reason I picked that one is that quite often people say to me, Oh, my, my organization, aren't very good at this, or they're not really into it, or, you know, I don't really know where to start. Yeah, everybody, everybody can sit down and think about where they are right now. Yeah, like, There's nothing. There's no knowledge barrier to thinking about what skills and abilities you have. I know someone who does their CV every couple of months. Yeah, it's got them into trouble in a couple of jobs because they've misunderstood. Yes, I know people. They do it because they want to understand where they are versus where they were, and actually what it gives that sense of improvement. You change a little bit here, change a little bit there.

So you notice when you're not when you're actually just doing more of the same thing all the time, if you're not growing anymore, yeah? And you suddenly realize you're just writing bigger numbers in the same content. Yeah? And I thought that was a really powerful thing. So that's another way that's good thing to do. There was a really practical way of doing it. So the next thing I want to talk about is the different types of personal development there are. So I thought we'd do this as a bit of a game. Oh, exciting, I know. So James, if I said to you, I have eight types of personal development activities in front of me. I'm going to give you two so that you've got a sense. Oh, right. Are you going to give

me the easy ones? So I've got eight on here, and we're going to see how many of them you can get within six guesses. So I'm going to give you two. So be six left. You get six guesses, and we'll see how many of you get. Oh, right. So the first one on my list is a special project, so being given a specific piece of work by someone outside of your remit, yeah, and the second one I'm going to give you is reading or researching, right? Reading? I'm just making a note here. I know

James has taken this really seriously, because it's the last game. It's the last game of the

season. Scary game. It's a final. So we've got special projects. We've got reading. I do something like formal course, yeah, training course, one for one. So

pressures on, I would do something like shadowing. So if you're paired up with somebody shadowing a specific piece of work, so secondment or shadowing is indeed in there. Oh, wow,

look at this. Okay, so we've got formal, we've got shadowing, we've got reading, we've got special project. What else would I do? I would do something well, like, maybe it's shadowing. I'd say something like observation, but that's probably shadowing, isn't it? Would I do special project, reading,

formal course, shadowing, I do peer conversations. So like a peer development group, something like, that's not on there, but I love it. So leave nine people, yeah.

So development group is on there, yeah? Peer led development group, yeah. Peer led development group. Quite often you see crossing over of diversity networks, don't you, and stuff like that, then I would say something like coaching or mentoring. Yes, I

was, I was worried, yeah, given James as a coach, the idea that he wouldn't put coaching mentoring, so that's on there. So you how many you Well, I'm giving myself three plus development, yeah, networks. So you four for four in terms of, I agree with that, yeah. And then I've got another two to guess, another two guesses. So would we say some sort of informal learning? I don't know what that would be. No, not on there. No, all right, so that's one more guess. Then I've got what about

you? Had reading special projects? I don't know. I'm gonna declare absent. Okay, so hilariously people,

Oh, what about listening to podcasts?

No, it's not on there. But reading and writing, researching should have podcasts on it. Yeah, change it so the remaining two are on my list. Are deliberate practice. Oh, I should have no no tonight. So I it and then increased responsibility with some people would talk about special projects, but what I mean by that is taking on some of your boss's jobs. So firstly, my key point of this, right is there's something that isn't training. Yeah, there's quite a lot, I would go as far to say as that I have never learned anything from a training course that I haven't either, either needed to activate through something else, through support somewhere else, or that hasn't been replaced by another way of learning. Yeah, training has never been the thing that has changed everything. Yeah, it might have been the thing that gave. The knowledge to be able to know what to do, to change everything.

Yeah, training itself isn't really the answer to a lot of things, right? I mean, training is only good if you then take away what you learn and use it in your but

it's finite. It's timed, yeah? It exists outside. Someone else does it. And it's just, you know, and quite often there's, like, a certificate or a piece of paper, yeah, and you get qualified. And it's really

important to understand the difference between personal development qualifications. Qualifications are a different thing. They might be part of your personal development. They might not. It's utterly not the same thing. Personal Development is about identifying ways of improving your own person, personal skills, resources, etc. So do you think I missed any so

I think you missed any, apart from the podcasts, obviously, like peer led, you know, communities of interest, yeah, which I think communities of interest are good, I'd say that, but I'm sure there are others that we've

met, yeah? And I guess that's my point, right? Just, there's so much out there that you can do. And of those, I would argue at least four of them, you can get on yourself, a huge amount of his things you can, you know, the and I'm tired and frustrated by really bright, really clever, really ambitious people saying, but my my organization, don't about me, and I'm sorry for that. And you know, we will do a whole episode one day about organizations and personal development and why they're idiots not to, yeah, but do something about it. In the meantime, quite

often, you can just do a lot of stuff yourself. I mean, if you're interested and motivated and intelligent, you can go and find ways to do and to learn by doing is one of the best ways to learn anything. I'd

say, Yeah, I think so. And I think people admire you hugely as well, don't they? So you think when people actually go out there and try and do it, you're like, Wow, I can't believe this.

And when you do that, you develop a much broader range of skills than just for skills, for the thing that you're doing. So you get the whole ownership, you get the self starter stuff, overcoming obstacles, all that kind of stuff fits within that self, you know, self driven type of work.

So, so I really like, I just, I use this quite often when I'm talking to people about personal development, as right before you even start talking about this, look at that list. What are those things sound exciting to you? Because I think actually, not only are trainings not as interesting, I think sometimes it's really exciting to talk about, like increased responsibility, or it's great coaching, if it's right for you, you know. And I think that's, I don't know, I just feel like that's a really good way of starting a conversation, rather than, what do you you know, similar to turning its on the head, like the conversation earlier. I think it's saying, Don't worry about where you want to be for a minute. Don't worry about what you need to do to get there, for a minute. Let's talk about what you enjoy doing, and let's talking about where you are now. And I think that's a much more powerful conversation, and a conversation you're much more likely to be able to have with yourself. Yeah. So any for you, any successes, any of your for those, your favorites yourself.

I like a range of them. I mean, obviously I think sort of coaching and learning through others is good. I think, you know, I think that there's often a great opportunity to learn from tangential things. So I'm a big believer in kind of broad polymath type learning. So you know, if I'm interested in one area of work, I think I can often learn transferable skills from other areas of work and bring those in. So for example, I like coaching, but I also like project management. So by learning about project management, it gives me something different to bring so I think that sort of interdisciplinary approach to learning can be really powerful. I think learning in any area is powerful. And I think continuing to develop your knowledge in a broad range of areas helps you in all the areas that you're interested in. Because I think there's a huge amount of crossover. Yeah, I think, I think you're right. And I think,

yeah, I do, and I don't think we spend enough time on any of this stuff, yeah. And it really frustrates me, yeah, there's

a big drive for specialism, which is, of course, hugely important, but you do learn cross specialism as well, which I think is

I've always, not always, but the last few years of my career, I always felt like I was somehow considered to be less good because I was broad, rather than because I'd learned how to run an organization, a small organization, I'd have to learn everything, yeah, but I hadn't had the resources to do any of those things brilliantly. Yeah, you know, and not as a specialist, and I always felt a little bit like I was never quite the expert in the room. Yeah. So, okay, so, yeah, that my absolute single advice for people who want to start off, get that list out, sit in front of it and think, What would I like to do? Yeah, not, not. What do I think is going to get me somewhere? Because often people choose training because they think it'll get them somewhere. I would argue that increased responsibility and special projects are without question, the things that have boosted my career through the roof, because I've got to work with people who are just far more senior to me, great or Yeah, and it's and it's been opportunistic about it. Okay, so third section of research, round. Today is around the process that you go through or might want to go through. And I think, I mean, it's not, there's nothing fancy about it. I just think it's really helpful. Yeah, so step one, establish your purpose or direction. Great, and think about where you want to be in a medium term. They talk about, okay? So they said, This is not about next year, fine. Okay, so first you would do next year if you had already done a medium term. Their next year is three to five years. Their medium term is three to five years. Okay? So they are saying next job or two, fine. They're saying, I think what's your next job at the end of it probably, and then about identifying these development needs. So looking at, you know, realistically, where are you now? What skills have you got that are transferable into that sort of new role or new job, or whether it's a new life choice? Yeah, what's not? And then figuring out what's the gap? Yeah. And I talk about the gap all the time, yeah, so I feel like there's a never ending gap in front of me, and I just keep because I keep pushing forward about what, yeah, the goals keep moving, so the gap keeps shifting. But I quite like thinking about it, because then it's like filling a gap, yeah, and then we've got identify learning opportunities. Don't be fussy. Would be my advice around this, if opportunity to come, don't be like, Oh, I don't know if that's the right one, yeah. And also, I think it's really, really, really important to understand those opportunities in the wider sense. So for example, no matter who you are, there are charities all over this country that are desperately in need of trustees sitting on a board at any level, whether it's a one man, no employee, charity with three board members and one volunteer, you're still responsible for something, still learning, and you're learning from different people. You're understanding what's going on. So identify learning opportunities, and don't look as narrowly as your workplace. Formulate an action plan, and I'm going to go on to action plans in a minute. And the actual plan themselves. Sorry, the actual action plan, the actual action in terms of what actually goes into one and then undertake the development, which sounds like the easy bit, right? Record the outcomes and evaluate and review, and I quite often organizations do this on an annual basis. Yeah, truly dreadful idea. I mean, who who literally sets action plans and then doesn't look at them for a year or six months? Maybe, I think a lot of people do that, yeah, but who does that and has success? Who should be

doing surely? So one of the things I would encourage is to you mentioned detailed earlier in one of the definitions. Yeah, detailed plan. The more detailed, and the more you can break it down into action plans and sub action plans, the more you're going to get traction and movement in what you're doing. More you're going to see where you're going. And I think it's really important to think about how you're going to execute it. So for example, people don't talk enough about how their network works. So how many people do they have in their network who are able to share information with them about jobs that might be coming up, share information about opportunities for learning, offer them mentoring and coaching, and I think, something like a year long process. So I've really, I've often seen I want to grow my network, yeah, right. And that's a year, right? That's not a development plan, that's a line that's like five words, yeah, right. What I want to see is I found a tool online to map my development network. This is where it is. These are the people. These are the things that I don't think I have covered. And therefore, these are the kinds of events I'm going to try and go to, to try and meet these people. And these are the people I'm going to try and connect with internally. And this is the person I think I could head up. That's an action plan, yeah. So

it's kind of targeted and clear on where you're trying to get to. And it's got that level of detail. It's

absolutely got that level of detail. It's got that level of ability to say, you know, if you're explaining to your mum, who might not understand it, because she's not really into this stuff, because she's, I don't know works in something else, yeah, she should be able to say, I understand what you're actually going to do. Yeah, my suspicion with plans by office. But what are you going to do? Yeah, I understand what you want to achieve. What are you going to do? Sorry, I know I sound a bit lecturer, but I just It drives me back people's development is in their grasp. It really is, so undertaking development put time inside so I do used to have a deal with one of my team where she was allowed to take two hours a week, and she would work from home on a Wednesday afternoon, and she would do an hour and a half work, and then she would do development work for two hours. Development work for two hours, great, and as long as she could stay on top of her work, I was happy for that, because she hated doing her development work in her office. She was doing quite some specific research, and she didn't want to do in her spare time. And that's fair enough. So that's the deal we struck, and it worked really, really and guess what? We got a really good bit of research out of it that ended up using. For the organization, and then finally, sorry, and then record the outcomes. Yeah, so really bad. People are really bad at reporting on Personal Development Planning, and it's because quite often people only reporting for the purpose of meeting their personal development reviews. Yes, of course. I mean, yeah. And it's really bad,

because actually the thing that matters the most is that you acknowledge you've made a difference to your own personal development and that you've moved yourself forward. I think anyway, yeah, it's a big, important piece and and on that probably worth mentioning. If you have any authority in your organizations, there's some, really quite a lot of research around that suggests that unhooking performance management from personal development is crucial. We did an organization I worked with. It was brilliant. I mean, it wasn't perfect. It was so much better. Yeah, and so I don't know if you had any experience of

that, so I've had lots of conversations about it. I've been in an organization that's subsequently decoupled performance and development conversations, however decoupled. I've just said that, that seems about right, doesn't it? Is that the right word? I just think that's hilarious. Um, yeah, so

there's I've been in organizations that have subsequently done it, and I've seen a fair amount of research about it. I think it's absolutely right to do it, but I've got some sort of cynicism and skepticism about the decoupling as well, because my sense is where it's been rolled out, it's fundamentally replaced with basically the same thing anyway. Okay, so great in practice, sorry, great in theory. Great if you can do it well. But I don't know that it is always done well, yeah.

And I feel like I explained, I think I told them the story about where we did this, an organization. Oh, no, I didn't. I wrote a blog about it. That's where I did cool, which is about where I did it, in the organization. And the deal was, your performance was measured. It was a total on a totally different cycle. So it was on, like performance review was quarterly, yeah, through three short meetings and one long meeting. But actually long was still only an hour, because it was very straightforward. It was, have you hit your targets? Have we hit our targets? If not, what could have been different, and there was no evaluation of the person's behavior at all? Yeah.

And so I've seen stuff like that done not in organizations I worked in, but in organizations with whom I've spoken, whereby they've introduced, effectively, alternate managers for personal development. Oh, wow. So you'll get a whole series of people who are for development managers for a team, yeah, and they'll manage a series of people, but they won't task management, yeah. So the Task Managers have a different set of conversations, and they're for performance people, and then there's a different relationship. Okay,

so that's really interesting. So we did the opposite, but ended up it's not the opposite, it's the same, but different roles. So my first job, we had such a weird team, and it was so the dynamic was really strange, and there was a couple of real experts who were very young that what we had was we had a project based team, okay? And so you had your line managers, but you very rarely, your line manager was the person who task managed you, really only in the sense of deciding whether you were going to be accepted onto a project or not, so they could veto. And then they they perform it. They personal developed you. Okay, yeah, that's not a verb, but you know, they did your personal development and stuff like that. But actually on all the projects they were trusted to go, yeah, find the day to day. Yeah, Okay, interesting. But so coming back to the place where I've seen it uncoupled, I think what's really interesting about that is the only other thing they were measured was whether they put any effort into their personal development, yeah, so as long as they put effort in, big tick, yeah, I've got a thumbs up, but you can't see if they didn't put the effort in. Was the only time that they could ever be pulled up on that. Okay? The argument was, if you know how to do your job and you have got your job, you should not be being judged on your behaviors and skills for being stretched, right? That's not, that's not the job. That's you doing another job. But if you, as long as you put some effort into improving, and I just it just changed everything that's nice, well, people stop fighting about I'm a really good person. I'm brilliant, and I deserve a raise, because it wasn't about raises anymore. Raises were almost so numer numerated, numerical because of performance targets. It was just totally different. So, yeah, I, I, that was my special plea. If you do have any influence, you should just think about how you might be able to do that, because the research is there now, and they're just saying that basically, if you are in any way using performance remuneration, you're killing it by putting you're killing any effect it has what you're doing by putting the personal development on

it. Yeah. I mean, it becomes a weakness. It becomes a stick to be beaten with. It becomes well, and it becomes

something you don't want to share. Absolutely. Why on earth would someone want to say this is the thing I really want to work on when they then shows up that they're not calibrated meeting six months later, and yes, calibrated me. So

the other thing that calibrated meters, as you don't know, is basically grading on a curve in a business. So I can't be a four because there's a. 100 fours above me, and they were 4.1 twos. Yeah, just nonsense anyway. And then finally, evaluate and review. And I think quite often people think they're leaving organizations before they're going to been through more than a couple of or they're leaving jobs at least before they're going to have been through a couple of years worth of personal developments. So it's this, there's like, let's say you stay an organization average of three years, right? That means it's going to be, you can't come in in what year one, so it won't be done properly. You'll have one full year, and then you'll be gone by the third one's evaluated, which means that there are approximately, I don't know how many people work in the UK. I don't know. I should know these many's. There are a lot of personal development plan, sitting on shared drives that have never been done totally. So this is another reason why you should own it yourself. You should look after it yourself, even if you live in organization. I'll give you a top tip. I know someone whose first question, first interview question, is, what's on your personal development plan? And if it's what my boss told me, You ain't getting the job. So you should be owning it. It's really important that you own it. I'm not saying you should pay for it. Organization should pay for their people's development, but you absolutely should be owning and discussing and influencing what's on there. And speaking of which, the final part of research round up is just to go through what's normally on one Okay, cool. In a very and I've got a template that I'll stick up, but I think the easiest thing to do is just talk you through it. No, I talk you through it. No, yeah. So

the simplest way I've got one in front from a company called high speed training, and they have 1234567, goals, seven columns,

and they will say, what are my big goals? Someone calls them, who calls them hairy audacious goals, big hairy B hags, yeah, big hairy audacious goals. So the examples they give, and they've got personal and professional, they've got completing a PhD and saving a deposit for a house, okay, they've also got, they

also put things like on there, like, you know, becoming a manager. So these are really big goals. And I would just remind you the things we said, make sure you want them right? Make sure these are goals that you actually want to achieve. If you don't want to achieve it, if you're just writing it to fill it in, don't put it on there. So what are my big goals? Then, what goals need to happen first, right, or what things need to happen so that I can achieve it right? And that's your action plan. How, you know, I can't save for deposit until I set aside 10% of my wage every Sure, yeah, I can't set deposit until I've looked and researched properties to find out how much and then spend companies. So really breaking it down, and then you can just like, tick off all these things. When do I want to do this by be

really specific about this, and I know this is coming back to smart goals, all of that, but it's important, when do you and just because your development plan with your organizations a year doesn't mean that you can't put a five year goal and just explain the first year as work and where it will get you right. People don't like that, but it's the way to do it. And then what obstacles might get in your way? What might stop

you getting this done? Sure, so blockers, too, which I really like, items saves never used to be on. Mine absolutely would have put that on. That's good. And I would, you know, I'd even add something there about how might you end up accidentally stopping this from happening? Because nine times outta better self sabotage, right? Well, you know, particularly saving money for deposits and stuff. And then the next one is, how can I improve my chances of meeting my goal? So what can I do right now? Pre commitment. What

can I do? We sorry, pre commitment was something we talked about in previous episode around habit No, around behavior change. Behavior change, behavior change. So

how can I improve my chances of me my goal? What can I do right this minute? That would mean I'd have a better chance of getting that goal. So it might be of saving to deposit. It might be setting up a standing order right now, literally, just get on your phone. Do it. If you're trying to become a manager and you want to do it. It might be getting on in might be getting on the internet right now, finding out, downloading job descriptions for managers in my organization, to see if I can find out what's in there. And where can I go for support. Who could help me? Who should I ask? What do I want to talk to? So where can I go for that support? And finally, a review column of how am I doing? And that's that's really interesting, because on this one, and I agree with this, it's a feeling, it's about how you might object objectively, break down how you think progress we're doing. Yeah, you can't do that if it's linked to your performance review. No, absolutely not. But you can if it's not, yeah. So I really like that. I

know it's a really simple template. We'll put it up, or put a link up to the high speed training guys, because I think it's good one. Yeah, it's helpful to have. It's

helpful to get. It's a bit more detailed than some of the ones I've seen. Let's go a few good bits in there. So, yeah, that's my very brief research. Round up cool. I

think it's good. I think there's some good stuff in. Here. I love the fact that you called out that you really need to make time to do this stuff. You know, there's no point in having a plan if you don't put the time aside to actually work on it. So I think that's really important. One other thing that I'd call out that I think's helpful, and this is less about creating the plans and more about achieving them. And we touched on it in some of the areas, but I think it's worth calling out is it's important to celebrate the success as well. So, you know, as you follow your progress and as you make progress, be it through, you know, writing a new CV that shows improvement, or checking in on your your goals and your plan, but just stepping back and really celebrating if you've made progress. So it's quite a motivating factor as well. I think, yeah,

I think, I think my favorite thing around stuff like that is when you're in a situation that you would never have been in, yeah? So when someone exposes you to a situation or so for me, it's always like, I always talk about it, but it's, for me, it's always like being up a hill on a morning because I've got control of my diary. Yeah? Great. For other people, it might be being in meetings they would never would have got to be in, yeah, because they've been brought in by someone who that they've really tried to connect with and develop a relationship with, yeah. So it's kind of appreciating that and celebrating it and spotting it and going, Look, I'm here, and I wasn't. Yeah, cool.

All right, so I'm going to jump on to a list of a week. And again, it's a really simple one. The overall subject, as you've seen it's, you know, it's fairly, fairly clear and simple. So the list of a week is as well and and all we're going to do on the list of a week is talk through five things that we think are signs that you've got a development plan that's good, right? I mean, we've talked about ways to create them and the type of things that are in them, but this is just a bit of a sense check onto whether or not it's something that will be helpful for you. So we pulled out five points that we think are good here. The first is that your personal development plan really is personal, right? It shouldn't be generic. It should be about you. It should be for you. It should be designed to improve you, you know? So if, if it is, if it's bespoke like that, then that's a good sign. If it's a template that's been rolled out from other people, or something your boss has said, Well, it's probably not going to be as good for you as if it really is bespoke. Point two is it should be simple. You know, you can have huge amounts of things that you can work on, but in reality, it's probably worth trying to come up with a few high level simple things that you want to get right. And you can have a fair bit of detail in relation to them, but really, there should only be a few high level things that you're focusing on, it should be simple and fairly straightforward. And I think, as Jane said, you should be able to, you know, explain it to your mom, and that's the level it should be at. It shouldn't be impenetrable. I feel like we're being really disrespectful to moms. Well, maybe,

maybe spend your eight year old cousin, yeah, that sounds good. Next up is number three, you know, for the things to be on there, but to be helpful, they really should be something that you've bought into. It should be things that you actually want to do. So if you put something down there because you think it should be there, then that's less likely to be something that will really support your personal development than if it's something that you actually really want to do if it fits with your values and your goals. Number four is that at some point you should sense check your development plan. It's great to have it, it's great to create it yourself, but really it's worth checking with other people and just confirming, because you might put something down as a development goal that people think you don't need. They might say, actually, you're really good at that. Or they might say, Yes, you absolutely need that. Or they might say, that seems overly ambitious. Or have you thought about the time or the other impact, or whatever it is, but getting a bit of validation is helpful on it. And then lastly, point number five says that actually the development plan should be something that really moves you forward and helps you get to where you want to get to. So it should be stretching to some extent, but it should really help you move towards your goals. And if it's not something that moves you forward, then it probably then it probably shouldn't really be on your development plan. And then moving you forward could be in all kinds of different directions of your choice. So it could be in relation to personal happiness, it could be in relation to career, it could be in relation to finance or relationships. But whatever those sort of directions are you're looking to go, you want to make sure that your plan will help move you in this direction. So that's for five things we called out. It's personal, it's simple, it's something you want to do, it's something that you've validated with others, and it's something that moves you forward. And I think if you check your plan and it's got roughly those things in it, then you know it's probably not going to be a bad thing. Any thoughts on that?

I think, I mean, all of that is true. The only thing I would add is development plans, by nature, can get away with being completely ambitious and silly. So they don't have to be something that you get everything done. No, that's true. How? I guess, I guess the reason I'm saying that is because sometimes we're not big and brave and scary, and actually sometimes just writing something down that's big and brave and scary moves us a bit towards that big and brave and scary. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with having

something a bit exciting on that. Yeah, so, but I love all of that, and I agree with all of that cool.

Have you got any tales from a keyboard? Thoughts on these? I've definitely got

a tail for the keyboard. I. And for me, it's a really straightforward one, and very live to me for a long time, or maybe for the last three years, I felt like I had a number of narratives about my life that I'd written that I wanted changing. One was about not being particularly academic, and another was not feeling like I was a real expert this stuff, and I was giving people lots of advice, but not necessarily having a theoretical necessarily having a theoretical basis to back it up. But I've always seen myself as super practical. So I had this idea to go back to uni and do masters. And I didn't really know what exactly in but I did test it out by saying out loud to see their faces. I was like, and I remember my mom's face was like, Oh, she was horrified. Oh, my God. She's like, don't make me live through that again. It was all for the first time. She was very supportive when I did it, but there was definitely a face of why. And I said it to my boss, and I said it's all sorts of people. I said it to like a taxi driver, and I would say, you know, I wanted to know what it would feel like to say it, well, you got to practice that. Yeah, and then I put it down, and I wrote it down, and I wrote it in my outgoing person, my last year of my personal development plan, my last job, I was like, I want to do this. And it's astonishing. What writing something down does. It really is. I always say this around goal setting, but so for me, I was really clear where I wanted to do it. I sat down and worked out how much it was going to cost me. What were the So, what were the blockers? You know, how much know, how much cost me? How could I possibly manage my time? Was there a course that existed that I could do while I worked? Because most of them don't at masters level, most of them are full time, or if they're part time there during the day, so I wouldn't be able to work. And I did loads of research, and I just, you know, I mapped out when, if theoretically, I were to do it, what I would have to do when, and then suddenly the deadlines just roll around, and you just go, hang on, I said I was going to do this. I'm told people now, and then it's done. And now I'm in a place where I'm six months down the road and sitting waiting for my second set of results, quite nervously. So there you go. That's a real life in action story from the keyboard. What about

you? Yeah, I quite like that one. First of all, I thought that was kind of fun. My stories from a keyboard, or, I guess maybe a little bit more, you know, actually in the work environment, as opposed to sort of crossing over to personal and it's just really reflecting back on, you know, my time in organizations where I've had people working for me, and when I've worked for others. And I guess it's just just, I guess, to call out the fact that in a lot of organizations, things like personal development aren't really captured as a priority. So quite often, what I've seen was things like personal development plans being necessary for part of your performance management process. So you know to submit your performance management plan, or your sort of plan, for every year you need to submit, as well a personal development plan, but people don't really put as much effort into those as I think they should, and I think that's a bit of a sad thing. One other thing that I think I wanted to just call out, but I've seen, is that sometimes you get to situations where somebody else tells you what's in your personal development plan. And I think I've had that happen to me once, but I've certainly seen it happen to other people as well. You know, quite often, I've seen people being told what should be in their personal development plan. And I think, you know, that's kind of just what it is in some organizations. But I think when we spoke a while ago about, you know, goals and things like that, but this whole thing about accepting what it is that you want to do, but it doesn't always go hand in hand with being told what your development needed. So I think there's space for organizations to do better at this and to give people more space to genuinely have their personal development plans be designed for them. So I guess that's really it for my tales from a keyboard. I guess if we jump onto top tips and things like that. Have you got any top tips you want to share or,

yeah, I guess, I guess, for me, it's, it's always going to be, understand this is for you. Yeah, it's, you know, I know your organization occasionally will make it feel like it's not, and sometimes it's for them too. But even if you, even if your organization isn't great at it, take the time to do it properly, because, without sounding ridiculously Evangelical, your life will not change until you decide how you want it to change. And a personal development plan is the easiest way to decide how you want your life to change. Yeah,

and, I mean, that's basically what I was gonna say for a top tip as well. No, slightly, sorry, it's all good. I was just going to say, make sure that whatever you capture as a personal development plan is personal, and that it's something that you want to do, right? I mean, if you don't want to do it, then it won't really be right for you. So I think trying to make make sure that you've got time and that you actually do that that'll give you the best chance of getting a good personal development plan. So I think that's probably us on personal development plans. Would you say any other things you want to call out about personal development plans? No, that's it. I think that's been I know it's a

very practical episode, and it's a little bit less theory and a little more how to use it, but it's been

useful. Hopefully. Cool. All right, well, let us just say you can get in touch with us at all the usual places. I think it's just goodbye until next time. And for me, it's enjoy your development plan. And goodbye. Hi.